PTo get this column out of its hibernation, what could be better than the electrical energy of Lucille Ball? The sitcom’s founding mother was already here before Christmas, when it was discovered Being the Ricardos, by Aaron Sorkin, on Prime Video, of which she is the central character. It is also found on the New Year on the big screen, in Licorice Pizza, by Paul Thomas Anderson, where she makes a brief, but remarkable, appearance. In the first film, set in 1953, Nicole Kidman played the role of actress Lucille Ball, who became Lucy Ricardo in I love lucy, the first series to bring a nation together in front of television receivers. Licorice Pizza takes place twenty years later, and Lucille Ball (renamed Lucy Doolittle), who has become, as in reality, a successful producer and a formidable boss, has the features of Christine Ebersole, a great figure on Broadway (we can see her in the thirtieth second of the trailer).
These resurgences of the figure of Lucille Ball inspired the team of the Séries Mania festival a number Reboot, webseries available on YouTube, informative video that will give an idea of the importance of the character in the history of episodic fiction. For a French public necessarily unaware of the escapades of the Ricardo family, it will be a vade-mecum whose vision is essential before embarking on the viewing of the episodes ofI love lucy that can be found online.
Consumed as is, they leave an impression of disuse, with their forced line painting of a New York couple made up of a macho musician and a mindless housewife who dreams of going on stage. You have to pay attention to discover the innumerable pearls of burlesque that hide in stories whose conventions seem overwhelming today.
Modern and utilitarian aesthetics
Except that these conventions were invented by Lucille Ball and producer Desi Arnaz. In a few shots, the team of Reboot traces a genealogy of American televised family humor that goes as far as Friends Passing by MA beloved witch.
Among the information provided, this one which has never ceased to plunge me into abysses of reflection since its discovery: I love lucy was the first series shot live, in front of an audience, with three cameras. These technical conditions, to which must be added the poor quality of the cathode image in the 1950s, posed almost insurmountable technical difficulties. Lucille Ball then appealed to the director of photography of La Du Barry was a lady, a comedy by Roy Del Ruth that she shot in 1943 with Gene Kelly and Red Skelton. Karl Freund, that’s the name of the director of photography in question, therefore invented a modern, utilitarian aesthetic, without worrying about anything other than the readability of the image, as evidenced by this very technical article which he signed in January 1953, when he was inventing the visual grammar for the sitcom.
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