Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. Michel Chion describes The Scarlet Empress as a ‘Symphony of Textures’ (2000). 2. James MacDowell has written about the aesthetics of ‘so bad, it’s good’ through detailed exploration of The Room (2013). 3. Raymond Durgnat’s discussion of auteur theory engages with grouping and regrouping Hollywood directors according to facets of style, several categories of which (‘soft’, ‘muscular’, ‘plush’) implies a textural understanding of those films (1967: 80). 4. Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (2010) is an indicator of the importance of sensory response to film in theory, as well as a useful reminder that attention to sensory experience is not an entirely new facet of Film Studies. 5. As Ian Garwood points out, sensory scholarship tends to be divided into two camps; those engaging with Merleau-Ponty and those engaging with Deleuze (2013: 14). 6. As indicated by Sobchack (2004), Beugnet (2007), Barker (2009), Elsaesser and Hagener (2010). 7. This bears a relationship to José Ortega y Gasset’s (1968) argument for two different ways of seeing in art, proximate and distant vision. As Gilberto Perez puts it, Ortega’s proximate vision is tactile ‘we don’t merely see, we virtually seize hold of an object with our eyes’ (1998: 135). Perez’s reference to Ortega leads him to a rich discussion of the treatment of objects and space on film – the chapter ‘The Deadly Space Between’ (1998: 123–148). 8. Schiff’s two modes of touching map onto distinctions between haptic and optical visuality. 9. Though some such language may also belong to the clichés used to evoke film style (Clayton & Klevan, 2011: 1). 10. Susan Smith (2000) has explored the concept of tone as part of her study of Hitchcock. 11. Misek’s discussions of colour most illuminating to discussion of texture are in the range of qualities contained in the use of surface colour, such as the hardening qualities of colour in a rejection of Technicolor’s ‘law of emphasis’ that decreed colour should support the emotional tenor of a scene (2010: 56–57), and optical colour, for example, the propensity for desaturation in use of natural light in New Hollywood filmmaking and how this light and manipulations of it through use of smoke and dust shaped the space (2010: 134–135). 12. As noted by Clayton and Klevan (2011: 5–6). 13. In an article concerning the terminologies of textiles, cloth and skins, Susanna Harris evokes the contrasting attitudes to the qualities of textiles 169 170 Notes and their use in different cultural traditions. She states that ‘the selection (or rejection) of cloth-type materials was in accordance to wider culturally held beliefs based in the appropriate aesthetics of structure and surface’ (2008: 230). In the same article she proposes: The reason for selection in cloth types is culturally dependent and varied: it may depend on attributes such as color, thickness and decoration, desir- ability based on the origin of the product in terms of raw material, source through exchange, the user’s social relationship to the producer, or taboos surrounding particular materials. (2008: 231) 1 Introducing Texture in Film 1. Thanks to my father, Graeme Fife, for his Classicist’s illumination of the etymological origins of ‘texture’. In his words: ‘From the Latin texo-texere- texui-tectum “to weave” from the root tek- which appears in the Greek etekon, tikto “to beget” ’ (2009). 2. Notably, this covers ‘any natural structure having an appearance or consis- tence as if woven; a tissue; a web, e.g. of a spider’ (OED). 3. Architecture and geography are other areas in which texture plays a role. Giuliana Bruno discusses the textural relationship between film and these areas: ‘As we travel filmically in the shared “fabric” of apparel, building, and mapping, I dwell on the fiber of these domains, and particularly in the folds – the texture – of their geophysic design, where wearing is, ultimately, a wearing away’ (2002: 9). Constance Classen’s exploration of the many tactile realms of the past, from the Middle Ages to Modernity, demonstrates the wide disciplinary reach of concern with texture, materiality and feel (2012). 4. ‘Spontaneity can be seen in Cézanne’s vigorously marked surfaces, which display unconventional texture as well as irregularity in degree of finish’ (Schiff, 1991: 137). 5. My thanks to Alastair Rider for elucidating the significance of texture to discussions of its absence. 6. Lesley Millar draws attention to a project by Japanese designer Masayo Ave, ‘The Sound of Materials’, which explores the articulation of texture and seeks to create a haptic dictionary of newly created works to identify and describe texture. The project has its roots in the fact that Japanese has many instances of onomatopoeic description, while other languages do not (2013: 31). 7. Though this has not always been the case. Earlier modes of viewing art permitted this more intimate relationship between beholder and artwork, as touching was a part of the 18th century exhibition. See Classen (2005: 275–286). 8. Schiff is instructive for such a comparison between painting and photog- raphy: ‘one is coarse-grained and relatively discontinuous – bumpy to the imagined touch – whereas the other is sufficiently smooth-gradated so as to inhibit the viewer’s attending to tactile qualities’ (1991: 147). 9. ‘Painters regularly use their hands to wipe off excess paint; but in [Baptism of Christ, St. Jerome, Virgin of the Rocks, Adoration of the Magi and Ginevra de’Benci] Leonardo [da Vinci] used his fingers and the butt of his hand as if they Notes 171 were brushes, sometimes dragging them across the tacky surface of nearly dry paint and sometimes punctuating a stroke with a single fingerprint’ (2003: 233). 10. In 1921, his manifesto was read at the Theatre de L’Oeuvre in Paris and the Exposition of Modern Art in Geneva. Marinetti proposes a scale of tactile values with categories of different touches as characterised by different materials. 11. Although it may be a relatively new term, belonging principally to the modern age (Dunsby, 1989: 46). 12. Italian for texture. 13. ‘Lower notes seem to have more “mass” than higher ones and so create a much denser aural impression’ (Buhler et al., 2010: 47). 14. Writing on sound technology, particularly the emergence and development of Dolby Surround Sound, brings a focus on the spatiality of cinematic sound. See Chion ([2003] 2009: 117–146); Sergi (2004); Sobchack (2005). 15. For Barthes, the particular qualities of sound in the cinema throw the body of the actor into our ears, as it brings the audience into contact with a voice in ‘close up’, enabling us to hear in their materiality, ‘their sensual- ity, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips, a whole presence of the human muzzle’ ([1973] 1983: 413–414). 16. For a fuller discussion of these rhythmic qualities, see Elsaesser (1972: 11–12). 17. Thanks to the speakers at the Symposium ‘Texture in Film’ (University of St Andrews, 2013), and especially the contributors to the roundtable discussion for helping me get a clearer sense of these strands and their delineations, especially the ones further away from the specificities of my own concerns with texture. 18. As in the discovery in 1994 of over 800 negatives produced by Mitchell and Kenyon in the early 1900s. 19. A tactile process that is being transformed through the move to digital film, which consists of materials that can’t be physically marked, scratched or painted to transform the image. 20. Cinematographers interviewed in the documentary Side by Side (Christopher Kenneally, 2012) who discuss celluloid in these terms include Reed Morano, Bradford Young and David Tattersall. 21. Interviewed in The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (Wendy Apple, 2004). 22. See Barry Salt ([1983] 2009: 47–48; 69; 85; 167; 199; 221). 23. Salt discusses this practice as more of an aesthetic than budgetary choice in independent filmmaking of the 1980s ([1983] 2009: 323). 24. This is a significant aspect of the discussion of digital and film by filmmakers in Side by Side. 25. As revealed in interviews with production designers Richard Sylbert and Richard MacDonald. Sylbert notes the difficulty of black-and-white: ‘It’s very hard to do texture in black and white, because you’ve got to get separation and you can’t get it by changing colors’ (LoBrutto, 1992: 54–55). In contrast, McDonald observes the difficulty of colour: Color has taken away all that depth of focus, all that quality. In black and white, you could use two velvets and could see the way that the nap on 172 Notes one worked against the nap on the other. You could see the feel of it. You could see the density of the material. (LoBrutto, 1992: 66) 26. ‘Softness and hardness of lenses varies with different manufacturers, and many cinematographers have preferences depending on the type of effect required. Filtering is not just for colour and effects. In the old studio days up until the harder look of the ‘80s, a female star always had to have a softening filter, to ensure beauty in comparison to her male counterparts’ (Greenhalgh, 2003: 109). 27. As noted by Valerie Orpen (2003: 37). 28. As with other studio personnel, composers were contracted to studios and became known for their specialities (Flinn, 1992: 19). 29. Greenhalgh describes the codification of lighting: ‘Every genre was assigned a “key” and contrast range to fit its mode of expression: heavy melodrama – low key, high contrast; comedy – high key, low contrast’ (2003:122). As Helen Hanson recounts, in melodrama (especially crime and thrillers), low key sound interrupted by sudden high key bursts is used to match the rise and fall of the narrative and high contrast chiaroscuro of the visual style (2010: 94–97).

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