Basic Reading list for Starters ... !!

STRUCTURALISM OF CINEMA…

I have been asked if I could provide a kind of reading program to help students of Prof. Rahat Yusufi approach new cinematic criticism which is transforming academic practice as well as film-making in Europe, America and Australia. There are far more gifted commentators than I, and further, I write in haste, so what I indicate here is necessarily crude and idiosyncratic and I would not like to be formally held to the following piece.

General Comments

Despite some brilliant, early attempts to formalize Film Theory & critical practice such as:

Eisenstein                “Film Form & Film Sense”

Bazin                       “What Is Cinema?”

Arnheim                  “Film Art”

Lindgren                 “The Grammar of A Film”

Kracauer                  “Redemption of Physical Reality”

(…these texts are well worth study but I have personally discarded Lindgren & Kracauer) most enlightened film-criticism was humanist, evaluative, liberal, often concerned with the problems of ‘realism’ (Gaston Roberge prefers ‘realism/s’ and I agree) and aimed at a well rounded aesthetic effect. Such an essay is by David Bordwell – ‘On Citizen Kane’ (in Bill Nichols’s “Movies & Methods”) and the prefatory remarks are very illuminating. Increasingly, however, this criticism seemed un-satisfactory to my generation, for narrative / feature films were quarried only for ‘moral’ or ‘aesthetic’ dilemmas, or the psychological consistency of characterization/ character. At worst they ended up as plot-summaries and at best they were over literary and scarcely referred to ‘cinematic’ quality of films; being most dependent on the ‘anchorage of dialogue’ to illuminate the film’s meaning. To find the peculiarly ‘cinematic’ quality of films, many of us returned to the notion of rhetoric and examined the conventions and dramatic devices and the use of poetics, while others incorporated insights from art history.

In the 60’s, however, linguistics accelerated as a discipline through the impact of structuralism, best evidenced by Levy Strauss’s insight that, “society was structured like a language” & that “Myth” was a social coding system that maintained contradictory &/or dominant social practices and exchanges. In short, he saw a play between “Absence” & “Presence”; just as breath & the presence of obstructing mechanisms like lips and teeth create sounds like h  -  s  -  p  -  b…., to create with vowels words or signifiers or “re-presentations” of “meaning”.  Derrida and Kristeva have further extended his play of ‘presence’ & ‘absences’ to a principle of “differences”, nothing can be understood unless it is compared with something. “Difference”; in the simplest structure things are held in tension thus the tremendous insight of ‘binarism’ which has ultimately created through ‘digitalism’, the computer revolution.

Claude Levi Strauss:    “Triste Tropique…Structural Anthropology”.

Thus the next advance, in English film criticism was the work on ‘auteur’ , whereby American directors, held anonymous by the Hollywood commercial & industrial requirements could actually be ‘revealed’ not as mere ‘assembleurs-de-la-scene’ but as powerful and literary authors, once their individual codes of themes, subjects, postulates and prominent stylistic conventions employed were made into their own individual structure. Again, certain ‘genres’ were constructed by theorists derived from consistency of convention, character positions, binary oppositions. Two useful examples are:

“Signs and Meaning in the Cinema” :  Peter Wollen

 

 

“Six Guns and Society”  :  Will Wright.

In his book Peter Wollen indicated that the next step forward was to develop semiotics or ‘the science of signs’ much as the early French linguist Sassure had outlined at the turn of (the previous!) century. In the Russian Revolutionary times the project had been begun by the formalists who became the Warsaw School, but had dwindled because of because of lack of translation and intellectual support. About this time, the important French magazine “Cahires du Cinema” (which for a few years brought out English language editions as well; collector’s item, that lot) issued a comparative essay:

“The Young Mr. Lincoln”  :  Cahires du Cinema  in

“Movies & Methods”  :  Bill Nichols; which I feel was part influenced by :

“Cinema / Ideology / Criticism”  :  Comolli/ Norboni. In Movies & Methods & in SCREEN vol. 12/1&2 &/or SCREEN READER #1.

Both essays indicate an assertion of the materiality of film; its placement as a commodity under certain economic practices, and hence, reflecting social practices & relations; and most importantly that all such products are grounded in ideology – at that level there is nothing that can be ‘value free’ or could avoid some political utilization.

In France, Christian Metz attempted to determine whether there was a :“Film Language”  :  Christian Metz.  Trying to be scrupulous in determining the “Cinematic Object” he posited the “Shot” as the basic Cinematic Unit; but there is much controversy about his work. For my preference resolves many difficulties and raises the seminal idea of “Triple Articulation” :

 

“Theory of Semiotics”  :  Umberto Eco.

To gain a general grasp of Semiotics is not easy but these books will help:

“Semiology”  :  Pierre Girandy

“Structuralism & Semiotics”  :  Terence Hawkes

“Marxism & Formalism”       :  Tony Bennet

“Structural Poetics”              :  J. Culler

“Subcultures”                       :  Dick Hebdige

“Levy Strauss”                      :  E. Leach

“Elements of Semiology”      :  R. Barthes also “Image Music Text” by him.

As these areas developed, the Feminist Critique also developed and in the Caheri’s essay, Freudianism & Marxist Theory was employed, as well as a critique of ‘realist’ practices. The two central propositions are that, “…as the world moved from feudalism to capitalism, hierarchical society and culture had to arrange itself differently, and if we believe Tawney, Weber & Reisman, a different personality type had to be constructed with a different set of perceptions and social control mechanism – hence the myth of the autonomous, free enterprising and “progressive individual” became the ideal without any real attention to social consequences. To sustain these perceptions, the Arts changed dramatically, especially Painting & Architecture; so ‘perspective and 3`dimentiality became prized objectives aimed at verisimilitude with external phenomenon’. So also with Cinema – ideas of “best camera position”, crossing imaginary line, continuity cuts and most important of all, matching of looks and screen direction were enlisted to make realistic camera practice in the capitalistically and economically dominant Hollywood system – hence French terms like, “le plan American”. As with the realistic novel, the aim was to make a cohesive, centralist, single perception which would convince the reader / viewer that s/he was indeed seeing real life; the construction of a seamless web, an apparent transparency of object. But, of course, film is a representational system and though it may affect reality and be part of it, it is not total reality. Hence one needed to criticize film practice and notions of realism. So we have the following:

Noel Birch   :   “Theory of Film Practice”

R. Barthes    :   “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein” (Screen vol:15/2)

C. Metz        :   “Realism and the Cinema”  (Screen vol:15/2)

D. Broadwel :  “Space and Narrative in the films of Ozu” (Screen vol:16/3)

E. Branyan   :   “Formal permutations of the Point-of-view shot” (Screen vol:16/3)

Ogle             :   “Depth of Deep Focus”  (Screen vol: 13/1)

Mc Cabe      :   “Principles of Realism and Pleasure” (Screen vol: 17/3)

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE

 

asserts that the world is phallocentric, Male-dominated. One of the most sustained psychological systems, Freudianism asserts the centrality of the male for the reality and understanding of the male-constructed world. A person can not speak to a person but a man speaks to a woman, and it is in that dimension that male tyranny prevails.

The psychological mechanism that holds the Cinematic object in place is called, “Scopophilia”: the desire to look & its two fetishistic practices “voyeurism & narcissism”. Women are not constructed as active agents in film capable of determining events, but as passive ‘sexual’ objects and are ornamented and displayed as such. Even when a woman is narcissistic, she is constructing herself on an already existing, male dominated voyeuristic principle. Thus, Feminist Film Practice chooses to de-construct the positioning of the female in Cinema and hopes to post an alternative reality, which will reflect more equal relationship between men & women, which they hope will come about. So we have:

Laura Mulwey    :   “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” (Screen vol:16/3)

Claire Johnson   :   “The Subject of Feminist Film” (Screen vol: 21/2)

John Cllis           :   “On Pornography” (Screen vol: 21/1

Thus these two areas lead to “New Cinema” and the resurgence of Avante Garde. An overall perspective on the current state of Film Theory is provided by:

Brian Henderson,   but you might like to work towards him through:

Andrew Tudor   :   “Theories of Film”

Dudley Andrews :   “Major Film Theories”

 INTERCULTURAL or NATIONAL FILMS 

At this stage, my thoughts are un-formed in this area, but I have noticed in Hong Cong and at a lesser level in India; a desire to re-examine the formalist qualities of popular film, rather than hold to an elitist, moralistic, superior film alternative. In both groups, earlier Dance & Drama have been incorporated even if further vulgarized into the staple formula movies of sword-play, martial-arts, song & dance.

India has, of course, one of the most profound Semiotic works:

“A Monograph of Bharata’s Nattya Shastra : PSR Appa Rao & Pt. R. Sastri.

“The Nattya Shastra” : Manmohan Ghosh. MA. PhD. Cal.

“Introduction to Bharata’s Nattya Shastra”

:  Adya Rangacharya.

Most critics and scholars have merely paid ‘lip service’ to this systematic approach, but with new semiotic insights, I feel, much analysis should be carried out. Of course it is very hard to know which way to go, but I found:

Noel Burch   :   “The Distant Observer”

Rosalind Coward/John Ellis : “Hong Kong, China 1981” (Screen vol: 22/3) useful.

CRASH COURSE

 If you are in a hurry; I’d suggest essays as follows:

Comolli/Narboni   :   Cinema/Ideology/Criticism

Cahiers du Cinema:   Depth of Deep Focus

Mc Cabe               :   Realism & the Cinema

Mc Cabe               :   Principles of Realism & Pleasure

Muldey                 :   Visual  Pleasure & Narrative Cinema

Metz                     :   The Imaginary

??                         :   Programming the Look (in the last few ‘Screen Education’)

The Three Best Film Teaching Books:

“Movies & Methods”    :    Bill Nichols

“Film Art, An Introduction    :    D. Bordwell & K. Thompson

“How to Read Film”    :    James Monaco.

If anyone undertakes an extended analysis of Intercultural or Indian Film, I would be interested in seeing the work and exchanging opinions.

PETER JEFFERY.

Lecturer in Film & Television.

Murdoch University.

MURDOCH. WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Caca1701.readings