Glassicfilm theory and semiotics AnthonyEasthope Filmtheory had to strugglea surprisinglylong time obviouslycontaminated with unprocessedsensation, beforeit couldbecome a proper theory of film. Diffi- too liableto documentaryappropriation, too easily cultyarosefrom the very feature which ensured cinema turnedto usefulsocial purposes. itsuniversality: ever since the earliestaudiences flung themselvesout of the way of an oncomingscreen locomotive,film hasstunned us by itsseeming capa- Glassicfilm theory cityto reproducereality transparently, immediately, directly.Because of this realism,serious analysis of As Aaron Scharf(1 969) shows in convincingdetail, the filmwas con{ronted from the first by antagonismfrom early impact of photography on painting and notions thesmothering inheritance of Kantianaesthetics. of art was enormous. Although encouraging some (1 ln Ihe Critigueof Judgement 790)Kant contrasts artists into innovation and experiment, photography sensationand contemplation,singular and universal, alsoserved to strengthenand substantiatethe opposi- interestedand disinterested (useful and useless).Aes- tion between art and craft.the aestheticand the useful. theticexperience isopposed to merelysensuous grat- As'moving pictures',produced when light isprojected ification(eating, for example)because it combines through strips of celluloid onto a screen, cinematic sensation-through hearing and vision-with contem- images have a double intimacywith realitysince they plation.The aesthetic object is focused on asa singu- are both caused by it (light from these objects marked larity,not as an instanceof a generalconcept, for its photosensitivefilm) and also resemble it. lt was only ownsake and not for any kind of usefulnessor social too tempting to deny cinema a statusas art. purpose.All thiskicks against what cinema appears to In the face of a seemingly incontestablenaturalism, do best;its renderingof the real seemsjust too the labour of classicfilm theory was to designate the E CRITICALAPPROACHES specificvalue of cinema-what has allowed it to pro- which the photographed image originates.Yetthough vide such a compelling representationof modernity. he arguesthat film exceeds reality,Arnheim does not Forthistwo main strategiesemerged. The creationists challengethe view that film is powerfullylnfluenced by (orformalists),including RudolfArnheim, SergeiEisen- its photographic resemblanceto reality.The realists, stein, and 86la Bal5zs,defend cinema as an art form led by Andr6 Bazin,make that relation the essential which goes beyond realism,while the realists,partrcu- virtue of the medium, as,for example, in this passage: larly Siegfried Kracauerand Andr6 Bazin,apprecrate Theobjective nature of photographyconfers on it a quality cinema just because it does provide such an exact of credibilityabsent from all other picture-making. Inspite of representation of reality. anyobjections our criticalspirit may offer, we areforced to Creationism iswel I representedby RudolfArn heim's acceptas realthe existenceof the object reproduced,actu- book Film(1933), which setsout'to refutethe assertron ally re-presented,set beforeus, that is to say,in time and that film is nothing but the feeble mechanicalrepro- space.Photography enjoys a certainadvantage in virtueof duction of real life' (1958:37). Arnheim points out first thistransference of realityfrom the thing to itsreproduction. of all how the experienceof sitting in the cinema differs (Bazin1967:13-14) from ourempiricalperception of theeverydayworld. In This passagemakes it clearthat Bazinis aware that in everydayexperience the world is three-dimensional, 're-pre- cinema filmed objects are not presented but while in the cinema all we get is a flat screen;our life is sented'. And elsewhere he exolains how he varues lived colour with sound, while cinema is black and cinematic reality because it has an almost Brechtian white, and silent (or was, up to 1929);in our ordinary effect in leaving the viewer free to criticize, when world we can look whereverwe want within our field o{ more obviously constructed cinema (Eisenstein,for vision,while cinema limits what we see within the instance) aims to manipulate the viewer's under- maskedframe of the screen. standing. Formalisttheory (Arnheim)and realisttheory (Bazin) Formalisttheory (Arnheim)and realist appear to oppose each other. But what is crucial,and what marks off classicfilm theory, is the assumption theory (Bazin)appear to oppose each they share. Formalist theory values cinema to the 'the other. But both positionssuppose that extent that it is, in Arnheimt phrase, more than cinema,based as it is in the feeble mechanicalreoroduction of real life':realistthe- 'a photographic process,must be ory values cinema to the extent that it adheres to which man assessedas in part a mechanical mechanicalreproduction in the making of plays no part', as Bazinsays (1967: 12).Both positions reproduction,whether feeble or supposethat cinema,based as it is in the photographic convincing. process, must be assessedas in part a mechanical reproduction, whether feeble or convincing. lt was 'l not until the 960s that this view-the naturalist,or Arnheim celebratesthe many effectsthrough which reflectionist,fallacy-began to be finally overthrown cinema transformsand constructsa reality,including in film theory. cameraangles and movement, focus, lighting effects, framing, altered motion, superimposition, special lenses.And, in addition to these features pertaining mainly to the single shot, cinema works through 1968 and after sequencesof shots edited together, producing daz- zling and significanteffects of contrastand repetition, Film theory was able to develop into a fully fledged metonymy and metaphor. Editing makes something account of cinema because it staged what Stephen 'the availableto someone in the cinema that could never Heath refersto as encounter of Marxism and psy- be seen by any empiricalviewer of what was originally choanalysison the terrain of semiotics'(1916: 11).Of filmed. these three theoretical interventions, semiotics (or Arnheim is one of the first to codify the specific semiology)arrived first. In a posthumouswork, Course resourcesof cinema and the many ways it produces in General Linguistics,published in 1916, Saussure meaningsbeyond anything present in the realityfrom introduced into the study of language a number of E CLASSICFILM THEORY AND SEMIOTICS 'Yesterday dreoreticaldistinctions, of which two in particurar since bites man' is not a meaningful sen- provedfruitful when carried over into film theory. tence. Fromancient rhetoric, Saussure revived the dis- In other words, it was possible to think of the syn- tinctionbetween signifier and signified to analyse tagmatic axis as a consistent structure which would 'words'. dre naiVeconcept of In any utterance the remain the same even when different paradigmattc levelof the signifier is made up from the sounds terms were substituted along it. ln 1928 Vladimir (phonemes)selected for use by a particular lan- Propp applied this principle to the analysisof narra- guage,arranged in a temporal order; while that of tive, discerningacross 115 Russianfolk storiesa com- 'functions'. the signifiedconsists of the meanings assigned to mon structure consisting of thirty-one 'The anygroup of signifiers.Signifiers consist of entirely Thus, function (Propp 1968: 11), hero leaves 'lvan arbitrarysounds related only to each other in an home', can be realized as easily by is sent to 'Dmitri internallyself-consistent system, and it is purely a kill the dragon' as by goes in search of the matterof conventionwhat set of signifiersgive rise princess'. to a certainmeaning. In modern English, for ex- A semioticanalysis of film narrativewas initiatedwith 'mare' ample,the sounds represented by can enthusiasmand some effect,notably by Raymond Bel- 'female (1972) openonto the meaning horse' or possibly lour in his study of fhe Birds(USA, 1963)and by 'municipal leader' (mayor),while a very similar group PeterWollen (1982),also discussingHitchcock, in his (USA, of signifiersin French ('mer'l'mdre') open onto the account of North by Northwest 1959). Bellour 'sea' 'mother'. meanings and discussesthe Bodega Bay sequence shot by shot, while Wollen aimsfor a Proppiananalysis of whote A principleis implied by Saussure'sdistinction, that the movie. Both examinations, thematerialorganization of a languageisontologically plausible as they are in detail, suffer from what are now recognized as the priortoany meaning it produces. During the 1960s inevitable assumptionsof formal narrativeanalysis- semioticshad a decisive impact upon film theory by that there isonly a singlenarrative and not a number of concentratingattention on the question what were the simultaneousnarrative meanings, that the narrativeis specificproperties of film, its specifica differentia, dis- 'out fixed once and for all there' in the text and not tinguishingit from other forms of signification(novets constructed in a relation between text and reader. anddrama, for example). Narrativeanalysis of film on the precedent of Propp Thereare certain problems in detail, however. For had the definite benefit of shiftingargument awayfrom whileSaussure's distinction between signifierand sig- any question of the relation or correspondence nifiedapplies perfectlyto a language,it is much harder between a film and some real it might be supposed togetittoworkforavisual medium suchasfilm. In any to reflect.lt focused on film as text but did so only by famoussequence, such as that at the end