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CURRAN, TRISHA A NEW NOTE ON THE FILM: A THEORY OF FILM CRITICISM DERIVED FROM 5USAMNE K- LANGEA *5 PHILOSOPHY OF ART.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, PH.D*, 197U

Universit/ Mocxilnris International 3q o n . z e e b r o a d , a n n a r b o r , m m b i o c

© Copyright by

Trisha Curran

1978 A NEW NOTE ON THE FILM

A Theory of Film Criticism Derived from Susanne K. Langer's Philosophy of Art

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By Trisha Curran, B. A., M. A.

The Ohio State University 1978

Reading Committee: Approved By

Donald R. Bateman Ali Elgabri G. Robert Holsinger L. Jane Stewart Adviser: Department of Humanities Education To Joe

ii VITA

July 26, 1940...... Born--New York, New York

1962-1965...... Middle School Teacher, Notre Dame Academy, Water bury, Connecticut

1965-1966 ...... American History Teacher, Stamford Catholic High School, Stamford, Connecticut

1967 ...... New York University, New York, New York 1967-196 8 ...... Social Studies Teacher, Rye High School, Rye, New York

1968-196 9...... Social Studies Teacher, Weston Junior High School, Weston, M assachusetts

1975-197 6 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University

1976-197 8 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Photography and Cinema, The Ohio State University

FILMS

A Point of Contact, documentary film for the Labor Education and Research Service of The Ohio State University, 1977.

Columbus Arts Festival Public Service Announcement, Television Spot for the Columbus Arts Council, 1977.

Strength Through Struggle, documentary film funded by the Ohio Program for the Humanities, for the Labor Education and Research Seivice of The Ohio State University, 1975.

iii PAPERS

"Strength Through Struggle: The Making of a Compilation Film and The leaking of a Filmmaker," University Film Association, College Park, Maryland, 1977.

AWARDS

Chris Statuette, Columbus International Film Festival, 1977.

Certificate of Excellence, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Film Festival, 1976.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Studies in Cinema. Professors Robert W. Wagner and Ali Elgabri

Studies in Criticism. Professor G. Robert Holsinger

Studies in Aesthetics. Professor Donald R. Bateman and L. Jane Stewart TABLE OF CONTENTS

VITA......

INTRODUCTION......

Chapter

I THE MODE OF THE FILM ......

11 THE PRIMARY ILLUSION OF THE FILM

111 THE FORM OF THE FILM ......

IV THE CRITIQUE OF THE FORM ......

CONCLUSION......

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... INTRODUCTION

In her ’’Introduction” to Feeling and Form Susanne K. Langer writes that

nothing in this book is exhaustively treated. Every subject in it demands further analysis, research, invention. That is because it is chiefly an exploratory work, which—as Whitehead once said of William James’ pragmatism—chiefly starts a lot of hares for people to chase.... The main purpose of the book, therefore, may be described as the construction of an intellectual framework for philosophical studies, general or detailed, relating to art. *

Whereas Herbert Read calls the body of Feeling and Form ”an illuminating guide through the jungle of modern aesthetics," ^ Langer terms its appendix, ”A Note on the Film,” "only an impressionistic sketch, " stating that "the number of films I’ve seen in my life I could count on my fingers and toes. If I had seen more, I would have written an extra chapter like I did for the other arts.

Her philosophy of art deserves a less impressionistic application to film than she was capable of as a non-film viewer; and the art of the film demands as intensive an analysis as plastic art, music, dance and poesis received in Feeling and Form and Problems of Art. Langer has provided the foundation for such an analysis in

Philosophy in a New Key, the inspiration in Problems of Art, the model

Feeling and Form and many of the fertile concepts in Reflections of Art. Thus, with her best wishes, I have chased the "hares” of organic form, orders and modes of art, and primary and secondary illusions within the art of the film, and have used her intellectual framework to develop an exploratory work on film criticism, which I hope, will, in turn "start a lot of hares for people to chase."

My debt to Dr. Langer is obvious. One cannot chase non­ existent hares. Less obvious, but equally real, is my debt to the members of my committee who critiqued the chase. 3 NOTES

^Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), pp. viii-ix. 2 Herbert Read, "Describing the Indescribable," Saturday Re­ view, 15 July, 1967, p. 32. 3 Conversation with Susanne K. Langer, April 16, 1978. CHAPTER I

THE MODE OF THE FILM

According to Abraham Kaplan, the ultimate goal of theory is

"to establish a network of highways and superhighways so that any important point may be linked with any other."* Susanne Langer has succeeded in establishing such a network in her philosophy of art.

Her highways of principles of art (as opposed to principles of construction in art) and her superhighways of primary and secondary illusions of the individual arts, link the orders of art--plastic art, music, ballet and poesis, and the modes of art--painting, sculpture, architecture (of plastic art), and poetry, literature and drama (of poesis).

Langer’s principles of art--the creation of an apparition, the achievement of organic unity, and the articulation of feeling--are essential for a work to be art. Hence they are found in every work of art, for art, according to Langer, is the creation of forms expressive of human feeling. Principles of construction, on the other hand, vary from art to art, and even from art work to art work within the individual orders and modes of art. Thus Bell and Fry’s theory of painting as significant form, A. C. Barnes' of color and Berenson's of decoration are principles of construction in art. A painting can be art without significant for m/color /decoration (principles of construction in art), as long as it creates an apparition, achieves organic unity and articulates feeling (principles of art).

Like Bell, Fry, Barnes and Berenson, film theorists have based their theories on principles of constructian--disregard of reality

(Munsterberg), montage (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Kuleshov), camera angle and close-up (Balazs), motion (Lindsay), animation (Arnheim), deep focus (Bazin), recording and revealing of physical reality

(Kracauer), and semiotics (Metz). Hence their theories have been theories of construction, of filmmaking, rather than of film viewing or film criticism. They have been intent on telling the filmmaker what to do (as if art could be made from a recipe) rather than on explicating what he has done and how he has done it for the viewer. Limiting their discussions to particular types of fiction films they had seen and admired--early American silent films (Munsterberg, Lindsay,

Arnheim), Soviet montage (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Kuleshov, Balazs), neorealism and works of Renoir, Welles and Wyler (Bazin), and

Westerns and Astaire musicals (Kracauer), their theories lack a net­ work of highways and superhighways provided by Langer's principles of art and primary illusions. The primary illusion is the illusion or apparition that is always created within a particular order of art and which thus distinguishes the different orders of art. For example, all works of plastic art create the illusion of space in its various modes--all painting creates the illusion of scene, all sculpture, the illusion of volume, and all architecture, the illusion of ethnic domain. In like manner, all music creates the illusion of time, all dance, the illusion of power or gesture, and all poesis, the illusion of life, be it the vir­ tual experience of poetry, the virtual memory of literature or the virtual destiny of drama. Each order of art has one and only one primary illusion that is always created in every work of art of a particular order. There is no painting, statue or building that does not give the illusion of space, no song or symphony without virtual time, no dance inexpressive or virtual power or gesture, and no work of poesis that does not portray virtual life. Because they have different primary illusions, plastic art, music, dance and poesis are each separate orders of art. And because virtual scene, volume and domain are modalities of virtual space (the primary illusion of plastic art), painting, sculpture and architecture are modes of plastic art; and since virtual experience, memory and destiny are modalities of virtual life (the primary illusion of poesis), poetry, literature and drama are modes of poesis.

Thus the primary illusions distinguish the orders and modes of art. The secondary illusions connect them. A primary illusion of one art, may be and often is a secondary illusion in the other arts.

Virtual time, the primary illusion of music, is a secondary illusion in plastic art, dance and poesis. Indeed Souriau finds it more worthy of study in the plastic arts, than in the so-called temporal arts. "In painting, the time of the work may attain dimensions equal to and

9 at times greater in breadth than theatrical time itself." Although the order of successive presentation is not set in plastic art as it is in music, dance or poesis, the movement of the eye may certainly be directed by the artist. When the aesthetic effect is profound, Souriau finds "a more or less central moment of coincidence and of harmony between the time of contemplation and the time itself of the work."^

The time of the contemplation of sculpture presumes a moving spectator successively viewing the work from all angles. So too, according to Souriau, is a cathedral successive, "delivering itself little by little in different spectacles which are never simultaneous."4

The virtual power of balletic movement is also a secondary illusion in plastic art. As Parker Tyler noted, Degas painted his dancers in mid-gesture, horses half out of the frame, a woman rising from her chair; Van Gough broke up the sun’s rays to convey the passage of light through space, and painted pinwheel constellations in Starry Night to express the energy of celestial bodies in movement.

Pointillism portrayed molecular movement, Futurism, the blur of moving obj ects, and Action Painting, power itself. The virtual power of balletic gesture also enhances such works of sculpture as Bernini's

David (1623) preparing to hurl the stone from his sling, Brancusi's The Seal (1943) in the process of rising, Duchamp-Villon1 s The Athlete

(1910) running, and Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) striding; and such works of architecture as the pyramids, Rheims

Cathedral and the World Trade Center.

Although the individual arts are distinguished by their primary illusions, they are enhanced by their secondary illusions. Indeed, in the sculptural and architectural works cited above, the import is effected far more by the secondary illusion of power, or gesture, than by the primary illusions of volume (sculpture) or ethnic domain

(architecture), although these are both powerfully portrayed. Virtual volume is primary in sculpture and virtual domain in architecture, because sculpture would not be sculpture without the illusion of volume, nor architecture, architecture, without the illusion of ethnic domain.

Primary illusions are primary because they are always created in a given order of art.

Where then does film belong among the orders and modes of art linked by this network of highways and superhighways of principles of art and primary illusions? Is it animal, mineral or vegetable? Plastic, musical, balletic or poetic? What qualifications does it have in the way of illusions for belonging to one of the above orders?

The Reubens-like scene in Pretty Baby of Hattie and her all-night customer sleeping naked, but unexposed except for rounded, yet firm, hips and buttocks; and the Impressionist quality of the head-

on, center-screen view of the touring car full of whores in their

pastel dresses, holding parasols, driving down the tree-lined dirt

road after Violet and Papa's wedding would seem to be prime examples

of virtual scene. Other striking examples are the Impressionist-like

use of soft-focus in Julia for the flowers behind Lily and Mr. Johan as

they sit on a bench, center screen, during their early morning meeting

in the Tuilleries and the diagonal limbo shot in Black Orpheus of death

flanked by two huge red wheels in the trolley yard; and the Cubist

composition in Last Tango in Paris of triple images of parts of Jeanne

reflected in a broken mirror.

One could go on citing examples of virtual scene in film until

one had listed every scene from every film he/she had seen. For

every film scene is a virtual scene. In order for there to be a painting or a film, there must be an illusion of virtual scene, regardless of whether it is created from oils, acrylics, or silver nitrate. The materials are irrelevant. Virtual scene is virtual scene, and it is always created in painting and in film. Was Arnheim correct? Is film painting? Obviously, it is not, for although film creates an illusion of virtual scene, virtual scene does not sufficiently character­ ize the filmic illusion.

Does the virtual scene of painting plus the virtual volume of

sculpture add up to film? Even without special 3-D glasses and lenses, 10 film gives the illusion of depth. Indeed Andre Bazin wrote of deep focus:

At last the director writes in film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism—has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within. The film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, he is, at last, the equal of the novelist. °

As Berenson noted, volume suggests solidity, and the illusion of volume in film —of Luke wheeling himself down the aisle behind the fruits and vegetables in Coming Home; of Jenny’s hair reflected in the mirror behind her as she talks on the phone in Face to Face; of

Orpheus in Black Orpheus, walking in circles in the pawn shop holding his guitar and an old-fashioned phonograph, and later of him seen through the bamboo poles of his house playing his guitar while

Benedetto and Zecca sit listening in front of him, and neighbors talk outside the re a r window; of Violet and Papa standing on either side of the bar arguing, while Harry is behind the bar, center screen, fixing drinks in Pretty Baby; of Paul and Jeanne drunkedly dancing in front of the jury trying to judge the contestants doing the tango around them in The Last Tango in Paris--is an integral aspect of the filmic image, but not its primary illusion.

What then of the virtual ethnic domain created in film? Of the amber-lit whore house in Pretty Baby, the bare cubicle in In the

Realm of the Senses, the apricot apartment in Last Tango in Paris, that the viewer lived in for the duration of each of the above films? Of the high angle stationary view of the twelve story circular black marble staircase Orpheus and the janitor walk down in Black Orpheus, of the low angle view of the stained glass window and the highly polished, dark wood square staircase in Pretty Baby, of the geometrical network of fire escapes surrounding Abe and Molly as they say goodnight on her escape in F. I. S. T .; of the deep focus shot of Eurydice lying on

Orpheus' bed, through the bamboo poles of the foot of the bed and the open-air walls, to Orpheus lying in the hammock outside his "house;" of the graphically designed, color-coordinated Soho street scene in

An Unmarried Woman, as Saul’s bright canvas is lowered against a dark brick wall, over garbage cans, a fire hydrant and a sidewalk littered with rectangular white pieces of paper? Of Antonioni’s extensive use of architecture in his films as objective correlatives of his characters’ emotions? Of Pudovkin’s claim that "film is not shot but built, built up from separate strips of celluloid that are its raw materials?"^

Since film is obviously more than its settings, limbo may be substituted for virtual ethnic domain; the primary illusion of architecture is but a secondary illusion of film. Both Antonioni’s use of architecture as an objective correlative, and Pudovkin’s claim that films are not shot, but built, are principles of construction that characterize their films, not principles of art. As such, they have 12 nothing to do with the primary illusion of architecture, virtual ethnic domain.

Thus we have traveled through the modalities of virtual space along the superhighways of virtual scene, volume and domain in our search for a home for film among the orders and modes of art. Let us now turn to music and virtual time. As Barry notes,

Music is truly an image of time unfolding in space, but, freed from the literal connotations, music has primarily developed our experiences of repetition and variation, where drama has developed the Heracleitan image of man in an ever changing time. ®

The repetition of color is an effective filmic spacio-temporal transition, which creates the illusion of virtual time in virtual space.

In The Greek Tycoon Thompson cuts from Lizzy’s white collar as she prepares to leave Greece, to the white house at Hyannisport, and from the blue water and white flowers at Hyannisport to the blue water and white yacht off Greece. Zimmerman uses the same repetition of color in Julia as he cuts from the white spray of the ocean on Long Island to the white spray of a Paris fountain, and from the warm tones of

Julia j reddish hair and Lily's auburn hair on New Year’s Eve as pre­ adolescents, to the same warm tones of hair, fire and brandy on New

Year's Eve as young adults. Repetition of action also creates virtual time in virtual space. In An Unmarried Woman, crying links Elaine

(in Erica’s bedroom), and Erica (at her psychiatrist's office); as dancing links Serafina and Eurydice with Benedetto and Zecca in 13 Black Orpheus, and the turning wheels of Luke’s wheelchair, as he wheels himself up the ramp in Coming Home to the turning wheels of the other paraplegics’ chairs in the Fourth of July hospital football game. Repetition of part of an action--the various aspects of diving in Olympiad 1936, the raising of blinds in Berlin, Symphony of a City, the closing of garage doors in F.I. S.T ., and the montage of Martin’s medicine chest belongings as they land in the wastebasket in An

Unmarried Woman--further compresses time and space.

Variation is equally effective in compressing filmic time by changes in filmic space. In the opening sequence of Coming Home

Hal Ashby cuts between shots of Bob’s feet and legs as he jogs around the Marine base in preparation for going to Viet Nam and shots of paraplegic Veterans on stretchers and in wheelchairs, at the Veterans’

Hospital on the same base; from a center screen close up of Bob’s face as he runs toward the camera to a center screen close up of the round, open barrel of his gun; from Luke in bed watching the Smothers'

Brothers on television to Sally getting ready for bed watching the

Eleven O’Clock News; and later from a right screen close up of

Sally on the boat off Hong Kong to a right screen close up of a Chinese singer entertaining in the night club. In The Last Tango in Paris,

Bertolucci uses variations of an action in cuts from Paul’s slamming the door of an onlooker in his flophouse to Jeanne opening the apart­ ment door the next day, and again from Paul’s leaving Rosa’s lover's 14 door open still another day. Zimmerman cuts from the close up of a

German official throwing a travel visa (center screen) at Lily, to a close up of Lily exchanging her tickets (center screen) at the hotel desk in Julia; Mazurski, from Saul’s left-right motion throwing paint on a canvas, to Patti’s left-right motion rushing into the dining room with the salad the next evening in An Unmarried Woman ; and Ashby, from Sally walking out of the newspaper meeting from right screen to center screen, to a paraplegic wheeling himself from center screen to left screen in Coming Home.

In addition to using variations of an action for temporal transitions, Ashby varies screen direction to convey concurrent events. From a long shot of Bob, Dink and Sally walking screen right to screen left along the water in Hong Kong, he cuts to a long shot of

Luke wheeling himself from screen left to screen right behind the fruits and vegetables in the supermarket; and from Luke’s left-back­ ground to right-background movement leaving the supermarket, to

Bob’s right-background to left-foreground movement pacing around the bed in the hotel room.

Space also becomes time in film by variations of action in the same screen position. Malle cuts from Violet behind Nell, massaging her back, to Violet hanging on to her friend from behind as they ride a pony in Pretty Baby. In North by Northwest, Hitchcock pulls out from a close up of Thorndike's hand pulling the female CIA 15 agent’s hand up the ledge of Mount Rushmore to a medium shot of him helping her up to the top train bunk as Mrs. Thorndike. Minelli uses a series of such transitions in An American in Paris for the fantasy dance sequence in which Jerry’s and Lisa's clothes and backgrounds change as they dance, much as Keaton's had done years earlier as

Sherlock Junior, the projectionist who dreamed himself into the movies.

Virtual time in film is more than repetition and variations of successive visual space. There are also Heracleitan sequences of an everchanging time, which in film is portrayed by ever changing space. "In cinema as in life, time is never perceived; space is perceived, and time is perceived as spatial change."^ Thus, in Face to Face Bergman shows Jenny and Tomas getting out of the car at

Tomas's house, having a drink inside, Jenny leaving in a taxi, Tomas walking upstairs, Jenny opening the doory to Grandma's apartment.

An evening is compressed into five short sequences, five different spaces. In Providence, Resnais compresses the time of a formal dinner in the space of a 360° pan of the estate. As the camera returns to the table (on the lawn) the meal is over and the guests gone. In

Black Orpheus Camus uses the continuity of space to express the con­ tinuity of time, and the repetition of color for the repetition of life.

From a long shot of Orpheus and Eurydice lying dead in a giant cactus at the foot of the precipice, he pans diagonally up the precipice to Zecca in a white shirt, playing the guitar to make the sun 16 rise, and a little girl in a white dress, dancing to the music (Orpheus had worn a white shirt and Eurydice a white dress at the beginning of

the film, when she danced to his music). By dissolving to a classical

sculptural bas relief of Orpheus and Eurydice, Camus emphasizes

the virtual time of the film and the timelessness of the myth. In

Coming Home Ashby uses discontinuous space for continuous

Heracleitan time. Cross-cutting from Bob committing suicide, to

Luke telling the High School students what he had learned from Viet

Nam, to Sally and Vi going to buy steaks, he also portrays the con­ tinuity of time, and by ending on Sally and Vi, rather than on Bob, he too reaffirms life.

From these rich examples one might be tempted to classify film as an art of time, a musical mode. Reinold has defined music as "sounding motion in temporal space.Can we not then define film as a spatial art that unfolds in time? If we do, and such a definition seems reasonable following film's plastic attributes, we eliminate virtual time as a possible primary illusion of film, and film as a possible musical mode. Instead we are aware of the rich­ ness of virtual time as a secondary filmic illusion, and of the possibilities of film as a balletic mode, for the above definition of film as "plastic motion in temporal space, " is equally descriptive of dance, truly a spatial art that unfolds in time. In discussing film and ballet, Borodin notes that both are arts of movement, pre- 17 sentations of a picture in motion, of patterns in movement, sequences of constantly changing pictures presented in an artistic plan. He compares them to Italian and Spanish, as "languages of a common origin and similar foundations which developed along different lines.

Indeed film is an art of movement--of camera movement, character movement, edited movement and projected movement. As such it is uniquely able to enhance the fluidity of movement of the dance.

In Turning Point Ross achieved the illusion of virtual power by moving the camera with the dancers, dollying in for close ups and tilting up and down for a variety of angles. Bertolucci combined moving low-angle medium close ups of constantly moving dancers shot against illusorily moving white globe chandeliers, with long shots and close ups of the dancers’ feet and legs in The Last Tango in Paris. Camus was particularly successful in capturing the power of movement in Black

Orpheus. From a high angle shot of Eurydice dancing, he tilted down so that she appeared to grow in stature while she danced. As the dancers moved left, he panned right, and as Eurydice danced back and forth across the screen, he had the crowd behind her move up and down to effect a riot of movement. In another scene, the camera was stationary as the dancers formed two concentric circles that moved in separate directions. To capture the frenzy of the woman who received the spirit, he had the camera track around her in a circle as she danced and stamped; and to signify the virtual power of the police, 18 Camus filmed the police motorcycle driving among the throngs of dancers.

Bergman accentuated character movement in Face to Face by moving back and forth with Jenny as she struggles in Tomas' arms during her hallucinations. In like manner, Mazur ski moved the camera with Erica and Charlie during their lovemaking scene in

An Unmarried Woman. By dollying in for a close up of Saul twirling

Erica he accentuated the illusion of power and filled the screen with movement. Bertolucci fills the screen with frantic movement in The

Last Tango in Paris as he intercuts low angle and high angle shots of

Paul running up the circular staircase with subjective shots of Jeanne in the elevator, afraid of his power. Zimmerman also alternates between a subjective and objective constantly moving camera in Julia for horrifying scenes of violent power.

Although film and ballet both may be described as plastic motion in temporal space, they are not in the same order of art.

Virtual power or gesture is much too transient in film to begin to qualify as a primary filmic illustion. Let us continue along the super­ highway of primary illusions to poesis and virtual life--to poetry, literature and drama, and the illusions of experience, memory and destiny.

There are some wonderful examples of poetry in film--the sound of the narration in Jules et Jim, Last Year at Marienbad, and 19 Night and Fog; the rhythm of Rain, The Bridge, and Berlin, Symphony of

a City; the images of Claudia’s white hand on Sandro’s black hair in

L’Avventura, of the dance of death in The Seventh Seal, of the ending

pan of Black Orpheus and the opening pan of Equus; of the colors in the opening sequence of The Passenger and the lights in the opening

sequence of Taxi Driver; of Rick and Louis walking into the night in

Casablanca; of the sled in the incinerator at the end of Citizen Kane, and of Mrs. Florence Reese singing ”Which Side Are You On?" in Harlan

County. The illusion of virtually experienced life is vibrant in the lovemaking scene in Coming Home and the eating scene in Tom Jones; in the image of Erica vomiting in An Unmarried Woman, and of Violet watching her brother being born in Pretty Baby, of Alvie telling Annie not to "take any course where they make you study Beowulf' in Annie

Hall; and of every scene in Harry and Tonto, Harold and Maude,

Modern Times, La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, The Kid and Outrageous.

The illusion of virtually experienced life is a powerful one in film.

But it is not primary. Film can be film as are art films, educational films, animated films, and experimental films, without the illusion of virtual experience. Where it is created, it is powerful, but it is not always created--hence virtual experience is a secondary filmic

/ illusion. Is virtual memory then the primary filmic illusion?

In commenting on filmed novels Blue stone stated that "the end products of novel and film represent different aesthetic genera, 20

as different from each other as ballet is from architecture.”^ Although

he regarded both novel and film as temporal arts, he held that the

formative principle of the film was space. However, Frank has noted

that modern literature exemplified by such writers as T. S. Eliot,

Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust and James Joyce is moving "in the direction

of the spatial form. The reader is intended to apprehend their work

spatially, in a moment of time, rather than as a sequence."^

Does the spatialization of the modern novel bring it closer to film? I believe that it does. Much of what Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote in For a New Novel is equally applicable to film. For the new film, like the new novel, is exploratory, evolutionary, and subjective.^

But it is still in the mnemonic mode and as we stated above, film is in the present tense, and the mnemonic mode presupposes the past.

Is film then entirely separate from literature as Bergman has claimed?^ Is there no illusion of memory in film? Are flashbacks not in the past?

As filmic elements they are always in the present. How­ ever the filmmaker creates the illusion of memory so that the viewer perceives the flashback as being just that--a flash back­ wards in memory that he understands happened at an earlier date, but experiences in the present. In Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy the scenes of the little boy intercut with shots of Joe Buck looking out the window are obviously scenes of him as a child. No longer 21 does the viewer need (if he ever really needed) out of focus transitions from now to then, as Curtiz provides in Casablanca when Rick, sitting drinking at a table in his saloon, slowly goes out of focus and the

Arc de Triomphe appears, followed by shots of a younger Richard and Ilsa driving in Paris.

Entire films may create the illusion of memory as do Julia,

Jules et Jim, and Citizen Kane, but the illusion is a secondary one that adds import, not essence. In Citizen Kane, Welles uses a news­ reel and interview format to create the illusion of virtual memory:

"Then last week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles

Foster Kane." (Narrator); "In the winter of 1870..." (Thatcher's memoirs); "He was with Mr. Kane and me the first day Mr. Kane took over the Inquirer." (Bernstein); "I can remember everything..." (Leland); "It was his idea, everything was his idea, except my leav­ ing him ..." (Susan Alexander); " Yes, Sir, the old man was kind of queer, but I knew how to handle him..." (Raymond). Truffaut begins Jules et Jim with off-screen narration: "It was about 1912.

Jules, a stranger to Paris..." over a close up of Jules playing dominoes. And Zimmerman begins Julia with Heilman’s voice: "I am old now..." over the opening image of Heilman fishing.

In each of the above films the dialogue and visuals are in the present tense. Without the narration, there would be no illusion of virtual memory. Thus it is the narration, the presence of a story- 22 teller, that creates the mnemonic illusion in film, that makes film a narrative according to Scholes and Kellogg’s definition of narrative as a "story told by a storyteller."^ Since the narrative aspect is only a secondary illusion in film, is it not possible that the dramatic illusion of virtual destiny is the primary illusion of film, and that film is in fact drama?

Scholes and Kellogg define drama as "a story without a story­ teller, a definition that would seem to apply to the vast majority of fiction films that do not use narrators, for without a narrator, the viewer is largely unaware that he/she is viewing a camera-controlled point-of-view as pervasive as that provided by an official storyteller.

Nanook of the North and Man of Aran are Flaherty's views of man’s struggle against nature. And Looking for Mr. Goodbar is Brooks’ view of the swinging single.

In its strictest sense drama is action. Thus Gessner defines the play as "fundamentally a series of actions"and Mitry describes film as "an action before it is a narrative--the fiction is presented in arts mimed by the participants themselves, and not related by a narrative external to the action."19 Action does seem more universal in film than does narrative. We are all familiar with the action-packed

Westerns ("people never get tired of seeing a horse gallop across the plains"), gangster films, musicals, war pictures, James Bond movies, disaster films, and cartoons. Kuleshov was certainly describing 23 these when he wrote: "pure action constitutes the basis of the film

scenario. Movement, dynamics--these are the material of the film

spectacle."2** Rare is the freeze frame, the scene without movement.

Interestingly, when it does occur, it is usually the last scene in the film. (A point we will discuss at length in Chapter II, The Illusion of the F ilm .)

Without a doubt film and theater both are arts of action, of movement, that unfold in time. When Hamilton describes the appeal of the play as "primarily visual rather than auditory," and the problem of the dramatist as "less a task of writing, than a task of constructing

... a story that will tell itself to the eye of the audience in a series of shifting pictures, "2* he is also describing the task of the film director.

For, as we shall see in Chapter III, the Form of the Film, the visual compositions of the film do indeed tell the story. Film still has a universal language in its visuals, but to study it as language is to study semiotics rather than film; it is to miss the forest for the trees, and the trees for their molecular structure.

A glimpse of the forest: In F.I. S.T. Jewison conveys Anna's experience dancing the polka at her wedding with a circular swish pan of the other dancers. Bertolucci, in Last Tango in Paris, shoots

Jeanne as her fiance pretends to be seeing her through his imaginary camera. The viewer sees Tom framing Jeanne with his fingers, and

Jeanne begins to go out of focus as Tom approaches her. In Pretty 24

Baby, during the scene in which Hattie, now Mrs. Fuller, and her husband come to Papa's to claim Violet, Malle moves the camera in and out of focus as Violet fluctuates between whom she wants to live with. While Violet stands talking to Papa, the Fullers go out of focus.

They slowly come into focus, and Papa goes out of focus, as Violet walks toward her mother, and the train signal is heard in the distance.

Are the above scenes theater? They are actions, they unfold in time, they are visual rather than auditory. They are also "the work of many collaborators, ... addressed to a group-mind... a world of pretense, ... in a perpetual present time, " thus fulfilling Thornton on Wilder’s four conditions for theater. *

How then does film differ from theater? According to

Thompson "the main difference is simply that the stage presents people; the screen, pictures." 23 Sontag distinguishes between the continuous use of space in theater and the discontinuous use of space in film. ^ (However the use of the set in the current Broadway production of On the Twentieth Century would seem to contradict her view of continuous space in the theater. Indeed the play sounds more "cinematic, " in Kracauer’s sense of the term, than was the 1934 film, Twentieth Century. ) Simon finds that in cinema "plot has a tendency to preponderate at the expense of character," whereas theater "has a way of riveting us to the naked essence of its creatures. And Stephenson and Debrix note that theater "makes 25 Of\ space work harder," and film "makes time work harder."

We could go on and on listing the differences between film

and theater, but to do so would not be relevant to our purpose, nor

answer our introductory question, for all the differences the

theorists of film and theater posit are differences of construction.

And, as we noted above, principles of construction are irrelevant in

distinguishing the orders of art. Let us then turn our attention to the primary illusion of drama, and discuss film in terms of virtual

destiny, future coming.

The future is indeed embryonic in Looking for Mr. Goodbar

and All the President’s Men, films made from popular novels, that in turn were written from current events. The viewer knew Theresa would be murdered and Watergate would be uncovered, before he/she ever entered the theater. Hence, he/she was aware of clues, of nuances, of history coming, of virtual destiny throughout the films.

In Looking for Mr. Goodbar each encounter with a man was a fore­

shadowing of Teresa's impending murder, as was each trip to a

singles' bar and every knock on her door. We knew what would happen, but we didn’t know when; the future was coming, but when would it arrive? So too was the future coming in Black Orpheus. Love and death become impending forces as soon as the characters were identified as Orpheus and Eurydice. Suicide and life were aspects of destiny in Face to Face. Jenny's nervousness, illness and alone- 26 ness in her grandparents' apartment, and the letter to her husband in

America, simply marked "Eric” forebode suicide; and her movie date with Tomas on the phone before she abruptly hangs up, forecast ultimate rescue. We know he will save her. Constant warnings to

Liza to take her birth control pills, and her fear "of the bonecrusher" are fore shadowings of her pregnancy and still-born delivery in

Outrageous. Alvie Singer's introductory monologue "It's been a year now since Annie and I broke up..." creates the illusion of history coming throughout Annie Hall. When and how will the final break-up occur? Rick's "I don't make plans that far in advance, " and the repeated allusions to his running guns to Ethiopia and fighting with the

Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War are indications that his destiny will be to help Ilsa and Lazio out of Casablanca.

Destiny is definitely a filmic illusion. A dramatic illusion, it is strongest in those films whose endings are already known.

Freed from wondering what will happen, we are able to watch how it happens. Everything is significant when we know what it is leading to. And we know what it is leading to when we know the ending.

Thus, in a way, every fiction film creates the illusion of destiny when viewed the second time. Hardly sufficient support for destiny as the primary filmic illusion!

As a secondary filmic illusion, history coming is compatible in film with virtual memory. For the virtual present, the non- 27 flashback part of the film is virtual history in relation to the flash­ back, (which is virtual past in relation to the virtual present of the non-flashback). Thus virtual destiny, as well as virtual memory are created in flashbacks.

Narrated fiction films with illusions of virtual memory create the illusion of virtual destiny to the extent that the narrator discloses the future of the diegesis and the present of the film. For example, Annie’s leaving Alvie in Annie Hall is in the future of the diegesis and the present of the film. Alvie Singer's statement, "It's been a year now since Annie and I broke up" establishes the break up as the virtual future of all the flashbacks that compose Annie Hall, as well as the virtual present of the film, from which all the flashbacks will be illusions of virtual memory. The poetic modes of virtual memory and destiny as well as of experience (for all the examples of virtual memory and destiny have also been examples of virtual experience--the narrator is speaking in the present, and the images are in the present) are interconnected in cinema as secondary filmic illusions.

Having analyzed film in the illusive light of virtual experience, memory and destiny, let us now turn to virtual dream, the poetic mode Forsdale, Patti son, Hoth and Allen turned to in "The

Primary Illusion of Film: A Beginning Investigation"27 and which

Langer adopted in "A Note on the Film ," her appendix to Feeling and 28 Form .

Indeed the only one who had seen many films was Forsdale, having started as a child with three or four a week. Allen was a linguistics student, and Hoth and Pattison general communications students. All were in the Department of Languages and Literature.

Having previously collaborated on "The Concept of Illusion: A

Problem in Education Methodology" 28 for the first semester of

Langer’s two semester seminar in Communication and Communication

Arts at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, they again collaborated in the second semester, excitedly working within

Langer's system in response to a question raised during the seminar that Langer had been unable to answer: "What is the primary illusion 2 9 of film?"

They based their answer on the "assumption that the film viewer identifies with the camera, that "film, like dream, is often com­ posed of j uxtaposed elements seemingly unrelated except as that re­ lationship is made clear through their close temporal proximity to 31 one another," and on the obvious importance of pictures to film and the congeniality of pictures to dreams." 32

Their primary assumption, that the viewer identifies with the camera, completely ignores the function of editing. The viewer sees images photographed with a camera, but structured on an editing bench. Which leads us to the "juxtaposed elements seemingly 29 unrelated except... through their close temporal proximity to one another" of their second assumption. Their close temporal proximity is due to their relatedness--be it relatedness of shape, color, form, movement, diegesis. There is as much reason for the order of filmic elements as there is for the order of literary elements--the words of a sentence, the lines of a poem, the chapters of a novel.

Let us briefly analyze the opening sequence of Psycho for the justification behind the juxtaposition.

The first four aerial shots of Phoenix, each from a seemingly lower altitude, effect a break with the non-film world, establish the city, date and time of the diegesis, and isolate a single section of the downtown area. In the next sequence the camera moves in from a shot of six windows of a building to one window, to the opening of the windows, inside, to a hotel room, to a two shot of Marion, lying on the bed, and Sam standing next to her. These twelve shots comprise a spatial progression from extreme long aerial shot to long shot.

They are followed by a series of post-lovemaking medium two shots, and then a series of alternate shots as Sam and Marion voice their opposing attitudes toward marriage, a two shot as Marion prepares to go back to work, a medium long shot of Sam, right foreground, a dissolve to Marion's office, and a medium long shot of Marion entering the office, left foreground. Again the shots are related spatially— two shots for romance, alternate one shots for opposition, and 30 contrasting long shots for absence.

From a center screen long shot of Marion in a white dress leaving the office, Hitchcock cuts to a center screen long shot of

Marion, in black underwear, standing in front of her closet. From center screen long shot to center screen long shot, from office door to closet door, from Marion in white to Marion in black (she had previously worn white underwear). The spatial change of locale presumes a passage of time, and the change in color symbolizes a progression from grace to sin. The latter becomes apparent with the following sequence--a close up of the $40,000 on her bed, a close up of her suitcase (packed), a medium close up of her getting dressed, a medium close up of her further packing her suitcase, (all center screen), to right and left screen images of her in the mirror looking around, to a medium shot of the money on her bed, a medium rear shot of her, center screen, at her closet, dissolved to a center screen medium close up of her driving her car. Space becomes time and spatial relatedness precedes temporal proximity.

The "obvious importance of pictures to film and the con­ geniality of pictures to dream" is not as obvious a comparison as it at first seems. The nature of the pictures are very different.

There is no peripheral vision in film, and no isolating close up in dream. Filmic images bear as little relation to dream images as stream of consciousness writing bears to stream of consciousness 31 mental activity. Our dreams are no more Citizen Kane than our idle thought processes are Mrs. Dalloway. But our dreams are ours.

We possess them, and we analyze them. The films we view are separate from us. We go to_ a film. Our subconscious is not in control, thus we view things we would never dream; our inner censor is free to concede to the Motion Picture Association.

Twenty-eight years and millions of dreams after the seminar paper, Forsdale is uncertain about film as a dream mode, and thinks that the argument for film as virtual dream "relies too heavily on the dislocation of the viewer." Dream is more "leisurely" than film; the

50 spatial dislocation not as "extreme." But the "spatial dislocation" is not dislocating when one can appreciate it as the unfolding of a form

(the topic of Chapter III).

Langer could not. She had seen far too few films. "The number of films I‘ve seen in my life I could count on my fingers and toes. If I had seen more, I would have written an extra chapter instead of an impressionistic note. Thus her observation that "the oc immediacy of everything in a dream is the same for film. Every­ thing is immediate in film, but like equality in 1984, some things are more immediate than other things—those more immediate things are shown as close ups. Nor did she comprehend the nature of filmic space:

One of the aesthetic peculiarities of dream, which the motion picture takes over, is the nature of its space. Dream 32

events are spatial--often intensely concerned with space-- intervals, endless roads, bottomless canyons, things too high, too near, too far--but they are not oriented in any total space. The same is true of the motion picture and distinguishes it—despite its visual character--from plastic art: its space comes and goes. It is always a secondary illusion. ^

The space of a motion picture cannot come and go and still be a motion picture, for a picture is virtual space. A motion picture is virtual space in virtual motion. It is not necessarily virtual life. Although virtual life, like virtual experience, is a powerful illusion of the fiction film, and of the documentary, it is often completely lacking in the educational, instructional, experimental and art film.

Poesis is fiction; film is fiction and non-fiction. It transcends the orders of plastic art, music, dance and poesis. Incorporating their illusion of space, time, power and life, it constitutes its own order of art, cinema, with its own primary illusion (the topic of Chapter II).

Film is not plastic, musical, balletic or poetic. It is cinematic--of or pertaining to motion pictures. 33 NOTES

^Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry as quoted in Robert Lewis Shayon, Open to Criticism (Boston; Beacon Press, 1971), p. 41, o Etienne Souriau, "Time in the Plastic Arts," ed. Susanne Langer, Reflections on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 130.

^Ibid., p. 132.

4Ibid., p. 125.

^Parker Tyler, Sex, Psyche, Etcetera in the Film, (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), pp. 186

^Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? Volume!, trans. and ed. Hugh Gray, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 39-40. 7 V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. and ed. Ivor Montagu, memorial edition, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1976), p. 24. Q Jackson G. Barry, Dramatic Structure, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 206. 9 "Christian Metz on Jean Me try's L’Esthetique et Psycho- logie du Cinema, Volume II," Screen, vol. 14, nos. 1-2, p. 67.

^Helmut Reinold, "On the Problem of Musical Hearing," ed. Susanne Langer, Reflections on Art, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 271.

^George Borodin, This Thing Called Ballet, (London: MacDonald and Co., 1945), p. 56. 12 George Bluestone, Novels Into Film, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), p. 5. 13 Joseph Frank, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," ed. Mark Schorer, Josephine Miles, Gordon McKenzie, Criticism, The Foundation of Modern Literary Judgment, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), p. 381. 34 14 Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel, trans. Richard Howard, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965).

^Ingmar Bergman, "Film Has Nothing to Do With Litera­ ture, " ed. Gerald Mast, Film: A Montage of Theories, (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1966), p. 144.

1 f \ Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 4. 17 Ibid.

18John Gessner, Producing the Play, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Rinehardt, 1941), p. 285. 19 Metz on Mitry, p. 62.

20 Lev Kuleshov, Kuleshov on Film, trans. Ronald Levaco, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 90. 21 Clayton Hamilton, The Theory of Theatre, (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1939), p. 3.

22Thornton Wilder, "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting," ed. Augusto Centeno, The Intent of the Artist, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), pp. 83-98. 23 Alan Reynolds Thompson, The Anatomy of Drama, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946), p. 16. 24 Susan Sontag, "Theater and Film," ed. John Harrington, Film And/As Literature, (Englewood Cliffs: Printice Hall, Inc., 1977), p. 82. 25 John Simon, "Stating the Case, Casing the State," New York Magazine, February 20, 1978. 26 Ralph Stephenson and J. R. Debrix, The Cinema as Art, 2nded., (London: Cox and Wyman, Ltd., Penguin Books, 1976), p. 70. 27 presented May 2, 1950. 28 presented January 22, 1950.

^Interview with Louis Forsdale, May 2, 1978. 35 30 Louis Forsdale et al., MThe Primary Illusion of Film: A Beginning Investigation, " Seminar on Communication and Com­ munication Arts, Teachers College, Columbia University, presented May 2, 1950, p. 17.

^Ibid., p. 22.

32Ibid., p. 23. 33 Interview with Louis Forsdale, May 2, 1978.

^Conversation with Susanne K. Langer, April 16, 1978. 35 Susanne K. Langer, "A Note on the Film, " Feeling and Form, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), p. 413.

36Ibid., p. 415. CHAPTER 11

THE PRIMARY ILLUSION OF THE FILM

Cinema is the art of motion pictures. Indeed, "cinema” is

derived from the Greek kinein, to move, and kinemat, kinema, move­

ment. For cinema to exist, there must be both motion and pictures,

movement and images. If one is lacking, there is no film and no cinema, for movement and images are the bare essentials, the fundamental elements, the basic abstractions of each and every film,

be it fiction, documentary, educational, animated or experimental. It

matters little if the filmic elements were created by actors or non­

actors, on studio sets or actual locations, with cell drawings or compu­

ter printouts, single frames or uninterrupted runs of the camera.

All are composed of movement and images, and all create the same

primary illusion, just as all plastic art, ancient, classical, Pop and Op, creates virtual space; all music, tonal and atonal, virtual time;

all dance, narrative and non-narrative, virtual power; and all poesis, lyric, epic and dramatic, virtual life.

That "same, primary illusion" created in all film is the illusion of presence. Virtual presence is the essence of the filmic

mode, the primary apparition that is always created in film and with­

in which all filmic elements exist. As music is the "creation of 36 37 virtual time, and its complete determination by the movement of audible forms, "* so film is the creation of virtual presence, and its complete determination by the movement of visual forms. In both arts, the movement is illusory. The listener hears flowing musical forms, not minute instrumental vibrations, and the viewer sees flowing visual forms, not the intermittent movement of celluloid through a projec­ tor. Virtual presence implies plastic space, musical time, balletic gesture, and poetic life. More than space, time, gesture and life, the film viewer is aware of the virtual presence of characters, objects and settings portrayed on the screen in the present, regardless of the time of the diegesis. Thus virtual presence is both spatial and temporal. It is "rich in proportion to the parts that it holds in unity."

These "parts" are virtual scene, volume, domain, time, power, experience, memory and destiny, the primary illusions of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, ballet, poetry, literature and drama, present (in every sense of the word), in film, as secondary illusions, through the basic filmic abstractions of movement and images.

In Equus, the slow dolly in and equally slow dolly out, the slight tilt up and down on M artin's face, and the movement of his mouth and cheeks as he talks to us from behind his desk create, the primary illusion of his virtual presence, and enhance the secondary illusions of virtual scene and virtual experience, as character and edited movement in shots of Martin at home, in his office, at Hesther’s, 38 and at the Strangs', create the primary illusion of virtual presence and the secondary illusion of virtual domain. Virtual presence and virtual volume are achieved in juxtaposed left and right profiles of

Alan in half screen close ups; in shots through a mirror of Alan looking at himself, and of Martin shaving; and in crosscutting between track­ ing shots of Jill riding around the inside perimeter of the stable, and of Alan, in the center, turning to face her. Alan's ritual gallops on his bed, his sexual gallops on Equus, and his blinding of Equus in six horses create virtual presence and virtual power; Martin's talking to us of his sessions with Alan, and Alan's recollections of his experiences with Equus create virtual presence, virtual memory, and virtual time, remembered and presented in the present; Alan's treatment, Martin's "sacrifice to the god of the normal," create the virtual presence of Alan hysterical and sedatized, and his virtual destiny "to become a ghost." Martin and Alan, Equus, Mr. and Mrs.

Strang, Jill and the stable owner, are all present to us in the present, as are the settings--Martin's office and home, the stable and the field of Ha Ha, the movie theater, street, and bus stop. Martin recalls incidents as he speaks to us in the present; each incident unfolds in the present--"How old are you?" "Where are you now,

Alan?" We see the visual unfolding of the diegesis in the present before we hear the audio. Thus we see a long shot of Mr. Strang,

Alan and Jill standing at the bus stop, before we hear Alan's voice: 39 "We stood at the bus stop as if we were three pigs in a poke." As we watch Alan's hand caress Equus, we hear Martin ask "and now, what do you do?" and Alan answer "touch him all over." In like manner we see Alan and Equus facing each other, necks touching, Alan's arms around Equus, as we hear Martin's voice "Afterwards, he says, they always embrace."

In the theater the horses were represented, in the film they are presented, as Alan is presented in his sand castle on the beach, with

Equus in the field of Ha Ha, on his bed worshiping Equus, in the stable grooming him, in the hayloft with Jill "denying" him, and finally alone in the stable blinding him; as Martin is presented at home with his wife and his books, at Hesther's raking leaves and preparing dinner; and as the Strangs are presented, evasive and defensive, in their home, and Mr. Strang, at his print shop. Richard Burton and Peter

Firth are not present; nor are the supporting actors and actresses.

Martin Dysert and Alan Strang are; as are Mr. and Mrs. Strang,

Hesther, Jill, and the stable owner. The proscenium arch of the theater is replaced by presence in the film. Actors and spectators are not separated by the footlights; rather the spectator is carried behind the footlights, up-stage and down-stage, left-stage and right - stage, from ceiling and pit, to the presence of the characters, not the presence of the actors and actresses. During the film, the spectator is concerned with the characters in the diegesis, not with the actors/actresses as is the theater spectator, for there is no danger of a film character forgetting his lines, as there is a theater actor/ actress, nor much basis of comparison between different actors/ actresses in the same role as there is in the theater. "Whereas theater is an art of representation, the cinema is an art of presentation."^

And whereas theater is an art of distance, cinema is an art of presence. As Morgan notes, the dramatic illusion consists in the

”suspense of dramatic form” rather than the "suspense of plot." "The desire to know what will happen... is a quality of the audience’s delusion it springs from their temporary belief that they are witnessing not art,

O but life."0 Film, on the contrary, is virtual presence and virtual life.

We want to know what happens. We are involved with the characters, and we care about their destinies. Although, what Bullough describes as "the exceptional which produces the Distance of tragedy: exceptional situation, exceptional characters, exceptional destinies and conduct"^ are as possible in film as they are in theater, there has been no film tragedy. According to Kracauer, tragedy is uncinematic because it is internal, and film is external. ^ (But the stage is even more external since it lacks the close up.) Krutch delves deeper:

"We can no longer tell the tales of the fall of noble men because we do not believe that noble men exist. Krutch’s argument may be viable for the theater, but there is a more specific reason for the lack of 41

tragedy in film, that stems from the very nature of film, from its

primary illusion, its virtual presence. It is its presence. As

Bullough has noted, "the tragic is just so far different from the merely 7 sad as it is distanced." And film is presence.

With the opening shot the film creates virtual presence. In

Equus the camera pans right from camera movement on a stylized

dagger handle of a horse* s skull, through fields at night, to a close up

of Martin's face, (only the right side is lit), before pulling out to a

medium shot of Martin behind his desk. In Citizen Kane Welles zooms through the fence at Xanadu, across the golf course, zoo, monkey

terrace and drawbridge, in the window of the dying Kane's bedroom, to an idyllic snow scene in a glass ball Kane is holding as he gasps the word, "Rosebud;" and in Psycho Hitchcock cuts from progressively lower aerial views of Phoenix and progressively tighter shots of a downtown building, inside the window to a hotel room where Sam and

Marion are preparing to get dressed. In Turning Point, Ross cuts from a pan of photographs of ballet dancers, to Deedee, chunky and forty, getting her family and her Oklahoma City house ready for the

American Ballet Company's visit; and in Coming Home Ashby pulls out from a close up of moving balls on a pool table, to a pan of paraplegics around the pool table talking about Viet Nam, before dolly­ ing in on Luke. Mazurski pans across the East River and tracks with

Erica and Martin as they jog along the river (on what has since become 42 known as "the Unmarried Woman Run"), waits for them to jog down a fEght of stairs, and accompanies them to their apartment house. Thus, camera movement, character movement and editing movement of filmic images create the primary illusion of virtual presence, the cinematic answer to the proscenium arch. They also create and present the secondary illusion of virtual scene, volume and domain, from the first shot. The primary illusions of painting, sculpture and architecture, the modes of plastic art, are ever-present in film. Its space may change, but it is always present, and always moving, if only due to the movement of the projector as in the freeze frames of Antoine and Erica ending The 400 Blows and An Unmarried Woman.

But virtual presence is not only created in the feature fiction film. It is the primary illusion of all film--documentary, O educational, experimental--the "very stuff of film, " "its very substance. Thus Lumiere creates the illusion of virtual presence in Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, and Arrival of the

Conventioners by recording character movement with a stationary camera, as does Flaherty in Nanook of the North, with shots of

Nanook spearing fish, building an igloo, warming his son’s hands, and in Moana, 1926, with shots of Moana climbing a giant palm-tree and undergoing tattooing. Vertov creates the illusion of Mikhail

Kaufman's presence in Man With a Movie Camera by filming him climbing bridge spans, riding on trains and lying under trains filming 43 aspects of Soviet life. Leni Riefenstahl creates the illusion of Nazi presence in Triumph of the Will, by editing movement to movement, and in Olympiad by editing part of a movement to part of a movement, e,g. "A" jumping on the diving board to "B" jumping on the diving board. In N. Y., N.Y., Francis Thompson whimsifies movement with an anamorphic lens; in Dead Birds, Robert Gardner captures the movements of ritual tribal warfare with a zoom lens; and in On the

Bowery, Rogosin concealed lens and microphone to capture the natural movement and speech of the men of the Bowery. The Maysles created the illusion of presence by following Paul from door to door and rejection to rejection with hand held camera and tape-recorder in

Salesman. In like manner, Wiseman made Philadelphia high school teachers and students present in High School, and Kansas City police­ men and residents present in Law and Order.

Likewise the students, teachers and director of Summerhill are present in Summerhill, a direct-cinema educational film; the

Tacoma Bridge present, briefly, in the Tacoma Bridge Collapse, a single concept physics film; irritated parents present in Bus Stop, an open-ended educational administrators' training film; and the animated "haves" and "have-nots" present in Tilt, a broadly educational World Bank film. That animation creates presence is obvious from the universal following of Charlie Brown, Linus and

Lucy; Batman, Superman and Spider man; and of course Popeye, the 44 Sailor Man, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse.

Although experimental films differ greatly from fiction, documentary and educational films, they too share the primary filmic illusion of virtual presence. Thus Rocketman flies across America in Bruce Baillie's Quixote; death mounts a motorcycle in Kenneth

Angerfs Scorpio Rising, objects rotate in Man Ray’s Emak Bakia, dancers transcend gravity in Maya Deren's The Very Eye of Night, and a crying infant issues from the mouth of a crying infant in Part

Two of Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man. All present. All pictures.

All moving.

Does presence equal picture plus movement? Is it sufficient to show an image of something moving on the screen to create the illusion of presence? Must there be camera movement, character movement and edited movement as well as projector movement? Does more movement mean greater presence? Just as there are vast differences in the quality of virtual space in individual plastic works of art, and of virtual time in different musical works, of virtual gesture within a single ballet, and of virtual life within a single author’s opus, yet all plastic art creates virtual space, all music, time, all dance, power, and all poesis, life; so too there are vast differences in the quality of virtual presence from film to film, and scene to scene, although virtual presence is created in every scene in every filmic work of art. It is the "very stuff of film," its 45

"substance," its essence, its primary illusion, the apparition film

always creates, "made always from the very first stroke of work"^

on a film. Let us see how it is made, how the basic elements are

combined.

In An Unmarried Woman, Mazurski uses images of Erica

moving--medium long shots of her pirouetting through her apartment

after making love with Martin; a close up of her eating lunch with

Martin; a close up of her face, lips separated, revealing a slight

movement of her lower jaw, as Martin tells her he is in love with

another woman; a long shot of her, woodenly walking away; a low angle close up of her hysterically screaming and struggling with a would-be lover in the taxi; a medium shot of her slumped in a chair, breathing heavily, telling Patti she needs help; a close up of her crying at the psychiatrist’s office; images of her gazing straight ahead--in close ups of her, happy, in bed as Martin leaves for work; in a two shot with Martin, as they discuss his problems, also in bed; of a close up of her looking into the mirror, as she takes sleeping pills; and images formed by a combination of Erica moving and the camera moving, as Mazurski slowly dollies in to a close up of Erica talking to Tanya. _

In The Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci accentuates char­ acter movement with peripheral movement, and movement of light and shadow. Thus he has a curtain blowing in the breeze, and 46 lights and shadows moving on Paul's face as he moves, heartbrokenly talking to his dead wife, and wiping off her lipstick; camera move­ ment reveals further movement of light and shadow on Paul's face caused by his gesticulations as Bertolucci pulls in slightly to a close up of Paul, telling Jeanne about his childhood and out to a medium close up, revealing moving shadows on Paul's naked chest and shoulders.

Throughout both scenes, Paul is gazing straight ahead. Thus we meet his gaze. We also meet his gaze in the shot of him looking in the mirror shaving. Indeed, we meet his gaze and Jeanne's gaze through most of the film, as we do Erica’s in An Unmarried Woman, Jenny's in Face to Face, and Violet's in Pretty Baby. And we identify our gazing at the film with their gazing in the film. We are united in the same action. Our point of view is Paul's, Jeanne’s, Erica's, Jenny's,

Violet's. The scene of Hattie in labor would have been far less moving were we not watching it through Violet’s eyes. Malle made sure that we would watch it through her eyes, by opening the film with a close up of Violet gazing straight ahead, watching, and listening to her mother's screams of pain. We identified with Violet's looking and listening (our own filmic activities) by the time he cut to a shot of

Hattie. Later in the film, before Violet goes to j oin her mother and a customer, Malle again shoots her gazing straight ahead, and we again become more aware of her point of view as well as of her presence. We need these close up, full face shots of her, for as 47 Truffaut has rightly noted:

A subjective camera is the negation of subjective camera--when it replaces a character, one cannot identify oneself with him. The cinema becomes subjective when the actor’s gaze meets that of the audience. If the audience feels the need to identify, ... it automatically does so with the face whose gaze it meets most frequently during the film, with the actor who is most often shot full on and in close up.

The audience’s need to identify is completely frustrated in

Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake. After a long-held static long shot of Philip Marlowe, talking at us, about the background of the diegesis, we only see him again in a few seemingly accidental mirror shots (the framing is off), and another static long shot of him talking at us. During these "talking head" shots there is an image, but barely any movement (except projector movement), and in scenes of character/Dbject/earnera movement there is no image of him. We have no one to identify with. The intrusiveness of his constant talk on the sound track keeps us from identifying with Adrienne, as do the static shots of her from Marlowe's distance. We never see her in close up, save for one awkward image of her about to kiss the camera.

Montgomery uses Marlowe's actual point of view and actual distance for determining camera view and lens distance, and real time for filmic time. Thus he shoots a name plate on a door, and pans to the door bell, where Marlowe's hand, in close up, rings the bell. The camera remains on the section of the door immediately in front of

Marlowe’s eyes, until someone opens the door. Montgomery is 48 expecting us to see with Marlowe’s eyes, but he is not providing the filmic means for us to do so--images of Marlowe "shot full on and in close up" and movement of camera, character and editing.

So too is Minelli expecting us to care about Jerry Mulligan’s

"world" above the cafe in the opening narrated sequences of An

American in Paris, before showing us images of Jerry, and of other characters reacting to Jerry, thus reaffirming his existence, his presence. Thus, we need to see Marlowe look at Adrienne, in order to see her as he sees her, in order to reinforce the illusion of her presence. In Outrageous moving images of Robin and Liza entering each other’s worlds—of Robin running to push the hallucinatory bonecrusher away when he hears Liza scream, of Liza encouraging

Robin to be "dazzling" in his female impersonations, of her getting out of bed with a lover who referred to Robin as "that thing," and of

Robin and Liza dancing at a gay club, Robin, in his element at last,

Liza "alive and sick and living in New York like 8 million other people"--make them and their worlds present to us.

Virtual presence, created by image and movement, is immeasurably enhanced by the increase of image size and resulting heightening of movement of the close up. The slightest movement becomes significant--Tomas’ hand moving up and down on Jenny's shoulder as she breathes, and Jenny's head moving back and forth as she speaks in Face to Face; and Martin’s facial muscles 49 expanding and contracting during his concluding monologue in Equus.

By increasing the volume of the character’s face, the close up increases the magnitude of his/her movement, and the illusion of his/her presence. And by increasing the volume of the sound,

Jenny’s breathing, her clothes rustling, the clock ticking and the telephone ringing in Face to Face, the sound close up magnifies move­ ment and image, for as Panofsky has stated, "that which we hear remains for good or ill, inextricably fused with that which we do see.

Therefore the sense of seeing, and the sense of present remain primary.Indeed12 the "sense of present" is primary in the close up of Sally’s face, eyes open, gazing straight ahead, during her orgasm in Coming Home, and the sense of ecstacy "inextricably fused" with the moving image by her climactic noises on the sound track. The movement and image create the presence; the sound amplifies the image and adds the ecstacy. Together they form the audible image.

Silence is a special effect, as in the many silences of Coming Home and Pretty Baby.

Thus far we have been discussing synchronous dialogue and sound effects in the fiction film, virtual presence in the virtual present of visual image and audio image. What of the narrated film?

Of the fiction film that combines narration and dialogue, and of the narrated documentary film? Although ostensibly in the mnemonic mode, "Let me start properly, in order... It all began one Monday 50 with Hesther's visit..." Martin's on-screen narration of Alan Strang’s case in Equus, is more in the present tense, than the past, more dialogic than narrative. "Sometimes I blame Hesther, she brought him to me." "My compassion is honest... Sacrifices to Zeus took

60 seconds each. Sacrifices to the normal can take as much as 60 months." "These are fundamental questions but they have no place in a consulting room. Do I? Do any of us?" "Why me? F irst account for me? How can I?" Martin's account of his own problems as well as of Alan’s enhances the virtual presence created by camera pans, dollies, close ups and reaction shots on the screen. As the sound in

Coming Home amplifies the image and adds the ecstacy, the sound in

Equus, amplifies the image and adds the agony.

In Jules et Jim Truffaut uses voice-over narration to tell us what he cannot show us--"It seemed to Jim as though she had just arrived for their meeting at the cafe after a long delay, and that she had dressed specially for his benefit.. . "Jim wanted Catherine, but he fought back the desire more than ever. She must not leave... How much did he want this for himself? He would never know. She was perhaps--Jim was by no means sure of it--deliberately seducing him.

It was intangible. Catherine only revealed the things she wanted when she had them in her hand..." "When Jim got up he was enslaved. Other women no longer existed for him." "Thus for Jules, their love was becoming something relative, while his own remained absolute." 51

"No longer would Jules suffer from the fear he had had from the very beginning, first that Catherine would be unfaithful to him, and then only that she might die... for now it had happened." Thus the narration although in the past tense serves to further involve the viewer in the virtual presence of the moving images.

How does narration in the documentary film effect the illusion of virtual presence created by movement and image on the screen?

Does it "amplify the image and add the ecstacy, " suspense, excitement and humor of dialogue and sound effects in the non-narrated film? Or, is it instead, as Wiseman has suggested, "the proscenium arch because it immediately separates you from the experience you're going to see and hear, by telling you that it has nothing to do with you, or by telling you what to think about it. 13 Or do some narrations, or some parts of some narrations, amplify the virtual presence of the moving images and other narrations, or other parts of the same narration, distance the spectator and decrease the illusion of filmic presence? Which aspects involve and which distance? How do tense, length, sentence structure, voice and person affect virtual presence?

Let us discuss these aspects in the light of specific examples from narrated documentary films.

The third person, simple declarative sentences separate the viewer from the subject in The Photographer--"His photographs communicate thought and feeling... Not here, not here, but here 52 is a thing of beauty... Photography is an art and a science too...

What an artist can do depends upon his to o ls... A part may tell the story better than the whole"; and in Future Shock, "Young people are on the move... Home is a place to leave"; as do the awkward constructions of The Rival World: "You must have help, and on an international scale, its knowledge against the dreadful force of numbers inconceivable... Harmless to man, his crops and cattle"; the purple prose, "Kinder fear of fires and feathery depths... The wood, desiccated in the heat, fell apart," and self-conscious cleverness of

The Real West, "Somebody in a sweaty undershirt got the two oceans joined... They put wheels on cash and credit and rolled them across the Missouri"; the passive constructions in Dead Birds, "Wajah has already filled an empty stomach and resumed a relaxing task... The pigs are arranged behind the men’s house to be admired and lose their ears and tails"; and the multi-phrased, multi-word senstences in the

National Geographic Special, The Mystery of Animal Behavior,

" ... awaken in the groves of trees, where they have spent the night for protection from nocturnal predators. ... to fill the evolutionary niches left on other continents by less efficient mammals."

So too does the purple prose of The Savage Eye, "Travellers by cloud, uneasy, grateful, swing on a thread of exploding fire, they step down from heaven to the great sweaty footbound company of us all," and "On the morning of the sixth day, the stars declined, and 53 the sun rose, and out of a handful of fire and dust, garbage and alcohol, God created Man. He made a big mistake"; its self-conscious alliteration, "They want to be beautiful, anesthesized, and happy;

They want to be laid and loved--like you," and "Pity the pets. They bear more than their natural burden of human love"; its sarcasm,

"a lucky spot where one miserable stranger can meet with seven others and never be hurt, " its condescension, "These are your deities, bargain saints; the infinite mercy of papier-mache, " its moralizing,

"Those who dine are at least alive. I must be merciful before I can be happy," as do the full literary statements in The Death of JFK,

"Then the long walk down the steps, Mrs. Kennedy's face pale and drawn, masking the monumental grief of these four days"; as opposed to the phrases amid silence, in the same film, "the spot where Lincoln lay... A tribute from the new president..."; and in the yoga scene of

The Savage Eye, also amid silence, "to grow a new body, new skin... to be born again." Incomplete in themselves, they invite completion by the viewer, for "the interval invites participation: it creates riddles that involve one."^

Indeed, the intervals and the narration of The Quiet One invite participation and amplify presence. Its personal beginning,

"When I watch theni play..."; its use of future tense, involving the viewer in what is yet to come, "Donald will learn to read—but not for a while yet... During the next few weeks, things will go much 54

better for him.. its present-tense treatment of the past, "These

are the memories Donald lives in day and night.. its involving use

of sentence fragments, "the same old helpless confusion, misun­

derstanding. .. the sick quiet that follows violence... and duty without

love... and peacemaking that fails.. . its direct, second-person involvement of the viewer, "But if you're as lonely as Donald, all you

learn is more loneliness... After a while you even want to go home ..."; its unity of visual and audio, "The baby in him desperate to be

comforted..." (scene of crying child and her mother outside the

tunnel); its intra-sentence unity of second and third persons, "It smells

like home, but it’s no home for you... Chances have to be taken because they're the only things you can find out for yourself, and by yourself"; its presentation of inside information, "But he isn't well yet

by anymeans"; its combination of fragment and second person, "to

suffer uprooting... to try ... to put your need and your love once again in another’s trust.. its juxtaposition of universal and particular,

of present and past, "There are things no one can ever find out for you, or tell you, or show you... As the day grew colder, and darker,

Donald found them out... Seeing that, accepting that, his own spirit

began to come of age... He turned back toward the school..." In City of Gold, Pierre Berton also mixes first, second and third person,

and present and past tense to involve the viewer in his personal reminiscence of Dawson City, Alaska, "This is my town and my 55 father’s town before me." (present, first person); "For enough gold, you could fill a bathtub with champagne, and pay a girl to take a bath in it." (present tense, second person); "Some men did." (past tense, third person). And in Harvest of Shame, Edward R. Murrow uses short, hard-hitting sentences of a television journalist, abruptly switching from third person to first person, for a dramatic, thought- provoking conclusion, "The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruits and vegetables." (third person); "They do not have the strength to influence legislation." (third person); "Maybe we do." (1st person).

The hauntingly beautiful blend of visual and audio, past and present, indicative and subjunctive, sentence and fragment, objective and subjective in Night and Fog amplify the virtual presence of the constantly moving images. Objective--"1933. The machine gets under way." (present); "Deported. Interred. Arrested." (past); "Chooses again in the night and fog." (present); "Shaved. Tatooed. Numbered." (past); "They all have woman's names: Dora, Laura." (present);

"Then the real world, the world of the past." (fragment); "Later, today tourists have themselves photographed in them." (present).

And subjective--"Who is on the lookout from this strange tower

(present) to warn us of the coming of new executioners?" (future)

"Are their faces really different from our own?" (present) "And there are those of us who sincerely look upon the ruins today, 56

(indicative) as if the old concentration camp monster were dead and buried beneath them." (subjunctive) "Those who pretend to take hope again as the image fades, (indicative) as though there were a cure for the plague of these camps.” (subjunctive) "Those of us who pretend to believe (present) that all this happened only once, at a certain time, (past) and in a certain place, (past) and those who refuse to see, who do not heed (present) the cry to the end of time, (future).

Contrary to the purple-prosed, alliterative, condescending, sarcastic, verbose, self-consciously clever, third person, full state­ ments of The Photographer, The Real West, The Savage Eye, Dead

Birds, The Death of .JFK and The Mystery of Animal Behavior, the narrations of The Quiet One, City of Gold, Harvest of Shame and Night and Fog are involving vehicles, rather than distancing structures.

Their present-tense treatment of the past, personalizing, universaliz­ ing use of the first and second person, skillful mixing of present and past, present and future, fragment and sentence, subjective and objective, amplify involvement and enhance the virtual presence of the moving images, the primary filmic illusion. 57 NOTES

^Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form , (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 125. 2 Mikel Dufrenne quoted in Metz, "Metz on Mi try, " Screen, p. 65. 3 Charles Morgan, "The Nature of Dramatic Illusion, " Reflections on Art. ed. Susanne K. Langer, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 98. 4 Edward Bullough, "Psychial Distance as a Factor in Art and an aesthetic Principle, " W. E. Kennick, ed., Art and Philosophy, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), p. 547.

^Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film, The Redemption of Physical Reality, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 267-9. 6 Joseph W. Krutch, "The Tragic Fallacy, " The Modern Tem­ per, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1929), p. 137. 7 Bullough, "Psychial Distance, " p. 547.

^Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), p. 41. 9 Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 118. ^Langer, Problems, p. 81.

^Peter Graham, ed. "Interview with Francois Truffaut, " The New Wave, (New York: Doubleday), p. 93.

12Erwin Panofsky, as quoted in Bluestone, Novels Into Film, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), p. 59. 13 John Graham, "There are No Simple Solutions: Frederick Wiseman on Viewing Film, " The Film Journal, Spring, 1971, p. 45. 14Edmund Carpenter and Ken Heyman, They Became What They Beheld, (New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1970). CHAPTER III

THE FORM OF THE FILM

"It is the felicity of art to show how a thing begins to signify not by reference to ideas that are already formed or acquired, but by the temporal and spatial arrangement of its elements"* and it is the felicity of theory to explicate the signification, not to prescribe it, for

O theory exists "in the wake of experience" and must, if it is to be relevant, remain open to new experience; "A good theory may have 3 special cases, but not exceptions." It is the felicity of Langer*s philosophy of art, and of the film theory developed from it, "to show how a thing begins to signify... by the temporal and spatial arrange­ ment of its elements, " but its structure, its articulation, its form.

What Bell and Fry term " significant form" Langer refers to as

"expressive form, for the work of art "does not signify, but articulates and presents its emotive content; it formulates an "import, " not a "meaning. Would that the critics would realize this, and spare us their moral exegeses. To quote Langer again, "the artist (film- maker) is not saying anything,... he is showing. But this is the topic of Chapter IV, The Critique of the Form; here we are concerned with the form itself, "a whole resulting from the relation of mutually dependent factors," "the way that whole is put together. Thus we

58 are concerned with organic form, in which a change in one element causes changes in each of the others, living form, dynamic form.

Indeed Langer*s description of dynamic form is equally definitive of film--"permanence in a pattern of changes (moving images)... organically constructed (edited)... interrelated, interdependent centers of activity (sequences)... held together by rhythmic processes"

(movement, tempo, shot distribution, rhythm), ® what Goethe calls the "existential complex of an actual being. Thus we may compare the development within a film as Muller compares the development within a poem, to the growth of a plant through metamorphosis. ^

Like the lines in a poem which together create a unified form, an apparition of virtual experience, the sequences in a film also create a unified form, an apparition of virtual presence, of virtual experience present before us, in the present. Thus the image of the assasin hiding behind red curtains in the remake of The Man Who Knew Too

Much derives its impact from Hitchcock’s association of the child with the color red earlier in the film, and creates the illusions of virtual presence and virtual terror. Louis* order at the end of

Casablanca to "round up the usual suspects" paralleling, as it does, the same order at the beginning of the film, creates a sense of ongoing presence, a virtual experience of "the more things change, the more they remain the same." As do the repetition of the tulip stained-glass window toward the beginning and at the end of Face to 60

Face, the freize in Black Orpheus, the fishing scene in Julia, the black and white still pictures in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and the song, "Out of Time" in Coming Home.

In a film, as in a poem, growth does not just add something "more" or "longer, " but changes what has already been said by a further fashioning of the whole. * * The final scene in Harry and Tonto changes the living-in-the-past orientation of the preceding scene of

Harry chasing Tonto*s look-alike, to the here-and-now orientation of

Harry j oining a child on the beach, building sandcastles (shadows of

Fellini). The scene in Pretty Baby of Hattie and Mr. Fuller, going outside the dining circle to announce their engagement, signals the final dissolution of community between Hattie and the other whores, and the scene in Jaws of the police chief moving behind the table, within the light of the candle, to sing with the captain and the ocean­ ographer, symbolizes the establishment of community between the previously antagonistic men (shadows of Hawks).

Just as the lines of a poem introduce new elements that are connected to elements in previous lines, so too, the shots in a film introduce new elements that are connected to elements in previous shots. Thus a shot of a white horse against the night sky follows a shot of Martin*s white shirt against his dark windown in Equus; a close up of Erica cracking eggs follows a shot of Saul throwing orange paint across a canvas in An Unmarried Woman; and close up follows 61 close up, Rick, Ilsa, Rick, Ilsa; two shot follows two shot, Rick and

Lazio, Lazio and Rick; three shot follows three shot, Lazio, Ilsa,

Rick (from behind), Lazio, Ilsa, Rick (front view); and alternate close ups of Ilsa and Rick staring straight ahead, follow a two shot close up of Ilsa and Lazio also staring straight ahead in Casablanca.

Unlike Morgan who bases his theory of dramatic illusion on the belief that the form of a play does not exist until the end of the play, ^ Muller states that "the form exists, not only at the end of the work, but as early as the completion of the first metamorphosis, just as a plant or an animal represents its true form in every stage of its growth.MAO1 ^ And again, "the form of a work is a progression of unified metamorphoses."^ These progressions follow the vertical and spiral tendencies noted by Goethe. The vertical, or "directive force, " refers to the forward and upward elements of doing and happening; the spiral or expansive force, to the embodying, digressing, revolving aspects of mood and setting. ^ One can apply Morgan's theory of dramatic illusion to Muller's theory of morphological poetics, for, the suspense of form that constitutes the dramatic illusion (Morgan), exists in the becoming of the form (Muller), and the becoming of the form is present from the beginning of the first metamorphosis, the beginning of Act I, Scene I in a play and line one in a poem. In film, it is prefigured in the opening credits, as in the graphic vertical design Saul

Bass used as a morphological transition from "Directed by Alfred 62

Hitchcock” to the opening aerial view of downtown Phoenix in Psycho. Thus the apparent opposition between the theories seems to be a semantic rather than a philosophical one; Morgan neglects to define form, and seems to presume the notion of "completed form” in his use of the word "form. ” As Bertrand Russell has noted:

... A great part of philosophy can be reduced to some­ thing that may be called "syntax, ” though the word has to be used in a somewhat wider sense than has hitherto been customary. Some men, notably Carnap, have advanced the theory that all philosophical problems are really syntactical, and that, when errors in syntax are avoided, a philosophical problem is thereby either solved or shown to be insoluble. I think this is an overstatement, but there can be no doubt that the utility of philosophical syntax in relation to traditional problems is very great. ^

Since there is no real opposition then, between Morgan's theory of dramatic illusion that we discussed briefly in Chapters I and II, and

Muller's theory of morphological poetics, that will comprise the framework of this chapter (indeed, Langer included both essays in

Reflections on Art), let us proceed with our discussion of film in terms of the Goethian vertical and spiral tendencies within metamorphoses that constitute the "becoming of the form" of individual films.

Curtiz uses screen position to effect the "becoming of the form" in Casablanca. From a two shot of Ilsa and Rick as she tries to tell him her story, he cuts to alternate close ups for Rick’s biting remarks, a two shot of Ilsa starting to leave from right foreground and Rick in left foreground, to Ilsa center background and Rick right foreground, to a center screen medium close up of Rick looking down, 63 a medium close up of his hands over his eyes, and a close up of his head on his hands. Angle is a directive force in the series of alternate medium close ups that comprise the dinner sequence in

Psycho. While Marion is consistently shot full face, at eye level,

Norman is increasingly shot from the side and below. The stuffed birds and their shadows gradually appear in shots of Norman as the conversation turns to Norman's mother. At the mention of institutionalizing her, the birds are very pronounced in an extreme low angle shot of Norman from the side, so that only three quarters of his face is visible beneath the birds and their shadows.

In the shower sequence, shot distribution, movement and shape are the directive elements. Hitchcock begins the downward movement with a medium close up of Marion's head and shoulders followed by a medium close up of her legs and feet as she gets into the shower, and continues with the downward thrust of the nozzle and the downward flow of the water in a medium close up of her face under the nozzle. A center screen close up of the nozzle accentuates its circular shape and completes the first sequence of medium close ups ending with a close up. In the second sequence of medium close ups Hitchcock cuts from

Marion’s face under the nozzle, to a side view of the water on her shoulders, to a side view of the nozzle and the downward flowing water, to different angles of Marion, to the shadow of the "mother” with the knife pointed downwards, through the water to Marion with 64 her mouth opened, to a close up of Marion through the water. A center screen close up of her opened mouth accentuates its circular shape and completes the second sequence of medium close ups ending with an extreme close up. Alternate medium close ups of the mother thrusting the knife (center screen) and Marion (slightly left screen) and the knife being thrust (right screen) are followed by a series of close ups of the knife, Marion's hands on the wall, her face, and end with an extreme close up of her hand grabbing the shower curtain, and the shower curtain rings (circular shape). The next sequence of close ups show the base of the toilet and the floor, Marion in front of the toilet on the floor, her rounded elbow on the round knob at the base of the toilet, the shower nozzle (center screen), her feet (upper right), the circular drain (lower left), with water and blood running down in a circular motion. A series of extreme close ups of the drain, and

Marion’s open eye again accentuate the circular shapes of the drain and the eye, and conclude the sequence. From the extreme close up of Marion's eye, Hitchcock pulls out to reveal her forehead and her nose, and then her head and neck. He cuts to a side view close up of the shower nozzle with the shower still running, of Marion’s mouth opened against the floor, her robe on the toilet, followed by a close up of the bed, the table and lamp and ends with a close up of the newspaper, before cutting to a long shot of Norman's house. 65

Shot distribution, movement and shape also function as directive elements in the closing sequence of Psycho. Hitchcock proceeds from an extreme long shot of Norman as his mother wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a chair, to a long shot, medium shot, medium close up and close up, to an extreme close up of his hand with a fly on it ("I’m not even going to swat that fly."), to a medium close up of Norman smiling (.. . ’’why she wouldn’t even harm a fly."), dissolv­ ing to a medium close up of Norman in which his teeth look like those of his mother's corpse, and the blanket, like dark pond water, to a pond with two horizontal white bands, and finally to the figure of

Marion’s car rising out of the pond, the final reversal of the film's downward motion.

The change in Marion's clothes from white to black is also a directive element because we see her in black, before we see the money on her bed. So too is Hitchcock’s hiding of the assasin behind the red curtains of the Royal Albert Hall in his remake of

The Man Who Knew Too Much (discussed above); Antonioni's use of red for passion and blue for frigidity and fear in The Red Desert; and

Malle's symbolic use of red for Violet's ambivalent feelings of sexuality in Pretty Baby—Violet finds Papa and kisses him behind red clothes in the attic; she has red paint on one leg as she flirts with him; and a red stocking on one leg as she goes to j oin her mother and a customer. Symbolic of Heilman’s relationships with Julia and 66 Dash are the rippling water, the train, steam, and beach house that function as a sort of synecdoche in a series of dissolves on color and texture within the opening scene of Julia. From the rippling water of the fishing scene Zimmerman dissolves to the dark train, its steam, back to the water over Heilman's eyes, watery in close up, to the beach house and the beginning of the diegesis.

Alternating dark and light, movement and screen position provide forward and upward movement in An Unmarried Woman.

From a black and grey long shot down the middle of a deserted night

Soho street, to a two shot of Saul and Erica walking arm in arm to

Saul’s loft to make love, Mazurski dissolves to a bright, low angle, soft-focus background, close up of Erica, smiling, floating in space, pulls out to a tracking long shot of her ice skating at Rockefeller Center, and continues the motion in a dissolve to a close up tilt of her hands moving up Saul's back, as they dance backlighted in the dark, their profiles forming a figure-ground relationship of light and shadows.

Background color also contributes to forward and upward movement.

In the Italian ice sequence Mazurski maintains separate color - coordinated backgrounds for Saul and Erica as they walk through

N.Y.U. to Washington Square Park. Saul, in khaki shirt, olive green vest and brown pants is consistently shot against the brown of Bobst

Library; and Erica, in an off-white coat sweater with blue and green stripes, against the white of the Main Building across the street. 67

To get Erica past the brown of Bobst Library, to a bench in the park,

Mazurski shoots her in close up, her light brown hair against the brown background. Once on the bench, Erica is again backed by the white of the Main Building and Saul by the brown of Bobst. The green stripe in Erica's off-white sweater and Saul's olive vest balance the green grass in front of them. (If one is looking for symbolism one can read the separate backgrounds as signifying their separate residences for the next seven months—Erica in New York and Saul in Vermont, and the green common to them both, as their love, or their hope for the future. But such is not necessary for the background color to function as a directive force.) Mazurski again uses back­ ground color as a forward force in connecting the scene of Erica, in light and medium blue against the bluish cast of the white walls of her future home talking to Elaine, in tan against the wood floors, and the farewell scene in Saul’s loft, of Erica, in a white dress, sitting on the floor, her white dress balancing the white walls, and her hair backed by the wood tones of the polished floor.

In Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci likewise uses color as a directive force. In the final scene in Jeanne's apartment, Paul, in close up, is backed by daylight from the door to the balcony, the greyish light accentuating the grey of his hair as he tells Jeanne he loves her, asks her name and yells "ouch." From a silhouette of Paul's back as he walks to the balcony, Bertolucci cuts to a close up of Paul's face, dumbfounded, to a close up of him putting his gum under the railing, to a long shot of the blue-grey curtain blowing in the back­ ground. From a "subjective" shot of the blue-grey roofs in front of

Paul, Bertolucci tilts down and pulls back to Paul in blue and grey curled in the embryo position, lying dead on the balcony, and then back further to a close up of the gun hanging on Jeanne's finger, before tilting up to her face—"I don't know his name." Bertolucci ends the film with a freeze frame of Jeanne, in an apricot and brown tweed jacket, standing against a dark wall, next to the balcony door, the gun hanging from her finger, and Paul, lying dead in the bright daylight outside.

In Coming Home, Ashby uses blue as a forward element in

Billy’s suicide sequence. From a long shot of Billy in a blue and white striped shirt, walking back and forth violently playing his guitar as one of the paraplegics, in navy and light blue dials the telephone in the left foreground, Ashby cuts to a right foreground medium close up of Luke, in blue shirt talking on the phone. The long shot of Luke leaving his apartment to go to Billy reveals blue lights on blue flowers, and a bluish cast to his car. In Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Brooks uses the alternating light and dark caused by the strobe light going on and off as the forward force in the murder sequence. Although Goodbar was shot in color, this sequence is entirely in black and white. Many of its images—the knife, the downward motion, the blood--are reminescent 69 of the Psycho shower sequence, but instead of the scream of violins, we hear Terry's groans, and then silence as only a small image of her face is intermittently visible on the otherwise black screen. The intervals of light and dark become longer until there is only dark, and the film ends, not with a bang, nor a whimper, but with total silence and stillness.

Screen position, shot distribution, color and composition also function as expansive spiral forces of mood, circumstances, setting and feeling, within the filmic metamorphosis. Thus Oshima cross cuts between Sada's face and her lover’s face as she strangles him in

In the Realm of the Senses to increase her sexual satisfaction; Brooks uses separate frames, medium shots, rather than close ups, to emphasize the emptiness of Teresa's casual coupling in the Goodbar sex scenes, and Bergman shoots Jenny in isolated close ups, with only

Tomas' hand visible on her shoulder, to emphasize her private agony in Face to Face. In Last Tango in Paris, alternate close ups of Paul and Jeanne on opposite sides of the screen depict their disagreement over the happiness of Jeanne's childhood, and their essential alone- ness, after Jeanne declares her love and Paul responds to her beliefs about love with "You’re alone."

Color is a particularly rich expansive force in the becoming of the filmic form. Malle uses it to expand the illusion of virtual presence, scene, volume and domain he creates with his moving 70 images. The characters are one with their backgrounds—Jelly Roll

Morton with the mahogony paneling of the House; the little black boy with the dark walls of the barn; Violet, in dutch blue, along the city streets; in beige, leaving the faded gold walls of the House; and in brown at the railroad station. And Papa's camera is one with the sofa his models pose on--its warm wood tones blending with the gold brocade and brown velvet, further enhanced by the chestnut brown tones of

Violet's hair and the soft, warm tones of her naked body. Papa's unity with Violet, if not hers with Papa, is expressed in the garden scene of Violet as "pretty baby, " holding the doll Papa bought her.

Violet is all in white—hat, dress, stockings, shoes--against the green palm trees, and Papa, too is wearing a white shirt. So too the frequent shots of the whores in their white undergarments further expand their sense of community as a House, evident in their actions and dialogue, and Malle's frequent group compositions. The illusion of the House as virtual domain is expanded by the ever-present amber, lights and gold walls, separating it from the rest of the world.

The dreariness of factory life is expanded by the blue-grey factory scenes under the opening credits of F.I.S.T ., the history of the beginning of the labor movement, by the amber tone of the organizing scenes, and its turning point from the amber uprightness of the thirties to the white-glare corruption of the fifties, by the grey cast of the funeral scene. Following the murder Jewison tilts up a 71 grey smoke stack to the grey-black smoke and the overcast sky, and then down to the mourners in black suits and ties against the grey city scape. The pink and blue cast of Sally’s confrontation scene with Luke near the beginning of Coming Home expands on the girl cheerleader-boy football captain roles they had been accustomed to in high school. Sally’s pink lipstick, pink sweater and pink flowers on her light blue smock are reflected in the pink flush of Luke’s face. Her blue-grey suit blends with the blue-grey water and skyline as she arrives in Hong Kong, as in Bob’s homecoming sequence, the drunken marines’ beige uniforms blend with the wood paneling of the living room, expanding the illusions of virtual presence, scene and domain. So too the dark green bus driving into the dark night expands the virtual lonely scene of Bob's departure, and the abundance of institutional grey and green in the hospital sequences, expand the virtual dreary, drab domain of the hospital.

Virtual scene is further enhanced by color balance within individual scenes—by the yellow light above the bar (left background) balancing Sally’s yellow dress (right foreground), and by the pink scarves on the amber lamps (left foreground) balancing Vi's pink sweater, beige top and reddish hair (right foreground) in Coming Home; by the orange railing (extreme left) balancing Sada's red-orange kimono

(right center) and the brown wood (extreme right) balancing her lover’s brown kimono (left center), by the candle flame balancing the flesh 72 tones of their naked bodies, and the black of the geisha's kimono balancing the black of their hair in In the Realm of the Senses; by blue candles on the window sill (extreme right) balancing Patti's blue shirt (left center) and the white chair and white bridge lights (right center) balancing Erica's white robe (extreme left) as Mazur ski pulls out from a medium close up of Patti and Erica playing the piano, to a color balanced long shot in An Unmarried Woman; by the blue of the station wagon (right foreground) balancing the blue in the painting

(center background) being lowered from Saul’s loft, and by the white of the rectangular litter (left foreground) balancing the white of the rectangular canvas; and, in the final freeze frame, by the blue of the

Pepsi sign (left background), of several pedestrians' clothing (left, center and right foreground) and the stripes on a truck (right fore­ ground) balancing the blue in the painting (center background).

Color is perhaps most expansive in conveying mood and feeling. Oshima uses rich colors--navy, red, turquoise, yellow and maroon in the geisha's clothing for the special festive ceremony inaugurating Sada and her lover's living together in In the Realm of the Senses; Zimmerman uses warm tones of fire, brandy and straw­ berry blond hair for the warm, loving mood of Lily and Julia's New

Years Eve reunion in Julia, dark green and black of the Berlin station for the ominousness of Lily's mission, and the somber black and grey of Lily’s pumps on the Alsace cobblestones, as she searches for little Lily. With the blue grey haze of the ocean he creates the virtual presence, scene and domain of the beach house, as well as the haziness of Heilman's and Hammet’s relationship. Thompson lyrically portrays

Tomasis' acceptance of death as "the Greek Tycoon" slowly merges with sea and sky, blending into the violet background while dancing a native Greek dance at a waterfront cafe. In Last Tango in Paris

Bertolucci expresses the feeling of foreplay with amber lights, apricot sheets and pillow cases, shadows of Jeanne against the rust-colored wall, and a medium close up of Paul sprawled on the bed waiting for

Jeanne, playing "Good Ship Lollypop" on the harmonica. Static long shots and somber blue, grey and black tones convey Jeanne's lack of passion in the anal sex scene with Paul and the movie love scene with

Tom. From a medium close up of Jeanne, dressed in a salmon shirt and apricot checked j acket, kneeling on the rust carpet, in front of the apricot bedding piled against the rust wall, hysterically crying over

Paul's absence, Bertolucci cuts to a half screen close up of Jeanne, screen right, her reddish brown hair, salmon shirt and apricot checked j acket against the warm tones of wood paneling behind her as she tearfully phones Tom to tell him she found an apartment. The other half of the screen, empty save for an unpainted concrete wall, expands Jeanne's feelings of emptyness, aloneness and isolation.

Ashby portrays Sally's and Bob's isolation in Coming Home by shoot­ ing them on either side of the opened suitcase on their bed before Bob leaves for Viet Nam, and on opposite sides of a chain link fence as

Bob returns. A chain link fence also separates Sally, on her way to

Hong Kong to meet Bob, and Luke on the hospital basketball court, soon to be released. The two shot of their conversation is preceeded and followed by subjective long shots—Sally watching Luke play ball through the fence, and Luke watching Sally walk away. Ashby had used alternating close ups of Sally and Luke earlier in the film when

Sally responded to his ”1 spend ninety-five percent of my time in the hospital thinking of making love with you," with ’Tve never been unfaithful to my husband." In the showdown scene with the outraged husband, Ashby shoots them from behind in a triangular arrangement, expressive of the triangular relationship and the unknown outcome.

Expressive of Sally and Luke's relationship are a close up of Sally's face on top of Luke's, her arms around his neck, engulfing him, and an extreme long shot of Sally and Luke, in his chair, clutching each other against the future. In The Maltese Falcon Brigid’s future is expressed in a close up of her behind the bars of an elevator gate on her way to jail; and in North by Northwest the uncertainty of

Thorndike’s future is expressed by extreme long shots of him power­ less and exposed on a deserted country road, and on Mount Rushmore.

A low angle shot of Johnny and Abe reading John L. Lewis' telegram of congratulations reflects their feelings of power and success, as a low angle shot of Johnny across the "no man's land" of the polished negotiating table expresses his power and success as a labor leader in F.I.S.T. In Last Tango Bertolucci portrays Paul’s interchange­ ability with Rosa’s lover by shooting both men in identical bathrobes;

Jeanne and Paul's developing relationship, by a medium close up of them sitting opposite each other making love, knees bent, legs form­ ing intersecting triangles; and Jeanne’s lack of involvement with Tom by a static long shot of them embracing in a dark apartment. In An

Unmarried Woman Mazur ski positions Martin against a background of green trees and Erica against a brick wall, as he hopefully asks to be taken back, and she firmly refuses. To express the emptiness both

Charlie and Saul experience after Erica leaves their lofts, Mazurski holds the camera in the same position it was for the preceding two shots of Erica and Charlie, and Erica and Saul after she leaves. Thus the lack of compositional balance on the screen, mirrors the men’s lack of internal harmony after her departure.

Panofsky's principle of coexpressibility--that "the sound can­ not express any more than is expressed at the same time by visible movement;"^ Mitry’s statement that the "continuity of film is most commonly insured by the visual element, the intelligible link between

JO shots, and his prescription that "the role of music in film should be to intervene intermittently only, and to interact with the images, not from any concern to imitate, but in order to make more explicit, not a dramatic fact, but an audio visual rhythm;"^ are contradicted 76 in Last Tango in Paris, Black Orpheus, F.I.S.T ., Face to Face,

Coming Home, Pretty Baby, Psycho, An Unmarried Woman, The Greek

Tycoon, Nashville. .. Sound in film has both vertical and spiral ten­ dencies, and functions as a directive as well as an expansive force in the becoming of the form of individual films.

Jeanne's heavy breathing is the expansive force of the first lovemaking scene in Last Tango. All we see is a medium close up rear view of Paul in a camel's hair coat, and Jeanne's hands on his back. In the long shot of him wiping lipstick off his dead wife's mouth, Paul’s sobbing likewise expresses more than its accompanying visuals. So too do the white men's bids for Violet’s virginity over the close up of Jelly Roll Morton, "Sold" over the close up of Papa, and

Violet’s screams of pain over the close up of the children and Madame

Nell, followed by soft blues over Papa in Pretty Baby. In F.I. S.T. the contrast of the honking horns outside the capital and the silence in the senator's office as Abe is asked to testify against Johnny conveys the seriousness of the situation, as do the contrast of the ringing phone and the absolute silence in Face to Face as Jenny moves slowly through her grandmother's apartment; and the contrast between the ticking clock and the deadly silence after she lays down to die. In

Black Orpheus the sense of virtual presence and virtual domain are enhanced by the intermittent strumming of the guitar as the people in the pawn shop accidentally knock the strings while passing the 77 guitar over their heads to Orpheus, and the sense of virtual presence, virtual romantic scene, and virtual gesture, by the distant sound of an airplane, as Orpheus rubs his lips across Eurydicefs hand. Music is also an expansive force in film—the scream of violins during the

Psycho shower sequence, the drums in the carnival scenes in Black

Orpheus, "Rockin' Robin" for the fifties corruption of organized labor in F .I.S.T ., Erica's theme for her fight for independence in

An Unmarried Woman. Indeed music is increasingly used for fights and violence--the violent fights in F.I. S.T. between union organizers and company "security guards"; the friendly fight between Jeanne and

Tom, his abrupt ending of their fantasy airplane sequence, and Paul's violent demands on Jeanne's love in Last Tango, and Billy's suicide,

Bob's loading his gun, slamming the garage door and off-screen suicide in Coming Home.

The songs in Coming Home are directive forces with expan­ sive tendencies. "Baby, baby, baby you’re out of time" over shots of

Bob jogging in preparation for going to Viet Nam, conveys Bob's position as a professional hawk in an increasingly peacenik-society, and foreshadows the diegesis. The past tense and absolving spiral tendency of "A Time of Innocence" places it in the mnemonic mode as an editorial comment, an illusion of virtual memory of how we would like to remember the late sixties. The lyrics "take me to the station, and put me on a train" literally echo and expand Luke's 78 frustrated cry, "Take care of m e." In like manner "thinking of doing wrong..." expands Luke's "I spend ninety-five percent of my time in the hospital thinking of making love with you"; and "that I might kiss you..." his kissing Sally. "When we meet agin, please don't let me know what..." over a close up of Luke in the pool conveys his feelings about their growing relationship, as does "then maybe when we'll meet again I'll know you," over alternate close ups of Sally and

Luke on opposite sides of the screen. "Why can you make me feel this way, my girl, my girl..." over a long shot of Luke watching

Sally through the chain link fence, expresses his present feelings and foreshadows the fact that she will be "his girl" when she returns from

Hong Kong, as "a time for change" expresses Sally's feelings after

Bob’s "Is this what you do the gimps in the hospital?" "Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name..." continues as a directive force over Luke meeting the new prostitute, and "as to the nature of my game" over Billy locking himself in the nurse's room. The volume of the music expands the violence of the suicide, as the paraplegics bang on the door and yell from outside. "Looking for adventure..." over Luke putting the carton of chain in his car, and "Born to be wild..." over him getting it out at the gates of the Marine base serve as forward diegetic forces, and "Living is easy with eyes closed...

It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out..." after love- making, as expansive, feeling forces, as does "A man and a woman 79 have each other, baby..." over Sally massaging Luke in front of the fire.

"There's something happening here..." over the empty garage conveys the forward movement of the diegesis—Luke has gone home; Bob will be coming home, "Stop, hey, what’s that sound; Everybody look what's going around.. literally describes Luke's repairing the wheel of his chair, and answering a telephone request to address a high school assembly. "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep..." over Bob getting off the plane conveys his mental unbalance and forwards the diegesis. "Stop, hey, what's that sound; Everybody look what's going round..." are directive forces connecting Bob's homecoming, theF.B. I. interrogation, and his confrontation with Luke, and increasing the suspense, the illusion of destiny, "Now the time has come; no place to run..." as he leaves Luke, "Time—time-- time--time—" over him loading his gun in the garage, and the crescendo of cymbals as he slams the garage door. "Once I was a soldier..." expresses Bob's feelings as he carefully takes off his uniform; "soon there'll be another..." his shoes; "Once I was a lover

... I searched behind your eyes for you..." his wedding ring;

"Remember me. Remember me..." as he swims into the surf and Sally and Vi walk by the "Out" door of the supermarket. "You're out of time my baby... baby, baby, baby you're out of tim e..." over the credits expands the impact of his suicide, and the ending of the film.

Ashby also uses dialogue for forward moving sound bridges 80 from place to place in Coming Home. Thus the guards’ "What the fuck are you doing" connects and is expressive of shots of Luke chained to the gate, and of Sally and Vi going into the motel with the two men from the bar. The repetition of "marine corps" in

".. .highest tradition of the Marine Corps" at the awards ceremony and "the Marine Corps builds body, mind and spirit" at the high school assembly, bridge scenes involving Bob with scenes involving Luke, and lead to the crosscutting of the final sequence. Luke’s words to the high school students, "You grow up quick over there. All you see is a lot of death" precedes the shot of Bob walking to the beach; and

Luke's "you see your buddy blown away, " leads into the lyrics

"through the ashes of our life..." as Bob swims out to sea. Sound may bridge time and space as well as simultaneous space. Bertolucci cuts from the grunts Jeanne and Paul invent as names, to the quacking of ducks and pidgeons in a scene with Tom, and from Tom saying "the

Colonel, the Colonel" at Jeanne’s home, to Jeanne saying "the Colonel had green eyes..." as she walks naked through Paul's apartment in

Last Tango. In Goodbar, Brooks cuts from James’ yelling at Teresa in her apartment, to her father yelling at her in his house on

Christmas Eve, and in The Greek Tycoon Thompson cuts from Lizzy and Tomasis discussing their marriage contract to them pronouncing their marriage vows. In Turning Point Ross has Deedee and Tom continue the conversation about Deedee going to New York in the family 81 room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen the following morning, as

Zimmerman has Lily and Dash continue the sable coat conversation outside the Long Island beach house, in a row boat on the lake, and in front of the campfire in Julia. His sound advances go backwards and forwards in time. From a shot of Lily sitting on the bench in the Tuilleries as an adult, hearing Julia's "Lilly, you don’t have to come this way" he cuts to the origin of the words—a hiking scene of

Julia and Lily as young girls, Julia telling her scared friend "Lily, you don’t have to come this way. It’s all right, you’ll do it next time."

And from them playing "I am Paris..." as children, to them repeating

"I am Paris..." as adults.

In Nashville, Altman skillfully combines the vertical, directive force of sound bridges and sound advances, with the spiral, expansive force of sound distances and sound absences. Within master scenes, songs serve as sound bridges from performers to audience. The camera further follows the sound, through the recording studio, with

Bud Hamilton and Opel; backstage at Oprey Land to Winifred and

Connie White; over the radio to Sueleen's apartment, and Barbara Jean’s hospital room. In some scenes songs serve as sound advances to the source of the song. Singing is heard in the recording studio, before

Haven Hamilton is introduced; outside Davis Den before the singers are identified; on Martha’s record before Kenny looks toward her room; and on Tom’s tape recorder before a slow pan to Tom in bed. Cuts between master scenes are most often straight cuts of picture and sound, frequently introduced by the preceding scene's dialogue. Thus

Haven Hamilton's remark to Frog, "You don’t belong in Nashville." leads into the sign, "Welcome to Nashville." "Oh! The girls in their costumes!" is followed by girls in costumes; "Here they come!" by the arrival of Barbara Jean's plane; "You kids get better every year!" by the twirlers. "Tom's a registered Democrat and he wouldn't do it." takes us from Bill and Mary's room to Tom's tape recorder playing in

Tom's room, with a slow pan to Tom and Opel in bed. Opel's "yellow, yellow, yellow fever" precedes the cut to the yellow phone in the hospital. Haven Hamilton’s "Sing. Sing. Someone sing!" leads directly into vVinifred singing "It Don't Worry Me." Similar semi- simultaneous sounds serve as bridges between otherwise unconnected scenes. Thus applause links Tom, Bill and Mary's performance with

Sueleen’s; a fragment of dialogue connects Linea's "still don't know how it will come out, " with Haven's I don't know..."; and Mr. Green's grief-filled sobs combine and contrast with Opel’s and Tiplet's empty laughing. Telephone bridges connect Tiplet at Linea's and Gilbert's home, with Davis Den where Sueleen is auditioning; Tom, with Linea,

Gilbert and their deaf children; Kenny with his neurotic, over-bearing mother. Tiplet's dinner conversation with Gilbert is an additional sound bridge which becomes progressively louder as Linea leaves the kitchen where she had been talking to Tom on the telephone, and 83 walks toward the dining room. Finally the political sound truck is a noisy sound bridge linking various areas of the city. It drives up and down the streets, around the airport, under Barbara Jean’s hospital window, and to the park, bridging people and locations as it passes.

Altman's integration of sound distance and camera distance and his use of sound effects and sound absences are spiral, expansive forces. For each close up picture, Altman provides close up sound: music, dialogue and effects. Thus as the camera moves in on the church choir singing "Amazing Grace" to a close up of him, Haven

Hamilton's voice becomes more prominant. So too do the Black man's singing and burping become more audible as the camera moves in on

Linea and him during Tom, Bill and Mary's performance. The re­ lationship of visual and audio is especially effective during the last song in the park, when both sound and picture alternate between close ups of Winifred, Gospel Singers, and the crowd. As the camera pulls back and up, the sound becomes more and more distant. By skillful mixing, Altman builds the "coctail party effect" into his simultaneous dialogue tracks. At the airport lunch-counter, Oprey

Land, King of the Road, and outside the River boat, multiple conversations add realism and quicken the pace of the film without sacrificing intelligibility. Although confusion seems to reign in both sound and picture, we actually hear everything Altman wants us to hear, and we become increasingly engrossed in the film, while 84 straining to hear more.

Altman is very sparing and skillful in his use of sound effects

and sound absences. During the opening sequence, one horn faintly

honking leads into distant drumming. A close up of Barbara Jean's

airplane is accompanied by close up sound; a medium shot of Bud Hamilton by medium sound; and a close up of Winifred getting out of

a parked car, by close up sound of a car door creaking open and being

slammed shut. At the airport lunch counter, realism is heightened by close up sound effects of a cup rattling and coins spinning. So too,

the close up effects in Tom's room: Linea replacing a candle on the nite table, picking up her watch and jewelry, rustling the covers, running the water, and closing the door, add to the sense of virtual presence. Altman is even more selective with sound absences than with sound effects. There are so many songs at performance volume, and so much noise from the incessant political sound truck, screach- ingly-loud race cars sequence, and surface confusion of the multiple dialogue tracks, that the absence of sound, even for a very short time, is most dramatic. Sound absences are effective in Linea's scenes at home: lovingly singing with her deaf children, calling to her husband, listening to Tom as he sets a rendez-vous for the evening. The moment of silence after "Mrs. Green died this morning" is as dramatic as it is brief. Silence also serves to increase tension as

Barnett turns the radio off, speaks to Barbara Jean, and leaves for 85 King of the Road; and later as the soldier stealthily enters the hospital room. Since, as Brelet notes, "it is in their absence that objects and beings realize in us their spiritual essence, and it is in that absence

•of itself which is silence that music achieves fulfillment, 20 it is also in their absence that sounds achieve fulfillment, and, in the absence of sound, in film, that silence achieves significance. Thus

"silences are of one substance with the music; for the reality of sounds emanates precisely from the powers of silence, and the power of silence emanates precisely from the reality of sounds.

Altman’s use of sound absences heightens his vast use of sound-- musical sound, dialogue sound, effects sound--sound bridged, advanced, distanced, montaged, juxtaposed--Sound that fulfills both vertical and spiral functions in the "progression of unified metamorphoses"^ that is the form of the film. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life--not • necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-- and indeed from the very mood. ^ 86 NOTES

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological angle, quoted in Christian Metz, Film Language, A Semiotics of the Cinema, trans. Michael Taylor, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1074), p. 43.

2 Victor Perkins, Film as Film, Understanding and Judging * Movies, (London: Cox, Wyman L td., 1976, Penguin Books L td.), p. 190. 3 Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 177.

4Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), p. 128.

5 Ibid., p. 134.

^Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 394. 7 Langer, Problems, p. 16.

8 Ibid., p. 52. 9 Gunther Muller, "Morphological Poetics,” Reflections on Art, ed. Susanne Langer, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 208.

10Tu Ibid., P- 214. UIbid., P- 215.

l2 Ibid., P. 97.

13Ibid., P- 218.

14Ibid., P- 225.

15Ibid., PP. 218-9. ^Bertrand Russell, York: Simon and Schuster, A Touchstone Book, 1945), pp. 830-1. 87 17 Erwin Panofsky, "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, " ed. Daniel Talbot, Film: An Anthology, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 21.

18Christian Metz, "Christian Metz on Jean Mitry's L'Esthetique et Psychologie du Cinema, Vol. 11, " Screen, vol. 14, nos. 1-2, p. 51.

1 9Ibid., p. 55. 20 Gisele Brelet, "Music and Silence, " ed. Susanne K. Langer, Reflections on Art, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 121. 21 Ibid., p. 105. 22 Muller, "Morphological Poetics, " p. 225.

0 3 Robert Frost, "The Figure A Poem Makes, " ed. Cox and Latham, Selected Prose, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 19. »

CHAPTER IV

THE CRITIQUE OF THE FORM

A work of art lives on its form, not on its material. The essential grace it emanates springs from its structure, from its organism. *

Ultimately the greatest source of emotional power in art lies not in any particular subj ect matter, however passionate, however universal. It lies in form.

Thus, the emotional power of Last Tango in Paris lies not in the sensuousness of the subject matter but in the sensuousness of the form. The truly erotic elements are the combination of composition, sound, color and shot distribution within the progression of unified metamorphoses that is the form of the film, not the sexual activities of Jeanne and Paul. In like manner, the movement of color, sound and motion within and between the metamorphoses in Coming

Home, not the comment on the physical and emotional destruction of the Vietnam War; the color coordinated metamorphoses of An

Unmarried Woman rather than the positive image of women; and the progression of light and dark, sound and silence, within and between the metamorphoses of F .I.S .T ., not the story of organized labor provide the emotional power as it is the unawareness of the form of

Coming Home, not is untimeliness, the unawareness of the form of

88 89

An Unmarried Woman, not its "woman's film" status, and the unaware­ ness of the form of F .I.S .T ., not its incomplete history of the labor movement that account for a lack of emotional power on unaware spectators and critics. As Ortega has noted, "not many people are able to adj ust their perceptive apparatus to the pane and the transparency that is the work of art. Instead they look right through it and revel in o the human reality with which the work deals." Thus Haskell writes of Ashby's omissions in Coming Home: "Even in 1968, Vietnam was as much catalyst as crucible. There were many different currents of anger and confusion and hostility which Coming Home either fails to acknowledge or sweeps under the rug of well meaning compassion;"^

Canby of Mazur sky's An Unmarried Woman:

He glosses over crucial details. His characters here would seem to be Jewish in their backgrounds, though the people we see have no connections to any special culture, which could well be one of the factors that lead to their problems. Erica and Martin and their friends have liberated them­ selves onto limbo, but this is never acknowledged;5

Kael of its plot:

when the movie provides Erica with a robust, worshipful man with good instincts (and he's even got money), and she hestiates and demurs and worries about her develop­ ment, we lose interest in her. ° And Sarris of a line in F.I. S.T.:

At one point in F .I.S .T . Stallone’s Johnny Kovak pooh-poohs the presence of reds in his local. In the expression of this attitude he invokes the somewhat devious common-man innocence of Henry Fonda's Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath: Reds? I haven't 90 seen any reds around here. Why are people worrying about reds when the real enemies are the bosses? Stallone renders this sentiment very briefly and sotto voce, and the subject is dropped. This, in a way, is symptomatic of what is wrong with F.I.S .T ., and with a great many other ambitious undertakings in today's word-wary film industry.

Although these are all critical statements, Haskell, Canby, Kael and

Sarris are not really writing as critics in Shorer’s sense of the term--

"It is only when we speak of the achieved content, the form, the work Q of art as a work of art, that we speak as critics.'

American "critics" speak of the film, as artifact, rather than art, as plot rather than form, and as mirror, rather than lamp.

Haskell writes of "the complex nature of films as part current events, o part artifacts, and here and there, in bits and pieces—works of art."

Yet, when the bits and pieces appear, as they do in F.I. S.T., she complains about the "greater visual sophistication, ” and the fact that:

the excitement and violence of the strike itself recedes before the awe we feel at the exquisite compositions of the visual effects--the close-ups of lean faces and heavy feet and the scenes that have preceded them: a lonely ware­ house by night with distant figures in silhouette; the interior of a union hall, light suffusing the faces of honest but suspicious workers; a bleak truckstop gas station right out of Edward Hopper, with two lustrous scarlet gas pumps. The images of those pumps are, in fact, more vivid than the supporting actors— Conway and David Huffman as Johnny’s idealistic buddy, Abe Belkin--who have a hard time emerging from the shadows of a visual scheme that keeps seeing them as configurations of light and dark rather than flesh-and-blood characters.

And in reviewing The Duellists, she complains that Scott • 91 O.D. ’s on the cinematic luxuries of landscapes and period details, but as often happens in such cases--the effect is precisely the reverse of what is intended: The laborious attention to period authenticity, instead of completing the illusion, only calls our attention to the film’s flaws and inconsistencies, the major faux pas being the casting of Caradine and Keitel in the leading roles, 1* as if the casting would not have been a problem with less lush visuals, and as if she knew "what is intended," On this latter point, film critics could profit from adopting the assumption of the formalist critic--

"that the relevant part of the author’s intention is what he actually got into his work, i.e. the author’s intention as realized is the 'intention' that counts, " as well as an ideal reader.. a central point of reference from which he can focus on the structure.

Without an "ideal reader, " or in the case of film, an "ideal viewer, " the critic lacks a "central point of focus, " a definite sense of audience. Writing in the mass media, for newspapers and periodicals with mass circulation--The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, New York, National Review, The Saturday

Review, and The New Republic, as opposed to scholarly j ournals with small readerships, about a mass medium, rather than the relatively esoteric arts of painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature and drama, the film critic vitally needs "an ideal viewer." Such an assumption is more realistic than the assumption of a mass audience, for only a very small proportion of the movie-going public reads the above newspapers and periodicals, and only a small proportion of 92 the readers actually read the film criticism/reviews. Film is a mass medium, with a mass audience. Parker Tyler thinks criticism should begin by "assuming that the myth of the movies as a mass art is a false one, and recognize it rather as a quite esoteric art whose latent creative powers—as distinct from ’cinemascope'

IQ window-dressing-are imperfectly understood even by the select few." ^

That they are "imperfectly understood by the select few" is obvious from reading what is commonly referred to as "film criticism." That they are incapable of being understood by the mass audience of moviegoers" is ridiculous. As Bruner has noted, anyone anyone can learn anything, at any time, if it is properly presented. ^

However, as Sontag so succinctly stated, "art is seduction, not rape;" thus it cannot seduce without the complicity of the experiencing subject."^ Criticism can provide the understanding and the complicity. It can fulfill D. W. Griffith’s "above all, I want to make you see." But to make others see, the critic must be able to see, and must take the time to see. Film, particularly the new film, is too rich an art to be appreciated in one viewing. It must be seen and re-seen; experienced and re-experienced. Only through repeated viewings will its directive and expansive forces become evident, and its metamorphoses apparent.

None of the "critics" experienced Ashby’s use of sixties songs as elements of the metamorphoses in Coming Home—"preserve 93 your memories, they’re all that’s left you know" over Sally packing

Bob's suitcase for Vietnam; "the sympathy and the pain," over Luke wheeling himself out of his apartment to go to Billy; "It’s all right, that is I think it's not too bad" over Sally receiving Bob’s letter; "Well, baby when times are bad," over Sally and Luke on the beach, upset over the thought of Bob's return; "Now the time has come; No place to run" over Bob walking away from Luke; (in addition to the many examples mentioned in Chapter III). Every line of every lyric relates directly to the diegesis, as does every visual—even the bumper sticker "Make Love" on the back of Doug's spinning wheelchair as

Sally and Luke return to the hospital after Luke tells her, "I spend

95% of my time in the hospital thinking of making love to you." Kael wrote that the script

is a mixture of undeveloped themes, and is so thinly textured that Ashby has filled in the dead spaces by throwing a blanket of rock songs over everything. (It's disconcerting to hear words like "strawberry fields forever" when you're trying to listen to what people are saying to each other.) The music isn’t used for a strong beat or for excitement, it's more like a deliberate distraction, as if Ashby had got bored with the movie and wanted to hear what was going on in the next room." And Sarris,

The soundtrack blares forth with the standard repertory of. the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, et al. The effect is to reduce the moaning of one era into the Muzak of another!?

And the effect of Kael’s and Sarris's columns is to reduce their readers' 94 viewing of Coming Home to the awareness of their own.

One would think that as "critics" they would be aware of

Parker's discussion of organic unity—that each element in a work of art is necessary to its value, and conversely that a work of art contains no elements that are not necessary. Thus the critic need not go beyond the work to seek something to complete it, ^ nor may he/she overlook elements within it. "In art, everything counts. Everything plays a role in relation to everything e l s e . "*9 The elucidation of the inter­ relatedness is the function of the critic, for critical analysis, as

Beardsley had defined it, is "the minute examination of the part of the work and their relationships with one another."^ As Bell has stated, "it is useless for a critic to tell me something is a work of art; he must make me feel it for myself. This he can do only by making me see; he must get at my emotions through my eyes." 21

Do our critics make us see? Do they get at our emotions through our eyes? Are they in fact critics? Or are they reviewers, consumer advocates, whose function is not to enrich the reviewer's filmic exper­ ience, but to predict his/her reaction to the film. Whereas the critic is concerned with film as a work of art, the reviewer focuses on its peripheral values. What is the focus of our critics/reviewers?

John Simon considers Stanley Kauffman and himself film critics; Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris and Penelope Gilliatt movie critics; and Vincent Canby an auteurish reviewer. Simon's film 95 critics regard film as art and have had extensive experience writing on the other arts, as opposed to his movie critics who tend to be buffs and who concentrate on the feel of the film, its immediate impact and its relation to the temper of the times. Their dedication, zeal and film scholarship separate them from reviewers and journalists such as

Judith Crist (Simon's example).22 Their enthusiasm for Godard and his cinematic following further separate them from the film critics.

Indeed, the "Godard line" 23 may be the only dividing line between

Simon's film critics and movie critics, if it is a dividing line at all.

Using Abram's four coordinates of art criticism--Audience, Universe,

A rtist and Work—for film critics/review ers, Kauffmann, Youngblood,

Crist and Kael focus on the audience, Schlesinger on the universe, and Simon, Sarris, Haskell, Gilliat and Canby on the work-with maj or and minor variations. Let us consider each of them in turn.

Kauffmann’s chief criteria are "the aim of the work and the quality of execution."24 He believes that "distinction among films arise from the way they please or displease us with ourselves: not whether they please or displease us, but how." Thus he finds

Julia "irresistible, but not really good.. .its lushness...keeps us safe from anything like tragedy;"^dismisses Bobby Deerfield,

"racing car drivers are not interesting; they should be doing something difficult like driving a school bus;"27 ' and Last Year at Marienbad,

"Resnais obviously thinks a film should not mean, but see... (his) efforts lead only to a duplication of experience, whereas Antonioni’s efforts result in illumination. After Marienbad I knew more about

Resnais and Resnais' search for reality, after La Notte and L’

Avventura I knew more about myself. Kauffmann praised Close

Encounters of the Third Kind because it "makes one feel good, panned The Turning Point because of the "stupidity of the fundamental question; for how many people is it a question?"30 Thus he espouses utilitarianism as well as pragmatism. For Kauffmann, a film should mean, not see, and it should mean for the greatest possible number.

For Youngblood it should not "mean" too often: "How many times must we acknowledge the human condition before it becomes redundant?" ^

Hence he tends to lump all non-synaesthetic films together as entropic, genre entertainment, and praises negentropic, psychedelic films, for, he maintains "it is the artist's idea and not his technical ability in manipulating media that is important." For Youngblood, the film should mean psychedelically, not see expertly. For Crist, it should mean--Fraternity Row has something of importance to say to the

'70s, and A Bridge Too Far is an ultimate comment on the paradoxical mindlessness of warfare and the courage of men trapped

O j in it. Crist describes herself as "a teacher and preacher at heart," movies as neither art nor art form; "they have increasingly less form oc and only on rare occasions even a inkling of art, and criticism Oft as "too pretentious a word in the face of... audience fodder." 97

Kael doesn't care if a film means or sees, as long as it feels.

Thus she praises Last Tarigo in Paris, "It is a movie you can’t get out 0 7 of your system.. .you can't resolve your feelings about it"; Nashville "It’s a pure emotional high, and you don't come down when the picture is over, you take it with you";^ Saturday Night Fever, "you feel good watching this picture, even if it doesn't hold in the mind afterward the

OQ way it would if the story had been defined, 7 and American Hot Wax,

"everything except the pious morality-tale aspect of it is cheerfully, 40 trashily enjoyable." Audience enjoyment is her prerequisite for art—"if a movie is said to be a work of art and you don't enjoy it, , 41 the fault may be with you, but it s probably with the movie. Thus she pans Last Year at Marienbad and praises trash, for "trash has given us an appetite for art. "^2 But Kael enj oys trash in and for itself and whole-heartedly condones its shortcomings--"the visual poetry of

The Fury is so strong that its narrative and verbal inadequacies _do not matter" (Kael's italics). ^ Yet she writes of Julia, "the script fails to draw you in.. .perfectionism has become its own self-defeating end";^ of One Sings the Other Doesn't, "Varda’s lyricism is trivializing";^ of Equus, "There's all this acting, these immaculate, orotund performances";^ and of Coming Home, "it’s so sloppily m ade."^

Although she praises De Palma's visual style in The Fury, "smooth­ ness combined with jazzy willingness to appear crazy or camp," his "pans around rooms and landscapes to give us more to look at and 98 to keep up our expectations," she most often omits any mention of visuals, or else dismisses them with a put-down—"Julia is perfectly lit."4** Kael justifies her neglect of visuals with the claim that

"Hollywood movies usually have the look of the studio that produced them, " and of technique, "American movie technique is generally more like technology and usually isn't very interesting."4^ It is not interesting to Kael because she does not see it an integral part of the moving picture, because she does not see. Thus Macdonald wrote of her "ascetic insensibility to the sensual pleasure of cinema, and

Sarris that "her bias is inescapably literary rather than visual.

Her literary bias prevents her visual comprehension of cinematic editing as evidenced in her comments on Coming Home:

A former editor, Ashby is generally referred to as a meticulous craftsman; he took more than four months to shoot "Coming Home" and then eight months to supervise the cutting. Can it be that it's so sloppily made because he took so long over it? ... the cutting is often like a door slamming in our faces, and, without any dramatic pre­ paration there's bam-pow crosscutting between simultaneous events One’s time sense is violated; movie crosscutting was more highly developed than this in D. W. Griffith’s day .... Ashby has no ending-just a lot of cutting back and forth . 5 2

As noted in Chapter III, Ashby linked simultaneous scenes with oppos­ ing movement, Sally, Bob and Dink walking from right to left along the Hong Kong waterfront and Luke wheeling himself from left to right in the supermarket; similar movement, Vi going from left background to right foreground to take a shower and Luke also going from left back­ ground to right foreground to put the chain in his car; sound bridges, 99 Bruce’s "maybe we should have turned on the television" with Luke on the parking attendant’s television; Bob’s unbuttoning the jacket of his uniform with Luke’s statement to the high school students, "You guys are going to look at the uniform.. . and the song "Remember Me" over Bob on the beach, Sally and Vi in the car, and Bob swimming and

Sally and Vi going into the supermarket. What more of an ending could there be than Bob's suicide?

Schlesinger too finds Ashby's crosscutting heavy, and sound track intrusive, but salutes Jane Fonda "for insisting that it be made, " for

Coming Home "recalls however imperfectly, the horrid waste and destructiveness of the most shameful war in American history, the worst year of our lives.Focusing on the universe, Schlesinger regards film as "a duplicitous art" which "plays avidly upon the dreams and illusions of a nation, a society, a world. Hence he praises The Duellists for its historical background and faithfulness cc to the text. An Unmarried Woman as "an entertaining annotation to the mores of our days";^ Pretty Baby as a successful French movie, not a successful American movie due to its French theme

S7 and French stereotypes; 7 pans Another Man, Another Chance CO because "the camera work is exquisite but that is about all"; and discusses Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a reality image:

Close Encounters says, "How wonderful." Spielberg has no doubt that the visitors from space will be benign. The little boy, snatched up as the spaceship hovers over 100 Indiana, returns intact and happy. But how can we be so sure that a civilization sufficiently in advance of our own to put its spaceship on earth will regard us with any more consideration than white intruders from Europe regarded the Indians of the American continent, the blacks of Africa, or the primitive peoples of the South Pacific? Professor Zdenek Kopal of the University of Manchester has warned: "The chances that we could come across another civilization in the Universe at approximately the same level of development--and with which we could effect some kind of intel­ lectual understanding—are... vanishingly small." This being so, what gain could we expect from contact with civilizations millions of years ahead of our own? The risks entailed in such an encounter would vastly exceed any possible interest—let alone benefit; and could easily prove fatal." Therefore, should we ever hear that ’space-phone’ ringing.. .for God’s sake let us not answer; but rather make ourselves as inconspicuous as we can to avoid attracting attention. This is not Steven Spielberg’s vision. Let us pray that the future dreamed of in this humane, attractive, brilliant movie turns out to be right. ^9

For Schlesinger a film should be-a mirror.

For Simon it should be, according to his ideal model. Thus he defines the critic as a teacher, artist and thinker, who has a

"concept or intimation of what the ideal solution to an artistic problem would be, and the dogged insistence on measuring every performance against the envisioned model. Thus he admonishes would-be critics to "never abandon that image of perfection at the back of your head, on which the film, superimposed, must fit like identical triangles, " for the critic is the conscience of the art form, and his/ her first and last responsibility is "to raise the standard of motion pictures.Until recently the thrust of Simon's campaign has been the physical appearance of actresses. Thus his problems with 101 Midnight Cowboy, "with the exception of Sandy Dennis, there is no more irritatingly unfeminint actress around these days than Miss

Vaccaro, a cube-shaped creature who comes across as dikey as a

Kewpie doll”; and Teorema, "the daughter played by Anne Wazemsky, in private life Mme. Godard, is possessed of the face of a horse, teeth of a rabbit and the expression of an amoeba. However, in

Coming Home he mentions the "perfectly splendid performances of

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight," 64 in Turning Point, Baryshnikov is

"almost more spell-binding than on the stage, and in An Unmarried

Woman, "wonderful performances pop up all over the movie.

So too do visual examples pop up all over Simon’s column in National

Review: Turning Point is "lighted and shot so that the dancers never get lost, in the ice skating scene in An Unmarried Woman "the camera comes in tight on her for what seems like an unconsciously long time as Erica has her first sense of being blessed by freedom, and in F.I. S.T. there is "one imaginatively directed and strikingly photographed sequence (by Lazio Kovacs) in which bargaining for an 69 8 .5 percent wage increase is made visually exciting." Although he is completely unaware of the visuals in Pretty Baby, "Malle apparently does not know what he is doing, beyond wishing to express his fascination with a child born into and coming of age in a whorehouse; and with New Orleans' jazz";^ he concentrates on the visuals in his review of The Lacemaker, "the camera tracking and panning shows the 102 shop's activities"; "camera placement and editing separately conveying

Pomme's quiet bewilderment"; the "collapse at the street crossing, filmed in long shot, distance making it more inexorable, awful"; the colors are pale yellow and blue-grey: cold"; and "the medium long shot of her putting sea-shell on soldier's grave, scrupulously laconic, "... "makes 'masterpiece' a clean word again. 71 and Simon's column clean rather than caustic.

Sarris' problem with The Lacemaker is that "no one ever knows if Goretta is looking at his characters from the inside or the

70 outside." Without knowing the point of view, Sarris cannot appreciate the images. Nor can he appreciate them when he knows the point of view--thus he complains of the "painterly quality of the pictures" in Pretty Baby, describing it as a "pictorial essay of sparce dialogue and pregnant silences;"7 3 of the "series of paintings unfurled in time" in Red Desert, stating that "even the plot is a function of the color"and of "contemporary cinema being abandoned to its cinematography" in Cat and Mouse, feeling that it

"almost qualifies as the next best thing to Paris in the Spring.

"Pure cinema," for Sarris "is the scene in The Birds of the heroine in a boat and the hero in a car racing to intercept her at the other side of the bay." Thus, in reviewing The Birds he states that

"Hitchcock is at the summit of his artistic powers. His is the only contemporary style which unites the divergent classical traditions of 103 n f\ Murnau (camera movement) and Eisenstein (montage)." (Is such a union the essence of pure cinema?) Oblivious of Beardsley's third criterion of a work of art, the intensity of regional quality (the other 77 two are unity and complexity), 7 Sarris faults Saturday Night Fever for the "mumbo-dumbo" pronunication of the "two verbal defectives"^ and complains about the ethnicity of Grease. 7 9 He writes of A Woman of Paris, "Chaplin was an actor who took infinite pains with each shot and each take"; and of An Unmarried Woman, "the lyrical dimension is wonderfully controlled and modulated," but he does not give any examples to help his audience see. Even in defending The Greek

Tycoon he does not go beyond the content of the images to Thompson’s kaliedescopic studies in blue and white.

Some critics have complained that the characters lack depth, and the dialogue distinction. They are right on both counts. But it would seem on this occasion at least that one must look at The Greek Tycoon for signs rather than substance. We all know the story, or at least much of it. There is no need to dwell on it when there is so much of the deep blue sea to contemplate from the deck of a yacht, from a helicopter, from a private island. And when and how are you going to spend your vacation?^

Although defining the term "auteur" as a "unique cinematic category halfway between the artist (the visual surface) and the author (the narrative structure),"81 Sarris focuses almost exclusively on the narrative aspect, occasionally mentioning the content of the visuals as a function of the plot, but always discussing the plot. The film stands or falls on its plot. Pretty Baby falls, "Some people may even 104 find the painterly quality of the picture stirring in its own right. I can only record my own boredom and thereby rest my c a s e " ;**2 as do

Peckinpah's films:

... looking back from the vantage point of Convoy, one might say that every Peckinpah movie is too long. Never do any­ thing only once if you can do it 10 times more, and if you like how it looks, do it in slow motion.

From Major Dundee on I never felt that Peckinpah was an artist with a compulsion to tell stories but rather than artist for whom stories were merely a pretext for the creation of images. Hence, the excessive use of slow motion tends to delay the narrative, as if Peckinpah would never be really content until he could stop the motion altogether, so his composition could be frozen with all its beauty intact, forever secure from the narrative’s process of decomposition Even his Russian-montage mannerisms advance the dramatic action less often than they restate it.°^

For Sarris a film should not see, but tell. And it should tell audibly.

Hence his comments on F.I.S .T .:

Everyone seems to be afraid of language. It is partly the dregs of Method Acting, a discipline that encourages emotional excavations under the lines to find an actor’s truth rather than a writer’s truth. It is partly the abandonment of modern cinema to modish cinematography. Now that the stars are taking over what is left of high-budget filmmaking there is a tendency to prune even more dialogue out of scripts so as to leave room for pregnant silences and I’m- not -giving-y ou- any -bullshit expr e s sions.

Hence, I cannot single out Norman Jewison, Joe Esterhas, and Sylvester Stallone for being faithful to the spirit of their age in not developing the nuances and complexities of their admirable subject. There are moments in the saga of Johnny Kovak's rise and fall reminiscent of such classics of disenchantment as Power and the Glory, Citizen Kane, All the King’s Men, and Fame is the Spur. Stallone has carted the ethnic sentimentality of Rocky to the barricades, but he has not marked the occasion with any eloquence. 105 Johnny Kovak's relationship with his adopted kid brother, Abe Belkin (David Huffman) bears more than a passing resemblance to the Kane-Welles relationship to Leland-Cotten. Leland, however, is given much more time to develop his role as Kane's conscience than Belkin is given to express himself vis-a-vis Kovak. Curiously, F.I.S.T. is a longer movie than Kane, but it seems skimpy and sketchy in the extreme. As Kane leaned on the real- life legend of Hearst, F.I. S.T. leans on the real-life legend of Hof fa. People will say that it is ridiculous to compare Welles and Jewison, and I certainly do not want to carry the comparison too far. Nonetheless, I would suggest that Kane owes much of its reputation to the rhetoric, trickery, and illusionism it inherited from '30s Hollywood studio cinema. By the same token, F.I.S.T. suffers somewhat ■ from the flabby literalism of location shooting in the ’70s, and from structural deficiencies in the scenario that never integrates the private and public lives of its characters.

So too does Haskell find "almost any forties film on the late show (not to mention the mouth-watering revivals)... superior technically, structurally, and in its sexual sophistication to its modern counterpart";85 and criticizes Julia and Bobby Deerfield for their pregnant silences, "Love means never having to say a word."

With Kael, Haskell declares that "DePalma's films are rich in the surface delights that are a large part of what movies are all about, 87 and with Sarris complains that Goretta "so refined his technique that

The Lacemaker, like its heroine is more of an 'object d'art* than a 88 dramatic creation, " and that Ritt made "a major mistake" filming the race in Casey's Shadow, "slow motion aborts suspense and turns the event into an aesthetic ritual."89 Likewise she is less than enthusiastic over the visuals in The Last Waltz, 106 The sound recording, for which a 24-track system was used, is excellent, but even more exceptional are the visual effects wrought by Scorsese's illustrious corps of cinematographers: Michael Chapman, Scorsese's gifted regular, and no less than Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs heading up a team of six additional directors of photography.

Here, too, I wonder whether the rich, vibrant colors, the elegant lighting, and classically smooth movements possible with the new camera aren't somehow at variance with the ragged, sweaty immediacy of the rock concert. The best scenes are not the ones in which the most interesting or complex music is heard but th^se which provide a perfect mating of visual and audio.

Are not the best scenes always the ones which provide a perfect mating of visual and audio?

Like Sarris, Haskell focuses on the work, as the work of a director. However she occasionally goes beyond auteurism to the artist's intention, as in the review of The Duellists (quoted above),

The Turning Point, "the tension between mother and daughter, and the clash between Darwinian process of survival and emotional poetic license of fiction, belie the film's seriousness as a dance film"; 91

Heroes and Rolling Thunder, "if the evidence on the seven o'clock Op nightly news couldn t drive us out of Vietnam, no mere film would."

On the other hand, Looking for Mr. Goodbar is an "important film for media gurus who propound the glories of swinging singlehood and sex on demand--.. .never has the gap between the rhetoric, the exhortations to 'control over bodies' and the out of control reality been drawn more clearly, as is Annie Hall for exposing the 107 "current myth of sexual liberation and come-easy couplings, 94 and

Pretty Baby is "closer to anthropology than to art... The infinite tolerance with which Malle regards this luscious Eden is finally as life-denying as the most rigid m oralism ."^ Thus, for Haskell, a film may tell, or mean, but it should not see.

For Gilliatt a film should tell, but it must be careful about what it tells.

Our memories, and the pains of patient historians and investigative reporters, are worth a great deal. We don*t welcome something that amounts to a Louella Parsons paragraph about a marriage in which an exceptionally rich man writes out a contract for his young wife to spend ten nights a month with him for a whacking great sum. The times so poorly chronicled, with so many gossip reporters' mistakes and cheap guesses, belonged properly not to any "Greek tycoon" but to the Kennedys. It is quite an insult to the world public to suppose that we are more interested in a tycoon than in the record and in the sufferings of a forthright political family. 9°

And it is quite an insult to The New Yorker readers to suppose that they are more interested in weekly plot expositions, than film criticism; that they prefer the heresy of paraphrase to an analysis of motion pictures. And it is an insult to The New York Times readers to be subjected to transcripts of Vincent Canby interviewing himself. But then, according to Simon, Canby and Crist are only reviewers, although Canby is an "auteurish reviewer" to Crist's

"journalist."^ Frequently Canby focuses on the film as a point of departure for a socio-economic column on the movies—The Van,

"Why it Pays to Pay Attention to Junk M ovies," New York, New York, 108 "The Accountant Theory of Filmmaking--You're As Good As Your

Last Picture, Sam," Smoky the Bandit, "Why Its Making a Killing,"

Close Encounter of the Third Kind, "Somebody Must Put a Lid on

Budgets, " Handle with Care, "How Can Such a Good Film Flop, "

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Turning Point, "Rediscover­ ing the Secrets that Made Hollywood Corn Grow," and An Unmarried

Woman, "Who Keeps House in Those Women's Films?" Like Gilliatt, Canby is appalled by the subject of the Greek Tycoon, " Though it's only 106 minutes long, it's a numbing experience, like being forced to read the collected works of Louella Parsons."^ But unlike Gilliatt,

Canby can see, and can communicate his sight. Hence, his column on Woody Allen as the American Ingmar Bergman,

if you think his films are too verbal, you aren't looking at them. They have a disciplined simplicity that is in the style of a Bergman or a Bunuel. No irrelevant cam era movements. Everything is in the service of the screenplay. Nothing interferes, which is why 'Annie Hall' is so effective— both hilarious and moving."

... As Bergman has a way of transforming Liv Ullmann into one of the world's great beauties, so does Woody have a way of permitting us to share his appreciation of Keaton’s beauty, talent, intelligence and wit, as well as her idiosyncracies. There's a scene in 'Annie Hall’—the one in the nightclub in which Woody allows Diane Keaton to sing 'It Seems Like Old Times' from start to finish, with­ out a cut—that is comparable to the great monologues that Bergman has given Ullmann, and, to go further back, comparable to Chaplin's treatment of Paulette Goddard in 'Modern Times' and 'The Great D ictator."'^

And on "The New Disconcerting Movie" that does not disconcert Canby. 109 "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick” is a stunningly straightforward story of a man cutting himself loose from his society, going over the edge into lunacy the way the rest of us take off on a summer vacation. Methodically. Wenders uses no tricks. We recognize the world in which his hero travels. It is so ordinary that for about the first third of the movie we wonder what is up, at which point we begin to notice that although we recognize the world of the goalie, it's not all that ordinary. Everything is a bit too precise. We are aware of noises we wouldn't usually hear. At times the landscape seems uninhabited, then suddenly full of menacing strangers. There are portents of disaster everywhere, sometimes in the hysterical way children play when they're excited.

The manner in which Wenders draws us into the goalie’s mind (without one subjective camera movement) is so re­ markable that the film rivets us, though to this day, I'm not sure why or what it all means. It's too easy to call it a study in alienation. The film and the responses it prompts are more mysterious than that.

... New Movies are neither better nor worse than Old. They are different. They ask us to look at the screen with skepticism instead of expecting to be lulled into euphoria or having our prejudices (good and bad) reaffirm ed. Sometimes New Movies aren't worth the effort. Sometimes, though, as in films like "Mother Kusters" or Terrence Malick's "Badlands” or Woody Allen's "Bananas," the experience is to remind us that movies have only scratched the surface of their possibiEties. ^

So too does Canby's analysis remind us that his columns have only scratched the surface of his possibiEties, and our analysis of the above critics/reviewers, that American film "criticism" has only scratched the surface of its possibiEties.

Simon's distinction between film critics and movie critics is a distinction without a difference, for film is a progression of 110 moving pictures in unified metamorphoses. The basic filmic abstractions of movement and images are evident in the popular terms

"motion pictures, " "moving pictures, " "movies;" and conspicuous by their absence in Simon’s film/movie critics' columns. Only

" auteurist-reviewer" Canby communicates a sense of film as moving images, and is free of major problems in his all-too occasional columns of film criticism. In using their feelings as criteria in criticizing films, Kauffmann*s and Kael's criticism lack "relevant critical reasons." For as Beardsley has noted, "in order to be relevant, reasons must be statements about the work itself."^

Crist's and Haskell's message--hunting is also irrelevant, for as

Langer has stated,

Since the art symbol is not a discourse, the word 'message* is misleading. A message has something communicated. A work of art, in all semantic structures, cannot be said to effect a communication between its maker and his fellows... The artist is not saying anything, he is showing. ^ 2

To focus on his ideas, as Youngblood does, on his plot, as Gilliatt does and on the outside world as Schlessinger does and ignore his showing, his technique, what Schorer defines as "the difference between content or experience, and achieved content, or art, " is anti-art, for "when we speak of technique, then, we speak of nearly everything.Thus Sontag's declaration that "the best criticism dissolves considerations of content into those of form. It also dissolves the critic's idea of perfection into the artist's. Simon will I l l only be able to raise the standard of the motion picture and give the artist an answer, if he abandons the idea in the back of his head and concentrates on the film in front of his eyes, for, as Langer has explained, in order to develop the filmmaker's power, criticism

"must be based on his partial success—that is the critic must see the commanding form of the disciple's work, because that is the measure of right and wrong in the work. The measure of right and wrong is not, as Sarris implies, the union of divergent traditions nor the execution of theoretical precepts. Such "are not criteria of excellence, they are explanations of it, or contrariwise of failure. As soon as they are generalized and used as measures of achievement, they become baneful." For, as Langer continues, "no theory can set up criteria of expressiveness (i.e., standards of beauty). If it could infi we could learn to make poetry, or paint pictures, by rule."

Frye defines theory, as "theoria, a withdrawn or detached vision of the means and end of action, which does not paralyze action, but makes it purposeful by enlightening its aims. 107 Purposeful criticism demands a detached critic (as opposed to one who measures every work against an envisioned model in the back of his head) with a vision of the means and end of the art he is involved with, and of the individual work's aims as evidenced in its form. Ashbery has a detached vision of the means and end of painting as virtual scene, and of the aims of the individual works he criticizes. His criticism is 112 purposeful. It communicates a sense of the artist’s achieved purpose, the creation of virtual scene, through the critic’s enlightened eyes:

Her (Jane Freilicher) Wetlands and Dunes is one of the treasures of the show—vibrant, glowing, its assortment of hummocks and tussocks lovingly differentiated with the care that only a truly ’’concerned” painter (in the post-ecological sense) can command. Another is the Maine-based painter Neil Welliver, whose Anonymous Freshet has everything but a name to keep it from anonymity: a sun-flecked glade is a re-created in purely painterly terms, so that not j ust the final image but the processes that resulted in it seem to reproduce nature.

... (Richard Estes) B_&_0, is one of the strongest pictures in the show. A medium-tacky street, one side plunged in shadow, the other sunlit, recedes toward some brick buildings which the catalog identifies as "the restored Head House Market and Square . . . designated a National Historical landmark." The title of the painting, however, comes from a bar sign in the middle distance. But the painting is unanecdotal even by this tight-lipped realist’s standards. Instead it dwells on the fresh spring light and dank shade falling over ordinary buildings, with a sparseness, accuracy, and austere gaiety that suggest Canaletto's vedute of London.

... In White Hourse Ruin--Morning, he (Philip Pearlstein) has imparted the juiciness and mystery of flesh to some Pueblo Indian ruins and the canyon wall beetling above them. Both here and in a companion piece, White House Ruin--Afternoon, he organizes and orchestrates details on a massive scale which will surprise those familiar only with his intimist figure paintings.

In like manner, Siegel communicates a sense of achieved purpose, the creation of virtual power/gesture through her enlightened -eyes as a dance critic. Thus she writes of the male dancers in

Balanchine's Kammermusik No. 2 "they reinforce the image of their own solidarity by forming a hands-linked mass, an asymmetrical moving sculpture that keeps changing shape as individuals take a 113 few steps through it without losing contact.11 ^ And of Sphinx, the virtual gesture is "Martha Graham's movement turned inside o u t."^

Steiner communicates Graham Greene’s creation of virtual memory in The Human Factor by quoting a few of Greene's lines:

"I once knew the approximate date of an invasion." "Normandy?" "No, no. Only the Azores." and commenting on them at the level of the word--"There is mastery in that "approximate."^ Maureen Howard also uses brief quotations and insightful comments to communicate Mary Gordon’s creation of virtual memory in Final Payments. "She cares about her diction, rhythms of a sentence and pacing of a paragraph; we are made to care about Isabel Moore’s arrested emotional development, her agony of guilt and pain--that is the genuine achievement of Final

Payments, 112 and of Howard's review.

Walter Kerr's "Stage View" is the genuine achievement of dramatic criticism. Kerr focuses on drama as virtual destiny, discusses the act as the basic dramatic abstraction, and is aware of the means, ends and aims of the individual works. As Nachman has commented "Walter Kerr is the critic's critic, the actor's critic, the reader's critic. He isn't quite perfect but he's getting there. He seems to have "gotten there" in his critical comments, based as they are on a theory of drama as virtual destiny, a detached focus on the work itself, and an ability to communicate his enlightened 114 vision on the level of the act (individual action). Thus he pans "Golda” it denies us any sense of forward movement, praises "Feedlot" for its illusion of virtual destiny, history coming--

The two remain caged for the balance of the evening. I shan't detail any further plot developments for you, lest I reduce Mr. Meyer's inventiveness to a mere dancing skeleton. Suffice it to say that the homosexual theme is developed in a new if ambiguous way, the matter of the boy's sister is briefly illuminated, other and rather startling twists and turns seem to suggest we are on our way to the Minotaur. Word by word, we believe; incident after incident holds our interest, 15 and "Da" for its suspense of form, its virtual destiny--

As the play moves like mist--and with bountiful humor-- through intricately dovetailed flashbacks, we are really tracking Da down, adding him up piece by piece, gradually putting together a salty, vagrant, violent, pitiful image that will in its sheer complexity become unforgettable. And we get it, like a thunderclap, in a powerful climax that blends a terrifying senility with Da’s deep self-assurance that he's led a lovely life, straight through. Suddenly all of the quirks of the man fuse in a dazzlingly complete and now irresistible, forever "alive” human being, and we are rewarded, at last deeply touched.

Seeing the play a second time, we know the whole man from the outset. Which means that we read his wholeness into every cantankerous impulse of a generous heart and a stubborn brain, see in each passing episode a Crotchet that belongs to an already known and loved pattern. Double the vision and you double the emotional response, that’s all.

Please understand that I'm not saying you have to see the piece twice. I'm just saying that you can. Either way, Barnard Hughes—florid, feckless, infuriating, eternally funny—is going to make the good ghost work for you. Mr. Hughes is masterly in the role of a lifetime, working skillfully as a watchmaker with every jewel in place— including himself. 115 K err's detachment is marvelous—of "A Touch of the Poet' he writes,

"the clumsiness of the gesture may be half-right but surely it should have another half to it... It is possible to shrivel a play by doing only one aspect of it, and regretably, that is what has happened this time to "A Touch of the Poet." 117 As is his insight into the means and end of the play. "'Saint Joan1 is the battle Joan can't win. Shaw's got it all sewed up for his spokesman." 118 His sight— Madeline Kahn asks the key question quite early in the new Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Cy Coleman musical, "On the 20th Century." It pops up in a flashback, one devoted to that historic moment in which zany Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffee (John Cullum) first lays eyes and hands on the girl who will become Lily Garland, his star, his true love and, quite naturally as these things go, his mortal enemy.

Miss Kahn is, at the moment, a shuffling little nobody, a mere rehearsal pianist come to accompany the chanteuse that Jaffee* s auditioning. She takes a lively interest in her work, though. She sorts and unsorts her sheet music to a right foot, left foot, try-it-again bounce. She purses her quivering lips in silent passion as her fingers ripple the upper keyboard to make moonlit waters for one of those Indian Love Song things of the 30's. She generously interrupts the singer on a certain note to see if she can force her up a fourth, where she belongs. This bit of sweet helpfulness draws her into a screaming contest with the soloist, though she does get the soloist to at least scream on key, after which she demands her day's carfare with a schoolgirl stubbornness that seems to involve a boxing stance, and quits. The chanteuse is of course let go and Miss Kahn offered the job. She refuses twice, making two separate, exquisitely haughty exits. After a very short pause, however, she is back, moving like a rockinghorse on tiptoe, to ask, most virginally. "You really think I can do this?" Miss Kahn is lovely, lovely, doing the whole r o u t i n e ; ^

His sense of dramatic structure 116

Because the author is obviously talented, there are lines that catch and tease the most wandering ear: Asked how he's feeling these days, Mr. Hurt stretches out and mockingly replies that "on a scale of one to 10, I'm due to show up on the chart any time now." But no line, no set-piece, is intrinsically connected to any other. All are like pages from a loose-leaf notebook, readily detachable, subject to rearrangement in any old order at all.

It is one thing to write a play about the loss of structure in our lives. It is another to write it, as a good many of our younger dramatists have taken to doing, with as little care for shape and form as the life that is being mirrored. A mirror may reflect chaos; but it is not itself shapeless. *^0 and of drama—

Rhetorically speaking, the play isn't saying anything. It is showing us something, showing us a series of vignettes (each beginning as a still-life, then gliding into an exploration of freshly rearranged relationship) that ultimately explode into a violent event. The event may have happened just this one time, in this one particular place, and we generalize from it at our own risk. ^1

The similarity of Kerr’s "the play isn't saying anything, it is showing," to Langer’s (the artist) "is not saying anything, not even about the nature of feeling, he is showing, 122 and "all poetry is a creation of 123 illusory events, even when it looks like a statement of opinions, " has not happened "just this one time, in this one particular place and we generalize from it at our own risk," for Langer’s philosophy of art permeates Kerr's criticism, as does her theory of drama--"a poetic art in a special mode, with its own version of the poetic illusion to govern every detail of the performed piece... Drama is neither ritual nor show business, though it may occur in the frame 117 of either one; it is poetry, which is neither a kind of circus nor a kind

of c h u r c h " of dramatic action—"a semblance of action so construed

that a whole indivisible piece of virtual history is implicit in it, as

a yet unrealized form, long before the presentation is completed"

criticism--"what has the poet done, and how did he do it? " ^

Pepper defines sound criticism as "the application of a sound

philosophy to works of a rt." ^ Kerr's dramatic criticism is sound.

So too is the art, dance, and book criticism quoted above--all focus

on the work of art as the artist's achieved purpose and discusses it in terms of its primary illusion--virtual scene in plastic art; virtual gesture, dance; virtual memory, novels; virtual destiny, drama;

and of its basic abstraction--the image in plastic art, movement in dance, the word in literature, and the act in drama. "What has the poet done, and how did he do it?" In film the "poet, " (filmmaker) has created the illusion of virtual presence by means of the basic

abstractions of movement and images. Sound film criticism must focus on the filmmaker's achieved purpose and discuss it in terms of its primary illusion and basic abstractions—in terms of virtual presence, movement and images within the progression of unified metamorphases that is the form of the film.

What has the filmmaker done and how did he do it? 118 NOTES

*Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Notes on the Novel (Princeton; Princeton University Press, *T9f)5}, p. 2 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1966), p. 179. Ortega, Dehumanization, p. 12.

^Molly Haskell, "Movies," New York, 27 February 1978, p. 69. ^Vincent Canby, "Film View, " New York Times, 12 March 1978, p. 17. ^Pauline Kael, "The Current Cinema, " The New Yorker, 6 June 1978, p. 101. 7 Andrew Sarris, "Films in Focus, " The Village Voice, 1 May 1978, p. 39. 0 Mark Shorer, The World We Imagine (New York: Giroux, 1968), p. 3. ^Haskell, New York, Year End Issue, 1977, p. 82.

10Haskell, N.Y., 8 May 1978, p. 74. 1 Haskell, N.Y., 30 January 1978, p. 58.

^Cleanth Brooks, "The Formalist Critic, " Gerald G. Goldberg and Nancy Marner Goldgerg ed., The Modern Critical Spectrum (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1962),p. 3. 13 Parker Tyler, Sex, Psyche, Etcetera in the Film (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), p. 220. 14 Jerome Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction (New York: W. W. Norton and C o., 1968}

^Sontag, Interpretation, p. 22.

l^Kael, New Yorker, 20 February 1978, p. 120. 119 ^Sarris, Voice, 20 February 1978, p. 39.

^De Witt Parker, "The Problem of Esthetic Form," Melvin M. Rader, ed., A Modern Book of Esthetics (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1935), p. 232. 19Morris Weitz, "The Nature of Art, " Unpublished address before the National Committee on Art Education at The Ohio State University, March 24, 1961, p. 9. 20 Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Classification of Critical Reasons," Ralph A. Smith ed., Aesthetics and Problems of Education (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 440.

2*Clive Bell, "Significant Form, " Melvin M. Rader ed ., A Modern Book of Esthetics (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1935), p. 248.

^John Simon, Movies Into Film, Film Criticism 1967-1970 (New York: Dell Publishing Co., A Delta Book, 1971), pp. 5-13. 23tu.j no Ibid., p. 22.

94Stanley Kauffmann, A World on Film, Criticism and Comment (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1966), p. 19. 25 Stanler Kauffmann, Figures of Light, Film Criticism and Comment (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1^71), p. 282.

Stanley Kauffmann, "Arts and Lives, Films," The New Republic, 15 October 1977, p. 28.

^Kauffmann, TNR, 22 October 1977, p. 22. 28 Kauffmann, World, p. 251. 29 Kauffmann, TNR, 10 February 1978, p. 24. 30 Kauffmann, TNR, 19 February 1978, p. 31. 31 Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1970), p. 69.

32Ibid., p. 193. 120 33 Judith Crist, ’'The Movies, " The Saturday Review, 9 July 1977, p. 37. ‘ 34 Crist, SR, 25 June 1977, p. 24.

^Judith Crist, The Private Eye, the Cowboy, and the Very Naked Girl, Movies from Cleo to Clyde (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. xviii.

36Crist, SR, 11 June 1977, p. 38. 37 Pauline Kael, Reeling (New York; Warner Books, 1976), p. 52.

38Ibid., p. 591. 39 Kael, New Yorker, 27 December 1977.

4^Kael, New Yorker, 20 March 1978, p. 123. 41 Pauline Kael, Going Steady (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970), p. 108.

42Ibid., p. 129.

4^Kael, New Yorker, 20 March 1978, p. 123.

44Kael, New Yorker, 10 October 1977, p. 118. 4 5 Kael, New Yorker, 14 November 1977, p. 127.

4^Kael, New Yorker, 7 November 1977, p. 121.

4^Kael, New Yorker, 20 February 1978, p. 120. 48 Kael, New Yorker, 10 October 1977, p. 101. 49 Kael, Going Steady, p. 92.

3^Dwight Macdonald, Dwight Macdonald on Movies (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 473.

"^Andrew Sarris, Primal Screen, Essays on Film and Related Subjects (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1073), p.~T2^ 121 52 Kael, New Yorker, 20 February 1978, pp. 120-1. 53 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The Movies, '* The Saturday Review, 29 April, 1978 54 Schlesinger, SR, 29 October 1977, p. 41. ^Schlesinger, SR, 8 March 1978, p. 29. 56IU., Ibid.

37 Schlesinger, SR, 27 May 1978, p. 41.

CO Schlesinger, SR, 3 May 1978, p. 26.

^Schlesinger, SR, 7 January 1978, p. 46. 60 John Simon, Private Screenings (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1967), p. 6.

61Ibid., p. 13. 6 2 Simon, Movies Into Film, p. 360. 63Ibid., p. 147. 64 John Simon, "Film Review, " The National Review, 8 April 1978, p. 480.

65Simon, NR, 23 December 1977, p. 503. 66_ Simon, NR, 18 April 1978, p. 480. ^ Simon, NR, 23 December 1977, p. 503. 68Simon, NR, 18 April 1978, p. 480. 69 Simon, NR, 23 June 1978, p. 792.

7QSimon, NR, 9 June 1978, p. 728.

^Simon, NR, 20 January 1978. 72 Sarris, Voice, 7 November 1977, p. 34. ^3Sarris, Voice, 10 April 1978, p. 45.

^Andrew Sarris, Confessions of_a Cultist; On the Cinema 1955-1969 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 189.

^^Sarris, Voice, 8 May 1978, p. 9.

7 f%Sarris, Confessions, p. 84.

^Beardsley, "Critical Reasons," p. 438. ^Sarris, Voice, 26 December 1977, p. 41.

^Sarris, Voice, 19 June 1978, p. 43.

80Sarris, Voice, 22 May 1978, p. 45. 81 Sarris, Voice, 5 June 1978, p. 35.

8^Sarris, Voice, 10 April 1978, p. 45. oo Sarris, Voice, 17 July 1978, p. 39. 84 Sarris, Voice, 1 May 1978, p. 39. QC Haskell, N. Y. Year End Issue, 1977, p. 85.

86Haskell, N. Y., 10 October 1977, p. 61. 87 Haskell, N. Y.. 27 March 1978, p. 64.

8 8 Haskell, N. Y., 7 November 1977, p. 91.

89Haskell, N.Y., 24 March 1978, p. 63.

90Haskell, N. Y ., 8 May 1978, p. 77.

9*Haskell, N. Y., 21 November 1977, p. 89.

9^Haskell, N. Y., 14 November 1977, p. 135. 93Haskell, N. Y ., 31 October 1977, p. 116. 95Haskell, N. Y., 17 April 1978, pp. 97-8. 9^Penelope Gilliatt, "The Current Cinema, " The New Yorker, 29 May 1978, p. 113.

97Simon, Movies Into Film, p. 13. 9®Canby, Tim es, 21 May 1978, Sec. 2, p. 17. 99 Canby, Times, 24 April 1977, Sec. 2, p. 13.

l00Canby, Times, 22 May 1977, Sec. 2, p. 7.

^Beardsley, "Critical Reasons, " p. 437.

102Langer, Feeling and Form , p. 393.

■^Shorer, World, p. 3. 104 Sontag, Interpretation, p. 14.

^Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 407.

^Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 407.

107 Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: P. U. Press, 1957), p. 348.

^John Ashbery, "Art," New York, 3 April 1978, p. 64. 109 Marcia B. Siegel, "Dance," New York, 3 February 1978, p. 94. 110Siegel, N. Y ., 22 May 1978, p. 87. ^George Steiner, Review of The Human Factor by Graham Greene, The New Yorker, 8 May 1978, p. 152.

^M112 aureen Howard, Review of Final Payments by Marty Gordon, The Saturday Review, 16 April 1978, p." 1, 33. 113 Gerald Nachman, "Who’s Afraid of the Broadway Critics?" More, July/August ’77, p. 22. 114 Walter Kerr, "Stage View, " New York Times, 2 November 1977, p. 3. ^K err, Times, 13 November 1977, p. 3. ^ K e r r , Times, 14 May 1978, p. 7. 117 Kerr, Times, 8 January 1978, p. 5.

^®Kerr, Times, 1 January 1978, p. 2. ^K err, Times, 26 August 1978, p. 5.

•^Kerr, Times, 7 May 1978, p. 5.

■^Kerr, Times, 12 February 1978, p. 7.

*22Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 394.

123Ibid., p. 219. 124 Ibid., p. 320. 125 Ibid., p. 310. 126 Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), p. 155. 127 Stephen C. Pepper, The Basis of Criticism in the Arts (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1965), p. 8. CONCLUSION

In focusing attention on the primary filmic illusion of virtual presence and analyzing the basic filmic abstractions of movement and images, the theory of film criticism developed on the preceding pages fulfills Frye's requirement that the "axioms and postulates of criticism

.. .have to grow out of the art it deals with";^ and Perkins’, that "a useful theory has to redirect attention to the movie as it is seen, by 9 shifting the emphasis back from creation to perception.

So too does the analysis of the directive and expansive forces of composition, color, movement, shape, screen position and sound in the progression of unified metamorphoses that comprise the form of the film fulfill Henderson's exhortation that "the next period of theoretical effort should concentrate on the formulation of better, more complex models and theories of part-whole relations, including sound organization as well as visual style"; Durgnat's for "an aesthetic which can take into account the 'non-subtle' wavebands of middle-and-lowbrow art and folk art.. .without denying or dismissing the superior subtlety of some films, and Sontag’s for "a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, vocabulary for forms... to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is."^

Hopefully this exploratory work will "start a lot of hares for 125 people to chase"—hares of virtual presence; of movement and images; of unified metamorphoses; of film as a fine art rather than a mass medium; of individual films as good art and bad art, rather than as art and non-art; hares of form-centered film criticism; of the critic as educator, rather than consumer advocate; of a single critical approach for greater and lesser filmic achievements rather than a sliding scale of values for "art" and "entertainment"; hares of the critical implications of film as moving pictures—for as Langer has noted "the chief virtue of a fertile theory is that it allows philosophical inquiry (i. e., conceptual analysis and construction) to go into detail. "6

The above is but a beginning. If it helps critic and viewers see, it is a fruitful beginning. 127 NOTES

^Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism, (Princeton: Ptinceton University Press, 1957), p. 9. O ^Victor Perkins, Film as Film, Understanding and Judging Movies (London: Cox, Wyman Ltd., 1976), p. 27. 3 Brian Henderson, "Two Types of Film Theory, M Film Quarterly 24, Spring, 1971, p. 41. 4 Raymond Durgnat, Films and Feelings (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967), pp. 176-7.

^Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1969), p. 14. 6 Susanne K. Langer, ed ., Reflections on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. xiii. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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