CINÉ- TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM, COMMUNICATIONS. CULTURE, AND POLITICS THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CINEMA FILM PERFORMANCE CAMERA MOVEMENT AND CINEMA SPACE SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN DOCUMENTARY THE FUNDAMENTAL REPROACH (BRECHT) VERTOV'S MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA VIGO/JAUBERT "SINGING IN THE RAIN" NO.2 $2.50/ £1.50 SPECTACLE AS SPECTATOR CINE- TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM, COMMUNICATIONS. CULTURE, AND POLITICS ISSUE #1 Film/Technology/Ideology John Berger Stephen Heath Dusan Makavejev Ideology and Media Messages Ethno-Hermeneutics SPECIAL ISSUE #2 — THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CINEMA Film Performance Camera Movement and Cinematic Space Spectacle and Spectator Self-Reflexivity in Documentary The Fundamental Reproach (Brecht) The Concept of Cinematic Excess Vigo/Jaubert Kino-Truth and Kino-Praxis — Vertov 1 year $8.00 (foreign $10.00) 2 years $14.00 (foreign $18.00) Libraries and institutions $12.00 (foreign $14.00) Payment must be sent with subscription to: CINE-TRACTS, 4227 Esplanade Montreal, P.Q., Canada H2W 1T1 Name Address Code (American subscribers must pay foreign rate) CINÉ - TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM, COMMUNICATIONS, CULTURE, AND POLITICS special issue on THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CINEMA edited by David Allen & Teresa de Lauretis Jeanne Allen published in collaboration with the David Bordwell Center for 20th Century Studies of Ben Brewster The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Claudia Gorbman Stephen Heath Judith Mayne Patricia Mellencamp l Kristin Thompson TO OUR READERS Cine-Tracts is very pleased to publish the following articles from the 20th Century Studies Program which we feel raise some important questions for the study of film and for the theory of cinema in general. The response that we have had to our first issue has gone beyond our original expectations both in terms of subscriptions and feedback. We have been criticized for using a language of analysis and criticism that is too closed, too academic and in some instances, too obscure. We agree with the editors of this issue (no. 2) that the present bias -- anti- intellectual and anti-theoretical—among people working in film is detrimental to the development of a 'critical' approach to ideology and cultural phenomena. Of equal importance to Cine-Tracts as a journal though, is our communication with our reader- ship and it is our hope that we can balance between the clear need for a high standard of work and the obvious requirement of using a language of analysis to which you can relate. We want to avoid a form of knowledge production that gains its strength from mystification. We look forward to getting your letters about issue no.2. R.B. M.A.B. EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE: Martha Aspler Burnett, Ron Burnett, Hart Cohen (Europe), Chandra Prakash CORRESPONDANTS: Virginia Fish (West Coast), Joan Weinberg (Australia) ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD: David Crowley (McGill) University), John Fekete (Trent University), Jacqueline Levitin (Ryerson), Bill Nichols (Queens University), Peter Ohlin (McGill) University), Donald Theall (McGill) University), Martin Walsh (University of Western Ontario) PRODUCTION THIS ISSUE: Chantal Browne, Nicole Chèné Kevin Roch, Hans Speich CINE-TRACTS is a quarterly journal of film, communication, culture and politics. 4227 Esplanade Avenue, Montréal P.Q., Canada H2W 1T1 Please send all manuscripts in duplicate, double-spaced. All rights reserved. Articles copy-right their authors. Graphic Reproduction by Vanier College Press. Phone no. (514) 845-5040 Depot légal -- Bibliothèque Nationale du Quebec CINE-TRACTS Vol. I - NO. 2 Summer 1977 CONTENTS Page Introduction David Allen and Teresa de Lauretis. .3 Film Performance Stephen Heath 7 Camera Movement and Cinematic Space David Bordwell 19 Spectacle and Spectator: Looking Through the American Musical Comedy Patricia Mellencamp .2 7 Self-Reflexivity in Documentary Jeanne Allen 37 The Fundamental Reproach (Brecht) Ben Brewster 44 The Concept of Cinematic Excess Kristin Thompson .54 Vigo/Jaubert Claudia Gorbman .65 Kino-Truth and Kino-Praxis: Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera Judith Mayne 81 Contributors 92 1 FOREWORD The Center for Twentieth Century Studies is a community of scholars in the humanities whose research focuses on ethnic studies, mass media (including film and video) and artistic/technological alternatives to print culture. In 1975 the Center organized its first International Symposium on Film Theory and in 1976 a Conference on the Teaching of Film. Papers from these two conferences are published in special issues of the Quarterly Review of Film Studies (vol. I, nos. 3 & 4). A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. made possible a third conference in February 1977, this time an interdisci- plinary study of production in film/theatre/video. I wish to express personal thanks to Don Druker, of NEA, who attended this third gathering, which also benefited from the presence and presentations of Michael Snow, Nam June Paik, and Marcel Ophuls. Most of the papers edited for this special issue of Cine-Tracts were delivered at the Conference in experimental workshops. Selecting from a very rich and interdisciplinary conference, the editors con- tributed their own theoretical perspective. We may not be quite ready yet for a cultural theory that would subsume theatre and video as performance arts under the same roof as film; film scholarship may still have some way to go from its specific focus to a system of intensities and their mediation across the arts. An energetics of spectacle (Lyotard, Eyzigman) points that way. But this issue, nonetheless, stand on its own — thanks to David Allen and Teresa de Lauretis. I am grateful to all, the editors, the authors, and our staff — Robert Dickey, Mary Adam, and Jean Lile — who pulled the contents of this issue together in record time. The Center’s work in film studies will continue next year in relation to our research theme which is technology. There will be a conference on the Cine- matic Apparatus under the guidance of Stephen Heath, February 22-25, 1978 at the Center, and one a year later on Film and Language. They will tend to be closed work sessions organized toward theoretical results, so we welcome inquiries. Michel Benamou, Director Center for Twentieth Century Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2 INTRODUCTION When we began collecting and editing these papers, we had not yet seen the editorial which launched the first issue of CINE-TRACTS. Some of the state- ments we had planned to make, by way of introduction, regarding the ideo- logical premises of all cultural work, the political function of film criticism as a part of the larger concern with sociocultural change, and the relation between theory and practice within the critical activity, have already been made by the CINE-TRACTS editorial collective. There is no need to repeat them. But since the very notion of theory has come under attack from the left as suspect of elitism and mystification, some clarification seems neces- sary. Theory is a form of knowledge that would be foolish to discard simply because it may have been appropriated by the dominant classes.' Without theory, the complementary knowledge that is generated through practice would lack the critical and historical dimension. Our title is purposely plural: 1 "All enquiry is 'motivated'. not theory as a set of axioms, normative laws, or even as a closed system of Theoretical research is a form of social practice. Everybody exchange between elements of a theory or between theory and practice; but who wants to know something wants to know it in order to rather theoretical perspectives, bundles of operations which are subject to do something" (Umberto Eco, transformation and redefinition by the very practice "which is that theory's A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington: Indiana Univer- condition of production."2 sity Press, 1976, p. 29). 2 Juliet Mitchell, Woman's Estate We also think, as stated in the CINE-TRACTS No. 1 editorial, that the value (New York: Vintage Books), of any critical writing, hence of the following works, consists in the questions 1971, p. 91. it poses as much as in the tentative answers it offers. Thus, this second issue 3 "L'oeuvre personnelle, même is conceived to continue, extend and particularize the analysis of some of the la plus radicalement novatrice, est une singularité dans le mag- crucial areas and problems indicated in the first issue. Within the general pro- ma de la creation social-histo- blematicof positioning the subject in relation to a hegemonic social structure rique continuée, singularité qu'entoure une region plus operative in the institution of cinema in general and in the cinematic appara- dense et plus différenciée de ce tus in particular, the papers presented here examine the perceptual and con- magma" (Cornelius Castoriadis, "La psychanalyse, projet et ceptual codes established by that apparatus, including self-reflexivity, excess, elucidation," Topique, 19 and the relations of image- and sound-tracks. Explicit or implicit in these (Janvier-février 1977), p. 56). discussions is the critical awareness of the irreducible, unsuppressable dimen- sion of the socio-historical context in the film text, i.e. the social foundation of the most "personal" or "original"work.3 These problems are addressed in both general and specific terms, and examined in the perspectives of cinema as institution, of the codes established by a particular genre, or of the textual strategy of a single film. A word on the order of presentation may be appropriate, for old habits die hard and sequence tends to be read as hierarchy — a misunderstanding that we want to prevent. Sequential ordering is unavoidable but no single criterion could have been followed other than alphabetical or random order. We also wanted to avoid the common distinction between theoretical and analytical studies, which recalls too closely the false dichotomy between theory/ methodology and "application" as separate activities, and is at best episte- mologically naive. So we chose to present the articles according to the type and quantity of the problems discussed, from the general to the specific — and even this only by rule of thumb, so to speak.