1 2 Between the Eye and the World The Emergence of the Point-of-View Shot P.I.E. Peter Lang Bruxelles Bern Berlin Frankfurt am Main New York Oxford Wien 3 4 Elena DAGRADA Between the Eye and the World The Emergence of the Point-of-View Shot Rethinking Cinema No.6 5 We thank the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, which kindly made frame-stills of the film Curiosité d’une Concierge (Pathé, 1905) specially for this publication. This publication has been peer-reviewed. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photocopy, microfilm or any other means, without prior written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved. © P.I.E. PETER LANG S.A. Éditions scientifiques internationales Brussels, 2014 1 avenue Maurice, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgique www.peterlang.com ; [email protected] Printed in Germany ISSN 1379-8391 ISBN 978-90-5201-035-9 D/2015/5678/18 Bibliographic information published by “Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek”. “Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek” lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbiblio- grafie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at <http://dnb.d-nb.de>. 6 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................ 9 CHAPTER 1 The Archaeology of a Filmic Form ..................................................... 15 1.1. Early Cinema, Early Spectator ................................................. 15 1.1.1. The World As Spectacle ................................................ 20 1.1.2. Transformations of the Visible ...................................... 25 1.2. The Place of the Look ............................................................... 33 CHAPTER 2 Frontiers of the Visible ........................................................................ 59 2.1. The Eye and the World, or the Faculty of Sight ....................... 59 2.2. Bigger, Not Closer: Grandma’s Reading Glass ........................ 61 2.3. A History of Filmic Forms and the Historiography of the Cinema .................................................. 65 CHAPTER 3 The Circle and the Keyhole ................................................................. 73 3.1. Clues to a Paradigm .................................................................. 73 3.1.1. Autonomy ...................................................................... 77 3.1.2. The Line of Vision ......................................................... 82 3.1.3. Movement ..................................................................... 87 3.1.4. The Matte ...................................................................... 93 3.1.5. Alternation ................................................................... 105 3.1.6. Gesture ........................................................................ 110 3.1.7. The Punitive Ending .................................................... 113 3.2. This Side of the Circle, the Other Side of the Keyhole .......... 118 CHAPTER 4 Towards Linearisation ....................................................................... 141 4.1. The Look and the Story .......................................................... 141 4.2. Parataxis and Hypotaxis ......................................................... 143 4.2.1. Isomorphic Combinations ........................................... 146 4.2.2. Polymorphic Combinations ......................................... 151 7 4.3. Linearisation, Centring and the Match Cut ............................ 154 4.3.1. The Match Cut and the Look ...................................... 158 4.3.2. From the Enlargement to the Insert ............................. 163 4.3.3. Alternation and Linkage .............................................. 166 4.3.4. The Partial Line of Vision ........................................... 169 4.3.5. Reading and Writing ................................................... 173 4.3.6. The Diegetic Spectator ................................................ 178 4.4. With the Naked Eye ................................................................ 183 CHAPTER 5 The Inner Gaze ................................................................................... 189 5.1. Forms of Vision ...................................................................... 189 5.1.1. The Magic of the Eye Before the Cinema ................... 193 5.1.2. The Circle and the Focus ............................................. 197 5.1.3. Forms of the Dream .................................................... 201 5.1.4. Attractions and Apparitions ......................................... 207 5.1.5. The Memory Eye ......................................................... 210 5.2. From Magic to Introspection .................................................. 214 Bibliographic References ................................................................... 221 Index of Names and Film Titles ........................................................ 233 8 Introduction This study originates from a conviction and a question. The conviction – today a shared belief, common to most film scholars – is that the set of filmic forms dominating Western institutional cinema is the product of a culture and its history, rather than the expression of what was once presumed to be “naturalness”. The question concerns the emergence of one of the most fascinating filmic forms, commonly called the point-of- view shot, which represents on the screen the characters’ gaze, showing what they see from their own optical vantage point. The relationship between this conviction and this question may appear quite unrelated. Actually, it relies on the fact that, even today, ordinary spectators perceive the point-of-view shot as a “natural” device, which everyone understands without necessarily realising that it needs to be understood. And yet, to claim that the set of filmic forms dominating Western cinema is the product of a culture and its history means precisely to question the apparent naturalness of its devices. This study, then, investigates the emergence of what we call today a point-of-view shot. It examines the first period in cinema history – generally referred to as early cinema – in which some films include images representing what a character sees, usually looking through an optical instrument or a keyhole, and thus showing some views mediated through the evidence of a gaze. It tries, therefore, to provide an answer to the question: “Where does the point-of-view shot come from?”, analysing early films in which the representation of the gaze makes its first appearances, so as to trace the driving forces which brought it about. That is, the forces which were conducive to the emergence of this form, rather than another. In doing so, this study formulates three hypotheses. The first is that the form assumed by the representation of the gaze in these films does not spring from nowhere. On the contrary, it derives from scientific, iconographic and performance practices which existed well before the advent of the cinema, and which converge in the cinema in the form of a trick, of an optical artifice, displayed as an exciting attraction. When examined in the light of their historical context, these early occurrences do not appear to be dominated by the urge to build a solid and linear set of film editing rules, nor a film narrative “grammar”. Rather, they seem to respond to the idea of showing spectacular views, autonomous and in movement, often magnified, mechanically reproduced and otherwise inaccessible to the human eye. Indeed, the main addressee 9 Between the Eye and the World of these views is not so much the viewing character in the film as it is the spectator in the audience, for whom they were actually conceived. The second hypothesis is that this same form flows somewhere. More precisely, it feeds into the perfection of an editing practice capable of linking shots through a character’s gaze – among other things – in order to tell stories. It enables, then, the emergence of a pattern apt to establish a link between the subject and the object of a look, which, over time, is codified into a match-cut practice that will be called an eyeline match or a point-of-view shot, depending on its specific form. This editing practice, quite as much as those especially related to the articulation of space and time, will be of crucial importance in the process of elaborating that set of filmic forms mentioned above, which are indeed also key features in the development of cinema as a narrative system. Lastly, a third hypothesis concerns the fact that, in spite of the name that the point-of-view shot will acquire over time, these early occurrences of the representation of the gaze are, at first, unrelated to either narrative purposes or to the expression of the characters’ “point of view” or subjectivity, for which specific forms are developed from the very beginning. In early cinema, in fact, the expression of a character’s subjectivity is a prerogative of those mental images – oneiric, visionary or fantastic – which constitute the representation of a kind of inner gaze, i.e., visions originating inside that character’s mind. In other words, since its very beginning cinema has elaborated specific forms for the representation of the gaze on the one hand, and for the representation of subjectivity on the other. This study, however, also originated long ago. It started out as my 1982 graduation thesis for the University of Bologna, dedicated to the classical point-of-view shot from a formal and narratological perspective.