ADAGIO DANCER

« Adagio dancer is a chapter in the novel The Big Money written by John Dos Passos and published in 1937.

The Big Money is the 3rd book in the USA trilogy.

John dos Passos is an American writer close to socialist realism.

In this extract , the life of Rudolph Valentino is depicted.

2 sequences are distinct: his artistic beginnings and his successes. In the first part o f m y presentation, I will show to what extent we can say that this portrait is cinematographic .

The, I will explain that this extract correspond with th e tradition of American D ream.

Fin ally, I will focus on the d e - personalization of Valentino.

I - A cinematographic portrait. A - A f ast portrait with simple images It’s a biography of Rudolph Valentino, a character who actually existed. The excerpt is a summary of his artistic debut to his successes: after doing small jobs « he hung about cabarets doing odd jobs», he becomes a tango dancer», «he began to get engagements dancing the tango in ballrooms and cabarets» until his first success with his first film «He got his chance in The Four Horsemen». Moreover, we notice that lon g periods are told in a few words (lines 22 - 24), these scenes accelerate the rhythm, and the reader is caught in a whirlwind of the star ’s success .

B - L ack of punctuation , lexical invention: p oetical creativity.

We can observe a dance of the text, the words dance on the page in a fluid and regular way. The meticulous work of rhythm, acceleration and deceleration allow to highlight the stages of the dancer’s life. The text is like poetry.

L5: artistic beginnings of Valentino: the 3 main propositions are disjointed by the sem icolons in a sentence. We skip a line and start over. The rhythm is fast and hectic, there is a reduction of all the punctuation marks therefore highlighting the semicolons. The drawee has been removed to “goodtempered” and no space to “tangodancer” so the pause is only introduced by semicolons. While line jumps slow down the reading . C - Mix between reality and cinema.

T he facts are real but the director, the plans and the camera eye of the narrator gives us the impression of being in a cinematography. Moreover, we observe a play of light «flas hlight», «glare of the milliondollar searchlights», «glare of klieg lights», this brings us to a place of shooting, with the scenery we do not know anymore if Valentino is an actor for real or for fake, including lines 22 - 24.

Even Valentino’s life is like a Hollywood movie .

II - The perfect American Dr eam A - Portra it of determined ambitions immigrant Valentino by his real name Rodolfo Guglielmi (l5) leaves Italy for the USA to succeed in life «to sink or swim». But Valentino is looking for celebrity at all costs: «He wanted to make good» is repeated 3 times from the beginning un til the end of the single, which shows the obsession of the character to be known. In addition, the main propositions follow one another, and the temporality is erased, the chronological markers and the logical links are absent. All the events leading to Va lentino’s career are on the same level. The ternary rhythm of the sentences underlines the rapidity of the launch of the dancer’s career (l 17 - 19). Rhythm is therefore put at the service of the. »