{"id":62469,"date":"2021-12-03T15:18:59","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T15:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62469"},"modified":"2021-12-03T15:21:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T15:21:01","slug":"passing-into-film-rebecca-halls-adaptation-of-nella-larsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62469","title":{"rendered":"Passing into Film: Rebecca Hall\u2019s Adaptation of Nella Larsen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing into Film: Rebecca Hall\u2019s Adaptation of Nella Larsen<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Modernism\/modernity<\/a>
\nVolume 6, Cycle 2 (2021-11-10)<\/p>\n

Rafael Walker<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of English
\nBaruch College, City University of New York<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Fig. 1. Promotional poster for Rebecca Hall’s<\/a> Passing<\/em><\/a> (2021). Image via IMDB<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Director Rebecca Hall\u2019s<\/a> recent adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> exquisite second novel, Passing<\/em><\/a> (1929), is visually stunning. I had the pleasure of seeing the film on the big screen, during its limited theatrical run and before its Netflix<\/a> release. It was the ideal atmosphere for absorbing this cinematic rendering of Larsen\u2019s eerie, anxiety-ridden plot: ensconced with a sparse audience (my companion and I comprising two of the four patrons for the 5:10pm showing) in a small independent theater in Manhattan<\/a>, just a few miles from where the story is set, and with Halloween everywhere looming on this late-October evening.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

These qualities of the novel were only enhanced by Hall\u2019s decision to film it in black and white<\/a>, a daring choice that she, a first-time filmmaker, had to fight for, as Alexandra Kleeman<\/a> of the New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a>. On the one hand, this artistic decision conjures all the nervous palpitations that Hitchcock<\/a> made synonymous with black-and-white mise-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/a>, maintaining the unshakable uneasiness one experiences while reading Larsen\u2019s novel. On the other, it hurls the either-or terms of Jim Crow<\/a> racial binarism into conflict with a predominating grayscale\u2014an all-pervading sign of the fictionality of the dichotomizations structuring American culture. Nothing could be more in the spirit of Nella Larsen\u2019s novel. I suspect, however, that Hall\u2019s departures from the source text will attract the attention of modernists far more than her convergences…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director Rebecca Hall\u2019s recent adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s exquisite second novel, Passing (1929), is visually stunning. I had the pleasure of seeing the film on the big screen, during its limited theatrical run and before its Netflix release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8413,1196,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[32002,31962,1631,20941,87,29469,596,22792,28879,827,19672],"class_list":["post-62469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-communications","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-alexander-skarsgard","tag-andre-holland","tag-harlem","tag-modernismmodernity","tag-nella-larsen","tag-netflix","tag-new-york-city","tag-rafael-walker","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-ruth-negga","tag-tessa-thompson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62470,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62469\/revisions\/62470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}