O estranho caso de Angélica by Manoel de Oliveira: a Traveling Out of Time

Abstract

Manoel de Oliveira’s film of 2010 goes back to a project of 1952 and underlines the importance of memory in his art. Understanding memory as freedom in a “travelling outside of time”, O estranho caso de Angélica reflects on Oliveira’s dialogue with other visual arts, namely photography, and the notion of “aura” in Walter Benjamin’s writings, and with Marc Chagall’s work, namely his painting s representing a couple flying over town. We shall analyse the relation of the “travelling outside of time” in this film with the motif of suspension in the work of the Jewish Russian painter.