Video editing, 110 min.
Returning Carlotta’s Way redoubles the proposition set forth by Carlotta’s Way. Likewise divided into fourteen chapters, the work lingers on another series of details from Las Meninas, associated with the same extract from Vertigo, which is once more reworked to play backward and forward in very slow motion. As such, the video offers a second progression within Velasquezs composition, isolating different motifs and arranging alternative portions of the image so as to create further complex interactions between the painting and Hitchcock’s film.
The retrograde succession of chapters (from 14 to 1) creates a sense of returning after Carlotta’s Way, (whose chapters run from I to XIV). The combination of these two works can thus form a loop over three hours in length, structurally reinforcing both the forward and backward playback that composes the pieces and the perspective that the videos can afford one another. Combined, they create a trap that encloses the pictorial and filmic characters despite the many movements that would liberate them.
Nevertheless, the durations of the two videos differ. While they make references to types of film formats (4/3 vs. VistaVision) and to the means of their diffusion (movie screen vs. television or DVD), the videos take on a voluntary asymmetry proper to the pictorial composition and to the structure of the film’s screenplay – a means of signaling the difficulty of any return in time and the consideration of its many lessons.
