RobertP. Kolker

'cinema'to Definingthe film text Metz'sdefinition of the encompassinginsti- tution of production, distribution, exhibition, and What do we mean when we talk about a film? The reception.But that will be the easiestpart of the untan- answersto this apparently straightforward question gling process.Film and the cinemaare sucha regular are not simple, not at all based in common sense, part of our lives, that defining, differentiating, and and go to the heart of the complexitiesof the institu- analysingthem are not only difficult, but also difficult tions,the practices,and the viewing of movies. for many people to accept. Indeed, there are some The terms themselves suggest our uncertaintres. things we would ratherwere left alone,and the movres Cinema,as Christian Metz (1977/1982: 5-9) suggests, are one of them. The oreferenceto think of a film as a impliesthe entireinstitution of filmmaking,film distri- kind of self-constructedpresence, full of story,charac- bution,film exhibition,and film viewing.In Englano, ters, and emotion, is strong.A film is there, complete, the cinemausually refers to the place where a film rs full,and waiting forourgaze. Why makeit moredifficult 'movies' shown. In the United States, replaces than it appears?Precisely because it appearsso simple 'cinema', 'film' and the word is reserved for serious and because the influence of film on our lives is so intent.In Hollywood,the people who makefilmssome- great. 'pictures', 'What timescall them and once referred to them Our first responseto the question is a film?' 'A (somestill do) as'shows'. might be: film is what we see when we go to the lseveryone talking about the same thing? And what cinema (or the movies)or watch a videocassetteor a 'thing'? isthe As we try to untangle a definition of the television broadcast of a film'. A direct enough 'movie'(reserving filmtext, lwill use'film'instead of my response,but one that actually responds to different right to be serious)and will try to restrict the term things. Or, more appropriately,different, but closely E CRITICALAPPROACHES

related, texts. We can define a text as a coherenr, screen in any given theatre has been determined by delimited, comprehensible structure of meaning. A the size of the theatre, not by a standard ratio for text is something that contains a complex of events recording and projecting the image. While a standard (images, words, sounds)that are related to each other ratio did existfrom the early 1930sto the early 1950s, within a context,which can be a storyor narrative.All of the advent of different widescreenformats, the small the parts of a text cohere, work together towards a shopping-mall theatre, the need to compose the common goal of tellingus something.In ordinarypar- image ultimatelyto fit on television,makes image lance,a text isalso something physical,like a novel or a size and composition inexact and undependable for book of poems. We all know about a textbook. But a any given film. The film text, in its physical, visible painting is also a text. So is a televisionshow, and the sense, is therefore subject to architecture,to theatre entire processof watching television.In fact,any event management, to the exigencies of broadcast and that makes meaning can be called a text if we can videotape conventions. Almost every videotape isolateand define its outside boundariesand its rnter- releasedin the United Statescomes with two warnings: nal structure-and our responses to it (for a text to be one from the FBl, warning us about copyright restric- 'this completed, it must be seen, read, heard by someone). tions; the other telling us that film has been for- lf we think of this in relationto a film, we begin to see matted to fit you r television'.Physica I textuality, I i ke so how hard it is to define the film text-or texts-which much else in the creationand reception of film, is sub- are physical, narrative, economic, and cultural, and ject to external forces that make it difficult for us to which include production, distribution,exhibition, define it as some essential,unchanging thing. and viewing. Ultimately,the physicalityof film, even the forms of The physical presence of a film constitutes one its projection, are lessimportant than the effect it has aspect of film's textuality: the five or six reels of when we view it. Watching a film is more than any of its 35mm plasticribbon containingphotographic images physicalparts: it is an event that occurswhen the phy- that are projected onto the screenin the theatre,or the sical thing becomes activated by human perception videocassette we rent from the video store with its through some kind of projectionor broadcast.As soon hundreds of feet of magnetized plastic coating con- as a thinking, feeling person is present-viewing the tained in the cassette.A videocassette shown on a film-that person'sexperience is brought to bear on televisionset isnotthe sameas the theatricalscreening the film's images, sounds, and narrative.The viewers of a 35mm print. On the most obvious level,the con- experienceis itselfinformed by the culture in which he ditions of its viewing are not the same. The kind of or she lives. A person's beliefs, understandings,and concentration made possible in a darkened cinema valuesare all activatedwithin the context of film view- where a high-resolution image is projected on the ing. That istrue for the people who created the film as screenis not the same as the bright busy living-room, well. They, too, are a major part of the text. Their or the comfort of the bedroom, where a small, low- beliefs, their understanding of what a film shouro or resolutionimage is projected from behind onto a cath- should not be, the economic constraintsthat allow ode ray tube. The image and the ways in whicn we them to say and do only so much in any given fitm- attend to it are different.The televisionor videotaoed these become textualizeo. image are not only smaller,but also more square.The lsthis any differentfrom our contactwith other works sides of the image are lost on most transfersof film to of the imagination?The German critic Walter Benla- video (almosttwo-thirds of the image if the originalwas min, wrote in his 1936essay'The Work of Art in the Age ,pan filmed in anamorphic wide screen and then and of MechanicalReproduction'thatfilm is unique among scanned'for videotape).The differencein size,resolu- the arts becauseof the fact that it is not unioue. Of all tion, and responsecreates a differenttextual construc- the arts,Benjamin wrote, film iswithout'aura', without tion for televisualas opposed to theatricalviewing. the singularity of the immediate experience of an We can extend these differencesfurther.In theatrical artefact uniquely connected with a singular human exhibition the size, proportion, and resolution of the creative imagination. Film seems to have no origin; film image are no longer under the control of the film- it is there, whole and complete, ready for our enjoy- makers or the audience. They are controlled by the ment or the enjoyment of anyone else with the price physical circumstances,resources, and commitment of admission,a monthly cable fee, or money for ren- of the exhibitor. For a number of vearsthe size of the tal. For Benjamin,film's lackof aura, lack of forbidding @ THEFIIM TEXTAND FltM FORM

uniqueness,and its ease of accessmakes it the most and legible to many interpreters,whose responsesare socialand communal of the arts.Film addresses the themselves part of its very textuality and form. world,pierces through the realitiesof dailylife likea surgeon!knife (1936/1969:233) and, by opening perceptionsof the ordinaryto the many,holds the The film text and authenticity possibilityof engagingan audiencein a socialand culturaldiscourse, a mass engagement of the imagi- Textualityand form include questions about'authenti- nationunlike any other art form. (Benjamin also made city'.Benjamin's concept of thework without aura sug- itclearthatfilmrunsthe riskof forging an authoritarran gests that film removes authenticityfrom its text. assentto thedominant ideology.) However,despite Benjamin'sargument about the Thetextuality of film is thereforedifferent from a lossof aura,actual people do makefilms. But given novelora painting. Less personal, but more accessible. the collaborativeand commercialbasis of filmmak- Neitherunique nor intimate,yet closerto the world ing-so differentfrom the individualcreativity attribu- mostof uslive in, engaged in itsdailiness, and power- ted to the traditionalarts-the creativeauthority of the fullyin touchwith the social.The text without aura filmic text has been at the core of theoreticaland becomesthe text that resonatesacross many fields historicaldebate. andmany consciousnesses. In any film we arewitness One part of the debateinvolves the abilityto find toa richand often conflicting structure of imaginative, and identiiy authoritativetexts for early cinemathat cultural,economic, and ideologicalevents. Because would enableus to createa reliablehistory of early mostfilms are madefor profit,they attempt to speak film.lt isestimated that almost 75 percent of the films tothe largest number of people,and by sodoing have made beforeand just afterthe turn of the centuryno to appealto whattheir makersbelieve are the mosr longerexist. Those that do exist.from the earlytwen- commonand acceptablebeliefs of a potentialaudi- tieth centuryup to the teens,are in questionable, ence.But audiences often respondin waysthe film- ofteninauthentic forms. For example, Edward S. Por- makersdon't expect.The resultis that the film text ter'sfhe Lifeof an AmericanFireman (1 903) has been oftenlies at a nexusof expectationand response,of regardedas one of the earliestfilms to intercutdiffer- culturalbelief and individualresistance. lt is availaore ent scenes for the sake of narrative complexity.

Oneof the first fllms to intercut dlfferent scenes- Porter's lhe Life of an Ameilcan Fheman (L9O3) E CRITICALAPPROACHES

Recently,it was discoveredthat the print with the inter- and the director'sjob was primarilyto trans{erthescript cut scenes(we will discussintercutting and cross-cut- to fi lm: to makethe shotsand to coachthe actors.I n the ting a bit furtheron) may have been put together years end, the producerand studio head had the final sayon laterby distributors.The speculation is that the original how the film looked. version of The Life of an American Firemanmay have Becauseit is so intenselya public, commercial art, been constructed with less cross-cutting,depending film is authorized-or textualized-from a number of more on a successionof shots,which was the norm of directions.No one person or event determines it. Dur- the period (Gaudreault1990). We do knowthat Porter's ing the studio period, a film emerged from the collec- other famous film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), tive work of a large staffunder contract.Today a film is went out to distributorswith a shot that showed one often conceived by a scriptwriterwho, with the help of of the train robbers pointing his gun at the cameraand an agent, sellshis or her idea to a studio.The agent firing.The film exhibitorwas given the choicewhether playsa key role, brokering actorsand director.During to put that shotat the beginningor the end of the film. these initialperiods of conceptionand selling,many Thisability of the distributorand exhibitortoalter a film decisionsabout narrative.characterization, and com- parallelsthe contemporary problem we spoke of ear- mercial appeal are made. Also during this period lier,in which the sizeof the theatre ortelevision screen intense economic negotiations are carried on in an determinesthe look of the film. attempt to sell the film to a studio. The shooting of As we move forward in film history the authenticity the film by the director may involve some cinematic of the early film text becomes closely related to the experiment,but, more often than not, becauseof bud- personalityof the filmmaker.Eric von Stroheimt Greed getary and scheduling restrictions,standard, conven- (1925)was brutally cut by MGM. Stroheim'sauthority tional storytellingtech n iques predom inate,as they will over his production was compromised when lrving have during the scriptwritingprocess. Thalberg, head of production at MGM, refusedto dis- Afilm ismade for an audienceand willsurvive only as tribute Stroheim's original ten-hour cut. Thalberg far as an audience finds it acceptable.Therefore, the caused Greed to be trimmed to two hours ano creation of a film is, in part, a structure of educated destroyed the rest. Stroheim'sfilm, and his career as guesswork and creative repetition. lf audiences director,were all but destroyed aswell. Orson Welles's responded wellto certainstructures, stories, and char- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), perhaps the most acters in the past, they should be (most filmmakers infamousexample of an inauthentictext, was removed believe) repeated, with some variation, in the new from Welles'scontrol before it was edited. The studio, work. When that work is finished,the audience is put RKO,reshot portions of it, changed the ending, and- into negotiation with it. (During the studio days that as MGM did with Greed-destroyed the deleted foot- negotiation process was fairly immediate, as studio age. In both casesstudio policy, personaldissension, executivesand the filmmakerswent to suburban los and economic determinants conflicted sharply with Angeles theatresto watch a pre-releasescreening of the artisticendeavours of the filmmaker. their currentfilm, and would then make changesto it, What is the authoritativetext of Greed or The Mag- depending upon the audience'sresponse.) The nego- nificent Ambersons'.the films Stroheim and Welles tiation process includes film reviews,familiarity with made, or the films released by their studios?These and responsivenessto the film's stars,resonance with areegregious examples of a perpetual problem, which the narrativecontent of the film, willingnessto accept is intimatelyconnected to the question of authorship. the inevitable exploitation of sexuality and violence The assumption of auteur theory, for example, has that are the major components of most films. been that we can identify the text with a person-the The textuality of a film therefore becomes part of a director.In doing so, it is argued, we can not only dis- resonantfield of creationand response.lt is a field that cover the authoritative boundaries that give a per- radiatesfrom the film or videotape back to its making sonal, textual legitimacy to a film, but authorize our and forward into the environsof movie theatre or liv- reading of the film as well. But the auteur theory- ing-room. lt confusesthe safe categoriesof authentic especially as applied to American film-has been and inauthentic versions, and calls upon the entire based more on desire than fact. The reality is that the cultural surround of the viewer and its creators. lt is texts of classicalAmerican studio cinema were ano are encaosulatedwithin other textual forms: the forms of only rarelythe productsof an individualimagination, production that drive the economy of a given culture

@ THE FILM TEXTAND FILM FORM which is as responsiblefor the way a film is maoe, films such as Batt/eship Potemkin (1925), October marketed,and receivedas is the work of any individual. (1928),and lvan the Terrible(1943). He theorized that In short,the ribbon of plasticthat holds the images is the shot was only the raw materialthat the filmmaker onlya partof a largestructure of imagination,econom- used to constructthe edifice of hisfilm. For Eisenstein, ics,politics, and ideology and of individualsand the a shot hasno meaninguntil it is put in contentionwith cultureas a whole. another shot in a montage structure.Montage-a spe- cific kind of editing-is constructed out of shots that affectone anotherin particular ways. One shottakes on Analysingthe film text: the shot and meaning in relation to the shot that precedes and the cut follows it. Spatialdynamics of the shot'scomposition, the length of the shot, the rhythm achieved when The diversecritical approaches to the study of film different shots of varying visualand thematic content reflect this complexity. But, no matter what the are juxtaposed, all contribute to a carefullycalculated 'montage approach,it is now generally accepted that the film of attractions'.For Eisenstein,montage was text is a plural, complex, simultaneouslystatic and not merely the filmmaker'smost important tool, but changingevent, produced by the filmmakers who the sign of his aesthetic and political control. The put it togetherand the audience members who view shot, by itself, is inert, he believed. Making the shot it.lt isunified by certainestablished ways in which shots (and, with the help of his cinematographer Edward aremade and edited together. These structures are as Tisse, Eisensteinfilmed powerful and dynamic com- conventionalizedas the storiesthey create. By exam- positions)was only craft.Turning the shot into a tem- iningthe internalstructure of film narrative,the way poral structure of rhythmic, conflicting, kinetic imagesare made and put together in order to tell us montage was the director'sart. stories,we can discover a great deal of information For Eisenstein,editing not only created a visual aboutwhat films expect of us and we of them. dynamism of conflictingforms, but it had the potential Analysisof the form of the cinematic text concen- of being a cinematicequivalent of KarlMax's theory of trateson the two basicbuilding-blocks of film, the shot dialecticalmaterialism. Through the interactionof form andthe cut,and on the structurethat comes into being and content between shots,by the way one shot deter- whenthe film is assembled,the combination of shot minedthe meaningof the precedingorfollowing shot, andcut that isthe finishedfilm. The first element, the Eisensteinbelieved he could create a third thing, a shot,is the photographic record made when film rs dialectical synthesis of idea, emotion, perception, exposedto light.The second comes into being when that would, in turn, create an intellectual perception the shotis interrupted,when the camera is shut off, or of revolutionary history for the viewer. Montage, in when one piece of film is cut and then fastened to short,was a tool that allowed the filmmakerto address anotherpiece of film during the editing process.The history as well as art, in a dialecticalway. thirdelement is the completed structureof image and Eisensteinbelieved so profoundly in the basic,driv- editing that communicates the narrative (or overall ing aestheticand ideologicalforce of montage that he shapeof the film). lt is the initializingconstituent of saw it developing in literatureand the arts before film. thetext aswe havedefined it: the complex interactron Montage was an aestheticevent waiting to be politi- offilm and audience,structure, content, context, ano cized with the invention of cinema. culture. Noneof theseformal elementsare simple or uncon- tested.Controversy overthe structureand importance Analysisof the form of the cinematic oftheshot and the cut, of the shot versusthe cut, forms the bedrock of film theory. In the writings of Sergei text concentrateson the two basic Eisensteinand Andr6 Bazin,especially, and the work building-blocksof film,the shot and the of a varietyof filmmakers,belief in the priority of one cut, and on the structurethat comes elementover the other has determined the way films into being when the film is assembled, are made and understood, at least outside of Holly- wood. the combinationof shot and cut that is SergeiEisenstein was the great Soviet director of the finishedfilm. E CRITICAL APPROACHES

Andr6 Bazin was not a filmmaker.A critic and film opportunitytosee into the wholeness and continuity of theorist who was active from the end of the Secono time andspace. Editing is manipulative;it forcesus to World War until his death in 1958, he influenceo a see what the filmmakerwants us to see.The shot is generation of directors and is considered to be the reverential.Political, too. An uninterruptedshot, pre- father of the French New Wave. Bazin'sfilm aesthetic ferablyin deep focus (an effect of lensand lighting that is directly opposed to Eisenstein's.For Bazin,editing makeseverything in the composition,from the closest was the destruction of cinematic form, indeed the objectin the frame to thefarthest, appearto be equally destruction of the essence of cinema. For him. it is clear)might create a kindof democracyof perception. the shot. the unedited gaze of the camera onto the Theviewer would be freeto oickand choosewhat to world before its lens, that constitutes cinema's aes- lookat with in the frame, rather than have the filmmaker thetic core. lf Eisenstein'saesthetic was political at its pickout what he or sheconsiders important by cutting root, Bazin'swas religiousand founded in the faith that andforegrounding specific faces or objects. the cinematic image could revealthe world in fact and Bazin'scinema is painterly. lt dependsupon compo- spiritand confirmthe temporal and spatialtherenessof sition,lighting, and the profoundrevelatory effect of the world with the camera'smeditative eye. the camera'sgaze. The constructionof mise-en- Editing, according to Bazin, denies that faith, scdne-the complex articulationof space through becauseit cuts offthe filmmaker'sand the film viewer's composition,light, and movement-is pre-eminent

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'the Does fong take reveal the world to the viewer', as Bazin suggests? Wyler's Ifte Eest yeals ol our Lives (!9481 THE FILM TEXTAND FILM FORM

in Bazin'stheory. In fact, Bazin uses the example of en-scdne,hand in hand with the auteur theory, helped paintingto describethe prehistoryof cinema,the early to found the field of cinema studies.A focus on mrse- and ongoing urge of the imagination to preserve en-scdnepermitted an emphasisupon the elementsof imagesof the world. In a sense,Eisenstein's is a pain- film that made it distinctfrom other narrativeforms and terlycinema too, a dynamickinetic form analogousto was usedto explainhow images,through composition, Cubismand RussianConstructivism (an art movement camera movement, lighting, focus, and colour,gener- contemporarywith Eisenste in's f iI m m akin g). Th e d iffer- ate narrativeevent and guide our percePtionthrough a enceis that, for Bazin,the image and its complex con- film. Mise-en-scdneanalysis was alsoa way to connect structionis primary; so isthe spectator'sgaze,liberated personality,style, and meaning. to roamthe imageand connectits internalparts. Bazrn Mise-en-scdne and auteur criticism were closely asksthe spectator to look and put the parts of the intertwined within the analysisof style, and style was imagetogether, to achieve understanding through often implicitly defined as the personal expressionof contemplation.For Eisenstein,the viewer must re- mise-en-scdne.When V. F. Perkins (1972: 84-5) for spondto the invisiblespace that is created by images example, analysesthe use of colour in Nicholas Ray's in conflict.The spectatorresponds to the dialectic of Bigger than Life (1956),or Terry Comito (1971)talks montageand the revolutionaryhistory it articulates. about the vertiginoushorizon in Welles'sTouch of Evil Eisensteinlconcept of montage dominated film (1958); when any number of criticsdefine F. W. Mur- theory and some film practice for a brief period (the nau's use of moving camera, Otto Preminger'slong Frenchavant-garde movement of the 1920s and tne takes, or Hitchcockt use of framing to describe his Americandocumentarists of the 1930s) and then characters'statesof mind, they are speaking of the waned.lts only appearancein Hollywood cinema was ways in which the imaginationof the auteur visualized throughthe work of an editor named SlavkoVorkapich, theirworld in distinctlycinematic ways. Mise-en-scdne whocreated'montagesequences' forsuch 1930sfilms criticismserved many purPoses:it helped concentrate as San Francisco (1936) and Mr Smith Goes to the critical gaze on the formal structures of film; it Washington(1939). The Bazinian aesthetic of the explored the significanceof style in a medium that longtake had a broader history and a powerful influ- few had ever consideredcapable of manifestingstyle; ence.Bazin looked to the work of Erichvon Stroheim, and it heloed to determine a field-cinema studies- F.W.Murnau, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles,William Wyler, by proving that both artisticpersonality and stylecould and the films of the post-war ltalian Neo-Realists exist in a massart. (RobertoRossellini, Vittorio De Sica, especially) as Likeauteurism, mise-en-scdne criticism was a useful examplesof the cinemaof the long take.The followers construct,a way of bu ildi n g a criticaldiscourse. Even as of Bazin,from Jean-LucGodard and FranEoisTruffaut it heloed define film form and structure,it was some- to MichelangeloAntonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci,the thing of an evasion,for it tended to repressthe realities Greekdirector Theo Angelopoulos, and the British of the dominant Hollywood cinema,whose forms con- filmmakerTerence Davies (to name only a few;, struct most of the films we see. Becauseof its place of dependupon the complex gaze of the camera rather origin, this form has come to be known as the classical thanediting to constructtheir mise-en-scdneand, from form of Hollywood cinema or, more simply, the con- it,their narrative. lt can be said, with strong empirical tinuity style. lt is a remarkable form because of its evidence,that any filmmaker who sets out to make a persistence,its invisibility,and becausewe learn how film that is counter to the structure of the dominant to read it easilyand without any more instructionthan Hollywoodcinema turns not to Eisenstein,but to the seeing the films themselves. cinemathat Bazin applauded and championed, the cinemaof the long take, of coherent mise-en-scdne. The conceot of mise-en-scdne attracted the atten- The continuitystyle tion of criticsas well. Cahiersdu cin6ma (the French journalBazin helped found), as well as the Britishjour- Eisenstein ian montage and the long-take-deeP-focus nalMovie, along with writers such as V. F. Perkinsand aesthetic advocated by Bazin are attention-drawing RaymondDurgnat, pursued the idea of the shot and its forms. They foreground cinematic structure and constituentparts as the defining elements of a film. In make them part of the narrativemovement. They are France,England, and the United States,study of mise- intrusivein the sensethat thev make the viewer aware CRITICALAPPROACHES of the meaning-makingapparatus; they askthe viewer of which all production parts and personnelwould be to look at the way the world is being observed and on hand and easilyput into place in orderto create a constructed cinematically.Despite Bazin'sinsistence product attractiveto the greatest number of people. that the long take reveals the world to the viewel what more often happens is that it revealsthe cine- matic apparatusand its ways of looking. Montage, of course, is dynamic, intrusive: Eisenstein meant his Eisensteinianmontage and the long- moviemakingto have a shockeffect, to raisethe blood take-deep-focusaesthetic advocated pressureand the intellectualtemperature. He called it 'kino by Bazinare attention-drawingforms. the fist'. The classicalHollywood style, on the other hand, asksthat form be rendered invisible;that They are intrusivein the sensethat they the viewer see only the presenceof actorsin an unfold- makethe vieweraware of the meaning- ing storythat seemsto be existingon its own; that the makingapparatus. audience be embraced by that story, identify with it and itsparticipants. Unlike montage and the longtake, the continuitystyle was neithertheorized nor analysed Giventhe factthat the classicalstyle developed prior (not by the people who developed and used rt, at to the studio system,we can speculatethat the struc- least);its ruleswere developed intuitivelyand pragma- tures of narrativemay have contributed to the rise of ticallythrough the earlyyears of filmmaking.The con- the economies of studio production. In other woros, tinuity style developed because it worked, and its the development of a meansto deliver narrativemean- working was measuredby the fact that it allowed film- ing through an economicalvisual construction created makersto make storiesthat audiences responded to templates for the formation of an industrialmass pro- with easeand with desire.They likedwhatthey sawand duction of narratives(Burch 1990). Early film consisted wanted more. We want more still. of a presentationof shots in series,each one of which On the level of ideology, the classicalHollywood showed something happening (as in the Lumidre style is a capitalistversion of Eisensteinianmonrage brothers'earlyfilmin which a train pullsintothe station, and a secularversion of Bazin'sdeep-focus, long-take or Edison'sfirst efforts in which a shot showed a man style.(Eisenstein recognized this, and in hisessay'Dick- sneezingor a couple kissing).Within a few years,dur- ens,Griffith, and the Film Today',wrote about how the ing the turn of the century,such shots became edited Hollywood style spoke the ideology of Western capit- together in the serviceof expressingstories. Georges alism.)lt is the form that placates its audience, fore- M6lids made primitive narrativesof a trip to the moon grounds story and characters,satisfies and creates a or a voyage under the sea in which different shots desire in the audienceto see (and pay for) more of the succeeded one another. Porter's The Great Train same. lt is alsoa form that is economicalto reproduce. Robbery reflects a more complex process in which Once the basicmethodology of shooting and editing a partsof the narrativethat areoccurring simultaneously, film became institutionalized-quite early in the twen- but in different spatial locations,are placed one after tieth century-it was easy to keep doing it that way. the other (Gaudreault1983). One site where the pro- Although every studio during the classicalperiod of cess of establishing the continuity style can be Hollywood production (roughly between the late observed is the seriesof films made by D. W. Griffith '1 910s to the early 1950s)performed slight variations forthe BiographCompanyfrom 1908to'1913. Griffith on the continuity style, its basics were constant ano made more than 400 shortfilmsduring that period, and used by everyone. What this means is, when we talk in them we can see the development of what wouro about the classicalstyle of Hollywood filmmaking, we become the basicprinciples of continuity:an apparent are talking about more than aesthetics,but about a seamlessnessof storytelling;the movement of charac- larger text of economics, politics, ideology, and stor- ters and story that appear to be flowing in an orderly, ies-an economicsof narrative.The Hollywood studio logical,linear progression, with the camerapositioned system,which wasthe centralmanufacturing arm of the in just the right place to capture the action without continuitystyle, developed as many other manufactur- being obtrusive; and, perhaps most important of all, ing institutionsdidby rationalizingproduction, creating an authorityof presentationand expressionthat elicits a divisionof labour,and discoverinqmethods bv means preciselythe correct emotional responseat precisely THE FILM TEXTAND FILM FORM be the right moment, without showing the means by implying such transitionsvisually is more difficult. In whichthe responseis elicited. early cinema there lurked the continual concern that The key to the continuity style is its self-effacement, such things would be misunderstood.Too much cut- itsabilityto show without showing itself, tell a storyand ting would confuse or trouble the viewer. But these makethe storytellingdisappear so that the storyseems fears were rarely realized,and filmmakers as early as to be tellingitself. This legerdemainwas not a natural Edward Porter found that, as long as they contained occurrence.The elementsthat came together to make some kind of narrativeglue, scenesplaced side by side it possiblebegan as arbitraryimaginative, and usually would be understood as occurring either simulta- intuitivechoices. In early cinema there were no rules neously,earlier, or later than one another. Shots of a and no groups that set the standards that would woman held captive by a menacing male (or caught in !y develop into the classicalstyle. The only arbiters some other dangeroussituation) are intercutwith shots t- weredirectors like Porterand Griffithwho tried things of an heroic male figure purposivelymoving in a direc- out,and audiences,who responded favourablyto the tion that has been establishedas that of the menaced experimentsand their refinements. woman.The resultis quite legible:the man is coming to save the threatened woman. The pattern comes )r from nineteenth-centurystage melodrama,but Griffith 'rt Thekey to the continuitystyle is its self- was imaginativeenough to realizethat film could stretch its spatial and temporal boundaries (Fell effacement,its ability to show without 1974).His audience was imaginative enough to accept showingitself, tell a story and make the the illusion and substitute the emotional reality (sus- l storytellingdisappear so that the story pensefulexpectation that the hero will conquer space seemsto be telling itself. and reachthe heroinein time)forthe formal reality(two J sequencesactually occurring one afterthe otheron the I film strip, each sequence constructed in the studio at Thereare a few basicformal comoonents that were different times). The pattern stretches out time and developedby Griffithand others in the early1910s that narrowsspace, providing the viewerwith a way to enter I establishedthe classicalstyle. Narrativeflow is pieced the narrativeand be affected by it. Gender is clearly togetheroutof smallfragments of action in sucha way marked asthe woman-like the viewer-becomes the that the piecing together goes unnoticed and the passivefigure, waiting for salvation,and the male the actionappears continuous. Sequences that occur at active figure, redeemed by his heroism. (Griffith did the sametime but in different places are intercut to reversethe roles in contemporary sequencesof /nto/- createnarrative tension. Dialogue sequencesare con- erance (1916),in which a mother moves to save her structed by a series of over-the-shoulder shots from imprisoned son awaiting execution.) Even less com- one participantin the dialogue to the other.The gaze plicated man@uvres than the traversal of large of the vieweris linkedto the gaze of the main charac- areas of physical and narrative space required tersthrough a seriesof shotsthat show a characterand thought and practice. Take something as simple as thenshow whatthe characteris looking at.The resultof getting a characterout of a chair,on her feet, and out these constructionsis that narrative proceeds in a of the door. In the Biograph films, Griffith worked straighttrajectory through time. Any transitionsthat through the structuring of this movement until it breaklinearity (flashbacks, for example) are carefully becameinvisible. prepared for and all narrative threads are sewn What was the drive to develop such constructions? togetherat the end. The spectator is called into the For one thing, they allow for a great manipulation o{ narrativeand becomes part of the story's space (cf. spaceand narrativerhythm. Much of very earlycinema Althusser1977). consistedof a kind of prosceniumarch shot, the cam- Griffithwas instrumental in establishing cross- or era located at a point at which an imaginaryspectator intercuttingas a primary narrativedevice. The literary in an imaginarytheatre would best see an overallgaze equivalentof this device is the simple narrativetransi- at the spacein which eventswere taking place.This isa 'in 'later tion-'meanwhile' or another part of town' or restrictive,monocular perspective, static and inflex- the same day'-and some films borrow these verbal ible. But why create complex editing only to generate cluesthrouqh intertitlesor voice-over narration. But the illusion of a continuous movement? Eisenstein E CRITICALAPPROACHES didn't. He cut into temporal linearityand restructured shoulder set-ups. lt sounds complicated, but the it. He would return to a shot of a person falling, for economiesare clear. As a normativeprocess, everyone example, at a slighty earlierpoint than when he left it, concernedwith the making of a film knows how to do it so that the inevitableaction is retarded,time manipu- with dispatch. The use of over-the-shoulder shots lated. In the famous plate-smashing sequence In means that one of the high-priced actors in the Potemkin,the single act of an enraged sailoris broken sequence does not have to be present all the time. A into eight separateshots, each lessthan a second long, shot from behind the shoulder of a stand-in can be which extendsthe act and emphasizesthe fury behind made to look just like a shot from behind the shoutder it. EvenGriffith wasn't absolutein hisown constructron of the primary actor. The reverse shots of the over-the- of linearity.In films during the Biographperiod, and shouldersequence do not even haveto be done in the sometimes later, there are occasional sequences of same place! Cut together, keeping the eyelines people rising from chairs in which the second shot is matched, two spaceswill look the same as one. The earlierin the trajectoryof action than the first, and the process resultsin many shots-many choices-avail- person appears as if he were getting up twice. able forthe producer and the film editor to work with in Despite Griffith's'lapses'in the continuitycutting he a much less expensive environment than the studio helped develop, the development of continuity in the floor.The resultis standard patterns of narrativeinfor- early19'1 0s continuedto privilegean illusionof linear- mation,comprehensible to everyonefrom a technician ity and of unbroken movement acrossa seriesof edits. in the studio to a member of the audience in the We can,finally, only speculateon the reasonsafter the theatre. fact.The continuitystyle developed asa way to present And the processprovides a unifyingstructure. This is a story in forward progression,not as a way to look at its great paradox.The fragments of over-the-shoulder how the story was created. lt generated its own econ- dialogue cutting, or any other part of the continuity omy, in narrativeas well as physicalproduction. Film- style,create unity out of plurality,focus our gaze,suture makers developed formal methods that made us into the narrativeflow and the space between the shooting relatively quick and easy: shoot whatever glancesofthe characters.Theories have been setforth scenesare most economical to shoot at a given time that the constantcutting acrossthe gazes of the char- (shoot out of sequence when necessary);cover any actersslips us into their narrativespace becausewe are given sequencefrom as many different angles as pos- continuallyasked by the cutting to expect something sible and with multiple takes of each angle to give the more. Someone looks,and we are primed to respond, 'What producer and editor a lot of material to choose from; is the characterlooking at?' And the next shot edit the material to create linear continuity, cut on inevitably tells us, by showing the person (or object) movement, keep eyelines matched (maintainingthe being looked at. This play of intercutgazes creates an directiona person isgazing from one shotto the other). irresistibleimaginary world that seemsto surround us Make the storyappear to tell itselfas inexpensivelyand with character and actions. lt is as if the viewer quickly as possible. becomes part of the text, reading the film and berng No more interestingand enduring examples of the read into it (Dayan 1992).lt is this element of the rrre- continuity style can be found than in the cutting of sistible,of desire and its satisfaction,that most cleany basicdialogue sequences.Even before dialogue could demonstratesthe staying-powerof the classicalcon- be recorded on a soundtrack,the following pattern tinuity style. emerged: the dialogue begins with a two-shot of the Alfred Hitchcock-to take one example-can creare participants in the scene. The cutting pattern then overwhelming emotions simply by cutting between a startsas a seriesof over-the-shouldershots from one characterlooking and what the characteris looking ar. participant to the other. The pattern may be slightly Earlyin Vertigo (1958),James Stewart'sScottie drives altered. For example, shots of just one of the partici- through the streets of San Francisco, following a pants listeningor talking may appear in the course of woman he has been told is obsessed by someone the sequence.Butthe main seriesof shotsare over-the- long dead. The sequence is made up by a relatively shoulder cuts, back and forth, that conclude with a simpleseries of shotsand reverseshots. We see Scottie return to the original two-shot. A simple dialogue in his cardriving,we see from his carwindow, as if from has,therefore, to be filmed many different times with his point of view, Madeleine's car. She arrives at a numerous takes of the two-shot and the over-the- museum. Scottie looks at hel Hitchcock cuts to a THEFILM TEXT AND FILM FORM

point-of-viewshot of her, looking at a painting, and ventionalwisdom if we look carefullvand decode them beinglooked at by Scottie.She goes into a dark alley. with a knowing eye. Scottiefollows, his gaze pursuing her to a door. As the Much has been done and much remains.Attention dooropens,and Scottie'sgaze penetratesit, the dark- needs to be paid to the minute particularsof the clas- nesschanges to a riot of colourful flowers in a fiower sicalHollywood style;more needsto be saidaboutthe shop.Throughout the sequence we see with Scottie, way a gesture with a coffee cup, how a cut between two but see(as he does) only a mystery which, we learn charactersglancing at or away from each other, gen- later,is not a mysterybut a lie.The woman he follows rs erate meaning. The economy of style of the classical notthe personhe thinksshe is: both he and the audi- form may present apparent obviousnesses,but it is in enceare fooled. The director uses elements of the fact a structuralshorthand, a code book that keeps classicalstyle to manipulate our responses,to place criticsand viewers attentive and attracted. In its very usclose to the gazeof the centralcharacter, wh ichtu rns invisibiiitylie the structuresof desirethat make us want outto be seriouslycompromised. We identify with an to see more and more. illusion. And as we identify with it, some of us want to discoverhow it has been constructed and perpe- Gontestingthe Hollywoodstyle tuated.Some of the most imoortant work in recent film criticismhas developed in the process of dis- The Hollywood stylewas and isthe dominant stylethe coveringthe working of the classical Hollywood world over. But there have been periods when some style.Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson's fhe C/as- filmmakers consciouslyworked against its structures, sical Hollywood Cinema (1985) is a massively rethinking its structural and semantic codes. These detailed catalogue of the attributes of what its filmmakersfavoured long takes (in the Bazinianman- 'an authorscall excessivelyobvious cinema'. Other ner), atemporal or non-linearnarratives, and subject- writershave discovered that beneath or within this matter that differed from the usual Hollywood stories obviousnesslies a complex form and structure,and a of violence and melodrama. They called attention to rich interplaybetween a film and the culture that their methods, exploited the possibilitiesof mise-en- spawnsand nurturesit with its attention. Films speak scdne,and asked viewersto become aware that form to us and we respond with the price of admission or creates content; that stories don't exist without the the rental of a video. lts articulatenessis created tellingof them. througha narrativeeconomy in which narrative,ges- One great period of such experimentationoccurred ture, composition, lighting, and cutting are tightly during the 1960s and 1970s. Spawned by the French codedso that we understand the intended meaninq New Wave, extending to ltaly, England, the United immediately. States,and then, in the 1970s,to Germany,the move- Butimmediate comprehension often means simple ment produced a body of work, and a seriesof imagi- assentingto the reproduction of gender and racial native filmmakers who, briefly, changed some basic stereotypes.lt is necessary,therefore, to analyse why assumptionsof cinematicform. The resultswere a ser- weassent, to what we assent,and why we keep coming iesof filmsthat reconsideredAmerican genre films in a backfor more. Theories of subject placement-how form that stressedthe long take and oblique cutting,an the vieweris fashioned by a film into a kind of ideal avoidanceof classicalcontinuity rules,and, in the case spectatorwho desiresto see what is shown him or her of French director Jean-Luc Godard, a cinema that on the screen-attempt to answer questions of how ouestioned the form and content of the cinematic formcreates attention, and attention fashionspercep- image itself.Godard and his contemporariesand fol- tion.Critics such as Dana Polan (1986) have investr- lowers-Alain Resnaisin France;Michelangelo Anto- gated the tight links between culture and film, nioni, PierPaolo Pasolini, the earlyBertolucci in ltaly; indicatinghow history and our responsesto it make RainerWerner Fassbinderand the earlyWim Wenders of film an ideologicalmirror and an engine of affirma- in Germany;Glauber Rochain Brazil;the filmmakersof tion.Others, like MaryAnn Doane (1987),have probed ICAIC (the Cuban film Institute)(to name only a few)- indetail the interplaybetween the American style and made filmsthat took their own textualityas one of their ourgiven ideas of gender; or they have read against subjects.They asked their viewers to think about the thegrain to point out how films can question the con- imagesthey produced,the storiesthey told. Theirfilms

@ CRITICALAPPROACHES

questioned whetherother imagesmight be used,other working class, bases his interrogations of form on stories be told. Many of thesefilmmakers worked in the the I950s American melodrama of Douglas Sirk. tradition of the German playwrightand theorist Bertolt Through these approaches they take the classical Brecht, who demanded that a work of art put the spec- style into account, respond to it, and, finally,honour tator in a speculative position, reveal its internal it by recognizing it as their base. For better or for mechanisms, and show how the power of the imagina- worse, the classical style has survived, ano tion can work with or againstthe power of a cultures absorbed, all of the responses to it. Everything dominant ideology. Many of their films were passron- else stands, finally, in dialectical relationship to it. ately political,speaking the inquisitiveand corrective This static, dynamic, dominant, and absorptive tex- voice of the left. tuality embraces the cultural surround and articu- lates the complexities of ideology. The film text becomes a rich and a complex event, reticent and The Hollywood style was and is the boisterous, asking passivity from its viewers while provoking their desire, dominantstyle the world over. But hiding itself while announ- cing its power in film after film. there havebeen periodswhen some filmmakersconsciously worked against its structures,rethinking its structural and semanticcodes. BIBLIOGRAPHY 'ldeology Althusser, Louis (1977), and the ldeological State Apparatuses', in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben The structuralprinciple Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press). of this modernist, reflexive *Bazin, Andr6 (1967), What is Cinema?,2 vols., movement was complexity and mediation, a recogni- trans. Hugh Gray, i (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of tion that the film image and its editorial structureare California Press). not givens,certainly not natural,but the constructions 'The Benjamin, Walter (1936/1969), Work of Art in the of convention. And what is made by convention can Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in ///uminations,ed. be questioned and altered. The over-the-shoulder Hannah Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn (New york: cutting pattern, naturalizedin the classicalAmerrcan Schocken Books). style, is not necessary;and most of the filmmakersof Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson this movement avoided it, using instead the Bazinian (1985), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and long take, which permitted the image to be interro- Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia Uni- gated, found false or adequate, but versity Press). always only a *Burch, 'This Nodl (1990), Life to those (Berkerey: representation. is not a just image,' Godard Shadows 'lt just Universityof California Press). says. is an image.' *Cameron, lan (1972), Movie Reader(New york: praeger). Yet, no matter how much they used film as med- Comito, Terry (971),'Touch of Evil', Film Comment, T/2 ium of exploration, these filmmakers kept referrrng (Summer), Three Masters of Mtse-en-Scene: Murnau. to their base of American cinema. Alain Resnais! Welles, Ophuls. 'The LastYearat Marienbad (1961) is a radical meditation Dayan, Daniel (1992), Tudor-Code of Classical on the conventions of past and present tense in film Cinema', in Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, ano Leo editing, and a remake of Hitchcock'sVertigo. Anto- Braudy (eds.), Film theory and Criticism (New york: nioni, whose L'awentura (1960), La notte (196j), Oxford Un iversity Press). Doane, (1987), L'Eclisse (1962), Red Desert (1964), and Blow-up Mary Anne The Desire to Desire (Bloo- (1966) show an extraordinary mington: Indiana UniversityPress). commitment to tne *Eisenstein, 'Dickens, Sergei (1949), Griffith, and Film idea that filmic composition is an architectural Today', in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and form obeying its own rules of narrative logic, keeps trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World). playing his work off against the conventions of -(1943), The Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda 1940s Americanmelodrama. Rainer Werner Fassbin- (London: Faber & Faber). der, the most Brechtianfilmmaker after Godard, and Fell, John (1974), Film and the Narrative Tradition (Nor- the one director most committed to exploring tne man: Universityof Oklahoma Press). THE FILM TEXTAND FILM FORM 'Temporality Gaudreault,Andr6 (1983), and Narrativityin - (1988),A Cinema of Loneliness,2nd edn. (New York: EarlyCinema 1895-'1908', in JohnFell (ed.), Film before Oxford University Press). Grifith(Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress). Metz, Christian (1977/1982), The Imaginary Signifier, -(1990),'Detours in FilmNarrative: The Development trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewstel and of Cross-Cutting',in Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker Alfred Guzzetti (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress). (eds.l,Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative(London: *Perkins, V. F. (1972), Film as Film: Understanding and BritishFilm Institute). Judging Movies (Harmondsworth: Penguin). rKolker, Robert Phillip (1983), fhe Altering Eye (New Polan, Dana (1986), Power and Paranoia (New York: York:Oxford University Press). Columbia UniversityPress).

E READING:WR,TTEN ON THEWIND

Written on the Wind

RobinWood from RobinWood: FilmStudies at WarwickUniversity Vision, 12 (Dec.1974),27-36.

One might talk about Written on the Wind (1957) in terms aspire to the creation of the film's meaning. Certain of these 'crude', of fundamental American myth, the myth of lost innocence featuressome might again want to label though and purity: the charactersof the film repeatedly look back againthey are capableof anotherdescription. Douglas Sirk to their collectivechildhood. Universalmyth, perhaps,but was originallyDanish, but settledfor a time in Germanyand deriving a particularmeaning from the Virgin Land that nas made films there before he went to Hollywood. lt can be so rapidly become one o{ the most technologically argued that he inherited something of the tradition of advancedcountries of the world. The nostalgicyearning for German Expressionism(a tradition that other directors also- innocence has a markedly pastoral flavour: the characters, Lang, Hitchcock,Murnau-have found readilycompatibre among their oil pumps and scarletsports cars,long to with the Hollywood melodrama in one form or another), of 'the return to river', where they were happy (or think they which the central aim was the projection of emotional states 'Rosebud', were). The same myth, in the form of animates by means of imagery: the use of the colour scarlet in Written Citizen Kane (1941). on the Wind might be seen as having Expressionist derivation.Sirk also admired,and collaboratedwith, Bertott This might prove a useful starting-point for an exploration Brecht, a writer who seems at first sight very far removed of more than Written on the Wind. One might develop an from the Hollywood melodrama. There is no room in the investigation of the film itself further by considering the Hollywoodgenre movie for Brechtianalienation devices: the genre within which it is situated:the Hollywoodmelodrama. centralaims are obviouslyincompatible, the tendencyof the Melodrama has proved a very difficultword to define (like genre movie being to enclosethe spectatorin an emotional so many such shifting,complex, dangerousterms- experience,the function of alienationdevices being to 'tragedy','sentimentality','classical','Romantic', etc.). lt detach him by means of interruptions.Alienation effects,one implies in this context, I take it, charactersdivided fairry might say, can be sneaked into Hollywood movies only on 'good' 'bad'; markedlyinto and simplifiedissues; violent or conditionthat they ceaseto alienate(unless we bring to the 'Crude 'alienated'). extreme emotions; a reliance on rhetoric. films prior expectationsof being One can, melodrama': the words often go together. One can ask- however,see the extremenessof some of Sirk! effects as the Written on the Wind might well prompt one to ask- result of a desire to break the audience'sabsorotion in rne whether crudeness is a necessaryfeature of melodrama. narrativeand force it to consciousawareness. ln the Certainly the forceful projection of violent feelings is, drugstore at the start of the extract, there are not just one or 'Drugs', though that is also a feature common to many tragedies. two signssaying they are suspendedall over the One can see the simplificationof issuesand the powerful shop to an extent that a/most oversteps the bounds of the projectionof emotion as a matter of clich6or vulgarity;one Hollywooddemand for plausibility.How does one see might also see it, in certaincases, as a reduction of thinqs this?-as part of the excessesof Hollywood melodrama?-as to essentials,the stripping away of the intricaciesof the legacy of Expressionism?-as derived from Brechtian personal psychology (though Sirk'sfilm is not exactly alienation?The idea of a societydrowning its awarenessin lackingin that quarter)to revealfundamental human drives alcohol (like the Stack character)or in drugs is central to the in the most intense way possible. film.

Which set of terms should be applied to Written on theWind Then there is the very loaded, obtrusive shot with the camera can only be argued,I would claim,through closeattention to tracking out of the drugstore in front of Stack to reveal the the level of realization,or of style: the level at which the boy on the wooden horse in the foreground. One can say personal artist supervenes,the level at which, for the critrc, many things about that: the decisionto do it as a tracking considerationsof national myth and genre must give place to shot instead of cutting to a close-up ofthe boy-the effect is a consideration of personal authorship. Certain elementary to stressthe connection (both psychological and symbolic) features of style belong more to the studio than to Sirk: between Stack and the boy by uniting them in the frame, notablythe set design.Connoisseurs of Universalfilms will, without lossof impact. There is then the question of what the for example, probably find the hallway and staircase boy signifies;and a device that may at first sight seem crude somewhatfamiliar: they will have seen them in Marnie takes on surprisingcomplexity. First, most obviously,the ooy (1964), and perhapsin other Universalmovies. But the representsthe son Stack has just learnt he will probably extract we have seen contains striking stylisticfeatures which neverhave; second, the violentrocking-riding motion carries can't be explained in this way; features that are not just strong sexual overtones, and in Stack'smind the idea of functional, like the staircase,but determine our responseand sterility is clearly not distinct from that of impotence; READING: WR,TTEN ON THE WIND

wrtttelon th: till::::::::

third,the child takes up the recurrent idea of the characters' terms as her rebelliousassertion of herselfin a drab world. yearningfor lost innocence-and for the unreflecting The effect is again not simple: the red carries the simple 'scarlet spontaneityand vitality that went with it-a central theme in traditional sense of the woman', certainly, but it also the film.The child! expressionand actions are very precisely expressesvitality and powerful, if perverted, drives; it has judged:we see him as enjoying himself,yet we also see how, positive as well as negative connotations within the world to Stack,his smile appears malicious, taunting. The the film creates.I should like to single out two moments obtrusivenessof the device is perhaps justifiable in terms of where colour is used particularly forcefully and expressively. densityof meaning. One is the moment when the camera tracks forward towards Dorothy Malone's car, the whole screen filis with It is impossibleto leave this topic without reference to the red, and the image dissolvesto the green car in which useof colour.The film is built partly on colour contrasts: the LaurenBacall is arrivingfor the arrangedmeeting with her stridentscarlet associated with Dorothy Malone against the alreadydrunken husband.The use of the colour contrast 'natural' greens and browns of Lauren Bacall. The use of combines with the technical device of the dissolve to create scarletis a beautiful example of the integration of a complex significance(a significance felt, perhaps, rather 'Expressionist' effect within Hollywood's'psychological than consciouslyapprehended, as we might experience realism':the glaring red of Dorothy Malone's phone, effects in music): it contraststhe two women through the toenails,flowers, and car is explainablein psychological colours with which they are associated;it evokes the idea of

The curved stalrcase forms an integlal part of the mlseen-scine ln Douglas Slrk's l/yrltten on the Wlnd (L9571

E READING: C,TIZEN KANE

wriuen wi:d co::l'::o 11th:

simultaneity,suggesting the convergenceof forces (which passes,Rock Hudson is shown reflected in the hall mirror, will culminatein the father's death); hence it linksDorothy watchingher There is also,related to this, the use o{ Malone with her brother, underliningthe parallelsbetween windows: repeatedly, Sirk shows charactersas seen through 'framing' them-his alcoholism,her nymphomania,the common glass.One can see this in variousways: the of (or cause complex of causes,at the centre of which is the people who aretrapped; the inabilityof people to help each Rock 'hero,). Hudson character,the film's apparent The other, each reduced to a glass surface that can't be second example is the dance, which employs not only penetrated; the unreality of the characters,who, trapped in 'reflections' scarletbut a particularlystrident colour clashinvolving their own fantasies,have become mere of Dorothy Malone's ceriseneglig6e. The dance itself is an human beings (Sirk'slast film was called lmitatjonof Life extraordinarydevice for suggestingall those things that 1959). couldn't be shown on the screen in 1956, and which perhaps gain greater force from the partial suppression: Finally,I should talk briefly about what is the most difficult sexualexhibitionism and masturbation(the use of Rock aspect of film to analyse.I suggestedearlier an analogy Hudson's photograph as a substitute for his physical with poetry; I hope to make this clearer rather than more presence being crucialto this scene and an indicationof obscureby adding to it the analogywith music.Sirk himself themes centralto Sirk'scinema). has said that his conscious model for Written on the Wind was Bachfugue. He talked about the acting as pared down From the use of colour (and with this photograph still in to clean intersecting lines, like counterpoint. lf Written on mind), we might pass to another feature of Sirk'sstyle that the Wind is a fugue for four voices, the sequence 'baroque': of the haselicited the word the use of mirrorsand other father's death is clearly the stretto. What I want to indicate glass sur{aces.One might argue that this is merely is the obviousfact that film, like music,has a fixed duration. decorative, but not that it is accidental: there are three Hence the appropriatenessto it of musicalterms like striking 'tempo' 'rhythm'. shots involving mirrors. First, at the bar, when the and We still haven'tfound a way of 'musical' camera swings left to show the charactersreflected in the bar talking satisfactorilyabout this dimension,the mirror. Second, when Robert Stack is brought home. Third, direct effect of the movement of film on the senses,except when DorothyMalone is brought home (theparallel between in dangerouslyimpressionistic terms. There is a lot of work 'musically'underlined), her and her brotheragain and, as she to be done.

Citizen Kane

'lntroduction Peter Woffen from to Citizen Kane,, Film Reader, no. I (1975), 9_1 5.

To write (1941\ about Citzen Kane is to write about the of Hollywood such as No€l Burchputs Welles in relationto cinema. lt is impossibleto think about this film without Elia Kazan,Robert Aldrich, Joseph Losey,and Arthur Penn, thinking about its place in film history.Most critics,despite and condemns Kanefor simply displayingan amplificatron Welles! own unhappy relations with Hollywood, have seen of traditional narrative codes which it does nothing to him primarily,implicitly within the frameworkof the American subvert. narrativecinema. Pauline Kael talks about the 1930s newspaper pictureand builds up the role of Mankiewrcz,a Against this mainstreamtrend, of course, we have to set the hard-core Hollywood scribe if ever there was one. Charles massiveinfluence of Andr6 Bazin.For Bazin,Kane and fhe 'wholly Highamtalks of a Americanwork', Andrew Sarrisof Magnificent Ambersons(1942) 'the were crucial moments in the Americanbaroque', and they leave no doubt, I think, unfoldingof the cinema'svocation of realism.Together with that, where the cinema is concerned,for them the work of Jean Renoirand WilliamWyler, Kane represented America = Hollywood.And, from the other side, an enemy a rediscoveryof the tradition of realism, lost since rne

E READING: CIT,ZEN KANE

Cltlzenl(ane contin ued

silentepoch (LouisFeuillade, Erich von Stroheim, F. W. Bazin's.So flexible, so generous in many respects,Bazin was Mumau).Kane looked {orward to ltalian Neo-Realismand. neverthelessable at times to restrict and concentrate his had Bazinlived longer,his interestwould surely have turned visionto an amazingdegree. Obviouslyhe felt the influence to cin6maverit6 and the new developments in documentary of Expressionism(which he hated) on Kane, but he simply whichfollowed the invention of magnetic tape, lightweight discounted it-or tried to justify it by pointing to the recorderand camera,and the tape join. (lndeed the strain of exaggeration and tension in the characterof Kane, a kind of 'technological messianism'in Bazin'sthought must surely psychologicalrealism, similar to the way in which he havetaken him in this direction). defended the expressioniststyle of a {ilm about concentrationcamps. (ln the samevein, ChristianMetz ForBazin, o{ course,the crucialfeature of Cithen Kane was remarks how the formal flamboyance of Kane, the film, its useof deep focus and the sequence shot. Yet one parallelsthe flamboyantpersonality of Kane,the man.)In sensesall the time, in Bazin'swritings on Welles, an uneasy general,however, Bazin simply hurriedon to his favourite feelingthat Welles was far from sharing the spiritual theme-the importance of deep focus and the sequence humilityand self-effacement,or even the democratic snot. 'style mentality,which marked for Bazin the without style', the abnegationof the artist before a reality whose meaning The key concepts here for Bazin were those of spatial and outrunsthat of any artefact. lt is easy to forget that, on temporal homogeneityand dramaticunity. lt is almost as if 'sadism' occasion,Bazin talked about the of Welles, of hrs the theatrical scene was the model for Bazin'stheory of the rubberyspace, stretched and distended, rebounding like a cinema.Of course,he believed that filmed theatre should catapultin the face of the spectator. He compared Welles respect the scene and the stage. Beyond that, it seems he to El Greco (as well as the Flemish masters of deep focus) believed in a theatrum mundi, which it was the calling of 'infernal 'tyrannical andcommented on his vision' and the cinema to capture and record-there is a sense in which objectivity'.But this awarenessof Welles the stylist and all cinemawas for him {ilmed theatre,only in Neo-Realism, manipulatordid not deflect Bazinfrom his main point. for instance, the world was a stage, the players were living Fundamentally,his enthusiasmwas for the deep-focus therr lives,and the dramatist,who gave meaning to the cinematographywhich Welles and Gregg Toland action,was God himself.No wonder then that, for him, the 'artist introducedwith such virtuosity. lt was on this that Welles's artist, in Annette Michelson's phrase, was as witness' 'Ultimate placein film history would depend. and the whole of reality the offering of an Spectacle'.Indeed, Bazinwrites that in ltaly daily life was a Yeta third currenthas been felt recently,again often more perpetual commedia dell'arte and describes the implicitthan explicit.Putting together some remarksof Alarn architectureof ltaliantowns and cities as beinq like a Robbe-Grillet,the article by Marie-ClaireRopars-Wuilleumier theatre set. in Po6tiqueand that by William van Wert in Sub-Stance,we cansee how it is possible to place Kane as a forerunner of Bazin always laid great stresson the theatricality of Orson LastYearat Marienbad (19611,a film which pointed the way Welles.He saw Wellesas a man of the theatre and talked towardsthe breakdown of unilinear narration and a about the sequenceshot as a devicefor maintainingthe 'An Nietzscheandenial of truth. lt is in this sensetoo that we can primacy of the actor. actor's performance loses its 'labyrinth understandBorges! praise of Kane as a without a meaning,is drainedo{ itsdramatic blood like a severedlimb, centre'.Kane's perspectivism (leading so easily to nihilismt, if it ceasesto be kept in living, sensorycontact with the other itscomplex pattern of nesting, overlapping, and conflicting characters,and the setting. Moreover, as it lasts,the scene narratives,put it in a particular tendency within the modern charges itself like a battery . . .'. movement,which has its origins perhaps in Conrad or Faulknerand its most radical exponents ln Pirandelloand the BasicallyBazin justifies the sequenceshot and deep focusfor furtherreaches of the French new nover. three reasons:it maintainsthe dramatic unity of a scene, it permits objects to have a residualbeing beyond the pure And of course,this tendency, whose origins are in literature, instrumentalitydemanded of them by the plot, and it allows hasbegun to spread into the cinema, especially in France, the spectator a certain freedom of choice following the throughthe influence of writers-Marguerite Duras, Jean action. In Kane it was the first which was uppermost. The Cayrol,Robbe-Grillet-who have worked on films, even second was imoortant to Bazin-he talks about the door- becomefilmmakers. handle of SusanAlexander's bedroom, in the sequence after the suicide attempt, and goes on to describe the cold feel o{ The oddest of these three versions oI Kane is undoubtedry copper, the copper or indented enamel of a door-hanore,

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yet we must feel that this is his own projection, reverie almost simply thought that psychologicaltruth and dramatic (in the Bachelardiansense), which has little relevanceto configurations would reveal themselves more fully if there Kane. As for the third reason, Bazin recognizesthat Welles was a minimum of artisticintervention. He remained directs the spectator'sattention through lighting and hostile throughout to experimental film (for him Stroherm movementas imperiouslyas any editor at times, but he was the great experimentalist and Welles, of course, can remainsaware of the potential ambiguity of the sequence easilybe perceivedas an avatarof Stroheim)and thought shot and, of course,links this to the ambiguousportrayal of of theatre and the novel as the models with which cinema Kane'scharacter. should be compared. There too he tended to have conventionaltastes-he aligns himselfwith Sartre,s Yet, with the advantage of hindsight, we can see that Bazins condemnationof Mauriac,but seems also to accept love o{ the sequence shot has been strangely betrayed by without question Sartre'spositive tastes-Dos passos, the filmmakers who have subsequently used it. Who do we Faulkner,Hemingway-and clearlywas not interestedin think of? Andy Warhol,Michael Snow, Jean-LucGodard. the literary revolution inaugurated by Gertrude Stein and Jean-MarieStraub, Mikl6s Jancs6. There are linksof James Joyce. course-Straub reveres Bazin'shero, Bresson;Godard was deeply marked by Roberto Rossellini-but clearly the Yet the example of contemporary filmmakers has shown that sequence shot has been used for purposes quite different the long take and the sequenceshot tend to underminethe from those which Bazin foresaw. Some of these filmmakers primacyof the dramaturgy:duration becomes a stylistic have stressedthe autonomy of the camera and its own feature in itself and, far from suppressingthe filmmaking movement, rather than the primacy of the actors or the process,the sequence shot tends to foreground it. At most, drama (Jancs6,Snow), others have used the sense of the sequence shot can be associatedwith a Brechtiantvoe of durationto de-realizethe imaginary world of the film dramaturgy, based on tableaux. In fact this tendency can be (Godard),others have been interested in duration as a formal seen even in Citizen Kane, where it is disguised by the feature in itself (Warhol).Straub, probably the closest to movement in and out of the framing story and the comprex Bazin in his insistenceon authenticity, on a refusalof character of the transition. Bazin thought that the principal guidancefor the spectator'seye, has none the lessput his functionof the cut should be that of ellipsis,but, within the Bazinianstyle to purposesvery differentfrom those Bazin kind oi rhythm built up by a seriesof long sequenceshots, himselfcould have envisaged. the cut automaticallytakes on a rote as caesurarather than ellipsisalone. It is worth noting that most of the sequence shots in Citizen Kane are, in fact, used in the framing story rather Truffaut,always {undamentally a conservativecritic-as he than the flashbacks,in the scenes in which Thompsontatks has shown himselfto be a conservativefrlmmaker-has said to each of the interior narrators. The average length of a that'if Citizen Kane has aged, it is in its experimental shot in CitLen Kane is not particularly long because of the aspects'. lt seems to me that it is preciselythe opposite number of short shots that exist 'tricks', both in the newsreel which is true. All Welles's as they are often sequenceand in the numerous montage sequenceswhich contemptuouslycalled-the lightningmixes, the stillswhich Welles uses, mostly as transitions.The decisionto use come to life, the complex montages, the elasticity of sequence shots in the framing story is clearly a decision perspective,the protracted dissolves,the low-angle camera not to use classicalfield reverse-field cutting, and thus to movements, etc.-are what still gives the film any interest. de-emphasize the role of Thompson, the narratee. Nobody, after all, has ever made high claimsfor its Thompson only appears as a shadowy 'novelistic' figure with his back content, its portrayal of Kane,spsychology, its to the camera. lt is hard to separate decisions on lenqth of depiction of American society and politics in the first half of shot and edit;ng from decisions on narrative structu;. By the twentieth century,its anatomy o{ love or power or wealth. shooting Thompson in this way Welles precludesany Or, at any rate, there is no need to take such claims ver, spectator identification with the character who, from the seriously.lt seemsquite disproportionatefor Nodl Burchto point of view of information and focalization.is the submitthem to hisacute dissection and attack,as he himself spectators representative in the film. seemsto half-acknowledge.

In the last analysis,what concerned 'pro-Hollywood' Bazin was dramaturov Indeed, the defence of Kane is quite (evenif, as with the Neo-Realists,he could speakof a 'dramaturgy pathetic in its lack of ambition (Kane after all, is widely held of everyday life'), and he tended to assumerne to be the greatestfilm ever made).Pauline Kael beginswith need for charactersand a continuous 'the narrativeline. He hyperbole one Americantalking picture that seems as READfNG: CtflZEN KANE

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fieshnow as the day it opened', but soon descends to dub seems to reflect the ponderousnessof his themes. His 'a kne, in a famous phrase, shallow work, a shallow interest in formal devices and technical ingenuity puts him masterpiece'.The shallownessdoes not worry her, howevel closerto mannerism,to a consciousappreciation of virtuosity 'such becauseit is what makes Kane an American triumph', and the desire to astonish. 'the and then we discoverits triumph lies in way it gets its 'mannerist' laughsand makesits points'. Basically,she assimilatesKane It is this aspect of Welles which still lives-not to the traditionof the well-made Broadway play, translated the dramatic unity which deep focus and the long take into the 1930scomedy film, with all its astringency and make possible,but the long take and deep focus as formal senseof pace and fun. Other critics do not really claim features in themselves. Similarly,it is not the theme of 'masterpiece', muchmore: CharlesHigham talks of a but time, youth, memory, age, etc. which is of any interest, but 'epic also journalism';once again, we get the insistenceon the devicesused to organizetime within the film. Many of 'American' dte quality of Welles and Kane, ironic in the these point the way towards a quite different kind of use- lightof the original intention to call the film The American. contemporary filmmakers' variations on the long take, Energy,grandeur, and emptiness. Robbe-Grillet! variations on the freeze frame-still. Kane remains an important film historically,not within the terms 'content' Thetruth is that the ol Citizen Kane cannot be it set itself, or those within which it has been mainly seen takentoo seriously.Yet it had an enormous impact-largely by critics, but because, by a kind of retroactive causality,it becauseof its virtuosity,its variety of formal devices and is now possible to read there an entirely different film, one technicalinnovations and inventions. In themselves, of which Welles probably never intended. Citizen Kane, we course,these are purely ornamental, and the dominant can now say,was a milestonealong the road which led, not aestheticof our age is one that rejects the concept of to a reinvigoration of Hollywood, or a novelistic ornament-the ruling aesthetic of our day is one of complication of narrative, or the unfolding of the realistic expressionismor functionalismor symbolism or formalism, essence of film, but towards the expansion and elaboration seenas a complexprocess of problem-solving ratherthan wit of a formal poetic which would transform our concept of ordecoration.Welles is usuallydescribed in terms of cinema entirely, towards film as a text which is a play with baroqueor expressionism,sometimes the Gothic, but this meaning ratherthan a vehicle for it.