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Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Neoformalism

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Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Neoformalism Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Neoformalism BY GREG LINNELL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS IN AESTHETICS SUPERVISOR: DR. CALVIN SEERVELD INSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIAN STUDIES TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA SEPTEMBER 1993 TABLE OF CONTENTS PROSPECTS (INTRODUCTION) .......................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 : THE FORMALIST LEGACY introduction .............................................................................................................5 historical overview ..................................................................................................6 key concepts and scientific-historical poetics ...................................................... ..12 neoformalist appropriation .....................................................................................22 critique and summary .............................................................................................30 CHAPTER 2: A NEOFORMALIST HISTORIOGRAPHY introduction .............................................................................................................36 Formalism, neoformalism, critics ...........................................................................37 Dreyer and Ozu .......................................................................................................41 classical Hollywood cinema ................................................................................. ..56 contending histories .............................................................................................. ..68 CHAPTER 3: INTERPRETATION/ANALYSIS introduction ........................................................................................................... ..76 making meaning.......................................................................................................78 breaking the glass armor ...................................................................................... ..102 summary ..................................................................................................................121 CHAPTER 4: HISTORICAL POETICS (CONCLUSION) introduction .............................................................................................................124 the “Bordateliregime” ............................................................................................125 irreconcilable differences .......................................................................................134 BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 PROSPECTS T h is t h e s i s ADDRESSES several aspects of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s film scholar­ ship, particularly their advocacy of neoformalism and a historical poetics of cinema as evident in their history of the classical Hollywood cinema, Bordwell’s monographs on film directors Carl- Theodor Dreyer and Yasujiro Ozu, Thompson’s analysis of an individual film (Otto Preminger’s Laura), and Bordwell’s anatomy of academic film interpretation. Such a study can, at the outset, presume, and during its course demonstrate, a unity operative within the work of these authors Because they both appropriate many of their key ideas from Russian Formalism and deploy those ideas in a similar fashion.1 Between the two of them a suBstantial Body of film scholarship has seen puBlication and its ongoing significance warrants investigation. Of all the possiBle inquiries to mount, however, I have chosen to focus on their appropriation of Russian Formalism, their film historiography, critique of current interpretive practice, and the predominant features of neofor­ malist film analysis. Consequently, I have not included a consideration of their theories of narra­ tion or cognitive psychology (except where the immediate context warranted) which also comprise important contributions to film studies Because, at the moment, these areas lie outside of my competency to assess properly (drawing as they do upon research with which I have insuffi­ cient familiarity, that is, narrative theory and cognitive science). As chapter one makes clear the literary criticism developed By the Russian Formalists provides the basis for Bordwell and Thompson’s work But it is important to realize that it is a selective ap­ propriation of the tenets of Russian Formalism that is operative within neoformalism. It is, there­ fore, inaccurate and preemptive to assign the proBlems of early Russian Formalism (or, for that matter, Anglo-American New Criticism) to neoformalism. This chapter, nevertheless, concludes By assemBling the suBstantial Body of critique directed against neoformalism and a historical poet­ ics into four distinct areas; this critical agenda provides the structure for the features of neofor­ malism to Be examined in the rest of the thesis. 1 Bordwell and Thompson are also married. PROSPECTS 2 Chapter two’s study of neoformalist historiography was prompted by the reception of Bord- well and Thompson’s study (together with Janet Staiger) of the classical Hollywood cinema. The study exerts an undeniaBle presence on the domain of American (and Canadian) film study and has Been suBject to Both extreme praise and critique. Moreover, it presents a challenge to those post-1968 influenced film histories which would posit that a film is merely the site of contending cultural codes and that the history of film is really the tracking of the socio-political predisposi­ tions and the ideological interventions of, for example, a dominant American ideology consisting of predatory capitalism and strident individualism. In recent years any formalist-inspired historiog­ raphy has Been seen as a scandalous enterprise and I Believe (and hope to demonstrate) that Bord- well, Staiger, and Thompson offer a rigorously developed, defended, and alternative paradigm for constructing the history of cinema. Similarly, chapter three’s examination of Bordwell's analysis of the inferential and rhetorical conventions operative within contemporary academic film interpretation is set up to demonstrate how Bordwell’s analysis constitutes a serious challenge for those critics who understand their in­ terpretive practice to follow directly from their theoretical position. In response to the dominating view that criticism is concerned solely with yielding a film’s meanings, the chapter also demon­ strates how Thompson’s neoformalist approach illuminates not just the meanings of Laura But also how point of view structures within the film operate at several different levels to comprise the film’s dominant. There is, in other words, more to do with an individual film than make it produce yet another “reading.” Chapter four concludes the thesis By citing and analyzing what may Be the most extensive cri­ tique of neoformalism’s foundational and guiding epistemic presuppositions yet offered: Robert Ray’s typology of two types of knowledge is examined for how it would position neoformalism and a historical poetics of cinema in relation to postmodern practices. I then attempt a Brief tran­ scendental critique of the key enaBling presuppositions to Be found in Ray and Bordwell’s epistemologies. PROSPECTS 3 Throughout the thesis I practice an immanent critique assuming that Bordwell and Thompson’s scholarship and claims are to Be consistent with their presuppositions. I freely alter­ nate between passages of describing the features of Bordwell and Thompson’s work and, on the other hand, pausing to consider the critiques which encourage reflection upon different features in the neoformalist enterprise. The sometimes extended descriptive passages are also necessitated by an undesiraBle yet pervasive feature of current film scholarship namely, the tendency to misrecog- nize what neoformalism is, for politically and institutionally useful ends. In other words, I remain convinced that it is important to discern between what constitutes a legitimate disagreement within the domain of film studies and what is merely a game of malicious one-upmanship. A cor­ rective to this situation is provided by my explications of key features of Bordwell and Thompson’s scholarship. Finally, the neoformalist prospects for a different type of knowledge about the cinema are re­ vealed not only in the arguments, concepts, and analyses of Bordwell and Thompson’s writings on film history, theory, and criticism but also in the widespread and diverse critical response to those writings. Although many opponents would desire to dismiss neoformalism as entirely out of step with contemporary film studies, it is apparent that Bordwell and Thompson’s work presents a knowledge of the cinema that calls for and demands a nuanced analysis. Why else would their work provoke such an extreme critical response if it were not for the fact that neoformalism truly represents a competing paradigm for film scholarship? My own response to neoformalism has been shaped by my curiousity regarding the determination aBout what is so compelling and capti­ vating about the cinematic experience and By my involvement with the Redeemer College Film Review Committee. I was led to examine the formal elements that comprise a film and I found the neoformalist writings to be extremely helpful in explicating systematically the variety of compo­ nents that are organized within a film. Such an analysis also functioned to anchor the interpretive process in a thorough familiarity with the film thereby serving as a corrective to those who would
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