Vagabondages

Abstract

The first part of Chapter 3 observes the figure of the nomad or vagabond, the quintessential traveler. Several cultural philosophers and writers such as Walter Benjamin, Georges Steiner, Michel Maffesoli, and Joseph Roth inform my reading of nomadic traveling that occurs in the following films: Sarah Petit’s (now Sarah Léonor) L’Arpenteur/The Land Surveyor (2003) and Le Lac et la rivière/The Lake and the river (2002), Ermanno Olmi’s La Légende du Saint-Buveur/The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988), Siegried’s Sansa (2003), and Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania (2006). These French productions venture into the world, introducing the figure of a global traveler not geographically bound by borders and nations. In the second part, Jean-Claude Guiguet’s testament film Les Passagers/The Passengers (1999) relies on the metaphor of the train or tramway for the meaning of life. Located at the periphery of Paris, Guiguet conveyed a poetic incantation on life and death, and the state of our world at the end of the 20th century. I focus on the form of the tramway, and the various lines that crisscross the film.

vagabond n. & v. i. 1. Having no fixed habitation, wandering etc. 2. Wanderer, vagrant, esp. idle & worthless one; (colloq.) scamp, rascal. 3. v. i. (now colloq.). Wander about, play the vagabond. Hence (vagabond)age (2, 3), -ism (2), -ish, a. -ize (2) v. i. (Oxford Dictionary of Current English 1435)¹