Abstract

Much has been written on the work of Danish director Lars von Trier, though the majority of these texts have limited scope, focusing primarily on matters of aesthetic and auteurist interest. What is lacking in these investigations is any detailed discussion of the films' sonic properties, sado-masochistic structures, and affective potentialities. Centering on two of his recent films, Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, this thesis seeks a greater understanding of these facets of von Trier's work, as well as a deeper appreciation of the receptive body as a sensing body --experiencing the cinema on a level beyond cognition. Turning away from traditional film-theoretical approaches such as the psychoanalytic and hermeneutic, this thesis moves into more philosophical terrain, locating the roots of its methodology in the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Building on Deleuze's conceptualization of the cinema as an intertextual body comprised of two complementary semiotics--the movement-image and the time-image --this thesis looks at the films through the prism of a new theoretical construct, one that imagines the cinema as composed of two parallel texts: the first sadistic, the other, masochistic. The site of our affective experience is located in the interval that exists between these space-times, an interval felt most profoundly, perhaps, in the realm of sound. This project submits a new model for understanding the films of Lars von Trier, but more importantly, offers a new approach to thinking cinema that moves beyond more traditional ocular-centric and formalist practices