J ea JeaN-LOUis Comolli FILM THEORY N-L FILM THEORY IN MEDIA HISTORY IN MEDIA HISTORY O CINema AGaiNst SPectacle U is TechNIQUE AND IdeoloGY REVisited C omolli TraNslated AND Edited BY DANiel FairfaX “The holy alliance of spectacle and the commodity This critical dimension was at has now been realized. From pole to pole, across the work in the six articles by Jean- tropics, capital in its current guise has found the ul- Louis Comolli which appeared C timate weapon for its domination: images and sounds I under the title “Technique and N combined. Never in history have so many machines ema Ideology” in Cahiers du cinéma given so many people so many images and sounds to (1971-1972). For the first time, see and hear. Alienation, as revealed by Marx, is no A they are published in their enti- G longer merely what sweetens the bitter pill of misery, ai the opium of the masses. It goes beyond rendering rety in a fresh English translati- N service to capital. It serves itself. Spectacles, images on, alongside a new translation st and sounds pervade our lives for the overarching goal of the seminal editorial “Cine- SP of making us love alienation itself. The spectacle is ma/Ideology/Criticism” (1969, ectacle not content with serving the commodity. It has be- co-authored with Jean Narboni) come the supreme form of the commodity. and Comolli’s 2009 text “Cine- To struggle against this domination is to lead a vital ma against spectacle.” combat to salvage and preserve something of man’s human dimension. This struggle must be carried out against the very forms that the spectacle employs in Jean-Louis Comolli is a French order to maintain its domination. It is incumbent writer, editor and film director. upon us, both spectators and filmmakers, to break He was editor of Cahiers du ci- up this domination chain by chain, to pierce it with néma from 1965 to 1973. off-screen space, chip away at it with intervals. Ci- Daniel Fairfax is a doctoral can- nema against Spectacle? But it is the cinema which, didate in film studies and com- in its history, constructed a spectator capable of see- parative literature at Yale Uni- ing and hearing the limits of seeing and hearing! A critical spectator.” versity and a regular contributor – Jean-Louis Comolli to Senses of Cinema. AUP.nl 9789089645548 Cinema against Spectacle Film Theory in Media History explores the epistemological and theoretical founda- tions of the study of film through texts by classical authors as well as anthologies and monographs on key issues and developments in film theory. Adopting a histori- cal perspective, but with a firm eye to the further development of the field, the series provides a platform for ground-breaking new research into film theory and media history and features high-profile editorial projects that offer resources for teaching and scholarship. Combining the book form with open access online publishing the series reaches the broadest possible audience of scholars, students, and other readers with a passion for film and theory. Series editors: Prof. dr. Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main), dr. Trond Lundemo (Stockholm University), and prof. dr. Weihong Bao (Berkeley, Uni- versity of California) Advisory board: Prof. dr. Dudley Andrew (Yale University), prof. dr. Ray Raymond (CNRS Paris), prof. dr. Chris Berry (Goldsmiths, University of London), prof. dr. Fran- cesco Casetti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Yale University), prof. dr. Thomas Elsaesser (Universiteit van Amsterdam), prof. dr. Jane Gaines (Columbia University and Duke University), prof. dr. André Gaudreault (University of Montréal), prof. dr. Gertrud Koch (Free University of Berlin), prof. dr. John Mac (Yale Univer- sity), prof. dr. Markus Nornes (University of Michigan), prof. dr. Patricia Pisters (Uni- versiteit van Amsterdam), prof. dr. Leonardo Quaresima (University of Udine), prof. dr. David Rodowick (Harvard University), prof. dr. Philip Rosen (Brown University), prof. dr. Petr Szczepanik (Masaryk University, Brno), prof. dr. Brian Winston (Lincoln University) Film Theory in Media History is published in cooperation with the Permanent Semi- nar for the History of Film Theories. Cinema against Spectacle Technique and Ideology Revisited By Jean-Louis Comolli Translated and edited by Daniel Fairfax Amsterdam University Press This book is published in print and online through the online OAPEN library (www.oapen.org). OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for aca- demic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. Originally published as: Cinéma, contre spectacle, Jean-Louis Comolli © Éditions VERDIER 2009. ISBN 9782864325871 Cover illustration: Jean-Louis Comolli Cover design: Suzan Beijer, Amersfoort Lay-out: JAPES, Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978 90 8964 554 8 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 945 3 NUR 670 Creative Commons License CC BY NC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) This translation D. Fairfax / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise). Table of Contents Preface 7 Philip Rosen Introduction 17 Daniel Fairfax Cinema against Spectacle Introduction 49 Cinema against Spectacle 55 I. Opening the Window? 57 II. Inventing the Cinema? 87 III. Filming the Disaster? 99 IV. Cutting the Figure? 115 V. Changing the Spectator? 131 Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field Introduction 143 I. On a Dual Origin 147 The ideological place of the “base apparatus” 147 Birth = deferral: The invention of the cinema 154 II. Depth of Field: The Double Scene 171 Bazin’s “surplus realism” 172 The work of “transparency” 176 For a materialist history of the cinema 188 “For the first time...” 197 III. “Primitive” Depth of Field 209 IV. Effacement of Depth/Advent of Speech 223 5 V. Which Speech? 237 Appendix I: Cinema/Ideology/Criticism 247 Appendix II: Machines of the Visible 281 Glossary of Terms 291 Publication History 301 Filmography 305 Bibliography 311 Translator’s Notes 331 Index 343 6 Preface Philip Rosen A network of new conceptions, arguments and debates about cinema produced in the 1970s made these years one of the key periods in the history of film theory. With the contemporaneous “take-off” of university film studies in the English-speaking world, these ideas assumed foundational status during a period of expansive profes- sionalization and academic institutionalization. As contested as some became, cer- tain ideas and concepts from 1970s film theory have had staying power. However, many of the most important formulations of 1970s film theory claimed motivation in the politically radical impulses and ideas of the period, which also permeated some of the most important filmmaking of the time. By the mid-1960s, there were already important claims for a distinctive break with earlier, “classical” film theory. Then, in 1968, a number of political tensions and con- flicts erupted in spectacular political disruptions and oppositional public events all over the globe. For a few years after 1968, yearnings for political transformation often intersected with desires for the radical transformation of intellectual sectors, desires which one finds in certain of the initiating texts of 1970s film theory. Among all of these events, May 1968 in France was the time and place where film culture was most famously – and perhaps even mythically – associated with politicized practices and understandings of cinema. Jean-Louis Comolli was one of the central figures in French film culture at that moment. Very much an homme du cinéma, he is a filmmaker as well as critic and theorist. As critic and theorist he has always committed himself to engaging with the very textures of films while simultaneously conceptualizing the broader aesthetic vocations and social possibilities and roles of cinema. In the early 1960s, Comolli had emerged as a writer, and then chief editor, for that most influential of Parisian film journals, Cahiers du cinéma. His articles from the late 1960s and early 1970s are not his only important theore- tical and critical work, but they may be counted among the foundational texts of 1970s film theory. In this volume, Daniel Fairfax provides corrected, theoretically and historically informed translations of certain of Comolli's most widely discussed writ- ings dating from the immediate post-1968 years of Cahiers. These include two polem- ical editorials written in 1969 and co-authored with Comolli's fellow Cahiers editor Jean Narboni, along with Comolli's most far-reaching, extensive, and consequential work for the history of film theory, “Technique and Ideology,” which was written and 7 published serially in 1971-1972 in several issues of Cahiers. Fairfax additionally pro- vides a translation of “Cinema against Spectacle,” a recent major essay in which Co- molli reconsiders the position of cinema some 40 years later, when filmmaking finds itself part of a transformed 21st-century media universe. Fairfax's extensive introduction gives us a detailed account of the debates and critiques generated by “Technique and Ideology” and the Cahiers editorials. In the English-speaking world, the impact of “Technique and Ideology” was all the more remarkable because of the cumbersome, inconvenient way it was distributed. Though rapidly translated into English, it was at first available only in typescript form for discussion and study groups in London. Some contemporaneous British translations of other French film-theoretical polemics were quickly published in the journal Screen, the most central English-language journal for 1970s film theory, and they soon became standard texts in Anglophone debates.