391 Midterm 1 Review

Film Language People (7)

film medium people (2)

phenomenology people (1)

pudovkin's article title

Eisenstein's article title

bazin article title

original christian metz article title

dayan article title

bordwell article title

stork article title

panofsky article title

balazs article title

dudley andrew article title

“The meaning is not in the image, it is the shadowof the image projected by montage onto the field of consciousness of thespectator. . . .Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage,the cinema has at its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose itsinterpretation of an event on a spectator”

Temporal and spatial duration of a shot

Renoir “forced himself to look back beyond theresources provided by montage and so uncovered the secret of a film form thatwould permit everything to be said without chopping the world up into littlefragments and would reveal the hidden meanings in people and things withoutdisturbing the unity natural to them”

Depth of focus does three things: 1) “brings the spectator into a relation with the [cinematic] image closer to that which he enjoys with reality;” 2) “implies. . .both a more active mental attitude on the part of the spectator and a more positive contribution on his part to the action in progress. . .he is called upon to exercise at least a minimum of personal choice. It is from his attention and his will that the meaning of the image in part derives;” 3) The two preceding points, “which may be described as metaphysical,” mean that “depth of focus reintroduced ambiguity into the structure of the image. . .The uncertainty in which we find ourselves as to the spiritual key or the interpretation we should put on the film is built into the very design of the image” (50).

shot-in-depth versus invisible (IMR continuity) editing

believes that filmmakersuse the cognitive approach to influence the hypotheses we make while watching afilm. These hypotheses or inferencesshape our understanding of what’s goingon and what will happen. . .Gone Girlis an example of how filmmakers [today] use our propensity to jump toconclusions about the diegetic world we’re being presented, against our ownhypotheses.” (Group Presentations)

Schema: a knowledge structure that enables the perceiver to extrapolate beyond the given information”

for cognitivists, understanding film does not rely on structuralist codes or a psychoanalytic unconscious but on a “complex process of actively elaborating what the film sets forth” (428). In cognition, the spectator “participates in a complex process of actively elaborating what the film sets forth. They ‘go beyond the information given’” (428) using the reasoning procedures that one practices in life.

“Not all spectators are filmmakers, but all filmmakers are spectators.”

the core of cognitivetheory is the spectator’s process of inference/elaboration, from the film,which supplies, in a coherent way, the basic information (cues) needed for inference. The film’s cues would be meaningless,however, without the spectator’s ability to connect the cue with personal,relevant prior knowledge, called “schemabased knowledge.” A schema is “aknowledge structure that enables the perceiver to extrapolate beyond the informationgiven”

“Every narrative of any complexity withholds some story information from both viewers and characters. This creates gaps in our knowledge, disparities among various characters’ state of knowledge, and mismatches between a character’s knowledge and the viewer’s knowledge, all the while generating Meir Sternberg’s response-trio of curiosity, suspense, and surprise”

· AlthusserianMarxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis

· suture

· The form of film isfilled with the content of ideology. Classical cinema is inherently capitalist and illusionistic, creating a (false) sense or reality. The system of representation "inscribes" or interpellates the viewer into thepainting, so s/he can only view it in certain, (always capitalist) ways. Film’scodes control what can be said as well as what can be understood. The IMR “tutor code” of shot/reverse shotutilizes the Lacanian unconscious/Imaginary, teaching capitalist ideology whileit communicates it, operating without our awareness. This code invisibly constructs the spectatoras a certain kind of subject/person, with certain ideological values

· In IMR's shot/reverse shot “code,” viewers relate to a filmsequence in a pattern that is repeated again and again. In shot one, thespectator first "sees" the film without perceiving the screen’s frameor camera angle, because he/she reverts through the screen of the mirror into the Imaginary stage of unity andinfantile bliss. “When the viewerdiscovers the frame—the first step in reading the film—the triumph of hisformer possession of the image fadesout. The viewer discovers that the camera is hiding things, and thereforedistrusts it and the frame itself, which he now understands to be arbitrary. Hewonders why the frame is where it is. Thisradically transforms his mode of participation—the unreal space betweencharacters and/or objects is no longer perceived as pleasurable . . . For the spectator who becomesframe-conscious, the visual field [of the screen] means the presence of the absent-one as the owner of the glancethat constitutes the image. . . . When the spectator ceases to identify withthe image, the image necessarily signifies to him the presence of anotherspectator” (116) The viewer briefly becomes aware of the system that producesmeaning, which includes the double “imaginary” of the field and where"I" am viewing the field. Inthis nanosecond, there is a split/separation him/herself from the imaginary ofunconscious and screen—an opening that is closed shut by “suture” of thereverse shot.

In this nanosecond, there is a split/separationhim/herself from the imaginary of unconscious and screen—an opening that isclosed shut by “suture” of the reverse shot.

· Film'ssystem (the tutor code) stitches thespectator back into the film by shot two of the shot/reverse shot. This secondshot is the reverse of the first, and represents the absent one. “The reverse shot has ‘sutured’ the hole (the opening in the spectator's imaginaryrelationship with the filmic field caused by the perception of theabsent-one). This effect and the system which produces it liberates theimaginary of the spectator, in order to manipulate it for its own ends.” (bycreating a capitalistic “false” reality effect)

hopes that the “knowledge effect” mayset you free:

“The viewer's question, cued by the system ofrepresentation itself--`Who is watching this?' and `Who is ordering theseimage?'--tends, however, to expose thisideological operation and its mechanics. [Move from the “reality” effect to the knowledge effect].

Thus the viewer will be aware (1) of the cinematographicsystem for producing ideology and (2) therefore of specific ideologicalmessages produced by this system. We know that [capitalist] ideology cannotwork in this way. It must hide its operations, `naturalizing' its functioningand messages in some way.”

· conflict (or collision) montage: two concretes add up to anabstract [(a + b = c) orconcrete + concrete = abstract]

.The differentiation in montage pieces isdetermined by the fact that each piece has in itself no reality at all”(38-39).

If we are to compare montage with anything, thenwe should compare a phalanx of montage fragments—‘shots’—with the series ofexplosions of the internal combustion engine, as these fragments multiply intoa montage dynamic through ‘impulses’ like those that drive a car or a tractor.”

· howcinematic counterpoint might operate: some elicit “purely physiological effects, from the purely optical tothe emotional;” but in some instances the same conflict/tension serves to “achieve new concepts, new points of view, inother words, serves purely intellectual ends. . . .The gradual succession idea and image [in TenDays] continued in a process of comparing each new image with its commondesignation and unleashes a process that, in it; common designation unleashes a process that, in terms of itsform, is identical to process of logical deduction. Everything here is already intellectuallyconceived, not just in terms of the resolution but also of the method ofexpressing ideas. The conventional descriptive form of the film becomes a kindof reasoning. . . .Whereas the conventional film directs and develops the emotions, here we have a hint of thepossibility of likewise developing and directing the entire thought process. . . .It is precisely this form that is best suited to expressideological critical theses” (39-40)

in my view montage is not an idea composed ofsuccessive shots stuck together but an idea that DERIVES from the collisionbetween two shots that are independent of one another”

· film is “propaganda,” not art

· “The shotis…not comparable to the word in a lexicon; rather it resembles a completestatement (of one or more sentences).”

· “GrandSyntagmatique” (langue = IMR; individual film = parole), alternating syntagma(that show time/space changing)

· linkage montage; "two concretes add up to an abstract” [ A + B = C (concrete image linkage concrete image = abstract(primarily feeling)]

"The lens of the camera replaces the eye ofthe observer and. . .must be subject to the same conditions asthose of the eyes of the observer."

· “There is a lawin psychology that lays it down that if an emotion give birth to a certainmovement, by imitation of this movement the corresponding emotion can be calledforth. . . .One must learn that editing is in the actual fact a compulsory anddeliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator. . .if itbe coordinated according to a definitely selected course of effects orconceptual line, either agitated orcalm, it will excite or soothe the spectator.”

· “editingis not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is amethod that controls the ‘psychological guidance’ of the spectator”

· meaning is in juxtaposition, not in a single cinematic image; filmis “propaganda,” not art

Chaos cinema has: hyperactivity, rapid editing, close framing, bi-polar lens lengths, and unrestrained camera movements to communicate action

While visual clarify and continuity in Hollywood decreases (posts 9/11), the quality and clarity of sound mixes are increasing (Group Presentation)

Contemporary cinema is a never-ending crescendo of flair and spectacle. Examples: Bourne Ultimatum and Unstoppable (Group Presentation)

· Stork argues against chaos cinema, claiming it bludgeons theaudience into a stupor. It’s an aesthetic aspiring to overwhelm, to overpower,to hypnotize viewers and plunge them into a passive state, linked to thepost-9/11 moral chaos/confusion

“Chaos cinema is a never-ending crescendo offlair and spectacle.” Auditory clarity is more important than visual/spatialclarity—the story is followed through sound rather than picture.

There are specific instances where this hyperactivity is appropriate (The Hurt Locker), but generally it is lazy, inexact and devoid of purpose

· creates an approach thatfocuses on a non-rational, experiential approach that accounts for how a filmviewer assists in the construction of textual meaning.

"Life itself tells us that experience is dearer and more trustworthy than all the schemes by which we seek to know it”

second level systems; schemes by which we seek to know things (like structuralism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis) that interfere with our own experience/encounter with and response to a film

“trace” and “congealed pre-formulation” within a text; concern with “the `other-side’ of signification, those realms of pre-formulation where sensory data congeal into `something that matters’ and those realms of post-formulation where that `something' is experienced as mattering” (trace)

"Phenomenology has attempted to stay within the `hidden reason' of cinema itself and to make visible that `reason' on the run, so to speak" (631). This means that as a methodology, phenomenology focuses on what happens when a spectator encounters a film—that the “meaning” of the film is created as he/she watches a film. The meanings—the “reason” or cause-to-be—of the film emerge when a consciousness encounters the film. (“Tang”)

phenomenology focuses on viewer perception and meaning in film viewing. Reason and intellectual constructs cannot be trusted because reason consumes all other modes of perception. Phenomenology "seeks to put reason and language at the service of life or at least human experience."

· good close-ups can"radiate a tender human attitude in the contemplation of hidden things, adelicate solicitude, a gentle bending over the intimacies oflife-in-the-miniature, a warm sensibility. . . .[It can] discover...the soul ofthings.” The close-up is responsible for "the discovery of the humanface" and "emotions, moods, intentions and thoughts, things whichalthough our eyes can see them, are not in space. For feelings, emotions,moods, intentions, thoughts are not themselves things pertaining to space, evenif they are rendered visible by means which are.”

Film made possible a "polyphonic" play of features, that is, the appearance on the same face of contradictory expressions. “In a sort of physiognomic chord a variety of feelings, passions and thoughts are synthesized in the play of the features as an adequate expression of the multiplicity of the human soul.” It also facilitated a "micro physiognomy" which was "a great new form of art.”

“Those primordial archetypes of film productionson the folk art level—success or retribution, sentiment, sensation,pornography, and crude humor—could blossom forth. . .as soon as it was realizedthat they could be transfigured—notby an artificial injection of literary values but by the exploitation of the unique and specific possibilities of the newmedium”

· “These unique and specific possibilities can be defined as the "the dynamization of space""spatialization of time" and, accordingly, the "spatialization of time” (249) (That is, "time-charged space and space-boundtime." Philosopher/film scholar Stanley Cavell said Panofsky meant that "in a movie thingsmove and you can be moved instantaneously from anywhere to anywhere, and youcan witness successively events happening at the same time.")

· “The movieshave the power, entirely denied to the theater, to convey psychologicalexperiences by directly projecting their content to the screen, substituting,as it were the eye of the beholder for the consciousness of the character” (250).