impaginato A - Current Issue

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E DITRICE
I L C ASTORO
CINEMA & Cie no.
2
spring 2003
CINEMA & Cie
International Film Studies Journal
Editorial Board
Richard Abel (University of Michigan),
François Albera (Université de Lausanne),
Rick Altman (University of Iowa),
Francesco Casetti (Università Cattolica, Milano),
Lorenzo Cuccu (Università di Pisa),
Thomas Elsaesser (Universiteit Amsterdam),
André Gaudreault (Université de Montréal),
Tom Gunning (University of Chicago),
François Jost (Université de Paris III),
Michèle Lagny (Université de Paris III),
Leonardo Quaresima (Università di Udine),
Lauren Rabinovitz (University of Iowa),
Vicente Sánchez-Biosca (Universidad de Valencia),
Irmbert Schenk (Universität Bremen)
Co-ordination
Francesco Casetti, Leonardo Quaresima
This issue of CINEMA & Cie is part of the
research project: Ricerca nazionale interuniversitaria Cofin 2002 (ex 40%) “La tecnologia
nel cinema, la tecnologia del cinema” /
“Technology in the Cinema, Technology of the
Cinema”.
Unità di ricerca dell’Università di Udine: “La
tecnologia e il cinema italiano negli anni
Venti e Trenta. La rivoluzione del sonoro. Le
rivoluzioni delle avanguardie, dal Futurismo
alla contemporaneità” / “Technology and
Italian Cinema in the Twenties and the
Thirties. The Revolution of Sound Cinema.
The Revolutions of Avant-gardes: from
Futurism to the Present”
In co-operation with
CINEMA & Cie
International Film Studies Journal
No. 2, spring 2003
Dead Ends/Impasses
Cineteca del Comune di Bologna
Editorial Staff
Francesco Pitassio, Cosetta Saba, Paola Valentini,
Laura Vichi and Veronica Innocenti, Valentina Re
Edited by Leonardo Quaresima
Supported by
CINEMA & Cie is promoted by:
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(Università degli Studi di Udine/Dipartimento
di Storia e Tutela dei Beni Culturali/Corso di
Laurea DAMS, Gorizia)
Directed by
Leonardo Quaresima
The warmest thanks to our friends who have
helped with the linguistic revision of the published texts: Frances Guerin, Alessandra
Raengo, Rachel Reid, Lesley Stern, Jennifer
Wild, Tami Williams.
Forthcoming Issues:
The New Ways of Audiovisual Experience
(edited by Francesco Casetti)
Early Cinema: Technology and Apparatus (VII
Domitor Conference – edited by Rosanna Maule)
Theories of Spectacle (edited by Lauren
Rabinovitz)
Cartography of Film Genres in Italian Cinema
(edited by Alberto Farassino)
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EDITRICE
IL CASTORO
CONTENTS
DEAD ENDS/IMPASSES
9
Introduction
[l.q.]
11
What Happened to Pantomime?
Ben Brewster
15
The Art of “Speaking Silently”: The Debate around Cinema
and Pantomime in the 1910s and 1920s
Elena Mosconi
36
The Phantom of the Relationship, the Poverty of Cinema
and the Excesses of Hypnosis
Ruggero Eugeni
47
Cinema and Revelation: for Professional Eyes Only
Michael Barchet
54
Tra fotografia e cinema: la tridimensionalità in Italia negli anni Trenta
Paola Valentini
61
In Search of Expanded Cinema
Sandra Lischi
82
At the Museum and the Movies
Leonardo Quaresima
96
Enclosure: The Tactile Screen/Lo schermo tattile
NEW STUDIES
103
Visages du dedans
Raymond Bellour
105
Cinematic Performance: between the Histrionic and the Quotidian
Lesley Stern
113
Approche de la réception par la triade “programmation - presse - censure”
Gianni Haver
122
Opposite or Complementary Conceptions? What Do Rudolf Arnheim
and Michel Chion Have in Common?
Frances Guerin
PROJECTS & ABSTRACTS
Université de Lausanne (François Bovier, PhD Thesis Abstract)
Università Cattolica - Milano (Vincenzo Buccheri, PhD Thesis Abstract)
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) - Paris
(Adrien Gombeaud, PhD Thesis Abstract)
Universiteit Utrecht (Rudmer Canjels, PhD Thesis Project)
Universität Bremen (Uwe Day, PhD Thesis Project)
University of California - Los Angeles (Tami M. Williams, PhD Thesis Project)
Università di Bologna, Università Cattolica di Milano, Università di Firenze,
Università di Milano - Iulm, Università di Pavia, Università di Pisa,
Università di Torino, Università di Trento, Università di Udine, Cinematic
Technologies
The Keith-Albee Collection. Special Collections Department University of
Iowa Libraries
129
141
143
146
148
150
152
156
158
160
X International Film Studies Conference. LIMINA - Film’s Thresholds
(Udine, March 17-20, 2003)
MAGIS Gradisca Film Studies Spring School / Multiple and Multiple-language
Versions (March 21-28, 2003)
165
SELECTED BY
167
Richard Abel (Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity:
Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts)
Rick Altman (Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity:
Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts)
François Albera (Germain Lacasse, Le Bonimenteur
de vues animées. Le cinéma “muet” entre tradition et modernité)
Francesco Casetti and Mariagrazia Fanchi (Annette Kuhn,
An Everyday Magic. Cinema and Cultural Memory)
Lorenzo Cuccu (Sandro Bernardi, Il paesaggio nel cinema italiano)
Thomas Elsaesser (Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture,
Unification and the “New” Germany)
André Gaudreault et J.-P. Sirois-Trahan (Vincent Pinel, Le Montage,
l’espace et le temps du film)
162
169
170
171
174
176
177
180
Tom Gunning (Rachel O. Moore, Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic)
François Jost (Gérard Genette, Figures IV)
Michèle Lagny (Jacques Aumont, La Théorie des cinéastes)
Francesco Pitassio (Giorgio Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale)
Leonardo Quaresima (Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions)
Lauren Rabinovitz (Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card:
Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson)
Cosetta Saba (Documenta 11 Platform 5: Exhibition. Catalogue)
Vicente Sánchez-Biosca (Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, Le Cinéma
en Amérique Latine. Le miroir éclaté)
Irmbert Schenk (Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen, Cornelius Schnauber,
eds., Fritz Lang. Leben und Werk / His Life and Work / Sa vie et son œuvre)
Paola Valentini (Bruce Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England)
Laura Vichi (Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall, Brigitte Berg, eds.,
Science is Fiction. The Films of Jean Painlevé)
184
186
188
188
191
192
195
198
199
200
202
DEAD ENDS/IMPASSES
INTRODUCTION
The history of cinema is rife with models that have never established themselves, projects that have never taken form, “incorrect” theories. It is a history that began long ago,
and which saw the films, the technology, and the idea of cinema of the Lumière brothers
prevail over other models of showing images in motion, models destined to have a brief
and ephemeral existence. It is a history in which a narrative cinema – derivative of the
novel and French melodrama more than any other communicative, performing, or
expressive art forms – has constituted the central and dominant axis. Along the way, we
find numerous different directions, some ambitious and audacious, others simply inventive and sensible, which have been thought of as different hypotheses of development, for
a radical transformation of the system, or as a corrective to some of its elements. In many
cases these are “micro projects,” unsystematic contributions, brief theoretical interventions by writers who soon fell, or remained, in the shadows. In other cases, they are
greater elaborations, by well-known scholars not necessarily working within the field of
cinema studies. In still other cases, they are utopic visions, imaginative projections developing in the context of projects and experimentations of the avant-gardes. And yet, this
story is also made of concrete choices, “institutional” projects, paths of development
designed and used by productive sectors, which, however, were abandoned and replaced
by different models of development.
Reconsidering the traces of these “detours,” these dead-end streets, is not only a scholarly and archaeological task. By looking knowledgeably at what cinema is not, we can better evaluate what it is. Exploring the web of possibilities it could have followed, we can
see, behind the apparently natural course of events, the singularity, and possibly, the arbitrariness of the trajectory leading up to the present. Re-examining abandoned and discarded models, we are better able to investigate the fundamentals of the new medium’s
resources and structures, as we now know them. Even more: by bringing to light the blind
alleys and the abandoned roads, we can get a better perspective on the directions that contemporary cinema is exploring and experimenting with.
The visions of the avant-gardes are probably the most often visited chapter of this history. We have decided to set it aside on this occasion – without intending to downplay its
importance or influence – only because it is so well-known, at least with regard to those
imaginative visions linked more to an utopic and experimental dimension of cinema,
than to real “institutional” hypotheses of transformation. It is to the latter, I emphasize,
that we would like to draw attention, convinced that the evolution of cinema has been
less linear and “necessary” than it continues to seem.
A perfect example, from this point of view, is the role played by the pantomime in early
cinema and in particular in the Twenties, during the intense phase of development that
11
led to the hegemony of a stable narrative and communicative model, accepted on an international level (feature films, new formats of the cinematic “spectacle,” new distribution
systems, new exhibition sites). Ben Brewster’s investigation calls into question the commonplaces linked to the evaluation of the relationship between pantomime and film. He
also gives us the basis for analyzing the concrete results of grafting the principles of pantomime onto the new medium – ranging from the artistic contribution of the
actors/mimes to the impact of the new forms of expression of the “new” pantomime at
the end of the century. Elena Mosconi reconstructs the theoretical debate that accompanies this relationship in the Italian context and suggests, originally, some outcomes of
this relationship (in particular, in analyzing the “mimicry of the masses”). But it is also
true that in some cases (that of German Autorenfilm, for example), the pantomime
becomes, in effect, one of the models employed by the cinematic system in pursuit of new
developments: with concrete prototypes, the mobilization of authors, directors, and
actors, and the involvement of a critical and theoretical discourse. After a few tries, this
model too ran right into a dead end.
In the case of pantomime, the hypothesis of development is constructed along the lines
of autonomous, pre-existing models of representation. And, we know, other systems (in
addition to those derived from the theater) are also called upon in the same time period:
painting (the idea of a film as a development of thematic and iconographic motives of a
painting, or of a cycle of paintings), sculpture, graphic art (culminating in some experimental works, such as Von Morgens bis Mitternachts, in the early ‘20s). But cinema can
also be considered as a way of creating a more exhaustive representation of reality
because is capable of accommodating and reproducing its phenomenological data. Or it
can be seen as an instrument of the most extensive spectacularization of act of viewing,
capable of surpassing human perception itself. The recurring proposals to re-plan the
new medium in pursuit of the ideal of stereoscopic vision, discussed by Paola Valentini,
also fit into this picture. Before becoming the basis of a specialized sector of cinema
(although that plan also went unrealized) – or of a genre, as sustained by Valentini – stereoscopy had birthed projects for a “machine” for the spectacularization of representation,
still mostly unexplored (as shown by the discovery of Guazzoni’s photographs brought to
light by Claudio Domini and illustrated in the photo-essay appearing in this issue).
But cinema could have been a quite different medium, precisely because it is a system
for revealing reality. No longer a form of spectacle, it could have become an instrument
for scientific inquiry. The experiments conducted by Marey and Muybridge, as everyone
knows, bring us to the idea of cinema as an apparatus making visible that which escapes
observation, a machine that acts as an extension of sight. Less known is the thread unfolding from this concept, and which concerns what Michael Barchet calls, in his essay, the
“non-public spectacle.”
Beyond the poetics of individual directors and the aesthetic projects aimed at overcoming the limits of the cinematic system of representation and spectacularization, and crossing the borders between cinema and other communicative and expressive fields, the theories and practices of expanded cinema of the ‘60s embodied the tendency to bring cinema
out of itself. This is a familiar situation in early cinema (the flexibility of the context and
forms of exhibition, its co-existence with other forms of entertainment) and accounts for a
system continuously facing its own exterior while being contaminated by it. It was with
the introduction of sound, with the rigid normativization of classical cinema, that these
12
processes solidified, and seemingly disappeared from the history and even the genesis of
the new medium. Consequently, cinema became identified with a device that makes the
screen-as-frame the only basis of expression, which elects the direction that goes from the
screen to the audience as the only axis of communication, which makes the dream-like
state of the spectator the only model of spectatorship, and turns the film into a closed textual system. This is a model that Ruggero Eugeni invites us to interpret as linked to the
hypnotic state, in a way that is sometimes veiled but nonetheless strict. The institutionalization of classical cinema, he tells us, goes hand-in-hand with the constant thematization
of the hypnotic experience itself, as we can see in a range of genres from horror to film noir.
The tenets of “expanded cinema,” on the other hand, called this fixity into question and reactivated processes that, as already mentioned, were already inscribed in the history of cinema.
We would have liked to bring to light other models and paths. For example, the idea of
cinema as a portrait, as a system that, parallel to other systems (painting, photography),
could have been primarily an instrument for recording a family’s memories, a gallery of
characters, a cultural archive; or as a form of visual thought (from Epstein to underground
cinema); or as a langue (Pasolini). Maybe this issue of CINEMA & Cie. will have a sequel:
it will depend on the interest that it is capable of generating, on the echo that the issues
raised here will create.
Reflection needs to be done not only on these issues, but above all, on the ways in which
we approach them. I have used terms such as “dead end,” or “incorrect theories,” but I do
not believe, at all, that these terms are absolute. Contemporary cinema, the spectacular
forms currently employed, the new models of integration between vision and experience,
have re-opened paths that seem to belong to the archeology of missed opportunities.
Pantomime (as expressive system for organizing body language) has found, in hip-hop
culture, in music videos, or rather, in the new musical cinema, boundless possibilities of
expansion. The experiments of video art, the “fruitive” model of the installation, the wide
diffusion of digital supports, and the world of video games and the internet have made the
idea of expansion a common and a daily one. And these are not processes merely involving these new communicative and expressive systems, parallel to or bordering with cinema. It is cinema itself which is implicated. It is the models of classical and modern cinema that today appear as “dead ends.” The multiplex is more similar to the forms of
fruition of the “invisible cinema” of Peter Kubelka than to the hegemonic models of the
movie theater prevailing from the ‘20s to the ‘60s. IMAX is closer to the conditions of
stereoscopic vision than to the institutional model of movie theaters. Currently, not only
individual artist’s experiments (such as the contaminations of Peter Greenaway, the multiplications and the interactions of stories and screens of Mike Figgis, or the polyptychs of
Lucas Belvaux) but the tenets of every cinematic narration move further away from the
spatial and temporal categories of classical, and “modern,” cinema.
Looking at the cinema as an open system, and looking at its history as a history of possibilities, can help us formulate models for understanding today’s cinema and the paths
it is following even now.
[l.q.]
I would like to thank Francesco Pitassio, Paola Valentini, and Laura Vichi for their contributions to the planning and realization of this issue.
13
WHAT HAPPENED TO PANTOMIME?
Ben Brewster, University of Wisconsin
Although fiction films had long become the major part of the film programme in the
variety theatres or specialised film theatres in which films were seen, before 1908 few if
any commentators thought that the figures they saw on the screen representing a composed action were actors or that what they were doing was acting. When the activity
was discussed at all, it was likely called “posing for the moving pictures,” by analogy
with posing for “life-view” lantern slides or song slides. Nevertheless, commentators
were clear about what this activity was like, and in particular that, insofar as the performers had to convey the inner life of the figures they were supposed to represent, they
had to do so in a highly mobile and exaggerated way. Challenging the notion that the
cinematograph, if invented a century earlier, could have captured for us the acting of a
Talma or a Rachel, Jules Claretie remarked,
But would it have really been what I might call Rachel’s statuesque gait that had been preserved for us by the cinematograph? [....] It would be the ghosts of Rachel and Talma that
would appear to us today. Cinematographic life, or survival, is nothing but life somewhat
extreme in its posthumous movement or fixity. There is no escaping a certain exaggeration
in cinematographic gesture. To express a feeling in the cinematograph, to make it comprehensible, visible, the physiognomy has to exaggerate it to the point that it becomes a grimace. It would be Rachel’s mask I would have before me, not her soul.1
The figures on the screen so lacked presence that they could only register with
grotesquely exaggerated gestures.2 In the trade press, the same point was often made
with less philosophical justifications, e.g., that bad stage actors are more successful in
the cinema than good:
The actor who is too reposeful on the stage, and expresses his meaning and feeling merely
by the tone of his voice or in subtle movements, is utterly worthless for the moving picture. Sometimes the actor who has risen no higher than to scrub parts or the chorus can be
made good use of for the moving picture because of his great proneness to gesture and
motion.3
or that the French perform better in films than the English:
Strange as it may seem, the best moving picture actors or actresses are not found in the ranks
of American and English professionals. The best material is found in the Latin races. The
French and Italian people are notably successful. The explanation of this is that the AngloCINEMA & Cie, no. 2, Spring 2003
15
BEN BREWSTER
Saxon is more phlegmatic. By reason of his natural suppression of powers of expression he
fails to attain the same ends that the others mentioned do. There is a lack of required action.4
L’Assassinat du duc de Guise, after describing the weightier part gesture must play in
film drama as opposed to the ordinary stage play, asks:
By the time of this last quotation, the Autumn of 1908, trade commentators in France,
England, and the USA were well aware that in France a company, Film d’Art, had been
formed to make films featuring well-known actors from the Parisian stage. Perhaps as a
result of this development, as much as the films that eventually appeared in November
of 1908, the superiority of French films over those from other producing countries evidenced everywhere in audience preferences in variety theatres and movie houses,
began to be attributed especially to the acting in those films, and that acting began
more and more to be called “pantomime.” In France, this tendency culminates in the
publication of Eugène Kress’s manual on acting for the cinema, Le Geste et l’attitude,
whose subtitle – L’Art mimique au cinématographe – as well as its content marks its
affinity with such pantomime manuals as Charles Aubert’s L’Art mimique, suivi d’un
traité de la pantomime.5 In England, Nelly Gorman described the Film d’Art films as
examples of “elevated pantomime;” and Colin Bennett wrote in his Handbook of
Kinematography that “the kinematograph actor must be a master pantomimist, and
the writer of kinematograph plays must write for pantomime.”6 In the USA, Rollin
Summers gave a section of an article on “The Moving Picture Drama and the Acted
Drama” the subtitle “The Importance of Pantomime,” and argued in it that “The most
apparent limitation of the moving picture is its powerlessness to use dialogue. A primary means of expression is thus eliminated and only pantomime remains.”7
The claim that film acting should be pantomime did not, however, go unchallenged.
As is well known, American commentators rapidly turned away from it, so that the
prevalence of pantomime, seen as a form of acting inappropriate in works to be presented to an American audience, came to be counted among the defects of foreign
films which authorised their exclusion from the American market by the cartels that
came to dominate the American cinema around 1910.8 In a racist twist, the AngloSaxon reserve that American audiences would or should prefer to see in the cinema
would be subverted by the pantomimic gesticulation of the acting in French films.
Less prejudicially, such commentators as Frank Woods in New York Dramatic Mirror
began to argue against pantomime on realist grounds: “picture acting is not pantomime, […] it is merely the art of fine acting without words, and […] the essential thing
is to have a good story to act and then act it in the most natural manner possible.”9 In
England, rather, pantomimic acting became associated with other schools of traditional acting, ones that were, by the 1910s, provincial or “old-fashioned,” but which
continued to be felt to be appropriate for the cinema, both because the absence of
speech in the cinema demanded a broader style, and because the audiences for the cinema were seen as relatively unsophisticated, like those who still appreciated the older
acting styles of the spoken stage.
In France, things were somewhat more equivocal. Although descriptions of film acting as “pantomime,” and of the fiction film as a form of “pantomime” were common
from 1908 until the First World War, this was never a unanimous opinion. In his review
of the preview of the first products of Film d’Art at the Salle Charras in Paris on
November 22nd 1908, Adolphe Brisson, the principal dramatic critic of Le Temps, in a
passage which seems to be echoing conversations with Henri Lavedan, the founder of
Film d’Art and author of the screenplay of the most important film in that programme,
So is this art, from which speech is subtracted, the same thing as pantomime? [...] By no
means [...] Pantomime has a specialised language and grammar, immutable signs whose
meaning never varies; one of those signs means greed, another pride, another flirtatiousness,
and so on. The cinema refuses to use this alphabet; its aim is life. To grasp, sift, fix, by stylisation, the forms of life and their fleeting aspects, that is the task it has taken on.10
16
Other French commentators continued to dispute the significance of mime acting
for film.11
So far, this article has been merely about talk: what contemporaries said about films
and film acting, as evidenced by what was published in both the film trade and the lay
press. When dealing with contemporary comment – especially journalistic comment,
but the same is also true of discourse in general – it is crucial to bear in mind that it by
no means follows that because we can find articles that say that something really is
happening, or because we can find articles that say that something has begun to happen that there has in fact been any change. Column-inches have to be filled, and readers’ adherence solicited, and for these purposes commonplaces and truisms are more
useful and more easily available than descriptions of unfamiliar phenomena or original
deductions.
This is important here, because, under one common sense of “pantomime,” most cinema was pantomime by definition. Although in England, the term had taken on a different meaning, in France (and probably also the U.S.A.), the basic meaning of “pantomime” was a play without spoken dialogue.12 With the relatively minor exceptions
of the phonoscène and those films accompanied by actors behind the screen speaking
words in synchronisation with the figures on it, fiction films were enacted dramas
where there was no dialogue, or the dialogue was inaudible and hence anything it was
supposed to convey had to be supplied by other means. In this sense, it was therefore a
truism to say film was pantomime, and the evocation of a genre with its roots in antiquity was highly flattering to the tradesmen who purveyed these wares.13 Most references to fiction films as pantomimes are of this kind. When Édouard Helsey in
Comœdia calls the Film d’Art productions “these important pantomimes,”14 it means
no more than if he had said “films” except to imply these are high-class films. When
“Souffleur” writes in the Bioscope that
The school for cinematograph acting – when it comes – will find that gesture and pantomime, acting by signs instead of words, will have to be taught, and taught thoroughly;
moreover, it will be found that a peculiar class of gesture – broad and deliberate – is necessary to permit of good photography and satisfactory results15
the first part of this statement says little more than that film actors must cultivate
gestures if they are to convey the inner life of their characters, while the second is the
familiar insistence in these years that film acting has to be broad.
In the light of this, it is not surprising that Sabine Lenk, in a careful and detailed study
of both the film trade and the lay press in France before the First World War, concludes
that the regular appeal to “pantomime” is superficial:
17
BEN BREWSTER
In their efforts to integrate the new entertainment medium, most writers rely on external
features: film is mute, it tells stories, it usually shows human beings in action, music accompanies its offerings – all these things are also true of pantomime. Hence many conclude that
film is a kind of pantomime.16
However, in an as yet unpublished thesis on acting in the early British cinema,
Jonathan Burrows argues, on the contrary, that
most of the relevant evidence that we can examine points to the pervasive influence of one
specific European theatrical histrionic tradition which predominantly informed the choice
of productions, performers and acting styles that they [theatrical adaptations made in
Britain between 1908 and 1911] showcase. That tradition is the discipline of authentic wordless pantomime.17
Burrows’s claim has two parts. First, that there was an acting tradition associated with
pantomime distinct from other acting styles in the theatre of the period, and second, that
the film acting described as pantomime, in particular the acting in the early Film d’Art
films and that of such films as the 1911 Cooperative Film Company adaptation of
Shakespeare’s Richard III, acted by F.R. Benson and his troupe, can be shown to conform
to that tradition. What Burrows attempts to do is to find prescriptions and proscriptions
in manuals for pantomime acting that contradict those found in similar manuals for the
spoken stage, and then to demonstrate that the films he believes are strictly pantomimic conform to the rulings in the pantomime books and not those for spoken drama.
Burrows’s first point is that, in the tradition of spoken drama which Lea Jacobs and I
call “pictorial,” gestures were slow. He cites Gustave Garcia’s prescription that “precipitation between two gestures, in fact want of repose in the general treatment of a
scene completely destroys the illusion which the spectator would otherwise feel.”18
This he contrasts with Aubert’s claim that the action in pantomime had to be “rapid
[...] expressions which require too many explanatory gestures must be rejected or modified because they cause length.”19 For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, he
links Garcia’s call for slowness in gesture to Dene Barnett’s summary of eighteenthcentury acting manuals to the effect that gesture was timed to the delivery of dialogue
at a very fine-grained level: “The action tended to be matched to the short phrase rather
than to whole passages. One acted by the word rather than by the paragraph or by the
pervading emotion.”20 Clearly, the same could not directly be true of pantomime,
which has no spoken component. However, insofar as pantomime involved gestural
dialogues and monologues, i.e., gesture was used as a substitute for speech in pantomime, the timing of such gesture could approach that of spoken drama. Moreover,
in the same passage Barnett himself draws attention to the vigour of gesture in récits,
speeches in which the actors describe an action not directly depicted on stage, and an
example in Antonio Morrocchesi’s Lezioni di declamazione e d’arte teatrale in which
22 plates with widely different attitudes and gestures illustrate a récit of 16 lines shows
that gestures timed to dialogue could be very fast indeed.21 Aubert’s rejection of long,
complex gestural sequences in pantomime is directed more at achieving clarity than
at pace as such – a string of gestures without speech to clarify the meaning might easily cause the spectator to lose the thread of the mimed dialogue. “Length” is not being
criticised here for slowing down the action, but for spoiling the “immediacy” that
18
Aubert demands characterise pantomime gestures. Finally, if gesture is rapid in many
films of this period, and later, this is attributable to the brevity of scenes in films,22 a
brevity necessitated by the overall length of the short films standard around 1908, but
retained in feature-length films, which usually have many more scenes than stage
plays of equivalent length.
Burrows’s second contrast is between Aubert’s suggestion that, in pantomime, groups
of extras may all perform the same gesture simultaneously and Johannes Jelgerhuis’s
insistence, in his Theoretische Lessen over de Gesticulatie en Mimiek of 1827 that
“nothing is more ugly than for two Actors to stand alike, because contrasts must hold
in the whole of the tableau.”23 Burrows sees the extras in L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise
(specifically, the members of the King’s Guard in the scenes immediately before and
after the assassination), and those in the Benson Richard III, as acting in unison in this
way. However, Jelgerhuis and Aubert are talking about such different issues in the
respective passages that the contrast is more apparent than real. Aubert’s suggestion is
in a chapter entitled “On the Unity of Expression” whose main point is that different
gestures should never occur simultaneously: “In no case should an actor be allowed to
express two things at once. For example, to respond to the line So you no longer need
me? by a no with the head and a leave me with the arm.” Similarly, two actors should
never make gestures at the same time, although (but he insists it is not an exception):
It is true that several actors, when addressing a single person, may at the same time gesticulate, implore, insult, threaten; but were they one hundred, were they one thousand, they
never represent anything but one crowd, one party, one unit – in other words, a single interlocutor. And, so long as this crowd and the person it addresses do not make their gestures at
the same time, but each in turn, then the dialogue will be just as clear as if there were only
two people on the stage.24
What is at stake is the temporal relationship of gestures. Given that gestures can be
realised in an infinite number of ways – indeed, much of the art of acting lies, not in the
correct performance of a gesture, but in producing a unique variation on the gesture –
then it is quite possible for a group of extras to conform to Aubert’s insistence on performing gestures in sequence, and hence on a crowd all producing a single gesture at
once, without offending Jelgerhuis’s concern for contrast in the stage picture as a
whole, insofar as each extra produces a variant of the gesture, coordinating his or her
variant to fit with the others’ into a harmonious ensemble.
There is no doubt that the turn taking principle expounded by Aubert for pantomime
was also standard in spoken drama. At a broad level, it can be demonstrated in the directions given in play texts.25 Where extras are concerned, it is clear that one of the reasons
Chronegk’s direction of the Meininger troupe was seen as so innovative and so offended theatrical traditionalists is that he rejected the Aubert prescription and provided
each of his extras with an individual piece of business to perform at his own pace, and
the result, at least for the traditionalists, was precisely the distraction that Aubert was
trying to guard against.26
There might seem to be a contradiction between this turn-taking and the idea of the
tableau, both in the sense of the climactic picture and the sense of conceiving the
organisation of the action on stage as the movement from one picture to another –
after all, the tableau was the assemblage of a group of different, indeed contrasting atti19
BEN BREWSTER
tudes, all held at once. But the stasis of the climactic picture is what helped avoid the
distraction, since the audience had time to take in its complexity, and the compositional structure even of the picture which was hardly held at all immediately indicated whose was at that moment the principal part – the succession of pictures is what
made possible the turn-taking.27 Rather than a contradiction, there is a tension
between turn-taking and tableau, part of the overall tension between stasis and movement in pictorial theatre.
As for the films, I see nothing in the ensemble work of the actors playing the guards
in L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise to offend Jelgerhuis. Their gestures – e.g., when they all
raise their swords to swear to the King to carry out the murder, or when they all point
to the dead Duke as Henri emerges from his bed curtains – are similar, but their arrangement in a semi-circle ensures variation in their outlines for the spectator. Moreover,
there are clear examples of tableaux in the early Film d’Art productions, as well as constant resort to turn-taking.28 There seems nothing to suggest that there was any difference between pantomime and spoken drama in these matters, and hence nothing in the
films of 1908-10 which was incompatible with emulation of either theatrical form.
Burrows’s source of rules for pantomime acting, Charles Aubert, says as much:
Actors [sc. in spoken drama] will easily see that, if they can leave to mimes in the narrow
sense most of the deliberate or considered gestures which are intended to replace speech, it
is very much in their interest to study and use all the instinctual expressions which so powerfully enliven speech by giving it more force, clarity, and warmth.29
Whereas these arguments for a specific acting style for pantomime have depended on
comparing prescriptions for pantomime actors with supposedly contradictory ones for
actors for the spoken stage, Burrows claims at least one case where an acting manual
directly contrasts rules for standard drama and for those for pantomime. He paraphrases Gustave Garcia to the effect that (in standard acting) the actor should avoid symmetrical movements of the limbs, and goes on:
However, quick, “symmetrical movements [...] are admissible” he [Garcia] adds, but “only in
pantomimic action.” Rapid mobility and a plastic susceptibility to instantaneous changes of
expression are “the first condition of a good pantomimist.” Thus, “The very faults to avoid in
tragedy or high comedy could be turned to good account” in mute drama.30
We should note that Garcia discusses “pantomimic action” rather than “pantomime.”
Indeed, it is arguable that he never discusses pantomime as a genre, probably because it
was not a significant genre on the British stage when he wrote. Burrows’s second quotation shows this clearly. In full, it reads:
In descriptive ballets the dancers have to express all their sentiments by pantomimic action.
Mute actors, such as the dumb girl in Masaniello, are also introduced. This sort of acting
requires a great knowledge of the different gestures appropriate to each sentiment and passion. The first condition for a good pantomimist is to possess a face susceptible of great variety of expression – of great mobility. The very faults to avoid in tragedy or high comedy
could be turned to good account in low comedy or comic parts. Symmetric, awkward movements prove very successful when judiciously used.31
20
The references to ballet and to Masaniello show that he is thinking of moments in
other genres (I will discuss ballet-pantomime in more detail later) where gestural substitutes for dialogue are used, such as the communications of a character who is dumb
(one can easily imagine other, similar cases, e.g., when characters are forced to converse
by gesture to make their communication inaudible to another character). Note that the
sentence Burrows completes with a reference to “mute drama” in fact concludes with
“low comedy or comic parts.” The usage of “pantomimic action” in the passage from
which Burrows draws his first quotations might seem more generic:
Symmetrical movements in acting are admissible only in pantomimic action or low comedy, and are therefore incompatible with elevated sentiments. In high comedy or tragedy
such movements would be out of place.32
But the basic framework is the same: Garcia is distinguishing between types of gesture appropriate to low and high genres, and assumes (forgetting here the example of
Masaniello) that characters in the low genres are more likely to resort to mime.
These quotations from Garcia also illustrate the difficulty of the approach Burrows
takes, assuming that the manuals codify a style, and that an examination of what
actors do in surviving films will allow us to assign the acting in those films to one style
or another. Garcia does not think of acting as one style, or even a set of styles for different kinds of theatre. Pictorial acting is not really a matter of “styles” at all. Rather, it
is an approach to acting which enjoins the actor to consider at every moment how he
or she looks to the audience in relation to the stage picture as a whole. Acting manuals
codify the approach as a set of rules – dos and don’ts – but these are not absolute; thus,
all the manuals tell you that the arms should not be raised above shoulder level, but I
have no doubt that in most performances of most plays in the nineteenth century
some actor raised his arms above his shoulders at some point. The rules’ purpose is to
ensure that the stage picture, and hence the actor’s part in it, is appropriate to the situation depicted, to the character being depicted, and to the genre of the play being performed. They are rules of decorum, and as such are meant to be broken when situation,
character, or genre require it. The manuals codify the pictorial approach in a neoAristotelian manner as a set of prescriptions for verisimilitudinous mimesis.33 What
appears on stage will be plausible to the audience if it respects the rules of decorum,
which include the provision that, in extremis, the rules should be broken. As Lessing
put it, the actor may permit himself “the wildness of a Tempesta, the insolence of a
Bernini,” if the situation demands it and the transitions to and from the rule-breaking
moment are properly handled.34 As a result, pictorial acting encompasses as many
styles as there are genres, as many styles as there are situations, and, indeed, as many
styles as there are actors. Indeed, it could be argued that pictorial acting would allow a
place for acting which fits no recognizable style, which does not look like acting at all
(and which therefore might, in a different context, be identical to the strictest naturalistic acting). Burrows’s key example of the reduced acting style he argues was more
typical of respectable (i.e., non-melodramatic) stage acting in Britain at the turn of the
century, Charles Hawtrey, might be a case in point:35 Hawtrey specialised in a very narrow kind of comedy in which what was comic was that he failed to respond to situations in the expected way, i.e., the “actorly” way; a similar kind of humour is generated by those pantomime dames who do not act in a womanly way (or Cary Grant when
21
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in drag in I Was a Male War Bride), though in this case it is a refusal to act according
to character that is at stake.
Clearly, such a broad account of pictorial acting is intended to make the very notion of
“verisimilar” acting impossible (or coterminous with pictorial acting as such). One of the
things that has most surprised Lea Jacobs and me in the reception of Theatre to Cinema
at conferences where questions of early film acting have arisen is that, although we were
concerned lest our critique of Roberta Pearson’s opposition between “histrionic” and
“verismilar” acting might be too virulent, in the event many people have rather conflated that distinction with our one between pictorial and naturalistic acting – supposing
maybe that the two oppositions are conceptually different and what we call pictorialist
performances might be classed as verisimilar by Pearson, and vice versa, but for most purposes lumping together Pearson and Brewster and Jacobs as slightly different accounts of
how film acting evolved from theatrical beginnings to cinematic realism. This conflation
has not yet appeared much in print, as far as I know, but an example would be Charlie
Keil’s remark that “Brewster and Jacobs dispute the validity of categories based on purported distinctions in theatrical practice, but they agree that the transitional period witnesses a marked change in performance style. I see no reason to abandon the descriptively useful terms Pearson has devised.”36 But the real problem is the escalator model as
such, the idea of a “transitional” period during which an old-fashioned, stage-centered
style (with all the bad connotations the anti-theatrical prejudice associates with “histrionic”) is more or less steadily displaced by something natural, unaffected, realistic and
better adapted to the cinema. This evolutionism is already evidenced in the 1910s themselves, and is now well entrenched, so well entrenched that one book is not going to shift
it. Moreover, although our point about naturalistic acting was that it was a programme
so maladapted to cinema that only a very few filmmakers attempted to espouse it, we did
see it as coming after pictorialism, and hence interpreted film performances which were
heavily influenced by post-naturalist theatrical movements such as symbolism as somehow pre-naturalist, because they can be analysed in pictorialist terms.37 We thus opened
the door to the temptation to consider particular film performances as somewhere on a
diachronic line between traditional theatrical acting and modern cinematic acting, when
what an understanding of pictorialist acting allows is the possibility of describing the differences between different performances and different performers synchronically, without branding one as more “advanced” or “regressive” than another.38
The misappreciations induced by evolutionist accounts of early film acting are illustrated by the way recent commentators contrast the performances of Raphaël Albert
Lambert and Charles Le Bargy in L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise. Thus Burrows:
There are, it is true, several moments of relative stillness and undemonstrative behaviour in
L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise from Albert Lambert as the eponymous Duke, but the main star
of the film Le Bargy – playing Henri III – often employs very broad gestures and moves in a
noticeably frenzied fashion, particularly in the scene where he gives instructions to the conspirators.39
And Lenk:
The sociétaire of the Comédie-Française [Le Bargy, though the description would apply
equally to Lambert] often uses what, from a present-day standpoint, seems an exaggerated
22
and misplaced gestural pantomime, while the acting of the other performers is more
nuanced and reserved.40
Thus the difference between the two performances is seen as a stylistic discrepancy,
Lambert being more advanced, Le Bargy regressive. But this is to ignore the point
emphasised above – that pictorialism calls for different acting for different characters
and situations. L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise is generically the most experimental of the
Film d’Art productions. In it, Lavedan abandons the conventions of the well-made play
which dominated most late nineteenth-century drama and opera, and tries to create
what might be called a pageant play, one in which historical events unfold in the manner of a chronicle within a providential horizon in which each character and each deed
is reducible to a moral type. This form had been tried by Romantic writers, and Ludovic
Vitet’s Les Etats de Blois of 1827 might even be a direct influence, but these plays had
been regarded as unperformable; however, there was a very similar impulse behind
many of English spectacular theatre’s productions of Shakespeare, most particularly
Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s 1910 Henry VIII, and it is clear that there was a widespread
preoccupation with pageant drama at this time, seen as restoring the sacral dimension
that the bourgeois theatre had lost (witness the fascination with such folk dramas as
the Oberammergau Passion Play).41 Within this genre, de Guise stands for Hubris,
brushing aside all the omens foreshadowing his death – the anonymous letter, the nosebleed, his mistress’s and his fellow Councillors’ warnings – so Lambert shows him with
a calm somewhere between heedlessness and an appropriately Iberian sosiego, while
Henri III stands for Tyrannical Pusillanimity, barely screwing himself up to destroy his
long-time ally and rival, so Le Bargy’s gestures show agitation, terror, uncertainty, contradictory impulses, superstition.42 The contrast in the acting is not one between an old
and a new acting style, but between different characters in different situations. Brisson
captures this contrast in his review: “The King [...] ferrety, disturbed, mouselike, agitated, [...] the Duke [...] bold, his eye steady, his posture haughty, trusting to his courage.”43
Thus it seems to me that Burrows does not establish his claim that there was a pantomime acting style distinct from the acting styles of the spoken stage (except insofar
as most early film and pantomime both lacked one of the crucial aspects of that stage,
namely, the conveyance of information via the resources of the voice). And I would also
agree with Lenk that most identifications between film acting and pantomime in this
period are restricted to the obvious features in this last parenthesis. But this does not
mean that there was no significant influence from acting in French pantomime upon
the acting in the early French film. I have stressed that neither contemporary accounts
nor what we can see in the films suggests that there was an acting style for spoken theatre that can be homogeneously distinguished from one for pantomime; I have also
indicated that spoken theatre itself had no homogenous acting style. Might not the
same be true of acting in pantomime? One problem here is the small number of detailed
accounts available. Most modern commentators simply rely on Charles Aubert’s L’Art
mimique, assuming this one source is a description of contemporary pantomime practice, when the author’s own comments suggest that he is promoting a particular conception of mime, not describing the range of mime practice of his own day, let alone the
full range of mime acting.44 Moreover, a glance at films made in all film-producing
countries before the First World War shows that actors in the cinema used a mime
vocabulary which is barely if at all referred to by Aubert in his manual. These pan23
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tomime gestures are not attitudes or expressive gestures, but rather gestures that stand
in for speeches the characters are supposed to be making. Aubert distinguished five
kinds of action:
Mimic movements can be divided into five kinds, viz.:
1) Movements of action, which are purely and simply the movements required to carry out an
action: to drink, to walk, ... etc.;
2) Movements of character, which are persistent and define the character, habits and quality of
a role;
3) Instinctual movements, which are spontaneous, involuntary, and convey an emotion, a physical or moral sensation;
4) Descriptive or speaking movements, which are voluntary, deliberate, composed, and whose
aim is to express a thought, a need, a desire, or to describe a person, an objet, or to indicate a
point or direction.
5) Complementary movements, which make up the participation of the whole body in the
expression signified by the main movement, giving that expression more force and harmony.45
He goes on to say that the fourth category, the speaking movements, are above all
hand gestures, and that they are relatively conventional, and hence require more exposition in his manual than the first three categories.46 Despite the large space devoted to
this fourth category of gestures in Aubert’s manual, he includes few of the gestures that
we see in the films, and the usage he describes differs from that in the films.
In one of the first American articles attacking mime in the cinema, Frank Woods
exemplifies the “old pantomime” as follows: “If an actor desired to indicate to another
that he wanted a drink of water he would form his hand in the shape of a cup and go
through the motions of drinking.”47 This gesture, familiar to anyone who has seen
many films made in the 1900s and 1910s, is not in L’Art mimique. Kristin Thompson
describes another familiar gesture:
One could catalogue many standard gestures in films before 1913. For example, when characters place an open hand palm down about three feet from the floor, that indicates
“child.”48
This gesture even occurs in a film that has been described as pioneering a “specifically cinematic direction of actors,”49 Germinal (SCAGL, 1913), when a number of blacklegs are forced to run the gauntlet of a crowd of striking miners. One of the blacklegs
makes the gesture as an excuse to his fellow workers for his return to work. This gesture – an open hand held low, palm down – is found in Aubert (p. 99, fig. 121), but with
the meaning “small” (or “short” – petit can mean either), and contrasted with that of an
open hand held high, palm down (fig. 122), meaning “big” or “tall.” Obviously, there are
contexts where “short [person]” and “child” could be synonymous, but the Germinal
example is not one of them – it is the father-child relationship that the blackleg is referring to, not the size of the child; he is excusing his return to work on the grounds that
he has a child to support. The only other familiar mime gesture I can spot in Aubert’s
long list is “arms folded, held close to the body, one elbow higher than the other” (p. 66,
fig. 54), which he says means “carrying a child in one’s arms; a child; a mother.” The
only meaning I have seen this used for is “baby.”
24
However, all these gestures are recorded, with the meaning evident from the films, in
a relatively recent work, Joan Lawson’s 1957 book Mime: The Theory and Practice of
Expressive Gesture with a Description of its Historical Development.50 This book (dedicated to Margot Fonteyn) is written for ballet dancers and choreographers. Mid-nineteenth-century French ballet, in particular (often called “ballet-pantomime,” as in the
passages from Garcia’s acting manual cited above), had extensive passages of musically
accompanied mime between what were more strictly dances, and such mime evoked
the same contradictory views that we find in relation to the mime dramas of the turn of
the century – some commentators find the mime the most affecting part of the performance (e.g., Théophile Gautier on Fanny Elssler in La Gipsy in 1839),51 others condemn it as an incomprehensible waste of time (e.g., Hector Berlioz on La Chatte metamorphosé en femme in 1837).52 Modern ballet, and modern choreography of classical
ballet, have minimised the extent of mime, but it is still impossible to perform or follow the action of Giselle or Swan Lake without using or understanding some mime, so
ballet dancers, unlike stage actors, still have to learn this vocabulary.53 Hence their presence in Lawson’s work. Why their absence (or modification) in Aubert’s, given that
their appearance in films suggests they were probably also present in contemporary
stage pantomime?
Nineteenth-century French mime usually claims descent from the work of Gaspard
Deburau at the Théâtre des Funambules in Paris in the late 1820s.54 Deburau specialised
in (some authors claim named) the white-clothed clown Pierrot, and although the
mime plays in which his Pierrot appeared were comedies, this clown had a melancholy
streak. Deburau’s Pierrot attracted the attention of literary intellectuals, giving rise to
the long history of Pierrots in modernist theatre, ballet, music, and painting as well as
literature. After Deburau’s death, pantomime persisted as a popular form, usually in the
context of variety theatre (especially in Marseille), but the mime contemporaneous
with the early cinema owes much to a revival, appealing to Deburau, centring on the
Cercle des Funambules, a club founded in Paris in February 1888 by a group of intellectuals including a novelist (Paul Margueritte), a dramatic critic (Félix Larcher), and a
journalist (Raoul de Najac), Paul Hugounet, an early member, stated the principal aim
of the Cercle des Funambules as follows:
To promote the growth of modern pantomime, by providing authors and musical composers with the opportunity to produce publicly their works in this genre, whatever the
artistic tendencies of those works in other respects.55
This formulation seems deliberately catholic with respect to the range of mime acting in the current theatre, but in a later work, Hugounet adds that the Cercle also aimed
for a reform of pantomime, distinguishing the work of the Cercle from the pantomimes
staged in French variety theatres, thus constituting the Cercle as a sort of “Théâtre Libre
de la Pantomime” (Hugounet’s phrase):
The point was to suppress in pantomime all the conventional gestures which make it
obscure, to set aside a whole alphabet which is incomprehensible to the audience.56
This, along with the use of serious and original music, would serve the distinguish
the work of the Cercle from variety-theatre and circus mime.
25
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This distinction, between an incomprehensible arbitrary mime vocabulary, an
“alphabet” as Hugounet calls it, and a mime based on the natural expressiveness of the
body is too much of a commonplace to be accepted as a real description (note how it
echoes the fifty year earlier opposition between Gautier and Berlioz), but it does suggest
a range of types of acting in pantomime, and why a writer like Aubert, who shared the
Cercle des Funambules’ reforming ideas, would try to make his descriptive gestures
motivated or “natural” signs rather than arbitrary ones.57 However, there is another
contrast that helps to explain the paucity of descriptions of the conventionalised gestures. A review in Théâtra of a March 1911 performance in Marseille by Georges Wague
and Christine Kerf in the mime play Aux Bat’ d’Aff’ commented:
How remote this is from the traditional pantomime of those so highly regarded famous old
mime-artistes and how much I prefer this new art of M. Wague, more true, more accurate,
more sincere.58
Wague, indeed, boasted that he avoided hand gestures, restricting himself as far as
possible to expressive attitudes. However, this praise evoked a furious response from
the mime Bighetti:
M. Wague’s modernism is not an artistic formula, it is no more than a recipe to draw a crowd
[....]. Pantomime is a difficult science, and to know it you must have learnt it. How can you
make yourself understood with gestures if you do not use the conventional signs of the
mimic alphabet?59
Bighetti (like Sévérin, Thalès and Jacquinet) was a pupil of the Marseille mime Rouffe
(1849-1885), whereas Wague was largely self-taught – he had debuted as a reciter of verse,
and had then progressed to full-blown mime plays via the cantomime, a mixed form in
which the mime illustrated a song performed simultaneously by a singer in the wings.
This quarrel thus counterposes two conceptions of the professional status of the mime.
For Wague, mime is the mastery of the natural expressivity of the body, and hence is in
principle open to anyone; for Bighetti, it is a learned alphabet, and hence is only available to those who undergo a long apprenticeship under the tutelage of another, older
mime. But the mime who sees his work as a craft secret is not going to publish a how-to
manual. Hence the written record, including both mime manuals like Aubert’s, and the
descriptions of mime by literary intellectuals and drama critics,60 favours a “new pantomime” which minimises the conventional vocabulary, but that vocabulary – the “old
pantomime” – can survive quite vigorously uncommented alongside.61
Perhaps it should be pointed out that this “new” pantomime has little to do with the
modern French mime we are familiar with from the work of Jean-Louis Barrault and
Marcel Marceau. These mimes trace their descent to Etienne Decroux, who reinvented
mime in collaboration with Jacques Copeau at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier at the
end of the First World War. Decroux’s mime drew on modern dance, Jacques DoniolValcroze’s eurhythmics, and gymnastics and other sports more than it did on the preWar mime tradition.62 In particular, contemporary descriptions of pre-War mime show
no evidence of the concern in the work of Barrault, Marceau, and also Tati, for the evocation of an invisible world, where the mime conjures up a whole environment, other
characters, objects, etc., with his body alone and no scenery and no props, except per26
haps a few nondescript ones.63 Pre-War mime used all the resources of the spectacular
theatre – props, costumes, scenery. Once again, this suggests that there was no specific
acting style for pantomime, except where acting was directly related to speech: pantomime was simply theatre minus words.
French mime actors did, however, have a significant effect on the French cinema,
since so many of them acted in it. In France in the belle époque, pantomime was a part
of variety entertainment. Pantomimes were presented (by professionals and amateurs)
in private performances in the homes of the rich, soirées and charity concerts; pantomime was part of the repertory at the big music halls, such as the Folies-Bergère and
the Moulin Rouge; it appeared on the bills in lowly café-concerts. At one end of the
scale, it was an intellectual pastime with modernist aspirations, at the other end `a popular entertainment barely distinguishable from strip tease. Not surprisingly, the same
stratum of the acting profession that served the variety theatre also provided the acting
personnel of the early cinema, and hence the early stock companies as well as deliberately promoted “cross-overs” from the live stage included many with experience in pantomime. An examination of the filmography of a few famous stage mimes as recorded
in Raymond Chirat and Eric Le Roy’s Catalogue des films français de fiction de 1908 à
1918 illustrates the point. Paul Franck appeared in twenty-three films in these years,
Jean Jacquinet in forty-nine, Stacia Napierkowska in seventy-six, Gaston Sévérin in
nine, Thalès in seventeen, Charlotte Wiehe in four, and Georges Wague in fifty-two.64
Some of these mimes, for example, Sévérin, appeared in films relatively rarely, and
almost always with his own mime troupe in adaptations of stage pantomimes; others,
notably Wague, became fairly regular film actors without abandoning their stage pantomime careers, while yet others, particularly Jacquinet and Napierkowska, moved
from pantomime acting to acting almost exclusively for film. But the overall presence
of pantomime actors, or actors who had established themselves in pantomime, in
French filmmaking, is undeniable. However, by the same token, these actors fit seamlessly into the ensembles with which they worked, ensembles that included many
actors from other stage traditions. Napierkowska, it is true, is an actress with a very distinctive, dance-like style (she had been a dancer as well as a mime, and, in general,
female mimes were often called on for dance in their mime dramas more than the men
– thus, most of Wague’s leading ladies were originally dancers) and this does lead to her
drawing excessive attention to herself (e.g., as the messenger in the 1909 Pathé
Cléopâtre), but in films like Capellani’s Notre Dame de Paris (SCAGL, 1911) her fellow
actors Henri Krauss and Claude Garry match the breadth of her gestures. And, although
I knew Germinal (SCAGL, 1913) very well, I did not realise Jacquinet was a mime until
I undertook the research for this article.
In addition to the conventionalised mime gestures described above, there are other
instances of mime in early film. In the 1910 Biograph film Gold Is Not All, there is a
scene in which a poor couple, played by Mack Sennett and Linda Arvidson, watch a rich
wife leaving her house in her automobile. After the car leaves the screen with the couple enviously watching it, Sennett points off in the direction the car left, makes circles
in the air with his forefinger, then points at himself, and lifts a foot and taps his shoe.
The meaning of the gestures is clear enough: the poor husband says to his wife something like “Look, she gets to ride in a car, while we have to walk!” However, these gestures do not appear in any source I know of mime gestures. Lawson has a gesture for
“walk,” but it is made solely with the arms, moving them backwards and forwards like
27
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a child imitating the pistons of a railway locomotive.65 Sennett (or perhaps Griffith)
seems to have invented these gestures for the immediate situation.
Note that Sennett’s lips do not move during this sequence of gestures. Aubert argues
forcefully that pantomimists should not move their lips, indeed, they should make no
reference at all to the notion that people speak (e.g., make no gestures indicative of listening to others speaking); the good mime has the talent to “cause the very existence of
speech to be temporarily forgotten.”66 Burrows, Lenk and others have taken the
absence of lip movements as typical of stage pantomime, and hence its occurrence in
films as a sign that these are “pantomime-influenced” films; the fact that in other films
characters’ lips do move thus for them marks the shift to a more realistic kind of film
acting. However, Aubert himself complains that some pantomimists did move their
lips, while the standard gesture for “Silence!” in the other manuals is a finger to the lips
with the hand palm out, and hence an obvious reference to speech, so once again,
Aubert adopts an extreme position on this matter.67 Moreover, film actors throughout
the silent period restrict the amount of visible speaking they do, so the distinction is
not an absolute one. But, from the beginning, filmmakers and spectators thought of the
moving-picture camera as a recording apparatus, and were aware of its limitations,
including, for the most part at this period, the absence of recorded sound, so they did
not have to imagine the world filmed as one lacking speech, while the absence of
speech in stage mime was purely a generic convention, so Aubert, at least, thought it
needed special treatment.68
However, in later Biograph films, while gestures of the type found in Gold Is Not All
remain common, they usually accompany lip movements, and can be realistically motivated as “talking with one’s hands” while speaking. Also, the effort to avoid conventionalised gesture often results in them being fairly obscure, unlike Sennett’s (and as
gestures accompanying talk are likely to be). In A Lodging for the Night (USA, Biograph,
1912), when Charles West as Dick Logan has to explain to the sheriff how he was set on
by thieves in the night and yet exculpate his guilty host since he is sweet on that host’s
daughter, he speaks to the sheriff and moves his hands up and down and across his body
as if playing arpeggios on an invisible piano. In the absence of an intertitle (the print I
have seen lacked intertitles, which I am sure would have been present here in a release
print), it is quite unclear what he tells the sheriff.
This kind of “talking with one’s hands” mime (“pantomimic action,” in Garcia’s
sense, but motivated by the absence of audible sound in silent film) remains common
in the cinema, particularly in the comic cinema (again confirming Garcia’s notion that
pantomimic action was particularly appropriate for low genre),69 and, indeed, had a
rich flowering in the late silent period, when the talking picture was already on the
horizon. Think of the children’s attempts to convey to their father the fact that the
chicken leg he is about to serve to his next-door neighbour is still adorned with the fatal
rosette which will reveal that this chicken is that neighbour’s prize rooster, in Pass the
Gravy (USA, Hal Roach, 1928), or Monte Blue’s mime to his wife across the street to
explain the effects of his old flame’s attempts to seduce him in So This Is Paris (USA,
Warner’s, 1926), or Adolph Menjou’s relation to his valet of his night’s adventures in A
Gentleman of Paris (USA, Paramount, 1927). In these last instances, filmmakers resort
to mime partly to evade censorship – mime enables things to be conveyed by characters
to the audience that censorship would not allow in dialogue, whether the content of
that dialogue was represented by titles or by audible speech.
28
There is one last type of mime that is remarkable for its absence, or at any rate rarity,
in the early cinema. Although, as we have seen, pantomime was associated with ethnic
stereotypes, it seems surprisingly infrequently used to convey ethnic information. It
may be true that, very broadly speaking, the basic ethnic stereotype at work – the
notion that the breadth and frequency of gesture is in inverse proportion to geographic latitude (in Europe at least) – is reflected in the acting of ethnic types, but the effect is
quite slight. In The Baby and the Stork (USA, Biograph, 1912), it is important to the plot
that the man who delivers the coal at Bobby’s family’s house is Italian (because this
explains why suspicion falls on him when the family’s baby disappears, a suspicion
motivated by a newspaper article presumably referring to something like black-hand
gangs engaging in kidnapping – here too, the print I have seen lacked titles and inserts),
but nothing in Edward Dillon’s performance marks this Italianicity to me. Even more
strikingly, although it is a central feature of Assunta Spina that it is set in Naples, and
this is emphasised in costumes and even more in the use of Neapolitan settings for the
exteriors, the repertory of gestures deployed by the actors – Francesca Bertini as
Assunta, Gustavo Serena as Michele, Alberto Albertini as Raffaele, and Carlo Benedetti
as Funelli – is quite standard, with no Neapolitan peculiarities, despite the notorious
gestural specificity of the Neapolitan, and the availability of a famous book on
Neapolitan gesture – Andrea de Jorio’s La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire
napoletano of 183270 – to use as a source. It may be that the national and international
character of the film market deterred filmmakers from the use of local peculiarities,
unless these were immediately comprehensible to an international audience as “local
colour,” so gestures which needed to be understood to follow the plot of a film had to
belong to a cosmopolitan repertory (or be so firmly naturalistically motivated as to be
comprehensible to anyone without previous familiarity). Although the raison d’être of
the play by Salvatore di Giacomo on which the film is based is that it was in Neapolitan
dialect, every Italian print I have seen has dialogue titles in standard (Florentine)
Italian, without the slightest attempt to capture a Neapolitan flavour.71
However, in the comic series he directed and starred in for Gaumont, Léonce Perret
does seem to be using gesture to mark what is presumably the Parisian culture of his
protagonist (which seems in general much more important to Léonce than it is to
Linder’s Max or Prince’s Rigadin, despite the fact that one assumes that these characters
usually live in Paris). In Léonce à la campagne (Gaumont, 1913), there is a scene in
which Léonce and his wife Poupette (played by Suzanne Le Bret) are staying at Léonce’s
uncle’s house in the country. One evening they are called to meet a group of the uncle’s
friends, who have come to dinner. The guests, local bourgeois, are sitting outside on the
terrace awaiting the call to dine. Léonce and Poupette approach the group from the rear,
as most of the guests listen in rapt attention to a harangue from a plump middle-aged
gentleman with a self-important attitude. After introductions, the gentleman resumes
his harangue. Standing behind them, Léonce and Poupette exchange glances, then both
look to camera and make the same gesture: they hold their right hand to their right
cheek, with the hand bent so that the back of the fingers is nearly against the cheek and
the wrist is towards camera, then wave the hand up and down, rotating it at the wrist,
so it brushes the cheek. The meaning of the gesture is not precisely clear (to me – I wonder if a modern Parisian would recognise it at once?), but it seems to involve contempt
for the guests and a degree of incredulity, together with complicity with the spectator:
“Who do these bumpkins think they are?” I cannot find it in any of my sources on pan29
BEN BREWSTER
tomime or ethnic gestures, though it might be a variant of de Jorio’s negativa, in which
the bent hand is held with the back of the fingers under the chin and the back of the
hand facing the interlocutor, and whose meaning is “I reject what you propose!”72 Here,
though, it surely underlines the fact that Léonce and Poupette are Parisians, with the
assumption that the spectators are, too, or at any rate they are more likely to identify
with a Parisian than with a provincial.73
So, what did happen to pantomime? It seems clear from this argument that a pantomime-based cinema was not a “road not taken,” neither an inappropriate theatrical
borrowing that had to be cast off to allow the emergence of true cinematic acting, nor a
lost opportunity to create a “non-realist,” stylised cinema. Insofar as the early cinema
shared an obvious feature with stage pantomime, its lack of audible dialogue, it was a
form of pantomime, as all those “superficial” commentators maintained, and it
employed many stage mime practitioners. But apart from the area of gestures that supplied the absence of speech, there was no special pantomime acting style – rather there
was a very wide range of acting “styles” in the pictorialist theatre as a whole, which
included the pantomime theatre, and the cinema drew on them all. And the mime that
supplied the absence of speech continued to be used in the cinema, and indeed, was
probably more widely used and more elaborated and orchestrated in the late silent period than in the 1910s. Rather than attempting to demarcate the broad trends of a stylistic history of film acting, we need to study the different ways actors deployed the
resources of pictorialist theatre in the early cinema.
1 J. Claretie, “M. Claretie et la Cinématographie,” Ciné-Journal (26 November 1908), p. 6
(reprinted from Le Temps).
2 Claretie here invokes a topos of early commentary on the cinema most familiar nowadays in
Maxim Gorky’s famous 1896 review of a Lumière Cinématographe show in Nizhni Novgorod.
See N. Burch, Life to Those Shadows (London: BFI, 1990), pp. 23-24 and J. Leyda, Kino: A
History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), pp. 407-409.
3 Moving Picture World (13 July 1907), p. 298.
4 “Film-Picture Actors,” The Bioscope (2 October 1908), p. 18
5 E. Kress, Le Geste et l’attitude: L’Art mimique au cinématographe (Paris: Comptoir d’édition
de “Cinéma-Revue,” 1912), and Ch. Aubert, L’Art mimique, suivi d’un traité de la pantomime
et du ballet, 200 dessins par l’Auteur (Paris: E. Meuriot, 1901). In Théâtre contre Cinéma. Die
Diskussion um Kino und Theater vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Frankreich (Münster: MAkS
Publikationen, 1989), p. 153, Sabine Lenk gives many other references to commentary suggesting films are pantomimes and that film acting is pantomime, including Louis Schneider
in Phono-Ciné-Gazette (15 August 1908), p. 693 (reprinted from L’Etoile Belge), Fourniols in
Touche-à-tout (December 1912), p. 479, and Des Anges in Comœdia (12 April 1913), p. 4. She
also establishes that the same was true of Germany in the same period.
6 Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly (20 January 1910), p. 611; and C. Bennett, Handbook of
Kinematography (London: Kinematograph Weekly, 1911), p. 219. For a detailed account of
English claims that film acting was a form of pantomime, see John Burrows, “The Whole
English Stage To Be Seen For Sixpence!”: Theatrical Actors and Acting Styles In British
Cinema, 1908-1918 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, to be published).
7 Moving Picture World, vol. 3, no. 12 (19 September 1908), p. 212.
30
8 See R. Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), pp. 136 ff.
9 “Spectator’s Comments,” New York Dramatic Mirror, vol. 63, no. 1622 (22 January 1910), p. 17.
10 “Chronique Théâtrale,” Le Temps, no. 17317 (23 November, 1908), pp. 1-2. The section of this
article on the Film d’Art programme was subsequently reprinted as “Ce que M. Brisson pense
du Film d’Art,” Ciné-Journal, vol. 17 (3 December, 1908), pp. 7-9; it is extensively quoted by G.
Sadoul, in Histoire générale du cinéma II: Les pionniers du cinéma 1897-1909 (revised edition,
Paris: Denoël, n.d. [1978]), pp. 504-507, and there is a partial translation in R. Abel (ed.), French
Film Theory and Criticism, A History/Anthology, I: 1907-1929 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), pp. 50-52.
11 For example, the film trade journalist Yhcam, and Maurice Luguet (“Opinions,” Comœdia (18
February 1914), p. 4). See Lenk, op. cit., p. 170.
12 In England, pantomime was and is the name given to a local variant of the magical spectacle
which in France would have been called féerie, one in which the emphasis was on clowning. The
different kinds of pantomime practised in France and England in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries had similar roots in eighteenth-century (and earlier) illegitimate theatre, which, at least
officially, had been required to be wordless, and had often featured clowns. As the restrictions on
the illegitimate theatre were progressively relaxed, French pantomime, claiming descent from
Gaspard Deburau, took its aesthetic dominant from the mime, whereas English, epitomised by
Joseph Grimaldi, found its in the clown. The indifference to reference in the trade press is illustrated by the fact that this perfectly well-known distinction did not stop English commentators
from claiming that actors who had distinguished themselves in pantomime (in the English
sense) were therefore particularly suited to the cinema – thus, a Kinematograph and Lantern
Weekly profile of Flora Morris highlighted her experience in “pantomime, one of the finest training grounds for the picture actress” (27 April 1911, p. 1775, cit.); J. Burrows, op. cit., p. 154.
13 The Bioscope published a learned article, “The Revival of Pantomime,” by Laurence Trevelyan
tracing the history of the genre from the primitive imitation of animals through ancient
Greece and Rome to the puppet dramas of Maeterlinck and Reinhardt’s Sumurun (21
December 1911, pp. 813-815).
14 Reprinted in Ciné-Journal, vol. 12 (5 November, 1908), p. 7.
15 The Bioscope (7 December 1911), p. 679.
16 Lenk, op. cit., p. 153.
17 Burrows, op. cit., pp. 61-62.
18 G. Garcia, The Actor’s Art: A Practical Treatise on Stage Declamation, Public Speaking and
Deportment, for the use of Artists, Students and Amateurs (London: T. Pettit & Co., 1882), p.
158, cit. in Burrows, op. cit., pp. 77-78.
19 Aubert, op. cit., p. 228, cit. in Burrows, op. cit., p. 77.
20 The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th Century Acting (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter Universitätsverlag, 1987), p. 18 (cit. in Burrows, op. cit.)
21 A. Morrocchesi, Lezioni di declamazione e d’arte teatrale (Firenze: Tipografia All’insegna di
Dante, 1832), pp. 255-257 and figs. 17-38.
22 See the analysis of gesture in a scene in An Official Appointment (USA, Vitagraph, 1912) in B.
Brewster, L. Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 127-129.
23 J. Jelgerhuis, Theoretische Lessen over de gesticulatie en mimiek (Amsterdam: P.M. Warnars,
1827; repr. Uitgeverij Adolf M. Hakkert, 1970), p. 90.
24 Aubert, op. cit., pp. 229-230.
31
BEN BREWSTER
25 See my analysis of the last scene of Paul Armstrong’s Alias Jimmy Valentine in “Alias Jimmy
Valentine and Situational Dramaturgy,” Film History, vol. 9, no. 4 (1997), p. 405.
26 “Two citizens cannot begin a conversation without the bustle of a market-place erupting
behind them, so that we are willy-nilly distracted from the important dialogue.” Hans Hopfen,
“Die Meininger in Berlin,” in Streitfragen und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1876), p. 241.
27 See the analysis of William Archer’s description of a scene from Hernani in Theatre to
Cinema, op. cit., p. 89.
28 See the analyses of La Tosca and La Fin d’une royauté in Theatre to Cinema, op. cit., pp. 121-123.
29 Aubert, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
30 Burrows, op. cit., p. 78.
31 Garcia, op. cit., p. 163.
32 Ibid., p. 80.
33 One of the most unfortunate things about Roberta Pearson’s distinction between a “histrionic”
acting style and a “verisimilar” one. R. Pearson, Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of
Performance Style in the Griffith Biographs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), esp.
pp. 27-37 and 43-50 is that her definition of “verisimilar,” conforming to a conventional notion
of the real world, is a crude version of the Aristotelian notion of verisimilitude, conforming to
a set of maxims that say how in certain situations, certain characters will behave, and such a
regime of verisimilitude governs all nineteenth-century acting before naturalism. Of course,
generic appropriateness also enters into the definition of Aristotelian verisimilitude, but it
would be hard to deny that even the most “verisimilar” Biograph performances do not take this
into account – Mary Pickford acts differently in comedy than she does in drama.
34 G.E. Lessing, The Hamburg Dramaturgy (New York: Dover, 1962), p. 19.
35 Burrows, op. cit., pp. 46-47 and 339-58. “Might be,” since I have not seen any of Hawtrey’s
films or read enough description of his stage appearances to make an overall assessment of
his acting.
36 Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style, and Filmmaking, 1907-1913 (Madison,
Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), p. 141.
37 A Yeats specialist has pointed out to us that a passage in which the poet discusses Sarah
Bernhardt’s acting in a 1902 production of Phèdre which we used (Theatre to Cinema, op. cit.,
p. 100) as evidence for the length of poses in the pictorial acting tradition was intended to
mark her performance as a modernist rather than a traditionalist one. Similarly, what we
treated as Asta Nielsen’s “pre-naturalist” pictorialism might better be seen as a “post-naturalist” pictorialism, and the influence of symbolism on the films in which Lyda Borelli or Emma
Bauer appear is undeniable.
38 Pace Keil, if we did “agree that the transitional period witnesses a marked change in performance style,” we do not think that the mid-1910s performances of Borelli, Bauer, Nielsen,
Bosse and Sweet can be seen as having evolved in the same way from the acting of the film
stock companies when these were formed in 1907-8. Perhaps one might generalise that acting improved overall in the late 1900s, as performers learnt to master the special conditions
of film as opposed to stage acting (which is not to say that performances became less theatrical – more likely, as performers gained confidence in the new medium, they realised that
stage practices they had thought would not “go over” in film did register with audiences, and
hence their film performances became more like their stage ones). But the development of
cinematic acting in the 1910s cannot be reduced to a single evolutionary line.
39 Op. cit., p. 74 note 43.
40 Op. cit., p. 170. In Théâtre contre Cinéma, Lenk accepts the notion of a natural cinematic
32
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
vocation for “realism:” “If directors like Calmette, Le Bargy, or Carré return to well-worn theatrical paths, pure filmmakers like Jasset or Feuillade strive for the reproduction of ‘authentic’ life” (ibid., p. 171). In later articles, and in those written in collaboration with Frank
Kessler, she emphasises rather the suggestion that, following Brisson in the review of the first
Film d’Art programme cited above, film actors strive for an artistic “stylisation” of life, which
is, of course, by no means incompatible with a pictorial approach to acting. See especially F.
Kessler, S. Lenk, “‘…levant les bras au ciel, se tapant sur les cuisses.’ Réflexions sur l’universalité du geste dans le cinéma des premiers temps”, in R. Cosandey, F. Albera (eds.), Cinéma
sans frontières, 1896-1918, Images Across Borders (Lausanne-Québec: Payot/Nuit Blanche,
1995), pp. 133-144, and F. Kessler, “Lesbare Körper,” KINtop, no. 7 (1998), pp. 15-28.
A less lofty influence, clearly, was earlier historical films such as the Lumière’s La Mort de
Marat (ca. 1897, Catalogue no. 749) or Pathé’s 1902 version of L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise,
which themselves derive from dioramas, tableaux vivants and history paintings, all popular
manifestations of nineteenth-century pictorialism.
More generally, in pictorialism villains have broader gestures than heroes. This is still evident
in Capellani’s Germinal, where it would be a mistake to see Jacquinet’s performance as Chaval
as “hammy” while Henri Krauss’ as Lantier is “naturalistic,” and to attribute the difference in
style to the fact that Jacquinet had a long career in mime before he became a film actor.
Brisson, op. cit.
Burrows simply asserts that Aubert is “authoritative” (op. cit., p. 76), without offering any justification for the claim. Apart from the pantomime manual (which had the good fortune, for
later commentators, to be translated into English many years later), Aubert was the author of
two volumes of pantomime plays, but, as far as I know, none of these were part of the standard mime repertory of the period.
Aubert, op. cit., pp. 12-13. The radically different assessments we have seen in contemporary
discussions of mime in theatre and film (and in ballet, as we shall see below) can be largely
accounted for if we distinguish what part of mime acting the commentators are discussing.
In general, those who regard mime as immediately comprehensible and affecting are talking
about Aubert’s third type of gestures, the ones expressing characters’ feelings; those who
regard it as an arcane system of hieroglyphics are talking about his fourth, those gestures that
stand in for characters’ speeches. Largely but not wholly. In the review of L’Assassinat du Duc
de Guise cited above, Adolphe Brisson clearly objects to the stereotyped character of mime
expressions of feeling as well as to the arbitrariness of the speaking gestures.
Ibid., pp. 16-18.
“Spectator’s Comments,” New York Dramatic Mirror, vol. 62, no. 1612 (13 November 1909), p. 15.
“The Formulation of the Classical Style 1909-28,” in D. Bordwell, J. Staiger, K. Thompson, The
Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge,
1985), pp. 189-190.
M. Marie, “Place de Germinal dans l’histoire du cinéma français,” 1895, special issue L’Année
1913 en France (October 1993), p. 230.
(New York: Pitman, 1957). See p. 92 for “drink,” p. 87 for “child,” and p. 85 for “baby.”
La Presse (4 February 1839).
Revue et gazette musicale (22 October 1837).
See M.E. Smith, Music for the Ballet-Pantomime at the Paris Opéra, 1825-1850, Yale University
Ph.D. thesis (1988), especially pp. 70-76.
Mime had a place in variety theatre in other European countries and the USA. in these years,
too – the issue of the New York Dramatic Mirror that reviewed the first Film d’Art films
33
BEN BREWSTER
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
34
shown in America contained an advertisement for a mimed Wild-West show – but French
mime received more literary attention and its history is easier to trace.
P. Hugounet, Mimes et Pierrots, notes et documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la pantomime (Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1889), p. 238.
Hugounet, La Musique et la pantomime (Paris: Ernest Kolb, n.d. [1892]), pp. 15 and 17.
Hugounet also edited a special number of the magazine La Plume on pantomime: no. 82 (15
September 1892).
Lawson gives the following for “mother:” “1. Raise both arms through 2nd position. 2. Bend
forearms inwards and allow them to cross chest. 3. Both hands come to rest with the fingertips just below and inside opposite shoulders. Traditionally the R[ight] hand is nearest the
heart. Palms against body” (p. 102). She suggests, however, that the original meaning of this
gesture (which might be thought naturally to express “chastity”) was “virgin,” but the use of
it in paintings of the Virgin Mary led to its arbitrary adoption as the sign for “mother.”
Contrast this shift from the motivated to the arbitrary with Aubert’s conflation (for natural
reasons) of the signs for “baby” and the sign for “mother.” In the same way, Aubert replaces
the sign for “child” with its motivation, the indication of a small size. Lenk notes the opposition between a “natural” and a “conventional” school of mime, but assigns Aubert to the latter, on the grounds that L’Art mimique devotes so much space to descriptive gestures, ignoring the “non-conventional” nature of Aubert’s descriptive gestures. See Lenk, op. cit., p. 167.
21 March 1911; cit. in T. Rémy, Georges Wague: Le Mime de la belle époque (Paris: Georges
Girard, 1964), p. 109.
Letter to Théâtra (13 May 1911), cit. in Rémy, op. cit., pp. 109-110.
See for example R. de Najac, Petit traité de pantomime, à l’usage des gens du monde (Paris: A.
Hennuyer, 1887), p. 4ff.
American trade-press comments that contrast an “old” and a “new” pantomime, such as H.F.
Hoffman’s “Cutting Off the Feet” (Moving Picture World, vol. 12, no. 1, 6 April 1912, p. 53),
imply, and have been taken by modern commentators to mean, stage acting versus film acting,
but it may well be that they are echoing a debate current in the pantomime theatre of the day.
For this tradition, see J. Dorcy, The Mime (New York: Speller & Sons, 1961), with essays by E.
Decroux, J.-L. Barrault and M. Marceau.
This kind of mime was, however, part of English and American clowning, particularly that
used in the variety theatre as opposed to the circus, and as such found its way into slapstick
comedy in American cinema. It may be that French mimes learnt it from Chaplin and Keaton
as much as from any native tradition.
R. Chirat, E. Le Roy, Catalogue des films français de fiction de 1908 à 1918 (Paris:
Cinémathèque française, 1995). It should be said that this filmography is not ideal for generating this kind of statistics. No catalogue of early films can claim to be complete, so there may
have been films in which mimes appeared which were missed entirely by the compilers., and
there may be films which do appear, but in which the presence of a mime actor is not recorded. But there may also be over-representation as well as under-representation. Chirat and Le
Roy seem to have decided to assign a catalogue entry to every title they found in an authoritative source. Quite apart from the quality of the sources they used – an entry in J. Mitry’s
Filmographie universelle, surely the single major source of error in early filmography, seems
to be enough to ensure a title an entry – the same film can have several titles that are authoritative in this sense. Films have working titles which are not identical to their release titles;
they are given new titles on re-release; films which are adaptations of plays or other works
may be referred to (especially in the memoirs of participants in their making) by the title of
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
the work adapted rather than the actual release title. There are examples of all these kinds of
multiple entry in the films with mime performers listed in Chirat and Le Roy’s catalogue. I
have endeavoured to eliminate these extra numbers. Fortunately, for films which appeared in
the Pathé Catalogues (films by Pathé itself, but also those by SCAGL and the early Film d’Art),
H. Bousquet’s Catalogue Pathé des années 1896 à 1914 (Bures-sur-Yvette: Henri Bousquet,
1993-1994) and De Pathé Frères à Pathé Cinéma (Bures-sur-Yvette: Henri Bousquet, 1999)
make this correction a relatively easy task.
Op. cit., p. 113.
Op. cit., p. 222.
For “silence,” see Lawson, op. cit., p. 109. “Secrecy” (p. 107) also involves a finger to the lips,
but the lips are tapped and the hand is held palm in. This gesture, too, obviously refers to
speech.
In the same way, although the scenes in most films in this period, even tinted and toned ones,
were monochrome, no one thought they had therefore to pretend that the world filmed was
one without colour.
See Thompson, op. cit., p. 192.
See A. de Jorio, Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2000).
Francesca Bertini is supposed to have acted in the stage version in Naples before she entered
the cinema (as one of Assunta’s assistants in her laundry, not in the lead part). I do not know
whether the Neapolitan dialect companies used specifically Neapolitan gestures in their performances as well as the language. If so, Bertini is avoiding them in the film version.
De Jorio, op. cit., p. 291 and plate XXI.
Since writing this, I have learnt from Bernard Bastide that this is a standard French (not peculiarly Parisian) gesture meaning “Boring!” Note that the conventional mime for “bored” is a
polite yawn, with the hand held to a half-opened mouth, not this much more vulgar gesture
(see Lawson, op. cit., p. 86).
35
THE ART OF “SPEAKING SILENTLY”
THE ART OF “SPEAKING SILENTLY”: THE DEBATE AROUND CINEMA AND
PANTOMIME IN THE 1910s AND 1920s
Elena Mosconi, Università Cattolica - Milano
Introduction
The issue of the relationship between cinema and pantomime needs to be located
within the emerging and often confused critical and theoretical debate born in the
birth and childhood of cinema. The main characters within this debate, as is well
known, are critics, playwrights, intellectuals, polygraphs, and educated men of various
cultural and social extractions who contributed to this discussion initially in newspapers and then in specialized journals. Over the years, this wealth of publications would
considerably increase the variety of arguments appearing in the first books devoted to
cinema. Often these contributions are solicited from the outside: an intellectual is
called upon, urged to break a cautious silence and contribute to the controversy around
the artistic status of cinema. Other times, other people might freely express their opinion motivated by the desire to spread a personal point of view on the new expressive
medium, its development, and its aesthetic potential: in both cases, such reflections
hardly produced organic, accomplished, and definitive thinking. Nevertheless, this
debate is full of prophecies, forecasts, tentative definitions, aesthetic projects most of
which would not be accomplished either because they proved unviable, because of the
difficulty of realizing them, because of the different direction that cinema will undertake as a commercial medium, and finally – as we will see – because of the overwhelming predominance of sound.
Within the multiplicity of possible directions, I have chosen to privilege theories of
cinema in relationship to pantomime: an expressive form perhaps less noble or credited among the major arts, but whose various genres link successfully with cinema’s; an
expressive form, furthermore, that, like cinema, has been defined as “silent theater.” An
analysis of these prophecies, disseminated here and there in various contributions,
reveal the presence of some basic recurrent themes, especially within the Italian debate:
the problem of analogies and differences between the two media, the issue of modernity, attention to the actor’s gestures, and the theorization of sound. I will try to establish
how and why a variety of theories, even those predominantly focused on production,1
will prove unsuccessful. Finally, I will mention an issue that would deserve to be more
fully addressed elsewhere and which will be only touched on here: the hypothesis that
the major influence of pantomime on cinema was exercised at the level of production
rather than at the theoretical level, and that this production was deeply influenced by
specific national artistic traditions.
At this point I would like to examine the main tenets of the theoretical discourse
from the point of view of the periodization suggested by Alberto Boschi, who divides
36
CINEMA & Cie, no. 2, Spring 2003
early film theory in three phases: the first phase (from the end of the Nineteenth to the
beginning of the Twentieth Century) is characterized by the predominance of reflections on technical aspects and by the issue of the reproductive power of the medium; in
the second (stretching from 1910 to 1915), emphasis is given to the consideration of the
status of cinema as an art; finally, in the third (1915-early ‘20s) and “moving from the
comparison between cinema and the other arts, the pioneers of theoretical discourse
began to outline the specific traits of the new medium, thus preparing the terrain for
the classical debate.”2 While mindful of the extreme fluidity3 of this distinction, it can
be claimed from the outset that, simultaneously with these phases, also the interpretation of the relationship between cinema and pantomime acquire a different form and
depth, transforming from a simple pretext for a linguistic analogy (immediate, because
neither medium implies the use of words) to an increasingly deep inquiry into the possibility of establishing foundational approaches to their aesthetics.
Another preliminary question concerns the definition of pantomime: the long history of this art and its multiple expressions – from the Roman pantomime to the commedia dell’arte, from the “white” pantomime to the English one, from the choreo-drama to
the Russian ballets – evoke a variety of meanings that make it difficult to retrieve a univocal and direct idea of the term.4 Similar to the theater-cinema debate, reference is
made to the media’s structural elements, namely, to the silent dramatic representation,
where mimic movements and dance, sometimes with musical accompaniment and
narrative comment, express action. Drawing on this shared meaning of pantomime it
is possible to inquire into its similarities with cinema.
Analogies
In a 1918 article, having been asked an opinion about cinema as an art, the renowned
critic Silvio D’Amico provocatively claims that the “cinematograph doesn’t exist”, since
it is nothing other than the most ancient form of expression, “a silent representation
realized only with gestures: and its name is pantomime!”5 This tardy claim gives an idea
of the tight network of exchanges between cinema and pantomime.
References to the analogy between the two expressive forms are widely spread, especially in the early 1900s, as Alain Carou believes.6 The analogy is also functional, as it
were: its aim is to institute relationships between cinema and the traditional established arts sin hopes that cinema too would be acknowledged as one of them. Or, alternatively, as in the case reported above, to deny its specificity.
A typical example of analogy evoked in order to elevate cinema’s artistic status is the
syllogism proposed by Roberto Bracco, playwright and author of numerous subjects at
the roots of the famous realistic strand of Italian cinema. He advocates the link between
pantomime and cinema with the following argument: since cinema is pantomime, and
“pantomime has never been denied the title of Art […] the cinematograph can also be
art.”7 The explicit objective of this statement is to build the foundation for the understanding of cinema as an art.
Where conditions allow it, the analogy is expressed through a history of the pantomime, from its Greek origins to the present. This is the case in the work of two interesting authors, Pietro Gariazzo and Anton Giulio Bragaglia. With The Silent Theater,
the former, screenwriter and manager of a production company, anticipates by ten
37
ELENA MOSCONI
years Anton Giulio Bragaglia, supporter of Photodynamism, innovator in cinema and
theater, and whose interest for the pantomime is expressed both theoretically, in works
such as Evolution of Mime and The Sound Film,8 and practically in works such as La
Fantasimina, (realized with Sebastiano Arturo Luciani), The Knights’ Dance (Il Balletto
dei Cavalieri), The Gipsies (Gli zingari), Epileptic Cabaret (with Marinetti), staged at the
Theater of the Independents.
Gariazzo and Bragaglia lead the way into a journey through centuries-long history of
pantomime by drawing frequent comparisons with its contemporary situation and the
cinema. Usually, this is a way to address some questions related to film aesthetics, and
identify, in the classical ideal of pantomime, a model for it.
An interesting example is the famous argument between French reformer Noverre
and Italian choreographer Angiolini, which Bragaglia presents chauvinistically.
Among the many reasons for this controversy, Bragaglia gives particular emphasis to
their disagreement about the usage of intertitles, prologues, or spoken comments. After
a detailed presentation of their different positions he concludes:
in agreement with Angiolini we also think that a film or a ballet that “is not understood
without recurring to the program is a ill-conceived and ill-executed work; that a program
that says what the art of pantomime cannot explain is a ridiculous work; that it serves nothing other than as an evident proof of the ignorance of those who cannot see how far the art
of gestures can reach.”9
Bragaglia expresses his ideal of cinematic purity by invoking the reflection of the
1700 Florentine choreographer. Anytime he sees cinema being plagued by uncertainties, possibilities for different developments, Bragaglia chooses the solution that guarantees the highest degree of faithfulness to the art of pantomime, which he regards as
cinema’s origin and destiny.
As a result, his reasoning creates a peculiar short circuit whereby the pantomime represents at the same time the beginning and the end of the artistic accomplishments of
cinema: returning to pantomime is a necessary condition if animated photography is to
be acknowledged among the arts.10 Thus, the a priori limitations imposed to the development of cinema become quite clear: this aesthetics of equivalencies runs the risk of
placing cinema in a state of constant subordination to pantomime as its model.
However, there is another latent issue, which Bragaglia’s words bring to the surface: the
analogy between cinema and pantomime rests – besides what has been said so far – on
some sort of intrinsic “weakness” that they share and that consists in the tendency of both
to contaminate themselves with other forms or expressive media, whether it is the theater, the spoken word, dance, or music. In short, cinema and pantomime tend to compromise their expressive purity and autonomy in order to enrich their communicative
potential with any possible means. “The history of pantomime” and by extension of cinema, argues Bragaglia, “is an interrupted alternative to the multifaceted collaboration
proposed to the ‘mute’ art by the word and, in different degrees, by dance […], which
deforms and alienates from its being the spiritual and delicate art of Terpsichore.”11
Cinema and pantomime are weak arts, corrupted by an original sin, and therefore always
seeking a surplus of expression and emotion that they borrow from other arts (spoken
word, dance, music, theater…). As a consequence, Bragaglia maintains, they lose their originality, risk failure, and jeopardize their very identity.
38
Modernity of gesture
As already shown, many theorists share the tendency to refer to the long tradition of
pantomime so that they can credit cinema with artistic dignity, regarding it as the last
evolutionary stage of an uninterrupted chain of artistic works and expressions. These
cinema critics’ need to explain the new by relying on the old12 – or as Antonio Costa suggests following Umberto Eco, to proceed with approximation, first associating the novelty to something known, and then introducing greater specifications – is quite clear.13
Nevertheless, the analogy between cinema and pantomime triggers also another
interesting comparison of a sociological nature between aesthetic forms and the
moment in time that produces them. In this sense, cinematic pantomime is interpreted as the outcome of a need of the times, a fundamental trait of the Twentieth century
sensibility.
The first modern trait can be found, naturally, in the mechanical and reproductive
nature of the medium, a new spatial and temporal synthesis made possible by the new
technology. The most original element, however, is the fact that cinema transforms
bodily expressions, clearly modernizing them. In this case, the modernity of the medium, combined with the modernization of its means of expression, greatly augments
the spectators’ experience of innovation. Within the all-encompassing perceptual balance created by modernity, within the intensity of a life ruled – as Benjamin shows –
by visual shocks14 “the rapid gesture that establishes itself with the precision of a
monstrous figurative clock, exalts the spirit of the modern spectators who are already
used to a fast living.”15
There is more to it: the priority of the gesture frees the art form from the dominance
(and subordination) of the spoken word, which characterized the previous century, and
restores its intrinsic universal value.
With this point of view, the argument put forth by Pietro Gariazzo, the author of The
Mute Theater, appears stronger. Upon drawing a sketch of recent technological
progress and the speed that characterizes it, he claims that the arts interpret the needs
of modernity “by becoming more synthetic, seeking forms of greater and faster expression”: in this way the cinema “no longer enclosed in the narrow confines of the verbal
forms, from its silent shadow, confronted by a musical rhythm, speaks to everybody
with the simple and universal language of gesture, and can easily be considered as the
expression of the need for theatrical speed.”16
Gariazzo expresses a common opinion, namely, that miming, the evocative gesture of
the actor, render cinematic language understandable beyond linguistic differences,
national boundaries, or differences in education: cinema enacts the universality of the
gesture and overcomes the limitations of the spoken or written word. The second characteristic of the cinematic gesture, for Gariazzo, is its immediacy: in cinema “the gesture is the thought become action: the sensation itself is being exteriorized, made visible;”17 it reaches the mind of the spectator directly, making itself comprehensible, without the mediation of a conceptual or linguistic codification. This statement clearly
reveals the utopia (or the over-simplification) of naturalistic acting.
All theoreticians, still searching for defining categories and an appropriate lexicon,
are struck by the unprecedented power of the gesture as revealed by cinema: Canudo
talks about the actor’s capability to translate an emotion, an action, a sensation into a
living movement.18 The actor becomes the necessary link enabling the pantomime to
39
ELENA MOSCONI
take place: his body, as already suggested by Noverre, becomes a speaking body. Man
becomes visible – to paraphrase Balázs – through his body and the mimic gesturing.19
In some passages of his extensive work on the subject, Antonio Giulio Bragaglia both
recuperates Gariazzo’s position and moves beyond it, by connecting it to the issue of the
1900s Zeitgeist: in the new century the opposition that the theoretician of
Photodynamism regards as the most irreconcilable, is once again that between word
and gesture. Cautiously committed to the defense of silent cinema’s pantomime in the
years of the advent of sound, Bragaglia erupts in a venomous denunciation of the
anachronistic “resistance” of the word: he asserts that “today’s ears are already full of
words upon words” and maintains that “word’s decadence is marked by the very character of nineteen hundreds’ sensibility.”20
We are not that far from the meditations of some theoreticians of modernity, such as
Simmel, for whom “modern art lives immediately the very sense of our life; it is much
more faithful to reality than any imitation, because it is not only truthful but truth
itself.”21 And cinema finds itself confronting reality without the mediation of word,
both complicit in and testimonial to the world’s changing makeup. This prompts
Bragaglia to claim, with an effective metaphor, “the silence of the modern art is the living resting place against the assaults of reality.”22
Differences
While some critics continue to celebrate the identity between cinema and pantomime, a more specific awareness of the differences between the two expressive forms
slowly begins to spread. These differences will be augmented by the most acute film
critics and by the first attempts to systematize an aesthetic of cinema. It is not by chance
that, usually, this way of putting pantomime at a distance precedes the enunciation of
a precise aesthetic project for cinema, however utopian: while what cinema is not is
strongly underlined (and in this case it is pantomime), what it should be is also powerfully established so that its expressive originality can be fully pursued.
Let us examine the exemplary – under this respect – trajectories of Ricciotto Canudo
and Sebastiano Arturo Luciani. In an enthusiastic and programmatic 1908 essay, The
Triumph of the Cinematographer, the former – writer, poet, critic and European playwright – articulates some precocious thoughts about cinema: among the different issues
examined (some about the specificity of the medium, other of an aesthetic nature),23
there are references to the theme that I have been addressing: “The cinematographer –
Canudo claims – is therefore theater of a new Pantomime. It is consecrated to painting in
motion, and contains the full manifestation of a most singular creation, realized by men,
who are for this reason of a new kind: a new Pantomime, a new dance of expression.”24
According to Canudo, the elegant prose, the frequent recurrence of synaesthesiae, and the
foreshadowing tone of the discourse25 attenuate the awareness that is nevertheless surfacing: with cinema, another art has appeared under the guise of the “modern
Pantomime.” Some years later, while he perfects his famous conception of cinema as the
seventh art, synthesis of the arts of time and the arts of space, Canudo distanciates himself even more from pantomime and all the other mimodramas, considering them a nourishment for cinema during its inexperienced youth,26 but from whose constraints it had
slowly freed itself. The aesthetic ideal that cinema should conform to, this time enunci40
ated explicitly by the critic from Bari, is the “visual drama,” a work capable of translating
the Wagnerian aspiration to the Gesamtkunstwerk. Along this line, pantomime follows
cinema at a considerable distance because – still according to Canudo – it is an imitative,
illustrative art, destined to represent stories, ideas, emotional states, but incapable of spiritually evoking them through the abstract procedures of visual drama.27
Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, scholar and musician, as well as critic for a number of
prestigious journals, moves from a different position, reaching a perspective not too
dissimilar: he begins by observing some similarities between cinema and pantomime,
such as the extreme popularity of both and their capability to effect social processes,
producing, for example, phenomena of stardom. However, this analogy is comprised
within a fundamentally negative vision: Luciani considers both cinema and pantomime as decadent expressive forms, both guilty of having tried to incorporate or substitute for other arts, poetry in particular. He nevertheless sees a possibility of amend
for cinema, more than for pantomime, in the modern mimic musical drama, where
music is the element leading the representation. Luciani refers to the Russian Ballets as
an example where music has freed itself from the constrains imposed by choreography:
similarly cinema, by relying on the musical element, can produce a representation that
is free, inspired by it, and authentically poetic:28 the impressionist drama.
More clearly – and more programmatically – in his 1928 volume, titled The
Antitheater, Luciani denounces the fact that the development of film aesthetics and
film art has been delayed by the serious prejudice of “those who persevere in considering this newest art form, created by modern sensibility, as a drama in which words are
not heard, or, at best, as a pantomime cinematically reproduced.”29
Beyond specific outcomes, which should be examined also in relation to their effects
on cinema’s production, I think we can detect a common core in the argumentation of
both intellectuals: the desire to move from pantomime in order to go beyond it, toward
the search for other specifying elements that would allow cinema to become a new and
original expressive form: an art synthesizing different perceptual experiences (musical
and/or visual), no longer reproductive pantomime, but accomplished “drama”.
Destines: pantomime and sound cinema
In the wake of the advent of sound cinema, the debate on cinema and pantomime
revives for the last time: this is the dismay of the two forms of silent art, both undertaking a common and unavoidable journey towards decadence. The first signs of the
technological revolution of cinema precipitate the debate on the use of sound, on the
value of the spoken word, and the related aesthetic transformations of cinema: theoreticians and critics take positions against or in favor of sound cinema often evoking
the similarities between cinema and pantomime. Two examples of opposed positions
can clarify the meaning of this alternative and the use, once again instrumental, of pantomime to support one’s convictions.
Marcel Pagnol, playwright and theoretician of the “filmed theater,”30 was one of the
more determined supporters of sound and of the power of the word in film. Drawing on
already established arguments, Pagnol talks about early cinema as a mechanically
reproduced pantomime, whose possibilities are limited. Sound provides cinema with
new possibilities: it frees the actors from the necessity of using exaggerated and unnat41
ELENA MOSCONI
ural gestures, and attracts cinema under the protective wing of theater. Sound works as
a divide between pantomime and theater, locating cinema alternatively on each side of
this divide. Pagnol concludes:
1. Silent film was the art of impressing, fixating, and spreading pantomime. 2. As the invention of the press had enormous influence on literature, similarly the invention of silent cinema had great influence on pantomime: Charlot, Gance, Griffith, René Clair have renewed
the pantomime. 3. The spoken film is the art of impressing, fixating and spreading theater.
4. The spoken film, which brings new resources to theater, must re-create theater.31
Therefore cinema, no matter whether it is theater or pantomime, has the effect of
reviving and renewing the higher arts on which it depends.
Within the group of the cautious defenders of silent cinema, we have already met
Anton Giulio Bragaglia, who devotes more space to the reflection on the relationship
between pantomime and film in his two volumes written between 1929 and 1930.32
The structure of this impressive study, especially the Evolution of Mime, reveals the
author’s intention: proving the relationship between cinema and pantomime, is, as we
have seen, the condition for reinforcing the necessity of silent cinema. Therefore, from
his introductory chapter, Bragaglia claims that sound breaks the link between cinema
and pantomime. “As the theatrical pantomime has become drama once mouths have
been opened, similarly the cinematic pantomime will become something else once it
adopts the spoken word; it will easily be something beautiful […] but it will no longer be
cinema, nor it will belong to the pantomime’s genre.”33
Sound is much more limiting, because it stops cinema’s development as an art that
has reached great accomplishments: the trajectory of the “simple theatrical pantomime” that has become “pantomime in itself” and has culminated with the “silent
theater,” undergoes, with the introduction of the word, a drastic fall. “The pantomimist,
highly refined in cinema, regresses in his footsteps and becomes mime, thus necessarily losing, because of the word, the originality of his mimetic expressions.”34
Bragaglia then ventures into prophecy and foresees the success of sound film, destined to be appreciated for its realistic nature; but he also predicts that alongside it,
silent cinema will continue to exist and to emphasize its poetic vocation, because “the
Pantomime, Poetry’s mysterious creature, has a magic charm that is superior to any
verisimilitude, and therefore it is immortal.”35
From Theory to Practice
So far I have sketched an outline of the main issues concerning the relationship
between cinema and pantomime: we have noticed how different attempts to formulate
a film aesthetics by drawing on this link (or on mutual differences) lead to theoretical
statements hardly applicable, for naïveté or for lack of awareness of cinema’s means of
expression, or because of the lack of interest towards the pure cinema encouraged by
theoreticians. We have understood how different prophecies about a pantomimic cinema have remained – in most cases – mere auspices and unrealized projects.
This does not preclude the fact that at the level of production pantomime effectively
entered into cinema. As correctly observed by Claudio Camerini, the influence of pan42
tomime needs to be detected – besides the move of actors from pantomime to cinema (the
most famous and international is Maria Carmi’s)
at the level of characters: cinema has revived classical characters such as Pierrot, to whom
many films are devoted […]; at the level of subject matter, by drawing the screenwriters’ attention to the typical themes of classical pantomime, especially in the realm of comedies; at the
level of acting, by enlarging the sphere of action of mimic and suggestive language, and at the
same time directing the potential of the repertoire of gestures towards more precise and
restrained effects; at the level of representation, by directing the mise-en-scène towards a sobriety that contrasts with most contemporary production and by stimulating the linguistic
research to find new representative solutions, especially elliptical and metaphorical.36
The analysis of the theoretical debate suggests another possible line of inquiry that I
will only mention here. Besides the white pantomime, which culminates with the
notorious Histoire d’un Pierrot,37 besides the acting of comedians trained in the pantomime and another number of influences suggested by Camerini, the Italian tradition
of pantomime expresses itself also with the pantomimic dance, following the example
of Manzotti’s great choreographies,38 very popular at the turn of the century. The influences of pantomimic choreography on cinema are not merely limited to the film transposition of the Excelsior Ballet realized by Comerio in 1913 with the La Scala dancers,39
or to the citations (“in the manner of”) of the same dance in films such as Giornalissimo
by Ugo Falena (1914).40 Rather, and more in general, they extend from the reproduction
of the mimicry of the masses, to choreography, to the spectacular and scenographical
dimension of films.
It is precisely from this pantomime, with the assistance of opera, that the interest for
the composition of masses and for spectacle is born: a tendency shared by all genres –
although very evident in the historical genre – whose echo is found in the theoretical
debate. As early as 1907, an anonymous newspaperman believes that cinema’s ambition
is not to become art but choreography, and explicitly indicates Manzotti as the model:
Choreography is […] the soul of cinema. The audience wants to have a good time, that is, be
struck by the spectacle of greatness, of wonders, and comedy. The spectator will watch simple scenes, with few characters, with more or less interest, but he will soon be tired. His spirit, instead, will appreciate the agitated mass on screen […] To bring all this together, however, a really talented choreographer is needed […] Manzotti’s skills.41
The influence of pantomime on cinema is maybe appreciated by looking into the
mimic of masses, the representation of choral movement, for the first time visible
through cinema not unlike the manifestation of the small gesture, or the character’s
face. This is a different direction, which might contribute to illuminate another issue,
such as the relationship between pantomime and cinema from the perspective of
national identity42. This is what a patriotic Gariazzo seems to suggest, when he talks
about the historical genre:
the great historical film has proven the uselessness of word and this is because it is a spectacle seen from a distance, essentially choreographical. … The representation of events in
ancient Rome has introduced the taste for grandeur […] and this taste has become a necessi43
ELENA MOSCONI
ty that has spread on all production […] Its success – Gariazzo continues – has opened the way
for composing predominantly mimic subjects.
And, while we fundamentally know that this did not give a definitive linguistic or
expressive impulse to Italian cinema, we also know that it at least tried to interpret “our
dreams, our ideals, seen under an heroic light.”43 Once again prophecies seem destined
to fail: not only in film theory but also in film practice, the season of cinematic pantomime ends very soon, even before producing its best results.
13
14
15
[Translated from Italian by Alessandra Raengo]
16
17
1 I draw the definition of production-oriented theories from F. di Chio, “La teoria americana e
lo specifico del cinema muto”, Lo Spettacolo, no. 4 (October-December 1992), pp. 514-516.
2 A. Boschi, “Le origini della teoria nel cinema”, in G. P. Brunetta (ed.), Storia del cinema mondiale. Teorie, Strumenti, memorie, vol. V (Torino: Einaudi, 2001), p. 374; on the periodization
of the theoretical debate in early cinema see also A. Boschi, Teorie del cinema. Il periodo classico (Roma: Carocci, 1998), pp. 27-50 and specifically concerning the French debate see, R.
Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism, vol. I, 1907-1929 (Princeton: Princeton University,
1988).
3 Boschi acknowledges this fluidity describing it as “an uneven, not at all linear, trajectory.”
See A. Boschi, “Le origini della teoria nel cinema”, cit., p. 374.
4 Later, particularly in the late ‘30s, the different meanings of the term pantomime are subsumed in the notion of pantomimic gesture, whose best examples, as is universally
acknowledged, are Charlie Chaplin’s performances.
5 S. D’Amico, “Il cinematografo non esiste”, In Penombra, no. 4 (September 1918), pp. 135-137.
6 A. Carou, “L’Autre Art muet. Pantomime(s) et cinéma en France”, in L. Quaresima, L. Vichi
(eds.), La decima musa. Il cinema e le altre arti – The Tenth Muse. Cinema and the Other Arts
(Udine: Forum, 2001), p. 525.
7 R. Bracco, Tra le arti e gli artisti (Napoli: Giannini, 1919), pp. 301-302; this essay, titled
“Cinematografo”, appeared in L’Arte Muta on 15 July 1916. For more information on the
relationship between critics, theoreticians and the pantomime in Italy, see my “La pantomima nel cinema muto italiano. Il caso de Il ballo Excelsior”, in M. Canosa (ed.), A nuova luce.
Cinema muto italiano. I (Bologna: Clueb, 2000), pp. 217-231.
8 P. A. Gariazzo, Il teatro muto (Torino: Lattes, 1919); A. G. Bragaglia, Il film sonoro (Milano:
Corbaccio, 1929) and A. G. Bragaglia, Evoluzione del mimo (Milano: Ceschina, 1930).
Information on Bragaglia’s activities are found in S. d’Amico’s (ed.) Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. II, (Roma: Le Maschere, 1954), pp. 975-979.
9 A. G. Bragaglia, Evoluzione del mimo, cit., pp. 158-9.
10 Writing in the journal Lux and as early as 1908, Roberto Bracco argues that the artistic form
that cinema will accomplish in the future “will be nothing other than pantomime, which,
on the other hand, finds its roots in the theater and in other developments of stage performances.” R. Bracco, “I nuovi orizzonti del cinematografo”, Lux, no. 1 (December 1908).
11 A. G. Bragaglia, Evoluzione del mimo, cit., p. 11.
12 R. Canudo, “Le Septième art et son esthétique”, in L’Amour de l’Art (1922). I’m quoting from
the italian translation in R. Redi (ed.), L’officina delle immagini (Roma: Bianco e Nero, 1966),
44
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
p. 84: “The miserable mistake of our cinematic production relies precisely in this confusion,
which manifests itself in the vile need to link new things to old ones just in order to accept
them at once, without taking the time to define them or understand them.”
A. Costa, Teorie del cinema dalle origini agli anni Trenta: la prospettiva estetica, in G. P.
Brunetta (ed.), Storia del cinema mondiale, cit., p. 417.
W. Benjanin, “Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire”, in Schriften (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp,
1955); English translation “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, in H. Harendt (ed.),
Illuminations. Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 155-200.
R. Canudo, “Il Trionfo del Cinematografo”, Giornale Nuovo (25 November 1908), now in G.
Grignaffini, Sapere e teorie del cinema. Il periodo del muto (Bologna: CLUEB, 1989), p. 108.
P. A. Gariazzo, Il teatro muto, cit., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 129. In chapter VI of this volume, devoted to mimic gesture, Gariazzo gives a rough
classification of types of gestures. He divides them in action movements, character movements, instinctive movements, descriptive movements, complementary movements.
R. Canudo, “Chronique du septième art. Vedettes du cinéma”, Paris-Midi (27 August 1923),
Italian translation in R. Redi, op. cit., pp. 135-138.
Within the extensive bibliography on actor’s gestures and pantomimic acting, let me recall B.
Brewster, L Jacobs, Theatre to Film: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (Oxford: Oxford
University, 1997); R. Pearson, Eloquent Gestures: the Transformation of Performance Style in the
Griffith Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California, 1992); L. Vichi (ed.), L’uomo visibile.
L’attore dalle origini del cinema alle soglie del cinema moderno – The Visible Man (Udine: Forum,
2002). See also Francesco Pitassio’s doctoral dissertation Ombre silenzose. Teoria dell’attore cinematografico negli anni Venti (Bologna, 2001) whom I would like to thank for his kind suggestions.
A. G. Bragaglia, Il film sonoro, cit., p. 169.
G. Simmel, “Rodin”, in Philosophische Kultur (Leipzig: 1911). I am quoting from the Italian
translation in G. Simmel, Il volto e il ritratto, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), p. 214. On this subject see D. Frisby, Fragments of Modernity. Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel,
Kracauer and Benjamin (Cambridge – Oxford: Polity Press – Basil Blackwell, 1985); F. Casetti,
Il cinema, per esempio. La nascita e lo sviluppo del cinema tra Otto e Novecento (Milano: Isu
Università Cattolica, 1999); L. Charney, V. R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of
Modern Life (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California, 1995).
A. G. Bragaglia, Evoluzione del mimo, cit., p. 213.
G. Grignaffini, op. cit., p. 59 and followings.
R. Canudo, “Il Trionfo del Cinematografo”, Giornale Nuovo (25 November 1908), now in G.
Grignaffini, op. cit., p. 109.
See G. Grignaffini, op. cit., p. 25.
R. Canudo, “Le Septième art et son esthétique”, L’amour de l’art (1922). I am quoting from
the Italian translation in R. Redi (ed.), op. cit., p. 85.
“Expressing life as a whole, with its infinite range of emotions, aspirations, failures, and triumphs, using the eternal play of light, understanding beings and things only as forms of
light, harmonized and orchestrated according to the animating idea of action: this is the
secret, the glory of Visual Drama. This way there won’t be ‘plays’ or ‘pantomimes’ any
longer: this is the highest, most spiritual work among our aesthetic creations.” R. Canudo,
“Le Septième art et son esthétique”, L’amour de l’art (1922). I am quoting from the Italian
translation found in R. Redi (ed.), op. cit., p. 90.
S. A. Luciani, “Impressionismo scenico”, Apollon, no. 3 (April 1916), also in R. Redi, C. Camerini
(eds.), Tra una film e l’altra. Materiali sul cinema muto italiano 1907-1920 (Venezia: Marsilio,
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43
46
1980), pp. 279-282. “Here is the direction the cinema could undertake, thus developing originally:
realizing, beyond theatre, the stage musical drama, that is, a representation where the visual element is not so much constituted by the actor’s gestures, but rather by real and fantastic landscapes, harmonies of lights and colors, that alone can render vaguely, as music does, emotions and
sensations. We would then have a newest form of representation where musical impressionism
would be fully integrated with the impressionism of the scene: in one word, the impressionist
drama.” This essay is completed by “Poetica del cinematografo”, Apollon, no. 4 (1 May 1916).
S. A. Luciani, L’Antiteatro. Il cinematografo come arte (Roma: La Voce, 1928), p. 9 and 17.
See A. Boschi, L’avvento del sonoro in Europa (Bologna: CLUEB, 1994), pp. 30-33.
M. Pagnol, “Cinématurgie de Paris”, Les Cahiers du Film (15 December, 1933), also in M.
Lapierre (ed.), Anthologie du cinéma. Rétrospective par les textes de l’art muet qui devint parlant (Paris: La Nouvelle Edition, 1946). Excerpts can be found also in A. Boschi, L’avvento del
sonoro in Europa, cit., pp. 30-33.
For Bragaglia’s general opinion about sound cinema see A. Boschi, L’avvento del sonoro in
Europa, cit., pp. 25-29. Here I am rather interested in highlighting the relationship between
sound cinema and cinematic pantomime.
A. G. Bragaglia, Evoluzione del mimo, cit., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 204.
Ibid., p. 222.
C. Camerini, “La formazione artistica degli attori del cinema muto italiano”, Bianco e Nero,
no. 1 (January-March 1983), pp. 9-43.
See C. Camerini, “L’Histoire d’un Pierrot”, Immagine. Note di storia del cinema, n. 7 (January
– March 1984), pp. 23-26. Among the other Italian films inspired by the character made
immortal by Deburau: Il romanzo di un Pierrot (tit. alt. Pierrot innamorato, M. Caserini,
Cines 1906); Cuore di Pierrot (Pineschi, 1907), Buonasera Pierrot (Ambrosio 1908), Gelosia di
Pierrot (Rossi & C., 1908), Pierrot all’Inferno (Cines 1908 – realized in 1906), Cuor di Pierrot
(R. Bacchini, Vesuvio-Film, 1909), Pierrot geloso (Cines, 1910 – realized in 1906); I due
Pierrots (A. Brunero, Brunero prod., 1915); Pierrot (D. Karenne, Karenne Film, 1917).
See under “Manzotti” by G. Tani in S. d’Amico (ed.), Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, vol. VII,
(Roma: Le Maschere, 1960), pp. 79-82. On the popularity of pantomimic dance in Italy see also L.
Tozzi, C. Celi, A. Testa, “Il balletto in Italia”, in A. Basso (ed.), Musica in scena. Storia dello spettacolo musicale. L’arte della danza e del balletto, vol. V (Torino: UTET, 1995), pp. 39-162.
See F. Pappacena (ed.), Excelsior (Roma: Di Giacomo, 1998), and my “La pantomima nel cinema muto italiano. Il caso de Il ballo Excelsior”, cit., pp. 226-231.
The metalinguistic angle developed in Ugo Falena’s film is quite interesting: “A curious character has invented special eyeglasses that will permit to see animated the characters he talks
about [a failed newspaper] …. The film is composed by a great number of gags in which public figures from articles about national and international politics, life-style, theater, crime,
sports, and literature jump from the articles and animate their description. To conclude:
Excelsior Ballet, with Apotheosis of Journalism and the Fourth Estate…” Rugantino, La CineFono (11 July 1914), quoted in A. Bernardini, V. Martinelli, “Il cinema muto italiano. I film
degli anni d’oro 1914”, Bianco e Nero, no. 1-2 (Torino: Nuova Eri, 1992), pp. 238-239.
Pellicola, “La cinematografia è un’arte?”, La Rivista Fono-Cinematografica, no. 9 (December
1907), also in R. Redi, C. Camerini (eds.), op. cit., pp. 35-38.
See J. Deslandes, “Victorin Jasset, 1862-1913”, in Anthologie du cinéma, t. 9 (Paris: L’Avantscène/C.I.B., 1976).
P. A. Gariazzo, Il teatro muto, cit., pp. 119-122.
THE PHANTOM OF THE RELATIONSHIP,
THE POVERTY OF CINEMA AND THE EXCESSES OF HYPNOSIS
Ruggero Eugeni, Università Cattolica - Brescia
The darkness of the cinema. The light of hypnosis
Inside, at the back of a pitch-black room with a low ceiling, the six-foot high screen, no bigger than a man, shines on a monstrous audience, a mesmerized mass glued to the seats by
this white eye with its fixed gaze. Lovers sit in a corner, embracing tightly, but what they see
takes them far away […] People […] stare until their eyes almost pop out of their heads.1
By 1909 the metaphor of hypnosis had already been cast on the viewing of films,
enlightening those excesses of the gaze that the darkness of the movie theater tends to
hide. This was a metaphor that was destined to become clearer and clearer, and more
pressing. At the beginning of the Twenties Epstein would speak of a “much more violent hunger for hypnosis than the habit of literature used to produce, because this one
modifies the nervous system much less;”2 while Fritz Lang would realize a vivid cinematic mise-en-scène as a hypnotic device during the second part of Dr. Mabuse, der
Spieler (1922).
Here, it is not our purpose to draw an outline of the relationship between cinema and
hypnosis, but rather to ask two related questions. Firstly, how can viewing a film be
seen as a state of hypnosis, even if no hypnotist is actually present in the cinema?
Secondly, what are the effects of the overlap between film and hypnosis as far as the
social perception of the act of seeing a film is concerned?3 I will finish with a brief annotation about the models of an “excessive” cinema – and therefore merely imaginary and
utopian – which the metaphor of the hypnosis has nourished to feed.
Archaeology of a metaphor
From the end of the eighteenth century up to about the 1880s, magnetism and hypnosis were practised in fixed and recurrent scenes, even though articulated from inside.
We can describe a classical magnetic scene. In the middle of the scene, there is the pair
magnetized – magnetizer; around them there is an audience which may be large or
small. This scene is ambiguous. On one hand it represents an excessively intense and
hierarchical relationship: the magnetizer assumes the control of the magnetized’s
actions and perceptions. On the other hand, we are dealing with a scene of a particular
epiphany: entering in a state of clear-mind, the magnetized-regains gets back control
over his perceptions, but in a wider and more powerful way. The magnetic somnambulist can look into his body, he can look at the scene he is living with his eyes closed, he
47
RUGGERO EUGENI
can cast himself into other spaces and times till he speaks with spirits and angel-like
creatures.
The clear gaze is an absolute gaze, one reason being that it overcomes all the other
senses, parting from them and, overall, turning the somnambulist’s body into a big
sensitive surface. Another reason is that, being a form of optical touch, it can explore
each dimension in the universe, visible or invisible, near or far, past, present or
future.
The magnetic setting therefore presents itself as a device composed of viewing and
excessive gazes. The main point is that this sort of viewing power is not born of a technological device (on the contrary, it is historically based on Mesmer’s refusal to adopt
electrical and magnetic devices), but rather through a relational expedient: it is the
meeting of gazes between magnetiser and magnetized, the tool of the subject’s projection towards other worlds and dimensions.
At the end of the eighteenth century this scene loses its definition and internal coherence: it is decomposed, reassembled, and disseminated into the social tissue. Hypnosis
is no longer practiced on clearly determined subjects and in clearly determined places:
it is to be found everywhere. The leading term is now “suggestion.” Suggestion presents
two dimensions. On one hand it spreads in a mutual relationship among the components of the society: each member of the society can hypnotize another, either with
criminal intentions or in terms of the phenomenon of mental contagion typical of psychic epidemics. So one can speak of a horizontal dimension of suggestion relationship.
On the other hand, suggestion is characterized by the direct relationship between the
magnetizer and the audience: the hypnotist’s magnetic gaze rotates 90 degrees and
turns to the audience. Therefore, a vertical dimension of the hypnotic relationship can
be spoken of.
The visionary component of hypnosis is notably present in the vertical dimension.
The orchestra director who keeps the orchestra players clinging, the famous actor or
the speaker who dominates his or her audience, the political leader who gives stirring
speeches, or simply the stage hypnotist of the turn of the century who can mesmerize
whole groups of people, all these actually project images directly into the audience’s
mind. And that’s not all. A similar image-projection happens when the magnetizer
and the audience are not simultaneously present, when the contact is through the
medium of a text. This is particularly true in the novel: reading is intended as a direct
transmission of images from the page to the brain. The physiological mechanist theories of the second half of the century, especially those of neurological reflexes,
restore, in the new context, the motif – typical of the classical magnetic scene – of the
clear, excessive and absolute gaze: the feeling infected by the magnetizer to the magnetized audience is a pure one, it is freed from perceptive senses, it penetrates directly into the subject and only at this point can it present itself to the subject as images
or narration.
But note the basic ambiguity that is produced. The classical setting clearly distinguished between the magnetized’s hallucinatory visions – provided and guided by the
magnetizer – and clear visions, which are produced directly by the magnetized, without
the aid of a magnetizer. Modern forms of the hypnotic scene match the two kinds of
visions: the hallucinatory scene is excessive because it is directed by another. In the
relationship with the hypnotist, the members of the crowd choose to offer their gazes
to the hypnotist so as to get them back serialized (all of them see the same things) and
48
THE PHANTOM OF THE RELATIONSHIP
strengthened (all of them see more and better than a subjective, organic and individual
gaze would allow).
It is interesting to notice that on some occasions this specific kind of visionary relationship is enlightened by a peculiar metaphor: the magic lantern metaphor. I hereby
report only two quotations. The first one is by a little known philosopher, Paul Souriau.4
Souriau identifies the experience of the fruition of a work of art with the hypnotic ecstasy: the author speaks of an admiring and contemplative ecstasy. As for the description of
a similar state, Souriau’s words in the passage dedicated to poetry are reported directly:
Let’s try […] to recover, through memories, the dreaming dimension to which the poetic
rhythm can take us, when one gives in to its influence. Amazing phantasmagory! It really is
the show from an armchair. The darkness is in the room and the wait for the mystery, exciting my imagination, induces me to see the as yet unprojected images on the white screen.
What is about to be performed? For instance Le Crépuscule. The performance starts. I see a
roaring pond in the evening breeze, a deep forest; and all of a sudden a star appears through
the shady branches which rises and lights up, radiant, resplendant in the sky. And as vaguely seen in a pale light, the shots appear one after the other, melt into each other, while an
invisible orchestra accompanies these visions. […] How sweet these visions are! How lulled
are we by this slow music! Sleep, it tells us, dream! After a while we sink more deeply into
hypnosis. We don’t imagine any more: we see, listen, hear; we are delighted by this evening
breeze, by the beautiful summer nights, this pure air, whose freshness seems to be coming
from the sky with the brightness of the stars.
[…] The passage is over. These magic lantern images fade away. I thus find myself in my armchair, with a book in my hands, and these little black characters on this white page are the
ones that led me to this hallucination: I was reading the Contemplations.5
The second quotation is posed by the better known scholar Gustave Le Bon. One of
the main ideas of Le Bon’s famous book on the psychology of crowds is that the crowds’
ideas are images and that their sequence is merely paratactic. The crowds think – and
are made to think by their leaders – as if they were watching a magic lantern show:
Whatever the ideas suggested to the crowds may be, they cannot become dominant unless
they are in a very simple form and are represented through images. These idea-images are
not connected by any logical - analogical or subsequent – link, so that each one can replace
the other, just like the magic lantern plates that the operator takes, one by one, from the box
they were laid one upon another.6
The metaphor of the magic lantern seems to extend implicitly in Le Bon’s following
reasoning step: what the crowds’ reasoning loses in logical coherence is then recovered
in the intensity of their interior perception, that is to say, in their hallucinatory power:
The crowds’ representative imagination, like that of people who do not possess the faculty
of reasoning, can be profoundly impressed. The images produced in their minds by a character, an event or an accident are as vivid as the real thing[...].
Only images, the only element their thought is fed by, can impress, frighten or seduce
the crowds, becoming the motive of any of their actions.7
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RUGGERO EUGENI
It seems as if all the elements to answering the first of our questions are present: the
metaphor of hypnosis is applied to the situation of fruition on the background of the
transformations that the hypnotic scene has undergone in modern times; in particular,
it is relevant to stress the “vertical” dimension it has taken and the possibility for the
magnetizer not to be present, physically, but rather symbolically, through the text.
However, one further phenomenon seems to be interesting: the overlap between cinema and hypnosis only fully occurs at the beginning of the Twenties, at the very
moment of a twofold recomposition: of the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the
social hypnosis on one side; of the social and inter-individual on the other. This organic composition is completed with Freud: the leader’s hypnosis of the single subject, seen
as a displacement of the subject’s ideal of the Ego onto an external object, implies a
mutual identification among hypnotized subjects. This reconnection is where the new
modern magnetic scene comes from: it is embodied in the imaginary and removed
scene in which
the father’s gaze – the feared father of the [primordial] horde – the master of life and death in
everybody, produced the same paralyzing effect on all the members of the horde and all their
life long, the same limitation of every self-sufficient activity and personal intellectual
impulse, that today the hypnotist’s gaze still produces in his “medium.” 8
The Father-hypnotist watches, the hypnotized subjects look at him spellbound, isolated from the external world, completely mesmerized. Good and evil, the world itself,
and the watching subject himself, do not exist but in connection with the Father and
his gaze. The stage model of hypnosis is embedded in the origins of every other scene of
hypnosis: from now on, the individual magnetic scene will exist only as an adaptation
of that scene. In other words, every hypnotized subject is part of an audience, even
when he is the only member.
A powerful, mesmerizing eye. An entrapped, isolated, subdued audience. The new
hypnotic scene, just recomposed, is ready to enter the darkness of the movie theatre
straightaway. Maybe it is not merely a coincidence that Massenpsychologie und IchAnalyse was published in 1921: the same year when Epstein published the essay
Grossissement and Fritz Lang filmed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.
The rule of metaphor
We now come to the second question introduced at the beginning of this chapter –
what are the consequences of the overlap between the modern hypnotic setting and the
scene of a group of spectators absorbed in the vision of a film?
First of all, it can be observed that the retrieval of the hypnotic scene allows what
would otherwise be invisible and unthinkable to be a scene which is thought of and
seen because it is entirely new: the scene of film’s fruition. In other words, the metaphor
of hypnosis helps build a social visibility of the film viewing scene and of the film
fruition experience, thanks to the restoration and overlap of categories well known in
this period, such as the hypnosis of crowds.
Secondly, and as a consequence, once restored, the hypnotic metaphor produces a situation of film fruition: it selects some of its aspects, such as the state of concentration,
50
fixity and steadiness of gaze required by the screen, the darkness of the movie theater,
the opening of a viewing scene shared by the spectators, the audiences’ emotional state;
at the same time the hypnotic metaphor isolates these elements, highlights them,
recomposes them in a unitary design and purpose. In short, the hypnotic metaphor
builds the film viewing scene, giving it a meaning, an identity, a model, a way. And this
is not all: from these operations, the hypnotic metaphor creates expectations, desires,
willingness in the social bodies. No less than other social situations, film viewing is subject to such a symbolic efficacy9 that knowledge, learning and social tales determine
role-takings, physical states, and emotional reactions.
Thirdly, and finally, not only does the hypnotic metaphor highlight and organize elements present in the film fruition device, it also brings about, through imagination,
what is not present in the device. This imaginary integration occurs, in particular,
through two correlated aspects.
The first aspect is the spectator’s gaze. The film viewing is destined to receive the
semantic load of the somnambulist’s clear gaze, with all the ambiguities contained
therein in these modern times. Therefore, there is a paradox in the movie spectator’s
gaze which can be defined thus: on the one hand driven by mass produced and released
images; on the other hand exalted in its skills and absolute to the extent that it completely absorbs the spectator’s body and senses.
Besides this ambiguous mythology in the spectator’s eyes, there is another ambiguous mythology: that of the relationship between the hypnotized spectator and the hypnotist’s gaze. We have seen how, since its origins, hypnosis emerges as a relationship
that awakens images from gazes. Hypnosis is first of all and originally an interpersonal
relationship, a kind of interaction. It is primarily expressed through the gaze: hypnosis
is triggered at the moment when the hypnotist’s gaze becomes absolute to the hypnotized, that is to say, it concentrates and re-absorbs the whole world, together with
desires and values, to make render them available again, but only inside oneself and
according to one’s own desires. This concept is not only found throughout the history
of hypnosis it is hypnosis: basically it is to be found from Mesmer to Freud. However,
when applied to the situation of film viewing, it has to face a notable difficulty: there is
no hypnotist in the movie theater, but only a group of spectators and a screen on which
technological equipment projects moving images. The only way to keep the hypnotic
metaphor is then to invent a non-existent relationship. In order for the metaphor to be
effective, and for the fruition scene to consequently have its meaning, it is necessary to
turn the imaginary interpersonal relationship between spectator and screen into a personal relationship between the spectator and a person who is there, watches him, talks
to him, shows him some images, tells him a story.10
Note: the future of an illusion
What is left of this metaphor in the history of cinema? What shape has it taken, what
utopias has it fed, what models has it given life to? And what ruins of an unfulfilled
future has it caused? It seems as if the answer were to be searched for according to three
directions. Firstly, the idea that the vision of the film consists of an experience of dispossession of the self and of strengthening of one’s own gaze is to be found in many
“total” or “expanded” movie devices in the history of cinema, up to the contemporary
51
RUGGERO EUGENI
virtual reality projects. Secondly, the idea that the movie is the place where a hypnotic
relation is set off – in more or less concealed forms – goes through the theories of cinema. It would be interesting in this sense, not only to read anew the most explicit declarations (Barthes, Bellour), but – and more into depth – the “relational” theories of the
cinema as well, in particular a wide range of reflections on the enunciation. Thirdly, the
idea that the movie spectator is absorbed in a hypnotic state goes through the history of
films and of the movie representation, with moments of alternate fortune and with a
discontinuous availability to make the diegetic representation of the hypnotic relation
a model of the relationship between the film and his spectator. Amply simplifying, it is
the German Expressionism and in particular the already mentioned Lang’s Mabuse
that in the Twenties constitutes the starting point for a reflection on the experience of
the spectator as hypnotic state. This is destined to surge in some American horror films
of the Thirties, subsequently followed by a period of drowsiness. It will be the task of
the “psychiatric” and the parapsychiatric movie of the late Fifties to arouse the attention for hypnosis as an object of representation and as a model of relationship between
the film and the spectator. After a new period of silence (or, better, a period in which the
subject is hidden inside B class horror movies) the theme comes out anew in certain art
movies of the Eighties (Von Trier, Bigas Luna), by the time fully aware of their metafictitious implications and consequences.
To study the way these three projections of the hypnotic metaphor in the movie have
or have not been correlated and synchronized is the concern of a work that still needs
to be done.
means through which it is possible to defend the French democracy from its enemies, he again
uses the term “propaganda,” introduced after the war. And most of all, he will see the cinema
as the new instrument of propaganda: the instrument that, more than others, works through
images, lending itself to the crowd’s thought processes in mime, penetration and direction better than the others do. The government itself, as Le Bon concludes, has to buy some movie theatres and become film distributor and producer. See G. Le Bon, “La vie politique: genèse et
propagation des idées,” Annales littéraires et politiques, no. 81 (1923), pp. 62-63.
8 S. Ferenczi, “Der individualpsychologische Fortschritt in Freuds ‘Massenpsychologie und IchAnalyse’,” (1922) in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, 1919-1926 (Paris: Payot, 1974), p. 183 and following, our trans.
9 C. Lévi-Strauss, “L’efficacité symbolique,” (1949), in Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon,
1964).
10 We are hereby linked through another way to Metz’s last phase matters: Ch. Metz,
L’Enonciation impersonelle ou le site du film (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991).
[Translated from Italian by Antonella Santambrogio and Clive Prest]
1 A. Döblin, “Das Theater der kleinen Leute,” Das Theater, Jg. 1, H. 8 (Dezember 1909); now in
A. Kaes (ed.) Kino-Debatte. Texte zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Film 1909-1929
(Tübingen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978), pp. 37-38, our trans.
2 J. Epstein, “Grossissement,” Promenoir, no. 1-2 (February-March 1921); then in Bonjour cinéma (Paris: Editions de la Sirène, 1921); now in Ecrits sur le cinéma, ed. by P. Lherminier, vol. 1
(Paris: Seghers, 1975), pp. 119-120, our trans. Epstein will return to the subject elsewhere, particularly in “Ciné-analyse ou poésie en quantité industrielle,” in Esprit de cinéma (GenèveParis: Jeheber, 1955), pp. 69-76.
3 This article presents a few conclusions to be found in R. Eugeni, La relazione d’incanto, studi
su cinema e ipnosi (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002), in particular pp. 65-161. For further indepth study and bibliography refer to this volume. Special thanks to Raymond Bellour and
Francesco Casetti for following this work with attention and encouragement.
4 P. Souriau, La Suggestion dans l’art (Paris: Alcan, 1893), our trans.
5 Ibid., pp. 193-194 of the Italian translation. The reader is reminded that Les Contemplations
is the title Hugo gave to his poems collection (1856).
6 G. Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Alcan, 1895), our trans.
7 Ibid., p. 63. The main model of such an imaginative force is no longer identified by Le Bon in
the magic lantern shows, but rather in plays. One should not be surprised by the conclusion
of this theory concerning the relationship between hallucination, hypnosis and crowds.
When, at the beginning of the 1920s, Le Bon goes back to his previous ideas and explores the
52
53
CINEMA AND REVELATION
CINEMA AND REVELATION: FOR PROFESSIONAL EYES ONLY
Cinema has been abducted. It has been robbed from the nurturing womb of science,
kidnapped from the respectful estate of empirical science to be raised in the smudgy
quarters of popular tastes, fast money and cultural pretense. Barely an infant, cinema
has been stolen by the showmen, the merchants and the artists. If cinema’s “pre-history” was to be adapted for a screenplay, the plot of abduction could be its central narrative conflict.1 A host of characters like Edweard Muybridge, whose story “has always
seemed to illustrate a peculiarly American mixture of applied science, sportsmanship,
and pleasure,”2 and the notorious Dr. Doyen, whose “teaching films” recorded amputations and other feats of surgery to be publicly exhibited in early 20th century France3
could stand for the proverbial “foul apples to spoil the whole barrel,” since their activities provided the means for the instrument of science to be purloined in the sense of
Edgar Allan Poe’s famous incriminating letter - precisely for the difficulty the eyes of
science have shown in recognizing it ever since.
Needless to say, cinema was thoroughly corrupted by the company it was forced to
keep. Since the abduction occurred in the most impressionable phase of development for positivisms most promising – however certainly neither only nor last –
child, its most promising future never was: to be the instrument of science in the
service of enlightenments defining quest of revealing the rational order of nature
and thus produce the disciplinary knowledge that enables technological control.
Instead, as many a source is telling us – the abducted cinema and its culture industrial siblings were instrumental in eventually bringing down enlightenment’s project all together.4
While many of the little gadgets that emerged during the 19th century were designed
to feed popular pleasures in illusionist movements, the “machines of the visible” built
by scientists like Janssen, Marey and Muybridge were meant after all, to be devices of
compensation; almost therapeutic in their design to redeem an ailment of the human
sensorium that separated empirical scientists from most crucial knowledge. They were
meant to extend the reach of the visible into a realm that most recalcitrantly remained
imperceptible - the realm of motion, notably the body in motion, that most seriously
remained unseen in its precise workings,5 since the encorporated sense of vision was
simply unable to register the details of movement beyond or below a certain speed.
Analytical machines of inscription like Marey’s photographic gun or Muybridge’s
series of still cameras promised and demonstrated the ability to transport the observational gaze’s need to measure, map and calculate into those realms of natural laws that
had defended their secrets most stubbornly against the penetration of surveillance.
These machines claimed to produce evidence and knowledge by revealing the empiri-
cally sound answer to serious quests for truthful information, such as: “Is there a
moment when a horses legs all leave the ground?”
In the hands of the showmen and artists the very flaw these analytical machines of
inscription and measurement were designed to compensate, the very insecurity as to
the veracity of perceptual information, the very imperfection of the human senses as
empirical instruments became the basis for a practice of deception. Instead of revealing
the true workings of nature by arming the flawed senses with technological devices, the
instrument was used to feed upon these very flaws and perceptual lacks to produce the
mimetic illusion of motion for an audience seeking visual and other pleasures and
craved for tricks being played on their senses. Magic tricks and conjurers acts the instrument of science was made to perform, its purity spoiled, its innocence corrupted, its reputation damaged and destroyed beyond repair.
Nothing but mocking salutes have been paid by the kidnappers in return. Such as the
thoroughly distorted views of science and scientists, the Dr. Caligari’s, Frankenstein’s
and Metropolis’ Rotwang that popular film has issued countless times as characters and
scenarios. Nothing but slander and mockery also in the relentless analytical onslaughts
by theorists of film like Metz, Baudry and Comolli, that have read the applied science of
the cinematic apparatus’ technologies as the means of ideological naturalization6 and
defining instances of the cinema of science, such as Muybridge’s “Human and Animal
Locomotion” as the birthplace of hard core porn.7 Perhaps even the plot of abduction so
prominent in early narrative cinema, such as Cecil Hepworth’s Rescued by Rover (1904),
D.W. Griffith’s Rescued from the Eagle’s Nest (1908) and Adventures of Dolly (1908) are
nothing but mockery, since they celebrate and demonstrate the growing mastery of the
story-tellers over the positivist recalcitrance their prey had inherited from empiricism.
And the most cutting mockery being perhaps that those films happy endings, the
reunion of the kidnapped child with the family it belongs to by right of birth, has forever been tantalizingly withheld, precisely for the undecided answer to the “academic
question” of due practice in studying cinema – within the disciplinary accountability of
a “cinema science” or the heterogenous, trans-disciplinary terrain of “cinema studies.”
Perhaps the sense of resentment evoked by the following passage from the notes for
the film program Origins of Scientific Cinema8 should not be surprising then: “This
series of films,” the unidentified author proclaims, “provides evidence that proves that
cinema’s roots lay in science.” Issued as a contribution to the celebrations erupting
around cinema’s 100th birthday, this speaker (and the film he announces) seems not only
after a record to be set straight, but a birthright to be reclaimed – spurred certainly not
only by the various versions of cinema’s history that relegate the empirical machines of
19th century firmly in a somewhat hastily sketched terrain of “pre-history,” “forerunners” or “prototype” but as much by the salacious flippancy of understating remarks like
that of Marshall McLuhan, who continues the tradition of mockery by noting in passing,
that “physiologists did have much to do with the development of film.”9
This tale could stop here, if its sole purpose was to illustrate the “dead end” empiricist
theories of instrumentality represent for the search of cinema’s true roots and epistemological belongings. Surely the plot of abduction suggested here, could be related to
its Peirceian notion, yet primarily the tale is meant to stress a territorial mapping of cultural domains that is so routinely acknowledged in the accounts of cinema’s emergence
as a mass medium, that its implications seem to be all but invisible: namely that the
transformation of the measuring instrument of inscription into a public spectacle does
55
Michael Barchet, Friedrich Schiller Universität - Jena
54
MICHAEL BARCHET
not merely articulate the tension between scientific research and technological “application” – a most common plot of abduction by the way – but is analytically to be
described as a structural shift of address – as opposed to the strangely biologist
metaphor of a “birth.”
Yet even if the screenings of 1895 are rarely mistaken for an origin resembling birth,
they most consistently provide the demarcation to decisively separate the history of
(popular) film from its (scientific) pre-history in the instance of the singular, decisive
event of “going public.”
Strangely enough it is the radical critique of the myths of cinematic origins that the
theories of the cinematic apparatus conducted from the late 1960s on, that exhibit a
most peculiar insistence on the “first instance of visibility.” While intended to
denounce the accounts of technological determinism that tell cinema’s history as a
series of inventions along the path of inevitable and rational progress, Jean-Louis
Comolli, perhaps one of the most radical proponents of the apparatus theorists,
announces that “the cinema is born immediately as a social machine” in 1895 by virtue
of its instant success as public spectacle.10 He continues with the provocative statement, that “one might as well propose, that it is the spectators who invent cinema.” 11
Yet with privileging not only the moment of the first public presentation – a moment
of revelation so to speak – but with the claim for an exclusive determination of cinema’s history by its presence and libidinal economy as popular spectacle a number of
problems arise. Thus Lisa Cartwright in her critique of Comolli maintains a number of
blind spots being produced by this conception. Eclipsed are thus the “epistemological
and ideological baggage […] the techniques of power and knowledge […] carried into the
post-1895 popular cinema from the laboratories of our cinematic patriarchs.”12 For
Cartwright an even more crucial oversight is articulated by Comolli’s often quoted, yet
somewhat generalized notion of the 19th century “frenzy of the visible” documented in
those “hundreds of little machines” designed to produce the illusion of motion. “Many
of these machines,” writes Cartwright,
The numerous cameras, projectors, and compound instruments that emerged over the
course of the 19th century, in fact were no mere little machines, the silly contraptions of
amateur inventors; they were fairly sophisticated instruments used in laboratories of
physics, chemistry, and physiology. Understanding the social context of the laboratory – its
technology, its economy, its own cultural mode of spectatorship – is no simple matter of
evoking an unspecified artisanal science or a generalized technology. 13
And it is the last instance of Cartwright’s lists of invisible subjects – the laboratory’scultural mode of spectatorship, where the blind spot of cinema’s exclusive conception
as public spectacle may well become crucial. If devoid of a conception of its historical
and contemporary mode of what may be called “professional spectatorship,” the dispositive of the public spectacle is bound to be blind for its implications as another. If the
rigid protocols of empirically produced knowledge, the modes of reading that transform cinematically produced materials into databases of technological inscription are
outside the scope of cinema studies’ scenarios, these kinds of readings are all but left to
the hands of those, who practice them and apply their results. In as much as it is nothing less than the scientific conception and production of “life” by means of empirical
observation that was at stake in 19th century physiology and if the suspicion has any
56
ground that contemporary practices of medical imaging are more than indebted to
these 19th century conceptions (as Barbara Duden suggests)14 it may well be asked if
cinema studies can afford to be satisfied with the plot of popular cultures triumph of
abduction, since it may serve as a convenient discursive demarcation that allows
important social practices to remain unseen – unrevealed so to speak to the eye of an
analytical gaze that could question their foundations and implications.
If this is to mean a fundamental re-orientation of cinema studies in a new terrain of
visual studies, as Lisa Cartwright recently suggested and Ulrike Hick’s massive and
extremely well researched Geschichte der optischen Medien15 convincingly practices
from the vantage point of early cinema is surely beyond the scope of this essay.
Similarly beyond this scope are issues of institutional implications or new methodological orientations. What I propose therefore for the remainder of this essay is an initial query into a topic of research that could produce knowledge about various modes
of professional spectatorship of cinema. For momentary lack of a better term, the settings for this mode could be called “non-public spectacle”– in order not to be confused
with the dispositive privacy of “home viewing.”
Professional spectators
While no account of film’s history is complete without the tale of those first spectators seeking cover under the seats of the improptu screening room, because they feared
to be run over by the train closing in on them from the screen, the outlines for the character of the professional spectator – early or contemporary – is rather vague. Should we
imagine him as the air force staff sergeant in uniform scanning the film recorded by the
B-52 gun camera to validate the effectivity of the bomb raid? Is it the good doctor in
white garments viewing the chronophotographical document of a tumor growth? The
engineer in his standard white collar office outfit concentrating on the slow motion
footage, that shows a given material’s reaction to extreme mechanical strain and
reveals the point where it finally breaks? Or even this film studies professor, replaying
a single scene of Citizen Kane for the third time on her/his VCR to complete her/his
notes on its shot-countershot structure?
We can place him (or her?) hardly in the iconography of spectatorship film has developed itself historically as part of its diegesis16 – with a certain yet significant exception
perhaps to be made for the character of the “computer wizard” in much recent film and
television – the technician manipulating images on the computer screen, zooming in
on details, calling up mysterious programs of enhancement that all the sudden clearly
show the detail that solves the case or reveals the location of the perpetrator. Neither
has the study of cinema’s history, that has given us a relatively clear and differentiated
image of the popular spectator over time provided all that much information about professional spectators, aside from the analytical viewer produced by the disciplinary protocols of film analysis and the cultural character of the film critic.
Despite this lack of information there are a few differences we can ascribe to the professional spectator as opposed to the spectator in public spectacle: she/he has been formally and more or less extensively trained for the task of watching film by an institution other than the cinema other audio-visual media, such as university, a program of
vocational training or the military. Rather than “mere pleasure” her/his experience of
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MICHAEL BARCHET
viewing is meant to produce some form of positive knowledge, beyond the information
communicated by a film’s narrative. There is a set of more or less standardized rules and
procedures that allow this knowledge to be articulated, communicated and brought
into a given epistemological horizon. The contract that transforms visual reception to
knowledge and information has been made explicit, has been installed in the viewing
subject by means of disciplinary work on her/his senses, her/his behavior, her/his “technique” prior and distinct from the actual experience of watching the particular film and
distinct from interactions with other media. It has been constructed as a normative protocol of reading such as the training film studies students or oncologists receive. Much
of this training has been geared towards the reduction of complexity and the installation of strategic gazes.
Thus the member of the air force reconnaissance unit, who screens the footage taken
over enemy territory, is not asked for a description of the beauty of nature he encounters in this footage; nor for an essay about the aesthetics of abstraction in aerial photography. His gaze is trained to produce signatures of troops, military equipment and
installations. To reduce the complexity of the image he has been disciplined by training
to read signs in a pre-determined way. There are most likely manuals, curricula, institutions of education that teach this particular mode of reading. To some extent the
mode of reading is implemented in the technical equipment itself – such as automatic
devices that record time, location and spatial identifiers. A particular medium of
inscription may be used, such as infrared film, that transforms differences in the emission of heat into visual information. Whatever visual pleasure this spectator may
derive from his experience of viewing, there is no place for it in the registers of knowledge, his work is designed to produce. The register of pleasure is most likely displaced
into a code of professional conduct. While the beauty of the bullet in extreme slow
motion, the path it slices into the gelatin mass of a suddenly liquified air may not
escape the engineer, who has the task to gather the data needed for the construction of
bullet proof steel, the dispositive of her/his strategic viewing cannot be interested in
this beauty but will produce correlatives of speed, strength and other physical qualities
compatible to computable relations between the elements in a closed system.17
By means of this institutionally determined and rigidly controlled closed circuit of
production and reception, scientific cinema of this sort may well exhibit one of its
defining differences to popular forms – namely that it institutionally secures dispositives of “preferred reading” in the sense of Stuart Hall’s ground-breaking conception.18
Perhaps one of the defining features of the “Non-public spectacle” would be the discursive and disciplinary structure that is geared towards the exclusion of negotiated or
oppositional readings, that is geared then towards an “ideal of communication,” where
the circulation of messages remains firmly under the tight and flawless control of a rigorous and disciplined normative code. While popular media can never secure this, the
very basis of professionally trained spectatorship seems to be designed to exclude all
but preferred readings. Which could describe the process of “corruption” once material
made for professional gazes becomes part of popular spectacle or a mode of professional spectatorship that works within a different register of producing knowledge – precisely that its reading may not be determined any longer, may be “misunderstood” and
“abused” to challenge and ultimately damage the ways it generates “ideal communication.” This not only echoes the suspicions Marey articulated about the use of the traditions of pictorial representation for the presentation of scientific data;19 it could also
58
address whom else but cinema studies with the challenge to embark on yet another
endeavor of abduction – since the institutionalized modes of revelation by means of
empiricist “ideal communication” have hardly died with cinema’s instant success as
public spectacle.
1 Many a cultural movement, suspicious and impatient of the very popularity of film, such as
the German Film Reform Movement in the teens of the 20th Century, the film theories of the
Soviet Revolution as embodied in writings so different as Dziga Vertov’s and Sergei
Eisenstein’s or later the various documentary movements have implicitly argued this plot
and claimed their own designs for cinema the more in keeping with its “true” heritage.
2 L. Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989), p. 37.
3 See M. Weise, Medizinische Kinematographie (Dresden: Steinkopff, 1919), p. 125. Weise
reports that Doyen claimed to use the cinematographic records of his surgery to review his
own performance and thus optimize his technique. Why these films were made public then
and could thus become early sensations of horror, awaits an explanation. A film made in 1908
depicting Dr. Doyen during the performance of an amputation is part of the compilation
Origins of Scientific Cinema. Vol III: Early Applications (D/F/I, V. Tosi, 1994).
4 Adorno/Horkheimer’s notorious chapter on the “Culture Industries” in: Th. W. Adorno, M.
Horkheimer, Die Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994 [1947]) certainly
being one of the most forcefully told tales of degeneration told about popular cinema in this
context.
5 And most pressingly needed to be seen not only in the context of physiology replacing anatomy as the key medical science in the 19th century but also in the context of increasing industrialization, that entailed a more and more detailed division of labor that prepared the ground
to concepts like Frederik Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management which used
chronophotographic motion studies for the analysis of work flow.
6 Although historians like B. Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London:
Starword, 1993 [1983]) have done their best to reveal this scandalous mistreatment as entirely groundless misunderstandings.
7 Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible,” cit., pp. 34-57.
8 Tosi, op. cit.
9 M. McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: Signet, 1964), p. 249
10 J.-L. Comolli, “Machines of the Visible,” in T. de Lauretis, S. Heath (eds.), The Cinematic
Apparatus (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), pp. 121-122.
11 Comolli, “Machines of the Visible”, cit., p. 122.
12 L. Cartwright, Screening the Body. Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 6
13 Ibid.
14 B. Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993).
15 U. Hick, Geschichte der optischen Medien (München: Fink Verlag, 1999). In a mode analogous to J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
Hick traces historical shifts in the conception of visual perception. Yet – as opposed to Crary
– posits the emergence of early cinema as the vantage point of her study.
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MICHAEL BARCHET
16 Understandably narrative cinema has reserved professional film watching for professionals
of the cinema industry. The screening room of the studio has quite frequently been a location
in filmic narrative such as the sequences at the beginning of Citizen Kane (O. Welles, 1941),
Sullivan’s Travels (P. Sturges, 1941) or La Nuit Américaine (Fr. Truffaut, 1973).
17 Which of course is not to say, that a popular film like The Matrix (A. Wachowsky, 1999) cannot be interested in presenting its spectators the experience of bullets in slow-motion cinematography for pleasure.
18 S. Hall, Encoding-Decoding (1973), CCCS Stenciled Papers, no. 74 (London: Hutchinson,
1980), pp. 128-138.
19 See Cartwright, Screening the Body. Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture, cit., pp. 33-39.
TRA FOTOGRAFIA E CINEMA: LA TRIDIMENSIONALITÀ IN ITALIA
NEGLI ANNI TRENTA
Paola Valentini, Università di Firenze
Tra le mille pressioni tecnologiche cui il cinema nella sua lunga storia è stato frequentemente sottoposto, l’introduzione del rilievo costituisce indubbiamente il caso
più eclatante di vicolo cieco. Quasi fosse un’innovazione abortita fin dalle sue origini,
come sentenziava già nel 1931 un acuto osservatore francese.
Parmi les transformations successives dont le cinéma a été ou sera gratifié le relief tient une
place à part. Alors que le film sonore, à son avènement, a été voué à l’exécration publique,
que la couleur est honnie des gens bien pensant, il semble que le relief bénéfice d’une indulgence particulière. Les gens du métier ne s’en soucient pas, parce que sa menace est encore
très imprécise et lointaine; les esthètes ne l’accablent pas parce qu’il ne gêne aucune de leurs
théories; le bon public, lui, se rappelle les vues stéréoscopiques qui firent son admiration et
souhaite retrouver à l’écran la même étonnante illusion.1
Se dunque, a differenza dell’acre opposizione al suono e al colore, il cinema stereoscopico non riceve fin dall’inizio tale trattamento ciò avviene perché da subito esso non
costituisce una reale minaccia: “De tous les perfectionnements attendus, le relief est le
moins discuté parce que le plus improbable”.2
L’applicazione al cinema della tecnica dell’anaglifi, a sua volta, ne costituisce – per lo
meno nella prospettiva cinematografica – un’ulteriore débâcle; presto rimpiazzata dai
più versatili sistemi basati sulla polarizzazione, introdotti dalla Polaroid, la tridimensionalità cinematografica accantonerà il rilievo esclusivamente bianco e nero di
Lumière e delle altre tecniche anaglifiche europee per conquistare finalmente il colore
e, ancora una volta, valicherà l’oceano per assumere la patria statunitense, gettando
ogni sua precedente identità nazionale nell’oblio.3
Il presente saggio, dunque, vuol essere l’occasione, con sotto gli occhi le fotografie di
scena stereoscopiche riprodotte da Franco Gengotti e allegate al presente volume, per
soffermarsi a riflettere sui primi passi di una delle invenzioni più ambigue del cinema,
fortunatissima negli entusiasmi del pubblico eppure così rimossa dai critici e relegata
spesso al ruolo di semplice curiosità. Soprattutto, è l’occasione per fare un po’ di luce sui
caratteri italiani di questa storia che ancora sembra non aver abbandonato l’immagine
in movimento. L’esaustività certo non è possibile; come dimostra se non altro l’alone
troppo fitto di mistero che circonda le citate fotografie e che avvolge le prime esperienze italiane applicate al cinema. Del resto non è nemmeno lo scopo che guida la ricerca:
come tanti vicoli ciechi, questo piccolo spaccato del cinema italiano aiuta forse meglio
a capire qualcosa di più su quelle strade maestre spesso imboccate meno “facilmente” di
quanto si creda.
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PAOLA VALENTINI
Tra fotografia e cinema: eccessi della messa in scena
Le fotografie “di” Guazzoni presentate in questo fascicolo, sono, fino a prova contraria, indubbiamente un unicum, come sottolinea Claudio Domini nel suo intervento.
Testimoniano di una solidarietà e di una letterale sovrapposizione tra stereoscopia e
cinema di cui non sembra a livello superficiale rimanere altra traccia. Ma esse sono
anche la prova tangibile di una lunga vicinanza almeno tra stereoscopia fotografica e
cinematografica che spesso si tende a dimenticare.
Intrattenimento progressivamente relegato ai margini, la stereoscopia costituì un
momento fondamentale di impatto delle immagini sulla vita dell’individuo; in una fase in
cui molti vi “avevano la stessa familiarità che hanno con i fiammiferi”,4 essa fornì una
prima sostanziale chiave d’ingresso alla fotografia nella vita sociale di fine Ottocento. Per lo
meno fino a quando la carte de visite ne sostituì la densità simbolica. Già nel 1863 uno dei
più attivi estimatori della stereoscopia poteva lamentare l’offuscarsi del fenomeno di fronte alla nuova moda sociale; Oliver Wendel Holmes infatti in quell’occasione ammetteva:
Negli ultimi due anni […] abbiamo trovato sul mercato ben poche nuove fotografie stereoscopiche. Ciò non si deve tanto all’aumento dei costi per le importazioni, quanto alla crescente popolarità dei ritratti-cartolina che, come tutti sanno, sono diventati ultimamente la
valuta sociale, la ‘banconota’ sentimentale della civilizzazione. […] Questi ultimi sono più
economici, più trasportabili, non necessitano di macchinari per essere guardati, possono
essere osservati da più persone contemporaneamente, in breve, hanno caratteristiche del
tutto popolari. La gente ama guardare i volti degli amici più che le meraviglie del mondo
giunte dinanzi ai loro occhi grazie allo stereoscopio.5
“Banconota sentimentale della civilizzazione”, il ritratto-cartolina proprio per – argomenti
facilmente traslabili nel cinema come vedremo – la sua disponibilità, la sua maneggevolezza,
il suo stare nel palmo di mano rimpiazza il solipsistico mondo in cui il visore stereoscopico
aveva allora diffusione e sostituisce alle rovine e i paesaggi urbani i volti cari degli amici: in
breve, come acutamente nota Holmes, diviene autenticamente popolare, fa uscire definitivamente la fotografia dal salotto per conquistare la piazza, lascia gli occhi dell’individuo per
conquistare quelli della collettività.
L’uso personale dunque, per la propria esclusiva gratificazione, è indubbio che sia effettivamente alla base delle fotografie “di” Guazzoni, come dimostra Claudio Domini.
Apparecchio ancora diffuso nelle case, è possibile sia finito un po’ per caso un po’ per curiosità sul set a documentare il lavoro fatto. Tuttavia, la tecnologia stereoscopica, come si è
cominciato a intravedere, ha ripercussioni anche più complesse; non è nemmeno escluso,
dunque, che le preziose fotografie ritrovate raccontino anche qualcosa d’altro.
Praticato soprattutto in direzione del turismo fotografico e della ricostruzione storica, è opinione diffusa che il ritratto in stereoscopia fosse quasi esclusivamente riservato alle celebrità, tra queste innanzitutto attrici e attori.6 Anche se, come si vedrà, negli anni Trenta la stereoscopia sarebbe ritornata come status symbol destinato all’impiego personale, nel primo
decennio del secolo scorso queste fotografie potevano quindi essere parte del bagaglio promozionale e colossale tipico delle produzioni cinematografiche storiche dell’epoca e, nello
stesso tempo, offrire un nuovo modo “iperbolico”, consono alla magniloquenza del film storico, di proporre il corpo e il volto dell’attore. Le fotografie stereoscopiche di Fabiola o di
Christus, di Messalina o Quo vadis?, non sarebbero che lo sviluppo dell’accompagnamento
62
promozionale e particolarmente spettacolare al film, già attuato del resto – seppur con la piatta fotografia tradizionale – dallo stesso Guazzoni per la promozione delle produzioni Cines.
La stessa stereoscopia del resto non era estranea al carattere letteralmente “di scena”: lo dimostrano non solo i ritratti di artisti o, per lo meno in area francese, le serie fotografiche come
“Théâtre de Paris” o “Actualités Théâtrales”, che proponevano quadri della scena teatrale, ma
anche in generale il modo in cui aspetti veritieri della vita borghese di fine Ottocento erano
ricostruiti attraverso figuranti e attori che spesso ritornano da una fotografia all’altra, non di
rado – come del resto negli stereogrammi di Guazzoni qui acclusi – accompagnati dalla presenza dello stesso fotografo.7
Gli eccessi della messa in scena del film storico dunque ritornano anche letteralmente nell’excedere delle fotografie che lo accompagnano. Progetto oneroso, analogo all’ampio dispiego di mezzi attuato per questi film, dai consistenti metraggi alle scenografie titaniche, dalla
magnificenza visiva alla grandezza uditiva delle spettacolari partiture musicali, e poi accantonato per quel complesso di condizionamenti non solo di mercato che attraversano il cinema. Come ricorda Gianni Rondolino, la produzione storica italiana propone all’epoca “film
popolari per un pubblico popolare, in cui i temi ricorrenti della storia patria o dell’antichità
romana o del mondo mitico degli eroi sono filtrati attraverso la letteratura romanzesca di
tipo popolare o infantile e la cultura scolastica di base, sorretta proprio da queste storie e da
questi miti”.8 L’associazione tra stereoscopia e cinema riporta dunque ancora una volta alla
dimensione popolare del cinema: accanto al romanzo d’appendice o i testi scolastici ripropone la necessità di valutare anche per un genere specifico come quello storico la mediazione
offerta dalle storie visive, allargate non solo alla tradizione figurativa o all’illustrazione popolare ma anche a fenomeni come appunto in questo caso la stereoscopia, che del resto questa
iconografia aveva a sua volta contribuito a modellare:9 magari mode passeggere ma che riescono seppur per breve tempo a toccare le corde della più autentica popolarità.
L’aggancio alla stereoscopia offrirebbe un ulteriore “filtro”, non più narrativo ma prettamente visivo10 alla costruzione del racconto cinematografico e registrerebbe un ulteriore
livello di quella tipica modellazione del film storico tra collettivo e individuale, di quel continuo passaggio dall’universale al particolare che ne costituisce una delle caratteristiche
dominanti11 affiancando a quella filmica una pratica come quella stereoscopica che ancora
più esplicitamente mescola l’offerta di un “plaisir égoïste” e l’occasione per “un élément de
convivialité qui relance la conversation”.12 È un argomento, dunque, che non solo ripropone
la questione dell’equilibrio e il dialogo che il popolare in un certo periodo pone tra le diverse
arti e forme espressive, ma riporta in modo diretto, e anzi per più versi ne offre quasi una
prova tangibile, al ruolo che la stereoscopia, come intuito da Noel Burch, di contro alle regole della pittura accademica, svolse con i suoi paesaggi urbani e i suoi “lucernari sull’infinito”
nell’attestazione del cinema e nella formazione del Modo di Rappresentazione Primitivo.13
Infine, ma certo non da ultimo, guardando le stereoscopie del fasciolo non si può non ipotizzare anche un uso della fotografia stereoscopica come bozzetto di scena, come ispirazione
e studio preparatorio: non va dimenticato che la stereoscopia era anche un frequente ausilio
alla pittura e, forse non a caso, Guazzoni stesso poteva vantare proprio una formazione pittorica; e del resto la fotografia stessa non ha mai abdicato a questo ruolo preparatorio all’immagine in movimento, dall’allestimento di un set allo studio sulla composizione di un’inquadratura.14 Le singole stereoscopie di Guazzoni avrebbero offerto ai rispettivi film un concreto strumento per indagare quelle “possibilità dello sguardo” tipicamente novecentesche
di cui parla Francesco Casetti, ossia per saggiare “l’ampiezza e la diversità degli aspetti filmati; e cioè riproposti alla vista, ma spesso anche fatti scoprire”.15 Il risultato è di costruire uno
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PAOLA VALENTINI
spazio ‘a tutto tondo’: non più solo contemplabile, come è quello del cinema delle origini, ma
in qualche modo tangibile e percorribile.16
Ed è tuttavia su questo aspetto che la presenza delle fotografie stereoscopiche per i film
mostra risvolti più complessi. Quell’ordine imposto dall’istituzionalizzarsi della forma cinematografica, in base al quale “il quadro non si presenta più come uno spaccato relativamente caotico, ma comincia a strutturarsi sia in superficie che in profondità”,17 trova qui contraddizione nel rilievo: una forma ibrida che da un lato propone una strutturazione prospettica e dall’altro la offre come aggettante, appunto in rilievo. Offre uno spazio tangibile sì ma
non percorribile o comunque precluso allo spettatore che al massimo ne può essere solo investito in pieno; ripropone, ancora una volta per il cinema italiano, un ibrido tra lo spazio cinematografico ordinato e strutturato e la spazialità debordante ed eccessiva del cinema delle
origini.18 Il ritratto di celebrità, l’esaltazione delle risorse produttive del cinema storico, lo
studio preparatorio: queste molteplici opportunità non esauriscono ancora la ricchezza dell’incontro tra stereoscopia e cinema. Andrebbe aggiunto almeno da ultimo, perché no, il più
tipico turismo fotografico legato agli stereogrammi; un viaggio questa volta non solo spaziale ma anche temporale nella realtà geografica e in questo caso anche storica e remota creata
dal set cinematografico. In fondo il regista nella serie stereoscopica considerata compare in
scena una sola volta; come non si volesse infrangere l’illusoria riproposta di una romanità a
tre dimensioni accessibile anche concretamente per lo spettatore. Del resto, come qualcuno
annotava, la stereoscopia aveva spesso questo ambiguo statuto: di promuovere i viaggi e gli
spostamenti ma deludere poi lo spettatore di fronte alla realtà: nel caso di questi film storici
essa è sottratta irrimediabilmente allo sguardo e allo scotto del confronto diretto.19
Dietro tutte queste ipotesi rimane comunque innegabile, ancora una volta l’unicum, il tentativo non riuscito, il vicolo cieco in questo caso potenziato esponenzialmente. Le fotografie
“di” Guazzoni mettono di fronte all’impiego strumentale per il cinema di un tipo di fotografia mai più decollata; a un incontro tecnologico tra cinema e fotografia mai più attuato; e infine finiscono anche con il tirare in ballo un cinema stesso continuamente riproposto nel
tempo ma mai realizzato pienamente.
Le fotografie di Guazzoni sono dunque lo spunto per tentare di parlare di un versante controverso del cinema, in particolare italiano. Un aspetto che in materia di identità nazionali
sembra avere sempre un volto solo americano, un po’ come quell’ It Came from Outer Space
in cui di solito viene ravvisato il fulcro della ricerca sulla tridimensionalità. In realtà la visione stereoscopica, fotografica e soprattutto, per quello che preme in questo caso, cinematografica, conosce anche una sua storia italiana. Minoritaria, fragile ma che può aiutare a dare
uno sguardo sulle coordinate di un eterno fallimento, quello della conquista della terza
dimensione al cinema.
Anche se le osservazioni che seguono non possono certo aspirare ad esaurire l’argomento,
tuttavia compongono un quadro nuovo. Il dibattito in Italia, infatti, appare molto attivo e
consapevole, ben più di quanto venga in seguito ricordato.
Una questione di tecnica: solidi dal nostro spazio
La seconda tappa di questa storia italiana, lungo la quale spingersi, si colloca attorno al
momento di attestazione del sonoro; alla metà degli anni Trenta, infatti, non ancora esaurita l’ondata innovativa del sonoro, come in più parti d’Europa anche in Italia il cinema si fa
direttamente stereoscopico.20 A sancire trionfalmente il nuovo inizio, preoccupazione che
64
non aveva avuto per il sonoro, Lumière, com’è noto, avrebbe girato un nuovo Arrivé du train
a la gare de Ciotat riproponendolo il 25 febbraio 1936 all’Académie des Sciences di Parigi.21
E ad attestare la continuità con le precedenti esperienze, esattamente come per le fotografie
di Guazzoni, il procedimento adottato è la tecnica dell’anaglifi che, nonostante la sopravvivenza di tutti e tre gli altri tipi di tecnica, il metodo a selettore, quello a luce polarizzata e
quello parallattico a griglie, fino al 1936 rimane in Italia l’unico sistema utilizzato per la
commercializzazione di film in tre dimensioni.22
Come mostra la tabella in coda al testo, che rielabora i dati riportati sul Bollettino della
proprietà intellettuale negli anni Venti, la tecnologia della stereoscopia nelle sue possibili
applicazioni al cinema prosegue intensa e ininterrotta in Italia; come una sorta di fiume carsico che sbuca tuttavia in superficie nel 1936 con la realizzazione del “primo film stereoscopico, a carattere spettacolare, che si sia mai prodotto al mondo”.23 Alle spalle del film c’è
“l’autorità di Luigi Lumière” che, come mostrano i brevetti, lavorava fin dal 1920 in questa
direzione, nonché “la spinta morale della Direzione generale per la cinematografia” che
preme per la realizzazione del film dandogli grandissimo risalto sulle pagine del suo organo
‘ufficiale’, Lo Schermo, e mettendo la produzione in contatto con i “migliori stabilimenti di
meccanica e ottica”.24
L’Italia, aspetto spesso trascurato, è dunque il primo paese a produrre un lungometraggio
di finzione tridimensionale. E, altro aspetto tutto italiano, la stereoscopia incrocia un genere apparentemente anomalo, la commedia Nozze vagabonde per la regia di Guido
Brignone.25 Secondo quella complessa ma evidente correlazione tra tecnologia e generi
cinematografici, infatti, l’eccedere invasivo della terza dimensione si accompagna fin da
subito ai generi più direttamente interlocutori nei confronti dello spettatore, così come
cascate, minacce e mostri diventano oggetti visivi in rilievo privilegiati da un cinema in cui
ogni spettatore “diviene il centro dell’illusione tridimensionale e spesso è disturbato dalla
sensazione ossessionante di essere preso di mira dalle figure, che il rilievo sembra proiettare vivacemente contro di lui”26. Come emerge dalla pubblicistica dell’epoca, le possibilità di
indossare al cinema gli occhialini colorati, si moltiplicano tra il 1935 e il 1936 anche per lo
spettatore italiano e l’anelito alla tridimensionalità torna a farsi palpabile e visibile. Alla
Mostra del cinema di Venezia e poi nelle sale italiane, avrebbe fatto scalpore la proiezione di
una serie di filmati della MGM in cui “il mondo d’immagini che deve vivere solo sulla tela
ne balza invece fuori per precipitarvisi addosso”.27 Come era consapevolezza dell’epoca, la
stereoscopia sanciva la possibilità stessa di deformazioni e di un “rilievo esagerato” spesso
ottenuto “attraverso l’allontanamento dell’obbiettivo durante la ripresa”, qual’era appunto
il caso dei corti MGM, in cui una palla, lo spruzzo d’un sifone di selz, un’automobile, un’altalena, un pugno e le canne di un sassofono si scagliavano contro lo spettatore del Lido.28
Nozze vagabonde, estraneo a queste deformazioni esasperate, continua tuttavia la ricerca
in direzione della più diffusa “aesthetic of emergence”.29 Con la tipica ibridazione dei primi
film sonori in particolare italiani, il film presenta in realtà più di una scena di genere musicale, prefigurando un sodalizio poi classico di questo genere con la tridimensionalità.
L’opera di Brignone, rimane piatta nella critica, occasione per la tradizionale tirata contro
la commedia alla moda.
Naturalmente soggetto e sceneggiatura erano questa volta un poco a rime obbligate. Si trattava di servire ad un grande esperimento di cinematografia stereoscopica. I risultati, che
ancora non abbiamo veduti, potrebbero spiegare tutto. Compresa la scena finale, in cui una
danza da caffè concerto occupa un metraggio evidentemente sproporzionato all’esiguità
65
PAOLA VALENTINI
delle invenzioni coreografiche. Vorrà dire che, per una volta tanto, gli artisti avranno rinunciato alla loro boria proverbiale per mettere in buona luce i tecnici...30
Del resto il film è innanzitutto legato alla figura di Guido Brignone, riconosciuto
quale “perfetto tecnico” dallo stesso Vittorio Trentino, che gli attribuiva la piena
responsabilità della diffusione del film parlato in Italia, e un regista dotato quant’altri
mai di “senso dello spettacolo popolare”31 che ne facevano il profilo ideale per la realizzazione di un’opera pionieristica di questo tipo.
Nozze vagabonde era inoltre il frutto delle ricerche dell’ingegner Gualtierotti. Poste sotto
brevetto il 27 giugno 1924, nel 1935, gli avevano fatto presentare alla Mostra delle invenzioni di Torino32 tre esperimenti di stereocinema, la terrazza del caffè, il viale di un giardino e il parapetto di un ponte che ottennero un notevole successo, tanto da spingerlo alla
fondazione apposita nel 1936 della S.A.I.S., Società Anonima Italiana Stereocinematografica con sede a Milano e che produrrà tuttavia quest’unica pellicola.33 Non rimangono altre tracce né iniziative analoghe nel cinema italiano del tempo. Altri nomi tuttavia
figurano accanto a quello di Gualtierotti, che estendono le ricerche, seppure mai uscite dai
laboratori, anche ai sistemi stereoscopici a visione collettiva, come il senese Luzatti, il milanese Guido Jellinek, autore nel 1932 di un opuscolo di una certa notorietà (Due nuovi sistemi di cinematografia tridimensionale), e addirittura il romano Filoteo Alberini, colui che,
secondo la testimonianza di Eugenio Giovannetti nel marzo 1935, “ha donato all’America
il film “grandeur” e sta forse per darci la soluzione radicale del problema della stereoscopia”.34 Fin qui la storia “ufficiale”. A scorrere infatti, come nella tabella posta in chiusura, i
brevetti depositati nel corso degli anni Venti, quella per la stereoscopia appare non la ricerca isolata di alcuni scienziati ma la corsa di tutta un’industria del cinema evidentemente
fiduciosa nelle possibilità dell’innovazione: da Alberini, appunto, a Roberto Omegna, dalla
Itala Film di Torino alla Arturo Ambrosio di Milano.
Nozze vagabonde costituisce dunque un caso isolato ma non meno rilevante; l’Italia è tra
i primi paesi a cimentarsi nel contatto del pubblico con il nuovo cinema in rilievo e tuttavia
fino agli anni Cinquanta non conoscerà nessun altro tentativo autonomo in questa direzione. Il film di Brignone è veramente un caso anomalo; a quanto pare perduto, tranne qualche
lacerto di pellicola,35 passa alla storia come opera pionieristica eppure maschera, come si è
detto, una committenza forte e potente. La Mostra delle invenzioni di Torino, come del resto
la seconda edizione svoltasi l’anno successivo a Milano, vedono una sezione apposita destinata a diffondere la stereoscopia cinematografica. Nel ’35 Gualtierotti è solo uno dei presenti, per la verità piuttosto negletto, accanto alle apparecchiature di Filoteo Alberini della S.A.
Martinez e figli, al binocolo stereoscopico di Emilio Bertos, allo stereoscopio Cinemason e
alle scoperte di Jellinek. Perché la scelta della Direzione per la cinematografia sia ricaduta su
Gualtierotti ci è ignoto. Così come oscuri sono i motivi per i quali Nozze vagabonde venga
acquistato dalla Warner Brothers insieme a Anonima Roylott nell’ottobre 1936 ma a differenza di quest’ultimo non trovi poi praticamente diffusione nelle sale.36
L’episodio dunque, nonostante l’invisibilità del film, merita di essere almeno parzialmente indagato e ricostruito e si offre come esemplare per illuminare quel nodo spinoso che si è
sin qui tentato di dipanare ossia i rapporti tra cinema e rilievo anaglifico.
Le cronache dell’epoca celebrano l’operazione produttiva sottesa a Nozze vagabonde. Gli
articoli che per circa un anno, dalla produzione nel gennaio 1936, con il titolo di Tournée
di nozze, alla tardiva uscita nelle sale nel giugno 1937, si succedono mensilmente senza
quasi soluzione di continuità sulle principali testate dell’epoca, dimostrano l’attenzione
66
riservata alla vicenda e esaltano in ossequio al clima dell’epoca l’approdo tecnologico in sé
e la sua dimostrazione della capacità del cinema italiano di stare al passo coi tempi.37
Tuttavia nelle succinte descrizioni, nei dati a volte scarni e nelle rade fotografie di scena che
gli articoli ospitano ci sono offerti non pochi spunti per un’ulteriore analisi.
Innanzitutto, quello che è interessante notare è la ricorsività delle situazioni che connotano i primi esperimenti di rilievo cinematografico e che torneranno di lì a un quindicennio ad animare la più solida produzione del 3-D americano e non solo. Il resoconto puntuale che del film fa la rivista Cinema e soprattutto le fotografie che corredato la recensione,38 mostra infatti la presenza di temi che ritorneranno diffusi all’interno della produzione in rilievo ma che buttano anche uno sguardo indietro, unendola con un sottile filo rosso
alla produzione stereoscopica fotografica.
L’autoriflessività, innanzitutto, che riporta alla frequenza con cui, si è detto, le macchine
fotografiche si affacciano negli stereogrammi fotografici. Il film di Brignone a quanto si sa
ne offre almeno due occasioni; da un lato con la più volte citata sequenza della rievocazione del cinematografo da fiera, dall’altro, come mostra una delle immagini, con la scena nel
negozio del fotografo che, ponendo il pubblico in platea dietro la macchina fotografica crea
un curioso effetto di mise en abyme che naturalmente la stereoscopia, con il suo rilievo
aggettante verso la sala, doveva esaltare parossisticamente. In generale, poi, è già riconoscibile il clima da backstage musical ante litteram che porta continuamente un film dalla
ardita costruzione tecnica a fare della messa in scena stessa il suo oggetto privilegiato.39
E poi è la costruzione “speciale” dell’inquadratura a offrire elementi di continuità tra
la stereoscopia fotografica precedente e la successiva tridimensionalità cinematografica.
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PAOLA VALENTINI
L’immagine appare spesso adiuvata da quinte e porte, costruita sulla composizione
piramidale dei corpi, attraversata da marcate prospettive con punti di fuga sempre leggermente laterali ad alimentare la “distorsione” in profondità, e soprattutto caratterizzata da primissimi piani e dettagli che sfondano nella sala magari rafforzati da provocatorie interpellazioni gestuali.
Ne deriva l’impressione che, anche la stereoscopia spinga, come spesso accade nei
primi passi di un’innovazione tecnologica, a prospettare l’esistenza per così dire di un
genere a sé, alimentato tanto nelle sue dimensioni tematiche e sintattiche quanto nella
sua funzione pragmatica e poi normalizzatesi nel corso dell’ “istituzionalizzazione” dell’invenzione. Certo, come solo uno dei commentatori del tempo rileva, l’opera si sottrae
ai canoni della commedia cinematografica offrendosi per quello che il cronista di
Cinema Illustrazione definisce “operetta, nella quale soltanto due o tre scene si svolgono senza accompagnamento musicale”; un’operetta che saremmo tentati di definire già
a tutti gli effetti musical cinematografico:
L’operetta contiene sei canzoni; di quattro di esse, le più importanti, quelle attese da un sicuro successo, diamo qui i titoli. Sono: “Tu mi piaci”, “Quando vien la primavera”, “Che sarà?”,
una canzone comica ballata da, oh meraviglia!, Gigetto Almirante, con Leda Gloria e
Maurizio D’Ancora, e infine il grande can-can “Amore senza verità” che ha richiesto ben
trentaquattro inquadrature cinematografiche, le quali hanno fatto non poco ammattire il
buon Guido Brignone.40
Eppure, come si è cercato di mostrare, le foto di scena offrono con forte evidenza innanzitutto il “genere” stereoscopia, che tornerà ad imporsi con forza nella sua solidità attraverso i palcoscenici di opere musicali in 3-D come Kiss Me, Kate! (George Sidney, 1953).
Suggeriscono anche nella loro piattezza quel “magnetismo”, quell’“esclusione degli
oggetti circostanti e la concentrazione assoluta di tutta l’attenzione che ne consegue,
[che] produce un’esaltazione onirica delle proprie facoltà, quasi una chiaroveggenza in
cui, abbandonato il corpo, ci libriamo in volo all’interno di una successione di strani
scenari come se fossimo spiriti disincarnati” che fonda – come rileva Holmes – l’autentica esperienza stereoscopica.41
Stereoscopia, rilievo e paradisi oleografici
Anche se internazionalmente non sembra quasi esserci soluzione di continuità,42 in
Italia per tornare a vedere in rilievo bisogna aspettare la metà degli anni Cinquanta. Ormai
il rilievo ha però perso quella carica di rifondazione del cinema tipica degli anni Trenta
Il cinema era infatti sembrato rinasce due volte; ma era sembrato anche rinascere doppio. Per quanto la stereoscopia possa prendere piede, essa appare comunque incapace di
vivere da sola, non solo per la congenita duplicità delle sue stesse immagini ma anche per
il costante supporto della versione piatta a cui sempre si accompagna. Tesa tra l’indifferenza e l’aperta condanna, la stereoscopia non supera mai lo stadio di opzione: che il pubblico nelle sale abbia effettivamente potuto vedere Nozze vagabonde in rilievo è tutt’altro
che documentato ed è abbastanza immediato supporre per questo film il destino, ancora
più grandioso se non altro per la presenza quale mentore di Totò, che subirà il secondo
tentativo di tridimensionalità nel cinema italiano. Nel 1953 Il più comico spettacolo del
68
mondo (Totò 3-D) di Mario Mattoli infatti sarà velocemente rimpiazzato, nelle poche sale
in cui era stato programmato in rilievo, dalla versione piatta, a fronte dell’insuccesso, certamente non imputabile unicamente al 3-D, che la pellicola ebbe presso il pubblico.43
Negli anni Cinquanta il dibattito appare più lucido sulla reale praticabilità di quello
stereocinema che ormai acquista lo sviante titolo di 3-D. Tra tutti naturalmente Renato
May che esamina uno a uno i limiti della nuova tecnica: mantenimento dell’angolo
parallattico costante durante le riprese, con limitazioni anche sul piano del montaggio
e ostacoli nel ricorso alla carrellata; imposizione di obbiettivi a cortissima distanza focale o del panfocus; forti limitazioni nell’uso dell’illuminazione, forzatamente chiaroscurale ed eccessivamente nitida; gesticolazioni, movimenti delle figure e panoramiche
assiali limitate nella trasversalità.44
Di motivazioni sulla caduta nel dimenticatoio del rilievo ne sono state espresse tante
e certo qui non ne si vuole aggiungerne una ulteriore; preferendo tra l’altro piuttosto
l’inspiegabile esistenza nell’universo della comunicazione di innovazioni incapaci di
trovare un bisogno reale che le determini e che come fantasmi tornano con regolarità a
cercare di offrirsi come nuove e come risolutorie.45 Tuttavia si vuole almeno sottolineare un aspetto spesso trascurato ma che l’esempio di Nozze vagabonde evidenzia in
modo netto. Il rilievo cinematografico per più versi è anche un’innovazione casuale o
meglio uno scarto produttivo, un residuo che come tale non trova naturalmente una
sua collocazione. Troppo spesso infatti si dimentica che la stereoscopia cinematografica nei primi tempi si muove nello stesso canale del cinema a colori. Non si tratta semplicemente di quella caccia al surplus di realismo che porta nel giro di pochi anni alla
ricerca del suono, poi del colore e inoltre appunto del rilievo. Qui è la radice stessa dei
fenomeni ad essere in comune. È più che lecito supporre che il brevetto depositato da
Gualtiero Gualtierotti fosse infatti indirizzato innanzitutto alla ricerca del colore.
È al montaggio Nozze vagabonde. Il film avrà, com’è noto, due edizioni distinte – una normale
e una stereoscopica – che hanno richiesto ciascuna una speciale difficoltosa lavorazione.
L’edizione stereoscopica, realizzata su una pellicola speciale, di doppia larghezza del normale,
è stata eseguita attraverso una macchina appositamente costruita dall’inventore del sistema,
l’ing. Gualtierotti.46
La strada imboccata dall’ingegnere milanese è comunque quella del sistema additivo,
ricerca sul colore che troverà l’applicazione concreta e lo porterà alla fama ben più della
tridimensionalità;47 e, rispetto alla quale, la stereoscopia è una possibilità, un effetto possibile ma anche un percorso opzionale. E non è l’unico caso. Molte ricerche stereoscopiche assumono ambiguamente questa doppia natura, ma in almeno un caso il gioco è
manifesto. Come mostra il deposito di brevetti, già nel 1920 la Itala Film aveva simultaneamente rinnovato la privativa sia per un sistema a rilievo che per il colore: una coincidenza forse non casuale.
Negli anni Cinquanta la situazione si riproporrà con molte similitudini in altre sperimentazioni, come lo Cristianicolor, introdotto a Firenze nel 1950 da Luigi Cristiani secondo un brevetto che, sull’onda di quanto già sperimentato da Gualtierotti, offriva un macchinario che, vorremmo dire suo malgrado, consentiva anche l’utilizzo per il cinema stereoscopico basato sul sistema degli anaglifi, ma che in questo caso non trovò poi su questo secondo versante applicazione concreta. Nel caso di Nozze vagabonde, tuttavia, l’ambivalenza tra colore e anaglifo è massimamente evidente: le cronache infatti riferiscono
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PAOLA VALENTINI
che il film offriva sperimentalmente anche “alcune scene a colori naturali col sistema dell’ing. Gualtiero Gualtierotti”.48
Il destino della stereoscopia sembra dunque legato geneticamente al colore; negli anni
Trenta la scelta è esclusiva, l’anaglifi infatti è incompatibile con il colore, negli anni
Cinquanta la scelta sarà invece definitiva e, ci sembra di poter dire, la stereoscopia forse
apparirà a posteriori solo come una tappa nella conquista del colore. Allora nuovi metodi
tridimensionali troveranno più ampia applicazione ma ormai, da un lato, come ha sempre osservato Noel Burch, il Modo di Rappresentazione Istituzionale e l’ingresso dello
spettatore sulla scena soddisferà la tridimensionalità più di qualsiasi 3-D; dall’altro, quel
magnetismo della stereoscopia di cui parlava già Holmes sarà ormai catturato pienamente dal colore, in grado soprattutto nei primi toni del Technicolor di assecondare il clima di
sospensione della realtà e di funambolismo paramusicale delle precedenti ricerche. Come
ammoniva già Leo Longanesi nel 1949 a proposito della fotografia, “In cinquant’anni,
molte illusioni sono cadute, molte ideologie sono mutate, e la fotografia ha saccheggiato
la cronaca di questo ultimo decennio fino alla nausea. [...] Forse la fotografia a colori ci
riserba un paradiso oleografico da operetta, romantico, coi colori degli avvisi ‘Coca-Cola’.
Ben venga. Il sangue ci ha annoiato”.49 Forse, dopo tutto, il segreto di questo legame tra
stereoscopia e cinema sta tutto nelle parole di Dino Falconi notissimo soggettista che con
l’amico Oreste Biancoli animò le sceneggiature dei principali film italiani dell’epoca, nonché le più innovative riviste italiane del tempo. Egli infatti, nel motivare il ricorso alla stereoscopia per Nozze vagabonde, il cui soggetto aveva composto con l’amico, mescola la
“solida scultura solare”50 alla sua più terrena e sanguigna vena popolare:
Della stereoscopia avevo una nozione piuttosto vaga. Mi ricordavo uno zio che, in un angolo
del salotto, aveva una cassettina di mogano con due lenti: guardando attraverso le lenti si vedeva in trasparenza su di una lastra lo zio in questione che si levava il cappello voltando le spalle
al Duomo di Milano, a Notre-Dame, alla Piramide di Cheope, al teatro Colon di Buenos Aires o
al “grattacielo del ferro da stiro” di Nuova York. Era un’innocente mania del mio parente quella di farsi ritrarre nel medesimo atto di saluto davanti ai più tipici edifici di tutto il mondo [...].
Le vedute, per altro, erano pregevoli per nitidezza e l’immagine di mio zio col cappello levato
era curiosamente distaccata dallo sfondo. Tali erano i miei ricordi stereoscopici. Ma confesso
che non vedevo quale rapporto potesse correre tra mio zio e un film.
[...] secondo [Oreste] Biancoli la stereoscopia era un’altra cosa. Per lui si trattava dell’aggeggio
che aveva un suo cugino, aggeggio che si teneva in mano, e non in un angolo del salotto, e, benché sempre attraverso due lenti, vi si vedeva non in trasparenza ma su di un cartoncino il detto
cugino, le braccia al sen consorte e un fatuo sorriso sulle labbra, accanto a svariate belle donnine. E anche per Biancoli la particolarità più curiosa era il distacco delle figure sullo sfondo.
La cosa seguitava a rimanere vaga. Tuttavia il fatto che nella stereoscopia ci potessero entrare
immagini di belle donnine si avvicinava un pochino all’idea di cinematografo.51
Le “belle donnine” di cui parla Falconi, il potenziamento del voyerismo, ben protetti
e nascosti dietro gli occhiali che questo cinema impone, nutre per un certo periodo la
vena popolare del cinema che tende ad esaurirsi nel solo arco della sua stessa novità tecnica. L’emergenza, lo scaraventarsi delle cose addosso allo spettatore cede il posto all’ingresso dello spettatore nello schermo, la finta profondità rimpiazza lo pseudo rilievo e,
nonostante gli auspici di Ejzenstejn la stereoscopia rimane lettera morta.52 Ma i nuovi
paradisi oleografici del colore sono ormai alle porte.
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DEPOSITO DI BREVETTI IN ITALIA PER LE PRIME APPARECCHIATURE
CINEMATOGRAFICHE STEREOSCOPICHE
La tabella riporta i brevetti relativi ad apparecchiature stereoscopiche – solamente quelli in cui esplicitamente compare il collegamento al cinema o quanto meno alla proiezione – rilevati dall’analisi delle annate
1920 (XIX) – 1927 (XXVI) del Bollettino della proprietà intellettuale (Roma: Ministero dell’Economia nazionale, Provveditorato generale dello Stato) organo ufficiale che dal 1902 registrava non solo la proprietà intellettuale ma anche i brevetti e – nel supplemento Bollettino dei marchi di fabbrica e commercio – i marchi.
Quasi tutti i brevetti citati risultano appartenere alla “Categoria XXIII – Industrie e arti grafiche”, tranne
qualche eccezione relativa alla “Categoria X – Meccanica minuta e di precisione, strumenti scientifici e strumenti musicali”. Ove non altrimenti segnalato, si tratta di “Attestati di privativa industriale”.
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DATA DEPOSITO
DOMANDA
1916
GOLDSOLL FRANK. J.
Berlino
Apparecchio per la proiezione di immagini
cinematografiche con effetto di rilievo.
(Privativa del 16 dicembre 1913) – Attestato
di prolungamento
28/9/1916
1918
RUFFIER LOUIS LUCIEN
St. Julien Marsiglia
(Francia)
Perfezionamenti nella cinematografica stereoscopica (Rivendicazione di priorità dai
giorni 31 dicembre 1917 e 22 luglio 1918,
date delle domande depositate nella Gran
Bretagna)
24/10/1918
1919
MANASSE ENRIC
Firenze
Proiezioni cinematografiche stereoscopiche e modo di ottenerle. (Privativa del 14
novembre 1916) – Attestato di prolungamento
29/9/1919
MOLINO GIUSEPPE
Reggio Emilia
Applicazione tecnica per ottenere la cinematografia stereoscopica
29/11/1919
FRASCARI CARLO
Torino
Perfezionamento nelle proiezioni cinematografiche stereoscopiche. (Privativa del 3
febbraio 1914) – Attestato completivo
16/12/1919
GANTES RAMON
Perfectionnement relatifs à la production
Roselle New Jersey (USA) d’images stéréoscopique mobiles
23/12/1919
TIOLI LICURGO
Roma
30/7/1919
Nuovo dispositivo per ottenere immagini
fotografiche che diano direttamente all’occhio dell’osservatore il senso del rilievo,
senza l’ulteriore intermezzo di mezzi diottrici artificiali o catottrici, con speciale
considerazione per il cinematografo
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PAOLA VALENTINI
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DATA DEPOSITO
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DOMANDA
1920
DOMANDA
LOUIS LUMIÈRE
Lione (Francia)
Procédé de steréo-syntèse photographique
par stratification. (Rivendicazione di priorità dal 21/1/1920 data della prima domanda depositata in Francia)
13/1/1921
DI LEGGE ROBERTO e
BOLOGNA MARIO
Roma
Nuovo apparecchio per aumentare
l’effetto plastico o stereoscopico nelle
immagini o proiezioni in generale
5/4/1921
22/3/1920
SCAPIZZI MICHELE e
GRECCHI GIUSEPPE
Milano
Dispositivo per macchina da presa
stereo-cinematografiche
30/8/1921
Perfezionamenti nelle lastre trasparenti per
cinematografica plastica e altre consimili
applicazioni (Privativa del 10 aprile 1914) –
Attestato di prolungamento
29/3/1920
CRISTOFOLETTI UGO
Roma
Schermo per proiezioni in rilievo
3/10/1921
TIOLI LIGURGO
Roma
11/10/1921
Sistema di apparecchio per la presa
di vedute cinematografiche destinate a dare
l’effetto di rilievo durante la loro proiezione. (Privativa del 18 gennaio 1913 – D. L. 20
giugno 1915, n. 962)
NB: Alla stessa data è depositata anche la
domanda per un Sistema per la presa di
fotografie a colori applicabile alla cinematografia a colori. (Privativa del 5 maggio 1914
– D. L. 20 giugno 1915, n. 962)
29/4/1920
Dispositivo fotografico per ottenere nelle
immagini fotografate il senso del rilievo
(stereoscopia)
TROMBETTI
AGOSTINO MARIO
Roma
Sistema di presa e di proiezione per
cinematografie stereoscopiche
21/9/1921
DE CHAURAND
Cinematografia a colori mediante
la successione di immagini monocromiche
11/10/1921
13/10/1921
Processo di cinematografica stereoscopica
18/10/1920
ULIVI GIULIO
Roma
Nuovo sistema di stereocinematografia
TAGLIAFICO GIOVANNI
Milano
Applicazione del principio della stereoscopia alla cinematografia onde ottenere pellicole cinematografiche che diano la percezione del rilievo nelle proiezioni ottenute collo
svolgimento delle medesime.
3/1/1920
DE BRAYER ALFRED
Parigi
Perfezionamento agli apparecchi di presa
di vedute cinematografiche per ottenere
nella proiezione la sensazione
del rilievo
19/12/1921
BONO PIETRO DI PIETRO
Torino
Apparecchio di presa per cinematografie stereoscopiche
13/2/1922
Nuovo dispositivo per ottenere immagini
fotografiche che diano direttamente all’occhio dell’osservatore il senso del rilievo,
senza l’ulteriore intermezzo di mezzi diottrici artificiali o catottrici, con speciale considerazione per il cinematografo
30/9/1920
OLIVATI MARCELLO,
ALIVERTA ETTORE,
ZOLDAN TOSELLI BRUNO
Trieste
MARION ALAIN
VICTOR FRANÇOIS
Parigi
Ecran orthotrope et son utilisation
pour réaliser un procédé de projection cinématographique donnant la sensation du
21/2/1922
DIEKINSON HERBERT
Perfezionamenti nei mezzi per
ottenere effetti stereoscopici nelle immagini proiettive. (Rivendicazione di priorità dal
13 marzo 1919 data della prima domanda
depositata nella Gran Bretagna)
9/3/1920
DE LUCA SALVATORE
Napoli
Dispositivo per ottenere nelle pellicole cinematografiche l’effetto del rilievo.
10/3/1920
CERNIGOI CARLO
Milano
Perfezionamenti nella cinematografica stereoscopica. – Attestato di prolungamento
(Privativa del 7 maggio 1919)
COLOMBO MARIO
Milano
E HEPBURN GEORGE
ANDRESON WILLIAM
Londra
ITALA FILM
SOCIETÀ ANONIMA
Torino
TIOLI LICURGO
Roma
72
DATA DEPOSITO
1921
DE ST. EUSTACHE ENRICO
Firenze
1922
73
PAOLA VALENTINI
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DATA DEPOSITO
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DOMANDA
DOMANDA
relief. (Rivendicazione di priorità dal 7
marzo 1921 data della prima domanda
depositata in Francia)
1923
74
DATA DEPOSITO
PERUGI GIUSEPPE
Roma
Obbiettivo per cinematografia stereoscopica
23/10/1923
Cinematografia plastica
21/6/1922
OSTORERO SILVIO
Torino
Applicazione della stereoscopia alla fotografia animata
23/11/1923
BOTTALINI RICCARDO
Milano
Apparecchio per la visione stereoscopica di
pellicole cinematografiche
2/10/1922
HELLER – DORIAN & CIE
Parigi
Films a reticolati lenticolari simmetrici
invisibili in proiezione
3/12/1923
SCHIERONI ETTORE
Milano
Processo ed apparecchio per proiettare ed osservare vedute stereoscopicamente
20/10/1922
HELLER – DORIAN & CIE
Parigi
Perfezionamenti nelle matrici incise destinate a imprimere i renticolati lenticolari
microscopici su pellicole fotografiche
3/12/1923
TELEVIEW (THE)
CORPORATION
Chicago (S.U.A.[sic])
Sistema ed apparecchio di presa e di proiezione cinematografica e stereoscopica
21/11/1922
PICTET LUCIEN &
CANTONI MARIO
Ginevra
Processo ed apparecchio
per la proiezione di pellicole cinematografiche stereoscopiche
8/12/1923
ALBERINI FILOTEO
Roma
NEWBOLD HARRY
St. Albans
(Gran Bretagna)
Mezzi perfezionati per ottenere effetti stereoscopici e di rilievo su lastre fotografiche
e su pellicole e sulle positive e proiezioni
fatte con esse. (Rivendicazione di
priorità dal 12 dicembre 1921 data della
prima domanda depositata in Gran
Bretagna)
11/12/1922
SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME
STÉRÉO-CINÉMA
Parigi
Stereocinematografia
21/2/1923
CUENIN ET
COMPAGNIE (Società)
Parigi
18/3/1924
Cinestereografia
31/1/1923
Dispositivo di presa di vedute che
permette di ottenere la sensazione del rilievo nelle proiezioni cinematografiche ed
eventualmente la restituzione colorata del
soggetto
DAPONTE DEMETRIO
LEONIDA
Londra
Perfezionamenti nei sistemi di cinematografia stereoscopica. (Rivendicazione di
priorità dal 29 marzo 1923 data della prima
domanda presentata in Gran Bretagna)
26/3/1924
ZOLDAN TOSELLI BRUNO
Trieste
AMBROSIO ARTURO
Milano
Sistema di cinematografia stereoscopica ed
apparecchio relativo
3/4/1923
AMBROSIO ARTURO
Milano
Processo per la produzione di film stereocinematografiche ad effetto stereoscopico
24/5/1923
OMEGNA ROBERTO
Torino
Apparecchio stereoscopico per la presa, la
visione diretta e la proiezione di immagini
cinematografiche o animata
13/6/1923
MATTICOLI ALFREDO
Torino
Sistemi e dispositivi per la proiezione stereoscopica fissa o animata
21/6/1923
DIENA CLEMENTE &
MONTALCINI GIUSEPPE
Torino
Apparecchio per visione stereoscopica di pellicole cinematografiche
3/10/1923
1924
GUALTIEROTTI GUALTIERO Sistema di presa per proiezioni
Milano
stereoscopiche
27/6/1924
AVERSANO SALVATORE
Milano
Dispositivo col quale si ottiene la visione
ottica di rilievo (stereoscopia) da comuni
pellicole proiettate su schermi cinema
tografici con comuni proiettori
6/8/1294
GRIMALDI LUIGI
Milano
Pellicola cinematografica stereoscopica e
processo di preparazione relativo
19/8/1924
LOSCHIRICO GESUALDO
Apparecchio destinato a dare il colore
25/9/1924
75
PAOLA VALENTINI
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DATA DEPOSITO
ANNO
TITOLARE
TITOLO DEL BREVETTO
DOMANDA
1925
76
Genova
dell’ambiente ed un conveniente rilievo alle
proiezioni cinematografiche
CARCHEREUX
ANTOINE FRÉDÉRIC PAUL
Valchiusa (Francia)
Processo e dispositivo
per ottenere la stereoscopia in cinematografia con una sola pellicola. (Rivendicazione
di priorità del 23 novembre 1923 data dalla
1 domanda depositata in Francia
4/10/1924
DE REYA CARLO &
VETTACH BRUNO
Trieste
Metodo e dispositivo per ottenere
pellicole cinematografiche stereoscopiche
7/10/1923
LEYDE JENNY
Vienna
Processo e dispositivo per la fabbricazione
di pellicole per il rilievo e la riproduzione di
cinematogrammi colorati. (Rivendicazione
di priorità dal 9 gennaio 1924 data della 1
domanda depositata in Austria da Emil
Leyde)
16/10/1924
DOMANDA
1926
CROW ARTHUR BAMBRIDGE, Perfezionamenti nei sistemi ottici per
Londra &
apparecchi fotografici e cinematografici e
DUNN EDWARD JONATHAN per altri apparecchi di proiezione
Linthorpe Midles
Church (Gran Bretagna)
24/12/1924
HEWSON BERTRAM TOM
Londra
Perfezionamenti negli apparecchi per prendere, riprodurre e proiettare le cinematografie stereoscopiche
23/12/1924
LUZZATTI
TOMMASO RICCARDO
Siena
Decorazioni piane con effetti
di rilievo
5/1/1925
POLACK ARON
Parigi
Processi e dispositivi per ottenere pellicole
le cui proiezioni diano allo spettatore l’impressione del rilievo. (Importazione dell’invenzione di cui al Brevetto n. 582.411 rilasciato in Francia a datare dal 12 settembre 1923)
26/2/1925
GUZZINI GIUSEPPE
Ferrara
Nuovo sistema di proiezione stereoscopica,
fissa od animata conseguita con lo sdoppiamento delle due immagini dello stereogramma successivamente proiettata
9/3/1925
DATA DEPOSITO
OLIVI GIUSEPPE &
ULIVI GIULIO
Roma
Nuovo apparecchio da presa per cinematografia stereoscopica
9/3/1925
BORDEAUX BRUNO
VICTOR CAMILLE
Eureux (Francia)
Dispositivo per realizzare
la stereoscopia per visione diretta e per
proiezione fissa o animata (Rivendicazione
di priorità dal 14 aprile 1924 data della
prima domanda depositata in Francia)
10/4/1925
QUIDOR AUGUSTE JOSEPH & Processo e dispositivi per la presa di
HERUBEL MARCEL ADOLPHE vedute cinematografiche che danno alla
Parigi
proiezione l’impressione del rilievo e pellicole ottenute mediante questo processo
10/6/1925
NATELLA MATTEO
Salerno
Sistema per la proiezione cinematografica
stereoscopica
7/8/1926
ZAMBRINI FAUSTO E
BAZZINI LIVIO
Rispettivamente
Nizza e Parigi
Apparecchio per proiezione cinematografica in rilievo. (Rivendicazione di priorità
dal 6 ottobre 1926 data della prima
domanda depositata in Francia a nome di
Zambrini Fausto)
19/10/1926
ANGHILLERO DOMENICO
Milano
Schermo girevole trasparente eliminante le
oscillazioni e proiettante immagini in rilievo
27/11/1926
FORMAGGIA LUIGI
Milano
Sistema di proiezione stereoscopica per
fotografia o cinematografia
16/12/1926
Il presente intervento nasce nel quadro della ricerca interuniversitaria Cofin “La tecnologia
nel cinema, la tecnologia del cinema” e in particolare nell’ambito dell’Unità di ricerca di
Firenze (responsabile scientifico prof. Sandro Bernardi).
1 R. Guy-Grand, “Le Relief”, Revue du cinéma, III, 24 (1er Juillet 1931), pp. 59- 63; cit. da p. 59.
2 Ibid.
3 Sull e tappe e lo sviluppo della stereoscopia cinematografica vd. gli studi classici L. Lipton,
Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema. A Study in Depth (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Company, 1982); O. Cahen, L’Image en relief, de la photographie stréréoscopique à
la vidéo 3D (Paris: Masson, 1989); R. M. Hayes, 3-D Movies. A History and Filmography of
Stereoscopic Cinema (Jefferson: McFarland, 1989); H. Morgan, D. Symmes, Amazing 3-D.
(Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1983); T. Lefebvre, P. A. Michaud (sous la dir. de), “Le
Relief au cinéma”, 1895, numéro hors série (octobre 1997).
77
PAOLA VALENTINI
4 O. W. Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph”, Atlantic Monthly (1859); trad. it. “Lo
stereoscopio e la stereografia”, in Il mondo fatto immagine (Genova: Costa & Nolan, 1995), pp.
15-32; cit. da p. 18. Va ricordato che a Holmes si dovette nel 1861 la costruzione di un apparecchio che ebbe grandissima fortuna e diffusione.
5 O. W. Holmes, “Doings the Sunbeam”, Atlantic Monthly (1863); trad. it. “Le creazioni del raggio di sole”, in Holmes, op. cit., pp. 56-76; cit. da pp. 63-64.
6 D. Pellerin (sous la dir. de), La Photographie stéréoscopique sous le second Empire (Paris:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1995), p. 66.
7 D. Pellerin, op. cit., p. 20 e ss. Fenomeni analoghi sono riscontrabili in area italiana vd. le serie
stereoscopiche riprodotte nei cataloghi Roma in stereoscopia, 1855-1908 (Roma: De Luca,
1994) e Obbiettivo Europa. La raccolta di fotografie stereoscopiche della Biblioteca
Vallicelliana. 1903-1908, (Gaeta: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali – Ufficio
Centrale per i Beni Librari e gli Istituti Culturali – Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 1992). Su questi
aspetti vd. anche I. Zannier, Storia della fotografia italiana (Bari: Laterza, 2000).
8 G. Rondolino, Storia del cinema (Torino: Utet, 20002), p. 88.
9 Sul collegamento tra stereoscopia e illustrazione popolare – dalle favole di La Fontaine alle
illustrazioni dal Nuovo Testamento, dalle situazioni comiche più tipiche della comicità popolare alle diableries – si veda l’ampio campione offerto dal citato catalogo della mostra alla
Bibliothèque nationale de France, vd. D. Pellerin, op. cit. L’autore, come del resto lo storico
Jean Alphonse Keim in Breve storia della fotografia (Torino: Einaudi, 2001), sostiene tra l’altro esplicitamente l’esistenza di un preciso legame tra stereoscopia e nascita del fotoromanzo
(D. Pellerin, op. cit., p. 7).
10 Ricordiamo per inciso che come Cabiria modella la sua “Visione storica del III secolo a.C.”
non solo sulle suggestioni d’annunziane ma anche sul romanzo Cartagine in fiamme (1906)
di Emilio Salgari, in quegli anni Christus, come informano dettagliatamente le didascalie,
mescola scorci paesaggistici egiziani reali all’iconografia religiosa più popolare e alla tradizione figurativa della Natività del Correggio o la Trasfigurazione di Raffaello Sanzio.
11 P. Sorlin, The Film in History. Restaging the Past (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1980); trad. it. La
storia nei film. Interpretazioni del passato (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1984), in part. pp. 19-20.
12 D. Pellerin, op. cit., p. 16.
13 N. Burch La Lucarne de l’infini. Naissance du langage cinématographique (Paris: Nathan,
1990); trad. it. Il lucernario dell’infinito (Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1994).
14 Vd. P. Galassi, Prima della fotografia (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1990), cfr. J. Aumont,
L’Image (Paris: Nathan, 1990).
15 F. Casetti, Il cinema e lo sguardo novecentesco (Milano: I.S.U. - Università Cattolica, 1997), p.
6.
16 Ibid., p. 10. Cfr. Burch, op. cit., pp. 174 e ss.
17 F. Casetti, op. cit., p. 9.
18 Si vedano le osservazioni su Cabiria in Aa.Vv., Cabiria e il suo tempo (Milano: Il Castoro,
1999). Sull’argomento cfr. anche quanto osservato a proposito del trucco cinematografico
delle origini da Antonio Costa, La morale del giocattolo, Saggio su Georges Méliès (Bologna:
Clueb, 19952). Cfr. anche A. Cappabianca, Il cinema e il sacro (Genova: Le Mani, 1999), p. 25
“C’è, da un lato, in Christus, una imagerie ottocentesca deliziosa, un versante alla Méliès, con
apparizioni, sparizioni, sovrimpressioni, visioni d’angeli e demoni, evocazioni di paesaggi, di
comete (si veda, per esempio, Gesù che cammina sulle acque, fantasma bianco sovrimpresso,
alla scena virata in blu, oppure l’Ascensione finale), e, dall’altro, si va oltre Méliès, con alcune
scene di grande forza plastica”.
78
19 I. Zannier, op. cit., p. 160.
20 Non erano mancati episodi isolati soprattutto americani, dalle ricerche di W. K. L. Dickson
(1893) al sistema Teleview di L. Hammond e W. F. Cassidy (1921), tuttavia il cinema stereoscopico conosce reale diffusione e sviluppa una produzione commerciale solo negli anni
Trenta e poi nel dopoguerra, anche sull’onda del rinnovato successo degli stereoscopi portatili tra i quali soprattutto il View Master (W. Gruber 1938).
21 Vd. R. Chenevière, “La vie et les découvertes des frères Lumière”, L’Illustration, XCIII, 4836 (9
novèmbre 1935), pp. 299-303 e E. Epardaud, “Une date cinématographique. Le premier film en
relief réalisé par Louis Lumière”, La Cinématographie française, 876-877 (24 août 1935), p. 19.
La presentazione al pubblico parigino sarebbe avvenuta solo il 1 maggio 1936 con il breve
documentario Rivière e la commedia Un ami de Monsieur di Pierre De Cuvier prodotti nell’aprile del 1936.
22 La tecnica anaglifica introdotta da Louis Ducos du Hauron nel 1864 riproponeva la visione
binoculare “selezionando” per l’occhio l’immagine corrispondente grazie alle proprietà dei
colori complementari, solitamente verde e rosso o giallo e blu come nel caso del sistema
Lumière; ciò precludeva per definizione la possibilità della resa dei colori. Solo nel 1937 il
sistema basato sulla polarizzazione verrà applicato ai primi film commerciali in Germania
(Zum Greifen Nah di Fritz Boehner) e nel 1939 anche negli Stati Uniti (In Tune with
Tomorrow di J. A. Norling). Cfr. E. Caporali, “Il cinema stereoscopico”, Cinema, II, 19 (10 aprile 1937), p. 271 e 21 (10 maggio 1937), pp. 382-383 e C. E. Giussani, “Il cinema in rilievo sistema Lumière”, Cinema, IV, 64 (25 febbraio 1939), pp. 113-114. Resta anche testimonianza dell’esempio isolato di un sistema a otturatore sperimentato nel 1903 da Raynaud che insoddisfatto distrusse poi le sue opere.
23 Anon., “Notiziario internazionale”, Lo Schermo, II, 5 (maggio 1936), p. 41).
24 Sono qui riportate le dichiarazioni sollecitate dalla stessa rivista a Gualtierotti in G.
Gualtierotti, “Il cinema stereoscopico”, Lo Schermo, I, 5 (dicembre 1935), p. 38. Va ricordato
che la rivista aveva nel comitato di direzione Luigi Freddi e Luciano De Feo.
25 Nozze vagabonde, naz. Italia; regia Guido Brignone; visto di censura n. 29255 del 30.06.36; m.
2275; casa di prod. S.A.I.S. Società Anonima Italiana Stereocinematografica, Milano. Alle notizie
dell’Archivio del cinema italiano curato da Aldo Bernardini per l’Anica, aggiungiamo secondo
quanto ricavato dalle riviste: Distribuzione Warner Bros, First National Films; Soggetto di D.
Falconi e O. Biancoli; Sceneggiatura di G. Brignone e F. Eckart; operatore Anchise Brizzi (versione piatta) e Luigi Reverso (versione stereoscopica); sistema stereoscopico ing. Gualtiero
Gualtierotti; aiuto regista e montatore ing. Giuseppe Fatigati; tecnico del suono: Giovanni Paris;
musica: maestro Nino Ravasini dirette dal maestro Ugo Giacomozzi; interpreti Leda Gloria
(Diana, soubrette), Maurizio D’Ancora (Umberto, lo sposo), Ugo Ceseri (l’impresario Magni),
Ernes Zacconi (la sposina), Luigi Almirante (il padre), Gemma Schirato (la madre).
26 P. Uccello, Cinema. Tecnica e linguaggio (Roma: Edizioni Paoline, 1966), p. 462.
27 Annuncio pubblicitario MGM, “Che cos’è il film in rilievo?”, Cinema, I, 2 (25 luglio 1936).
28 Vedi E. Caporali, op. cit.; cfr. M. Gromo, “Sullo schermo del Lido. Un film in rilievo e una diva
in incognito”, La Stampa (28 agosto 1936), p. 3 e Annuncio pubblicitario MGM, cit.
29 W. Paul, “The Aesthetics of Emergence”, in J. Belton, “Special Issue: Film Technology and the
Public”, Film History, V, 3 (September 1993), pp. 321-355.
30 Anon., “Nozze vagabonde”, Cinema, I, 11 (10 dicembre 1935), p. 433.
31 Intervista a Vittorio Trentino, in F. Savio (a cura di), Cinecittà anni Trenta. Parlano 116 protagonisti del secondo cinema italiano. 1930-1943 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1979), pp. 1103-1104; cit. da
p. 1104 e V. Martinelli, “I Gastarbeiter fra le due guerre”, Bianco e nero, XXXIX, 3 (1978), p. 33.
79
PAOLA VALENTINI
32 G. Provenzal, La prima Mostra nazionale delle invenzioni, Torino 11 maggio-28 giugno 1935
(Roma: Tip. delle Terme, 1935).
33 A. Bernardini, Cinema italiano 1930-1995. Le imprese di produzione (Roma: Anica, 2000), p.
379.
34 E. Giovannetti, “Nel quarantesimo anniversario del cinema. Le celebrazioni italiane”,
L’Illustrazione italiana, LXII, 12 (24 marzo 1935), pp. 438-439 e E. Cauda, “Cenni sulla cinematografia stereoscopica”, Bianco e nero, I, 4 (30 aprile 1937), pp. 12-33. Va ricordato che la stereoscopia sviluppa infatti due tecnologie particolari: quella a sistema individuale, vincolati
all’impiego individuale di specifiche apparecchiature per la visione del rilievo (come gli
occhialini bicolori per gli anaglifi), e quella a sistemi collettivi, basati sostanzialmente sulla
modificazione della sala e in particolare dello schermo, tra le quali le più note che hanno eco
anche in Italia sono le ricerche sovietiche sugli schermi parallattici. In Italia i sistemi collettivi troveranno pieno perfezionamento solo nel 1953 con il Sistema Betti procedimento a
trame di Alberto e Adriano Betti.
35 Vd. Aa. Vv., Mostra internazionale della stereoscopia nella fotografia e nel cinema (Torino:
Museo nazionale del cinema, 1966), p. 58. Desidero ringraziare Silvio Alovisio per l’aiuto datomi nella ricerca del film.
36 Anon., “Notiziario internazionale”, Lo Schermo, II, 10 (ottobre 1936), p. 47.]
37 Anon., “Notiziario internazionale”, «Lo schermo», II, 1 (gennaio 1936), p. 44 e II, 2 (febbraio
1936), pp. 39-40; Romanus, “Corriere romano. Guido Brignone e il primo film stereoscopico:
Nozze vagabonde con Leda Gloria”, Cinema Illustrazione, XI, 4 (22 gennaio 1936), p. 10; D.
Falconi, “Il cinema con gli occhiali”, La Lettura, XXXVI, 3 (1 marzo 1936), pp. 230-232; L. A. G.,
“Il nostro film stereoscopico. Ultimissime su Nozze vagabonde”, Cinema Illustrazione, XI, 18
(29 aprile 1936), p. 7; Annuncio pubblicitario Nozze vagabonde, Cinema, I, 6 (25 settembre
1936), p. IV di copertina; Anon., “Nozze vagabonde”, Cinema, I, 11 (10 dicembre 1936), p. 433;
Anon., “Nozze vagabonde”, Bianco e nero, I, 6, 30 giugno 1937, p. 83-86; Tecnico, Nozze vagabonde, «L’Illustrazione italiana», LXIII, 40, 4 ottobre (1937); A. Ceretto, “Nozze vagabonde”,
Gazzetta del Popolo (19 giugno 1938).
38 Anon., “Nozze vagabonde”, Cinema, I, 11 (10 dicembre 1936), p. 433. Le fotografie qui presentate sono tratte da questo articolo, tranne quellla sulle macchine da presa utilizzate nel film,
che è riportata in D. Falconi, “Il cinema con gli occhiali”, cit.
39 “Il racconto richiedeva l’impianto di tre palcoscenici diversi: il primo doveva ricordare il teatrino della piccola borgata provinciale [...]; il secondo, il palcoscenico della città di provincia
[...]. Ed il terzo, finalmente, doveva riprodurre il palcoscenico di un grande Music-hall, o
Varieté, in una grande città”; L. A. G., “Il nostro film stereoscopico. Ultimissime su Nozze
vagabonde”, Cinema Illustrazione, XI, 18 (29 aprile 1936), p. 7.
40 Ibid., p. 7. Le canzoni come la musica erano del maestro Nino Ravasini anche successivamente noto per alcuni famosi motivi canori.
41 O. W. Holmes, “Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture”, Atlantic Monthly (1861); trad. it. Dipinti e
sculture del sole. Con un viaggio stereoscopico attraverso l’Atlantico, in Holmes, op. cit., pp.
33-55; cit. da p. 36.
42 Le tappe principali sono rappresentate dalla Fiera mondiale di New York del 1940, dove la
Chrysler presenta Nuove dimensioni realizzato da J. A. Norling in 3D (sistema polarizzato) e
Technicolor. Ad essa fa seguito il Festival britannico del 1951 dove Raymond Spottiswoode era
direttore della Sezione pellicole stereoscopiche e stereofoniche, tra le quali le famose animazioni di Norman Mc Laren per il National Film Board canadese. Cfr. Physicus, “Tecnica e cinema”, Ferrania, V, 8 (agosto 1951), p. 28.
80
43 Vice, “Il più comico spettacolo del mondo”, Il Tempo (5 dicembre 1953); Vice, “Il più comico
spettacolo del mondo”, L’Unità (5 dicembre 1953). Il film venne realizzato con il Sistema
Podelvision, dalle iniziali della produzione Ponti-De Laurentis che ne commissionò a Paolo
Uccello la realizzazione; si trattava di un procedimento stereoscopico a lenti polarizzate.
44 R. May, “Lo stereocinema e il film di domani”, Ferrania, V, 9 (settembre 1951), e “3 D contro
rilievo. La stereoscopia non si addice al cinema”, Cinema, VI, 110 (maggio 1953), poi confluiti in Cinema e linguaggio (Brescia: La Scuola Editrice, 1962).
45 È il caso ad esempio del videotelefono; cfr. P. Ortoleva, Il videotelefono, in M. Nacci (a cura di),
Oggetti d’uso quotidiano. Rivoluzioni tecniche nella vita d’oggi (Venezia: Marsilio, 1998). Tra
le motivazioni più convincenti sulla fine della stereoscopia rimane sicuramente la sua concorrenza con il Cinemascope e in generale di quei sistemi che rinegoziano la dinamica tra spazio della sala e dello schermo vd. J. Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992).
46 Anon., “Notiziario internazionale”, Lo Schermo, II, 5 (maggio 1936), p. 41.
47 Si veda ad esempio l’inchiesta “Presente e avvenire del cinema a colori”, promossa dalla rivista Lo Schermo tra il dicembre 1935 e l’aprile 1936, di cui Gualtierotti è interlocutore privilegiato, e D. Meccoli, “Il film a colori. Il sistema Gualtierotti”, Cinema, VII, 137 (10 marzo 1942),
pp. 131-132.
48 Romanus, “Corriere romano. Guido Brignone e il primo film stereoscopico: Nozze vagabonde
con Leda Gloria”, Cinema Illustrazione, XI, 4 (22 gennaio 1936), p. 10.
49 L. Longanesi (a cura di), “Prefazione”, in Il mondo cambia. Storia di cinquant’anni (Milano:
Rizzoli, 1949); ora in D. Mormorio (a cura di), Gli scrittori e la fotografia (Roma: Editori
Riuniti, 1988), pp. 28-30; cit. da p. 30.
50 O. W. Holmes, “Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture”, cit., p. 39.
51 D. Falconi, “Il cinema con gli occhiali”, cit., pp. 15-17.
52 S. M. Ejzenstejn, “O stereokino”, Iskusstvo Kino (marzo-aprile 1948); trad. it. in G. Aristarco (a
cura di), L’arte del film (Milano: Bompiani, 1950), pp. 227-233.
81
IN SEARCH OF EXPANDED CINEMA
Sandra Lischi, Università di Pisa
The theory of Expanded Cinema, taken from the title of a famous and enlightening
book by Gene Youngblood (1970 – and never translated into Italian), which, in Europe,
has probably been quoted from more often than it has been read cover to cover, is usually reduced to the notion of the “expansion” of cinema to the forms of media that came
after it, namely video and computer. Yet, in that “after,” cinema still remains the main
instrument, the father or master, in the era of moving-images. The rare passages from
the text that have been translated into Italian1 only give a glimpse of the varied and
intricate network of references, and of the cultural context, which is rich with ideal and
creative fervor. Although Youngblood’s interventions after the book have been few,
they have been more expansive and in-depth, and his new imposing work, which was
started at the end of the eighties, still remains to be completed.2
Re-reading Expanded Cinema today, can help us understand, again, – in a new way, in
the light of the events that have taken place since its publishing – a projecting optimism
that echoes (with the due differences), some of Marshall McLuhan’s theories; it would help
us replace, in a challenging manner, some very famous quotations, which have been
extracted from the text and the context; it would help us trace the thread that has crossed
the decades, intertwining precisely with the most different forms of cinema, to the present day. And re-reading Youngblood would also mean rediscovering that rich mesh of references, from poetry to science, and art to ecology, which characterizes the (poignant)
introduction by Buckminster Fuller: a planetary vision, both humanistic and scientific, of
technology as the art of the possible dream, and of technological evolution as the strengthening of the senses, of the consciousness, of the awareness of the condition of man, and of
the need to better it, yet, not so naive as to ignore the enormous destructive potential of
science; Buckminster Fuller is, however, able to see, in the conscious use of the technologies of simultaneous image and sound, the mechanical vision, which is much stronger
than the human one, in the ubiquity, and the intimate and “portable” nature of audiovisual devices (but also in their ability to take us outside ourselves, outside our physical limits, and to establish relationships, reciprocity, planetary nearness), a new educational and
cognitive possibility, so much so as to prefigure an “Expanded Cinema University.”
One of Youngblood’s ideas is that of a mediating environment, or rather that of an
“intermedia network:”
the cinema isn’t just something inside the environment; the intermedia network of cinema,
television, radio, magazines, books and newspapers is our environment, a service environment that carries the messages of the social organism. It establishes meaning in life, creates
mediating channels between man and man, man and society.3
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It is a noosphere, (Youngblood quotes Teilhard de Chardin), as “the film of organized
intelligence that encircles the planet, superimposed on the living layer of the biosphere
and the lifeless layer of inorganic material, the lithosphere.”4 The pre-figuration of the
communications network – not only in this passage, but also in other passages in
Expanded Cinema that allude to “actual communities” established by technological
possibilities and not by geographical or familial identities – and, above all, of a potentially liberating understanding of it, in many aspects similar to the one recently put
forth by Pierre Lévy in his book L’Intelligence collective,5 is quite evident. After all,
Youngblood continued to repeat his theory as many as twenty years later, extending it
to all the new technologies that were developed in the meantime, when in 1991 he stated that a revolution in communications should concern its self with creating a medium
by combining television, computer, telephone, and satellite in one sole multimedia network that is run by the consumer, and which should be used free of charge, and intended, he added, to change mass communications into inter-subjective conversation.6
His idea of “intermediality” does not only regard interactions that take place between
the different forms of media, but also outlines the character of synaesthetic cinema,
which “includes many aesthetic modes, many ‘ways of knowing,’ simultaneously
omni-operative;”7 capable of expanding our vital capacities (he makes many references
to the texts by Norman O. Brown, Marcuse, and Laing) –, toward a polymorphic conception of erotism, and of going beyond the constrictive separation of mind-body, emotion-conscience: “the only understanding mind is the creative mind.”
Naturally, this “going beyond” regards – we will be able to understand it better later
on in the text – rising above the concept of cinema as entertainment, evasion, and a way
of presenting stories taken from literary or theatrical tradition. Cinema, as Youngblood
sees it, should never be a repetition of what is already known, but the development of
the intellectual-emotional powers, the creation of the unknown and the unseen before,
consciousness.
Expanded screens, exploded image
An anticipation, even though different in context and tone, of the idea of expanded cinema can be found, at the end of the fifties, in the “manifeste” written by Nelly Kaplan. It
analyzes and re-proposes the theory of “polivision” that was formulated between the
twenties and thirties by Abel Gance, both in regards to synaesthesia, and the explosion of
the image itself, through simultaneity, and a combining of possibilities. Kaplan was sure
that music, voices and the “sound belt” would come from everywhere, wherever needed,
and would embrace and direct the attention. She predicted that the vertical and horizontal unrolling of the scenes would be simultaneous and that it would stimulate the
numbed attention and the association of ideas hidden in the unconscious. Kaplan theorized that the psychological euphoria of the new sensations, the suggestion of a new
world hidden behind the images, would be elevated to the infinite power, because multiplication would no longer be enough. She thought polivision to be the cinema of the
future, the sole art in the atomic era, which had already opened before them. Nelly Kaplan
was certain that the era of the “exploded image” had arrived.8
The expansion and explosion of the cinematographic image also takes the matter of
the screen into account; Youngblood treats the argument in Expanded Cinema – when
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he discusses the pioneering experiences made in computer films by the Whitney family. The 16mm film, (without a title), made by John Whitney Jr. between 1966 to 1967,
foresaw multiple-projections on three screens (with the use of nine projectors):
The film is a sequential triptych: it develops in time and space, exploring the relationships
of both form and color, visual tensions, rhythmic modes, and optical illusions in a way that
relates each screen to the other with flawless exactitude. It is among the few independently
produced multiple-projection films to justify its own multiplicity. Whereas most multiple
projections is gratuitous and arbitrary, the Whitney film is a cohesive whole, each element
accentuating and complementing the other two in ways that make the experience incomplete without all three parts. The flanking images are identical, though reversed, so as to
frame the center screen symmetrically, and the close synchronization of form and color
among the screens demands highly controlled projection conditions.9
It is not merely a coincidence that John Whitney Jr. himself, when interviewed by
Youngblood, referred to the mental associations, to the “continuous flow of energy
between me, the machine, and the images,” and to letting forms and suggestions dictated by the unconscious flow through. Here is yet another of the “threads” that tie
Expanded Cinema to the cinema of the past, and even to pre-cinema: the words of John
Whitney Sr. on the metamorphosis of images and the abstractions allowed by the computer, as well as on the possibility of understanding dreams (and the connection
between Oriental philosophy and Western projecting technology) are, in this case,
quite exemplary. It is an “inner revolution through exterior manipulation.”10 It is the
thread that goes from Robertson’s “nottograph” to surrealist cinema, from Whitney’s
computer films all the way to present day theorizations and to the production of video
art, without overlooking the underground. It brings everything together into the same
expanded cinema category: the live performances and the experimental animation, the
artistic use of live, and closed circuit television, multiple projections and computer
films, intermedia events, computer graphics and video. Some examples are: James
Seawright, Otto Piene, the Cathode Karma by Nam June Paik, the decollages by Wolf
Vostell, Stan Van Der Beek, but also the “videographic cinema” by Scott Bartlett, and the
“cosmic cinema” by Jordan Belson, holographic films and certain aspects of 2001: A
Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (of which Youngblood presents a keen analysis,
crowning it all with an interview with Arthur C. Clarke and Douglas Trumbull). The
Stargate Corridor sequence is analyzed as one of the examples of the beginning of a new
era of cinema: “if one considers the introduction of sound and then color as successive
‘generations’ in the history of cinema, it is possible to say that we’ve entered the fourth
generation by marrying basic cinematic techniques to computer and video sciences...”11
It is an era, according to Youngblood, which no longer needs fiction to “narrate” things,
or to narrate itself.
Cinema, therefore, expands, also because the surface and space for viewing has multiplied, dilating the associative and visionary capacity of our minds simultaneously.
The very idea of the screen as a limited, two-dimensional surface is dated, replaced with
projects of multiple visions, or with notions of “infinite volume,” made up of one or
more images that envelop the spectator who then becomes a part of the whole.
Youngblood stops to analyze a few examples: on the one hand, the ones made possible
by the enormous world expositions (Montreal 1967, Osaka 1970), and on the other,
84
those run by the artists themselves; their own experiences can be linked to the revival
of the theatre, with happenings, with performances, and with the blending of art and
technology. The author does not set first type of performance against the second type,
because although the huge hyper-technological multiple visions are a commercial
response to world expositions, they allow the average man, writes Youngblood, to try,
even if “for a limited time, the wealth and inventiveness that is kept from him in everyday existence;”12 after all, the seminal figures of these devices, like Roman Kroitor (with
his Labyrinthe for the Expo in Montreal in 1967), and Francis Thompson, seem to be
inspired by the same profoundly experimental and innovative passion, more than they
are by the search for a technology that is surprising or spectacular, in the most banal
and brutal sense. Among the other characteristics of the multiple vision Labyrinthe, we
may note the horizontal projection (at times together with a perpendicular, vertical
one), the enormous dimensions (70mm.), and, in the various cinema halls of the maze,
the use of different, ever changing combinations of the various screens – and three
times bigger than Cinerama; special attention is also paid to the highly enveloping
sound environment (we mustn’t forget the “sound belt” that Nelly Kaplan mentioned).
The creators of these devices include them in the sphere of expanded cinema, which is
capable of overcoming the logic of the traditional plot, and of creating sensorial experiences that are deeper than the ones created in narrative films. And here, as we will see,
is one of the divergences between the multiple vision and the mega vision that
Youngblood talks about, and what has, in fact, asserted itself in both the world exhibitions and the theme parks.
According to Abel Gance, Moholy-Nagy, Eisenstein, and later Nelly Kaplan,
Youngblood, Kroitor and Thompson, overcoming the original format of the screen, its
oneness and size, its fixed nature and two-dimensions, is an intrinsic part of the cinema;
it is an expansion, which they hoped would spread and become “natural,” and not marginal, in this art, and in its reaching out to “the average citizen,” as Youngblood says. In
other words, this spectatorial aspects are the “experimental” tips of the iceberg, prototypes for a different but not marginal spectacularity, entrusted, only for the moment, to
randomness. It is a spectacularity, in other words, which should become a constitutive,
in an organic and widespread way, of the experience of the spectator. Whereas this overcoming has become – we will discuss it in detail later on in the text – an area of research
which extends (expanding and contracting) to two different areas of the audio-visual
world: on the one hand, experimentation, which is still elitist, in video art, and on the
other, the commercial and spectacular sensationalism of Imax, Omnimax, of the world
exhibitions and of theme parks. In the vast, central region between these poles, at the
boundaries of which we can see these two distant and contrasting profiles, we have the
cinema of the cinema halls, the cinema of the “average citizen,” which is (or is it still?)
deaf to new methods, new postures and new viewing experiences.
It is also rather interesting to note how the experiences of the sixties echo the spirit of
“polivision” by Abel Gance, but also (with the dream of the overcoming of the screen
itself) of the “total cinema” by René Barjavel who said that no satisfactory solution
could be met as long as cinema was a slave to that “flat tape” called film, and that changing a flat image into a three-dimensional one, even if we were to project it on a spherical screen, would be not only difficult, but illogical. He was convinced that the only
solution was to transform real objects directly into waves and then these waves into virtual images that would then materialize without a screen, or on a massive transparent
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screen, made perhaps immaterial, only of waves.13 We have an image, which, as we can
see, foresaw and suggested electronic technology, and the overcoming – or rather the
extending and expanding – of cinema.
Metamorphosis versus editing
What promoted the idea of polivision, of multiple and “eccentric” screens, with respect
to the classical format and position – right up to foreseeing virtual screens – was not, in
these as in other theorists (and artists, and experimenters), the idea of a cinema that progresses towards an integral realism, more and more accentuated and credible, inevitably
reaching that ontological vocation theorized by André Bazin. Cinema has gone from
silent films to sound, then color, then research and experimentation on Cinemascope and
Cinerama, on to the three-dimensional image, the Imax and Omnimax cinema halls, and
we could also add the improvements that have taken place in sound, and, naturally, the
use of more and more sophisticated special effects. Yet, if what counts in the cinema that
prevails today, or rather what dominates uncontestedly, is the simulation of reality, and
all the technical improvements are aimed at giving the maximum credibility possible to
a story (credibility even when the story is incredible), then utopian forms of cinema that
we have just mentioned, another cinema is being proposed, that is indifferent to traditional fiction, and hostile to the concept of cinema as entertainment or as evasion, as
show in the banal sense of the word. At times, we could even re-read the history of these
utopias and of these artistic practices (even of the recent, and very recent ones), like a voyage back in time, in search of the “dead-ends,” towards the “defeated” yet rich cinema that
is overflowing with ideas and suggestions; we would be going back to the primitive cinema, the cinema that is not yet trapped in the cages of genres and of codified length: this is
a refusal or relativization of speech, of visual and urban symphonies, of spaces and ways
of viewing not made for the classical “cinema halls” and for screens that are not modifiable and mobile. Let us also look at the improvements that have been made in sound with
the introduction of the “multiple track:” if on the one hand they definitely intensify the
impression of reality, then on the other hand, they compensate for the shallowness of the
image in respect to dialogue, and therefore restore, finally, dignity to noise, and, as Michel
Chion wrote, a decline in the spoken word in favor of a landscape of sound.14
In Youngblood’s opinion, as we have been able to see, classical fiction is no longer
desirable or necessary in expanded cinema: “the simulation of reality has delivered its
maximum performance; it no longer benefits us as it has in the past.” Cinema, thanks to
the new technologies, can go beyond this simulation (deriving from the pre-stylization,
and from the fictional organization of the profilmique), and represents so called reality
through “post-stylization of unstylized reality” in a dialectical manner, by creating:
a myth born out of the juxtapositions of the paradoxes of reality […] The natural phenomenon explained by synaesthetic cinema is the filmmaker’s consciousness. It is a documentary
of the artist’s perception. Since this is not a physical reality, it must be a metaphysical reality, that is, a myth. In the approximation of this intangible, however, the artist’s language is
reality, not fiction. What we see on the screen is not an act. True, it’s processed through the
medium until it no longer is objective reality, but it is nonetheless real. This is mythopoietic reality. In one sense it renders fiction obsolete.15
86
In this area that explores the oscillation between reality and representation,
Youngblood’s thought – supported by the analysis of a wide range of works and
authors – tries to get past the misunderstanding of a harsh contraposition, and
restores depth to realism, which is not the banal and mimicking simulation of reality.
This theory clearly echoes the reflections of Maya Deren, but also of the New
American Cinema, and vindicates reality and concreteness for films that are certainly
not considered realistic (something that Youngblood did, in fact, when examining the
kinetic paintings by Jordan Belson). We must remember here Jonas Mekas’ observations on the concrete essence of cinema, of all forms of cinema (which, being a moving art, is never abstract when it comes to color and movement). Thanks to its poets,
he said, this art of matter (Mekas adds celluloid and the screen to light and movement)
will go beyond being merely a medium for telling stories.16 Cinema is art of matter on
the one hand and “immateriality” of electronic technology on the other: today this
debate also regards the level of realism and of abstraction obtainable thanks to scientific devices – images of medical diagnostics, satellite images, infra-red camera images
– which allow us to see the invisible, the infinitely small, the infinitely big, not with
traditional “realistic” rendering (even abstract at times), but with something definitely real about it.17
This consideration on realism cannot sidestep the theories on editing: synaesthetic
cinema holds within itself the idea of conflict, and that of the harmonic combination of
the images, and precisely because it goes beyond the notion of reality to establish a
direct link between the author and the spectator, it is not interested in the classical staging, nor the exasperated fragmentation of the material collected: “it doesn’t ‘chop the
world into little fragments,’ an effect Bazin attributed to editing, because it’s not concerned with the objective world in the first place.”18
It is interesting to note how Bazin’s ideas are (at a distance of thirty years from
Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema), full of stimuli, even in respect to the poetry and
practice of video: the same Bazinian difference between “directors who believe in reality and directors who believe in image,” are found in the two different ways of interpreting electronic technologies: their capacity to continually register reality on one
side (an exasperation of the plan-séquence), and the rich scope of effects, decomposition, and fragmentation that electronic post-production offers on the other. Of course,
this extremely schematic distinction must be re-invented – the use of video often
reflects, in the same work, the two distinct poles of this “contrast” – and above all, it
must be a contradiction that can exist between the maximum of realism and the maximum of artifice in the greater part of mainstream cinema, which certainly betrays the
Bazinian ideal.19
It is exactly because it wants to represent “harmonic opposites” that synaesthetic cinema cannot be identified with the extreme temporal continuity of certain films by
Warhol, and yet, at the same time, refuses the violence of cutting. The solution is found
in the transition and the mixing of images, capable of using at its best “a space-time continuum, a mosaic of simultaneity […] A synaesthetic film is, in effect, one image continually transforming into other images: metamorphosis.” The use of “overlapping superimpositions” allows the non-traumatic, yet complex passage from image to image, and
“it’s the only style of cinema that directly corresponds to the theory of general relativity, a concept that has completely transformed all aspects of contemporary existence
except traditional Hollywood cinema.”
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Above all, according to Youngblood, this permits us to also recuperate Eisenstein’s
theories because “the conflict-juxtaposition of intellectual effects is increased when
they occur within the same image…”20
The superimposed image, as is well known, is one of the effects that cinema no longer
uses, and which has found its new identity only in the vast and different uses made of
it in experimental and underground productions, as well as in video art. In video art in
particular, if we want to take Bazin’s observation into account again – we note a sort of
rejection of the cut, which is expressed in two totally different ways: the use of long
sequences, of the “contemplative” capability of the mechanical eye (Bill Viola, one of
the authors most loved and studied by Youngblood), of smooth transitions and uninterrupted and soft stratifications, of the “mélanges d’images” (Robert Cahen), or of the
absorption of the cut inside the frame (which naturally, can no longer be called frame),
with an extremely fragmented interior leading to decomposition, the creation of mirror
effects, opening of windows, and so on (as with Nam June Paik, but also the video productions by Peter Greenaway).
Let us consider the use of superimposed images in Jean-Luc Godard’s striking work
Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998), in which the sliding and the crossing of images
acquires further complexity with the insertion of written texts on the screen: a
palimpsest effect, in which even the moments of exasperated cutting are an intrinsic
part of a concept suspended in time:
ici, le montage par ‘saccades,’ hyperrapide, quasi stroboscopique, jouant de tous les
principes de l’ornementalité (entre autres symétrie, dissymetrie et asymétrie, répétition,
accumulation et juxtaposition), ce montage va à l’encontre d’une possible contemplation,
produit un effet de syncope du temps, syncope d’une ligne qui se dessine dans le chaos de la
mémoire.21
Youngblood makes further reference to the subject of “re-reading” the cinema in his
article on The Art of Memory (Woody Vasulka, 1987) – one of the pioneers of international video art, of whom Youngblood has often written on it – who composed a moving
fresco on the history and images of the twentieth century. In it, Vasulka intertwines vastly varied and fragmented visual references into a continuous stream; he reconstructs a
film made up of many films, photographs, pages from books (about utopias, wars, and
revolutions in the past century), which unfold in ever-changing shapes and forms against
the majestic landscape of New Mexico. On various occasions Vasulka, has, in fact, been
open about his aversion to editing, and about his research on the transition of images,
which continually change in space and time.22 Youngblood, when presenting the article
at the end of the eighties, wrote that it has a musical structure, and is a panorama of associations that moves on through wipes, and not cuts.23 In 1991, it is Vasulka again who
quotes Bazin, and Youngblood’s theories on synaesthetic cinema when he states that
according to Bazin, reality exists, therefore why manipulate it? He goes on to say that with
computers everything is manipulation and “reality,” and that the new media have redefined the characteristics of narrative, thanks to an interactive mechanism. And, adds
Vasulka, they are able to unhinge the renaissance prospective that has dominated the construction of the images up to the present. A digital version of the soft transition from one
image to the next, is the morphing effect, which smoothly combines different forms by
passing form one to the other: Daniel Reeves made artistic use of the morphing effect in
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Obsessive Becoming (1995), in order to make an incessant – obsessive, in fact – transformation of memories (through photographs and family films) over the years.24
In both cases (complex and smooth transitions, or fragmentation within the shot) the
important thing is to recuperate and recreate a richness of the figures d’écriture, which
the cinema had explored and then abandoned. It is a richness that, on film, reveals itself
to be long and difficult, if not impossible, and which, however, was almost completely
eliminated with the advent of the logic of imitation and the ultra narratives of sound
films. The electronic image allows for and facilitates the expansion of cinema towards
a new way of portraying and narrating: its natural habitat is metamorphosis; its actor is
the image itself in continual transformation and proliferation; its mise-en-scène is
mise-en-page, wrote Pascal Bonitzer in 1982.25
Where have all the effects gone?
As we run through the history of cinema, progressively “overcome by a “normality”
of language, which often makes it so very uninteresting,” declared Carlo L. Ragghianti
in an article written in 1955 (dedicated, not by chance, to “Television As an Artistic
Fact”), we note the vanishing of the effects “that, by multiplicity, used to characterize up
to a certain point in time the cinema views of various original directors and which
became basic elements of ‘film grammar’ (slow and fast motion, framing, cut-off frequency, fades, passing matte shots, halation, lens diaphragm, back projection, intercutting, paced editing, etc.).”26 It is needless to say that the trick shots and special effects of
mainstream cinema do not go in this direction, but rather remain slaves to technical
perfection, against which Ragghianti himself warned us, as well as of a dimension of
verisimilitude of the narration.
Video has, in a certain sense, rediscovered and recreated the effects, giving them a
Vertovian value, of normal “proceedings” of language; video has invented new effects
and using the extraordinary potential (even interactive), of the live show: among the
elements of expanded cinema we can also find, in Youngblood’s theory, the recovery of
a real communicative and relational dimension of television technology (a dimension
which Brecht sincerely wished for radio in the thirties), which is able to put real people and far-away experiences in touch. It is not by chance that the book he has been
working on for the past fifteen years, Electronic Cafe: The Challenge To Create on The
Same Scale As We Can Destroy, opens with the pioneering research and the famous
performances of two authors, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, who, as early as
the eighties, had created interactive and highly participatory systems (and therefore
also deeply “spectacular”), thanks to live television. Their Electronic Cafe (1980)
involved a hook-up between a road in New York and one in Los Angeles (from the store
windows of two famous department stores), giving life to a succession of exciting,
funny, creative and also socially important dialogues, coast-to-coast sketches, meetings and mini-stories. It was both a social and public concept of cinema, which had
characterized part of the European avant-garde movement of the twenties (in particular in the Soviet Union), that led to the idea of a screen set up in public places and the
prefiguring, de facto, of TV.27
Youngblood’s new book proposes a more general reflection on the history of media
arts and, among other things, the expansion of telecommunication art to what is now
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called net art. Yet, from the point of view of the figures d’écriture, it is also the relationship between the in and off images, which is questioned by the new video technologies: the very idea of frame is questioned by the possibility of easily combining the
two spaces in the same image – returning to cuts inside the frame, to the collage – or
of presenting them together on various TV sets in video installations. Youngblood
gives us a stimulating account of how the relationship between the shot and the
reverse shot was overthrown when, in 1991, he presented the amateur-like, seemingly
private works of George Kuchar: in his video diaries the author, thanks to his easy-tohandle small video camera, is able to film both himself and the reality he is communicating with by going from one to the other and then back again. The subject is, therefore, a particular type of reverse shot, “guided” by the author without cuts. Youngblood
describes Kuchar as being in the center of this exchange of glances the whole time, and
says that when he points the camera at himself, he is the énonciateur, and we, the spectators, “see” his point of view; he is part of the image but his dialogue with others, and
his interior monologue, become one. It is a sort of “live editing,” of both documentary
and fiction.28
Leaving behind film-makers and independent video makers for the moment, one of
the film-directors, and later video-directors, who have studied the changes that have
taken place in the relationship between the on screen, the off screen and the reversed
shot, is Peter Greenaway. In his A TV Dante (with Tom Phillips, 1985-89), he combines
the techniques of soft transition and superimposed images, and the extreme fragmentation of the collage inside the frame: the image – he says – is forced into the frame like
into a straightjacket, but it will be able to free itself thanks to the new technologies, to
the combinative possibilities, and to the spherical showings in the panoramic cinema
halls: exactly the way painting did, thanks to the work of disintegrating the limits
that was done by such painters as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.29 In
Greenaway’s film with electronic post-production The Pillow Book (1996), we have
both the objective and the subjective in the same image: “we follow, objectively, the
character’s movements, and, at the same time, we see through his eyes, in a frame cut
inside the screen, like a subjective-window that opens and closes, and then flickers
away into a greater image...”30 Greenaway, after all, is truly convinced that the road to
fiction is the real “dead-end” of cinema, which must still analyze its possibilities and
will be able to do so only when it has overcome itself. Greenaway finds it stimulating
to try to combine the new technologies with the dislocation of the text, with the multiple screens already used by the avant-garde, to re-invent a new cinematographic language. He is convinced that the cinema of the future will have five new characteristics: it will have multiple screens, and therefore the screen will disappear; it will
involve the five senses; it will be much more interactive so that the public will be able
to control the events; it will move away from the present idea of the medium that
illustrates themes; and mostly, it will rotate around the individual spectator/screen
relationship.31 The social dimension of Greenaway’s cinema – it is quite clear – is not
as strong as it is in Youngblood’s: the cold formal perfection, the narrative geometry
and the absence of pressing socio-political needs, puts distance between Greenaway
and the author of the utopian and political tensions of Expanded Cinema. However,
on many other points, we hear the evident echoes of these authors (multiscreens,
synaesthesia, interactive, non-narrative...), and in this case we are in the realm of a cinema that is anything but marginal.
90
Live roads (Living ends, as opposed to Dead-ends)
Let us try to recapitulate, to summarize the theoretical points of Youngblood’s reflections and identify all the possible passages that further expanded of his thoughts with
modern day audiovisual methods.
The first part is that of synaesthesia, of the combination of sensorial perceptions and
of media (in later works, Youngblood has named the computer the metamedium par
excellence), which goes well with the question of the position (mental and physical) of
the spectator, with his or her experience of the different visions of images – multiple
vision, spherical, labyrinthine. The idea is not so much that of situations that engross
and render passive as much as that of the possibility of confrontation and mental associations (Eisenstein, again), and, as Youngblood stated in 1991, of “distancing.” He is
sure that alternative cinema does not have the problem of seducing the public, but
rather, it has the objective of keeping distance, and separating the public from the product.32 It is maybe for this reason that in 1966 Jean-Louis Comolli wrote of the need for
“illuminated cinema halls,” especially for modern cinema. Since light is both a
metaphor and a synonym for knowledge, the spectators as well as the characters on the
screen, should come out of the darkness, and be brought out into the light in the same
manner: both as protagonists of the work and of life.33
Now, it is obvious that the Imax and Omnimax cinema halls follow a different objective; they mean to fascinate and be sensationally spectacular, which is totally in line
with the commercial approach to cinema.34 This fact might induce us to think that the
dreams of the avant-garde cinema and of “expanded” filmmakers have been trapped in
a dead-end, but other audio-video forms (and not only) have shown us the extraordinary vitality of these dreams and have placed themselves among the liveliest and most
prolific experiences in contemporary art. Let us consider video-installations, for example, and video-environments, and how they have been able to use some of the research
done by the historical avant-garde, and by experimental cinema, and to re-invent the
notion of projection and that of the screen (as a support, but different from the fixed
and two-dimensional one: screens made of sand, of salt, of shreds of paper, accidental
screens, living screens – projections on human bodies – cut, inflated, extremely thin,
screens made of vapor...), of the synaesthetic or trans-sensorial dimension on which
they are based, and of the “new drama” that the works are striving for. It is not by
chance that some of the most perceptive filmmakers of our time (like Chantal Akerman
and Chris Marker) have tried their hand at this type of “construction.” It is also interesting to note an “expansion” of cinema in non-traditional spaces and conditions. For
example, the biennials of contemporary art (as in Venice, with the installations of some
filmmakers like Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi), are exhibitions that concentrate on a re-reading of the “old” cinematographic devices, by re-introducing the big,
possibly vertical, screen (Bill Viola, Robert Cahen, in their last installations), or by leaving the screen in the classical position, but move it outside the cinema hall and into
exhibition spaces, art galleries or in the open in churches and squares. If we take a look
at the iconographic wealth of Expanded Cinema we are surprised at the number of
inventions, forms, devices that “immigrated” from pioneering experiences to the modern day video art practices: the already mentioned Labyrinthe by Kroitor (1967) seems
to be re-evoked in later installation videos like Trinité by Jean-Paul Fargier (1990), or in
multimedia shows (theatre, literature, music, interactive devices) like Giacomo mio,
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salviamoci! by the “Studio Azzurro” Group (1998), who set up screen horizontally in the
place of the stall and a vertical screen, perpendicular to the other, on the stage. We can
add HPSCHD by John Cage and Ronald Nameth (1969) to the hundreds of films and
thousands of slides, diverse and simultaneous spaces for the image, as was seen recently in the video Ich Tank (David Larcher, 2000) that combined a live remix with nighttime multivision for spectators who, in Belfort, France, layed on the ground to watch
screens of at different heights inside a huge, glass hall. There are hundreds of examples
can go from installations, to video environments, to interactive environments: the
Festival “Ars Electronica” by Linz in Austria, has been exploring, during the past
decades, the artistic value of huge multimedia devices that combine music, theatre and
interactivity.
We have discussed the new figures d’écriture, the combination of multiple images,
the notion of metamorphosis, and have underlined how they have become common
practice in most modern day video art, just as the use of tiny video cameras has spread
and affirmed itself: they allow an ever-growing production of a type of diaristic registration, based on the particular configuration of on-screen/reverse-screen mentioned
earlier in the text (it is an “expanded” cinema in the sense of comprehensiveness, and of
the diffusion of personal shooting devices and, at this point, even the editing, and in the
sense of its ability, again, to be the direct expression of the stream of consciousness of
the visions of the author). And the “effects” are the object of an experimentation that
transcends verisimilitude and tends, rather, to unveil the device, and “cool” the narrative. The effect go beyond the cut in favor of a patient digging into the image, a sort of
revealing of a “new alchemy” (“the image has different possibilities of becoming. An
image can be elaborated for years, endlessly...” says Angela Melitopoulos, in her explanation on why she prefers the term video-processing to the term editing; Irit Batsry uses
the term image processing to underline the patient job of transformation from one
image to another – was as if one was hidden inside the other – of controlling it live, as
if it were an improvised jam session: her These Are Not My Images (Neither There Nor
Here), 2000, seems to correspond entirely to the idea of expanded cinema: there is a fluidity that proceeds by transition and metamorphosis, that at the same time, keeps a
diaristic style and pace, as a documentary and as a “narrative”).35 Video art – both as a
single-channel work and as installation – seem to have taken up the challenge of
expanded cinema, freeing it from the dead-end in which it had been trapped by the
dominating cinema.
Cinema is the art of organizing a stream of audiovisual events in time – wrote Youngblood
in 1988, underlining the theories expressed almost twenty years earlier in Expanded Cinema
– an event-stream, like music. There are currently at least four media through which we can
practice cinema – film, video, computer, holography – just as there are many instruments
through which we can practice music. Of course each has distinct properties and contributes
differently to the theory of cinema. Through its technology and the cultural and aesthetic
milieu in which it has developed, video expands the possibilities of cinema, enlarges our
understanding of what cinema can be and do. What we really mean by “video art,” then, is
experimental cinema practiced electronically – a personal rather than institutional enterprise, representing the poetic form of cinema as opposed to the prose form of narrative storytelling. In other words, it’s the true art of cinema, the opposite of entertainment, if by art
we mean a process of exploration and inquiry.36
92
We come straight back to Expanded Cinema, and to the clear distinction between art
and business: “commercial entertainment works against art, exploits the alienation and
boredom of the public, by perpetuating a system of conditioned response to formulas…”
And yet again: “the notion of experimental art, therefore, is meaningless. All art is experimental or it isn’t art.”37 Utopia? Yet, the roads, as we have sought to underline, are still
open; these ideas have found a narrow aperture, and have been able to make space for
themselves and cross different settings in which their energy has proved to be artistically
vibrant and theoretically prolific. It is, rather, on the very nature of “utopia” that we must
reflect, as Youngblood writes today, after more than thirty years from his important text:
I have a political approach to utopian thinking these days. I think that if a social proposal is
not “utopian” it is not radical enough. By “utopian” I mean “that which is not permitted.”
Some people define utopianism differently. For them, an idea is utopian if it is beyond the
psychological capacity or abilities of humanity. We are not capable of doing it, so it is impossible, i.e., utopian. I say that is not an answer, it is the problem. If we as humanity are not
capable of a certain “utopian” action, then our task is to transform ourselves so that we
become capable, because the only valid social action today is radical action, and utopianism
is radical. It is the dream of freedom, equality, and fulfillment.38
Yet, this living utopia needs new eyes also:
mostly even critics are blind – wrote Jonas Mekas. – We have a number of talented men and
women creating a new cinema, opening new visions – but we need critics and an audience
capable of seeing these visions. We need an audience that is willing to educate, to expand
their eyes. A new cinema needs new eyes to see it. That’s what it’s all about.39
That was back in 1964.
[Translated from Italian by Matilda Colarossi]
1 The book by Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, was published by Studio Vista, London and
by Dutton & Co, New York, 1970. The unabridged text can be found today at the Steina and
Woody Vasulka web site: http://www.artscilab.org/expandedcinema.html. The passages translated in Italy: “La videosfera,” in L’altro video. Incontro sul videotape, “Quaderno informativo”
no. 44, 9th Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro (1973); “Il cinema sinestetico” and
“Mitopoieia: la fine della fiction,” in R. Albertini, S. Lischi (eds.), Metamorfosi della visione. Saggi
di pensiero elettronico (Pisa: ETS, 1988, 2nd edition 2000). Published in the same volume is the
text “Cinema elettronico e simulacro digitale. Un’epistemologia dello spazio virtuale,” comment
by Youngblood at the International convention Cinema: dietro e dentro l’immagine elettronica,
Rome, November 1986, also in Cinema Nuovo, no. 2 (March-April 1987), under the title
“Simulacro digitale e virtualità dello spazio”. The text was published again in the Salso Film &
TV Festival catalogue, 12th edition, April 1989; today in M.M. Gazzano (ed.), Il “cinema” dalla
fotografia al computer (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 1999). The Festival invited Youngblood to hold a
conference on “Film, video, computer image: il futuro del cinema,” which included an exhibition
directed by Youngblood himself (whose commentary notes are also published in the catalogue).
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SANDRA LISCHI
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
94
Among the other publications in Italy, following Expanded Cinema we can find: “Il mito utopistico della rivoluzione comunicativa,” in F. Colombo (ed.), Parole sul video, special edition of
Comunicazioni Sociali, no. 2-3 (April-September 1992). Some of the texts, as well as articles quoted in the notes that follow, are the consequence of Youngblood’s conferences and other interventions in Italy: they include a series of meetings and video presentations at the University of
Pisa, together with Woody Vasulka (under the title“The Radical Image”) in May 1991.
Among the other interventions we would like to include (a special thanks to Susanna Carlisle
who sent me useful information in regards to them) “Cinema and the Code,” Leonardo
(Computer Art in Context. Supplemental Issue, 1989) and the weighty work on Bill Viola,
“Metaphysical Structuralism. The Videotapes of Bill Viola,” Millennium Film Journal, no. 2021 (Fall-Winter) 1988-1989. Youngblood has also edited the videodisc edition of the works of
Bill Viola and the L’Avventura by Antonioni, for Voyager Press, Los Angeles. His last book,
which is in the process of being finished, is called Electronic Cafe: The Challenge To Create
on the Same Scale As We Can Destroy.
G. Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (London: Studio Vista, 1970), p. 54.
Ibid., p. 57.
P. Lévy, L’Intelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du cyberspace (Paris: La Découverte,
1994).
Youngblood, “Il mito utopistico della rivoluzione comunicativa,” cit.
Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, cit., p. 109.
N. Kaplan, Manifeste d’un art nouveau: la Polyvision (Paris: Caractères, 1955).
Ibid., p. 238.
Ibid., p. 156.
Ibid., p. 352.
R. Barjavel, Cinéma total. Essai sur les formes futures du cinéma (Paris: Denoël, 1944).
M. Chion, L’audio-vision (Paris: Nathan, 1990).
Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, cit., pp. 107-108.
M. Deren, “Cinematography: the creative use of reality,” in G. Kepes (ed.), The Visual Arts
Today (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1960); J. Mekas, Movie Journal
(New York: Collier Books, 1972; December 9, 1965: “There is no abstract cinema: all cinema is
concrete”). In the texts of Movie Journal from 1964 and 1965 we can find the expressions
“expanding eye” and “expanded cinema.” See also D. Noguez, Eloge du cinéma expérimental,
(Paris: Paris expérimental, 1999 [1979]), Ch. Lebrat (ed.), Peter Kubelka (Paris: Paris expérimental, 1990), A. Aprà (ed.), New American Cinema. Il cinema indipendente americano degli
anni Sessanta (Milano: Ubulibri, 1986).
See the section “Tutte le immagini sono astratte,” opinions of various Italian independent
authors and video artists on this theme (ed. by F. Pesoli) in S. Lischi (ed.), Un anno italiano in
video (Milano: A&M Bookstore, 1996).
For a change in thought regarding the more or less “realistic” worth, in a cinema that strongly believes in the cut, I refer to the recent reflections by F. Albera, “Le teorie del montaggio in
Unione Sovietica. Da Kulesov al ‘realismo socialista,’” in G.P. Brunetta (ed.), Storia del cinema
mondiale V. Teorie, strumenti, memorie (Torino: Einaudi, 2001).
Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, cit., pp. 86-87.
P. Convert, “La Couleur dit et ne dit pas,” in Art Press special edition Le Siècle de Jean-Luc
Godard (November 1998).
22 K. Ausubel, “Entretien avec Woody,” in Steina et Woody Vasulka vidéastes, 1969-1984 (Paris:
Cinédoc, 1984); on The Art of Memory see also R. Bellour, “Les Images du monde,” Catalogue
de la 3ème Semaine Internationale de Vidéo (Genève: 1989).
23 Paper on “The Art of Memory” by G. Youngblood, in the catalogue Salso Film & TV Festival,
op. cit. Also see the text by Youngblood on the same video presented for publication Steina &
Woody Vasulka, Denver Art Museum (January-March 1992).
24 W. Vasulka in D. Evola, “Woody Vasulka,” Fare Video (July-August 1991).
25 P. Bonitzer, Le Champ aveugle. Essais sur le cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma/Gallimard,
1982).
26 C.L. Ragghianti, “La televisione come fatto artistico,” special issue of the review Il Mercurio
(1955); later in Cinema arte figurativa (Turin: Einaudi, 1964). On the reflections on the relationship between these reflections and the modern practice and theory on the electronic
image see my text “Chiaroscuri elettronici. L’immagine televisiva come arte nella riflessione
di Carlo L. Raggianti,” in AA.VV., Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti e il carattere cinematografico
della visione (Milano: Charta, 2000, bilingual edition Italian and English).
27 See F. Albera, “Le teorie del montaggio in Unione Sovietica. Da Kulesov al ‘realismo socialista,’” cit.
28 Youngblood in Evola, “Gene Youngblood,” Fare Video (September 1991).
29 See M. Cieutat, J.-L. Flecniakoska (eds.), Le Grand Atelier de Peter Greenaway (Strasbourg:
Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg/Les Presses du Réel, 1998).
30 T. Porcelli, “Equivoci della soggettiva,” Cineforum, no. 6 (July-August 1997, special edition:
Quel che resta nella cornice).
31 P. Greenaway in M. Polsinelli, “Peter Greenaway. Paesaggi con figure,” Bianco & Nero, no. 1-2
(1996).
32 G. Youngblood in Evola, op. cit.
33 J.-L. Comolli, “Salles obscures, salles claires. Notes sur le nouveau spectateur,” Cahiers du
Cinéma, no. 177 (April 1966).
34 For the history of these devices and reflections on the intertwining of dreams and commercial interests that have accompanied their development see P. Véronneau, “Imax, l’eccezione
canadese,” in Brunetta (ed.), op. cit.; see also E. Michaux, Du panorama pictural au cinéma circulaire. Origines et histoire d’un autre cinéma, 1785-1998 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999).
35 A. Melitopulos in M. Lazzarato, “Vidéo, temps et mémoire,” Chimères, no. 27 (1996); I. Batsry
in S. Cargioli (ed.), Immagini oltre (Pisa: Ondavideo, 2001). For these and other reflections on
electronic effects (but also the continuity from cinema to video) refer to my book Visioni elettroniche. L’oltre del cinema e l’arte del video (Rome: Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, 2001). Also
F. Beau, Ph. Dubois, G. Leblanc (eds.), Cinéma et dernières technologies (Paris-Brussels:
INA/De Boeck Université, 1998); and M. Rieser, A. Zapp (eds.), New Screen Media.
Cinema/Art/Narrative (London: BFI, 2002, book and DVD).
36 Youngblood, “Metaphysical Structuralism. The Videotapes of Bill Viola,” cit.
37 Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, cit., pp. 59 and 65.
38 Youngblood, from his letter to me on July 16, 2002. An approach similar to utopia, in particular to communicative utopia and the social possibilities of radio, is found in Brecht, in 1930,
who, when commenting on the extraordinary possibilities of the use of this medium, wrote:
“if you find all this utopian, I beg you to reflect on the reasons why it would be utopian.” In
Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967).
39 J. Mekas, Film Journal, cit. (February 6, 1964: “On the expanding eye”).
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AT THE MUSEUM AND THE MOVIES
1. It has been argued that contemporary cinema seems to re-open some paths that the
history of the medium had interrupted or abandoned. Multiplexes, IMAX, digital technologies, cross-fertilization with music videos, videogames, the World Wide Web, are
concrete and evident manifestations of such transformations. This new institutional
framework accommodates new projects and creative impulses. Current utopias about
the cinema, though, do not appeal to its “outside,” as something in which the cinema
should lay its foundation – as it happened with secular (and sacred) spectacles for early
cinema, with the theater during the introduction of sound, with television and other
mass communication media (if only as an attempt to re-define cinema’s social role) in
recent decades. Today the point of reference is either the basic tenets of early cinema or
of classical cinema (either way: the tenets of a pre-modern cinema). The main belief
behind several contemporary works (and therefore the uniqueness of the present situation) is that these tenets could resume their functioning within a structure of spectacle, reception, horizon of experience, within the territory of an institutional framework
that is no longer that of contemporary cinema. What’s more, this institutional framework is not even that of cinema but, rather, it’s associated with other institutions: the
museum, the art gallery, and the exhibition. This operation is based on the isolation,
and therefore the amplification and reinforcement, of some traits of pre-modern cinema. The overall attitude is not fueled by nostalgia or mere aestheticism, but it is the
result of a theoretical choice re-proposing possibilities that in the history of cinema had
been considered scattered or lost.
Two recent examples appear to be particularly meaningful and revealing of the situation I have just outlined. The first is the 2002 installation titled Going Forth by Day
put together by Bill Viola for the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin and the second is
also an installation, called The Paradise Institute, presented by Janet Cardiff and
George Bures Miller at the Venice Biennale in 2001. Viola’s work comprises the simultaneous projection of five “films,” shot on digital video, on as many screens leaning
against the walls of the same space. Each film is about 35 minutes long and the screenings repeat on a loop. No point of reference is given to the audience as far as its position (there is no given vantage point or seats). On the first screen, in which the entry
way creates a sort of “hole,” are projected the images of Fire Birth: “A human form
emerges from a dim submerged world. The body swims in the fluid of an unconscious
state between death and rebirth. Orange rays of light penetrate the surface of the
water, coming from the previous world, which ended in fire. Now, illuminated by the
light of prior destruction, the human essence searches for a way through this new
underwater realm. It seeks the material form and substance necessary for its rebirth.”
On a huge screen, occupying most of the surface of the biggest wall of the room, The
Path is projected: “It is the time of the summer solstice high in the mountains. The
early morning light reveals a steady stream of people moving along a path through
the forest. They come from all walks of life, each traveling the path at their own pace
in their own unique way. There is no beginning or end to the procession of individuals - they have been walking long before we see them here, and they will be walking
long after they leave our view. The constant flow of people suggests no apparent order
or sequence. As travelers on the road, they move in an intermediate space between
two worlds. A small marker in the forest grants them safe passage through this vulnerable state.”
The Deluge is shown in the smallest wall in the background: “A stone building,
newly restored, stands in the clear light of the autumnal equinox. People move along
the street immersed in the flow of day-to-day events. Small incidents play out, affecting individual lives. Families are leaving their homes, people on the street are carrying personal possessions, and all actions become colored by an increasing tension in
the community. Moments of compassion and kindness circulate within a mounting
concern for individual survival. […] Now they must run for their lives as the deluge
strikes with full force at the very heart of their private world. They rush out of a building when it is suddenly flooded from within by a raging torrent of water. […].” There
are two stories represented in the screens located against the biggest wall: The Voyage,
and First Light. In the former, “a small house stands on a hill overlooking the inland
sea. Inside, an old man lies ill on a bed, attended by his son and daughter-in-law. […]
Down by the shore, a boat is slowly being loaded with the personal possessions from
the dying man’s home. An old woman waits patiently nearby. After some time the son
and daughter-in-law must depart, leaving the old man alone with his dreams and fading breath. […] Soon after, the old man reappears on the shore and is greeted by his
wife, who has been waiting for his arrival. He too boards the boat, which departs, carrying them and their belongings […].” In the latter, “a team of rescue workers has been
laboring all night to save people caught in a massive flash flood in the desert.
Exhausted and physically drained, they slowly pack up their equipments […].
Eventually, the exhaustion and distress take their toll and, one by one, the four
remaining individuals drop off to sleep. All is still and calm. Then a disturbance
appears on the surface of the water and a young man’s face emerges. He rises up, limp
and dripping wet, and floats up into the sky. The drips falling off his body turn to rain,
waking the sleeping people. […]”1
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s installation is a wooden construction: the
spectator who accesses it will find the real-life size balcony of a movie theater, with real
seats, accessories, etc. The balcony overlooks the model of a large stall, just on a smaller scale, in such a way as to give the illusion, soon almost perfect, of being in a real, large
movie theater. On the screen, also of a reduced scale, are projected images of a film realized (on digital video) by the artists. At the entrance, the audience is given headphones
on which the soundtrack of the film is playing as well as other sounds typically heard
in a movie theater (neighbors talking to each others, or eating pop corns, a cellular
phone going off, the public’s reactions to the images on the screen). The film shows a
man imprisoned in a big clinic, a mysterious doctor is about to catch up with him, a
nurse tries to help him escape… “[The] scenari[o] alludes to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheeps?”2
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Leonardo Quaresima, Università di Udine
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LEONARDO QUARESIMA
2. In Bill Viola’s installation we can retrieve many of the principles of expanded cinema,
which Sandra Lischi discusses in this issue: the synaesthetic effects (the acoustic element,
reproducing “real” noises of various films, has great relevance here), the structure of polyvision, the idea of a “contemplative cinema,” the rejection of editing, the choice of duration. On the other hand, this work situates itself within the experiences of video-art (of
which the artist is an authoritative figure), as well as in the tradition of the expository
form of installations. At the same time, it involves elements that call upon (maybe only
implicitly, which doesn’t make them less important) aspects and principles belonging
most effectively to early cinema: the “format” of the vue, applied to sound as well; the idea
of opening onto a real-life scene; a relationship cinema/painting that gives the latter the
role of the model, of the point of reference in perceptual terms; the experience of the multiplicity of viewed materials; the re-appropriation of the space of fruition.
In all the videos projected (with the partial exception of Fire Birth) the cinema
appears to return to the main tenets of the Lumière Brothers’ first films. The frame is
fixed, the action is followed in continuity, and the attraction resides in showing the
fragment of an event, whereby the “event” comprises also a situation, a “state,” a “landscape.” In The Path the focus of attention is the flowing of characters across the frame
(a sort of pop catalogue of common people), the duration of their presence in the
frame, both in temporal terms (emphasized by slow motion) and spatial terms (underscored by the panoramic screen), however not the circumstances that motivate the
action (the provenience, the destination, the occasion) nor the specificity of the location (unidentifiable). The Deluge, which nevertheless presents a good surprise element in its ending (the water that erupts from the house, sweeping away its inhabitants) is based on a similar representational structure. The dominant element is the
indetermination of the origin of the event, the indetermination of the location. Once
again, the flow of passersbys is central to the piece, a flow that will make sense, spatially and logically, only at the end.
The Voyage’s structure is entirely based on the idea of the “animation” of a painting.
The house on a hill, where the old dying man is assisted by his relatives, is open on our
side and realized according to the compositional rules of a Giotto fresco, with the same
spatial organization. The staging of the main scene follows meticulously the iconographic organization of XIV century painting. The exterior (the lake, the ship where the
past of the old couple is being loaded) corresponds to the background of a painting of
the Renaissance tradition. The cinema (as in similar examples from the 1910s) adds a
temporal and narrative development to the pictorial structure, here again unfolding in
continuity. As in a Giotto painting, the appeal of the scene relies on the simultaneous
presence of real, quotidian elements (the scene at the house) and supernatural ones (the
scene at the beach with the woman, already dead, who awaits her partner to initiate
their journey to the beyond). At the same time, the temporal continuity gives emphasis
to the similarities between this representation and an early cinema vue.
A similar model is at the basis of First Light: the actions following the attempt to
recover the body of a man who has drowned emphasize elements of integrity and duration, focusing the attention on the anything and the ordinary. The pictorial model is
this time from Quattrocento and the iconography comes from a Resurrection. And even
while the unexpected ending (the body that, unseen, surfaces from the water) has the
effect of re-orienting all the preceding narrative, it still doesn’t change the regime of the
representation.
98
The influence of (especially Italian) pictorial tradition on Bill Viola’s work is well known:
in The City of Men (1989), Nantes Triptych (1992) and in the notorious The Greeting
(1995), inspired by Pontormo. Concerning Going Forth by Day the author has talked about
“images […] projected directly onto the walls - without screens or framed supports - as in
Italian Renaissance frescoes.”3 The bi-dimensionality of The Path also echoes a pictorial
framework: the direction of the characters is always rigorously horizontal; not even the
gaze of the characters is ever directed towards depth. But in this case the relationship with
painting goes beyond an aesthetic reference or the evocation of a specific poetics. This is
rather the re-designing of the relationship with the pictorial tradition according to principles analogous to those employed by early cinema; it is the re-opening of a path undertaken by the Autorenfilm (again, this is only an example) with “experimental” works such as
Die Insel der Seligen (Max Reinhardt, 1913) or Die Toteninsel (Vilhelm Glückstadt, from
the same year), which stirred the critical and theoretical debate of their time.
Furthermore, Bill Viola’s installation encourages the viewer to re-appropriate the space
of the movie theater. The multiplex produces an isolated spectator and a space approximating a private space, if not a domestic one. At the same time it disciplines, organizes, separates. The audience is fragmented, rigidly divided in groups, categories. The multiplicity
of screens is entirely illusory because the vision is, in effect, rigidly oriented. Additionally,
the theater becomes a neutral space, whose ultimate objective is to disappear, rather than
being perceived as such. Any experience is “sucked in” by whatever appears on screen. We
find ourselves, and we know it, in a situation that is contrary to that of silent cinema and,
at the same time, very far from that of classical cinema (where the audience was a collective entity, the space of the theater was articulated, staged, turned into matter of experience) and where the variety of the program would act as a multiplicator and would challenge the fixity of the screen. In the installation room (my argument, naturally, goes
beyond this specific case and includes the “installation” format as such) the space is once
again a living, divisible, structurable space. It is again a collective space where the spectator is a plural, heterogeneous, and multiform subject. The viewer also takes on an active
role in the spectacular event, as it happens in the tradition of the popular cinematic spectacle or otherwise preceding (or alternative to) the spectacle of cinephilia.
Going Forth by Day is based, naturally, on the experience of simultaneity of vision
(which is a situation that cannot be generalized). The situation of early cinema must
not have been different. It is not impossible to think that the succession of the different
vues and programs of different genres (along with “live” spectacles and numbers, and
until the advent of sound) might have been experienced by the spectators as a simultaneous presence of different items or sources. The insistence in finding a narrative
dimension in the vues can be interpreted as an attempt to neutralize this synchronic
effectiveness of the individual numbers of a program, derived from the synchronism of
other forms of spectacle, from panoramas to the Hale’s Tours.
The installation re-proposes another feature of early cinema: the effect of opening
onto a fragment of reality. Thanks to the real-life scale of the figures on the screen (The
Path, The Deluge), thanks to the location of the screens (because of the size of the figures, the frontality of the framing of the house and the sidewalk, the lightness of the
image, the screen located on the far side of the room, on the wall opposite the entry, the
installation provides the strong illusion of witnessing a scene that is taking place outside the museum as seen through an opening in the room), thanks to the absence of any
indicator (which we mentioned already) that would encourage to identify the screens
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as such, thanks to the strong realism of the soundtrack, the surfaces appear less as supports to the representation than diaphragms in direct relation to the outside.
3. Another analogous project (here, furthermore, made openly explicit) summarizing
and accentuating traits belonging to pre-modern cinema, in a context different from
institutional cinema, is at work in the installation of Janet Cardiff and George Bures
Miller. Here, the preliminary and strongest idea is that of re-appropriating the movie
theater, of recuperating the qualities of the pre-modern spectator. The operation is
achieved through the mechanisms of simulation: the “theater” is reconstructed, as we
have seen, so that it can exist inside a museum; the interior space is the result of a perspective illusion; sound comes from the headphones. This further intensifies the abovementioned characteristics precisely because they are made evident, literally exposed, in
a place governed by different regimes of representation and fruition.
The theater becomes again a site of experience for the spectator and a site for him/her
to enter in relation with the world of the film (condition, the latter, entirely lost in the
contemporary movie theater where the spectator, severed from any spatial reference, is
uni-directionally pushed towards an immersion into the space of the film). The theater,
which is the first and elementary passageway, becomes again the site for an interaction
among spectators (who are talking about being late, buying popcorn, or embarrassingly answer – in Italian! – the ringing cell phone) and for a re-elaboration of the “adventure” of the film. The audience (the voices from the audience are heard on the headphones) sings a tune playing in one of the film’s locales, or comments on a sex scene.
This re-elaboration can concern a cinematic knowledge (the comment about an actor
seen in another film, or about the sources of the story discussed in an article), but also
life experiences: the events of the film are connected to experienced facts or they directly effect the present situation and existential horizon of the spectator: “I’m too worried.
I have to go home and check the stove. I’ll wait for you there,” says the voice of a female
spectator who we then hear exiting the movie theater, while on the screen we see
images of a house on fire.4
The Paradise Institute “foregrounds”, as we said, these characteristics and therefore
attributes them an even greater relevance. But let me underline again that these are the
procedures of simulation itself, prevailing in this result. It is thanks to the fact that
sound is conveyed through the headphones that a complete unification between the
film’s acoustic world and the theater’s can be obtained.5 Similarly, it is the model that
produces the strongest unification between the space of the film and the space of the
theater, because the same perspectival principles employed in the representation on
screen are also applied to the theater. It is thanks to the headphones that the voice of a
female spectator, in particular, “sitting” next to us, seems to address us directly for the
entire duration of the spectacle. The voice (without a real body? Emanation of a real
presence?) bearing all traits of the acousmatic voice, narrativizes our experience of the
cinematic spectacle and, in this way, attributes an unusual and unexpected relevance to
the “voice of the spectator.”
There is a point when, behind us, we hear the steps of one of the screen characters and
his voice seems to be addressing us. The installation returns us, uncannily, to the situation of early cinema, to an idea of cinema as an “excerpt from reality” which can erupt,
at any moment, in the theater. This is a situation that is not assimilable to the involving
capacity of sound effects (surround sound and derivative technologies) in a contempo100
rary movie theater. In the latter case, the attraction relies in the sense of transference of
the spectator to the acoustic (and physical) space of the represented scene; it relies on the
possibility to suck the spectator into the event of cinematic fiction. The process triggered
by The Paradise Institute goes, on the contrary, in the opposite direction.
In the introduction to the already mentioned volume, Wayne Baerwaldt discusses
(albeit in problematic terms) the production of strong effects of identification, “as if to
abandon the sanctuary of self for someone else’s mind and body.”6 In effect, and positively, the opposite process is triggered: the stories of the spectators and the theater - and the
story of the film itself - are projected onto the viewer. The effect is a magnification of the
ego of the spectator, a sort of mutation of his/her conscience leading him/her to absorb
multiple lives and personalities at the same time. This is a viewing situation that we probably had forgotten about, and which, on the contrary, must have been familiar to the spectators of the past. This is an opposite state than that of the modern and contemporary
spectator, who is dragged into the film, and on the film projects his/her inner life.
From this standpoint, The Paradise Institute finds a direct precedent in the model of
a movie theater used in Murel Lake Incident (1999) where we also find the projection of
a film and the creation of the acoustic space of the theater for a spectator who feels like
an “omnipotent child,” a “giant discovering a miniaturized world.”7 Another
antecedent can be found in the performances of the “walks” (Louisiana Walk, 1996;
Drogan’s Nightmare, 1998; Lakeside Walk, 2000), where the “visitor” was invited to follow a path, leading also outside the museum, guided by a voice heard through headphones. Such structure gave birth to a complex system, developed like a veritable
“text,” where the direct experience of the visitor would not only intersect with the experience of the subject expressed by the voice, but also with the traces of previous experiences of the same path, embodied by the sounds and noises heard on the headphones,
connected to another exploration of the same trajectory. “I want you to talk with me,”
“We’re connected now, my breath a part of yours, my thoughts transferred to your
mind”8 would claim the voice heard by the visitor. Another subjectivity would creep
into the visitor’s.
The film projected on the screen of The Paradise Institute initiates also a direct dialogue with the “life,” the “text” of the theater. At the beginning of the story, the prisoner in the clinic seems to awake at the ringing of the spectator’s cell phone. At the
end, the mysterious doctor is walking to the room where the nurse is trying to resuscitate the man in order to enable him to flee: the noise of the door opening is transferred to the theater, behind our heads; we hear, behind us, the steps of the man
approaching, and his threatening words. Once the film ends, it is the same voice that
invites us to leave the theater and points out the exit to us: the direction of the relationship between film and audience is indicated in the strongest and most provocative
way. The film “exits” the screen and invests directly the sphere of the spectator’s existence. The spectator’s entry into the fiction transforms into the cinema’s entry into the
life of the spectator.
This happens in Bill Viola’s installation as well. The spectator is immersed in an
acoustic space, which isn’t simply the extension of the film’s soundtrack, but rather an
autonomous source and remnant of experiences. The slow motion produces a similar
effect by displacing the classical cinematic codes of the rendition of time (just like
Giotto’s perspective challenged the codes of the perspectival rendering of space) and
acts as an amplification of emotions or, even more, “could actually make visible the
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events that were unconscious and could bring those things right up front.”9 The overall effect is not only an intensification of the senses, but also of the subjectivity of the
spectator, the creation of a sort of “multiple-ego” where sensations, stories, and different lives converge, coexist, and merge. In brief, this is the state of any film spectator,
before cinephilia and before the multiplex.
4. That both examples examine the relationship with early cinema, i.e., with pre-cinema is quite apparent and even part of a poetics. In fact, the camera obscura holds a central position in Bill Viola’s artistic background. “Experimenting with a homemade camera obscura and video projections helped me to understand the idea of the room as an
instrument [and not] as a container.”10 An analogous role is played by the diorama in
the training and work of Janet Cardiff (“it’s about the play of the imagination and about
our ability to mentally jump into a space.”)11 However, as I have tried to show, this relationship acquires a meaning that goes beyond this or that artistic work, and becomes a
sort of re-planning of cinema (of its experience) and of the contemporary structures of
(the experience of) vision.
Pre-modern cinema seems to have a lot to say about possible developments, or paths,
opened by contemporary cinema.
This is a relationship and a set of processes that do not belong, in my opinion, only to
the program, to the “poetics,” of this journal.
[Translated from Italian by Alessandra Raengo]
1 The quotations are excerpts from Bill Viola, Going forth by Day (Berlin: Deutsche
Guggenheim, 2002).
2 Scott Wattson, Ghosts: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, in Wayne Baerwaldt, Ed., The
Paradise Institute - Janet Cardiff and/et/und/e George Bures Miller (Winnipeg/Manitoba: Plug
In, 2001), p. 33.
3 Ibidem.
4 The quote from the soundtrack is derived from the volume accompanying the installation:
Wayne Baerwaldt, ed., The Paradise Institute…, cit.
5 The sound recording is realized with the binaural technique, which involves sound recording by two microphones located on the sides of a mannequin’s head. “Everyone listening to
the headphones is at the center of the recording, where the binaural head was placed originally. Everyone feels like the action is happening around them. That’s pretty cool.” (G. Bures
Miller) “Because the sound is being recorded in binaural audio we can push people’s perception of the reality around them” (J. Cardiff). Cit. from I wanted to Get Inside the Painting.
Brigitte Kölle in Conversation with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Idem, p. 9 and 11.
6 Wayne Baerwaldt, Phantom of the Paradise, Idem, p. 3.
7 Scott Wattson, Ghosts: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, cit., p. 31
8 Cit. in Ibidem, p. 27.
9 Bill Viola interviewed by John G. Hanhardt, in B. Viola, Going forth by Day, cit., p. 107.
10 Ibidem, p. 86.
11 J. Cardiff in I wanted to Get Inside the Painting…, cit. p. 15.
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NEW STUDIES
VISAGES DU DEDANS*
Raymond Bellour, CNRS - Paris
Mais il y a aussi les visages du dedans. Le cinéma semble voué à les ignorer, tant il tient
à la peau des choses. Il lui faut en effet vaincre l’analogie de ressemblance, son privilège et sa croix, s’il veut toucher la ressemblance spirituelle, selon laquelle le visage serait
le témoin, sensible et unique, d’une vie intérieure. Mais cette ressemblance interne,
exprimant ce qu’on prend pour l’âme, ou même ce que Barthes, moins idéalement,
appelait l’air, tient encore à l’idée d’une surface rêvée en laquelle un sentiment de l’être
se rassemble, où une vue sur l’être se saisit. Identité phénomènale, avec sa clarté d’illusion. Aussi tout le travail du cinéma vise t-il à étendre sa trop simple expression.
Cadrage, montage, éclairage, composition: ainsi se construit et se déconstruit la “visagéité”. Mais au profit de quel visage? Ce pourrait être, sans le dire, pour toucher le visage du dedans.
Ce mystérieux visage a été autrefois celui de la peinture, quand elle codifiait, dans l’icône, au profit d’une idée fixe et immatérielle, toute incarnation préalable. Mais, surtout, il l’est devenu à l’époque moderne, sitôt que le visage humain s’est comme autodétruit à travers la peinture pour s’imaginer hanté par des forces plus extrêmes. Picasso,
Bacon en seraient les emblêmes. Préfigurés par Füssli, Kubin ou Redon; ou égalés de
façon tout autre par Klee. L’intérêt de la défiguration est que, tout en témoignant de l’idéalisme naturel si longtemps concentré dans le visage, elle l’atténue, le déporte et le
métamorphose en faisant aussi du visage la simple extrémité sensible d’un corps travaillé par ces forces au-delà de toute identité. Le regard en particulier y perd son privilège d’ouvrir à travers l’oeil la fenêtre de l’âme, sitôt qu’abîmé dans les formes et les couleurs il devient un organe parmi d’autres, le point à peine externe encore d’un visage et
d’un corps ruinés par une organicité qui s’expose, une matérialité qui s’entrouvre: frontière indécidable entre le corps biologique réel ou fantasmé et le fantôme. C’est là que la
peinture de Michaux possède un privilège rare. Ce dont le gratifiait Bacon, quand il pensait Michaux supérieur à Pollock, par son souci “d’arriver indirectement à une nouvelle définition de l’homme au moyen d’un langage du signe entièrement situé au-delà de
toute illustration mais ramenant toujours à la représentation d’êtres humains”.1
On reconnaît dans ses aquarelles surtout un destin incarné de cette idée de la figure
humaine: “Menant une excessive vie faciale, on est aussi dans une perpétuelle fièvre de
visages”.2 De la théorie virtuelle et glissante que, dans un manifeste à usage personnel,
Michaux se prête sous le nom de “fantômisme”, trois fatalités se dégagent. La première
s’adresse à l’intérieur de l’apparence:
Il y a un certain fantôme intérieur qu’il faudrait pouvoir peindre et non le nez, les yeux, les
cheveux qui se trouvent à l’extérieur… souvent comme des semelles./ Un être fluidique qui
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RAYMOND BELLOUR
ne correspond pas aux os et à la peau par-dessus [...]/ Le visage a des traits. Je m’en fiche. Je
peins les traits du double (qui n’a pas nécessairement besoin de narines et peut avoir une
trame d’yeux)./ Je peins aussi les couleurs du double. Ce n’est pas nécessairement aux pommettes ou aux lèvres qu’il a du rouge, mais dans un endroit de lui-même où est son feu. Je
mets donc aussi, je mets du bleu au front s’il le mérite.
La seconde fatalité fait de tout portrait “un compromis entre les lignes de forces de la
tête du dessinateur et la tête du dessiné”. Développant les deux premières, la troisième
fatalité tient au pouvoir inoui de métamorphose qui se trouve ainsi continuellement
touché, comme si l’on formait constamment en soi un visage fluide, idéalement plastique et malléable, qui se formerait et se déformerait selon les idées et les impressions,
automatiquement, en une instantanée synthèse, à longueur de journée et en quelque
sorte cinématographiquement”. Mais il est clair que si le visage est le coeur sensible et
la forme flagrante des aquarelles de Michaux, les visages sans cesse s’y évanouissent,
jusqu’à ressembler à des silhouettes, des entrelacs de corps, des interpénétrations d’êtres dont les limites corporelles deviennent indéfinissables. Tout fait visage dans le
corps; et le corps fait visage. Et le drame ainsi s’étend, de solitude en solitude entrevue.
“Foule infinie: notre clan”. Le “psychologisme” de Michaux se double d’un sociologisme
singulier: saisie dans sa masse fluidique, selon ses couches et ses coupes, la figure
humaine s’y déploie sans qu’on sache s’il s’agit là d’états accumulés d’une même subjectivité décomposée ou de diverses solitudes appariées en un seul instantané.
Un tel cinéma intérieur est bien ce que le cinéma, le vrai cinéma peine à rendre. D’où
l’importance du cinéma dessiné, qui n’a cessé depuis les origines de doubler le cinéma
de la présence réelle, devenant l’intermédiaire obligé d’un rapport souvent travesti mais
parfois immédiat entre le cinéma et une part de la peinture moderne ou contemporaine. Ainsi cette insistance de Michaux:
Le “flash”, les couleurs qui filent comme des poissons sur la nappe d’eau où je les mets, voilà
ce que j’aime dans l’aquarelle./ Le petit tas colorant qui se désamoncelle en infimes particules, ces passages et non l’arrêt final, le tableau. En somme, c’est le cinéma que j’apprécie le
plus dans la peinture.
Ou alors il aura fallu la vidéo, ce qu’elle peut détruire de l’analogie photographique
pour livrer une image d’une nature différente, “en une instantanée synthèse”. Corps
flottants et colorisés de Global Groove (1973), corps irisés, diaprès, innervés par les
irruptions de la couleur, corps métamorphosés au gré des phases de leur dance par la
puissance arbitraire et comme illimitée qui fait de Nam June Paik le premier sorcier
d’une image dans laquelle surfaces dénaturées et illusions de profondeur s’échangent,
selon une dépsychologisation intensive. Corps troués, effeuillés, fragmentés, pulsés,
intermittents des premières bandes de Thierry Kuntzel (Nostos [1975], Echolalia [1980]);
corps irradiés, auto-aveuglés et doublés de leur fantôme rémanent dans les neuf bandes
de l’installation Nostos II (1984); corps photographiques insensiblement pixellisés jusqu’à s’aveugler dans le blanc, de l’installation Nostos III. Partout, ici, le traitement uniforme affectant les corps, fragments de corps et visages les rassemble dans la même douleur d’une perte d’identité, sans plus de miroir formateur ni d’image du corps susceptible de figurer la reconnaissance visible d’états intérieurs. On peut dire aussi bien: il n’y
a plus de lieu de l’âme. Ou: de l’âme en perdition est partout, comme sur les visages trop
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VISAGES DU DEDANS
nombreux de la foule anonyme cruellement fixés par Rilke dans une page fameuse, au
début des Cahiers de Malte. On pense aussi aux irruptions moins radicales, mais virtuellement plus menaçantes chez un cinéaste “bazinien” de la défiguration-refiguration, chez Godard: les quatre séquences sexuelles et intimes de Numéro deux (1975),
seul exemple chez lui d’un recours au synthétiseur; et surtout les innombrables battements d’images qui précipitent dans une même trame des réalités hétérogènes, créant
dans Puissance de la parole (1988) comme dans Histoire(s) du cinéma (1989-1998) une
inquiétude perceptive nouvelle, qui rappelle pourtant les trucages et les effets de montage du grand cinéma muet.
Mais il faut voir plutôt comment le cinéma, le vrai cinéma de la pellicule peut arriver,
par ses propres moyens, à se tenir en vue du fantôme intérieur et à le faire vivre, dans l’image et entre les images, et au gré de logiques narratives apparemment peu compatibles entre elles.
La défiguration réelle du visage est une issue sensible qui étend d’emblée la caractérisation réaliste des traits de visagéité et de leur traitement en gros plan. Mais sa puissance ne devient vraiment active que si la défiguration est cachée dans l’image par l’histoire pour se révéler au(x) personnage(s) du film de fiction et à son spectateur. Le masque,
avéré ou secret, est alors un intermédiaire, parce qu’il confère au visage une double
épaisseur; il attente, en dédoublant l’analogie, à la trop pure transparence de sa vérité
immédiate et à ses illusions de profondeur. Ainsi, dans The Mistery of theWax Museum
(M. Curtiz, 1933). La puissance du masque tient sa force de la rouerie du scénario, fondé
sur une dispositif qui déjoue d’emblée le naturel trop simple de l’image-mouvement:
l’effigie de cire elle-même, et sa froide mimétique du vivant. Les visages impassibles des
statues s’animent cependant au cours de l’incendie qui scelle le sort du sculpteur Ivan
Gregor et celui du récit dont il est le héros: le feu, la défiguration qu’il impose aux visages, la cire qui s’écoule en mélangeant leurs traits, les corps entiers qui ploient, les têtes
qui s’effondrent – tout confirme une crise de la ressemblance que la seconde partie du
film développe. Les nouvelles statues de cire sont en effet conçues non plus comme de
simples répliques du vivant, mais sous la forme singulière de quasi morts-vivants: les
visages ont gagné une expressivité proche de la vie puisque la cire enveloppe désormais
des cadavres, sauvant par là les corps de leur fatale décomposition. Un visage sous le
visage s’esquisse ainsi: le vrai mort sous le faux vivant. Une espèce particulière, destinée
à rester virtuelle, en est offerte à travers le visage élu de Marie-Antoinette: à l’instant où
une surimpression fait coïncider le visage de la jeune femme insouciante jouée par Fay
Wray avec celui de la statue royale dans sa gloire première d’avant l’incendie – statue à
laquelle l’actrice, évidemment, prête d’emblée ses traits. Mais cette double épaisseur des
visages, encore immatérielle, prépare au vrai trouble qui suit: la face monstrueuse du
sculpteur surgissant sous le visage de cire qu’il s’est trop idéalement conçu, pour suppléer au ravage du feu (on peut seulement croire à une telle perfection dans la mesure
où on ignore en partie l’issue du drame fondateur: comme Marie-Antoinette-Fay Wray,
l’acteur continue bonnement à assurer son rôle). Quand la jeune femme fait surgir en se
débattant cette face hideuse, au moment où Grégor s’apprête à la précipiter vivante
dans la cire en fusion, elle met à jour, par-delà tout réalisme, un visage du dedans. C’est
à dire un fantôme intérieur, sorte de traduction visible du fantasme inscrit dans le corps
entier, habitacle de l’âme devenue meurtrière. Cela revient ici à un fantasme d’art extrême, qui s’étend du musée de cire au cinéma, au gré de circonstances fatales destinées à
justifier sa crudité. On songe alors à cette femme dont Rilke, dans la même page de
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RAYMOND BELLOUR
Malte, voit le visage rester empreint dans ses mains, de sorte qu’il devine “sa forme creuse”, frémissant “de voir ainsi un visage du dedans”, mais redoutant bien davantage d’apercevoir la tête “nue, écorchée, sans visage”.3 On pense aux visages des malfaiteurs pris
en flagrant délit et arrachés sur-le champ par le mage bourreau d’Au Pays de la magie.
Un drame dont Michaux avait déjà fixé l’image dans un petit tableau, finalement substitué à son propre visage sur la couverture du premier livre qui lui a été consacré.4 “Le
lendemain, un énorme, rond caillot croûteux s’est formé qui ne peut inspirer que l’épouvante. Qui en a vu un se le rappelle à tout jamais”.5
C’est aussi la fiction des Yeux sans visage (G. Franju, 1960). Le masque blanc qui couvre le visage d’Edith Scob est une figure de style: c’est selon ses lignes trop pures qu’il
suggère la face supposée horrible qu’il recouvre. Il confère au corps entier, enserré dans
sa cape blanche, un destin de fantôme. Deux moments de pure frayeur captent à travers
le film ce qui se trame entre les corps activant le drame (la jeune fille défigurée dans un
accident de voiture par un père imprudent, depuis tenue pour morte; ce père, chirurgien réputé, spécialisé dans les greffes de peaux, follement résolu à rendre une vie à sa
fille; son assistante et compagne, sur qui a réussi une première mais plus modeste tentative; enfin, les jeunes filles que celle-ci enlève pour mener à bien l’expérience qui doit
rendre à l’héroïne un visage). Lors du second moment, on nous livre la fiction d’une
vision horrifique: maintenue par quatre pinces, parcourue de filets de sang, avec la bouche et des yeux béants, la peau du visage est décollée de son corps d’origine pour être
ensuite appliquée au visage meurtri. La chose importante, ici, est que cette transplantation ratée renchérit sur l’idée du masque pour attenter à la croyance en l’expressivité
naturelle et individuée du visage humain. Si une peau quelconque ou presque s’applique au visage interne dont elle devient le témoin, d’où viendra au visage l’expression
supposée être la sienne? D’une jeune fille ou de l’autre? Du dehors, du dedans? D’un
visage intérieur détruit? Ou d’une fracture irrémédiable entre surface et profondeur?
L’atteinte à la surface met en oeuvre un dedans innommable, dont le visage mutilé n’est
à son tour qu’une image. Voilà ce que suggère de façon plus horrifique encore le premier
moment qui imprime à tout le film sa marque.
La jeune fille, alors, s’approche de la future victime endormie, attachée sur la table d’opération. Devant la glace, mais sans qu’on y voit son reflet, elle enléve son masque, puis
touche de ses mains le visage qui lui est promis. La jeune fille allongée s’éveille et se soulève, croit voir ce que le spectateur entrevoit seulement, puis hurle, sa tête alors emplissant tout le cadre. Un gros plan extraordinaire lui répond, prolongeant la vue antérieure trop rapide: le visage démasqué, ravagé, dont le flou atténue et accroît l’horreur, qui
s’éloigne comme aspiré en arrière, son composé fuyant d’ombre et de lumière s’enfonçant dans un noir de nuit. Entre sommeil et veille, la spectatrice préposée au supplice a
vu avec nous le visage du dedans.
Parmi les grands cinéastes modernes, Bergman est sans doute celui qui a le plus
accordé au visage, aux gros plans de visage (il y aurait aussi Ritwik Ghatak). Il s’est un
jour nommément donné pour objet Le Visage (1958), dans un film qui est avant tout
une variation sur le métier d’acteur, et sur ses masques supposés. Ainsi, après que le
héros-hypnotiseur joué par Max von Sydow a été donné pour mort, revient-il dans le
clair-obscur d’un décor de bric-à-brac terrifier le savant sceptique et réaliste qui vient
de l’autopsier: son visage strié de façon insistante par l’ombre et la lumière devient
alors comme le masque d’une face en-deçà du visage humain, recapturant dans un noir
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et blanc intensif les forces expressives des grands montreurs d’ombres du cinéma allemand. Mais c’est dans Persona (1966) que, par un emboîtement de dispositifs et de figures à première vue malaisés à harmoniser, du fantôme intérieur s’installe, suggérant
entre les visages un visage du corps profond qui marque leurs apparitions. S’arrêter à
ces éléments, vraiment, reviendrait à tenter une sorte d’analyse du film. Les recenser,
briévement, suggérer un de leurs liens possibles, est dire une des forces de ce film
incomparable.
Il y a d’abord les visages d’un pré-générique qui esquisse une archéologie du dispositif de projection et du cinéma primitif, et dont des éléments reviennent en cours et en
fin de film: visages immenses et seuls, comme saisis dans la pierre ou déjà la rigidité de
la mort dont pourtant l’un d’entre eux se joue: visage renversé de vieille femme dont les
yeux soudain s’ouvrent et vous fixent, d’un regard en-deça du regard humain. Puis, à la
fin du générique, c’est la double image fameuse, que seule la suite du film éclaire, de
deux visages de femmes échangeant insensiblement leurs traits, d’un mouvement si
lent qu’il semble avoir le hors-temps pour objet: visages immenses que la main ouverte
d’un enfant-adolescent parcourt, en vain, comme si la surface dérobait un corps où la
main pourrait s’enfoncer. Plus tard, une de ces deux femmes, actrice, sur-maquillée,
comme masquée, saisie sur scène en un gros plan emblématique, joue ou plutôt s’arrête de jouer: tout se suspend en elle, au profit d’un silence qui est le vrai sujet du film.
Dans la chambre de l’hôpital où on la soigne, une image de télévision la saisit, comme
si son visage retourné voyait là une image de son souci intime: au Vietnam, sur un trottoir, un bonze s’immolant par le feu pour protester contre la guerre. Bien plus tard, sur
l’île, ce sera la photo trop connue de l’enfant juif traqué dans le ghetto de Varsovie, que
la caméra, valant pour le regard de l’héroïne presque couchée contre l’image, décompose interminablement. On a pu croire qu’il s’agissait de l’autre photo que l’actrice regarde et qui traverse le film: la photo de son fils, certainement l’enfant-adolescent qui cherchait son visage.
Il y a surtout le travail inlassable d’une symphonie de gros plans qui trament au bord
du fantastique une aventure des visages entre les deux héroïnes, Elisabeth l’actrice et
Alma l’infirmière (qui la soigne sur l’île). Plus le film va, plus elles échangent leurs rôles.
Trois moments, surtout, concentrent cette énergie de l’échange des figures. Le premier
naît d’un champ/contrechamp de regard lourd d’agressivité entre Alma et Elisabeth: au
point que soudain l’image en gros plan d’Alma se scinde sous l’effet d’une zébrure. De
sorte que la moitié gauche du visage demeure et que l’autre réserve une plage blanche,
et que l’image aussitôt soit trouée d’une brûlure interne qui se diffuse à partir de son
centre jusqu’à s’effacer dans un blanc intense (c’est le prélude à un bref retour de quelques motifs du pré-générique). Le second moment prend l’allure d’un fantasme nocturne, peut-être prêté à Alma observant Elisabeth endormie, et répondant à la crise ouverte entre les deux femmes: le mari aveugle d’Elisabeth prend pour sa femme Alma
qu’Elisabeth lui livre. Tout tient ici à la composition en épaisseur des trois visages en
très gros plan à l’intérieur du cadre: ils circulent de telle sorte, dans une suite extraordinairement composée, que le regard d’Elisabeth, passant du fond du cadre à un premier
plan exorbité, semble envelopper les deux autres visages d’un regard qui ne porte plus
sur eux mais va directement de son oeil à celui du spectateur. Un moment, son visage,
telle une immense statue étrusque, débordant presque la limite du cadre, semble accepter l’éternité de ce qu’on voit. Là encore, le regard supposé réel vole en éclats; son énergie est transmué en espacements de figures.
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RAYMOND BELLOUR
Ce traitement intensif du regard dont le champ/contrechamp est au cinéma la figure
convenue est l’objet même d’un dernier moment. Les deux femmes se trouvent maintenant de part et d’autre de la table où elles s’affrontent en miroir. Comme elle le fait tout
au long du film, la voix seule d’Alma assure le récit dont deux versions sont ici figurées
par un changement des positions des deux femmes entre champ et contrechamp. Mais
c’est pour mieux détruire un système trop simple que le travail de la lumière vient d’abord enrichir: les deux visages se trouvent tour à tour scindés entre part de lumière et
part d’ombre, avant de ne former plus qu’une image composite et subtilement monstrueuse en laquelle se développe l’impossible sujet du film, programmé dès le prégénérique. Notre regard capture alors, dans son extériorité frontale, ce qui ressort entre les
personnages d’un regard interne, dont les divers traitements des visages confrontés jusque- là dans l’espace sont autant d’instants modulés.
Que dire d’un tel enchaînement de figures, réduit ici à son squelette? Ceci, trop simplement: dans le cadre d’une intrigue extrême mais de caractère réaliste, Bergman
essaie de trouver les moyens de passer la frontière des corps pour saisir ce qui de l’intérieur les anime: des forces indécises et puissantes de sexualité, au bord de l’inceste et de
l’adultère, de l’homosexualité, des désirs d’enfant et de mort, des identités pré-subjectives. Il fait ainsi remonter jusqu’à leur surface ce que l’imaginaire de la photographie
arrête et que celui du film déroule, et qui doit être confronté à son fantôme interne pour
prétendre tenir lieu de réalité. Il est bien sûr crucial que cette réalité si excessivement
intime soit aussi historique: que l’image du corps brûle au Vietnam dans la télévision,
de même que les deux charbons en se touchant au début du pré-générique ouvrent le
feu qui assure la projection du film.
Reste à concevoir la brûlure elle-même, le feu propre du corps et de la pellicule. C’est
le travail de 3rd Degree (P. Sharits, 1982). Il s’agit à la fois d’une installation (la dernière
de son auteur) et du film qui en découle. Dans l’installation, une triple projection compose une grande forme horizontale subdivisée en trois parties joignant bord à bord.
Mais les trois images se trouvent basculées à la verticale. Enfin, elles grandissent régulièrement, de gauche à droite, à proportion de l’espace occupé sur la pellicule par les perforations de l’image antérieure chaque fois refilmée, à partir d’une première image
absente. Dans le film, dont l’auteur de ces lignes a seul fait l’expérience, les trois parties
s’enchaînent, le cadre de la projection demeurant par force identique, l’image d’origine
se réduisant proportionellement à chaque stade de la projection. Simultanéité dans un
dispositif déterminé, succession selon le dispositif du cinéma: les deux expériences
demeurent incomparables, mais la force de leur principe est telle que chacune permet
de saisir l’autre. Par trois fois, il s’agit de refilmer ce qui a été d’abord filmé, et de mettre
ainsi en abyme la première puis la seconde image pour faire apparaître l’image antérieure, jusqu’à montrer dans la troisième image le cadre dans le cadre dans le cadre, le
film dans le film dans le film. “La deuxième partie ‘enveloppe’ la première, et la troisième ‘enveloppe’ la deuxiéme.”6
Comment dire d’abord ce qui paraît sur le premier écran, ou dans le premier tiers du
film? Avant tout, ça défile, au rythme d’environ deux photogrammes par seconde: un
visage fantôme par le défilement, avec la scansion propre au noir entre les photogrammes. Lorsque le mouvement s’arrête, on aperçoit vraiment un visage de femme en très
gros plan, et devant ce visage une allumette enflammée, peut-être même un fragment
de la main qui la tient. Mais aussitôt ce visage et la pellicule qui l’abrite s’enflamment,
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VISAGES DU DEDANS
d’immenses boursouflures blanches, rouges et brunes dévorent l’image, la consument,
tel un organisme fou. Et ça défile encore, en avant, en arrière, à des vitesses différentes.
Et dès que le film à nouveau s’arrête, soit sur le photogramme où l’image s’affiche, soit
entre les photogrammes où elle se scinde, dès qu’on perçoit la jeune femme et la flamme blanche de l’allumette, ça brule à nouveau. On voit aussi à droite les perforations de
la pellicule, qui redoublent dans le défilement, d’une ligne blanche et vibrante, le blanc
de la flamme de l’allumette. Il arrive qu’on voit le visage sans l’allumette, mais il brûle
quand même. Il est souvent d’un ton spectral bleu nuit, déjà à la limite de sa disparition.
Pendant tout le film une voix désynchronisée de femme égrène par intermittence et en
boucle chacun des mots qui composent la phrase : “Look, I won’t talk”. “Comme si, peutêtre” dit Sharits “cette personne était interrogée ou éventuellement torturée.”7 Tel est,
du reste, dans l’argot américain, le sens de l’expression “third degree”.
Les deux parties qui suivent intensifient le processus en l’attirant vers une défiguration de plus en plus flagrante, au fur et à mesure que deux puis trois séries de perforations envahissent le cadre et que les brûlures se superposent. “Dans la deuxième puis
dans la troisième section, le ruban filmique s’arrête sur des images des ‘brûlures au premier degré’, et cette ‘brûlure’ brûle. Les ‘brûlures au second et au troisième degré’ mettent en question la réalité des brûlures précédentes”.8 Ainsi sent-on que la brûlure ellemême se fige et défile, selon un battement d’enfer, que la brûlure en rebrûlant est
comme toujours déjà là. Il semble que l’image de la femme entrevue au début du film –
ou encore visible par intermittences sur le premier écran de l’installation – devient un
souvenir, une trace, une efflorescence dont le feu est désormais la seule dimension;
comme si ce visage était de plus en plus et sans fin consumé de l’intérieur. Et pourtant
il transparaît encore, très vite et très loin, par instants, fantôme incertain de lui-même;
et la flamme de l’allumette, ainsi multipliée, forme dans le défilement une ligne blanche qui s’allie à celles des séries de perforations. Les couleurs saturées de la brûlure se
confondent et s’étendent, bleu, rouge, orangé, jusqu’à s’abolir dans un blanc ultime.
C’est en voyant ce film indescriptible que j’ai compris la force et la possibilité du
visage du dedans. Il m’a sur-le-champ remis en mémoire que la femme d’Henri
Michaux a été victime au début de l’année 1948 d’un très grave accident dont elle a fini
par mourir après un terrible mois d’hôpital: un soir, chez elle, sa robe de chambre s’est
enflammée, provoquant de nombreuses brûlures, certaines au troisième degré. C’est
pour résister à sa douleur qu’au printemps de cette même année, Michaux, depuis
longtemps attiré par l’aquarelle, a réalisé en quelques semaines une extraordinaire
série d’environ trois-cents images dans lesquelles culmine ce “fantomisme” dont il a
tracé les linéaments depuis quelques années et qui se réaffirme avec la publication de
Passages en 1950. C’est aussi ce même printemps 1948 que Michaux écrit Meidosems,
où l’image-visage de sa femme morte brûlée irradie secrétement la conception de la
plus attachante et la plus visionnaire des peuplades dont il a eu l’imagination. Etres de
fils, de plis, d’âmes, de palpitations et d’effluves, les Meidosems sont les héros ténus,
toujours entraperçus, de cette idée de la peinture à la recherche du fantôme intérieur,
dont l’image du cinéma, dans son paradoxal défilement, a paru alors former pour
Michaux la ligne de fuite et d’abstraction.
Il me revient aussi que quelques années plus tôt, la femme de Michaux, encore
mariée au docteur Ferdière, le futur psychiâtre, à Rodez, d’Antonin Artaud, avait écrit
sous son nom de jeune fille, Marie-Louise Termet, un des deux brefs articles qu’on
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RAYMOND BELLOUR
connaisse d’elle: “Mystère des visages”.9 A l’occasion de sa visite dans un hôpital psychiatrique – on disait alors encore un asile –, confrontée à des malades dont son texte
livre des photos et gravures, elle s’interroge en compagnie d’un ami médecin sur la
question de l’expression des émotions humaines et sur les mots qui seraient susceptibles de les qualifier. Je ne peux m’empêcher de penser que c’est la même femme dont le
visage reviendra dans les plis indistincts des aquarelles de Michaux et dans les photogrammes en combustion de Sharits. Là, le visage, peut-être pour la seule fois sur une
pellicule, donne le sentiment, alors qu’on l’entrevoit de face (ou basculé, dans la logique de l’installation), d’avoir été filmé comme un visage du dedans, le projecteur situé
dans la tête, dans l’épaisseur du corps, et éclairant rétrospectivement tout ce qui
conduit vers lui dans le cinéma.
CINEMATIC PERFORMANCE:
BETWEEN THE HISTRIONIC AND THE QUOTIDIAN
Lesley Stern, University of California - San Diego
A gesture expands into gymnastics,
rage is expressed through a somersault
Eisenstein
[Je remercie pour leur aide Yann Beauvais, Nicole Brenez et Gerald O’Grady]
* Ce texte a été publié en allemand dans le volume collectif: C. Blümlinger, K. Sierek (sous la
dir. de), Das Gesicht im Zeitalter des bewegten Bildes (Wien: Sonderzahl, 2001). Nous remercions les éditeurs de nous avoir autorisé à le republier.
1 F. Bacon, L’Art de l’impossible. Entretiens avec Daniel Sylvester, t. I, (Genève: Skira, 1976), p.
120.
2 H. Michaux, “En pensant au phénomène de la peinture”, in Passages, Œuvres complètes, t. II,
(Paris: Bibl. de la Pléiade) p. 320. Les citations qui suivent figurent pp. 322-323, 325, 321, 329.
3 R. M. Rilke, Les Cahiers de Malte Laurids Brigge, in Œuvres. Prose, trad. par M. Betz (Paris:
Seuil, 1966) p. 535.
4 Par R. Bertelé, Henri Michaux (Paris: Seghers, 1946).
5 H. Michaux, Ailleurs, Œuvres complètes, cit., p. 74.
6 “Entretien avec Paul Sharits”, in J.-C. Lebensztejn, Ecrits sur l’art récent (Paris: Aldines, 1995),
p. 175.
7 “Interview with Paul Sharits and Gary Garrels” (October 1982), dans le catalogue de l’exposition Mediums of Language, Hayden Gallery, Massachussets Institute of Technology,
Cambrige, November 19-December 24, 1982, n. p. (tout l’entretien porte sur cette installation).
8 “Entretien avec Paul Sharits”, op. cit., p. 176.
9 Visages du monde, n° 30 (15 décembre 1935), pp. 231-233.
112
Cinematic performance, let us assume from the outset, is not confined to acting, nor
does it necessarily privilege the human actor. Nevertheless, insofar as my interest in the
topic is fueled by a curiosity about how films move spectators (the affective dimension),
the body remains central to my inquiry. But how can one speak of “the body” in cinema (as though there were only one)? Or how can one ask such a general question as:
“how do films move spectators?” (as though films move uniformly, and as though spectators are all moved in the same way)? Of course one cannot speak in such general
terms: outside culture and history. But perhaps it is possible to delineate a kind of poetics of performance that approaches the aesthetic in theoretical terms (focusing on the
production of sensory affect and knowledge), and is simultaneously alert to historical
and cultural context, to contexts of reception as well as production.
The discipline of performance studies privileges the performing body as object of
study but stresses the fact that the “performance text” always includes the audience.
Work in this area attends not only to the signifying work of the spoken (or sung) text
but also to the way the performing body produces energies and affects, which are registered somatically by the audience. In contrast, film theory for the last thirty years has
concentrated on elaborating the workings of the cinematic apparatus by privileging the
visual dimension, by elaborating the psychic and ideological dimensions of spectatorship. There has been little acknowledgement that to be in an audience is not merely to
see but also to feel, to experience a range of somatic responses; and concomitantly there
has been little attention paid to the element of pathos, that element which eludes
semantic description. I believe that we in film studies can benefit from the work done
by performance theorists, so long as we are wary of the fetishization of presence in that
work. The emphasis in performance studies is always on “aliveness,” on the almost
sacred space and time in which performers and audience are simultaneously present,
and on the energy that is transmitted in live performance. I would argue that this transmission of energy is not specific to live performance, that it can occur in cinema as well,
and, moreover, that it generally relies upon some mode of bodily performance. But the
challenge is to understand how the body in cinema can produce affects and transmit
energy when it is an unreal or fictional body: cut up, dispersed, faded in, spaced out,
speeded up, slowed down. But even while it is insubstantial, ephemeral, it is also indexCINEMA & Cie, no. 2, Spring 2003
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LESLEY STERN
ical of the real, and it is in this tension (between the indexical and the fictional) that
mimetic engagement is generated. The affect produced by cinematic bodies arises out
of an imbrication of acting techniques and cinematic technologies
Contemporary Western performance theory (both film and theatre) mostly remains
locked into an either-or approach as regards the nexus between performativity and
engagement. Traditionally engagement and illusion are ranged on one side (under the
rubric of Stanislavsky) and estrangement and contemplation on the other (under the
rubric of Brecht). My desire is to understand certain cinematic modalities that defy this
either-or categorization, cinematic modalities that have been neglected in contemporary theory, and for which we need to develop a critical vocabulary.
I believe that even in the most linear of films, the most representational, the rhetorical ploys are more diverse and surprising than current theoretical orthodoxy (or the
critical language we have inherited from 1970s theory) allows, and also that the generation and circulation of affect has hardly been understood. Nevertheless, it might be the
case that certain kinds of films, certain kinds of performance modes, might enable us to
articulate new understandings. This also might involve looking at the work of earlier
critics, historians and theorists, as well as investigating both the continuities and discontinuities between early cinema and more contemporary cinematic practices.
In exploring the topic of cinematic performance I have focused on three topoi: movement, gesture, and genre. First: to begin an exploration of movement (bodily movement
in motion pictures) I focus on a particular cinematic trope, the somersault, as it occurs
in a range of films. Second: gesture is of course a huge topic, but it is useful to start
thinking about the history and after-life of gestural regimes in cinema. To focus this
topic I have examined The Tales of Hoffmann (M. Powell and E. Pressburger, 1951).
Third: a very loose genre is constituted by films “about” performance, a genre which I
have tentatively called the “putting on a show” genre, where the show refers not just to
theatre but also to film, television, dance, kung fu… My contention is that the encounter
between different performative regimes and representational systems serves to dramatize enactment itself, not just on a thematic level, through narrative self-reflexivity, but
by making visible the performative, and through registering the performative as a question of affect.
Somersaults
We are watching Blade Runner (R. Scott, 1982). Pris, like a human missile, comes somersaulting straight towards us. One moment she is immobile (in a room full of mechanical and artificial toys, she appears to be a wax doll); the next moment she is galvanized
into life, her body moving at the speed of light. The force of her somersault charges the
air; reconfiguring space and time, her bodily momentum is transmitted and experienced in the auditorium as bodily sensation. My stomach lurches. How, I want to know,
is this affect produced?
It might be instructive at this point to locate Eisenstein’s phrase – “A gesture expands
into gymnastics, rage is expressed through a somersault” – in its original context: his
1934 essay, “Through Theater to Cinema.”1 This is a significant piece of writing because
in it Eisenstein describes those theatrical experiments which brought him to the “brink
of cinema.”2 In orchestrating a stage fight in 1920 he discovered, in a moment of aber114
CINEMATIC PERFORMANCE: BETWEEN THE HISTRIONIC AND THE QUOTIDIAN
rant expressionism, how he could affect the audience directly, and this led to a use of
the fight motif to contrast illusionary acting with “the physical fact of acrobatics.” From
here he started working with oppositional units, all leading to montage.
Eisenstein reminds us (in both his film making and theoretical writings) that intellectual cinema has as its correlate sensory thought or emotional intelligence. In developing an interest in the production of affect through stylized physical gesture he was
influenced by a number of writers and practitioners, including William Carpenter and
Ludwig Klages (as well, of course, as Meyerhold and the Proletkult Theater). Carpenter
was a nineteenth century British physiologist who delineated a phenomenon subsequently named the “Carpenter Effect” – the way in which a person unconsciously mimics the movements of another person whom they are observing, as a kind of physiological reflex. Klages expanded on Carpenter’s research to develop an aesthetic theory of
expressive movement which suggested that images of human bodies in motion could
evoke imitative ideo-motor responses in their observers.3 The influence of such theories on Eisenstein can be understood not in terms of a revelation that a somersault on
screen could evoke somersaults in the audience; rather, he became interested in the way
in which physical gesture and bodily movement could be charged with emotion, and
correlatively, the way in which emotion could be effectively transmitted via a circuit of
bodily affect. Rage, for instance, configured as a stylized gesture, would be experienced
via a somersaulting sensation in the viewer. In order to understand my own involuntary mimetic reaction (and to generalize a little about the moving body in cinema) I
have tried to analyze the imbrication, in the series of somersaults in Blade Runner, of
filmic codes with bodily performance.4
Gestures
Gesture is only one aspect of performance, but it seems to me an entrée, mainly
because it enables simultaneous attention to the somatic (pertaining both to the performer and the audience) and the rhetorical. Gestures are performed individually, but
they are not possessed by individuals. They acquire force and significance through repetition and variation. They are never simply signs – of a singular emotion, or identity,
nor an expression of the soul, but a charting of relations, imagined as well as real, interdiegetic as well as between films and audiences, stars and fans, characters and actors.
While a taxonomy of gestures (itemizing symbolic meanings and attached affects)
does not seem to me very useful (because gestures in cinema are not on the whole so
fixed), there is a way of refining our understanding by situating the gestural function
within the context of three performative modalities (all cast in a dialectical form):
histrionic/quotidian, inflation/deflation, the daily body/the extra-daily body.
The terms quotidian and histrionic serve to delineate two fundamental cinematic
propensities.5 They are not utterly distinct, but rather two impulses always and to varying degrees present in cinema. On the one hand we can say that the cinema, since its
inception, has always had a curiosity about the quotidian, a desire to scrutinize and capture the rhythms and nuances of everyday life; on the other hand, since its inception,
the cinema has been driven by a tendency to theatricalization, by a “properly cinematographic theatricality,”6 by stylization, by processes of semiotic virtuosity. In more
naturalistic cinema the gestural tends towards the utilitarian and quotidian; in more
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histrionic cinema the gestural tends towards the abstract, expressive and stylized. In
both cases gestural inflection has the capacity to move us (viewers) in ways that involve
less semantic cognition than a kind of sensory or bodily apprehension.
The terms inflation and deflation serve to designate cinematic operations, and their
employment signals a shift away from a problematic of representation, and an orientation more towards rhetoric. Inflation involves an ostensive propensity, an exageration
or foregrounding of the cinematic codes (color, editing, camera movement, acting ...);
deflation, on the other hand, involves a playing down of the codes, an intensive, rather
than ostensive, propensity.
The daily body and the extra-daily body do not serve to describe and identify persons,
but rather to distinguish modes of performance. The daily body is also a gestural and
cultural body, imbued with techniques that have been absorbed and learnt and which
are acted out on an unconscious and habitual level. The extra-daily body is differentiated from the daily in the kind and range of techniques and the way they are deployed.
This body has been produced through disciplined training, which enables a particular
deployment of energy, and includes a context: the presence of an audience, and the
marking out of a performance space. Eugenio Barba, from whom I have borrowed these
terms, calls this a “decided” body and he writes, “The actor gives himself [sic] form and
gives form to his message through fiction, by modelling his energy.”7
The Tales of Hoffmann seems to me a wonderful vehicle for exploring performance
since it is at once so histrionic and inflated in its operations and yet so moving.8 This is
precisely because of its imbrication of cinematic codes and actorly codes. It is full of
trickery, extravagant special effects, stylized colour, artificial movement, jump cuts,
magical dissolves that transform the “real” opera into a cinematic phantasmagoria.
André Bazin referred to it as the creation of “an entirely faked universe…a sort of stage
without wings where everything is possible.”9 Elsewhere Bazin argued that the transposition of a piece of theatre to cinema is possible only on the condition that it does not
cause people to forget but rather to safeguard the theatricality of the œuvre.10 We
might say that Tales safeguards the operaticality of its source, but does so through subjecting the opera to certain cinematic operations that we shall name operality: operations, that is, of histrionic cinema. By naturalistic standards acting in this film is unbelievable, and yet the performances are rivetting; that is to say, they have the capacity to
rivet our attention, and incite a mimetic response (kinesthetic duplication rather than
psychological identification). This surely derives from Powell and Pressburger’s decision to use dancers, and in the choreographing of movement to privilege the gestural.
A key to understanding Tales and its histrionic dimension, I argue, lies in a recognition of its genealogy, traced via the evolution of a performative dimension in nineteenth century opera, connecting to some of the tropes of silent cinema, and also to a
certain avant-garde trajectory in the twentieth century that privileges the physical over
the psychological, and the somatic over the semantic in the generation of affect.11 In
the early part of the twentieth century the modernist body began to emerge on the
avant-garde stage, a body trained in techniques that both derived from forms of industrial labour (the Taylorism of Meyerhold) and from the array of physical culture movements and modern dance techniques that were proliferating in Europe.12 Meyerhold
articulates the nature of this new attention to the somatic register: “Just as Wagner
employs the orchestra to convey emotions, I employ plastic movement [...] The essence
of human relationships is determined by gestures, poses, glances and silences…”13
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My suggestion is that we look to the cinema of the divas for an antecedent to the gestural quality of Tales, particularly to a figure like Lyda Borelli. In a film such as Ma
l’amor mio non muore! (M. Caserini, 1913) the inexorability of fate (and attendant sensations of fear, sorrow, yearning) unravels as much through the activity of her little finger, as through plot devices. Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs point out that Borelli’s performance in Ma l’amor mio non muore! is “dependent upon and facilitated by the
lengthy takes and staging in depth which are typical of European cinema [of the time]
more generally.”14 Through extremely detailed analysis they demonstrate that she is
never still, but rather moves very slowly from one pose into the next. They do not ask
(this is not their concern) why and how her gestural modality is so affecting. One of the
reasons is her decided body, which concentrates energy and concentrates our attention,
so that we kinesthetically experience the emotional range being enacted. In particular,
she utilises the technique of contra-posta or recoil. This was a modern technique based
on a dynamic of resistance and yielding; it involved moving into a pose, finding the
point of resistance and leaning out of it, thus concentrating and then redirecting energy. It occurs in a number of places: in the tango and its variations for instance (immortalised by another diva, Asta Nielsen, most famously in her dance in Afgrunden, U. Gad,
1910) and in the teachings of Eisenstein and Meyerhold.15
If we read The Tales of Hoffmann via this genealogy (stressing on the one hand the
process of reading rather than the assertion of direct influence, and on the other hand
the migration of gestures across a more extensive cultural landscape than that contained by the duality of theatre and film) many of the techniques deployed by the performers, Robert Helpman in particular, become legible. Moreover, by examining an
overtly histrionic film like Tales we can actually sharpen our analytic tools for understanding more quotidian gestures in the cinema. Take a figure like James Dean, a supposedly method actor, who adopts deflationary techniques, who reduces the space
between the daily and extra-daily body, who appears to be improvising anew rather
than repeating a repertoire of techniques. But look at Rebel Without a Cause (N. Ray,
1955) and notice how he exploits pathos through the technique of recoil.
Genre
Innumerable films belong to the “putting on a show” genre or group, and they will
not all yield the same insights; the most interesting examples for our purposes will be
those that extend reflexivity beyond the diegesis and actually enact performative
issues. In terms of films about film making, for instance, Stanley Kwan’s Centre Stage
(aka The Actress, 1992) or Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (1996) yield a great deal more than
Truffaut’s La Nuit Américaine (1973). In part this is because they are intertextual and
allusive of film history; they explore different styles of acting rendered through different modes of film making. Like many films dealing with theatre (think of Rivette, or
Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge, 1963) and some dealing with television (The King of
Comedy, M. Scorsese, 1983; and Bamboozled, S. Lee, 2000) they also are implicitly about
film performance.
To facilitate analysis of films within this group, and to understand how narrative and
thematic concerns intermesh with performativity I propose four analytic categories:
thematic motifs, generic tropes, figurative formations, performative modalities.16
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LESLEY STERN
Thematic motifs are grounded in the diegesis. They include: high culture versus low
culture, theatre versus film, disaster versus success, public versus private. Generic
tropes refer to privileged moments, iterative scenarios, dramatic dynamics which,
although embedded in a narrative, have a certain recognizable autonomy as “set
pieces”; their function is rhetorical and generically (rather than narratively) affiliated.
Included in generic tropes are: the big break, the audition, the rehearsal, opening night,
kidnapping, repetition compulsion, performative objects, Springtime (this trope –
short for “Springtime for Hitler” and derived from the ambivalent hit musical number
of that name in The Producers (M. Brooks, 1968) – is a correlative of the thematic motif
of disaster versus success, and it refers to the propensity of these films to invest “bad”
acting, via virtuoso performance, with the power to fascinate and entertain). Figurative
formations refers on the one hand to the range of stock figures – star, celebrity, producer/director, ingénue, understudy, ghost, diva – and on the other hand to the range of
relations that this “cast” enables, and to the emotional tenor of these relations: admiration, love, erotic energy, emulation, envy, revenge… Performative modalities include
three already mentioned – histrionic/quotidian, inflation/deflation, the daily body/the
extra-daily body – as well as on-stage/off-stage, on screen/off-screen, acting/not acting,
actor/role, stage/screen (which maps onto theatre versus film), self/other,
performer/audience.
To give a very brief indication of how these tropes are mobilized and transformed I
shall look at two pairings: 42nd Street (L. Bacon, 1933) and The Band Wagon (V.
Minnelli, 1953); and All About Eve (J. L. Mankievicz, 1950) and Opening Night (J.
Cassavetes, 1977).
42nd Street, as a musical and a backstage drama, introduces many of the features of
the “putting on a show” genre: the ingénue, the big break, an on-stage/off-stage and performer/audience dialectic, and the stage/screen dynamic. Mostly the film respects the
theatrical stage as the locus of performance, the stage is contained by the film frame,
and through this process of duplication we, the film viewers, are positioned as analogous to the intradiegetic stage audience. The narrative moves from audition to rehearsal to the anticipation of opening night, in the course of which the diva (Bebe Daniels)
twists her ankle, and the ingénue gets her big break, her man and stardom. The film
concludes with the opening night of the stage show. But this opening, choreographed
by Busby Berkeley, is unlike any stage show we have seen. In an unheralded and startling move the camera abandons all pretense of emulating the stage audience’s point of
view, and gives us a purely cinematic perspective and construction. The conjunction of
cinematic technology and performing bodies gives us not the opening night of a stage
show, but cinematic performativity at its most sensational. In its final 42nd Street does
not represent a stage show; it enacts the cinema’s capacity to transport us through
space, to take us, via bodily sensation, out of our own bodies.
Twenty years later, in The Band Wagon characters can sing and dance off the stage.
The stage is not invoked through proscenium shots (as it was initially in 42nd Street).
Theatricalization of the cinema, at which Minnelli excelled, is achieved through other
means: through the articulation of performing bodies and stylized mise en scène, for
instance. The celebrated “Dancing in the Dark” number, is the inverse of Busby
Berkeley: a duet, intimate, lyrical. Representationally it evokes the quotidian – one
evening Fred and Cyd escape their professional lives (and the trouble they are having
meshing two different performative modes) and take a horsedrawn carriage into
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Central Park. But this quotidian is rendered in an inflationary manner. That is, the cinematic codes are heightened (the lighting which gives a fairybook blue to the night, the
sets, the painted skyline), the extra-diegetic music (“Dancing in the Dark”). The public
and private and on-stage/off-stage tropes are animated here for both narrative and performative purposes. But none of this quite explains what is so magical about the scene.
I think it is because of the enactment of the difference between the quotidian and the
histrionic, demonstrated through a transition from the daily to the extra daily body.
Put simply it is the tension between walking and dancing. The “stars” alight from the
carriage and walk towards a dance pavilion. They walk through the dancing couples;
others dance, they walk, but they begin to walk in time, a lilting walk, almost a glide.
Entering into a blue glade there is a moment – almost invisible, undecipherable – when
the walk turns into a dance. This moment is rhymed by the ending of the dance with
the step back into the carriage. When I watch this sequence, though sitting in the theatre, I feel as though my own body has been liberated from its quotidian solidity, is quietly soaring into another dimension.
All About Eve is a backstage classic: it takes many of the features of the genre and
twists them. Bette Davis plays a mid-century diva, who makes every gesture matter,
taking up the frame, declaring “I like to act.”17 But, in terms of the diegesis, she is under
threat. The film deploys many of the features of the genre I have outlined, but with a
series of twists and inversions. The ingénue figure (Eve), who is also a fan, insinuates
herself into the life of the star she so adores and emulates, becomes her understudy,
studies her every move, gets her big break (through arranging for the star to be kidnapped), takes the star’s place, and becomes a star herself. At the end of the film a new
figure appears in Eve’s dressing room, a young ingénue … The process will be repeated.
And indeed it is, or at least is continued, in Opening Night. The emotions of mimeticism turn to envy, malevolence, revenge (the malevolent fan is mobilized in King of
Comedy,18 which also elaborates the kidnapping motif, given further fascinating
twists in Bamboozled and another film about film making, Cecil B. Demented [J.
Waters, 2000]). The fan (dressed just as Eve was in the beginning of All About Eve) turns
up at the stage door in beginning of Opening Night – as part of a mob besieging the
great actress Myrtle Gordon, played by Gena Rowlands. Shortly after this the fan is hit
by a car and killed. She returns as a ghost, a malevolent ghost with whom Rowlands has
to do battle, as she struggles to find a way to play, on stage, a part she finds unsympathetic. Myrtle is haunted, but the ghost has a materiality (on occasion she is embodied
by an actress), and the struggles are extremely violent, visceral, shockingly affective. I
have a feeling that Opening Night is a paradigmatic text for this study (even though it
is still an experimental and exploratory study) because the way it mobilizes the
daily/extra-daily body and the theatre/film modalities demonstrates that even while
the cinematic body is insubstantial, ephemeral, it is also indexical of the real, and it is
in this tension (between the indexical and the fictional) that mimetic engagement is
generated.
1 S. Eisenstein, “Through Theatre to Cinema” (1934), in J. Leyda (ed.), Film Form; trans. by J.
Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), p. 7. I have to admit to taking liberties
here – Eisenstein only mentions the somersault in passing, but it is a charged phrase, and like
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
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the movement itself it flies through the air, tumbles through space, escaping the static page.
It is, I believe, a significant mention.
Ibid., p. 8.
I am grateful to Miriam Hansen, Adam Daniel and Yuri Tsivian for drawing my attention to
the “Carpenter Effect” and the influence of Carpenter and Klages on Eisenstein.
L. Stern, “I Think Sebastian, Therefore I… Somersault: Film and the Uncanny,” Paradoxa, vol.
3, nos. 3-4 (1998), pp. 348-366.
L. Stern, “Paths That Wind Through the Thickets of Things,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 1
(Fall 2001), pp. 317-354.
Deleuze discusses the notion of a “properly cinematographic theatricality” and “a theatricality of cinema totally distinct from the theatricality of the theatre (even when cinema uses it
as a reference).” He is interested in what happens to various theatrical tropes, bodily postures,
modes of delivery and voicing when they are “borrowed” from the theatre, but deployed differently by the cinema. He argues that the very substance of cinema, as a technology with its
own potential for articulating the temporality of bodily presence (as it subsists and moves in
time), produces a new theatricality with specific affects. See G. Deleuze, Cinema 2: The TimeImage, trans. by H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (London: The Athlone Press, 1989), p. 83.
E. Barba, Beyond the Floating Islands (New York: PAJ, 1986), p. 94.
L. Stern, “The Tales of Hoffmann: An Instance of Operality,” in J. Joe, T. Rose (eds.), Between
Opera and Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 39-57.
A. Bazin, Radio-Cinéma-Télévision (July 1951), cited in “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” AvantScène, Opera and Cinema, no. 360 (May 1987), p. 70.
A. Bazin, “Theatre and Cinema,” in What is Cinema?, vol. 1, selected and trans. by H. Gray
(Berkeley - Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), p. 117.
I do not mean to flatten out the heterogeneous range of performative modalities existing in
early cinema, particularly as manifested in different national cinemas, but also across genres
and sometimes within single films.
And indeed in Hollywood too. American modern dance developed in California, along with
film. Body awareness was often considered more important than a background in theatre.
Lillian Gish, for instance, attended the Denishawn school of dance and Ruth St Denis choreographed the Babylon sequences in Intolerance (D. W. Griffith, 1916), which were copied by
De Mille in Male and Female (C.B. De Mille, 1919). See C. Olsson, “Moving Bodies,” Aura: Film
Studies Journal, vol. 4, no. 1 (1998), p. 78.
V. Meyerhold, Meyerhold on Theatre, ed. and trans. by E. Braun (London-New York: Methuen,
1969), p. 56.
B. Brewster, L. Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 111-12.
For the tango see Y. Tsivian: Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1998), pp. 46-7; and “Russia, 1913: Cinema in the Cultural Landscape,”
in R. Abel (ed.), Silent Film, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), pp. 203-208. For
recoil see A. Law, M. Gordon, Meyerhold, Eisenstein and Biomechanics: Actor Training in
Revolutionary Russia (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1996); and M. Iampolski, “Rakurs
and Recoil,” Aura: Film Studies Journal, vol. 4, no. 1 (1998), pp. 4-15. I am grateful to Yuri
Tsivian for illuminating discussions on this topic.
L. Stern, “Putting on a Show or The After-life of Gestures,” (July 2000); issue of the on-line film
journal, Senses of Cinema: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/.
François Regnault uses this phrase in discussing Robert De Niro, in whom he detects “an
inner jubilation.” See F. Regnault, “Plaidoyer Pro Niro,” Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 286 (March
1978), pp. 49-51.
18 I discuss De Niro’s histrionic disposition in “Acting Out of Character: The King of Comedy as
a Histrionic Text,” in L. Stern, G. Kouvaros (eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and
Performance (Sydney: Power, 1999), pp. 277-305; and also in L. Stern, The Scorsese Connection
(London-Bloomington: BFI-Indiana University Press, 1995), particularly Chapter Six.
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APPROCHE DE LA RECEPTION PAR LA TRIADE “PROGRAMMATION - PRESSE - CENSURE”
APPROCHE DE LA RECEPTION PAR LA TRIADE “PROGRAMMATION PRESSE - CENSURE”
Importance de sortir d’une approche centrée sur la production et sur les longs
métrages de fiction
Gianni Haver, Université de Lausanne
Dans un pays comme la Suisse, où le nombre de films de long métrage produits
annuellement ne dépasse jamais la quinzaine, et dans le contexte d’un conflit très
médiatisé comme la Seconde Guerre mondiale, une part importante de la représentation immédiate de la guerre passe par le cinéma, et est proposée directement par les belligérants. Cela impose de sortir d’une approche centrée sur la production nationale. En
effet, lorsque nous déplaçons la problématique au niveau de l’entier du spectacle cinématographique dans un lieu donné, les questions portent avant tout sur l’offre cinématographique, qui comprend bien évidemment des œuvres d’origines multiples. L’angle
d’approche n’est alors pas seulement celui qui vise à saisir une société à travers sa production de films, mais aussi celui qui veut comprendre la place du cinéma en tant que
média dans une société donnée. Dans les recherches sur le cinéma, on a longtemps et
abondamment privilégié une source particulière: le long métrage de fiction. En revanche, les actualités cinématographiques, les courts métrages, les documentaires, le cinéma publicitaire, le cinéma didactique n’ont pas, ou peu, été pris en considération. Seules
les actualités filmées ont fait ci et là l’objet d’études particulières, mais elles ont été traités de manière isolée comme “objet à part”. Or, une séance de projection pendant la
période des années 1930 à 1940 comporte souvent un ciné-journal, parfois plusieurs, et
un court métrage, en plus évidemment du long métrage. La projection des actualités
nationales est même obligatoire dans certains pays, et pas seulement dans des régimes
autoritaires comme l’Italie ou l’Allemagne: le Ciné-journal suisse doit être présenté
dans les salles de la Confédération dès 1940 et pour toute la durée de la guerre. Il existe
même des établissements spécialisés qui composent leurs programmes uniquement
avec des actualités et des courts métrages. Notre optique oblige à prendre en compte
toutes sortes de films et à établir à la fois leur importance quantitative (selon les titres,
l’origine, le nombre de passages dans les salles, le succès) et qualitative (les débats dans
la presse, les critiques, les interventions de censure, les éventuelles prises de position
d’associations ou de partis politiques). Les difficultés pour répertorier leur passage sur
les écrans et identifier la composition des projections sont considérables: les publicités
et les communiqués dans les journaux ne citent pas tous les films et, lorsqu’ils le font,
souvent on ne trouve que le titre d’exploitation, donnée généralement insuffisante
pour les identifier. Les ciné-journaux sont plus faciles à reconnaître, à la fois par l’attention que la censure leur accorde et par le fait que leur origine est, usuellement, d’emblée annoncée dans les journaux. Certes le long métrage de fiction reste un objet d’étude privilégié: les émetteurs de discours que nous avons observés s’expriment le plus
souvent sur ce type de productions. De plus, comme les fictions constituent la principale attraction des séances, elles sont systématiquement mises en exergue dans la publicité. Dans le cadre qui nous intéresse, cela nous a permis de repérer la quasi-totalité des
projections. Un tel inventaire est impossible pour les autres genres de films.
Cet article est issu d’un travail de doctorat qui portait sur un cas spécifique: le cinéma dans le canton du Vaud pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.1 Nous allons présenter ici quelques éléments du cadre méthodologique.
Notre position de principe est de porter l’interrogation sur la question de la réception. Cette dernière a souvent été confinée à l’étude des seuls articles de presse: nous
proposons de l’appuyer sur la triade “programmation – presse – censure”. Faute de
disposer d’une fantomatique parole “spectatorielle”, cette méthode permet de cerner
ce qui organise et détermine la réception.
L’objet d’étude est donc le discours qui se développe autour des films et non seulement les films en eux-mêmes. Il est néanmoins clair qu’il n’est pas envisageable, dans
une approche historienne, d’isoler la réception du contexte complexe de sa production. Ainsi, il est nécessaire de sonder les structures sur lesquelles ce discours repose
et qui participent inévitablement à le déterminer: la législation sur le cinéma, l’organisation et les caractéristiques du réseau de salles, l’organisation professionnelle du
secteur, le fonctionnement des commissions de censure, l’espace réservé au cinéma
dans la presse ainsi que l’autonomie de celle-ci, et l’organisation des maisons de distribution.
Au travers de l’étude de ces procédures de présentation, d’autorisation et d’explicitation, l’analyse des discours engendrés par les films va permettre de révéler les mécanismes qui sont à la base d’une logique de légitimation et de hiérarchisation de certaines positions idéologiques.
Ce travail sur le discours nous a permis de mettre en évidence des attitudes vis-à-vis
du conflit et des pays qui y sont engagés. L’étude des opinions émises sur les films de
différentes provenances est très révélatrice d’états d’esprit face aux belligérants.
L’approche que nous avons choisie nous permet de conduire une interrogation panoramique de la neutralité suisse, au-delà des déclarations officielles.
Quelle attitude la censure a-t-elle adoptée face à l’importation des diverses productions cinématographiques étrangères? En parallèle, comment la critique de presse vat-elle accueillir les films qui prennent ostensiblement position? Et le public? Sait-on
comment il a réagi à la propagande de guerre? Ces différentes réactions entrent-elles
en contradiction entre elles ou face au discours des autorités politiques?
Nous partons donc du principe que le discours sur le cinéma est révélateur d’un
point de vue plus large. D’autre part, le film de fiction fait parler: la presse commente
avec moins de retenue un film sur le conflit que le bulletin de guerre d’un pays. Le
cinéma autorise la critique.
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Offre et environnement cinématographiques
Les films en circulation dans une société et à une époque données (dans notre cas le
canton de Vaud pendant les années de 1939 à 1945) composent l’offre cinématographi123
GIANNI HAVER
que, qui participe à la formation de l’imaginaire des spectateurs. La composition de l’offre cinématographique est délimitée par différents facteurs. Dans un premier temps, les
films sont soumis à des impératifs législatifs, de censure, économiques, d’approvisionnement, de goûts culturels, de mœurs, etc. Tous ces éléments font que certains films
sont projetés, d’autres interdits, d’autres encore ne sont pas importés et, enfin, certains,
bien que disponibles sur le marché, ne sont pas choisis par les exploitants.
Les films introduits dans un marché s’intègrent dans un contexte particulier, ils doivent forcément interagir avec celui-ci. Ainsi un film a un impact différent selon la salle
où il est projeté, les critiques qu’il reçoit, la publicité dont il fait l’objet. La quantité et la
qualité des salles, la place que les journaux donnent à la critique et à la publicité des
films, l’existence d’une presse spécialisée, le recours à des projections dans des lieux d’éducation ou de socialisation, sont des éléments déterminants. Tout film projeté dans un
pays n’est pas nécessairement accessible à chacun, chacune. Ainsi, des lieux de projection particuliers ont parfois un public bien défini: en Suisse nous avons pu repérer les
projections pour les communautés étrangères,2 pour les écoliers, pour les soldats, pour
les membres de partis politiques, etc. Ces systèmes fragmentent le grand public des
cinémas commerciaux en des sous-publics parfois très différents les uns des autres.
Nous considérons que les limites qui déterminent l’offre et les éléments qui l’intègrent
au contexte composent l’environnement cinématographique.
Se confronter à une approche de la réception
Le grand muet reste malencontreusement le spectateur. Nous n’avons qu’occasionnellement accès à des fragments infimes de ses réactions: quelques sondages organisés par
des revues, des rapports de police sur des comportements en salle ou encore un commentaire dans la presse. Le public laisse d’autres questions sans réponse: quelle est la fréquentation par genre et par classe sociale? Quelles sont les préférences de ces catégories?
Comment varie la fréquentation des salles? On imagine que pour une durée de programmation identique, dans un même local, deux films peuvent connaître des afflux
très différents. Notre approche de la programmation permet de récolter quelques informations sur les succès de certains films. Un titre maintenu à l’affiche pendant plusieurs
semaines, et qui fait l’objet de plusieurs reprises pendant des saisons successives, est forcément apprécié par le public. Certes, de tels constats ne permettent pas de dire si le succès est dû à un intérêt lié à l’actualité, à un enthousiasme esthétique, artistique ou à la
recherche d’un divertissement. Nous ne pouvons mesurer précisément les échecs avec
cette méthode: la programmation d’un film pendant une seule semaine peut cacher une
mauvaise affaire pour l’exploitant comme une opération commerciale respectable. De
même, nous pouvons imaginer que des titres qui marchent soient malgré tout retirés de
l’affiche parce que d’autres engagements ont été pris par l’exploitant avec le distributeur.
Nous avons dit que notre approche va privilégier la production de discours motivés
par les films plutôt que l’analyse de films. Or, ces discours émergent avant tout dans
trois lieux. Le plus évident et le plus visible est celui de la critique cinématographique.
Les études sur la réception ont souvent avantagé cette source même si d’aucuns ont
émis des réserves en raison du décalage qui existerait entre l’expression d’une minorité
cultivée – les critiques – et un spectacle de masse.3 De notre point de vue, elle figure forcément au premier rang, mais il est nécessaire de la confronter aux autres discours rete124
nus. Le deuxième lieu est occupé par le discours des autorités qui passe par le canal des
décisions de la censure. Enfin, le dernier lieu d’expression est celui de la programmation, qui répond à des règles commerciales avant tout, même si d’autres éléments viennent influencer ce champ. Ces émetteurs sont les porte-parole des élites culturelles,
politiques et économiques. Leurs discours sont en conséquence orientés par les classes
dirigeantes, ce d’autant plus que pendant la période que nous avons choisie les lieux
d’expression d’opposition sont pratiquement éliminés, ou en tous cas mis sous contrôle. En Suisse, les journaux de la gauche se réclamant de la IIIe Internationale sont interdits, et la censure veille au grain pour ceux qui continuent à paraître.
Deux de nos sources principales – la critique et la censure – ont des caractéristiques
communes avec des objectifs totalement différents. L’une comme l’autre ont pour technique de passer en revue les réalisations et de produire un jugement au cas par cas. Dans
le canton de Vaud, la censure est moins prolifique que la critique, puisqu’elle ne visionne pas chaque film en circulation. L’autre point commun est une manière de s’exprimer
sur le film qui intègre des jugements d’ordre artistique et qualitatif; cela peut étonner
de la part de la censure, mais comme des journalistes et des artistes font partie de la
commission de contrôle, ce n’est finalement pas surprenant. Il n’est d’ailleurs pas rare
de trouver dans les procès-verbaux de cet organisme un développement d’ordre esthétique plus important que l’exposé des raisons qui motivent l’autorisation ou l’interdiction. La critique, quant à elle, est certainement soumise à des contraintes d’ordre commercial, voire de ligne rédactionnelle, mais il est difficile d’en mesurer l’importance.
Les commentaires de presse forment un discours par définition destiné à être rendu
public, contrairement à celui de la censure qui s’adresse aux autorités. En effet, dans le
canton de Vaud, seule la décision finale est rendue publique, et non les procès-verbaux.
Les quelques lignes qui accompagnent la décision avancent parfois des arguments bien
différents de ceux qui l’ont réellement motivée. Les deux modes de discours (presse et
censure) sont donc à la fois comparables et complémentaires.
Quelques résultats de l’étude de cas
Les choix de programmations, les articles dans la presse et les déterminations de la censure forment les principales traces du discours produit sur le cinéma. Une étude de ces
trois producteurs nous apporte-t-elle des informations représentatives d’un état d’esprit
largement partagé? Il est difficile de répondre de manière catégorique, mais nous pouvons
avancer quelques hypothèses. En consultant la plupart des journaux s’exprimant sur le
cinéma, nous avons pu mettre en évidence diverses constantes que nous avons ensuite
confrontées à la position de la censure et au comportement des spectateurs.
Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, plus encore qu’au cours des précédents conflits,
le cinéma devient une arme idéologique incontournable. En Suisse, entremêlés avec les
productions usuelles, drames ou comédies, on peut voir des films qui parlent plus ou
moins directement du conflit. Les grandes productions spectaculaires, les documentaires, les actualités filmées se croisent dans les salles obscures suisses offrant au spectateur une panoplie de discours et un kaléidoscope d’images de guerre. Le fait qu’à Berne
une censure militaire fédérale soit à l’œuvre pour surveiller ces importations et protéger le pays des films considérés dangereux n’empêche pas la diffusion d’œuvres clairement propagandistes, qui sont parfois même accompagnées d’un important battage
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GIANNI HAVER
publicitaire. Cependant, la bataille idéologique n’est pas l’apanage des films de guerre,
elle est menée aussi par le biais d’œuvres qui sous l’apparence de pur divertissement
charrient d’autres modes de pensée et de conception de la société. Enfin, les actualités
filmées, véritable fer de lance de la propagande en raison de leur discours explicite et de
leur régularité, font l’objet d’une attention révélatrice. Les Suisses seront parmi les rares
spectateurs qui, au cours des événements, pourront suivre en parallèle la production
cinématographique de l’Axe et des Alliés. Autrement dit, par les films, et loin des
champs de bataille, les puissances belligérantes s’affrontent aussi sur les écrans suisses.
Ce terrain s’offre donc à la confrontation, au jugement et aux critiques des producteurs potentiels de discours, qui ont devant les yeux plusieurs versions du conflit. Ces
versions sont certes choisies, coupées, édulcorées par la censure fédérale, mais elles restent néanmoins visibles. En contrepartie, la production nationale, dans le secteur fondamental des longs métrages de fiction, est une faillite au plan de sa présence sur les
écrans vaudois: elle ne parvient jamais à un niveau déterminant et reste marginale du
début à la fin. Les faibles moyens que l’État attribue au cinéma sont dirigés vers la réalisation de documentaires et d’un ciné-journal national. Des longs métrages de fiction
provenant de Suisse alémanique, ceux qui arrivent sur les écrans vaudois ont presque
toujours un lien avec l’actualité. Ceux-ci, unis à certains sujets du Ciné-journal suisse,
ainsi qu’aux documentaires, font que la représentation de la mobilisation, de l’armée et
du contexte de guerre vue par les Suisses est tout de même tangible; elle véhicule souvent l’idée d’une Suisse comme une oasis dans la tempête et une terre d’accueil qui
nourrira les mythes nationaux de l’après-guerre. Parfois, le cinéma suisse montre la
confrontation armée (Marie-Louise, Die letzte Chance, L’Oasis dans la tourmente, pour
ne citer que des fictions). Dans ces cas, les caméras se rangent toujours du côté des
Alliés. Mais ce ne sont des fragments d’images, car la vision cinématographique de la
guerre vient essentiellement de l’étranger.
La représentation allemande du conflit sort surtout des actualités UFA plus difficilement des longs métrages de fiction. À l’inverse, les fictions du camp allié, voire de
l’Italie, forment une part importante du corpus des images de la guerre. Selon notre
étude, il apparaît immédiatement que la vision des bandes d’actualités induit une attitude qui se distingue fortement de celle qui prévaut devant les fictions. La vision d’un
ciné-journal semble se fonder sur un pacte communicatif dans lequel le spectateur est
conscient de l’origine du discours. D’ailleurs la censure fédérale émet des directives afin
que la nationalité soit clairement annoncée et que les numéros de ciné-journaux restent
projetés dans leur montage original. État d’esprit qui devrait conduire à adopter un
comportement relativement distant, comme on pourrait le faire en temps de guerre
devant toute source d’informations dont l’émetteur est bien identifié. Par contre, par sa
nature même, le long métrage de fiction implique davantage le spectateur par des effets
d’identification: la guerre regardée à travers un film de fiction ou à travers une actualité filmée n’a pas le même statut. Enfin, le film principal est vu, de manière générale, sur
la base d’un choix. C’est bien moins le cas pour les actualités puisqu’elles sont projetées
en complément (sauf dans des salles spécialisées). Partant de ce constat, nous pourrions
interpréter le succès de telle ou telle autre fiction comme révélateur de l’attitude (des
sympathies, entre autres) du Vaudois pour le pays en guerre représenté, mais il apparaît
que des thèmes transversaux sont très appréciés par le public local, et cela quelle que
soit l’origine du film. Ainsi les tracas et les angoisses du front interne, tout comme le
quotidien des civils dans les pays en guerre, semblent émouvoir le spectateur. Cela
126
expliquerait le succès des deux films d’origines différentes, mais ressemblants sous certains aspects, Mrs. Miniver (W. Wyler, 1942) et Die große Liebe (R. Hansen, 1942).
Pendant la période du conflit, la fiction de guerre allemande est pratiquement absente des écrans vaudois, bien que de tels films figurent sur les listes des distributeurs allemands en Suisse, comme U-Boote westwärts (G. Rittau, 1941) et Wunschkonzert (F.
Lützkendorf, E. von Borsody, 1940) ou Kampfgeschwader Lützow (H. Bertram, 1941). La
langue ne pose pas de problème majeur pour les films de guerre américains, ni pour les
productions suisses allemandes sur la mobilisation, projetés en version sous-titrée; ce
n’est donc pas uniquement la caractéristique linguistique qui motiverait la mise à l’écart des fictions de guerre allemandes. Celle-ci peut s’expliquer par une certaine hostilité de la population vaudoise pour la guerre conduite par l’Allemagne nazie. Cela ne
vaut que pour les films représentant directement la guerre. En effet, les réalisations
considérées idéologiquement importantes par le régime hitlérien, comme Mutterliebe
(G. Ucicky, 1939), Robert Koch, der Bekämpfer des Todes (H. Steinhoff, 1939) ou
Annelie, die Geschichte eines Lebens (J. von Baky, 1941), ayant obtenu auprès du
Ministère allemand de la propagande les “prédicats” les plus élevés, sont projetées, et de
plus bénéficient d’un accueil favorable de la critique et du public. Quant à la censure
cantonale, elle n’a même pas pris la précaution de les visionner.
Pour marginale que soit la production soviétique, elle provoque une attitude de la critique et de la censure située à l’exact opposé: dès qu’il s’agit de montrer la guerre et les
défaites de l’Axe, ce qui n’est possible qu’après l’été 1944 pour des raisons de censure
fédérale, la critique applaudit, sitôt que ce sont des arguments idéologiques ou moraux,
la méfiance est de rigueur. On craint l’Allemagne comme un envahisseur potentiel. En
revanche, certaines dimensions de l’idéologie nazie, lorsqu’elles intègrent des valeurs
traditionnelles bourgeoises, sont parfaitement acceptées. En résumé, c’est la glorification de la machine de guerre allemande qui déclenche des réactions hostiles. Ce n’est
pas un hasard si les actualités UFA provoquent des sifflements de désapprobation dans
les salles, des lettres de protestation adressées aux autorités, ou encore des articles
outrés dans la presse. L’attitude pour l’autre pays voisin engagé du côté de l’Axe est encore plus parlante. Les films réalisés en Italie, même lorsqu’ils sont porteurs d’une idéologie fasciste flagrante et remarquée par la censure, comme Scipione l’africano (C.
Gallone, 1937) ne déclenchent aucune opposition réelle, d’autres sont même de grands
succès, comme L’Assedio dell’Alcazar (A. Genina, 1940). Contrairement à l’Allemagne,
la menace militaire de l’Italie fasciste est perçue comme très éloignée: ainsi nombre de
films qui montrent la guerre sont accueillis les bras ouverts par les critiques et le public,
alors que la censure ne bronche pas.
Entre 1939 et 1945, la guerre sur les écrans vaudois a provoqué des réactions qui dévoilent une antipathie pour les faits d’armes de l’Allemagne et, en parallèle, souligné une
proximité ressentie pour l’engagement militaire des Alliés. Par contre, pour les valeurs
morales exprimées par les réalisations françaises (d’avant l’Occupation) et américaines,
le ton est plus souvent à la condamnation – pour ne pas parler des soviétiques – que lorsqu’il est question de productions fascistes ou nazies. La prétendue immoralité décelée
dans les productions françaises du “réalisme poétique”, si souvent imprégnées par le climat du Front populaire, la prudence vis-à-vis de comédies sociales américaines ou encore la barrière dressée a priori devant les films soviétiques4 n’ont pas trouvé d’équivalent
dans l’accueil des films des pays de l’Axe ou de la France de Vichy.
Ce discours qui montre une réticence aux pratiques belliqueuses de l’Allemagne
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GIANNI HAVER
nazie, en même temps qu’il dévoile une proximité avec certaines valeurs idéologiques,
peut paraître étrange. Nous avons mis en évidence que les producteurs de ce discours se
placent essentiellement dans les rangs de la droite bourgeoise. Cette même droite
imprégnée et fortement conditionnée par les valeurs de la politique de “défense spirituelle”5. Divers historiens, après les travaux de Werner Möckli ont mis en avant comment “l’idéologie de la ‘résistance’ avait véhiculé également des stéréotypes nationalistes assez proches de l’idéologie que l’on entendait combattre”.6 Cette ambiguïté porte à
partager des valeurs qui sont célébrées dans les cinématographies de l’Allemagne nazie,
de l’Italie fasciste et de la France pétainiste, et pour autant n’empêche pas de s’enthousiasmer pour la propagande de guerre anglo-américaine.
1 G. Haver, Le Spectacle cinématographique dans le canton de Vaud, 1939-1945, Thèse de doctorat (Université de Lausanne, 2000). Ce travail sera publié aux éditions Payot, Lausanne, sous
le titre Les Lueurs de la guerre: le spectacle cinématographique dans le canton de Vaud, 19391945.
2 Les communautés allemandes et italiennes sont très bien organisées et numériquement les
plus importantes. Pendant la guerre, elles négocient avec les autorités suisses la possibilité de
projeter pour leurs ressortissants des films de propagande dont certains sont interdits sur le
territoire helvétique. Le nombre de ces projections est loin d’être anecdotique. Je me suis intéressé au cas italien dans l’article “Les Réseaux de pénétration du cinéma fasciste en Suisse
(1924 – 1943)” in M. Tortajada, Fr. Albera (sous la dir. de), Cinéma suisse: nouvelles approches
(Lausanne: Payot, 2000), pp. 111-122. Pour un survol général du cinéma en Suisse pendant la
guerre voir mon article “Images de guerre sur les écrans suisses” in G. Haver, La Suisse, les
alliés et le cinéma (Lausanne: Antipodes, 2001), pp. 71-87.
3 A ce propos voir J. Daniel, Guerre et cinéma (Paris: A. Colin/FNSP), p. 19; S. Lindeperg, Les
Ecrans de l’ombre. La Seconde Guerre mondiale dans le cinéma français (1944 – 1969) (Paris:
CNRS, 1997), p. 14.
4 Les films soviétiques étaient interdits d’office dans le canton de Vaud, il appartenait à l’exploitant de motiver sa demande pour obtenir une éventuelle autorisation. Traitement qui n’était appliqué à aucune autre production étrangère.
5 La politique de “défense spirituelle” suisse était destinée à protéger le pays des idéologies
étrangères; elle est mise en place dans la deuxième moitié des années 1930 et se traduit par un
repli sur les valeurs nationales.
6 Propos de D. Bourgeois sur la thèse de W. Möckli, Schweizergeist – Landgeist?: Das schweizerische Selbstverständnis beim Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Zürich: Polygraphischer
Verlag, 1973); in Business helvétique et Troisième Reich. Milieux d’affaires, politique étrangère, antisémitisme (Lausanne: Page deux, 1998), p. 29. Au sujet de ce même débat, on consultera avec profit les travaux de H.-U. Jost, notamment Le Salaire des neutres. Suisse 1938-1948
(Paris: Denoël, 1999) – et, pour une autre interprétation, les ouvrages d’A. Lasserre, Suisse des
années sombres (Lausanne: Payot, 1989).
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OPPOSITE OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS? WHAT DO RUDOLF
ARNHEIM AND MICHEL CHION HAVE IN COMMON?
Frances Guerin, Kent University at Canterbury
Artistic media combine […] as separate and complete structural forms. The theme to be
expressed by a song, for instance, is given in the words of the text and again, in another
manner, in the sounds of the music. Both elements conform to each other in such a way as
to create the unity of the whole, but their separateness remains evident, nevertheless.1
Like the music and lyrics of a song, Rudolf Arnheim maintains that even when
deployed together, image and sound should retain their respective integrity and separateness as sensory phenomena. This claim is born of his notion that sound and image
are two distinct media, as “separate and complete structural forms.” Furthermore, it is
only when the two media are distinct from one another that the work constitutes art.
In line with Lessing’s distinction between the visual arts and literature, sound and the
moving image engage their audiences in different sensory experiences, the aural and
visual respectively. In direct contrast to Arnheim’s theories of sound film, fifty years
later Michel Chion maintains that the cinema is defined by its marriage of sound and
image, that the two belong together in an interdependent relationship of creativity. For
Chion the ultimate goal of sound-image relations in the cinema is a utopian state analogous to the symbiotic relationship between mother and child in the womb.2 Chion
argues that the sound film is unique due to its eternal striving for this unity, a unity it
will however never fully realize because of the inevitable physical separation of sound
and image. For Arnheim, this separation is the sound film’s greatest weakness and for
Chion it is its creative force. Chion recognizes that while the sound and image tracks
are materially distant (sound is recorded with a different mechanism, exhibited
through speakers that are physically removed from the screen, and so on), they are, and,
in the sound cinema’s most outstanding examples, should be, experienced in perfect
sensorial unison. Similarly, the two theorists are opposed in their assessment of the
intrinsic worth of sound film. On the one hand, Arnheim is so damning that it is impossible for sound film to be considered art. Chion, on the other hand, celebrates the possibilities of sound film: it is a highly sophisticated and complex audiovisual medium.
While on the surface these two conceptions may appear radically opposed to one
another, on closer inspection they are surprisingly compatible. They are both driven by
the same premises: they are based on similar conceptions of cinema as a unique perceptual experience. And in both cases, this experience is marked as unique by the fact
that the cinema does not merely duplicate reality. For both Arnheim and Chion cinema
also presents a distinct art form. To achieve this distinction cinema must use the intrinsic properties of its medium. Lastly, both reject the notion that the coming of sound in
1927 ushered in a critical shift in film aesthetics.3
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FRANCES GUERIN
In recent years Chion’s work on film sound has been the subject of respect and analysis within Anglo-American film studies. It has been praised for its “fresh and rigorous
thinking about the complex relations between sound and image,”4 its offer of “new
ways to think about structures and effects of audio-visual experience”5 and its attention
to a hitherto neglected area of film criticism. Rudolf Arnheim’s 1938 theory of talking
pictures however is often dismissed on the basis of its naivety and conservatism.6 More
usually, Anglo-American works on the history of film-sound theory ignore Arnheim’s
work altogether. In this article I argue that despite the superficial polarities, in their
common search for a perceptual experience of a cinematic reality, Anheim and Chion
produce complementary theories. It is only due to the disparity of the respective historical moments within which they write that the two theories assume such discordant
attitudes toward the sound film. Chion conceives optimistically of an artistic, “adventurous” sound cinema. And it is only due to developments in viewing conditions and
available technologies for film production that he is able to excavate, theorize and celebrate the complexity of sound-image film relations. In turn, Arnheim’s pessimism
about the future of sound film is undergirded by the limitations of sound technology in
its earliest days, the historical moment in which he was writing. If we strip away
Arnheim’s and Chion’s dependence on their respective historical moments, the two theories are, I would argue, congruous. I want to draw attention to this congruity as a way
of challenging our rush both to denigrate the productivity of classical or modernist film
theory, and, to assume the value of more contemporary, though no less compromised,
theories. When classical film theory is viewed within its historical context, freed of its
oftentimes problematic theoretical assumptions, it has much to offer our understanding of film and our experience of the cinema.
While Arnheim is not against the combination of two media per se, he is pessimistic
about the successful marriage of sound and image in the cinema. Chion also states that
image and sound are always physically isolated, and yet, he also believes that it is possible for the two to be perceived as complementary and unified even if they are not unified in production and exhibition. Herein lies the fundamental difference between the
two thinkers. Arnheim maintains that in cinematic realism the spectator hears and sees
what is given to him or her. Therefore, if the sound and image are physically separated
in production and exhibition, they are necessarily separate to the human senses.
However, according to Arnheim, even in “composite” media such as the theatre, a combination of visual action and dialogue, one medium dominates and the other “completes” or “supports” the role of the dominant. Thus, prima facie, it would appear
impossible to achieve perceptual integration in any composite medium.
Unlike the theatre, the visual action of (silent) film is always complete. In film,
human characters may, but do not necessarily, assume center stage. Rather, for
Arnheim, humans are only a part of the world of the film: the medium is more concerned with “the world animated by man than with man set off against his world.”7 It
is the interaction of the human characters with the events which take place on the
screen that is, according to Arnheim, an essential quality of the cinema. Due to this
objective quality of film, for Arnheim, the addition of dialogue has disastrous results.
Either, the dialogue replaces action as a means of articulation, an instance in which the
visual becomes subservient to speech and the film shows no more than a static close-up
of a character talking. In such a film all other events are backgrounded. Thus instead of
pursuing its natural purpose as a medium of animated action, film supposedly lapses
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OPPOSITE OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS?
into pursuing the purpose of theatre: it articulates characters’ subjective states through
dialogue.8 According to Arnheim, such film is no longer an art, it is filmed theatre.
Alternatively, in the “talking film” the “dialogue is fragmentary; it consists of pieces
that are separated by unbridgeable interruptions.”9 Arnheim does not offer precise
details of the films to which he is referring, however, his comments apply to many of
the early sound films in which conversations with sound were included to display the
capacities for synchronized sound.10 Because of the difficulties of producing synchronized sound, there was often very little talking and these moments did appear somewhat incongruous with the rest of the film’s silence. The conversations were said to disrupt the viewing experience: they came as a “ludicrous surprise” in an otherwise silent
film. Rather than using the dialogue to support the image, to complete the visual, these
snatches of dialogue were utilized as a means of “condensing” the visual.11 For
Arnheim, this condensation of the visual disrespects the distinction of film as art. It is
more like filmed theatre. As he attests in an earlier essay, for the “acoustical film” to continue the groundbreaking work of silent film as a unique and separate art form, sound
would have to be able to be montaged in the vein of the visual montage of films such as
Varieté (E.A. Dupont, 1925) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924).12 Arnheim
makes it clear that although sound and image may coexist in certain art forms, there is
no place for sound in the cinema if film is to retain its integrity as art and a sensory phenomenon.
Arnheim’s scathing critique of the sound film is born of a number of factors. At the
time he was writing, the technological developments for the recording and editing of
sound were still in their infancy. As a result, the disruptions to the viewing experience
referred to by Arnheim are also due to the crudity of production techniques. Likewise,
filmmakers were still developing aesthetic techniques for the integration of sound and
image in the cinema. They were novices of the medium. Thus, the films upon which
Arnheim bases his critique did not exhibit the most sophisticated integration of sound.
Similarly, as Sabine Hake postulates, Arnheim’s vitriolic attack of the sound film was in
part motivated by his reservations of the increasing emphasis placed upon the economic viability of films.13 The introduction of sound accelerated the economic success
of cinema as a form of standardized mass entertainment.14 The cinema’s rising economic motivation was understood by many as detrimental to its artistic development
and consolidation. Although Arnheim himself was reluctant to attribute the decline of
artistic excellence to increased industrialization and economic exigencies, he does nod
towards the imbrication of the two.15 Perhaps the most important motivation for
Arnheim’s rejection of sound cinema is the fact that, quite simply, it did not accord with
his theory of film as a purely visual medium.
Despite the limitations of Arnheim’s conception of the separation of sound and
image, his thoughts on this matter are consistent with his larger theory of film as an art
unique unto itself. Like many other film theories of this period, Arnheim’s Film as Art
is driven by the imperative to legitimize the cinema as an art.16 This project was a reaction to the rejection of the artistic capacities of photography – and by extension, cinema – among art and literary theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Neither photography nor cinema was considered art: they were deemed mere
mechanical reproductions of reality. As slavish mechanically reproduced imitations of
nature, film and photography were unable to express the creative individuality of the
artist, a central condition for the determination of any medium as art. In a response to
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FRANCES GUERIN
this dismissal of cinema as art, in Film as Art Arnheim illustrates that the cinema is neither a mechanical duplication of nature or reality nor a replica of any other art, namely, the theatre. He does this by arguing that the cinema as a perceptual experience differs from a mechanical duplication of our normal perceptual experience of reality. Like
fellow classical film theorists such as Béla Balász or Siegfried Kracauer, Arnheim argues
that the cinema manipulates, transforms and magnifies the profilmic reality, and in so
doing, is more than a simple replication.17 Our perception of film is distinct from our
perception of the everyday world. Arnheim provides many examples of articulations
that are unique to film in order to support his theory. Among these he lists: the twodimensionality of the cinematic image, the absence of constancy in size, the use of
lighting, the absence of colour, the absence of the space-time continuum achieved
through editing, absence of non-visual sense experience and various other techniques.18 However, the use of these techniques alone does not legitimate film as art. Not
all films are art, rather, film has the potential to be art. Arnheim claims that a film is art
if these techniques form the basis of “expressiveness.”
In order that the film artist may create a work of art it is important that he consciously stress
the peculiarities of his medium. This, however, should be done in such a manner that the
character of the objects represented should not thereby be destroyed but rather strengthened, concentrated, and interpreted […] the various peculiarities of film material can be, and
have been, used to achieve artistic effects.19
This “artistic effect” is what Arnheim later refers to as expressiveness. As Noël Carroll
points out, Arnheim’s concept of expressiveness is vague and inconsistent. Carroll summarizes that in Film as Art, the meaning of “expressiveness” ranges from the “forcefulness” of a particular character achieved through an extreme low angle shot, through
the evocation of powerful emotions in the spectator due to specific framing devices, to,
broadly speaking, a “‘coexten[sion]’ with the idea of communication.”20 Irrespective of
the imprecision of Arnheim’s notion of the “expressiveness” yielded by film as art, it is
important to recognize that the specific perceptual conditions of the cinema be utilized
with the purpose of achieving this expressiveness.
Attributes of the cinema that ensure its divergence from a mechanical reproduction
of normal vision are imperative to Arnheim’s theory of cinema as art. As noted above,
the absence of sound is a limitation of film that enables it to manipulate reality through
the use of properties which are intrinsic to the medium. According to Arnheim, sound
is not intrinsic to the medium as it also belongs to everyday reality. Therefore, it comes
as no surprise that he would be so adverse to the presence of sound: in short, the sonic
dimension of film takes it closer to the specter of duplication so anathema to Arnheim’s
theory of the cinema. The very silence of film affords it its “impetus as well as the power
to achieve excellent artistic effects.”21 The cinema, like no other art form, has the
capacity to visualize that which is otherwise communicated aurally. Arnheim draws
upon a number of examples of this visual communication of sound such as Charlie
Chaplin’s pronounced movements and facial expressions, and the spirited rhythmic
dancing of people at a political meeting in Les Nouveaux Messieurs (J. Feyder, 1929)
which effectively visualizes the music they dance to. He also cites the visualization of a
scene from The Docks of New York (J. von Sternberg, 1928) in which a gun shot is fired.
In this sequence birds are seen to rise abruptly, scattering in the sky following the gun
132
shot. Arnheim argues that the spectator “sees” the quality of the noise: “the suddenness, the abruptness of the rising birds, give visually the exact quality that the shot possesses acoustically.”22 The spectator sees the dramatic impact of the gunshot through
the reaction of the birds. Therefore, the silence of the film does not reduce it to a mere
pantomime, but rather, for Arnheim the sonic dimension of on-screen events is
enhanced due to the absence of sound. Absence of sound is one of the perceptual conditions that marks the cinematic image as something other than mere recording of reality and can, as in the case of the scene from The Docks of New York imbue the image
with a forceful expressive effect.
Among his other reservations about the sound film Arnheim claims that sound gives
the image a three-dimensional quality, it reduces the frame to a mere opening, without
any particular characteristics. As such, the cinema is no more than a replication of reality. Sound also burdens each scene with an unnecessary naturalism, thereby preventing
the play with other realities and making impossible quick transitions between shots; in
this case, film becomes a “technically perfected theatre.”
Writing fifty years after Rudolf Arnheim, in his concept of “audio-vision,” Michel
Chion insists upon the integration of sound and image in the narrative film. Unlike
Arnheim, Chion is not posing a prescriptive theory of the conditions of film as art.
Rather, in Audio-Vision Chion sets out to describe the perceptual qualities of film
sound and, from here, to demonstrate the particular “reality” of the audio-visual combination in sound cinema. Thus he does not bring a pre-interpretative theory of film to
bear upon his conceptualization and consequent judgment of cinematic audio-vision.
He uses the perception of filmic sound-image relations as a basis for a subsequent theorization of the cinema.23 Nevertheless, Chion ends up with a theory of cinema that, like
Arnheim’s embraces its extraordinariness, and privileges the artistic effects of its peculiar reality. In addition, like Arnheim, Chion focusses on the perceptual experience as
the defining characteristic of cinema. As I shall argue, it is only due to developments in
film technology, production and exhibition that for Chion the cinema of “hyperrealism” is a sound cinema.
Like American film scholars such as Rick Altman and James Lastra, Chion is not only
disenchanted with the general lack of critical attention paid to film sound, but he is also
concerned to highlight the integrity of sound to cinematic production, exhibition and
reception.24 For Chion, sound is fundamental to a specifically cinematic perception. In
contradistinction to early theorizations of sound which spoke of the counterpoint of
filmic sound and image, Chion argues that the two parameters are always interdependent, never autonomous.25 Each owes its existence and coherence to the other. The
grounds of this claim are relatively straightforward. In the case of sound’s dependence
on the image for its existence and coherence as film sound, Chion repeatedly asserts
that whilst “a film without sound remains a film; a film with no image, or at least without visual frame for projection, is not a film.”26 If sound does not have a locus, or reference in the spatial parameters of the projected image, then it is not film sound, rather,
it is radio. Chion attributes the dependence of the image upon the sonic dimensions of
the medium to the “added value” effected by sound. He defines it thus:
By added value I mean the expressive and informative value with which a sound enriches a
given image so as to create the definite impression, in the immediate or remembered experience one has of it, that this information or expression “naturally” comes from what is seen,
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and is already contained in the image itself. Added value is what gives the (eminently incorrect) impression that sound is unnecessary, that sound merely duplicates a meaning which
in reality it brings about, either all on its own or by discrepancies between it and the
image.27
To give one example offered by Chion, the sonic dimension of a human punch or
physical blow adds an expression of temporal instantaneity to the visual dimension.
According to Chion, without the auditory perception of the blow, the image of the
punch would not be registered by the spectator: it “would not become engraved into the
memory, [it] would tend to get lost.”28 The sound of the blow serves to emphasize or
announce an action and its “reverberations” within the narrative, an action that the eye
would not otherwise register as significant. Similarly, the sonic enunciation of the visual action ensures that the significance of the blow registers in the spectator’s “consciousness” immediately. If the image is not accompanied by the sound of the punch,
the spectator will only recognize its significant reverberations in retrospect once it is
contextualized by the ensuing images. Due to this temporal instantaneity afforded the
film by its sonic dimension, sound “adds value” or expressiveness to the visual.
There are already striking similarities between Chion’s necessary integration of the
aural and the visual and Arnheim’s otherwise polar belief in the separation of the same
two parameters. Chion readily admits that sound modifies the image when it, for example, relieves the image of its responsibility to structure space. It is no longer the image’s
task to demarcate the space of the narrative, but rather, the “vast extension” of ambient
sounds map the much larger spaces within which a film takes place.29 Thus, like
Arnheim, Chion recognizes the re-spatialization of the image brought through the use
of sound: sound affords the image a three-dimensional quality. This added dimensionality is unwelcomed by Arnheim as it takes film closer to reality, away from an exploration
of the intrinsic qualities of the medium. Chion, however, considers sound’s alteration of
the dimensionality of the image an enhancement of cinematic perception. He points out
that the modification “has left untouched the image’s centrality as that which focuses
the attention”30 and that sound simply indicates what warrants the spectator’s attention. More notably, both Arnheim and Chion locate “expressiveness” as the key to the
perceptual conditions of film as art and cinematic reality respectively.31 And yet, in
keeping with his applause for the visualization of the sound of the gun shot in The
Docks of New York, the acoustic articulation of a punch would for Arnheim rob the film
of its status as art. To announce the punch with sound would be to replace the image
with sound, and thereby, disrespect the particularity of the medium, a medium that has
the capacity to communicate all sensory phenomena via the image. Similarly, such a
strategy would take the film closer to a mere mechanical duplication of reality. In short,
the film would be empty of all expressiveness. Likewise given Chion’s celebration of the
sonic dimension of the punch, the flurry of birds following the gun shot in The Docks of
New York, would be an image with no “expressive or informative value.” It would lack
the temporal instantaneity achieved through synchronous sound as the spectator only
registers the impact of the gun shot after the fact when the birds scatter and rise into the
sky. The very same silence which guarantees film as art for Arnheim impedes the creation of a cinematic hyperreality for Chion. And yet, Arnheim’s “expressiveness” and
Chion’s “added value” both adhere to the notion that the unique cinematic reality is a
heightened reality, a reality above and beyond, distinct from that experienced in the
134
everyday. Both writers are looking for the same extraordinary reality of the cinema. It is
only due to their historical circumscription, that they find it in radically different places.
But firstly, let us turn to Chion’s larger theoretical concerns.
Unlike Arnheim, Chion does not bring a pre-interpretative theory of film to his conceptualization of sound cinema and therefore his is not motivated by a theoretical
impetus. Nevertheless, Chion’s description of the audio-visual experience of the cinema is governed by a specific theory of perception. His interpretation of cinematic perception assumes a spectator who perceives the structural phenomena of cinema as an
organized whole, rather than as an aggregate of distinct parts. Although Chion only
mentions Gestalt psychology in passing,32 it can be strongly inferred that his model of
perception is drawn from this school. Certainly, in keeping with Gestalt psychology,
Chion maintains that the significance of the structured whole of cinematic perception
does not depend on the specific constituent elements of the audio and the visual. He is
not interested in analysis of sound and image as independent components of the cinema, but rather focuses upon the importance of each as relational structures for perception. Despite the fact that this assumption regarding the nature of perceptual experience does permeate the text, it is not a theoretical foundation for his argument. That is,
he does not impose this model of perception onto the filmic moments he describes.
Rather, the Gestalt theory of perception appears to be one of a number of biases which
inform the instances of audio-vision he describes, namely instances of cinematic synchronization and synchresis. Chion only chooses moments in which sound and image
work together to produce a concerted effect. There is no room in Chion’s argument for
the radical sound-image relations of avant-garde films such as those of Jean-Luc Godard
of the 1970s. His only references to filmmakers such as Godard, whose practices overtly challenge the unified and coherent integration of filmic sound and image, are superficial and unconvincing.33 Although Chion’s attachment to a certain model of perception may influence the cinematic instances he chooses to describe, the descriptions
which form the basis of his consequent understanding of cinematic reality are empirically determined. Like the example of the punch mentioned above, Chion offers a common sense characterization of the experience of perception.
Like Arnheim, Chion maintains that cinematic perception is of a different order to
that of normal perception, thus the cinematic reality is distinct from a mere technological reproduction of reality. However, Chion is not concerned to delimit film as art, only
to demonstrate the specific reality of the audio-visual combination as one in which
each sensory phenomenon influences and transforms the other. For Chion the cinema’s
sound-image relationship renders a “hyperreality,”34 by which he seems to mean a reality that is more real or “natural” than any reference point beyond the reproduction.
Like much of Chion’s terminology, his notion of hyperreality is nowhere clarified in
Audio-Vision. However, he does claim that the cinematic sound-image perception “supplant[s] unmediated acoustical reality in strength, presence, and impact,” and that it
offers “a more direct and immediate contact with the event.”35 Consequently, the
immediacy and directness of this experience heightens the reality of the perceptual
event. It is this augmenting of perception that ensures the distinction between cinematic and everyday reality. Similarly, there is an intimacy to the experience of cinematic fiction that has no equivalent in lived reality. The cinema facilitates the sensuous
experience of cartoon characters walking, of ghosts such as Dr. Mabuse talking, even of
punches being thrown. To take the example of the punch once again: in real life a
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FRANCES GUERIN
punch does not always make a noise, indeed it is possible to see someone being
punched and hear nothing. However, in the acoustically mediated reality the sound of
the punch is obligatory if the spectator is to believe that it has been inflicted.36 Thus the
spectator does not determine the truth or reality of the cinematic punch in accordance
with her pre-existing acoustic experience of punches in the real world, and yet, it is only
true or real to cinematic perception if it bears the quality of synchronous sound. Hence
in the hyperreality of cinematic perception, sound and image are perceived to be in perfect synchronization. In addition, in direct contrast to Arnheim’s understanding of the
unique film reality, sound is indispensable to the constitution of Chion’s reality.
Because the sonic dimension of the cinema is what gives the image its hyperreality, the
integration of audio-vision is critical to the manipulation of the intrinsic properties of
the medium.
Chion bases this theory of cinema’s hyperreality upon two conditions of normal perception. Firstly, as in the case of the punch, in “concrete experience itself” sound and
image are not necessarily integrated or unified as they are in the cinema. Secondly, in
concrete experience the distinct elements of sound, such as volume, nature, colour and
resonance will vary in accordance with each other. Therefore, for example, an increase of
volume in an enclosed space will cause echoes and vibrations. However, due to the
sophisticated technological capacities of the cinema each element of sound is manipulated in isolation from the others. Therefore, an increase in volume will not cause distortions to the entire sound event as volume is purified in isolation from the other ingredients.37 Thus, in contradistinction to the commonly accepted claim that the reproduction of sound does not suffer a loss in dimensionality, according to Chion, like the reduction of a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional image, the transposition of sound renders it two-dimensional.38 Similarly, the reduction of the dimensionality of the sonic
component of cinematic reality, heightens the “realism” of the perceptual experience.
Again, like Arnheim, Chion maintains that it is the limitation of film’s properties that is
instrumental to cinematic perception. For Arnheim it is, for example, the absence of
sound and for Chion it is, among other things, a loss in the dimensionality of sound.
For both Arnheim and Chion, the distinction of cinematic reality is dependent on an
effective use of the intrinsic properties of the medium. Nevertheless, for Arnheim these
properties are dependent on a separation of image and sound as sensory phenomena
and for Chion they are the result of the integration of the two parameters in the narrative film experience. Similarly, both are concerned to put forward a perceptual experience that is unique unto itself, an experience that is not a mere duplication of reality.
Despite the identical premises upon which the two scholars ground their theories of
film, their assessment of the intrinsic worth of sound film is diametrically opposed.
Arnheim is damning of the sound film: for him, it impossible for sound film to be art.
Despite his celebration of sound film, Chion’s perception of it also has limitations. Due
to the emphasis he places on synchronized and “synchretic” sound-image perception,
instances in which there is a slippage between sound and image would not effect a cinematic hyperreality in Chion’s terms. Perhaps more problematic than the inapplicability of this theory to certain avant-garde sound-image practices, if sound films are to represent the cinematic reality of Chion’s theory, they must be projected in a theatre or an
acoustically modified space with the technical equipment to isolate and further manipulate the various properties of the sonic dimension. Certainly, an old 16mm screening
in which the voices blur and the sounds are interrupted by imperfections in the record136
ing or reproduction are what “we might call caricatural.”39 Thus the logic of Chion’s
argument leads to the implication that a sound film seen in anything less than a multiplex does not render a cinematic perception. Despite his continued interest in film and
visual aesthetics Arnheim has never discussed the “artistic effects” that have been made
possible by increasing sophistication in film technology in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is true that Chion has paid close attention to both the films and screening environments of the past.40 However, even when he discusses the innovative
sound-image relations of films such as Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (F. Lang, 1932-33)
or Psycho (A. Hitchcock, 1960), Chion still interprets the films’ momentum toward
cohesion and unity. The voice is an “umbilical chord” that literally and metaphorically
connects Mabuse to Dr. Baum in Lang’s film and Norman Bates to his mother in Psycho.
Chion’s analysis of the initially disparate sound-image relations in these films is still
driven by his biases towards contemporary modes of filmmaking. Thus, both
Arnheim’s and Chion’s ideas are firmly circumscribed by the films, technologies and
intellectual culture in their environs.
This juxtaposition of Arnheim’s and Chion’s conceptions of sound cinema encourages an appreciation of their convergences and complementarity. While critics might
dismiss or ignore the significance of Arnheim’s film theory, his ideas are the forebears
of Chion’s lauded work on image-sound and sight-audition integration in narrative cinema. Arnheim may not explain the production processes of the most up-to-date sound
cinema. For that we must turn to a more contemporary critic such as Chion. However,
Arnheim identifies our desire to experience something extraordinary, something that
extends beyond our everyday reality when we go to the cinema. And more significantly, before Chion, Arnheim connects the fulfillment of this desire to the technological
rendering of the cinematic representation. For both thinkers, the medium’s technological capacities are the potential site of sound and image integration, and this integration
is at the basis of a cinematic expression that ushers forth a unique viewing experience.
The commercial demands on the cinema may insist that it embrace the latest possible
sound technologies, thereby relegating Arnheim’s theory to a historical curiousity.
However, the demands of commercialism are still in the service of creating a unique
cinematic reality and a unique perceptual experience of that reality – just as Arnheim
demanded nearly sixty years ago.
1 R. Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), p. 207.
See also R. Arnheim, “A New Laocoön: Artistic Composites and the Talking Film,” ibid, pp.
199-230; R. Arnheim, “Der tönende Film” (1928), Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, hrsg. H.H.
Diederichs (München: Carl Hanser, 1977), pp. 58-61.
2 Although this aspiration for unity permeates Chion’s conception of the sound film in AudioVision, it is most vividly argued in The Voice in Cinema in which he analyses a number of
very sophisticated films that the strive to integrate sound and image, but ultimately fail to
reach this goal because of the instability of the voice. I focus here on Audio-Vision as this
book represents a bringing together of the ideas in Chion’s previous books on sound and
music in cinema. See M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. and trans. C. Gorbman
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); M. Chion, The Voice in Cinema, trans. C.
Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
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FRANCES GUERIN
3 To endorse this break would underline the notion that silent film and sound film represent
two different media and that silent film has no sonic dimensions.
4 J. Rosenbaum, “Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen,” Cinéaste, vol. 21, nos. 1-2 (1995), p. 94.
5 C. Gorbman, “Chion’s Audio-Vision,” Wide Angle, vol. 15, no. 1 (January 1993), p. 67. When
discussing the field to which Chion’s book contributes, Gorbman does not even mention
Arnheim’s founding essay. See also S. Prince’s review of the book in Film Quarterly, vol. 48,
no. 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 40-42.
6 N. Carroll, “Lang and Pabst: Paradigms for Early Sound Practice,” in J. Belton and E. Weis
(eds.), Film Sound: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 265;
M. Rubin, “The Voice of Silence,” ibid., p. 285. See also Carroll’s scathing critique of Arnheim’s
theory of film in his Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), pp. 17-91. There are of course exceptions to this rejection of
Arnheim’s theories. See for example, L. Fischer, “Applause: The Visual and Acoustic
Landscape,” ibid., pp. 232-46. Fischer acknowledges Arnheim’s observations on the spatiality
of sound and the separation of the sound and image tracks as a basis for her interpretation of
Mamoulian’s Applause. For exceptions to this assertion see also the thoughtful analysis of the
strengths of Arnheim’s theory in S. Hake, Cinema’s Third Machine: Writing on Film in
Germany 1907-1933 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). Also, V. Petric offers an earlier appreciation of Arnheim’s theory as the first attempt to conceive of an integrated (as
opposed to counterposed) system of sound and image. See V. Petric, “Sight and Sound:
Counterpoint or Entity?”, Filmmakers Newsletter, vol. 6, no. 7 (May 1973), pp. 27-31. German
film studies has given more consideration to Arnheim’s theories. A recent issue of
Montage/av is devoted to Arnheim’s theories and includes sensitive interpretations of his
sound theory. See Montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller
Kommunikation (9 February 2000). See also H. H. Diederich’s introduction to the recently
reissued German edition of R. Arnheim, Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, hrsg. H. H.
Diederichs (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1993).
7 R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., p. 227.
8 For Arnheim theatre is character-centered and the visuals merely serve to expedite or
“improve upon” the spoken word in the development of human character.
10 Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) is a film in which we see and hear the talking heads in
long uncut conversations that remain incomprehensible because the recording technology is
not sophisticated enough to boast clarity or creativity. The film’s two moments of innovative
sound-image usage are conceptually (directorially) as opposed to technically creative. I am
referring here to the “sound close-up” of the narratively crucial “knife” and the woman’s
scream on finding the dead body that creates a sound bridge.
11 Arnheim does not explain how these fragments of dialogue “condense” the visual. However,
it can be assumed that, as is the case with the “all-talking” picture, the dialogue is an attempt
to communicate character as opposed to doing the same through action. Curiously, Arnheim
does not mention the fact that these intermittent sounds were often introduced by filmmakers as a “celebration” of the capacity of film to “speak.” Thus, it was also as a celebration of
the technological developments.
12 R. Arnheim, “Tonfilm-Verwirrung” (1929), in Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, cit., pp. 61-64.
13 S. Hake, Cinema’s Third Machine: Writing on Film in Germany 1907-1933, cit., p. 280.
14 He also mentions this in the abovementioned essay, “Tonfilm-Verwirrung”, cit.
138
16 For the lively debate on cinema as an art form in Germany, see A. Kaes (ed.), Kino-Debatte:
Texte zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Film 1909-1929 (Tübingen: Deutscher Taschenbuch,
1978).
17 See B. Balázs, Theory of the Film (London: Dennis Dobson, 1972); S. Kracauer, Theory of Film:
The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
18 See R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., pp. 34-134.
19 Ibid., p. 35. My italics.
20 N. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, cit., pp. 35-43.
22 Ibid., p. 108.
23 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit.
24 See R. Altman, “The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound,” and “Sound Space,” in R.
Altman (ed.), Sound Theory, Sound Practice (New York-London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 15-31
and pp. 46-64. See also Altman’s introductory essays to each of the sections of this book: J.
Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press,
2000).
25 In keeping with the vagueness of many of the criticisms Chion levels at film theorists and critics, he never indicates which works he is referring to when he makes these claims. However,
in the case of his dissatisfaction with the use of the notion of counterpoint and the musical
analogy of film sound, it can be assumed that he is referring to the work of Sergei Eisenstein.
Similarly, Chion’s characterization of harmonic counterpoint is confusing and ill thought out.
As this and other references are somewhat tangential to Chion’s argument, I have chosen not
to concern myself with a critique of his characterization and use of other texts.
26 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 143. Arnheim makes the exact same claim
in his essay “Philosophie des Ach so” (1933), in Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, op. cit., p. 74.
Of course, for Arnheim the claim is justification of his attack on the sound film. Chion does
not see that it might compromise his argument.
27 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 5. Chion’s italics.
28 Ibid., p. 61.
29 A good example of this innovative use of sound would be any of Alfred Hitchcock’s single set
films. In a film such as Rear Window, the sounds of the street faced by Thorwald’s apartment
and a ship’s horn on nearby water extend the set beyond the four walls of the apartment
courtyard. Sound is used to mark the spatial parameters of the diegesis and to let an otherwise claustrophobic set breathe.
30 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 144.
31 Chion is as vague and inconsistent in his determination of what constitutes “expressiveness”
or “added value.”
33 See, for example, Chion’s discussion of the ruptures in sound-image relations in “Godard’s
Nouvelle Vague” as “serv[ing] to reinforce the tension of the action.” That is, he interprets
these ruptures and tensions as being in the service of a narrative development. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
34 Ibid., p. 99.
35 Ibid., p. 103-104.
36 Ibid., p. 60.
37 Ibid., pp. 100-101.
38 Ibid., pp. 96-97. Balázs, Metz and more recently Levin all maintain that based upon the notion
that sound is a volume of vibrating air waves, when reproduced it retains its three dimen139
FRANCES GUERIN
sionality. See B. Balázs, op. cit., p. 216; Ch. Metz, “Aural Objects,” Yale French Studies, no. 60
(1980), p. 29; T. Levin, “The Acoustic Dimension: Notes on Cinema Sound,” Screen, vol. 25, no.
3 (May-June 1984), p. 57.
40 See especially his film analyses in M. Chion, The Voice in the Cinema, cit.
PROJECTS & ABSTRACTS
140
LE GROUPE POOL: CLOSE UP (1927-1933) ET BORDERLINE (1930)
François Bovier / PhD Thesis Abstract
Université de Lausanne
Ma recherche porte sur un groupe d’Anglo-Américains installés en Suisse romande,
qui animent, de 1927 à 1933, une structure de production et d’édition. Pool Production
recoupe une collection d’essais et de fictions, une revue de cinéma d’orientation avantgardiste, Close Up (1927-1933), trois courts-métrages et un long-métrage expérimental
muet, Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson, 1930, 85’). Un singulier ménage à trois:
Kenneth Macpherson, sa femme Bryher (née Annie Winifred Ellerman) et la poétesse
américaine H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), constitue le noyau du groupe Pool. Pour saisir les
enjeux et la singularité de leur approche du cinéma, il faut contextualiser leurs activités, en s’attachant plus particulièrement à la figure de H. D.
Les animateurs de Pool sont issus des milieux de la littérature moderniste. Deux pratiques scripturales, qui entrent en résonance avec le cinéma, balisent leur démarche: la
poésie imagiste et le monologue intérieur. L’Imagisme, mouvement dont H. D. est la
principale représentante, se caractérise par un “traitement direct de la chose”, c’est-àdire par un rejet de l’abstraction et de l’ornementation, au profit du dépouillement de
l’image.1 L’expression d’un flux de conscience, depuis l’autobiographie fictive de
Dorothy Miller Richardson jusqu’aux monologues intérieurs de Gertrude Stein, mobilise une écriture à l’énonciation fortement subjectivée, où les voix se chevauchent et les
niveaux de focalisation se démultiplient. L’objectivité de l’image présentée et la mise en
scène polyphonique du théâtre de la conscience sont pris comme grille d’évaluation des
films par les fondateurs de Pool.
La psychanalyse freudienne représente l’autre champ qui détermine leur approche.
Bryher et H. D. s’intéressent de près aux techniques de déchiffrement du rêve et des
mots d’esprit.2 Le détour par la psychanalyse permet au groupe Pool de poser une analogie entre les mécanismes mentaux du préconscient ou de l’inconscient et la logique
du film: les phénomènes de la condensation, du déplacement et de la sublimation, sont
mobilisés pour déchiffrer le travail du film. Le cinéma est ainsi envisagé comme un
moyen privilégié de reproduction des mouvements inconscients de la pensée.
Je soutiendrai que les fondateurs de Pool appréhendent le cinéma à partir d’un paradigme qui englobe les champs de la littérature et de la psychanalyse: le modèle de l’écriture hiéroglyphique, qu’ils investissent tour à tour dans la pratique poétique, l’interprétation analytique et la réalisation de films.
En premier lieu, la poésie post-imagiste de H. D. reproduit les procédés de l’écriture
hiéroglyphique, qu’Ezra Pound a érigée en méthode de composition. La juxtaposition
des scènes et des voix dans le poème génère des images inédites, tout comme l’association des idéogrammes forme de nouveaux mots dans l’écriture chinoise. En deuxième
lieu, les objets d’étude de la psychanalyse freudienne sont interprétés par les fondateurs
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FRANÇOIS BOVIER
de Pool comme des signes hiéroglyphiques ou des formations cryptiques. Les phénomènes du déplacement et de la condensation, les actes manqués et les symboles oniriques, sont associés aux procédés du montage et de la surimpression. En troisième lieu,
le cinéma est pensé comme un texte hiéroglyphique, dont le langage est universel.
Conformément aux articles théoriques de S. M. Eisenstein traduits dans Close Up,
Macpherson envisage le montage cinématographique comme un procédé de juxtaposition de cadres qui éclatent en de nouveaux concepts.
On comprend dès lors la fascination que le cinéma a pu exercer sur ce groupe. Le film,
en mobilisant le montage, permet de dépasser la poétique statique de l’Imagisme à travers l’image animée. L’univers filmique, en réactivant la structure du rêve, permet de
démultiplier les procédés du déplacement et de la condensation. A partir de 1933, le
contexte politique balaye ces spéculations. Mais présentons plus en détail le corpus analysé, qui permet d’appréhender le cinéma sous deux facettes complémentaires: l’écriture critique et la pratique filmique.
La revue Close Up3 (juillet 1927-décembre 1933) apparaît comme un lieu d’échange et
de diffusion d’idées. Financée par Bryher sur le modèle des périodiques littéraires indépendants, elle acquiert une vocation internationale. Revue miroir de son temps, sa ligne
éditoriale demeure éclectique. Tout au plus peut-on la départager en deux périodes et
isoler quelques angles d’analyse privilégiés.
En un premier temps, les articles de Close Up s’attachent à déterminer la spécificité
du médium cinématographique, en établissant des analogies avec le champ de la littérature et les mécanismes de la psychanalyse. En un second temps, suite à la généralisation du cinéma sonore qui remet en cause certains postulats de la revue (devenue trimestrielle à partir de janvier 1931), le film documentaire et l’émergence de nouvelles
cinématographies occupent le devant de la scène. Les éditeurs, qui siègent à la tête de la
Fédération des Sociétés de film ouvrier de Londres, prônent un retour au réalisme photographique et au primitivisme.
Kenneth Macpherson, qui signe les éditoriaux, défend une position avant-gardiste, en
portant l’accent sur le réalisme psychologique du film. Bryher, plus pragmatique, appelle
au fondement de sociétés de films et de ciné-clubs, et promeut le cinéma éducatif. H. D.,
dans des articles à l’écriture très travaillée, opère des liens de passage entre la modernité
cinématographique et la culture hellénique. Décrivant les films en situation de projection, elle élabore une théorie indirecte de l’identification au cinéma et de la nature du
signifiant filmique. A ces trois voix prédominantes: prescription d’une poétique du film,
défense des réseaux de diffusion alternatifs, et éloge de la beauté classique du cinéma, il
faut adjoindre la position de Dorothy Richardson. Correspondante régulière, elle élabore
une psychologie de surface du public, dans une perspective féministe. Enfin, la revue doit
sa notoriété à la traduction d’articles de S. M. Eisenstein, parmi d’autres réalisateurs (V.
Poudovkine, J. Grierson, E. Metzer, E. Deslaw, M. Ray, etc.).
Ces réflexions et prises de position sont transposées dans le domaine de la pratique filmique. Borderline, financé par Bryher, interprété par des amateurs à l’exception du
chanteur noir Paul Robeson, est issu de la collaboration des fondateurs de Pool.
Multipliant les intertextes poétiques et les signes allégoriques, ce film retranscrit le
conflit et la tension entre flux de conscience concurrents. Chant du cygne mais aussi
“véritable film d’avant-garde”, selon les mots de Macpherson, Borderline conjoint analyse symptomatique, poétique de l’image et représentation ethnique.
En premier lieu, Borderline met en scène des pulsions et des névroses qui font et
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LE GROUPE POOL: CLOSE UP (1927-1933) ET BORDERLINE (1930)
défont les couples à l’écran. Les tensions psychologiques s’inscrivent à travers les actes
manqués des personnages, le déplacement ou la condensation des conflits sur des scènes incidentes ou des objets de substitution. En deuxième lieu, Borderline juxtapose des
plans qui s’apparentent à une série de vignettes stylisées, s’imbriquant en un texte
second. Les objets qui circulent dans le film constituent un réseau de motifs iconologiques, et la topologie de l’espace répond à une cartographie mentale. En troisième lieu,
Borderline tente de véhiculer une représentation authentique des différences raciales:
le film repose sur l’opposition entre le jeu hystérique du couple blanc (Gavin Arthur et
H. D.) et l’attitude pacifiée du couple noir (Paul et Eslanda Robeson).
Macpherson, en commentant Borderline, établit des comparaisons entre le montage
contrapuntique d’Eisenstein et la logique des actes manqués. Il attribue le pouvoir de
suggestion du film au phénomène d’“inférence psychologique”4 du spectateur qui
reconstitue la phrase de l’inconscient à partir d’une succession de pictogrammes. Mais
la transposition filmique de ce modèle hiéroglyphique ne connaît pas de véritable prolongement: Macpherson, Bryher et H. D. se détournent du cinéma en 1933.
1 Ezra Pound lance l’Imagisme pour promouvoir la poésie de H. D. et Richard Aldington. Dans
le numéro de mars 1913 de Poetry, il édicte, sous couvert d’une interview, trois règles qui définissent la poésie imagiste: “1.- Un traitement direct de la ‘chose’, subjective ou objective. 2.N’utiliser aucun mot qui ne contribue pas à l’exposé. 3.- En matière de rythme: composer en
suivant celui de la phrase musicale, non celui d’un métronome”. F. S. Flint, “Imagisme”,
Poetry (March 1913). Dans le même numéro, il fait paraître une liste d’interdictions; cf. F. S.
Flint, “A Few Dont’s by An Imagiste”.
2 Bryher, après une analyse avec Hanns Sachs (1928-32), songe à devenir psychanalyste. H. D.,
qui se fait analyser par Sigmund Freud (1933-34), assimile les mécanismes décrits par la psychanalyse à des signes hiéroglyphiques.
3 Close Up (Territet: Pool Production, 1927-1933), rééd. en 10 vol. (Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint,
1969).
4 K. Macpherson, “As Is”, Close Up, no. 41 (November 1930), pp. 293-294.
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STILI DI RAPPRESENTAZIONE NEL CINEMA ITALIANO DEGLI ANNI TRENTA
STILI DI RAPPRESENTAZIONE NEL CINEMA ITALIANO DEGLI ANNI
TRENTA: LA PRODUZIONE CINES DAL 1930 AL 1934
Vincenzo Buccheri / PhD Thesis Abstract
Università Cattolica - Milano
La tesi affronta con metodologia mista (all’incrocio tra storiografia e semiotica) il caso
della Cines, la celebre società di produzione che tra il 1930 e il 1934 svolse un ruolo egemone nel panorama cinematografico italiano. L’obiettivo è di individuare le tendenze
stilistiche dominanti nella produzione Cines, non solo interpretandole in chiave estetica, ma in connessione con le strutture tecnico-produttive e con il contesto culturale
dell’Italia dell’epoca. Il problema al centro dello studio, infatti, è quello delle forme estetiche di massa nella cultura dell’Italia fascista, e del loro rapporto con la costruzione dell’identità italiana.
La prima parte è di taglio teorico: dopo una sezione dedicata al concetto di stile nelle
teorie del cinema, si tenta di proporre un diverso approccio al problema. Dalla storiografia neoformalista (Bordwell, Burch) si recupera l’idea di stile come sistema di rappresentazione peculiare di un contesto storico-sociale: ma poiché tale nozione appare
troppo generica ed empirica, si suggerisce il ricorso a strumenti teorici più elaborati
(che mescolano semiotica, narratologia e categorie bachtiniane). Ne deriva un’idea di
stile come sistema semiotico complesso, che coinvolge più testi e più livelli testuali (l’enunciazione, la rappresentazione, la narrazione, la comunicazione) e che va indagato
nei suoi presupposti culturali e ideologici (poiché anche la cultura e l’ideologia sono
sistemi semiotici, quindi interpretabili secondo categorie formali omogenee a quelle
dello stile). Perché ciò sia possibile, è necessario che le analisi testuali siano integrate,
cioè condotte in parallelo con la ricostruzione documentaria dei contesti (i modi di produzione e di ricezione, la tecnologia di ripresa, i discorsi sociali, lo sfondo intertestuale).
Inteso in questo senso, lo stile può essere letto plausibilmente come sintomo di una cultura, cioè come riflesso e rielaborazione di modelli di pensiero e di conoscenza socialmente diffusi.
La seconda parte è di taglio storiografico: attraverso la ricerca d’archivio, si ricostruisce il modo di produzione Cines tra il ’30 e il ‘34 (contratti, equipaggiamento tecnico,
planimetrie, personale artistico e tecnico, immagine esterna, “filosofia” aziendale, ecc.).
La terza parte, invece, è interpretativa: l’approccio messo a punto nella parte teorica
viene applicato all’analisi di nove film della Cines, fino a individuare tre modelli rappresentativi: lo stile plurale, lo stile teatrale e il classicismo realista. Tali modelli vengono interpretati anche in relazione al modo di produzione Cines (senza tuttavia stabilire
equivalenze dirette fra la macchina economico-tecnologica e quella del simbolico). Ma
i tre modelli sono interpretati soprattutto in rapporto al tema della modernità, e appaiono come gli esiti di un lungo processo di “negoziazione” che la cultura fascista conduce
nei confronti della cultura di massa. Si tratta infatti di forme visive a dominante restaurativa, che propongono una mediazione tra i modelli culturali in lotta nella società del146
l’epoca, cercando anzi una sorta di compromesso fra tradizione e novità, sperimentazione e codificazione, propaganda e mercato. Spesso, in questo tentativo, la cultura
fascista e la cultura di massa non sempre si sovrappongono, ma possono anche entrare
in frizione.
Ad esempio, le analisi di La canzone dell’amore (G. Righelli, 1930), Resurrectio (A.
Blasetti, 1931) e Acciaio (W. Ruttmann, 1933) dimostrano l’esistenza di una sintesi dialettica tra stili diversi che rimanda allo sforzo di conciliare due opposte visioni della
modernità (quella delle élites e quella della cultura di massa). Invece, le analisi di “commedie ungheresi” come La segretaria privata (G. Alessandrini, 1931), La telefonista (N.
Malasomma, 1932) e Rubacuori (G. Brignone, 1931) confermano il tentativo di costruire un’estetica da studio sul modello hollywoodiano, ma con una declinazione “teatrale”
che nasconde una volontà di organizzazione del consenso politico. Infine, le analisi di
Gli uomini… che mascalzoni (M. Camerini, 1932) e 1860 (A. Blasetti, 1933) rivelano la
presenza di un nuovo stile (il classicismo realista) capace di congiungere contenuti di
realtà e forma pienamente classica (una ricetta originale rispetto al cinema statunitense ed europeo, come dimostra il dibattito critico dell’epoca sulla possibilità di una via
italiana al cinema).
L’ipotesi generale, insomma, è che il cinema italiano dei primi anni ’30 abbia intrapreso un’opera di codificazione stilistica e ideologica, alla ricerca di un’identità che lo
differenziasse tanto dall’international style quanto dal modello americano. Questi
aspetti vengono approfonditi nell’ultimo capitolo, dove si ricostruisce il dibattito tra
intellettuali e regime sul “realismo” e lo “stile italiano”, e si ipotizza l’esistenza di uno
stile Cines, all’inizio caratterizzato dall’autoriflessività, poi stabilizzatosi nella formula
del realismo standardizzato, cioè di un’estetica peculiarmente cinematografica, nuova
rispetto al realismo letterario e pittorico (come ben capì Emilio Cecchi, che rispetto ad
altri intellettuali italiani si spinse molto avanti nella comprensione del cinema come
medium capace di fondere registrazione della realtà ed elaborazione formale). Sono proprio queste conclusioni che ci inducono a ridimensionare alcune interpretazioni storiografiche consolidate (ad esempio l’idea della Cines come porto franco ideologico o
l’immagine di un Pittaluga “commerciale” contrapposto a un Cecchi “sperimentale”),
portandoci a sfiorare per un attimo questioni complesse come il rapporto tra modernità, mass media e totalitarismi.
147
THE ORGANIZATION OF SPACE IN KOREAN CINEMA
THE ORGANIZATION OF SPACE IN KOREAN CINEMA (FROM THE 1980s
TO THE PRESENT DAY)
Adrien Gombeaud / PhD Thesis Abstract
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) - Paris
This thesis is based on the Chinese character for space jian (or gan in Korean). It represents a door opening on a sun. In this thesis I try to explain the richness of jian/gan
through an analysis of Korean films in the past two decades. This character helps me
define Korean space as an “in between space,” a place of non-stop motion and perpetual transformation.
Even though the topic is Asia and cinema, the argument is also based on comparisons
with other art forms such as painting, calligraphy, and aesthetical sources from the East
as well as from the West. The question of landscape (mostly urban landscape) is the key
to understand Korea’s modern spatiality. Therefore it is analyzed through every chapter
of the thesis.
The first chapter is called “frame and screen,” because these are the two bases of cinematographic space. I first argue that the notion of frame is very recent in the Far East,
and that the absence of frame in the history of Korean arts has a great influence in
Korean film composition. The directors use different tricks to make us forget about the
presence of the frame, one of them is to put material frames within the frame (windows,
doors…). The use of symmetry and asymmetry creates emptiness. The cinematographic
space is then opened to the viewer, the spectator is a guest who accepts himself as a looker, as the subject (the actor) accepts himself as a represented figure (he knows he is being
watched). The screen then becomes an interface instead of a surface, a place where the
inside world of fiction meets the outside world of the spectator. A door jian/gan.
The second chapter focus on material space (decors) and on Interiors and Exteriors.
The very notions of interiors and exteriors reinterpreted from an Asian perspective
becomes very vague. When I am inside I am in an interior, but what is architecturally
true for a westerner is not socially exact in the East. Being inside means being out of
society, out of it’s look. The attitude of the characters is opposite if they are in or out.
Therefore the closed place is an intimate secured space (like the Korean love hotel yogwan), as the outside space is opened to risk (like the big city or the mountain landscapes). These two mustn’t be seen as opposite but as complementary and alternative.
The use of recurrent places and accessories is analyzed: mirrors, aquarium…
The city of Seoul is considered as the center of every Korean space. Everything is
organized around the verticality of the city. Seoul is a space of contradiction: of attraction and repulsion, of destruction and construction, of loneliness and nameless solitude
as well as fame and social progress.
The countryside is analyzed as a religious landscape (where two complementary
Korean aesthetics are defined: Buddhism and Shamanism). Spirits and humans are
sharing the same casual space, so there is no place for fantasy in Korean cinema.
148
The last chapter is set on the notion of “rhythm”. To understand the Asian rhythm
one must go back to alternation as it is expressed in the first hexagrams of the Yi King,
and the theories of cosmological correspondences that include man in the big flow of
time and space where everything alternates on the rhythm of seasons considered as natural cycles. From a modern (i.e. urban) perspective space and movement are organized
on three different times “Attraction-Collision-Repulsion.” This is the basic rhythm of
the Korean story.
Korean cinema is then defined as a calligraphic art of “trace.” From the landscape to
the scars on the actors’ bodies, time leaves its traces everywhere. This is how alternation
is never repetitive, but creative through this accumulation of traces. In complicated
flashback structures, Time is recomposed by the viewer from all these pieces of space
and the traces left. The dynamic of the film comes from the distance between these
traces of spaces, compared to Zhuang Zi’s notion of emptiness. To create this dynamic
the purpose of the director is to break space and movements with brutal flashbacks,
still photos, text boards, multiplication of places, characters and points of view. The
story is then constructed on the important idea of rupture.
This organization of space gives birth to stories with no end or beginning. In these
films landscape is mostly a space of sensations. The body of the character is a receptacle
which is opening out to the power and sensation of space. This is the unique sensuality of Korean cinema.
In conclusion I show that the values of Korean aesthetic are imperfection and
ephemera. I compare cinema to the Buddhist “sand mandala”, constructed by the monks
to be destroyed. Seoul, a city of perpetual construction and destruction, then becomes
the symbol of Korean cinema. The big challenge of contemporary Korean cinema is the
reconciliation of man (in) and space (gan) to create a modern humanity (ingan) and by
doing so, breaking the equation modernity = westernization. In this new space the hero
will triumph not by conquering space but by renouncing and accepting it.
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MULTIPLE WORLDS WITHOUT ENDS: FILM SERIALS IN EUROPE, 1913-1929
MULTIPLE WORLDS WITHOUT ENDS: FILM SERIALS IN EUROPE,
1913-1929
Rudmer Canjels / PhD Thesis Project
Universiteit Utrecht
This thesis deals with the production and reception of European film serials in the
period 1913-1929. European serials were an important, but temporary phenomenon in
the European film industry. The main focus of my research is twofold: on the one hand
to find an explanation for the rise and fall of the European serial, and on the other hand
to shed light on the importance of the serial in the European film industry. The reception of the American serial in Europe and the European serial in America will play an
important part in this. Mostly for this research I will focus on the situation in France
and Germany (that supplied many serials) and the Netherlands (that only made one
serial); but possibly also Italy and England.
Serials seemed to have played a significant part in rebuilding the French and German
film industry during and after the First World War. Because of their serial-format and
with the hindsight on bigger budgets, serials were used from 1915 onwards, to compete
with the American invasion of features and serials. Compared to the American serials,
the European variants were different. The serial format was used in different genres and
episodes were longer and functioned as the feature in a film program. Not only were
popular adventure serials like Feuillade’s Les Vampires (1915) or Diamant Berger’s Les
Trois Mousquetaires (1921) released in multiple episodes, but many prestigious artistic
productions also used a serial format. There can be some debate if these “artistic” films
of usually two to four episodes are really serials or that they are just very long films
coincidentally cut into episodes, nevertheless a connection seems to exist. Before a feature version was made of Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919) and La Roue (1922), the two films
consisted of four parts and J’Accuse had been released as a feuilleton; Fritz Lang’s two
part Die Nibelungen (1924) and Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) had followed Die
Spinnen (1919-1920) which was intended as a four part serial (and which was re-cut in
France into ten weekly episodes); and Joe May’s two part Das Indische Grabmal (1921)
had followed the eight part adventure serial Die Herrin der Welt (1920).1
This thesis aims to explain how and with what results the European serial tried to get
back on its feet and give resistance to the American export. I will research how the public, critics and film companies from these continents reacted to the different products;
if competition and differences also existed between European serials; and if one can
speak of a European serial with a European culture. Because several different film versions of the serial appeared to have existed, I will carefully pay attention to the various
cultural modes of production, distribution and reception. For instance, some American
Pathé serials were especially adjusted and shortened for distribution in Europe. Or, in
the Netherlands there was a practice whereby several episodes (also the already shortened Pathé serials) of American serials were distributed and screened either edited
150
together or back-to-back in one film program. A complete American fifteen part serial
was shown in a period of three to four weeks instead of fifteen weeks. In the
Netherlands no American serial was ever released in its original version. This adjustment of American serials also happened in other countries, but it does not seem to have
happened to such an extent as in the Netherlands. It is possible that because of the repetition of the sensationalistic narrative, the Dutch critics sooner found the serial objectionable than in other countries, while at the same time the audience grew more rapidly tired of the serials. In the Netherlands the episodes functioned as the main feature in
a film program. When after five years the serial craze dropped, the serial had no place
to go and episodes could not be used as a filler next to a feature.2 On the other side of the
Atlantic a similar process of reconstruction was taking place. European serials were
either re-edited into one feature or shortened into lesser episodes. While the first option
could sometimes work (although the storyline tended to be somewhat confusing), the
latter option failed horribly. Episodic features of five reels or more just did not work for
the American audience that was used to short two-reel episodes.3 Questions I will deal
with during this project are concerned with these various (cultural) modes: with what
reasons were European and American serials adjusted for export and how did it reflect
a presumed national taste; were there any differences in adjustments; and what does
this say about the cultural self-image and the filmic cultural codification of America
and Europe?
Apart from the beginning when the serial format was still taking shape, I will also try
to map out the fall of the European film serial. Even though the European serial had
been reasonably successful in Europe, this success would only last for a little more than
ten years. From 1925 onward, the European serial started to disappear from the cinema
and was entirely replaced by the feature of one episode. This not only applied to the
European serial, the American variant was also in a bad condition. There was only one
difference: after World War Two the American serial came back in color and sound, the
European serial did not. However, the film serial would never regain the central place
in the cinema it once had.
1 One can also ask if the structure of a serial is different from the structure of the four weekly
episodes of Capellani’s Les Miserables (1912).
2 For more information on this topic see also my work: Serials in Nederland: 1915-1925 (thesis
Liberal Arts: Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 1999); and “De Serial in Nederland 19151925: de unieke opkomst en ondergang van een aangepaste filmvorm,” Tijdschrift voor
Mediageschiedenis, no. 1 (June 2001), pp. 108-128.
3 See also my article in the upcoming publication of the IX International Film Studies
Conference, Film and its Multiples, Udine, 20-23 March 2002: “Adapting Film Serials:
Multiple (Cultural) Models for the Cliffhanger in the Teens and Twenties.”
151
MYTHOS EX MACHINA: MOTOR SPORT AS AN ICON OF MODERNITY
MYTHOS EX MACHINA: MOTOR SPORT AS AN ICON OF MODERNITY IN
THE POPULAR CULTURE OF NAZI GERMANY
Up to now there have been few attempts to look at motor sport in Nazi Germany from
the angle of the contemporary mass culture and mass media in the Third Reich. This is
surprising because on the one hand Jeffrey Herf’s studies about “Reactionary
Modernism” have led to a new paradigm, in which the historical evaluations of fascist
Germany emphasize the Nazi enthusiasm about modern technologies and their engagement for a progressive public life style with high standards of cultural consumption
and modern mass culture. This was directly influenced by the cultural model USA, but
also tightly connected to reactionary folkloristic, cultural, and ideological values or traditional strains of ideology like “blood and soil” or pride about home and nation in the
romantic and racist terms of Heimatverbundenheit, Volk, or Deutschtum. On the other
hand, in the last ten years motorcar racing has been remarkably successful in the mass
media, particularly as a result of the popularity of the formula-one stars like Michael
Schuhmacher or the attraction of the competition between Ferrari cars and the socalled “Silver Arrows” of Mercedes-Benz. Especially in Germany, the upswing of
Formula One racing has revitalized memories of the “glorious era” of the Silver Arrows
in the 1930s and the German racing stars of that period like Bernd Rosemeyer, Rudolf
Caracciola, and Hans Stuck.
However, most of the illustrated books and documentary films today ignore the connections to the Nazi regime and the function of the motorcar racing as an instrument of
propaganda and an effective event of popular culture and mass entertainment. The cult
of motor sport as something constructed in and by the media in the mid-1930’s, can open
a historical window into the inner life of mass culture in Nazi Germany for us. It shows
the divided mentality of the German people, which Hans-Dieter Schäfer called
Gespaltenes Bewußtsein1 (split consciousness). This means a kind of multiple existence
caught in the tension between the daily ideological requirements of the regime, people’s
own national yearnings and their individual desires for a life in privacy and personal happiness. It refers to an existence between technological progress, popular heroism, cultural consumption, modern life, mass motorization and again reactionary attitudes, uniformed Nazi aesthetic and its permanent acclamation of pre-modern elements.
The images of the victorious racing drivers and triumphant German technology came
together to form a powerful mental construct that reinforced national self-confidence.
Bernd Rosemeyer or Rudolf Caracciola, the drivers from the German automotive companies Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz, became modern masculine heroes. Behind the
steering wheels of fast and powerful machines, they represented a strong, modern, and
capable industrial nation, which – in the discourse of the time – as an organically
grown and socially classless community of German workers (Volksgemeinschaft,
Werkmänner) never lost its roots to tradition, history and the virtues of workmanship
and handmade, high-quality-products (Deutsche Wertarbeit). The “motor battles”
(Motorenschlachten) at the Avus in Berlin and the Nürburgring were more popular
than the usual mass party rallies of the Nazis in Nuremberg or other cities. In comparison to the stiff rituals there, the marching uniformed, disciplined bodies and the ideologically unequivocal acclamation of the total hegemony of one party, car races were a
demonstration of the joy of life. They manifested the so-called Volksgemeinschaft as a
national community of joy and fun. Motor sport as a mass media construct moreover
shows the effective strategy of the Nazis and the significance of modernity.
Sound film was the most effective mass medium to present the dynamics of racing
sport. International races and trials in setting up new speed records already belonged to
the standard topics in the newsreels of the Weimar republic. In the Third Reich,
German drivers drove their foreign rivals from the pole position and the screens. Now
the Wochenschau and Kulturfilm presented the triumphs of German drivers over
Italian, French, or American fighters as a success story. The films were produced to proclaim the powerful “New Reality”2 and the rise of motor sport under the NSKK
(Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps), the Nazi motor organization. Furthermore,
these films supported the mass motorization propaganda of the Volkswagen and the
construction of the new motorways, the Reichsautobahn.
While in the reality of the Third Reich mass motorization was out of question, the
documentary shorts and features (Kulturfilme) that were produced showed an automotive wave rolling towards the cinema audience. Like no other medium, the movies
were able to turn the propaganda of mass mobility as well as the popular desires of the
viewers for tempo, spatial and mental freedom, and national edification into a virtual
experience. In the cinema, the car, the power of the Silver-Arrows, and the motorized
life style could become part of this virtual reality. The Kulturfilm transformed the
rapidity of motor sport into an agile audiovisual speech and film structure, which
ranked virtual experience and visual attractions far over the ideological loading of the
film text. The screen as a dispositive of perception suggested speed, potency, and
strength through the imaginary goggles of the racing driver. Therefore film analysis
must be directed to the topics of modern life because the films presented the “society of
the spectacle”3 in the same way as they mobilized individual and collective fantasies of
acceleration, infinity, and dynamism. Simultaneously they pleased the popular fascination for modern technologies, tourism, and adventures in connection with ideologies
close to Nazism like the sense of duty, discipline, toughness, or typically “German” or
“Prussian” virtues.
The length of the Kulturfilme ranged between 15 and 90 minutes. They were produced by the NSKK in cooperation with the automotive industry and other Nazi organizations or institutions like the SS, the military, or police forces (Wehrmacht). The films
were titled Deutscher Kraftfahrsport voran! (1935), Deutsche Rennwagen in Front
(1938), Sieg auf der ganzen Linie (1939), and Sieg der Arbeit (1940). Parallel to the official productions, Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz ordered their own films, in which
esthetical elements from several genres of documentary and promotion films were
amalgamated. In Sieg – Rekord – Meisterschaft (1940) Mercedes stylized its team and
racing cars into unbeatable representatives of unsurpassable German precision work.
The main titles are significant for the film’s major themes: national superiority, technical power-fantasies, and acceleration make up the center of the film text. The motor
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Uwe Day / PhD Thesis Project
Universität Bremen
152
UWE DAY
sport films of Nazi Germany came astonishingly close to the esthetic concepts of the
Italian and Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s. They were influenced by the dynamism of
the Italian futurists and by the genuine cinema, the “cinema of attraction”4 in the theoretical understanding of the Soviet avant-garde. Eisenstein viewed the cinema in relation to the fairground amusement parks. Thus the film audience should be given the
elemental feeling of sitting in a roller coaster. Film montage should be an instrument to
stimulate the audience, to charge it psycho-energetically and to impress it psychologically. Dziga Vertov raved about the possibilities of the “mechanical eye” that grasps an
modern accelerated world of living through different perspectives and the continuous
motion of the film operator and his camera, which has to hurry from extreme low to
extreme high perspectives.
The Nazi motor sport films carry on with these concepts: The cinema became a driving simulator for an audience that previously had been immobile. Now movies could
present the experience of virtual mobility:
When he sits behind the wheel and then the compressor is roaring and the thundering
sound of the engine bounce against the walls of the rock face. […] I honestly believed I myself
was sitting in this racing car. It was so near, so reachable, when the trees passed by. […] How
these guys filmed the Freiburger mountain record, so compressed, as if you are at all places
and at same time in the back of the car, too. That is magnificent. I was totally excited.5
The Filmkurier praised the dynamics of the filmic synesthesia:
Mighty motor battles are raging here, and over and over again it’s a triumph for the genial
constructions of German technicians and engineers. Out of the roaring of compressors and
the screaming of the brakes sounds the hymn of the racing driver. […] The film is brilliantly
made, it has a fascinating tempo.6
MYTHOS EX MACHINA: MOTOR SPORT AS AN ICON OF MODERNITY
just like the luxurious cars that were placed in the film cosmos of the Italian “Forum
Mussolini” or the “modern” colony Libya. The film text alternates between filmic sightseeing, ethnographic expeditions, and a tourist excursion, in which the cadre becomes
a space for product placement. The film transformed the screen into a car’s windscreen.
The film gives the spectator the point of view of a virtual tourist, a civilized European,
who becomes acquainted with foreign countries, people, and exotic sceneries. From the
virtual front passenger seat he could enjoy a filmic anticipation of the coming mass
motorization, which the “Führer” had promised.
1 H. D. Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit,
1933-1945 (München: Hanser, 1982).
2 W. Uricchio, “The Past as Prologue? The ‘Kulturfilm’ before 1945,” in H. B. Heller, P.
Zimmermann (eds.), Blicke in die Welt (Konstanz: UVK Universiätsverlag, 1995), pp. 263-288.
3 G. Debord, Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels [1967] (Berlin: Edition Tiamat, 1996).
4 T. Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” in A.
Arker, Th. Elsaesser (eds.), Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI, 1990), pp. 5962.
5 Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung, vol. 34, no. 1 (7 January 1933), p. 33.
6 Filmkurier, 18 February 1939.
7 S. Kracauer, Die Angestellten: aus dem neuesten Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1971).
8 E. Orbanz, Wolfgang Staudte (Berlin: Spiess, 1977).
The rapid editing of these reels broke with the official ideal of the Kulturfilm as an
educational medium and a sublime film format, which should keep to the high culture
demands of teachers and the well-educated middle classes. Films like Deutsche
Rennwagen in Front placed national edification and the “Cult of Distraction” that
Kracauer7 had described above the cultivation of the audience or esoteric building. The
films aimed less at simply distributing Nazi platitudes or high culture than at imparting a medially entertaining world-view, which at the same time was unmistakably
coded with the symbols of National Socialism. However, it was primarily just nationalistic and thus offered a wide range of the ideological address of the mass audience.
One expressive example for the mixture of traditional Kulturfilm genres like the
ethnographic documentary or tourist and landscape film is the movie Deutsche Siege
in drei Erdteilen, produced by Auto Union in 1938. Wolfgang Staudte was in charge of
post-production.8 Rather than using the usual chronological arrangement of the films,
the script of Deutsche Siege in drei Erdteilen sketched a narrative structure, in which
the Auto Union team is stylized to a German pioneer troop of motorization. The racing
season is turned into not only a global expedition, but also a worldwide campaign to
conquer virtual countries, symbolized through the trophies of triumph. And like a feature movies, this promotion film presented stars like the German idol Bernd Rosemeyer
and his wife Elly Beinhorn, a popular aviatrix. They were used as popular attractions
154
155
BEYOND IMPRESSIONS: GERMAINE DULAC (1882-1942)
BEYOND IMPRESSIONS: GERMAINE DULAC (1882-1942),
HER LIFE AND FILMS, FROM AESTHETIC TO POLITIC
Tami M. Williams / PhD Thesis Project
University of California - Los Angeles
Feminist, socialist, and pioneer filmmaker of the 1920s French avant-garde, Germaine
Dulac played a founding role in the evolution of the cinema both as art and social practice. Over the course of her film career (1915-42), she directed more than 30 fiction films,
many marking new cinematic tendencies (from “Impressionist” to “abstract”), and an
equivalent number of newsreels and documentaries. Moreover, Dulac played a leading
role in the innovation, legitimization, and diffusion of French film and film culture
through her prolific writings and lectures, as well as through her presiding roles in corporate, cine-club and social organizations, such as the Société des Auteurs, the
Fédération Française des Ciné-clubs, the International Council of Women, and the
International Institute of Educational Cinema, to name a few. Despite her vast impact
on the cinema, our knowledge of Dulac and her role in film history has been primarily
limited to short biographical overviews and analyses of two or three of her fiction films,
namely her ‘Impressionist’ La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923) and her “Surrealist” La
Coquille et le Clergyman (1927). Their isolated consideration obscures her broader contributions to cinema and feminism.
Using newly available, original archival resources from Europe and the U.S. (including
scripts, correspondence and legal files), I retrace, recontextualize and reevaluate the
social and aesthetic trajectory of Dulac’s “commercial” and “avant-garde,” “narrative”
and “non-narrative,” “fiction” and “non-fiction” films and projects, within the context of
early 20th century France and of her life and work as a whole. The scope of my analysis
spans the length of Dulac’s life (1882-1942) and is divided into four chapters and periods.
In my first chapter, I outline Dulac’s family background and her encounters with certain people, events and tendencies during France’s Belle Epoque, as they impact her
political and aesthetic views, or the paradigmatic alternatives that shape her film
career. I also examine her “women’s portraits” and theater reviews for the feminist
weekly La Française (1906-13), her first theater production L’Emprise (1907), and her
political writings and activism (1906-15). Then, I consider her early filmmaking career
– from her first experiences as a producer for Pathé in 1915 to her first directorial efforts
(Sœurs Ennemies to Le Bonheur des Autres, 1915-18) – in order to measure the historical significance of her incursion into and “negotiated” course within the French film
industry as a female artist and entrepreneur.
My second chapter considers Dulac’s corporate, artistic and pedagogical initiatives of
the 1920s, and comprises a historical overview and several inter-textual analyses of
Dulac’s “commercial” and “avant-garde” narrative fiction or “Impressionist” films (La
Cigarette to Princesse Mandane, 1919-28). Taking into account Dulac’s personal goals,
as well as industry constraints, I examine the gender and class politics of these “psy156
chological” films. Further, in light of confirmed “naturalist” and “symbolist” influences
(from music, theater, photography and dance), and in consideration of Dulac’s conception of movement, rhythm and “life itself” as specific qualities of the new “cinematographic art,” I examine the aesthetic, and epistemological shift in her fiction work. I
argue that the crux of this shift, from the use of the “technical effect” to that of “rhythm
within and between the images,” takes place in Dulac’s theories, as well as in her films
in 1924. To this end, I conduct an in-depth analysis of her independently financed feminist short La Folie des Vaillants (1925) which, amongst her narrative films, comes the
closest to fulfilling her ideal of a “visual symphony” and a “pure cinema” free from the
narrative and decorative conventions of literature and theatre.
My third chapter is devoted to Dulac’s “non-narrative” fiction films (1927-30), which
I examine in light of this shifting aesthetic ideal, as expressed through her writings and
lectures (1924-29), as well as in view of the emerging “specialized cinema” outlets (192630). In particular, I examine the polemic that ensued from Dulac and Artaud’s collaboration on La Coquille et le Clergyman (1927), and which was made famous by the
“Surrealist protest” following the film’s February 1928 screening at the Studio des
Ursulines. Taking into account Artaud’s “Surrealist” vision, I reformulate this polemic
with regard to Dulac’s description of the film as “visual music,” her activism for a
“pure” cinema, and her conception of authorship. The second part of the chapter is
devoted to Dulac’s “abstract” films Disque 957 (1929), Etude cinégraphique sur une
Arabesque (1929), and Thème et Variations (1929), which I examine within the context
of her filmography and writings, as well as in relationship to the work of other filmmakers of the movement.1
My fourth and final chapter addresses a crucial, but little known period of Dulac’s
career as a non-fiction filmmaker (1931-1942). In the first part, I consider the aesthetic
and social dimensions of her conception of the newsreel, in her work as founding director of one of the most important newsreel companies of the period (France-ActualitésGaumont, 1931-1935). In the second part, I examine Dulac’s socially and politically
engaged non-fiction films and projects from the Popular Front to Vichy, including both
her unique newsreel-based documentary feature Le Cinéma au Service de l’Histoire
(1935), which explores cinema’s role as a “carrier of history,” and her Socialist propaganda film Retour à la Vie (1936). I also consider her contribution, within the context of
the vast cultural movement Mai 36 and Ciné-Liberté, to the genesis of Jean Renoir’s La
Marseillaise (1938). Finally, I examine and contextualize a number of her fiction and
non-fiction film projects (1938-41) written during the period leading up to Vichy.
Through the broad scope of my analysis and in consideration of the radically evolving
social, political and cultural climate of the period, I aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the work of this prolific and ground-breaking woman activist
and filmmaker, and to reestablish its importance in film history.
1 Please see my overview of Dulac’s 1920s work published in 1895 (June and October 2001), and
my analysis of her “abstract” films in Jeune, Dure et Pure! Une histoire du cinéma expérimental en France (Paris: Cinémathèque Française, 2001).
157
CINEMATIC TECHNOLOGIES
CINEMATIC TECHNOLOGIES
Università di Bologna / Università Cattolica di Milano / Università di Firenze /
Università di Milano-Iulm / Università di Pavia / Università di Pisa / Università di
Torino / Università di Trento / Università di Udine
In the nineteenth century technological codes reached such a widespread diffusion at
the level of aesthetic languages, that Thirties’ theoretician Eugenio Giovannetti coined
the notion of “mechanical arts”. Cinema is placed at the core of the technological revolution: on the one hand it modifies the notion of art itself, on the other hand it determines a new social imaginary on the ground of technology and modernity.
From the Sixties, a new methodology of historical research on the evolution of cinematic technologies imposed itself: it led to more comprehensive technological histories
of film, which focus attention, besides production, also on distribution and propose an
articulated analysis of technological transformations in order to understand social
changes as well as the cultural values of cinema. Although the rich contributions this
methodological trend has given to film study, it hasn’t still offered a complete picture of
the research field. Especially in Italy, some carefully developed researches were published recently, presenting case studies of Italian technicians whose work offered an
important contribution to the development of film technology. These researches
though get involved just with a few historical stages and, actually, they grant a privilege
to film, leaving apart the whole network of relationships and convergence that new
technologies of film production and distribution determine on the social-cultural system, on the media and on the experience of spectators.
As a consequence, the research aims to map this wide field historically, revisiting the
whole life span of Italian Cinema and examining in detail those innovations which
changed its physiognomy and its functions; as well as the research aims to analyse the
evolution of cinematic technologies in so far as they affect the whole mass communication system and the functions and effects of the medium in society.
The project, produced in 2002 as “Programma di ricerca scientifica di rilevante interesse nazionale” for Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, is going to
focus on the role of technology within film history and spectatorship experiences (technologies of cinematic representation), mapping the main transformations occurred to
cinematic technologies through history and checking the effects of this progress on the
level of production, distribution and consumption of cinema. Besides that, the project
is going to consider the role of cinema in introducing and representing technology in
the social background, and we will evaluate the importance of cinema in the development of a “technological imaginary” (technologies within cinematic representation).
The analysis will be carried out both from a diachronic and synchronic point of view,
and will focus on particular decades and theoretical perspectives:
- 1910-20s: overview of the birth and settling of cinematic technologies, mapping the
social discourses and existing literature on cinema and technology. A methodical analy158
sis will be carried out collecting original handbooks, local newspapers, paratextes, testimonies and all sort of materials considered mediators of the incorporation of cinema
in the social contest;
- 20s-30s: from Silent to Sound cinema, the research intends to check and explain how
technological changes determine film genre statement and modify styles and habits of
moviegoing, film exhibition and spectatorship; and also to verify how the movies represent technology and interact with cultural and artistic trends;
- 30s-40s: the focus here is on the increasing development of cinematic technologies.
A complete overview of the main transformation of the studios and of the production
technologies, including a history of Italian companies will be defined, and a complete
analysis of the ways in which cinema leads the social acceptance of technologies and
the incorporation of “modernity” in Italian society;
- 50s-60s: how technological development influenced the cinema production and distribution is at focus here, together with the relation of society, media and the cultural
industry progress. A special collection of testimonies of vision experiences and spectators biographies will be connected with the transformation of the social role of cinema
within Italian culture, and a map of Italian popular genres, and the definition of the
boundaries of horror films, Italian Comedy and other film genres will be carried out.
Also the notion of Author will be questioned with a renovated attention;
- 60s-70s: This is the period of low-budget-technologies diffusion. Their historical
growth and the consequences of their circulation in production, consumption and narration is the main object here, connected to the multiplication and differentiation of
theatres and spaces of consumption (films out of cinemas) until nowadays, mapping
the major moviegoing and film exhibition trends;
- 80s-90s: here histories of cinema and of cinematic technologies are bound together
with postmodern cultural and social debates. In this perspective textual analysis and
forms of reception will be investigated together;
- The Digital turn: here the focus is on the effects of digital technologies in production, distribution, exhibition and moviegoing.
These ends will be achieved by adopting a comprehensive methodology, connecting:
- archival researches on original documents testifying the historical conditions within film and technology;
- textual analysis aimed to verify the transformations determined in the movies by
technologies, especially in relation to the codification of film genres;
- paratextual studies, able to identify time and modalities of technological transformations, as well as how they are commonly perceived and their social functions;
- audience studies, in order to measure the qualities and the symbolic values of the
technological turn in the experience of movie-goers.
The project is promoted by:
Sandro Bernardi / Università di Firenze; Michele Canosa / Università di Bologna;
Gianni Canova / Università di Milano-Iulm; Giulia Carluccio / Università di Torino;
Francesco Casetti (Head of the project) / Università Cattolica di Milano;
Lorenzo Cuccu / Università di Pisa; Alberto Farassino / Università di Pavia;
Leonardo Gandini / Università di Trento; Leonardo Quaresima / Università di Udine.
159
THE KEITH-ALBEE COLLECTION
THE KEITH-ALBEE COLLECTION
Rick Altman, University of Iowa
For students of American theater, vaudeville, and cinema, the Keith/Albee Collection
offers an unparalleled inside view of the day-to-day operation of vaudeville and motion
picture theaters in the early part of this century, including everything from specific
vaudeville acts and booking practices to nickelodeon programming, finances, and illustrated song use. Consulted by Robert Allen for his classic dissertation on Vaudeville and
Film 1895-1915: A Study in Media Interaction (University of Iowa, 1977), by Alison Kibler
for her innovative book on Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American
Vaudeville (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), and more
recently by researchers including Paul Spehr and Richard Abel, the Keith/Albee
Collection has nevertheless been by and large overlooked by silent film scholars.
Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee became partners during the
1880s to promote “high-class” vaudeville. After establishing a theater in Boston, they
turned to Providence, Rhode Island, where they operated a series of theaters of all types,
from opera house to nickelodeon and from vaudeville to picture palace. During the
final years of the nineteenth century, they created the nation’s premier circuit of vaudeville theaters, stretching from Maine to Ohio. In 1906, they established the United
Booking Office, a powerful organization that sought to monopolize U.S. booking of
vaudeville acts. During the 1920s the Keith/Albee circuit of theaters merged with a
western chain to form the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit, which was sold in 1928 to the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA), thereby establishing Radio-Keith-Orpheum
(RKO), a major force in Hollywood filmmaking throughout the studio years.
The papers in the first three series of this collection concentrate on the Keith/Albee
theaters in Providence and several nearby Rhode Island towns, from B. F. Keith’s Opera
House in 1894 to the RKO Albee in 1941, with a heavy concentration on materials from
the silent film period. Six feet of subject files housed in eleven boxes and a map case
include such unusual items as salary sheets, booking lists for vaudeville acts, and weekly cash books for several silent and sound theaters. The level of detail is often exhilarating. Box 10, for example, reveals the specifics of the Pawtucket, RI, Star Theatre’s
finances right down to the number of pennies spent to feed the local cat.
The heart of the collection, however, is the fourth series, 150 oversize (9 inches x 15
inches, often four or more inches thick) record books offering a level of detail available
nowhere else. Volumes 1-24 contain weekly reports covering the period 1902-1923 from
the managers of vaudeville theaters around the Keith/Albee circuit. The reports from
Boston, Providence, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and
Detroit are virtually continuous, while several other cities are represented only partially.
160
Each report (averaging two pages) details the manager’s evaluation of the week’s program. We learn not only who performed, but in what order, how many times a day, for
how many minutes, using what portion of the stage, and what the manager thought of
the act. Better than any other collection, these managers’ reports make it possible to trace
when films were programmed in vaudeville theaters, where they were located in the program, which exact films were shown, and how they were received. We discover which
films were held over, which ones were brought back, and from time to time we even find
out which portions of a film were cut by the manager, and why. For every week of the period covered an average of eight to ten reports provide precious information.
Volumes 25-137 are clipping books covering the period 1894-1941. From legitimate theater and vaudeville to nickelodeons, picture palaces, and neighborhood sound film theaters, these well-kept oversized books offer programs, other in-house materials, and clippings from the local press (including French- and German-language newspapers).
Researchers on early film theaters will be especially interested in volumes118-121 on the
Providence Nickel Theatre and Bijou Theatre (1906-1916), volumes 122-126 on the
Pawtucket, RI, Keith’s Theatre and Scenic Music Hall (1903-1924), and volumes 128-130 on
the Pawtucket Bijou Theatre and Star Theatre (1909-1923). Students of silent feature exhibition will pay special attention to volumes 56-70 on the Providence Victory Theatre
(1919-1932), volumes 71-76 on the Woonsocket, RI, Bijou Theatre (1913-1926), and volumes 77-95 on the Providence E.F. Albee Theatre (1919-1929). Sound film researchers will
want to consult volumes 96-109 on the Providence RKO Albee (1929-1941).
Volumes 138-150 contain miscellaneous materials, including two volumes of cast
lists, a volume of caricatures, five volumes describing new acts, and several cash books
from the 1918-1921 period.
The scrapbooks are not indexed in any way, so in general it is possible to trace specific performers or titles only if relatively precise possible dates of performance are known from
other sources or if a researcher is able to spend many hours, potentially, in the search.
Graduate students in the School of Library and Information Science can often be hired to
do this work at a researcher’s direction and expense. The Special Collections Department,
located on the third floor of the University of Iowa Library, can help in locating student
workers. The Department is open from 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday to Friday, except on
national and some University holidays; scholars visiting from a distance are urged to check
service hours on the Department website (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll) or to communicate prior to their visit, preferably using the e-mail address listed above.
The Department generally does not have staff resources to search the record books or
to make large numbers of photocopies for readers. A limited number of photocopies
can be made from some of the volumes in this collection, others are too fragile to permit copying. The web address listed above provides a complete inventory of the entire
Keith/Albee Collection.
Special Collections Department - University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City, Iowa 52242 USA
Telephone: 319/335-5921
Fax: 319/335-5900
e-mail: [email protected]
web: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC356/msc356.html
161
LIMINA - FILM’S THRESHOLDS
“opening credits juxtaposed to the textual opening:” here the fictional world takes
shape while verbal information are provided which reveal its artificiality, therefore
putting at risk the fictional contract. Where does the fiction start and where does
information on its genesis stop?
X International Film Studies Conference
Udine, March 17-20, 2003
Opening: hypotext and hypertext
This issue focuses on the understanding of the nature and the differences between
various modes of expression of the same series of events, in order to establish the medium specificity or the textual characteristics of adaptations. What changes in the passage from a novel to a film? And from an original film to its remake?
Within the vast field of what surrounds a film text or the cinematic spectacle, of
what “marks” its threshold, or of what lies in its nearest “outside,” we would like to
call attention to the moments of beginning and closure of the narrative/communicative act. As borders, passages, and areas that signal the spectator’s entrance in the fiction and that accompany its exit, the opening and ending of a film might perform a
wealth of crucial roles: they define its narrative models and generic conventions,
arrange enunciation strategies, determine points of view and regimes of knowledge,
evoke cultural and reception models. Within the study of early cinema, specifically,
the fluidity of the boundaries of the film text and its mobile configuration render this
an especially meaningful issue: the “borders” of the film are as mobile as the film
itself. Consideration of such borders contributes today to the specification and assessment of new theoretical “subjects.” Despite the lively interest displayed by film analysis, film theory has given scant, or at least discontinuous, attention to film openings
and endings.
The Udine International Film Studies Conference intends to explore the issue of film
openings and endings, seen as thresholds of the diegesis. Traditionally, the conference
gives particular emphasis to early cinema even though consideration will also be
extended to later phases in the history of film (with particular attention to the early
sound era) and up to contemporary cinema. The multiplicity of methodological
approaches will be, as customary, another prerogative of such meeting.
Film’s frame and matrix
Often the opening and the ending of a film enact a sort of symbolic condensation of
narrative meanings. The notion of matrix has been evoked to indicate the nature of the
opening (but, we believe, also of the ending) of a film.
Likewise, openings and endings often present analogies and correspondences (both
at the level of the signifier and at that of the signified) suggesting the presence of a sort
of “shell” enveloping the film: a frame holding various functions within the narrative.
Narrative openness and narrative closure
Within the process that led to the institutionalization of narrative forms, the elaboration of strategies of narrative openness and closure plays a particularly crucial role
in the understanding of the formation of different modes of representation.
The opening: author and spectator. Points of view and regimes of knowledge
The employment of a perspective relying on enunciation theory in the analysis of
film openings and endings can be a useful tool. Openings and endings can present
instances of reflexivity, meta-narration, or interpellation of the spectator, and institute
simulacra of the enunciator and the enunciatee.
Furthermore, very productive is also the analysis of openings considered as privileged sites of negotiation of different points of view as well as instances establishing
and regulating specific regimes of knowledge characterizing the film.
The opening and the ending in style, genre, and narrative models
Opening and ending can work as “indicators”, for instance, of the poetics and style of
an author, or of generic mechanisms and conventions. They perform a crucial role in
the definition and structuring of grand narrative models, which in turn reflect larger
cultural contexts.
Opening in classical, modern and postmodern cinema
Are the boundaries of the film text subject to historical mutations? To what extent
are the grand epistemes of film history reflected on the boundaries of the text?
Happy and other endings
In this case we are proposing an analysis of the location of the happy ending within
generic system and conventions (considering also its attendant ideological implications), as well as instances of subversion of the mechanisms that oversees it correct
functioning.
Openings and endings: variations (1)
The ending appears to be responsible for bringing the meaning of the film back to
cultural traditions and reception models. The issue of planned variations, with reference to specific national (or regional) contexts, is therefore raised. In the early years of
sound film, the systematic employment of multiple versions accomplished a sort of
institutionalization of such occurrence.
Opening and endings: variations (2)
There is an essentially ambiguous and volatile border zone, that we could refer to as
The intention of this heading is to address the multiple issues posited by variations
on the border zones of the film text for such disciplines as restoration, philology, and
archival methods. The borders of the film (meant as the material support) are consti-
163
The opening: text and paratext
162
tutively the most fragile zones and also the areas more emphatically susceptible of
manipulation.
International Film Studies Conference
Dipartimento di Storia e Tutela dei Beni Culturali
Via Antonini, 8
I-33100 Udine (Italy)
fax: ++39/0432/556789
email: [email protected]
www. uniud.it/udineconference/
MULTIPLE AND MULTIPLE-LANGUAGE VERSIONS
MAGIS - Gradisca Film Studies Spring School
March 21-28, 2003
This School, organized through a partnership among various European Universities,
is born in close relation to the Udine International Film Studies Conference, both as an
opportunity to expand on the themes explored at the Conference and as an occasion to
develop a didactic activity directed to PhD candidates, advanced graduate students, and
young researchers in general.
The first School program is connected to the themes of the 2002 Conference (Film and
Its Multiples) and those of the 2003 Conference (The Film’s Thresholds), while exploring a precise historiographical circumstance (and the related theoretical issues): multiple versions realized at the beginning of the sound era.
Usually the realisation of multiple versions of movies based on the same plot, shot in
different languages, sometimes with the same director and actors, some other with different nationality personnel, is circumscribed in a precise historical phase: the shift
from silent to sound era. The historical and archival research on the multiple versions
productive phase has never been conducted in a truly systematic way, apart from pioneer work by Herbert Holba, the contributions by Mario Quargnolo, the researches and
proposals of CineGraph (Hamburg) and the Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna). The multiple
versions question demands deep investigation and realisation of a detailed catalogue,
since it is a moment of generalised and international reassessment of the entire film
industry. Reconstructing such a phase appears to be so necessary, because its particular
nature can enlighten many features of the modes of production and representation that
will be defined during the Thirties.
The main objectives of this work project are follows: first, to elaborate a “cartography” of films which have multiple versions; second, to investigate what we may call
“multiple” and “variant” in relation with linguistic, stylistic, narrative frameworks and
genre patterns and also in relation with the cultural identity of national cinematographies (cultural industry among national and “transnational” strategies of communications). The research will aim at recognizing the variants and the recurrence of communicative processes in the “multiple versions”. The outputs of our work programme will
be the experimental compared analysis of the multiple versions films and also the formulation of philologically correct methods to classify them. Particularly, studying multiple versions seems to be crucial for the below-mentioned topics:
Film restoration
Sound technology
164
165
MULTIPLE AND MULTIPLE-LANGUAGE VERSIONS
Productive structures and infrastructures
International productive policies
International distribution models
National and international consumers’ practices and experiences
Stardom and author models
National and international narrative styles
In its first phase, the research on multiple versions intends to link a wide number of
FIAF film archives, in order to promote a catalogue of the copies of those films that have
several versions in different languages. In such a way, it would be possible to identify in
the film archives of different countries the various versions of a single production; thus,
the whole context of a specific productive case could be traced. After this phase, the
identification and cataloguing of non-film materials related to multiple versions and
present in different archives should follow. Single researchers should take care of a
restricted number of examples, and give account of their genealogy. In a third phase,
the reconstruction of different versions, the comparison of film and non-film materials
and the inclusion of the productive case in its context will be communicated during
institutional meetings (FIAF conferences, Udine International Film Studies
Conference, Internationaler Filmhistorischer Kongress-Hamburg, Pordenone Silent
Film Festival, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, etc.). In the fourth phase, the research
project results will allow a philological restoration, if needed, or a new visibility of the
studied films.
The partners of the Spring School Project are:
Universiteit Amsterdam, Universität Bremen, Università della Svizzera ItalianaLugano, Università Cattolica di Milano, Université de Paris III, Università degli Studi di
Pisa, Charles University-Prague, Università di Udine, Universidad de Valencia.
The research project is promoted by:
International Film Studies Conference, Udine
University of Udine/DAMS, Gorizia
MAGIS - Gradisca Film Studies Spring School
CineGraph, Hamburg
La Cineteca del Friuli, Gemona
Cineteca del Comune di Bologna
166
SELECTED BY
SELECTED BY
SELECTED BY: RICHARD ABEL
Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity:
Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)
Singer’s book offers a challenging, alternative history of 1910s American cinema to those
already available in such stellar works as David
Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin
Thompson’s The Classical Hollywood Cinema
(focused on film style and modes of production), Miriam Hansen’s Babel & Babylon
(focused on the public sphere and spectatorship), Staiger’s Bad Women (focused on the regulation of sexuality), or Sumiko Higashi’s Cecil
B. DeMille and American Culture (focused on
the emergence of a “middle class” cinema).
His book, admittedly, has had a long gestation. Its subject originated in two “discoveries” that Singer made, as a doctoral student at
New York University, doing research on the
US trade press of the 1910s: 1) melodrama
then meant something quite different from
what it usually means today and 2) featurelength films, which commonly define that
decade, actually were promoted no more
heavily than other films that long have been
overlooked: sensational serials. That subject
mutated during the dissertation process and
subsequent revisions, however, into a much
broader exploration of melodrama’s inextricable interrelation with modernity. Despite a
decade of writing and rewriting, therefore, the
book could hardly be more timely, for the way
it yokes two concepts now crucial to theorizing the history of early cinema. As drawn
from Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin,
and other Weimar critics, modernity has
shaped a more or less cohesive body of recent
historical inquiry – notably by such scholars
as Hansen, Tom Gunning, and Vanessa
Schwartz – that conceptualizes early cinema
both as a dynamic contributing factor to
modernity and as its cultural consequence or
product. Singer not only interrogates the socalled modernity thesis as a model of histori-
cal inquiry but also demonstrates its value by
exploring its symbiotic relationship with the
most popular form of melodrama in the USA
at the time. This was a melodrama of thrilling
action, violence, and spectacle quite unlike
the family melodrama of “classical
Hollywood” films – the principal subject of so
much influential work in cinema studies in
the 1970s and 1980s – a form of melodrama
epitomized by sensational serials.
Any book with such a dual focus confronts
the writer with an organizational dilemma, as
the opening chapters attest in taking up, first,
the “meanings of modernity” and, second, the
“meanings of melodrama.” This suggests that
alternation will govern the book’s structure,
but one soon discovers that the trajectory of
reading takes on a spiral movement in which
modernity and melodrama, somewhat like
orbiting double stars, are seen within a series
of differing yet linked frames that involve an
increasing degree of specificity. In one chapter, Singer addresses, point by point, the epistemological and aesthetic objections and
questions raised by such scholars of the
“Madison school” as Bordwell and Charlie
Keil about the modernity thesis; in the next,
he recasts the theories of melodrama derived
from Peter Brooks more firmly within the
context of modern capitalism, situating sensational melodrama at the center of a turn-ofthe-last-century culture war about class conflict. Taken in conjunction, these theoretical
considerations establish a gravitational center
for the fascinating cultural history dominating the rest of the book. Accordingly, several
chapters describe and analyze sensationalism,
as a highly visible component of urban
modernity, through a wide spectrum of prior
cultural forms and practices – from newspapers (especially graphic illustrations), amusement park rides, daredevil stunts, vaudeville
acts, and “blood-and-thunder” melodramas
(incredibly popular with the “masses”
between 1890 and 1910) to the sensational
melodramas on film that rapidly replaced
those on stage (this latter section is perhaps
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less thorough than it could be). The penultimate chapter puts a further spin on this analysis by also situating sensational serials at the
center of a culture war over gender roles, analyzing the “pleasures and dangers” of the serial queen (the prime example is Pearl White) as
a figure of the American “New Woman,” and
how that figure could have appealed to
women (and men) of most classes. A further
chapter then reverses the direction of the
book’s intertextual investigation, exploring
the “tie-in” marketing practices that sensational serials helped to promulgate, from fashion designs to early fan magazines.
Finally, Singer’s generosity encompasses
much more than the nearly 100 illustrations
that support the book’s analysis or the extensive twenty-five pages of bibliography. For one,
he deals unusually even-handedly with his colleagues’ objections to the modernity thesis and
accepts potential disagreement with certain of
his arguments. For another, he concludes the
book with a number of provocative questions
intended to encourage further research,
research that could not only extend or modify
but even counter his own invaluable work.
SELECTED BY: RICK ALTMAN
Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity:
Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)
(What follows is not a normal review.
Knowing that Richard Abel was reviewing
Ben Singer’s Melodrama and Modernity, I
exceptionally requested permission to review
the same book, primarily to draw attention to
a single aspect of the book’s coverage. This
review should thus be thought of not as an
independent statement, but as a complement
to Abel’s general review)
Ben Singer’s recent book on Melodrama and
Modernity is in many ways a book to admire.
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Both of the topics implied by the title are complex and controversial, yet the book handles
them with extraordinary clarity and generosity. Few important topics have been as shamelessly neglected by scholars as stage melodrama and film serials; Singer rectifies that situation with easily the best chapter ever written
on stage melodrama and two solid chapters on
film serials. Furthermore, this book boasts the
most interesting illustration program of any
recent film publication (though it is surprising
and disappointing not to discover more frame
enlargements from a wider range of serials).
From cover to cover, not only are the research
and scholarship first-rate, but they are supported by writing that is both forceful and clear.
The overall quality of Singer’s book makes
it all the more disappointing to note that this
major work on melodrama devotes hardly a
word to the melos that distinguishes melodrama from just plain drama. It is well known
that stage melodrama and melodramatic film
serials were both accompanied musically. Did
this music not contribute to the experience
and meaning of stage and film melodrama? It
is a sad statement regarding the state of sound
scholarship that such an otherwise good book
should entirely ignore such concerns.
To be sure, there are easier problems to handle than music for stage or screen. It is important to recognize, however, that substantial
resources are available in this area. On other
topics, Singer makes very good use of Lewin
A. Goff’s outstanding 1948 Western Reserve
University dissertation, The Popular Priced
Melodrama in America 1890 to 1910 with Its
Origins and Development to 1890, but he
draws little benefit from Goff’s substantial
material on melodrama music. More recently,
two scholars have produced a series of careful
and well-documented articles, chapters, and
books on music for stage melodrama. The following works by British theater scholar David
Mayer will be found useful:
“Nineteenth Century Theatre Music,”
Theatre Notebook, vol. 30, no. 3 (1976), pp.
115-122.
Henry Irving and The Bells (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 82.
“The Music of Melodrama,” in D. Bradby, L.
James, B. Sharratt (eds.), Performance and politics in popular drama: aspects of popular
entertainment in theatre, film, and television,
1800-1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980), pp. 49-63.
D. Mayer, M. Scott (eds.), Four Bars of “Agit”:
Incidental Music for Victorian and Edwardian
Melodrama (London: Samuel French and The
Theatre Museum, 1983).
“Parlour and Platform Melodrama,” in M.
Hays, A. Nikolopoulou (eds.), Melodrama: the
cultural emergence of a genre (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 210-234.
“Seeing With the Ear,” Nineteenth Century
Theatre, vol. 25, no. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 66-77.
“A ‘Secondary Action’ or Musical Highlight?
Melodic Interludes in Early Film Melodrama
Reconsidered,” in R. Abel, R. Altman (eds.),
The Sounds of Early Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 220-231.
The following writings by the American
musicologist Anne Dhu Shapiro/McLucas
will be found especially helpful:
“Action Music in American Pantomime and
Melodrama, 1730-1913,” American Music, vol.
2, no. 4 (Winter 1984), pp. 50-72.
“Nineteenth Century Melodrama: From A
Tale of Mystery to Monte Cristo,” Harvard
Library Bulletin, New Series, vol. 2, no. 4
(Winter 1991), pp. 54-73.
Later Melodrama in America: Monte Cristo
(ca. 1883) (New York-London: Garland, 1994).
The latter book provides all the elements –
text, music, director’s cue sheet – necessary to
document the intermittent nature of late-nineteenth-century melodrama accompaniment
practice. In the same series, Thomas L. Riis’s
edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York and
London: Garland, 1994) will also prove useful.
Unfortunately, no similar bibliography is to
be found on the music accompanying film
serials. Until current projects reach publication, the only solution available is careful
scholarship. While relevant materials are not
easy to locate, they are no more impossible to
find than the many contemporary newspaper
and magazine articles cited by Singer.
The problem here is of course not Singer’s
alone, but that of the entire profession. For
reasons having to do with the low status of
sound and non-musicians’ fear of music,
silent film sound has not been approached
with the determination characteristic of
recent work on virtually all other aspects of
silent cinema. Of all possible topics, I would
have thought that stage and early film melodrama could not possibly be treated without
attention to their music. I was wrong. Perhaps
this short non-review will encourage future
scholars to consider music as an essential
aspect of their efforts.
SELECTED BY: FRANÇOIS ALBERA
Germain Lacasse, Le Bonimenteur de vues
animées. Le cinéma “muet” entre tradition et
modernité (Québec-Paris: Nota Bene/Méridiens
Klincksieck, 2000)
Le livre de Germain Lacasse possède une
qualité plutôt rare dans le domaine de l’histoire du cinéma, en particulier en langue
française, il explore un aspect mal connu, met
à jour une dimension oubliée du spectacle
cinématographique sur la base d’un travail
d’ampleur dans des sources négligées jusqu’ici et il émet une thèse inscrivant le cinéma
dans un ensemble plus vaste, celui de la
“modernité” et des pratiques sociales de son
temps. L’aspect (encore) mal connu, c’est
celui du “bonimenteur de vues animées”, un
commentateur, un narrateur, un conférencier
ou un camelot, selon les opinions, qui verbalise avant, pendant ou entre les images en
direction des spectateurs. L’émergence de
cette figure, insoupçonnée il y a encore dix
ans, a bouleversé considérablement l’appréhension qu’on peut avoir des conditions de
réception des films muets des premiers
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temps: toutes les réflexions internes au texte
filmique, de nature narratologique ou plus
largement sémiologique, s’efforçaient jusqu’alors d’expliciter la logique des enchaînements, des ruptures reliant une vue à une
autre, chaque “plan” au suivant, dès lors que
le film “uniponctuel” de l’origine (une seule
prise de vue) devient “pluriponctuel” et avant
que des cartons explicatifs s’intercalent entre
eux. L’“oubli” de l’explicateur dont, par définition, les films n’ont gardé aucune trace
puisqu’il leur était extérieur, a impliqué de
revoir la question à sa base.
Le pionnier en la matière fut André
Gaudreault et Germain Lacasse appartient à la
même sphère de recherche que celui-ci, au
Québec. Mais Gaudreault a commencé par
envisager cette fonction-bonimenteur au sein
d’un modèle narratif, pourrait-on dire. Il en a
recherché l’origine – comme Erwin Panofsky
l’avait suggéré dans son texte de 1934, Style
and Medium in the Motion Pictures – dans
l’art médiéval et renaissant, avec la figure du
festaïolo et de l’admonitor, dont la caractéristique est d’être intra-textuel, comme les tituli
ou phylactères du Moyen Age. Cependant
c’est l’extériorité du bonimenteur qui s’est
progressivement développée dans une perspective qui envisage désormais le “film” des
débuts (et sans doute faudra-t-il poursuivre
cette veine au-delà des débuts) comme “intermédial”. D’ailleurs la description que donne
Panofsky des premières séances de cinéma
allait en ce sens: “des ‘explicateurs’ disaient à
haute voix: ‘Maintenant, il croit que sa femme
est morte, mais ce n’est pas vrai’, ou: ‘Je ne souhaite pas heurter la sensibilité des dames présentes dans la salle mais je doute qu’aucune en
aurait fait autant pour son enfant’”. Et çà et là
on devint attentif à des témoignages de toutes
sortes attestant de cette dimension hétérogène du spectacle cinématographique sous cet
aspect (Luis Buñuel par exemple), fût-ce la
reconstitution de celui-ci par René Clair dans
Le Silence est d’or.
Après divers études sur la question et après
un numéro d’Iris qui lui a été entièrement
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consacré en 1996, ce livre de Germain Lacasse
vient donc à son heure pour “totaliser” ce
qu’on sait de ce phénomène appelé à connaître encore des enrichissements factuels et des
développements interprétatifs. L’ouvrage, qui
souffre sans doute d’être la réduction d’une
thèse et comporte paradoxalement pour cette
raison même, trop de répétitions, s’interroge
sur les statut différents de ces bonimenteurs
selon les cultures, les modes d’appropriation
du cinéma propres à chaque pays, aux communautés sociales ou ethniques (chapitre 1).
Il retrace ensuite les origines de ce bonimenteur-conférencier, en s’attachant en particulier à la tradition des lanternes magiques (chapitre 2) avant d’examiner l’histoire et la géographie du bonimenteur dans le monde (chapitre 3)1 et de s’arrêter au cas particulier du
bonimenteur québécois (chapitre 4). Ces quatre chapitres font en quelque sorte le point sur
la question. Ensuite Lacasse s’attaque aux
questions de fond concernant les fonctions du
bonimenteur (chapitre 5), les rapports du
boniment et de l’institution émergente du
cinéma (chapitre 6) avant d’en venir à la question du “boniment” face à l’expérience de la
modernité (chapitre 7).
Cette dernière partie, qui éclaire la problématique d’ensemble du travail et en exprime
l’ambition, est abordée, à partir de Simmel,
Kracauer et Benjamin du côté de l’oralité, de la
discontinuité et du fragmentaire, base d’une
nouvelle subjectivité qui soit aussi forme de
résistance aux rapports sociaux de domination. Puis, avec Lyotard, du côté du “différend”, en opposition au consensus.
Ce sont évidemment les études concernant
la réception des films qui ont permis de dégager cette terra incognita.
Pour Lacasse, si le cinéma, notamment grâce
au bonimenteur, s’inscrit dans cette perspective d’un sujet pluriel, du “différend”, force est
cependant de constater que l’institutionnalisation dont il est l’objet va le tirer dans le sens
inverse, du côté de l’homogène et du sujet
“universel”. A cet égard la question du “bonimenteur” ouvre à une interrogation plus vaste
qui concerne l’ensemble du spectacle cinématographique: son “histoire” ne serait-elle pas
celle de cette institutionnalisation, la réduction, le contrôle progressifs de toutes ses
dimensions “orales”, tout ce qui relève, en lui,
du domaine de la performance, de l’événement? Outre l’activité du bonimenteur, on
peut penser à celle du musicien, du bruiteur
voire du projectionniste dont toutes les procédures et technologies d’automatisation, d’inscription sur la pellicule, de programmation
évacuent la dimension aléatoire, évolutive,
ajustée à un public.
Lacasse introduit avec force cette problématique dans son introduction, la reprend
dans son dernier chapitre, mais on est quelque peu déçu de ne pas voir la question développée plus avant entre ces bornes. La focalisation obligée sur le bonimenteur est peut
être la cause de cette sorte de surplace, mais
sans doute surtout une hésitation entre la
mise à jour documentée de cette dimension
et son exploitation plus étroite dans le
champ culturel et social tel que les études
américaines l’ont circonscrit. En particulier
le livre semble bridé par des contradicteurs
non cités mais omniprésents, notamment
Janet Staiger qui envisage ces questions d’un
point de vue opposé, non du “différend” mais
de l’assujettissement et de la rentabilisation
économique et idéologique. Cette contradiction qui est évoquée mais non discutée eût
méritée d’être envisagée frontalement. Elle se
rejoue en effet sans cesse aujourd’hui où l’industrie s’approprie selon ses modalités propres des “valeurs” qu’on a longtemps créditées
de “modernes”, voire de subversives (“l’œuvre ouverte”, la pluralisation de l’auteur, la
construction de l’ “authenticité” par la restauration, etc.).
Or le modèle benjaminien qui inspire largement l’approche de Lacasse – jusque dans son
titre – mieux assumé dans la conception du
“temps historique” qu’il implique, eût évité
cette hésitation. Il s’agit moins, en effet, de
balancer “entre” tradition et modernité que
d’envisager leur dialectique “à l’arrêt”. Le
texte de 1939 intitulé Der Erzähler (le
Narrateur) se serait imposé ici à plus d’un
titre: le bonimenteur est un narrateur!
Benjamin y relève la perte de l’expérience et
de la transmission dans l’époque moderne
parallèlement à l’intérêt qu’il manifeste pour
“l’esthétique des chocs” caractérisant cette
dernière mais également le cinéma. Ce n’est
pas “ou bien…ou bien…” (modernité vs postmodernité), mais la tradition “sauvée” politiquement, c’est-à-dire du point de vue de l’actuel, car seul le présent peut répondre aux
attentes du passé, “allumer la mèche de l’explosif qui gît dans ce qui a été”.2
Ainsi aujourd’hui, inscrire le cinéma dans
l’espace de “l’oralité” tel que l’a défini le
médiéviste Paul Zumthor paraît particulièrement fécond. Au-delà même du cas idoine que
représente le bonimenteur, cet outil conceptuel est de nature à renouveler en profondeur
l’approche du cinéma par son attention à tous
les phénomènes “performantiels” qui s’attachent à la séance, à la projection même, au
fonctionnement du film et à ce qui l’environne, l’accompagne, interagit avec lui. On peut
d’ailleurs penser que la question de “l’intermédialité” trouvera un éclairage puissant à
partir d’une telle entrée. Songeons à l’ensemble hétérogène du spectacle cinématographique tel qu’a commencé de le dégager Rick
Altman (qui préface l’ouvrage de Lacasse), la
chanson, la musique, les intermèdes, les
attractions, bref! l’ensemble du spectacle
“vivant” au sein duquel le film prend place.
Mais au-delà, selon nous, on peut intégrer à
cette dimension “orale” l’ensemble des variables qui ne cessent d’accompagner le spectacle
cinématographique (entr’acte, double programme, cinéma permanent, plein air, etc.),
sans compter celles qui affectent le film luimême: variables des négatifs différents et des
montages qui en procèdent, variables des tirages positifs – teintages et couleurs certes, mais
aussi bien durée, place des cartons – versions
multiples ou différentes sans parler de ses succédanés sur d’autres supports (video, DVD,
internet). Le mouvement d’homogénéisation
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sous l’égide duquel on a placé l’évolution du
cinéma et du film – voire son “langage” – se
voit ainsi contrebattu par une permanence et
une diversification des procédés et procédures
inverses qui comportent leur face purement
mercantile (plus-value des bonus, énièmes
restaurations et autres “déclinaisons”) mais
aussi bien leurs virtualités critiques ou de
renouvellement.
L’ouverture qu’opère ce livre doit emporter
l’intérêt et l’adhésion précisément parce que
cette opposition oral/écrit, performance/texte,
sous-tendue par des relations de pouvoir, de
domination, représente un enjeu très actuel à
plusieurs niveaux: dans l’art (performance,
installation) comme dans les médias (interactivité).
1
2
174
Ce chapitre est peut-être le plus fragile de l’ensemble et celui qui est le plus appelé à
“vieillir”car l’état de l’information évolue très
vite en un certain nombre de cas. Si la situation
française demeure encore sous-explorée, faute
de documents exploitables (alors que des témoignages attestent de la réalité du phénomène:
voir André Gilloix par exemple) et aussi parce
qu’elle offre de possibles complexités qui lui
sont spécifiques (Alain Carou a entrepris d’étudier la place de l’écrit “aléatoire” dans les salles),
celle de la Russie, en particulier, dont les données ici demeurent très frustes (travaux pionniers mais déjà anciens de Vance Kepley jr), est
appelée à être reformulée de fond en comble
(une recherche en cours, au CNRS – menée par
Valérie Posener – a démultiplié les sources et les
faits sur la question et donc la signification du
phénomène).
Cf. dans le même sens, les propos de Hanns
Eisler sur la musique chorale dans ces mêmes
années, repris partiellement dans Composing
for The Films (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1947) où l’on peut aussi repérer le lieu du
différend avec Adorno.
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SELECTED BY:
FRANCESCO CASETTI
AND MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI
Annette Kuhn, An Everyday Magic. Cinema
and Cultural Memory (London-NY: I.B. Tauris
Publisher, 2002)
In the past few years, the topic of the spectator and his viewing experience has acquired
a new weight in cinema studies. Due to the
attention given to moviegoing by historical
approaches and to the spectator’s interest in
fields of research other than semiotics and
psychoanalysis, the debate has increased
greatly, and not only from the numerical
point of view. The recognition of spectatorship as an independent field of research,
within which different perspectives act and
confront each other, has generated a more
critical and conscious attitude towards both
the reference theories and the adopted
methodologies.
Annette Kuhn’s text exemplifies this new
and more mature season of research on spectatorship, showing the main lines of development and the themes around which the
reflection and the issues, which are still problematic, possess close coherence.
The volume reconstructs the forms of the
movie viewing experience in the Thirties
through an integrated methodology that
compares different source dialogues with one
another. These include paratexts (the popular
press, the specialistic press, publications
about cinema); the spectators’ memories (collected through an ethnographic survey carried out with the help of in-depth interviews
and questionnaires) and a sample of representative films of the period (selected on the
grounds of their significance in the literature
and in the spectators’ memories, and read
again with the instruments of narratological
analysis). After a theoretical-methodological
introduction, the text develops through eight
chapters that provide in-depth study of several aspects, the most salient being spectator-
ship in the Thirties. These aspects encompass
moviegoing and the reappropriation of urban
space (“The Scenes of Cinema Memory”); the
socialized nature of the viewing experience
and the films’ role in shaping this sort of
experience (“Jam Jars and Cliffhangers”); cinema as an emancipation space and as an assertion of independence for young spectators
and therefore as a resource that contributes to
the forming of both generational identity and
gender identity (“When The Child Looks” and
“Growing Up With Cinema”); cinema’s capability of modelling behaviours and collective
rites, for example seduction, and of modifying the common sense of decency (“This
Loving Darkness”); the relationship between
cinema and other experiences, like dancing,
and their mutual influences (“An Invitation
to Dance”); the star system phenomena, and
the modes through which cinema concurs in
stimulating a palingenesis of life patterns
(“All My Life, and Beyond…”); and finally the
cinema’s escapist function and its abilities to
place itself as a boundary space between reality and desire (“Oh! Dreamland!”).
Although the discussion on these subjects
adopts a predominantly phenomenological
and descriptive approach (giving ample space
to the direct quotation of the sources), this is
often to the detriment of the interpretative
moment, a direction towards which it
emerges that the study of spectatorship has
been very clearly moving in both its focus of
attention and the theoretical and methodological points of view taken. From this perspective, Kuhn’s volume is an excellent reference book for those who are studying spectatorship today. Taking the cue from her work,
and taking into consideration the background of current field research which has
also blossomed in Italy in the last few years1,
it seems proper to focus attention on some of
the issues.
The first is the idea of situated vision, a
complex event that not only deals with the
filmic text and the spectator, but also from
the beginning brings into play the close and
widened context in which the vision takes
place. In other words, spectatorship includes
both the symbolic processes that develop on
the film-spectator axis, and the social and cultural processes that are produced by the relation with the environment. In this framework, the topic of the relationship between
what takes place inside and outside the movie
theatre and the capacity of the exhibition
places to function as liminal spaces that mediate the meeting between the symbolic and the
social – and between the event of vision and
everyday life – becomes salient.
The second issue is the idea of pathway of
life, of going to the cinema as an experience
that is defined in the background of the subject’s story, and is an experience whose growing and lines of development not only reflect
the evolution of the medium (of the languages, the technologies, the exhibition conditions), but also reflect the changes that affect
the subject’s life, his turning points, his crises,
the definition and re-definition of his biographical projects. In this picture, we can again
try to read the classical question on the relationship between cinema and identity in both
a dynamic and complex perspective, in which
the viewing experience is one of the many
fields within which the subject constructs and
gives consistency to his own social identity, in
a game of crossroads and exchanges, of passages and mutual interferences, whose stake is
the elaboration of a self-centred discourse, an
image that can be spent and ratified in the context and in the historical circumstances in
which the spectator lives. From this notion,
different research directions can be opened.
One of the most promising seems to be that of
studies on memory, which are striving to
reconstruct and to settle the plan (texture) of
relations – that act between the vision experience and the other experiences of the subject’s
life – and in particular, that new trend of
research that examines how films’ discursive
structures contribute to defining the pictures
of forming social experience and one’s own
life story.
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The third issue is the idea of vision as a
process of negotiation, mediating the different instances that coexist in the situated
vision and control their conversion into
resources to be invested in everyday life and
in self-construction.2 The concept of negotiation has the merit of underlining the interactive and process-oriented character of filmic
communication, bringing out the contribution that spectator, film and environment
give to the definition of situation of vision
and exhibiting the multiplicity of places and
forms where the vision processes intersect
life pathways. Around the notion of negotiation, and the system of categories and concepts that this notion has produced (those of
articulation and suture, quoting two concepts the writers have been reflecting upon),
is a series of hypotheses and perspectives of
research, that seem to have the power of putting the studies about spectatorship into the
field of discourse again and of offering an
arrangement and a theoretical and methodological support able to stand comparison
with the new and changeable forms that are
assumed today by the vision. Above all, these
three notions together have the power of
moving the studies on spectatorship and
forms of vision from an essentially phenomenological approach to an approach that is
capable of pushing in-depth into the interpretation of the phenomena, reconsidering,
in a viewpoint that seems more heuristic,
more traditional questions as well, such as
the question of relations that are established
between the film and the spectator or the
dialectic between the personal dimension
and the institutional dimension in the experience of vision.
1
176
Besides a rich trend of research that reconstructs the social value of cinema, using films
as circumstantial documents of processes and
tendencies crossing the historical and cultural
context. Among the most recent and exemplary
works are: R. Eugeni, Film, sapere e società
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2
(Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1999) and R. De Berti,
Dallo schermo alla carta (Milano, Vita e
Pensiero, 2000), contributions, that systematically act creating tension in the study of texts,
in the reconstruction of contexts and in the
analysis of the viewing experience, are emerging. On this subject, to be noted the book
Spettatori, a series of studies about spectatorship in the Thirties and Fifties in Italy (RomaVenezia: Edizioni di Bianco & Nero, 2002).
The idea of communication as process of negotiation is developed and studied in-depth by
Francesco
Casetti
in
Communicative
Negotiation in Cinema and Television (Milano:
Quaderni dello Stars/Vita e Pensiero, 2002).
SELECTED BY: LORENZO CUCCU
Sandro Bernardi, Il paesaggio nel cinema
italiano (Venezia: Marsilio, 2002)
In questo brillante e stimolante lavoro,
Bernardi sviluppa il suo studio sul paesaggio
nel cinema italiano muovendo dalla convinzione che il paesaggio – nella sua correlazione con i concetti di natura, da una parte,
e di “sguardo”, dall’altra – sia una delle forme
simboliche più significative e pregnanti
della cultura occidentale, oggetto di una riflessione il cui ripercorrimento è la premessa
necessaria di ogni discorso. E dunque, la
definizione del ruolo del paesaggio nel cinema italiano deve essere collocata nella più
generale prospettiva che ha visto succedersi
la concezione della natura come kaos e come
kosmos, poi, husserlianamente, come “l’ambito complessivo dell’esperienza possibile”,
fino alla concezione più moderna, nella
quale paesaggio e natura sono investiti dalla
rottura della centralità del soggetto, inteso
come centro della visione, dalla moltiplicazione dei punti di vista e delle forme possibili di rapporto con il mondo. In questa
prospettiva filosofica e antropologica
Bernardi colloca l’evoluzione del ruolo del
paesaggio nel cinema, che si definisce nella
doppia opposizione fra figurativo e narrativo
e fra luogo (visibile) e spazio (diegetico), che
rappresenta la polarità dalla quale si generano i modelli di costruzione dello spazio filmico, insieme diacronici e sincronici, storici e
strutturali. Sono le tipologie – alle quali l’autore attribuisce suggestive definizioni prese
in prestito dal poeta Dino Campana
(“panorami scheletrici del mondo”) e da
Ibsen (“il tempo dei giochi”, “il tempo dei
miti”, “il tempo della riflessione”), o da lui
stesso coniate (come quella di “paesaggio
come apertura sui possibili”) che scandiscono il passaggio dal vedutismo dei pionieri,
ai giochi visivi delle avanguardie, alla
costruzione di spazi funzionali al racconto
che nel cinema classico diventano spazi mitici, alla situazione nella quale il paesaggio
diventa protagonista – oggetto autonomo di
un’attenzione che si insinua nelle fratture
sempre più ampie del racconto – e si fa termine di riferimento della proliferazione di
sguardi forti – che sappiamo essere uno dei
tratti che marcano il cinema della modernità
–, fino a farsi esso stesso fonte di sguardo, nell’esperienza neorealistica e postneorealistica
di Rossellini e di Antonioni. Ed è proprio
quest’ultimo approdo – nel quale lo sguardo
cinematografico coincide con uno dei contrassegni del senso profondo della contemporaneità – quello che permette a Bernardi di
fare emergere l’ambizione metodologica,
teorica e filosofica del suo approccio: il recupero di una prospettiva antropologica,
assente nella cultura italiana; l’affermazione
dell’ estetica come “coscienza della distanza”
e di una critica come “critica della cultura”,
nella quale gli autori e gli stili individuali
siano i “filtri” che permettono di risalire al
modello di visione e di concezione che caratterizza un’epoca storica e una situazione
antropologica: una critica che sappia comporre un’analisi stilistica sottratta ai suoi
vezzi autoreferenziali e con un’impostazione
dei cultural studies che tenda a una visione
“stereoscopica” nella quale i nostri modelli di
ricezione si confrontino con i modelli che
sono alla base della visione che ha generato i
testi. Lo studio del paesaggio nel cinema italiano può essere appunto uno dei terreni nei
quali può radicarsi e svilupparsi questa
prospettiva culturale, assumendo come campioni in particolare Rossellini e Antonioni, al
quale, per il suo carattere esemplare, viene
dedicata tutta la seconda parte del libro,
momento iniziale di uno studio di portata
più ampia. E qui il discorso di Bernardi si
dimostra capace di coniugare il recupero dei
risultati più fecondi della critica antonioniana con l’acutezza e la profondità delle analisi dei testi, orientando il tutto alla verifica e
alla conferma dell’ipotesi più generale e complessiva che dà origine al discorso.
Si comprende dunque, anche da questa rapida esposizione, che siamo davanti a un lavoro
appassionante e profondo, capace di stimolare
un dialogo e un confronto problematico che
mi riprometto di sviluppare in futuro e che
auspico possa incoraggiare altri interlocutori.
SELECTED BY: THOMAS ELSAESSER
Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East:
Film Culture, Unification and the “New”
Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2000)
It has become quiet around cinema in
Germany. Long gone are the days of the New
German Cinema: Fassbinder has been dead
these past twenty years, and Wim Wenders has
turned himself into a gallery-photographer,
whose shows now grace the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao. The bright new hope of the
1990s, Tom Tykwer (director of Lola rennt),
whose Der Krieger und die Kaiserin remains a
bold, if flawed masterpiece in the post-Dogma
European transcendal style, has followed it up
with arguably one of the worst “Europuddings”
of recent years. Heaven, his necrologue-adaptation of a Krystof Kieslowski project, made the
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untimely loss of the Polish director the more
keenly felt. There is a sense that whatever
cinéphile energy still exists between Munich,
Hamburg and Berlin is now most likely to be
found among Germany’s (second-generation)
“young Turks:” Thomas Arslan, Katir Sözen
and Fatih Akin.
But even this graveyard of buried reputations and dashed hopes is a busy place, compared to the silence that reigns over the cinematic landscape in what are now called “the
New Federal States.” The official euphemism
for what used to be the “DDR,” the German
Democratic Republic was once one of the most
thriving filmmaking countries of the Socialist
block, with internationally renowned directors
such as Konrad Wolf and Heiner Carow, working at the DEFA Studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg,
the reluctant but not entirely unworthy heir of
the once-famous Ufa Studios.
As with so many other aspects of life in the
GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and
the subsequent unification of the two
Germanies also changed the craft-conscious,
self-confident but also somewhat complacent
world of filmmaking in the socialist part. By
West-German standards, which brutally came
to be applies in cultural matters just as much
as they did in economic affairs, DEFA – both
literally and symbolically – was declared
bankrupt. The fact that well before unification, GDR audiences had already begun to
abandon DEFA films in favour of such international box-office successes like Crocodile
Dundee and Dirty Dancing did not help the
home-grown film-culture to make its case for
continued state funding, once this state had
become the Federal Republic. Already since
the early 1980s, homes in the GDR had also
tacitly re-tuned their television sets to West
German channels, and in the process, converted their own film culture into the global mix
of American sit-coms and soaps, WestGerman comedians and chat-shows, sandwiched between the tv-reruns of Hollywood
classics. Paradoxically, West German
cinéphiles were envious of West Berliners,
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who could receive GDR television: not
because of the news or current affairs programmes, needless to say, but for the regular
Saturday matinee and late evening re-runs of
German cinema classics from the 1930s and
1940s (thus including films made under the
Nazi regime), thanks to the well-stocked
Staatliche Filmarchiv der DDR, another part
of the Ufa legacy that the GDR found itself
heir to.
This almost wholesale liquidation of a small,
but substantial film culture and unique
European media-ecology, together with its consequences for an entire generation of filmmakers, is the subject of a new book by Leonie
Naughton, an Australian film scholar with a
long-time interest in East and West-German
cinema. That Was the Wild East is a welcome
book, but one that will require patient readers.
With impeccable scholarship, intrepid dedication and an Australian sympathy for the underdog, Naughton charts a story almost as uniformly down-beat and relentlessly depressing
as so many of the films she discusses in such
loving detail.
The book has a commendably clear structure, which reflects the overall purpose of the
publication series, of which That Was the Wild
East is only the latest of about forty titles:
Social History, Popular Culture and Politics in
Germany. Part One sketches the impact of unification on filmmaking in the GDR, with a special emphasis on the discourses – both East and
West German, official as well as journalistic –
that were deployed to justify or protest the dismantling of DEFA, before the Treuhand, the
body entrusted with privatizing, uctioning off
and disposing of the former state-own assets,
finally sold the DEFA Studios to a French conglomerate. Because of the high profile of some
of the participants – notably the role of Volker
Schloendorff, the new Head of Studio
Babelsberg – the story of this “fire sale” is relatively well-known, at least in Germany. To have
it concisely re-told by Naughton is helpful, not
least because she so contrasts the ambitions of
certain figures in the national or European film
industry and the harsh realities of the globalized media business. If Paris or London have
struggled to survive as important centres of
cinema production, even with the help of television, it becomes obvious how provincial and
marginal Berlin had become during the
decades of the Cold War, notwithstanding the
hype about the New Berlin as capital and heart
of Germany.
Part Two of That Was the Wild East looks at
the films that have been made since 1989 about
unification, by East German as well as West
German directors. While most of these films
have had no impact whatsoever internationally, and – with one or two exceptions – encountered glacial indifference also in Germany,
their value as symptoms and documents is not
to be underestimated. At least this is
Naughton’s view, and her painstaking archival
work almost convinces one that for future historians, some ethnographic treasures are
indeed buried in these films, about which one
(West) German critic remarked: “when you’ve
seen one of them, you quickly get the impression you’ve seen them all.” Naughton is determined to prove him wrong, and she is able to
come up with quite a sophisticated classification scheme, which not only distinguishes
between feature films and documentaries,
between Wall films, Romantic Comedies, Love
Stories, Splatter Films, Musicals, and Gross-Out
Comedies. She also locates a whole series of
recurring tropes, ranging from the blatantly
didactic (sub-standard apples, divided families,
orphaned or neglected children) and transparently symbolic (inheritance, shoplifting, cannibalism, kidnapping are favourite narrative
motifs), to the enigmatically allegorical (an
underwater diver in full diving suit wandering
the streets without being noticed). As might be
expected, the private motor car plays an inordinately important role in marking – as well as
subverting – the differences of values, attitudes
and life-styles between West and East
Germans. Not for nothing is the title of the
most successful films of the entire genre Go
Trabi Go, alluding to the by now once more
folk-hero status of the East German equivalent
of the Volkswagen beetle, the Trabant. A
cramped, foul-smelling, two-stroke plasticated
menace on wheels, this tiny box-like car was so
ridiculous and ugly that it came to stand for
everything West Germans despised about their
brethren from the East, until the usual semiotic reversal operated by popular culture on
objects of disapproval or denigration by the
dominant culture rescued even the “Trabi,”
and made it into an icon of rebellious obstinacy and heroic perseverance against the BMWs
and Mercedes that progressively invaded East
German roads.
Naughton is good at showing how predictably contradictory are some of the representations of unification and of East Germany
in films made by West German directors. Thus,
she notes that - contrary to the actual movement of East Germans, many of whom went
west in search of better jobs and living conditions, in the films made by East German directors, the characters move further east, sometimes as far as the Ukraine or at the very least,
to Poland. Also on a retreat are the protagonists
of West German made films: but here the GDR
becomes a projection screen for disillusioned
radicals. A country which despite industrial
pollution, neglect and poverty beckons with
the chance for a fresh start in bucolic rural settings, the East becomes somehow the “better”
Germany, after both communism and capitalism have failed: a homeland to lost souls
among blossoming apple-trees. As Naughton
rightly says: “the reclaiming of the east as
Heimat is a western initiative [...] to which eastern filmmakers addressing unification do not
subscribe” (p. 123).
The three films that are discussed in greatest
details are Go Trabi Go (P. Timm, 1990), its
sequel, Das war der Wilde Osten (That Was the
Wild East, W. Büld, 1992) and Wir können
auch anders (No More Mr Nice Guy, D. Buck,
1993). All three are formula films, using alternately the road movie and the Western as their
generic foil to satirize both East and West
Germans. Produced by such commercial
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heavy-weights as Bavaria Studios (and Günther
Rohrbach), written and directed by West
German filmmakers, the films are broad comedies in the dumber-and-dumber mode, for
whom nothing is sacred and no gag too old or
hackneyed. By documenting the production
history and relating it to the fast moving
changes in public perception about the cost
and benefits of unification (both East and West
Germans became increasingly disenchanted
with each other), Naughton brings out the
symptomatic nature of the films’ plots, props
and characters. She is also right in emphasising
the “generic” nature of virtually every unification film, rather than taking an “auteurist”
approach. For even though some of the most
commercially successful as well as the most
clichéd works were made by “name” directors,
such as Helma Sanders-Brahms, Margarethe
von Trotta, and the two enfants terribles of
German cinema in the 1980s, Christoph
Schlingensief and Detlev Buck, their interest
for (film) history is not cinéphile, but sociological. Only when she comes to discussing the
films made by East German directors about the
effects of unification in her concluding chapter, names such as Helke Misselwitz, Roland
Gräf, Peter Welz turn up, along with former
DEFA directors (and dissidents), such as Frank
Beyer, Heiner Carow and Egon Günther. Their
post-unification films are few, and made with
minuscule budgets: these are on the whole
sombre and often self-lacerating balancesheets of the failures of the GDR: failures by its
own ideological and idealist standards of having set out after 1947 to create a more humane
and just society, not by the standards of West
German affluence, dominated only by the economic imperative. The sense of betrayal, of selfdeception is pervasive, and so is feeling of wasted lives: perhaps it is understandable that even
East Germans did not want to be confronted
with this kind of truth, so that some of these
films attracted fewer than 2000 spectators.
Naughton’s partisanship is unambiguously
on the side of the people of the East. They see
themselves above all as losers twice over, once
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betrayed by their political elites and another
time by their West German liberators, behaving as winner-takes-all predators, both politically and in personal relations. But she has a
message at the end which is at once devastating
and stoical, and not without its own self-deprecating irony:
Despite their divergent portraits of the east,
unification films from both the east and the
west present a generally consistent portrait of
German-German relations. Mostly these films
suggest that those relations do not exist. No
alarm is displayed about this situation, which
is accepted as perfectly normal. [...] This is
another irony that emerges from this cycle of
1990s films. What these films ultimately
effect is a segregation of East and West
Germans (pp. 242-243).
Clearly, the real “unification films” are yet to
be made, but just as clearly, Germany is not yet
ready for them. Perhaps here lies the glimmer
of hope, not just for the future of the Federal
Republic, but also for the German cinema:
when the East no longer feels the victim, and
West no longer thinks it has won, then
German filmmakers will have something in
common – the task of discovering each others’
“otherness.” But now in order to respect and
even to preserve that otherness: this could be
the beginning of another kind of national
unity, just as it could be the beginning of another kind of German cinema.
SELECTED BY:
ANDRÉ GAUDREAULT
ET JEAN-PIERRE SIROIS-TRAHAN
Vincent Pinel, Le Montage. L’espace et le
temps du film (Paris: Cahiers du
cinéma/CNDP, 2001)
Cet ouvrage fait partie d’une collection (Les
petits Cahiers) que viennent de lancer les
Cahiers du cinéma, en collaboration avec le
ministère de l’Éducation nationale, dans le
cadre d’une action visant à l’élaboration de
cours et de manuels pédagogiques pour les
lycéens de France et de Navarre.1 Initiative au
principe formulé comme suit (en quatrième
de couverture): “il en va aujourd’hui du cinéma comme de la littérature, et au cours de sa
formation, chacun s’approprie des films aussi
bien que des romans; les petits Cahiers proposent aux étudiants, enseignants ou lycéens,
aux autodidactes et autres amateurs, d’accompagner leur initiation vers un cinéma
éclairé”.
Heureuse initiative en effet, ce Montage,
complété par Le Plan et Le Point de vue, qui a
pour principal avantage de parler du cinéma
au plus près de ses moyens propres d’expression, et de faire échapper le film à tous les pensums auxquels le confine en général l’éducation, soit comme cahier d’illustration (dans
les cours d’histoire), soit comme adaptation
de grands romans (dans les cours de littérature).2 Les Cahiers étant justement cette école
critique qui a imposé, non seulement le cinéma comme art, et ce à travers le monde, mais
également l’esthétique selon laquelle un film
n’aurait point besoin d’un grand sujet historique ou de la légitimité “scénarique” d’un
grand écrivain pour asseoir sa valeur artistique, il n’est pas étonnant de retrouver ici les
présupposés qui font, au lieu d’un prestige du
contenu, du seul travail d’un “auteur” sur la
forme (sur le signifiant comme l’on disait à
une époque) le garant de cet art – du plan, du
point de vue, du montage en effet.
Ce qui est étonnant, par contre, c’est de ne
pas retrouver – pas encore, à tout le moins – un
de ces petits Cahiers sur la “mise en scène”,
concept-clé dans la bataille que livra jadis l’institution critique avec sa “Politique des auteurs”,
et qui permit d’imposer des cinéastes comme
Hawks et Hitchcock, dont les sujets jugés vulgaires repoussaient alors les littéraires. Une
bataille livrée, d’ailleurs, non sans quelque
peine (pensons que ces choix n’apparaissaient
pas évidents à Bazin lui-même). Il est vrai que
l’idée même de “mise en scène” fait partie de
ces sésames conceptuels dont le contenu labile
permet aux critiques – à l’instar des concepts de
“corps”, “figure” ou “durée” aujourd’hui – de
développer leur pensée face aux impressions
souvent indicibles nées de la confrontation
avec des objets filmiques non identifiables,
pour les meilleurs, à partir de catégories
connues. Partant de la triade théâtrale
“acteur/décor/éclairage”, et allant jusqu’au sens
général de “réalisation”, le concept de mise en
scène change d’acception suivant les chapelles:
aux Cahiers, il se rapporte plus précisément à,
disons, l’organisation des corps dans l’espace.
Moins comme un procédé formel que comme
cette idée normative, toute bazinienne, de la
primauté de ladite organisation comme révélation paradoxale du monde sur un cinéma du
montage ou de la “surcomposition” du cadre.
C’est justement ce montage-là que l’on retrouve ici, non sans surprise. Mais il vrai que les
antagonismes d’antan se sont relativisés.
Comme les autres ouvrages de la collection,
Le Montage se divise en deux parties: une première, qui fait la synthèse de la question; une
deuxième, qui propose des documents, analyses de séquence, textes célèbres et résumés
d’une question pratique. Mais alors que Le
Point de vue de Joël Magny, de par la nature
plus inusitée de son sujet, multipliait les angles
d’attaque, pour ne pas dire les points de vue, et
arrivait ainsi à une discussion passablement
originale de la question, moins balisée, la première partie synthétique du développement
que propose Vincent Pinel suit plus platement
l’évolution historique du montage, non sans
éviter l’écueil principal de ce genre de manuel:
celui d’être un résumé de la question (sinon un
résumé d’un résumé). Cela ne serait dû qu’à
une contrainte inhérente au genre si l’on n’avait pas le sentiment que le texte se présente
comme résumé définitif, non problématique
de la question. Le petit ouvrage se présente en
effet, par son ton et sa teneur, comme s’il s’autosuffisait, et l’étudiant qui le lit peut avoir
l’illusion qu’il peut faire, grâce à lui, l’économie
d’aller y voir de plus près. Bien plus, cette his181
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toire du montage glisse souvent vers l’histoire
du cinéma tout court, tant le montage, comme
nous l’affirme la quatrième de couverture, “est
unanimement considéré aujourd’hui non seulement comme élément essentiel du ‘langage
cinématographique’, mais aussi comme le plus
spécifique”, affirmation pour le moins doublement contestable. Mais il est vrai que cette petite histoire du montage parle également des
esthétiques qui sont justement une façon d’éviter le montage au sens strict (comme le planséquence ou les mouvements de caméra).
Suivons donc, pas à pas, le développement
historique proposé. Après avoir défini le montage, en le distinguant du découpage, on commence par le commencement en catégorisant
la “vue” Lumière et le “tableau” mélièsien,
définis tous deux, sans trop de nuance,
comme du cinéma sans montage: “les deux
principaux modes de représentation du cinéma des premiers temps, la vue et le tableau,
excluaient d’emblée l’idée de montage.”3
Affirmer pareille chose, c’est faire fi de certains principes pourtant fort connus: ainsi, du
côté des tableaux, les trucages par arrêt de
caméra à-la-Méliès, qui ont nécessité une
forme concrète de montage impliquant colle
et ciseaux, puisque pas un film de Méliès présentant ce trucage n’est exempt d’une coupe,
matériellement repérable sur la bande.
Affirmer pareille chose, c’est aussi faire fi de
certains principes, ceux-là un peu moins
connus, il est vrai: ainsi, du côté des vues, les
multiples arrêts-manivelle que la restauration
récente (1995) de la production Lumière a fait
ressurgir et qui affectent près de 10% de la
production Lumière d’avant 1900 (ces chiffres
passent à environ 50%, toujours avant 1900,
du côté d’Edison). Affirmer que le cinéma des
premiers temps exclut le montage, c’est aussi
examiner la période mise sous observation à
partir d’un seul bout de la lorgnette, celui de la
production. Car on omet ainsi de tenir compte
de ce pôle important dans le façonnage des
vues (des vues-telles-que-montrées) qu’est
celui des exploitants, dont le rôle dans l’assemblage et le montage des vues a été primor182
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dial (dépassant de loin les seuls exemples cités
dans l’ouvrage).
L’auteur définit ensuite chacun des deux
modes privilégiés du premier cinéma, la vue
et le tableau, à partir de leur autarcie supposée, et montre comment ces unités de premier
niveau pourront éventuellement être mises
en série sans perdre, dans un premier temps,
leur autonomie. Pinel met cependant dos à
dos la “liberté de la vue” et la “rigidité du
tableau”, celle-ci avec son “point de vue du
monsieur de l’orchestre” (Sadoul) et son
cadrage strictement “en pied”. Selon l’auteur:
“il faudra d’abord aménager puis pervertir et
remettre en cause le principe même du
tableau, figure centrale du monde de représentation primitif. Il faudra surtout introduire une notion nouvelle et révolutionnaire,
celle du plan, notion étroitement liée au montage.”4 L’auteur explique par ailleurs l’univers désordonné et centripète des tableaux,
une notion qui fut développée par Burch,
ainsi que ces “premières atteintes à l’intégrité
des tableaux” que fut la course-poursuite,
avec son rythme accru qui a fait poindre l’idée
du raccord de direction. Pinel aborde également le chevauchement des tableaux, qu’il
appelle “redoublement”, notamment chez
Méliès et Porter, en rappelant la filiation avec
le théâtre et en pointant ce que celle-ci peut
avoir de contradictoire: “le tableau [au théâtre] exige la durée pour s’installer et se développer (on ne lève pas le rideau pour une
scène de quelques secondes) alors que l’idée
de Méliès, de l’ordre du gag, exigeait un traitement rapide.”5
On enchaîne rapidement ensuite sur
Griffith dans un cadre qui recèle, malgré certaines nuances, une téléologie mal affichée et
la sempiternelle litanie des “premières fois”.
On annonce tout d’abord qu’“au commencement était Griffith” et que “tout commença
par une histoire de porte”... Viennent ensuite
le développement, chez Griffith, de la structuration du récit par les montages alterné et
parallèle, ainsi que la fameuse légende, colportée par Malraux (et Godard), de l’invention
du gros plan par un Griffith amoureux de son
actrice, et finalement, Naissance d’une nation
et Intolérance vues comme point d’orgue du
cinéma des premiers temps et coup d’envoi du
cinéma institutionnel.
Ce premier chapitre portant sur les vingt
premières années montre un peu les limites
de l’ouvrage: comment pourrait-il en être
autrement, alors que l’auteur ne semble s’en
remettre qu’à une seule source, La Lucarne de
l’infini de Burch, synthèse fondatrice et certes
remarquable, mais qui apparaît aujourd’hui
datée (le livre fut publié en 1991, mais l’essentiel en fut écrit au début des années 80, si ce
n’est à la fin des années 70…), tant l’étude du
cinéma des origines a produit depuis vingt ans
plusieurs renversements de perspective. En
effet, aucune trace, dans le livre de Pinel, des
travaux de Gunning, Musser, Abel, Jost,
Cherchi Usai, etc. On leur préfère les opinions,
surannées sur la question, des Malraux,
Langlois et Rohmer, qui reprennent du service... On aurait aimé que l’auteur ait tenu
compte des nouvelles approches sur le montage chez Griffith (Gunning) et on aurait aimé
aussi qu’il fasse une place, dans son histoire
du montage, à la notion de l’attraction, centrale par rapport au montage narratif.
Partant de Griffith, l’auteur nous parle ensuite des développements subséquents du montage pendant le muet, d’une part chez les
Russes, d’autre part avec l’avant-garde française, puis lors de sa régulation, en parallèle, au
sein des studios hollywoodiens. Poussant plus
loin que le pragmatisme du maître américain,
pour qui le montage servait avant tout à raconter, les Soviétiques détournent l’héritage de
Griffith pour développer une pensée théorique
et politique du montage. On passe de la démultiplication du point de vue, entres autres chez
Vertov avec son “ciné-œil”, à l’unification de ce
point de vue, théorisé par Koulechov et ses
fameuses quoique mystérieuses expériences,
en passant par le “montage des attractions”
eisensteinien. Son résumé rapide n’empêche
pas certaines réflexions fort intéressantes de
l’auteur, notamment après une explication
exemplaire de l’expérience avec Mosjoukine
pour démontrer l’effet Koulechov:
l’agencement des plans présente cependant une
bizarrerie qu’aucun analyste ne semble avoir relevé: le stimulé est placé avant le stimulant.
L’expérience aurait été moins subtile, plus mécanique, si les gros plans de Mosjoukine avaient été placés après les images auxquelles ils sont confrontés.
Dans la configuration décrite par Poudovkine, l’effet-K implique une contamination rétrospective de
la perception du jeu. Tout se passe comme si le
regard du spectateur se substituait à celui de
Mosjoukine disparu de l’écran et que ce regard
insufflait a posteriori ses propres émotions sur le
visage imaginé de l’acteur.6
Si Eisenstein est l’occasion de plusieurs
exemples, on passe rapidement sur
Poudovkine, si ce n’est pour évoquer combien
son ouvrage Film Technique fut important
pour les cinéastes américains classiques. Pinel
se permet d’en faire un résumé un chouïa
dérisoire et particulièrement lapidaire, puisqu’il tient en à peine un peu plus d’une page
(pp. 70-71). Ce qui vient confirmer, alors que
l’on traduit le moindre texte d’Eisenstein, le
scandale éditorial que constitue le fait que cet
ouvrage capital n’ait encore jamais été traduit
en français, lors même que les traductions
allemande et anglaise eurent un tel impact
pratique et théorique (il faut relire à ce sujet
Hitchcock expliquant à Truffaut sa vision du
raccord de regard en faisant référence à
Poudovkine). L’apport de Gance et Epstein,
notamment à travers le montage court et le
gros plan, sont rapidement esquissés – alors
que l’apport de plusieurs cinéastes a été carrément écarté – pour passer à une description
du montage dans la production courante,
notamment à Hollywood (où le monteur
assure souvent le contrôle du studio sur le réalisateur). Ainsi, sont cités en rafale (p. 39) les
règles et procédés du montage classique – on
se demande d’ailleurs ce que de jeunes étudiants pourront en comprendre alors qu’aucun lexique ne vient expliquer des termes lan183
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cés comme dans une description à la Prévert –
que l’arrivée du sonore viendrait confirmer.
Pinel décrit ensuite, de façon fort heureuse,
comment le montage classique hollywoodien
fut remis en question, notamment par Welles
et le cinéma moderne, en particulier dans son
arbitraire trop codifié (par exemple, le poncif
du champ-contrechamp) et sa sacro-sainte
transparence (avec quelques bémols cependant: on ne voit pas en quoi Welles et
Hitchcock auraient méprisé la transparence,
comme l’affirme l’auteur (p. 50). Il nous semble que l’on ne peut, de façon aussi simple,
renvoyer dos à dos transparence et écriture
personnelle, comme les grands cinéastes classiques, ou encore des modernes comme
Rossellini, nous le confirment dans leurs
œuvres).
Pour finir, l’ouvrage est complété par des
extraits de deux textes célèbres, le “Montage
interdit” de Bazin et le Temps scellé de
Tarkovski, des analyses de séquences de
Méliès, Eisenstein et Hitchcock, ainsi que de
plusieurs résumés synthétiques de considérations pratiques (sur le montage du son, par
exemple).
Malgré certains raccourcis inévitables, et
malgré plusieurs points discutables, Le
Montage offre pourtant un bon compendium
de l’évolution du montage. Écrit dans une
style clair et élégant, l’ouvrage n’est pas à
déconseiller, même si l’on prescrirait peutêtre des nourritures plus solides pour les néophytes. On peut d’ailleurs se demander pourquoi les petits Cahiers n’ont pas privilégié un
premier bouquin sur l’histoire du cinéma, où
l’on n’aurait pas fait l’impasse sur des mouvements (comme l’expressionnisme, le néoréalisme ou le cinéma direct) où le montage ne
semble pas à première vue aussi important
(quoique...) et un deuxième, précisément sur
le montage, dans lequel on aurait pu expliquer les divers procédés formels du langage
(comme l’ellipse, le fondu ou le flash-back),
qui sont ici à peine énumérés, sans guère d’explications. Seule la règle de 180° est développée en détails par Pinel, mais de façon si
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confuse que l’on se demande bien ce que pourront en comprendre des lycéens. Pour ceux
qui rechercheraient une initiation au langage
du cinéma qui allierait un souci pédagogique
jamais démenti à la volonté de faire un tour
non normatif des possibilités d’expression du
montage, nous conseillerions davantage le
(gros) bouquin de Bordwell et Thompson,
L’Art du film, une introduction (Bruxelles: De
Boeck Université, 1999). Cela dit, la différence
de prix, argument qui peut compter pour les
étudiants, fait peut-être de cet ouvrage des
petits Cahiers, très bien illustré, un premier
abordage, exigeant et profitable, sur la question fondamentale du montage au cinéma.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Les autres ouvrages de la collection, parus jusqu’à présent, sont: J. Magny, Le Point de vue. De
la vision du cinéaste au regard du spectateur
(Paris: Cahiers du cinéma/CNDP, 2001) et Le
Plan. Au commencement du cinéma,
d’Emmanuel Siety (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma/
CNDP, 2001), tous deux sortis en 2001.
Bien mauvais service à rendre au cinéma,
comme on sait: les adaptations de grands
romans sont le plus souvent mauvaises, entre
autres parce qu’elles sont souvent réalisées
pour de mauvaises raisons (alibi culturel), ce
qui en retour renforce le préjugé des littéraires
contre le cinéma...
V. Pinel, op. cit., p. 6.
Ibid., pp. 8 et 9.
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 67.
SELECTED BY: TOM GUNNING
Rachel O. Moore, Savage Theory: Cinema as
Modern Magic (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2000)
This major recent work of film theory has a
number of purposes and part of its success
comes from the intricate way it makes dis-
parate strands converge and yet not lose their
rich variety, producing a multicolored braid
that delights as much by its array of colors as
the coherence of its weave. It truly lives up to
its own citation of Gaston Bachelard’s description of the star pattern at the core of fire’s invitation to reverie. Moore takes the idea of cinema as modern magic seriously, accenting both
terms of the phrase and dealing with their paradoxical conjunction as well as mutual implication. Magic is approached anthropologically,
as an effective ritual action that implies a community of participants. Modernity is
approached not only in terms of the historical
period of cinema and its technological bases,
but as a position from which magic appears as
a “primitive” practice, in a fundamental sense
alien to modern experience, but also haunting
modern conscious with a fullness of experience it inherently lacks.
Moore sees the first theorists of cinema
(those which are now classed as Classical, perpsychoanalytical, pre-semiotic, pre-feminist)
as understanding cinema as supplying a modern form of magic, an art form that, while the
product of technology and industrial capitalism, nonetheless giving access a sort of immediacy of experience that modern man seems to
lack, Cinema supplies this, although its relation to the “primitive” communal ritual of
magic remains fraught with modern contradiction. Therefore one of the major threads of
this work, and possibly the most successful, is
a rereading of earlier film theorists, Vachel
Lindsay, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Bela
Balazs, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer,
and André Bazin in terms of this thematic.
This would be an important work simply as a
cogent rereading of these theorists, fresh and
original, renewing all of them and engaging
them in a powerful dialogue with each other.
But beyond this re-interpretation of these theorists, Moore sketches a truly unique and powerful mythology of cinema as the conjunction
of modernity and magic, focusing particularly
on a number of themes in early theory.
Eisenstein’s concept of “sensual thinking,”
Benjamin’s concept of the “optical unconscious,” and Epstein’s concepts of photogénie
all conjure cinema as a medium that can
renew modern man’s contact with the vitality
and expansive perception of the “primitive,”
and therefore play a redemptive role. Cinema
provides a new sort of language, one avoiding
the abstraction of actual language and drawing on the concepts of the gestural (Balazs),
inner speech (Eisenstein), or non-sensual correspondences (Benjamin), all of which are
explained by these theorist by analogy with
“primitive” practices: myths, rituals or children’s play. In a terrific analysis of sequences
from Eisenstein’s Staroe i novoe, Moore shows
how these ideas are carried out in film form as
well as theory. The primitive power of cinema
is also understood in terms of a primal fascination it exerts. Instead of approaching this
fascination as a complicit ideological regression as Seventies apparatus theory did, Moore
understands it as new (and old) relation to the
world and its objects, in which objects themselves are endowed with life.
In the cinema things become physiognomic,
revealing hidden truths within them, according to Balasz. In perhaps the most closely
argued and complex argument of the work,
Moore relates this secret life of objects to
Marx’s analysis of the commodity fetish, and
what Lukacs would call the reification of modern life. The question, as she puts it, is whether
cinema can “induce transformative meaning
rather than merely perpetuate reification and
further mystification.” Anger’s Scorpio Rising
is discussed as an attempt to create such transformative meaning. Drawing on anthropological discussions of the original meaning of the
fetish as a material thing rather a transcendent
signifier, Moore sees the nature of cinema, its
impassive, non-human ability to image things
as defined by Bazin, Benjamin, Kracauer and
Epstein (and I would add Ernst Junger) as creating a new modern perception of the place of
objects in the world. New modern contexts of
reception, a distracted awareness on the edge
of fatigue, seem to both allow new modes of
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perception and demand the rejuvenating
magic of the cinema.
The nature of the fascination of the cinema
is further described in terms of its relation to
the fascination of fire. Relating fire’s provocation of reverie as described by Gaston
Bachelard to Eisenstein’s sense of the protean
power of the animated film’s “plasmaticness,”
Moore provides a new model for film spectatorship unrelated to cognitive narrative drives
or ideological misrecognitions of wholeness
and one which I feel not only shows the richness of classical film theory but gives an
insight into the redemptive potential of cinema that has been disavowed for the last few
decades by the very people who claim to love
cinema. Bresson’s L’Argent provides an
instance in which the peculiar cinematic contemplation of objects, and the modern states
of fatigue are evoked by a unique style of filmmaking. Bresson’s repetitive rehearsal and
performance technique evokes the sense of
modern exhausted repetition, and the treatment of object evokes the power of the fetish.
Frampton’s nostalgia’s structure of burning
photographs and staggered narration is seen
as the cinematic equivalent of a healing ritual,
as its use of themes basic to Moore’s work of
fire, photography, the relation between language and image, and new structures of temporality evokes both the mourning for the
limitations of modern experience, and a
redemptive potential.
SELECTED BY: FRANÇOIS JOST
Gérard Genette, Figures IV (Paris: Seuil,
1999)
Dans la quatrième de couverture anonyme
de Figures IV, l’éditeur, frère jumeau de l’auteur, présente l’ouvrage comme une “mosaïque” de pages “aussi diverses par leur âge que
par leurs thèmes”, qui ne se recommande que
par cette diversité. Pourtant, se reprend-il, leur
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“disposition” n’est “nullement aléatoire”. On
peut voir dans cet aveu rectifié par une mise
en garde gentiment paradoxale les traces de
modestie désabusée et d’humour si caractéristiques de Genette. En ce qui me concerne, face
à cet exercice délicat de la recension, que je
n’affectionne guère, surtout s’agissant de l’un
de mes maîtres (j’ai fait ma thèse sous sa direction et, comme on sait peut-être, mon parcours lui doit beaucoup), je prendrai la plaisanterie au sérieux.
Suivant la lettre de la leçon genettienne, je
m’aiderai donc du paratexte (plus précisément le péri-texte) pour pénétrer le texte.
D’où vient l’unité de ce quatrième recueil de
textes paru dans la collection “Poétique”? Et si
la réponse, véritable image dans le tapis, se
trouvait à l’exact hémistiche de Figures IV, à
la page 182 de cet ouvrage qui en compte 364?
S’interrogeant sur la spécificité d’un “recueil
poétique” comme Les Fêtes galantes
(Verlaine), Genette tranche “Les Fêtes galantes
forment une suite poétique”. Pourquoi? Parce
que la pièce liminaire (“Clair de lune”) présente “les acteurs d’une comédie […] dont la
suite du recueil nous retracera les épisodes
successifs”, “comme dans un opéra dont l’ouverture annonce et résume d’avance, par la
succession et l’entrelacement de ses thèmes,
l’intrigue à venir” (p. 190). Les acteurs étant,
en l’occurrence, incarnés par ce “je lyrique”,
“dont l’origine reste essentiellement indécidable, c’est-à-dire impossible à assigner à un
sujet réel (le poète) ou fictif (un locuteur imaginaire)” (p. 327).
C’est bien à un spectacle du même genre que
nous invite la lecture de Figures IV. Le parcours
ne doit rien ici à la chronologie, comme en
convainquent les dates des premiers textes du
volume (1997, 1961, 1968, 1997); leur répartition relève plutôt d’une partition déjà jouée par
le premier texte (conférence à la Maison française de New York), où sont introduits les thèmes sur lesquels Figures IV va broder de minutieuses et indéfinies variations.
De la musique, le parcours de Genette
emprunte l’arbitraire et la nécessité. Le point
de départ, aléatoire, est le récit, suggéré
comme thème par Barthes pour un numéro de
Communications de 1966, pour lequel
Genette, qui confesse “sauter” dans les romans
les pages narratives au profit des descriptions,
n’a guère d’appétence. La nécessité vient de la
structure fuguée de la recherche, qui procède
par imitations, par variations, du texte aux
seuils du texte, et du texte à l’œuvre (je simplifie à outrance).
La suite des textes de Figures IV obéit
d’ailleurs au même principe structurel: chaque nouveau chapitre va chercher dans le précédent un thème entraperçu, à peine esquissé, pour le reprendre, le développer et lui donner de l’ampleur. Ainsi, successivement: les
valeurs esthétiques, l’esthétique de la variation, la disposition esthétique, etc., un des
“écrivains préférés” de Genette, Proust, faisant le lien entre bien des pages. La thèse fondamentale, qui court au milieu de cette structure fuguée, est que “le jugement esthétique
est un jugement de valeur qui se prend pour
un jugement de réalité, c’est-à-dire un jugement subjectif (‘J’aime cette fleur’) qui s’exprime en jugement de réalité objective (‘cette
fleur est belle’)” (p. 71).
Dans la mesure où le Beau ou le laid n’ont
pas d’existence en soi et dépendent du “regard
esthétique d’un récepteur” (p. 77), Figures IV
multiplie les variations sur la “relation esthétique”, cette “relation qui s’établit entre un
sujet humain et un objet, quel qu’il soit,
auquel ce sujet accorde une attention esthétique” (p. 87). Ainsi, tous les textes ici réunis
creusent peu ou prou ces questions qui
étaient déjà au cœur du second volume de
L’Œuvre de l’art: “l’attention esthétique”,
“l’appréciation esthétique” et la “fonction
esthétique” fortement liée à la candidature
d’un objet à une réception artistique.
Comme on sait, ce corps de concepts légitime une conception foncièrement relativiste de
la relation esthétique. On serait même tenté de
rajouter un mot qui ne se trouve jamais sous la
plume de Genette: démocratique. À la base de
l’idée que “l’œuvre d’art n’est ni belle ni laide
sans le regard esthétique du récepteur” et
qu’aucun jugement n’est supérieur à l’autre, il
y a évidemment une grande confiance dans la
liberté de chacun à juger, qui fait peu de cas des
déterminations sociales et qui témoigne d’un
relatif optimisme sur les relations humaines.
Quoi qu’il en soit, cette liberté du jugement
accordée au spectateur ne lui laisse guère d’autre choix que de se comprendre soi-même, ce à
quoi s’emploie Genette au fil des pages de
Figures IV.
“J’aimerais pouvoir élucider la nature, ou
les raisons, de la fascination, elle-même variable et récurrente, qu’exerce sur moi, comme
sans doute sur tout un chacun, le fait – et l’idée même, indissociablement – de répétition
et de variation” (p. 101). Cette variation, qui,
on l’a compris donne son unité au recueil,
Genette la trouve partout et, pour commencer, dans la relation que l’œuvre entretient,
pour le récepteur, avec le monde, tissant de
nouveaux liens entre l’art et la réalité.
“Concurrence ou traduction, la simulation
réaliste est encore, ou déjà, variation sur un
thème obligé, c’est-à-dire convenu, qu’on
appelle Histoire, société, vérité, bonheur,
Temps perdu, que sais-je encore, et que la
représentation la plus ‘fidèle’ nous invite,
nous sans détour à ricercare” (p. 106).
L’œuvre littéraire invite constamment le lecteur à construire une relation “sinon au ‘réel’,
du moins à l’idée que s’en fait le lecteur” (p.
106). Mais on pourrait en dire autant de tout art,
et Genette ne se prive pas de développer cette
idée, comme dans cette conclusion à l’analyse
de quelques tableaux de Pissarro, où perce l’autobiographe: “le mystère et la poésie s’en sont
peut-être flétris aujourd’hui, mais je puis attester qu’ils nous étaient toujours présents en
1939, même sans référence à Pissarro, et encore
pour quelques années, durant lesquelles on a
davantage détruit que construit dans ces parages” (p. 249). Telle est la tentation proustienne
de Genette: découvrir comme Marcel que “ce
sont ici ‘des œuvres d’art, les choses magnifiques qui sont chargées de nous donner les
impressions familières de la vie’” (p. 259).
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D’où la définition de la relation esthétique
comme “relation affective”, que Genette va
chercher chez Stendhal (p. 136), à laquelle
répond comme en écho “la focalisation affective” (p. 153) dans Le Rose et le vert. Relation
affective que mesure le “sentiment de plaisir
ou de déplaisir qu’elle provoque”. Face à l’impossibilité de prouver le Beau, il ne reste qu’à
comprendre d’où vient ce sentiment. Quel que
soit leur objet (Canaletto, La Recherche, Venise
ou l’abstraction picturale), les textes s’y efforcent d’y arriver. On a parfois l’impression que,
face à cette liberté indéfinie du spectateur, que
la réflexion philosophique lui a donnée, l’écrivain se trouve un peu démuni: que répondre à
ceux qui lui reprochent de refuser tout critère
objectif, qui permettrait de prendre des décisions “en fait d’achats, de subventions, de
conservation” et, j’ajouterai, de restauration?
(p. 84). L’attitude inverse, avec ce qu’elle comporte de diktats, est bien pire, répond-il en substance. Mais cette réponse est furtive et pèse
beaucoup moins que tous les arguments que
Genette va chercher dans l’analyse des écrivains et des artistes qu’il aime, et qui sont
autant de réassurances. Quand il cite Stendhal:
“Je ne juge rien, mais je sens tout; et c’est ce qui
fait que vous ne m’entendez jamais dire: cela
est bon, cela est mauvais; mais je dis mille fois
par jour: J’aime” (p. 143), Genette n’a pas
besoin d’ajouter: “C’est bien ainsi que nous
devrions toujours exprimer nos appréciations
esthétiques”… En fait, on pourrait dire de
Genette ce qu’il dit de Proust, qui fait passer sa
conception de l’art dans l’esthétique de la
grand-mère de Marcel: “la procuration est ici
double, ou plutôt triple: la grand-mère exprime par la bouche de sa fille une esthétique que
partage son petit-fils le narrateur, et leur ‘père’
à tous, l’auteur Marcel Proust, qui l’a souvent
défendue en marge de son roman” (note de la
page 280)… Procuration au quatrième degré:
Genette, père du père, approuve et signe.
Genette affectionne comme Proust la transfiguration du banal, dans laquelle Aragon voyait
d’ailleurs un programme esthétique pour le
cinéma: “Ce n’est pas le spectacle des passions
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éternellement semblables, ni – comme on eût
aimé le croire – la fidèle reproduction d’une
nature que l’Agence Cook met à notre portée,
mais la magnification de l’objet que, sans l’artifice de l’écran, notre faible esprit ne pouvait
susciter à la vie supérieure de la poésie”.1
Contrairement à Figures V, sur lequel il nous
faudra revenir dans CINEMA & Cie, Figures IV
n’évoque pratiquement jamais le cinéma.
Néanmoins, à l’heure où la recherche universitaire ou certaine institution gardienne du patrimoine filmique procède parfois par ukases
esthétiques, par panthéonisation et par excommunications, certains seraient bien inspirés
d’aller faire un tour du côté de chez Genette. La
recherche philologique a réhabilité l’intention
auctoriale sans qu’on y prenne garde, sans que
soit interrogée la relation esthétique, précisément, qui unit le spectateur au film. Alors,
entre les excès du relativisme et le dogmatisme
esthétique, je choisis mon camp…
1 “Du décor”, Le Film, 16 septembre 1918.
SELECTED BY: MICHELE LAGNY
Jacques Aumont, La Théorie des cinéastes
(Paris: Nathan, 2002)*
*Michèle Lagny apologizes for being unable to
send her review.
SELECTED BY: FRANCESCO
PITASSIO
Giorgio Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002)
La riflessione filosofica di Giorgio Agamben
si è caratterizzata sin dai primi contributi per la
sua singolarità ed originalità, per la capacità
all’interno del dibattito filosofico italiano di
non sottostare ai dettami epistemologici coevi
e incrociare suggestioni disciplinari, oggetti di
studio, metodi e autori eterogenei. Gli ultimi
contributi di Agamben costituiscono un tentativo interessante e stimolante di nuova considerazione delle categorie dell’etica, a partire da
una definizione dell’umano.1 L’esame della
concettualizzazione e formalizzazione dell’umanità nella storia, e in modo particolare nella
modernità, fornisce un criterio interpretativo
di determinati avvenimenti storici (la Shoah),
ma consente pure di rifondare un’etica a partire dalle impasse in cui questa stessa si è trovata
dinanzi all’impensabile. In L’aperto Agamben
prosegue l’indagine sull’umano, muovendo
dalla definizione dei suoi stessi limiti: dove
finisce l’animale e comincia l’uomo? Il filosofo
muove dalla lettura hegeliana di Kojève, secondo la quale “l’uomo non è, infatti, una specie
biologicamente definita né una sostanza data
una volta per tutte: è, piuttosto, un campo di
tensioni dialettiche sempre già tagliato da cesure che separano in esso ogni volta – almeno virtualmente – l’animalità ‘antropofora’ e l’umanità che in questa s’incarna”.2
Quel che qui interessa ritenere è l’ipotesi di
una macchina antropologica per la produzione dell’umano, in cui questo non è un dato,
ma il risultato di una continua ridefinizione
delle sue caratteristiche.
Qual è la pertinenza dell’impresa di
Agamben per gli studi cinematografici? In
primo luogo, l’approntamento di una strumentazione epistemologica capace di fornire
inediti spunti di riflessione agli studi sulle
forme di rappresentazione dell’antropologico
nel cinema, particolarmente avanzati nel
corso dell’ultimo decennio;3 in secondo
luogo, l’enucleazione di una genealogia della
meditazione su umano e ferino capace di evidenziare parentele poco sospettate anche
nella teoria del cinema.
L’animale appare sin dalle origini del cinema, a partire dagli esperimenti cronofotografici di Marey. In qualche misura, la rappresentazione del ferino pare essere da sempre consustanziale a quella dell’umano nel cinema. Esso
per certi versi funziona in maniera analoga
alla percezione che solitamente ne abbiamo:
Pourtant, l’animal, aussi domestique soit-il,
ne vit pas avec l’homme, ne vit pas dans sa maison […]. Il vit à côté, sur sa ligne, et, de loin en
loin, nous fait voire autre chose, quelque chose
qui n’est pas nous, qui n’est pas vraiment lui
non plus, en tant que bête soumise ou routinière. Il nous fait voir, trivialement, que nos schémas de pensée, nos modèles conceptuels, ces
idée dans lesquels nous vivons, que nous avons
transformées en lieu de vie, ne sont pas le
monde. […] L’homme est devenu homme lorsqu’il s’est aperçu qu’il y avait des animaux.4
L’animale è pertanto un operatore di differenza, che consente la creazione e il riconoscimento dell’uomo.
L’animale è pure quanto garantisce il realismo ontologico del cinema, in un’ottica baziniana, che da lì muove per proibire il montaggio. La mancanza di coscienza riflessa nell’animale, la sua pura reattività a dei disinibitori,
unita alla presenza differenziale dell’uomo, è
quanto garantisce la verità dell’immagine.
Come ebbe poi a scrivere Daney, “interner la
différence, cela veut dire sauver la représentation.”5 L’animale unito all’uomo, all’interno
dell’inquadratura, è quanto garantisce una
dissimiglianza ontologica e introduce l’elemento dell’alea. Agamben ripercorre alcune
pagine di Heidegger, e individua la differenza
tra animale e uomo nella povertà di mondo
(Weltarmut) del primo e nella costruzione di
mondo (Weltbildend) del secondo: l’incapacità del primo a distinguere i singoli enti del
mondo, al di là delle proprie reazioni a degli
stimolatori, lo differenzierebbe dall’uomo,
che nella noia si trova a enucleare enti pur
privi di interesse. Ora, questa apertura dell’uomo è quel che caratterizza l’umanità come
biòs, anziché zoè, continuo riposizionamento
di sé, a partire dalla scissione tra un’esperienza individuale e una lingua collettiva, incessante scollamento tra soggetto e desoggettivizzazione nel linguaggio:
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la noia profonda appare allora come l’operatore metafisico in cui si attua il passaggio dalla
povertà di mondo al mondo, dall’ambiente
animale al mondo umano: in questione è, in
essa, nulla di meno che l’antropogenesi, il
diventare Da-sein del vivente uomo. Ma questo passaggio, questo diventare-Dasein del
vivente uomo […] non apre su uno spazio ulteriore, più ampio e luminoso, conquistato al di
là dei limiti dell’ambiente animale e senza
relazione ad esso: al contrario, esso è aperto
solo attraverso una sospensione e una disattivazione del rapporto animale col disinibitore.6
Ora, questo passaggio è quanto viene messo
in discussione nella modernità, in modo particolare nell’instaurazione dei regimi totalitari
e nel loro agire politico nei confronti dell’umano, e successivamente, nella biopolitica
delle società contemporanee.
Far morire e lasciar vivere compendia la divisa del vecchio potere sovrano, che si esercita
soprattutto come diritto di uccidere; far vivere
e lasciar morire l’insegna del biopotere, che fa
della statalizzazione del biologico e della cura
della vita il proprio obbiettivo primario.
Tra le due formule se ne insinua una terza,
che definisce il carattere più specifico della biopolitica del XX secolo: non più far morire né far
vivere, ma far sopravvivere […]. L’ambizione
suprema del biopotere è di produrre in un
corpo umano la separazione assoluta del vivente e del parlante, della zoé e del biòs, del nonuomo e dell’uomo: la sopravvivenza. 7
Il passaggio a queste nuove forme di esercizio del potere a nostro giudizio ebbe uno strumento di grande efficacia e inedita funzionalità proprio nella riproducibilità tecnica, in
modo particolare nel cinema. In effetti, è proprio nel laboratorio rappresentativo ed epistemico del cinema stesso che l’articolazione
della macchina antropologica e la riconoscibilità dell’uomo a se stesso, secondo la formulazione di Linneo, entrano in crisi. L’esperienza
della visione della propria immagine cinema190
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tografica fu notoriamente traumatica per
molti degli attori che la sperimentarono. Non
solo. Il cinema è la sede espressiva in cui, per
la prima volta, la rappresentazione iconica e
narrativa dell’uomo e dell’animale si trovano
ad essere equivalenti, in cui si può dotare di
coscienza il ferino e privare di parola l’umano.
Agli occhi della macchina da presa uomo e
bestia si equivalgono. Forse per questo Bazin,
e scetticamente Daney, intendono salvare utopisticamente la rappresentazione, denunciando la propria non troppo segreta parentela con
Heidegger. Ma ormai, nella modernità, l’antropologico è divenuto puro linguaggio, o mera
animalità da curare.
Le potenze storiche tradizionali – poesia, religione, filosofia – che […] mantenevano desto il
destino storico-politico dei popoli, sono state
da tempo trasformate in spettacoli culturali e
in esperienze private e hanno perso ogni efficacia storica. Di fronte a questa eclissi, il solo
compito che sembra ancora conservare qualche serietà è la presa in carico e la “gestione
integrale” della vita biologica, cioè della stessa
animalità dell’uomo. […] L’umanizzazione integrale dell’animale coincide con una animalizzazione integrale dell’uomo.8
1
2
3
4
Si vedano, in particolare: G. Agamben, Homo
Sacer (Torino: Einaudi, 1995); G. Agamben, Quel
che resta di Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone
(Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998).
G. Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale,
(Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002), p. 19
Si pensi, ad esempio, a: J. Aumont, Du visage au
cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1991); J.
Aumont (a cura di), L’Invention de la figure
humaine. Le cinéma: L’humain, l’inhumain,
Conférences du Collège d’histoire de l’art cinématographique (Paris: Cinémathèque française,
1995); N. Brenez, De la figure en général et du
corps en particulier. L’invention figurative au
cinéma (Paris-Bruxelles: De Boeck & Larcier,
1998).
H. Aubron, “L’Espoir inconnu de l’escargot”,
5
6
7
8
Vertigo, n. 15, Animal, a cura di H. Aubron
(2000), p. 12.
S. Daney, “L’Ecran du fantasme (Bazin et les
bêtes)”, in La Rampe (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma/Gallimard, 1983), p. 35.
G. Agamben, L’aperto, cit., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid., pp. 79-80.
SELECTED BY: LEONARDO
QUARESIMA
Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002)
Un professore universitario di Letteratura
comparata, si imbatte casualmente in un film di
un protagonista minore del cinema comico
americano, del periodo del muto, e decide di scrivere un libro su di lui. Siamo negli anni ’80, la
cassetta video non si è ancora imposta, e lo studioso si impegna in un giro che lo porta in alcuni dei principali archivi americani ed europei
per visionare i dodici film dell’attore, la maggior
parte dei quali frutto di ritrovamenti recenti, fortunati quanto singolari. Il comico in questione è
Hector Mann, i suoi film sono stati realizzati da
una piccola casa di produzione tra il 1927 e il
1928, avrebbero potuto rappresentare l’inizio di
una carriera di primo piano, se questa non fosse
stata interrotta dall’improvvisa, misteriosa sparizione dell’attore. Successivamente all’uscita
del libro una lettera annuncia al professore che
Hector Mann sarebbe ancora in vita e che desidererebbe incontrarlo.
Questa la materia (ma non ho svelato nulla
che vada al di là delle prime pagine del libro)
dell’ultimo romanzo di Paul Auster1. Ci troviamo di fronte, all’apparenza, ad una delle molte
opere che tematizzano e “narrativizzano” in
forme più o meno libere, più o meno sperimentali, l’universo del cinema – ben noto, del
resto, anche direttamente, al suo autore. E il
lavoro si associa in effetti a tendenze postmodern, per il “gioco” che conduce sulle forme
dei generi cinematografici, adottando come
schema di base la struttura del “noir” (Sunset
Boulevard è sullo sfondo), accentuata vistosamente in molti passaggi (quando una pistola
può spuntare improvvisamente nelle mani dei
personaggi) e ricorrendo ancora di più a tale
“gioco” nel racconto (indiretto) delle avventure del comico dopo la sua scomparsa, modellate ciascuna secondo i canoni di un sistema convenzionale: il melodramma, il gangster movie
e persino il film porno.
Propone inoltre l’esplorazione di un territorio che sta tra la realtà e la finzione (e sulla cui
indagine si è impegnata la riflessione più
recente di François Jost), con lo Zelig di
Woody Allen stavolta come termine di riferimento più evidente. Tutto è meticolosamente
preciso, nel romanzo: la dislocazione degli
archivi, la situazione del cinema comico americano nell’ultima fase del muto, la cura, “filologica”, con cui i film di Hector Mann sono
repertoriati, le procedure della descrizione, da
The Teller’s Tale, quello che agisce come una
folgorazione sul narratore, a Mr Nobody, il
suo ultimo, vero lavoro. Salvo che (obbligata è
tuttavia la consultazione di un dizionario)…
nessuno di questi film è mai esistito e mai è
esistito un comico di nome Hector Mann. Ma
il territorio in questione può essere non meno
concreto di un luogo reale, e a sua volta quanto mai “compromettente”. Nel romanzo di
Auster è inserito anche un capitolo del libro
scritto dal protagonista su Hector Mann.
Ebbene, a parte il gioco mimetico rispetto, stavolta, a consolidati canoni critici (biograficoautoriali, neo-impressionisti: alcuni passaggi
sembrano provenire da un saggio di Delluc:
Richard Abel ha fatto davvero un egregio lavoro in America…2) ciò che colpisce è l’”esattezza” e l’intelligenza dell’analisi. Il testo è un
piccolo gioiello di indagine dei meccanismi
del comico cinematografico, e viene, verrà
voglia di inserirlo d’ora in avanti tra la letteratura sull’argomento, verrà voglia di trarne
delle citazioni…
Al centro del romanzo campeggia la figura
dello sdoppiamento, quasi ogni situazione o
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personaggio trova un suo corrispondente,
simile ed “altro” nello stesso tempo (appoggiandosi anche a fonti letterarie: The
Birthmark di Nathaniel Hawthorne, ad esempio). La situazione potrà non essere nuovissima, nelle sue relazioni con il cinema, ma qui è
ribadita con una radicalità e una sistematicità
inconsuete e più profonde. Coinvolta non è
solo una materia narrativa (ove si disegna un
rapporto di affinità tra il destino di Hector
Mann e quello del professore/narratore), coinvolto non è solo il piano esistenziale (e tutto
romanzesco) dei due destini, ma un po’ tutto
ciò che ruota attorno al sistema “cinema”, fino
alle caratteristiche della voce off, principio
utilizzato in tutti i film dell’”ultimo periodo”
di Hector Mann, attentamente analizzata e
messa in valore dal protagonista.
Il cinema è associato, inoltre, sempre, a una
situazione di perdita. E qui non è solo in questione la sorte dei film del passato, emblematizzata nelle vicende di quelli del comico, del
primo o dell’ultimo periodo. Il professore inizia ad occuparsi di cinema dopo la morte della
moglie e dei figli; un altro personaggio scriverà una biografia dell’attore dopo la morte della
madre; Hector Mann riprenderà a girare film
(che non avrebbero mai dovuto avere un pubblico) dopo la morte del figlio… Emerge dalle
pagine di Paul Auster un’idea di cinema connessa a funzioni di riparazione e compensazione. Il film è un fantasma: presente e visibile, ma conseguenza di una scomparsa essenziale. Ovvero: il cinema è potenziamento dell’esistenza, ma determinato da una situazione
di crisi. E’ Chateaubriand, ora, ad essere chiamato in causa: “Les moments de crise produisent un redoublement de vie chez les hommes” (p. 238). L’esergo del romanzo (ancora
Chateaubriand) tuttavia recita: “ L’homme n’a
pas une seule et même vie; il en a plusieurs
mises bout à bout, et c’est sa misère”…
Ma il dato forse più originale è che in questo
romanzo viene “novellizzata” è una situazione
frutto della ricerca più recente (quella cui
CINEMA & Cie ha dedicato il suo primo numero…), quella che ha portato alla rifondazione
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dell’oggetto “cinema muto”, a partire dalle
consapevolezze sulla conservazione di quel
patrimonio, da esigenze di ordine filologico, da
una nuova impostazione metodologica. Che
un romanzo costruisca una storia su queste
basi appare come la sanzione più forte, incontrovertibile dell’acquisizione, istituzionale, di
tali trasformazioni. Con tutte le contraddizioni che esse ancora contengono. Pure nell’epoca
del DVD e della digitalizzazione più estesa, sul
lavoro dello storico continuano a pesare i paradossi segnalati dal narratore: “I spent three
months watching old movies, and than I locked myself in a room and spent nine months
writing about them. It’s probably the strangest
thing I’ve ever done. I was writing about
things I couldn’t see anymore, and I had to present them in purely visual terms. The whole
experience was like a hallucination” (p. 64).
1
2
Ringrazio Werner Sudendorf per la segnalazione del libro.
Ecco l’inizio del saggio: “Before the body, there
is the face, and before the face there is the thin
black line between Hector’s nose and upper lip.
A twitching filament of anxieties, a metaphysical jump rope, a dancing thread of discombobulation, the mustache is a seismograph of
Hector’s inner states, and not only does it make
you laugh, it tells you what Hector is thinking,
actually allows you into the machinery of his
thoughts. […] None of this would be possible
without the intervention of the camera. The
intimacy of the talking mustache is a creation
of the lens. At various moments in each of
Hector’s films, the angle suddendly changes,
and a wide or medium shot is replaced by a
close-up.” (p. 29).
SELECTED BY: LAUREN
RABINOVITZ
Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card:
Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle
Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001)
Well-known for her scholarship on feminist
film theory and melodrama as well as for her
groundbreaking study of pornography (Hard
Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the
Visible), author Linda Williams takes on
American film melodrama as the primary narrative mode for dealing with the national
struggle over race relations. She first carefully
defines melodrama not so much as a genre but
as a mode that has been highly suitable (and
stable) for expressing an evolving national preoccupation. In this way, Williams moves her
project out of film genre studies – where so
many previous discussions regarding melodrama have taken place – into an expanded arena
of cultural studies. Her goal is to explain the
narratives and tropes that have anchored “the
primary way in which mainstream American
culture has dealt with the moral dilemma of
having first enslaved and then withheld equal
rights to generations of African Americans” (p.
44). Williams, therefore, aims at broad political
concerns but ones that are less about cinema’s
general relationship to ideology and culture
than about a deeply-felt concern for defining
American-ness, of “just who we mean when we
say ‘we’ are a nation” (p. 44).
But if her subject addresses content specific
to an American national identity, her historical trajectory of movie melodramas as a vehicle for representing racial identity and strife
proceeds from three major arguments that
have broad implications for film genre studies
in general. 1) Williams asserts that melodrama
as a category encompasses more than the
group of women’s pictures that first gave rise
to putative definitions of melodrama as “feminine excess” and then to feminist recuperations of melodrama. Following the line of reasoning of melodrama critics from Peter Brooks
to Christine Gledhill, Williams submits a corpus that includes a wide range of social problem films about everyday life.1 There is good
reason that this expanded corpus has been
subject historically to criticism of “feminine
excesses.” First, these films are unlike westerns or gangster films that have been perceived within film studies as preoccupied with
masculine cultural values. Second, this corpus
engages action and realism in the service of
sensation, sentiment, and feel-good moralism:
they achieve the merger of “morality and feeling into emphatically imagined communities
forged in the pain and suffering of innocent
victims, and in the actions of those who seek
to rescue them” (p. 21).
2) Williams contends that melodrama cannot be understood fully within the confines of
classical cinema. In this regard, she rejects the
overarching definition of classical Hollywood
cinema as a container for “genres” in general,
for looking at how groups of American films
adhere to or depart from a “classical” norm. It
is because of the normative category of classical Hollywood cinema, she argues, that melodrama is seen in the first place as “excessive.”
Rather, she opts for what is now fashionably
known as an “inter-medial” definition of
melodrama, one that takes into account melodrama as a form of representation and storytelling in literature, in the theater, and ultimately in the tabloid press. An inter-medial
definition opens up her corpus even further:
melodramas prior to classical Hollywood cinema and even prior to cinema may be compared and become important for long-range
historical continuities and the origins for
today’s racial narratives.
3) She therefore rejects outright the idea
that melodrama is a genre at all. Her claim
offers a bold feminist thesis regarding film
theory and history:
Narrative cinema as a whole has been theorized as a realist, inherently masculine medium whose ‘classical’ features were supposedly
anathema to its melodramatic infancy and
childhood […] Melodrama has been viewed
either as that which the ‘classical’ cinema has
grown up out of, or that to which it sometimes regresses (p. 17).
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Instead of a genre, melodrama is a “modality of narrative with a high quotient of pathos
and action” (p. 17). Williams’ key texts for
analysis here are the multiple manifestations
(novel, play, and/or film) of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin (1903), The Birth of a Nation (1915), The
Jazz Singer (1927), Show Boat (1936), Gone
with the Wind (1939), Roots (1977), the “texts”
surrounding the Rodney King police beating
case (1991-92) and O. J. Simpson’s televised
trial for murder and its subsidiary texts (ca.
1995) (the dates for fictional texts above are
for film and television versions rather than
original novels and plays).
Two racial narratives bind this interconnected chain of melodramatic texts: one she
labels the “Tom” narrative and the other is the
reversal of it called the “anti-Tom” narrative.
The former features the beating, suffering,
and victimization of a “good” black man,
which lends virtue and humanity to slaves
and former slaves. The latter inverts the history of racial abuse against African Americans
and casts the African American male as an
arrogant villain who poses a threat of rape and
endangerment to suffering white women. The
cycle of these two narratives for more than a
century and continuing up through two
recent nationally-televised trials demonstrates the wide extent to which victimization
as a melodramatic form of moral power has
played a prominent role at different times, for
different individuals, and in different ways in
defining American racial politics.
Williams’ analyses of individual examples
are smart, richly rewarding interpretations
that read the texts within and against existing
criticism. To each case study, she brings to
bear a synthesis of the best scholarship
already accomplished on that example. The
single limitation of her approach is one of cultural studies in general: there is little sensitivity to the reality outside the texts that gave
them power at specific historical moments for
specific historical reasons.
For example, Williams studies The Birth of
a Nation as a case of adaptation from both
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novel and play. She examines three different
texts for a variation of narratives through
which the Tom backlash narrative of black
male sexual threat emerges. But she does little to explain that this backlash against the
“suffering Tom” narrative occurred only
when African Americans migrated in record
numbers from rural southern counties to
Southern and northern cities, found expanded job opportunities during the labor shortage of World War One, and asserted a working class African American culture within
northern white cities. American cities were
dominated by non-white and non-native
born citizens, who brought religious, sexual,
and cultural values that threatened those of
white, nativist Americans. The “anti-Tom”
narrative found voice amidst the onset of
immigration restrictions and even mass scale
deportations, nativist preaching, wide-scale
segregation and discrimination laws, a
national epidemic of lynchings, and major
race riots in several American cities. In other
words, Williams neglects the power and function of her narratives within larger spheres of
cultural power. Hers is a textual study, an
excellent one that compares the important
relationships among texts not usually considered side-by-side in genre studies. But, as an
explanation of cultural power, it treats literary narratives as though they operate in a
somewhat self-contained, insular fashion.
Such a criticism should not be leveled solely
at Williams, who here dramatizes cultural
studies at its best, but at the short-sightedness
of American cultural studies as a historical
method.
What Williams does accomplish is a masterful interweaving of film criticism and the
complex historical depth to today’s disturbing racial values. She makes a persuasive argument for how the past conditions the present
– that we continue to be ready to feel sympathy only for the suffering and victimization of
either white women or black men. Such a
Manichean polarity and cycle of victims and
villains are ultimately tales of race, gender,
and power. They both serve not only to erase
the African American woman and justify her
continued abuse but to serve up a disturbing
narrative of national identity.
The extent to which Williams has hit upon
a basic nerve of the American character and
its history can best be illustrated here for an
Italian audience by the 1997 curtain call of
The Birth of a Nation at Le Giornate del
Cinema Muto in Pordenone. When the conductor turned to an onscreen picture of director D.W. Griffith, the mostly Italian audience
rose as one and gave a thundering ovation of
applause and cheers. The Americans scattered
throughout the audience sat dumbfounded,
unable to applaud or react. The difference in
cultural understanding was telling: in Italy,
the film is a stunning achievement of film art;
for Americans, as Williams so effectively
shows, the film represents a landmark in a
complicated racial history of shame and
denial that is reenacted regularly in today’s
racial politics and injustices.
1
P. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination
(New Haven: Yale University Press, reprint
1976); Ch. Gledhill, “The Melodramatic Field:
An Investigation,” in Ch. Gledhill (ed.), Home Is
Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and
the Woman’s Film (London: BFI, 1987).
SELECTED BY: COSETTA SABA
Documenta 11 Platform 5: Exhibition.
Catalogue, Kassel, June 8 – September 15, 2002
(Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2002,
English edition)
The catalogue of Documenta 11 Platform 5:
Exhibition outlines a circuit of attention on
the otherness of art, producing at the same
time a short circuit of our attention on the
same subject: a “behind the times” operation,
which muddles modern Western societies,
where the critical activity is deliberately
atheoretical or programmatically post-theoretical. This volume deals with the otherness, expressed and documented not only by
the works exhibited in the Platform 5 –
works which are oriented towards the crossing of thresholds and of frontiers between
territories, bodies, minds, texts, societies,
signs, etc. – but also by the expositive context
itself.
Documenta 11, as maintained by its curator,
Okwui Enwezor,
was conceived not as an exhibition but as a
constellation of public spheres. The public
sphere of the exhibition gesture, implicit in
the historical formation of Documenta, in
which art comes to stand for models of representation and narratives of autonomous subjectivity, is rearticulated here as a new understanding in the domain of the discursive
rather than the museological.1
Enwezor presents a new curatorial model,
consisting of an experimentation of the “platform” concept as referring to world cultures
and to their geography – traced out by historical and contemporary conflicts –, according to
the following thematic paths: Democracy
Unrealized (Platform 1, Vienna); Experiments
with Truth: Transitional Justice and the
Processes of Truth and Reconciliation
(Platform 2, New Delhi); Créolité and
Creolization (Platform 3, St. Lucia, West
Indies); Under Siege: Four African Cities
Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos
(Platform 4, Lagos).
The discourse of Documenta 11, planned by
Enwezor together with his co-curators, highlights through works of art, the theme of the
difference between Postmodernism and
Postcoloniality, in a context of modernity.
Enwezor asserts that
postcoloniality must at all times be distinguished from postmodernism. While postmodernism was preoccupied with relativiz195
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ing historical transformations and contesting
the lapses and prejudices of epistemological
grand narratives, postcoloniality does the
obverse, seeking instead to sublate and
replace all grand narratives through new ethical demands on modes of historical interpretation.2
Documenta 11 is the point of synthesis of a
multidisciplinary research into artistic practices and processes, inquiring about “circuits
of knowledge produced outside the predetermined institutional domain of Westernism,
or those situated solely in the sphere of artistic canons.”3 This is inferred from works like,
for instance, Future Amnesia (2002) by Pierre
Huyghe, The House (2002) by Eija-Liisa
Athila, Suspiria (2002) by Stan Douglas, From
the Other Side (2002) by Chantal Akerman,
Shoes for Europe by Pavel Brâila, etc. Such a
research reveals some precise forms of interconnection between artistic practices and different social realities, in various parts of the
world: this constitutes “a rethinking of
modernity, based on ideas of transculturality
and extraterritoriality.”4 Let us think, for
example, of As I Was Moving Ahead
Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
(2000, 16mm, 288’), by Jonas Mekas, an artist
who knows well the condition of displacement; or else, of Shirin Neshat (present in
Kassel with Untitled, 2002, 35mm), with her
special way of overcoming the binary opposition between the East (Islam) and the West,
outlining some identities of transition, some
migrant figures crossing frontiers and continually shifting the limits between “local” and
“global,” and sometimes investigating into
this mutual overturn (the local into the global and vice versa).
The introductory essays – let us remember
among others, “The Encyclopedia of Babel”
by Carlos Basualdo, “Xeno-epistemics:
Makeshift Kit for Sounding Visual Art as
Knowledge Production and Retinal Regimes”
by Sarat Maharaj, “Can Places Travel?” by
Sverker Sörlin, etc. – modulate the same con196
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ceptual isotopy in different ways: this can be
schematically outlined as “the postcolonial
aftermath of globalization and the terrible
nearness of distant places.”5 The works, or
better said, the texts of Platform 5 elaborate
programmatically their own visibility in the
double acceptation of testis and of textum, in
relation to a research path on discourses, on
silences, on signs of the world realities. Their
geography is continually re-shaped by mobile
frontiers, by trespassing and by crossing, produced by the reversibility between the local
and the global dimension. Documenta 11, at
least in the intention of its curator Enwezor,
transfers in social life itself – and most of all
in the discourse that art brings to contemporary world realities – an analytic look
through which it is possible to see procedures
of creolization, hybridization, displacement,
subversion, translation, interpretation and
reassemblage taking place.
Constitutively seeking its own definition,
art is a “reserve of sense;” it connects in an
indissoluble way text and out-of-text, text and
context (certainly not the merely expositive
one, which marks the artistic function).
Documenta 11 Platform 5 reveals vehemently
how aesthetical intervention does not just
dwell in the work, but also in the cultural and
social intertext which receives it. Apart from
the “museal” expositive space, let me recommend Bataille Monument (2002), by Thomas
Hirschhorn: he creates a “text” from an intervention on the receptive context (a suburban
area in Kassel, where a Turkish community
lives) and from the utilization of the same
work in the aforesaid context (an installation
articulated into a social center, a library, a TV
set and a bar). Bataille Monument is indeed a
confusing text: the spectator, compelled to
put into effect a condition of “other,” of
stranger, must renegotiate it in the context of
art, of daily life and of the artist’s expressive
intention. Art is the place where countless
relations between texts and contexts materialize; a reserve of expressive forms, originating
from an aesthetical intention (prefiguring the
interpretative action to which it is dedicated),
producing and awaiting their sense at the
same time.
As far as the visual content of an exhibition
is concerned, spectatorship is central; as
pointed out by Jean Fischer, “this means that
the affectivity of any aesthetic strategy
depends on the way it understands and structures its relation to the viewer.”6 If, as Mark
Nash emphasizes, “artist’s film and video has
emerged as a major if not dominant image discourse in the museum and gallery circuit,”7
what is changing the gallery or museumgoing experience actually regards the spectatorial activity, and concerns the presence of
the work and the time of vision. The artistic
utilization of audiovisual languages does not
place the viewer in an “aphysical and intellectual dimension,” but rather in a different
physical one, determining a near-corporeal
implication of the spectator, whose aspects
still have to be investigated. Let us think of
the film and video by Shirin Neshat: not only
does she make a complex image out of the
body, but also aims at the spectatorial body,
since she foresees it, she “incorporates” it, by
outlining the look trajectory and concentration between the screens and the motion-picture camera, between light and sound.
As Fischer points out, “art itself is a form of
excess expenditure:” when it is not organic to
power elites, that is, where it escapes the aesthetical procedures of the globalized art market, it emphasizes the discourses on legitimation of what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable” in the artistic languages, and not only in
those. In relation to such legitimating discourses, the otherness of art is what “enables a
coherent discursive position to take place.”8
This is the “behind the times” challenge of
Documenta 11, finding its own expositive
actualization in Platform 5. It is the challenge
of a rigorous curatorial program, that of
Mister Enwezor: thematizing and making visible theory’s aspirations of critical resistance,
plus underlining the paradoxes and the displacements of artistic languages, as well as of
reality. All this makes us even more aware of
the “built-up” character of culture and invention, or better said, of social negotiation
processes, of what we define “tradition,” of
what shows how culture is a “transnational
survival strategy, in continuous traductive
movement.” These are therefore the themes of
the unceasing translations among different
cultural systems and of the interferences
between different modalities of sense production. It all regards the West and its colonial
history, but also the existence, in it, of cultural differences: let us think of the knowledge
belonging to the minority, that is, knowledge
which is not shared or which is unsuitable for
the contingencies of cultural industry. This
knowledge requires our utmost attention,
especially because it reveals the discursive
processes which just made it become “minority knowledge.”
Documenta 11 presents some conceptual
passages which are incredibly “behind the
times” and can only be read by inducing an
assumption of responsibility, a crisis, a
change.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
O. Enwezor, “The Black Box,” in Documenta 11
Platform 5: Exhibition. Catalogue (OstfildernRuit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2002), p. 54.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid., p. 44.
J. Fischer, “Toward a Metaphysics of Shit,” in
Documenta 11 Platform 5: Exhibition.
Catalogue (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz
Publishers, 2002), p. 66.
M. Nash, “Art and cinema: some critical reflection,” in Documenta 11 Platform 5: Exhibition.
Catalogue (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz
Publishers, 2002), p. 129.
Fischer, op. cit., p. 67.
197
SELECTED BY
SELECTED BY: VICENTE
SÁNCHEZ-BIOSCA
Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, Le Cinéma en
Amérique Latine. Le miroir éclaté (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2000)
Le Cinéma en Amérique Latine est un
ouvrage a-typique dans le contexte des études
cinématographiques. À son origine se trouve
une thèse soutenue à l’Université de Paris I,
dont le but était d’inscrire les essais de l’auteur publiés tout au long d’une quinzaine
d’années dans la réflexion portée sur le cinéma de l’Amérique Latine. Exercice d’autorréflexion, pourrait-on dire, et c’est bien cela en
ce qui concerne la deuxième partie du volume
qui n’est pas sans intérêt étant donné l’identité de l’auteur, dont les ouvrages Le Cinéma
brésilien (1987), Le Cinéma cubain (1990) et
Le Cinéma mexicain (1992), entre autres, publiés par le Centre Georges Pompidou sont
devenus de vrais classiques. Quoi qu’il en soit,
l’apport fondamental du volume est condensé
dans ses premières 150 pages, car elles contiennent une étude minutieuse, quasiment
exhaustive, de l’historiographie du cinéma en
Amérique Latine.
Tout d’abord, l’objet. Comme nous venons
de le dire, il n’est pas question ici de l’histoire
du cinéma latino-américain, mais de son historiographie, ce qui fait jouer le rôle principale à la méthode. Le parcours que Paranaguá
fait d’auteurs, des tendances et des conceptions (explicites ou implicites) de six décennies est imposant, s’étendant dès les premiers
balbutiements dans chaque pays jusqu’aux
dernières manifestations. Il faut rappeler que
la réflexion historiographique avait fait l’objet d’un nombre croissant d’études portant sur
le cinéma nordaméricain ou sur d’autres cinématographies nationales (française, allemande, entre autres), mais lle n’avait pas été
envisagée à l’égard du cinéma de l’Amérique
Latine, quoi que l’espace de l’Amérique Latine
suggère des problèmes que nul autre ciné198
SELECTED BY
matographie est en mesure de soulever de
façon aussi précise, notamment la question
d’un cinéma national.
En effet, Paranaguá aborde l’étude d’un
ensemble hétérogène du point de vue industriel, esthétique, culturel et politique: une pluralité de pays qui partagent sans doute une certaine tradition (la langue, si l’on excepte le
Brésil, où il existe néanmoins une tradition
d’exhibition de films en espagnol), mais qui
diffèrent entre eux pour des raisons non moins
importantes. C’est ainsi que le Mexique,
l’Argentine ou le Brésil, pour ne mentionner
que des pays porvus d’une industrie nationale
puissante sont incomparables au Pérou, à la
Bolovie ou au Paraguay, par exemple.
L’hypothèse de Paranaguá ne se borne pas à
proposer le lieu commun de l’influence, mais
approfondit l’idée d’un dialogue à plusieurs
niveaux comme le montre sa fine analyse des
échanges entre le cinéma cubain au lendemain
de la révolution et le Cinema Nôvo brésilien
qui le précède. Aspirant à intégrer les questions sociologiques ou esthétiques ainsi que
les problèmes techniques et industriels, une
histoire comparée des divers pays latinoaméricains éclaire à la fois les tendances
générales et des aspects particuliers encore
sous-estimés, tels que la formation des professionnels, leur féminisation récente, l’existence
d’un néorealisme latino-américain ou les genres les plus caractéristiques (p. 9).
Si la dialectique entre cinématographie
nationale et globalisation soulève un problème ardu pour les historiens du cinéma, la
production de l’Amérique Latine devrait
devenir, comme le montre Paranaguá, un
champ d’études privilégié pour les
théoriciens et les historiens du cinéma tout
court. Se proposant comme une analyse
transversale des cultures, comme un dialogue
entre traditions relativement différentes, l’essai de Paranaguá souhaiterait faire partie d’un
projet plus ambitieux, soit, une histoire des
mentalités (p. 9).
Or, l’auteur est conscient que le cinéma de
l’Amérique Latine n’est pas le patrimoine
exclusif des spécialistes provenant des régions
concernées. Bien au contraire, trois aires géographiques et culturelles, pourvues de traditions de recherche, de méthode et de bibliographie spécifique ont abordé cette production: l’Europe, les États-Unis et les pays de
l’Amérique Latine. Résultat des migrations et
des exiles, des influences et des coutumes ou
des modes académiques, ainsi que de la critique (politique des auteurs, nationalisme,
études culturelles, filmologie, travail des cinémathèques, féminisme, analyse textuelle...), le
dialogue entre ces trois traditions n’est pas
aussi fréquent que souhaitable, même si l’objet semblait l’exiger. Et bien, un mérite incontestable de cet essai consiste à faire le point de
ces trois perspectives stimulant les échanges
entre elles.
En somme, Le Cinéma en Amérique Latine
est un ouvrage qui devrait intéresser non
seulement le spécialiste du cinéma explicitement dénommé, mais aussi tout chercheur
préoccupé par les questions méthodologiques
de l’historie du cinéma, tout chercheur qui
accepterait le défi d’interroger les limites
industrielles, culturelles, esthétiques et
sociales d’un cinéma national.
SELECTED BY: IRMBERT SCHENK
Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen, Cornelius
Schnauber, Fritz Lang. Leben und Werk / His
Life and Work / Sa vie et son œuvre (Berlin:
Filmmuseum/Deutsche Kinemathek/Jovis
Verlag, 2001)
Da segnalare all’attenzione del lettore un
libro non teorico e storico-critico ma “semplicemente” storico-descrittivo che può servire
da ottimo strumento per ogni ricerca sul cinema di Fritz Lang, ma anche sul cinema tedesco
di Weimar e sull’emigrazione a Hollywood. È
il catalogo della retrospettiva del Festival
Internazionale del Cinema di Berlino 2001,
curato da Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen,
Cornelius Schnauber ma al quale hanno dato
il loro contributo anche molti altri collaboratori. Tutti i testi sono presentati in tedesco,
inglese e francese e abbondantemente corredati da quanto promesso nel sottotitolo: fotografie e documenti. Il volume, infatti, è ampiamente illustrato con fotografie e facsimili di
ottima riproduzione e di grande varietà di
contenuto: dalle fotografie relative alla vita
privata e professionale di Lang, alla corrispondenza, alle foto di scena, ai fotogrammi tratti
da diversi film.
Rappresentano un importantissimo contributo alla ricerca i documenti che riguardano la
vita privata e semipubblica di Lang e le condizioni produttive dei film tedeschi, finora poco
conosciuti e di difficile reperimento. Si vedano,
per esempio, le annotazioni di Lang nel suo
Notizbuch scritte fra Frau im Mond e M o le
“memorie” dello scenografo Erich Kettelhut
sulla lavorazione di Metropolis, per fare solo
due esempi fra i tanti testi e documenti pubblicati per la prima volta. Tutto questo fa del volume un eccezionale strumento di lavoro da non
trascurare a chi voglia occuparsi di Lang.
Tuttavia, parlando di un libro di questa
importanza, non si può purtroppo fare a
meno di notare alcuni difetti che riguardano
in primo luogo la struttura dell’opera e le sue
modalità argomentative e filologiche.
Peraltro, è evidente una mancanza di equilibrio nella trattazione dell’opera di Lang precedente il 1933 rispetto a quella successiva all’emigrazione in Francia e negli Stati Uniti.
Dopo il 1933 le informazioni riportate illustrano quasi esclusivamente la vita privata del
regista, mentre sfiorano appena gli aspetti
relativi alla produzione dei suoi film. È vero, i
curatori hanno deciso, come indicato nella
prefazione, di presentare in primo luogo la
personalità privata di Lang, rimasta piuttosto
sconosciuta (anche per volontà dello stesso
cineasta) e di rivelarne il significato storico.
Nondimeno, non è chiaro il motivo per cui
dopo il 1933 lo sguardo sul suo lavoro debba
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quasi completamente sparire (fatta eccezione
per le foto). Dall’altra parte, il lato positivo di
questa scelta è l’assoluta scoperta del sostegno
generoso dato da Lang ad altri emigrati di lingua tedesca che si trovavano in condizioni
materiali meno fortunate delle sue.
Un altro punto debole nell’argomentazione
dei curatori consiste in un certo laconismo
nell’accennare ai contesti generali (storici,
politici, ma anche di storiografia del cinema)
senza rendere conto della loro problematicità.
Come se l’interpretazione venisse da sé.
Inoltre, mancano indicazioni su fonti o
rimandi alla letteratura secondaria su Lang,
che del resto proprio negli ultimi tempi è stata
notevolmente accresciuta da contributi critico-interpretativi di grande valore, apparsi in
diversi Paesi. Insomma, la sommarietà degli
aspetti critico-interpretativi lascia un po’
come l’impressione che, con la messe di informazioni raccolte dai numerosissimi contributi provenienti da varie parti del mondo,
all’ambizioso progetto alla fine sia mancato il
tempo necessario per un’elaborazione unificante...
SELECTED BY: PAOLA VALENTINI
Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of
Early Modern England. Attending to the OFactor (Chicago-London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1999)
Il libro di Bruce Smith offre una lettura
incuriosita e affascinante; un libro che apre gli
occhi su un aspetto che, per chi studia il suono
nelle sue diverse applicazioni, ivi compresa
quella cinematografica, serpeggia spesso sotterraneo non osando farsi pensiero compiuto,
ma anche che, come si cercherà in queste
poche righe di far presagire, crea una serie di
sollecitazioni che portano a rimettere in causa
molti aspetti in generale dell’andare al cinema
e dei suoi tentativi di ricostruzione storica.
Effettivamente il libro di Bruce Smith può
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essere riassunto in una domanda: è possibile
udire i suoni del passato? La sfida lanciata dall’autore, appassionato studioso di Shakespeare e dello spettacolo inglese di fine Cinquecento, è infatti quella di “ricostruire” il
soundscape londinese del periodo, verificare
la sonorità tipica dei teatri londinesi oltre
Tamigi, per i quali i testi di Shakespeare furono pensati, in modo non solo da arguire quali
suoni aleggiassero attorno allo spettatore del
tempo ma, per così dire, di farci ascoltare con
le orecchie di Shakespeare; di identificare la
messe di suoni in cui era immerso lo spettatore e le loro particolari caratteristiche acustiche, ma anche quale significato questi suoni
avessero per quella particolare cultura ancora
permeata di aspetti tipici dell’oralità. Ne
emerge “a historical phenomenology of
sound” che parte dalla ricognizione degli
aspetti fisici della produzione e ricezione di
suoni umana (capitoli I e II), rifiutando immediatamente tanto la concezione di un suono
“prospettico”, modellato solo su criteri visivi,
quanto la sua riduzione ad “oggetto”. Il suono
è invece una realtà che implica un’esperienza
(l’oscillazione tra l’inerziale hearing e l’attivo
listening ascolto mirato e dettato da motivi
particolari: sento qualcosa anche perché mi
aspetto o non mi aspetto di sentirla) che si
qualifica come realtà spaziale (l’ampiezza del
suono) e insieme temporale (frequenza); e dall’altro il suono connota una dimensione di
immersione rispetto alla presa dell’oggetto a
distanza (il suono ci attraversa, a partire dalle
risonanze che acquista dentro di noi e dai
suoni “metabolici” che lo impregnano). Poste
queste premesse, Bruce R. Smith muove poi
all’analisi delle strutture sociali e politiche,
infatti quella sonora è una realtà di una complessità irriducibile, che implica necessariamente uno sforzo interdisciplinare:
First of all there is the intractable individual
listener, with his distinctive knowledge and
experience, her own particular goals and intentions. To understand these factors, we need a
psychology of listening. Since knowledge and
intentions are shaped by culture, we need to
attend also to cultural differences in the construction of aural experience. The multiple cultures of early modern England may have shared with us the biological materiality of hearing, but their protocols of listening could be
remarkably different from ours. We need a cultural poetics of listening. We must take into
account, finally, the subjective experience of
sound. We need a phenomenology of listening,
which we can expect to be an amalgam of biological constants and cultural variables.1
Il desiderio di cominciare almeno a ricostruire questi protocols of listening, lo porta
quindi innanzitutto a indagare i soundscapes
of modern England (capitolo III); attraverso
una ricca ricerca condotta su fonti letterarie,
iconografiche, canore e su disparati documenti d’epoca, viene tracciata una “mappa sonora”
dei luoghi topici della vita sociale del tempo –
la città, la campagna e la Corte – dei suoni che
la caratterizzavano e delle dinamiche che li
animavano (come la rilevanza del suono della
campana della chiesa nella città quale vero e
proprio soundmark, elemento di organizzazione dell’ascolto e dell’acoustic horizon del
londinese). Immersi capitolo dopo capitolo
nei suoni e l’ascolto tipico dell’epoca, siamo
infine condotti dentro il teatro Globe e la particolare acustica dei suoi materiali e della sua
conformazione (capitoli VIII e IX), dove Smith
cercan di farci toccare con mano l’amalgama
di fenomeni fisici, percettivi e culturali che
anche il più semplice suono – l’O del titolo,
l’oh [o:] “nonverbal if not preverbal [sound
that] ally the human voice with the voices of
all breathing creatures in the soundscapes of
the world” che l’autore elegge a simbolo –
assume per quell’ascoltatore tra le tavole di
legno di quel teatro in quel tempo.
Non entro nel merito della valutazione del
nucleo centrale dell’opera, della nuova luce
gettata sulle produzioni di Shakespeare nonché sull’arte scenica in generale. Andrebbe
almeno ricordato che il Globe Theatre –
distrutto a metà Seicento insieme ai vicini
Swan, Rose e Hope in seguito all’ennesima
campagna puritana – è stato ricostruito recentemente (pur leggermente spostato rispetto
alla posizione originaria a causa del ritrovamenti di resti antichi) usando i materiali dell’epoca: un’iniziativa non trascurabile ma che,
dopo quanto detto, non supplisce la perdita
irreparabile della cultura dell’ascolto tipica
dell’era elisabettiana. Quello che, invece,
preme qui evidenziare è che dietro l’interesse
per i teatri in legno dell’allora malfamato
Southbank di Londra,2 si cela più radicalmente la sfida a ricostruire i suoni e soprattutto l’ascolto del passato. È una lezione dunque che
ha non poche conseguenze sul cinema in cui,
come ha da tempo evidenziato Rick Altman,3
rispetto alla relativa stabilità dell’immagine, il
suono è stato soggetto a un’evoluzione costante che obbliga dunque a interrogarsi su condizioni d’ascolto continuamente cangianti (dal
suono ottico a quello stereofonico, da quello
analogico a quello digitale, dall’ascolto frontale alla plurale e alternata successione delle sorgenti sonore ecc.) e soprattutto, come suggerisce Smith, caratterizzate da protocolli d’ascolto ogni volta diversi che connotano la sempre
più complessa, oralità secondaria del mondo
attuale,4 come mostra la recentissima ricerca
di Peppino Ortoleva sul suono televisivo.5
Certo l’approccio non è del tutto nuovo e fa
perno su una tradizione di studi ormai consolidata, che muove almeno dalle ricerche di R.
Murray Schafer e Pierre Shaeffer, transitate in
ambito cinematografico attraverso i fondamentali studi di Rick Altman, così come le ricerche
di Michel Fano o di Michel Chion. E più di
recente, il riferimento va immediatamente agli
studi di Barry Truax, il primo a obbiettare con
forza, come riconosce lo stesso Smith, che “a
speech community also constitutes an acoustic
community. Its identity is maintained not only
by what its members say in common but what
they hear in common”.6 Tuttavia inedito e affascinante è il tentativo, come si diceva, di non
lasciar cadere nell’ineffabile – come dichiara
Truax stesso a tergo del libro – “the aural experience of this society in the throes of a transition
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from oral to literature culture”, ma di porsi dei
seri obbiettivi per la “rappresentazione” e la
ricostruzione di soundscape complessi che travalica ovviamente la semplice fase elisabettiana. E in questo, rispetto all’evanescenza del
suono teatrale, il suono “meccanico” del cinema
offre forse qualche possibilità di recupero in
più; accanto alla svariata documentazione utilizzata da Bruce Smith, i film stessi possono
divenire un valido strumento alla ricostruzione
non già solo del visibile ma anche dell’udibile
cinematografico delle varie epoche.
Il libro infine è qualcosa di più di un trattato sul suono o meglio mostra ulteriormente,
come già indicato da tanti studi in materia, la
capacità ermeneutica del suono nei confronti
di tante problematiche della (audio)visione,
dell’andare al cinema, o dell’esserne parte del
pubblico. Tra i vari aspetti citiamo almeno
quello della nozione di contesto e di esperienza, a cui l’autore dedica tanta attenzione e che
fin dalle prime pagine afferma con forza:
The thereness of sound becomes the hereness of sound in the ear of the receiver. The
physical facts of time and space become the
psychological experience of time and space.
[...] The context, no longer an outside entity,
becomes something I belong to, something I
am immersed in. It is just at this juncture,
where thereness impinges on hereness, that
Western ways of conceptualizing experience
become as dogmatic as they are imprecise.7
1
2
3
202
B.R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early
Modern England. Attending to the O-Factor
(Chicago-London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1999), p. 8.
Sul teatro progettato dall’architetto Theo
Crosby e inaugurato il 4 aprile 1997 rimandiamo alla ricca documentazione presente sul sito
curato dalla University of Reading
www.rdg.ac.uk/globe.
R. Altman (ed.), Sound Theory/Sound Practice
(New
York-London:
American
Film
Institute/Routledge, 1992).
SELECTED BY
4
5
6
7
W. Ong, The Presence of Word (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1967) e Orality and
Literacy. The Technologizing of The Word
(London-New York: Methuen, 1982).
F. Chiocci, G. Cardoni, P. Ortoleva, G. Sibilla, La
grana dell’audio. La dimensione sonora della
televisione (Roma: Eri/RAI 2002). Devo tra l’altro una nota speciale di ringraziamento a
Peppino Ortoleva che mi ha per primo fatto
conoscere il libro di Bruce R. Smith.
B.R. Smith, op. cit., p. 46; vd. B. Truax, Acoustic
Communication (Westport-London: Ablex,
1984; 2nd ed. 2001).
Ibid., p. 8.
SELECTED BY: LAURA VICHI
Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall,
Brigitte Berg (eds.), Science is Fiction. The
Films of Jean Painlevé (Cambridge, Mass.London: MIT Press/Brico Press, 2000)
Science is Fiction, se si escludono i cataloghi, è il primo volume interamente dedicato a
Jean Painlevé. Tre saggi originali sul cineasta e
un’intervista accompagnano una serie di scritti d’epoca e le trascrizioni dei suoi film più
noti illustrate inquadratura per inquadratura.
Il testo “Hybrid Roots” di Marina
McDougall mette in luce le diverse componenti dell’opera di Painlevé, in cui il cinema e
la fotografia incontrano la ricerca scientifica
al più alto livello, dando origine a risultati di
grande lirismo che al contempo non tradiscono l’intento della ricerca né quello della divulgazione e dell’educazione del pubblico (il saggio di Bazin “Le Film scientifique: beauté du
hasard” riportato in traduzione nacque proprio in seguito a una rassegna organizzata da
Painlevé).
Il lungo e accuratissimo saggio biografico di
Brigitte Berg “Contradictory Forces” evidenzia
soprattutto l’aspetto poliedrico e la concezione non categorica del mondo che hanno caratterizzato la personalità e le attività del cinea-
sta e lo hanno reso ricettivo all’influenza delle
diverse personalità e degli incontri che ne
hanno punteggiato la vita privata e professionale. Primo fra tutti suo padre, il noto politico
e scienziato Paul Painlevé, che aveva sempre
concepito la scienza come una disciplina
indissociabile dall’impegno civile.
Nella prima metà degli anni Venti, insieme
a Geneviève Hamon, sua compagna e collaboratrice, il giovane Jean organizza un laboratorio per lo studio della biologia marina a Ty an
Diaoul, in Bretagna. Qui riceve le visite di
intellettuali e artisti, quali Pierre Prévert, Eli
Lotar, e più tardi Alexander Calder. Da questo
momento nella sua vita la scienza si mescola
all’arte e nel 1924 collabora al numero unico
di Surréalisme con due articoli, “Drame néozoologique” e “Exemple de surréalisme: le
cinéma”.1 Mentre il primo è una descrizione
lirica del comportamento di microrganismi
visti al microscopio, il secondo ha un carattere più teorico e, come commenta Berg, risente
delle concezioni di Ivan Goll (che aveva firmato l’editoriale della rivista), ma soprattutto
rende conto dell’importanza del cinema per lo
studioso Painlevé. L’idea di fondo del saggio è
infatti che il cinema sia la forma più adeguata
per dare un senso più diretto e intenso alla
realtà, la quale contiene in sé ogni forma di cui
la cinepresa può rivelare la bellezza e il senso
più profondo. Questo importante scritto non è
ripubblicato integralmente nel libro, ma la
concezione che ne è all’origine è il filo rosso di
tutto il testo, da cui emerge, parallelamente
alla dettagliatissima biografia – tra l’altro
arricchita da commenti e riflessioni inedite di
Painlevé – la vicinanza dello scienziato cineasta alle idee che circolavano nell’avanguardia,
di cui ufficialmente non fece mai parte. Gli
scritti e i film di Painlevé stimolano infatti la
riflessione sulle relazioni tra la photogénie e il
surrealismo, e vanno oltre i singoli apporti,
seppur importantissimi, di personalità che il
cineasta aveva frequentato, come Goll,
Artaud, Vigo, Buñuel, Man Ray, Léger, Chagall.
Il breve saggio di Ralph Rugoff, “Fluid
Mechanics”, alimenta indirettamente tale
riflessione approfondendo l’importanza del
movimento e la componente antropomorfica
presenti nei film di Painlevé. Di più, per questa via lo studioso giunge a definire l’autore in
questione un “cineasta del perturbante”, in
quanto i suoi film spesso generano incertezza
intellettuale in chi li guarda e rendono inquietanti e sconosciuti aspetti del mondo naturale
quotidiano.
I film che il libro presenta inquadratura per
inquadratura (Mathusalem, Hyas et sténoriques, L’Hippocampe, La Quatrième Dimension, Le Vampire, Les Assassins d’eau
douce, Le Sang des bêtes, Barbe bleue, Oursins,
Les Amours de la pieuvre, Acéra ou le bal des
sorcières) rappresentano un interessante complemento alla visione delle pellicole, permettendo di soffermarsi sulla bellezza delle forme
zoologiche e sulle parole dei commenti, mai
semplicemente descrittivi. Talvolta l’osservazione scientifica diventa quasi un pretesto,
come accade in Le Vampire, in cui il comportamento del pipistrello desmodus rotondus è
abbinato per associazione mentale al nazismo; il discorso del film e il piacere visivo si
trasformano così in pamphlet politico.
Qualcosa di simile accade in Les Assassins
d’eau douce, in cui le lotte tra gli organismi
ripresi richiamano gli orrori della guerra.
Il libro non tralascia la creatività, la passione e la perizia tecnica necessarie per realizzare
questo tipo di film, ma che emergono con
forza, oltre che nel saggio di Berg, anche da
alcuni scritti d’epoca riproposti in inglese,
come “La Castration du documentaire”, “La
Technique cinématographique”, “Mystères et
miracles de la nature” e “Les Pieds dans l’eau”
dello stesso Painlevé o “L’Institut dans la cave”
di Léo Sauvage. Science is Fiction si chiude
con un’intervista apparsa nel 1986 su
Libération, la quale ripercorre alcuni momenti e figure chiave nel percorso del cineasta e
mette ancora una volta in evidenza la poliedricità della sua personalità e del suo cinema,
capace di raggiungere diversi tipi di pubblico
e talvolta persino il successo popolare
(L’Hippocampe). Le ultime pagine, che seguo203
SELECTED BY
no la bibliografia, sono occupate dalle riproduzioni delle cartoline inviate al cineasta da
Ejzenštejn dal Messico e dagli Stati Uniti. Sono
prive di commento, di cui d’altra parte non
necessitano, lasciando spazio ad un puro piacere degli occhi, come si può dire di tutto il
volume, il cui apparato iconografico è straordinariamente ricco e affascinante.
1
204
In realtà questo articolo non reca alcuna firma e
sorge il sospetto che esso sia attribuibile, oltre
che a Painlevé, anche a Ivan Goll, del cui pensiero il cineasta condivideva più di un aspetto.
Questa incertezza spiega in parte l’assenza del
saggio dal libro. Ringrazio Brigitte Berg per
avermi fornito chiarimenti al proposito.
Finito di stampare
nel mese di marzo 2003 presso
CopyCardCenter,
San Donato Milanese (Mi)

impaginato A - Current Issue

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