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accompanied by the thunder and lightning of an unreal storm which is complemented by
images of exploding molotov cocktails - desired by Giacobbe - which detonate around the
city and are intercut with images of students shouting. Certainly Giacobbe's incoherent
shouting is endowed with the 'vibrations and qualities' (Artaud, 1938: 70) that Artaud
considered necessary to allow screams to 'enter the spectator's breast rather than his ear'
(Artaud, 1938: 99-100). This is achieved by enhancing the disturbing nature of the emissions
with frontal filming of Giacobbe's upper body swaying, and by close-ups of his tense face
and throat. Through this reconfiguration of Artaudian aesthetics, the mise-en-scene comes
close to achieving the sensory bombardment to which Artaud aspired, thus establishing
intense viewer engagement both at a cognitive and affective level. Additionally, Giacobbe's
double embodies Artaud's concept that the 'hallucinatory and fearful aspect' of theatre, as re­
established by the 'metaphysical enactment' of Balinese theatre, could be re-enacted through
the Western theatrical feature of the double, since it maintains a disquieting impact as a
consequence of being a direct evocation of the 'other world' (Artaud, 1938: 35-37).
Giacobbe's double engenders this ambience of hallucination and disquiet; although the
character does not generate notions of another world, he manifests the forces that reside
within every human; more specifically, through him, the cruelty of the individual materializes
in response to that of society.
Partner's mise-en-scene presents stylistic elements and themes associated with
German Expressionist theatre that connect the film's contemporary malaise as expressed by
the 1968 student unrest (2) with that of a movement founded by young intellectuals at the
beginning of the 20 th century. According to D.F. Kuhns, that generation staged a rebellion
against 'Wilhelmine authoritarian social structures' moved by 'a strong need to declare, in
specifically emotional terms, their individual liberation from Wilhelmine patriarchal values'
(Kuhns 1997: 21). They rebelled by using the arts, and in 1914 they established rules for the
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