fatter books trying to get out. The book can be compared in many respects with Frazer's 'Golden Bough' in that, although it contains so much information, one is left with no doubt that the author has had to select fragments from the greater amount of information that he has readily at hand. A short introductory chapter traces the ancestry of dynamic psychiatry on a world-wide basis, but his main theme concentrates on its emergence within the scientific, literary, and socio-political background of European culture. He leads up to and goes beyond Freud and, in the beginning, there was Mesmer. A description is given of the mystical-magical development of psychotherapy through hypnotism. The current use of the word 'suggestion' does not take us a great deal further than the pseudoscientific explanations of the period. The author's special gift is to be able to relate the progress of dynamic psychiatry to the cultural trends. He has, therefore, to give the reader some understanding of the historical progress of the Renaissance, following it with an account of the Baroque movement, and then he traces the third great cultural movement, the Enlightenment. According to Kant, this is 'the leaving behind by man of his self-caused minority'. To have the maturity and the courage to make use of one's own reason became

The Discovery of the Unconscious

In this chapter, I wish to reassess the juncture of cinema and modernism, and I will do so by moving from the example of early Soviet cinema to a seemingly less likely case, that of the classical Hollywood film. My inquiry is inspired by two complementary sets of questions: one pertaining to what cinema studies can contribute to our understanding of modernism and modernity; the other aimed at whether and how the perspective of modernist aesthetics may help us to elucidate and reframe the history and theory of cinema. The juncture of cinema and modernism has been explored in a number of ways, ranging from research on early cinema’s interrelations with the industrial-technological modernity of the late nineteenth century, through an emphasis on the international art cinemas of both interwar and new wave periods, to speculations on the cinema’s implication in the distinction between the modern and the postmodern. My focus here is more squarely on mid-twentieth-century modernity, roughly from the 1920s through the 1950s—the modernity of mass production, mass consumption, and mass annihilation—and the contemporaneity of a particular kind of cinema, mainstream Hollywood, with what has variously been labeled ‘high’ or ‘hegemonic modernism.’

The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism *

and dystopian science fiction: in the center would be Double Indemnity, and at either margin Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But this arrangement would leave out important titles. There is in fact no completely satisfactory way to organize the category, and nobody is sure whether the films in question constitute a period, a genre, a cycle, a style, or simply a "phenomenon."' Whatever noir "is," the standard histories say it originated in America, emerging out of a synthesis of hard-boiled fiction and German Expressionism. The term is also associated with certain visual and narrative traits, which some commentators have tried to localize in the period between 1941 and 1958. Others contend that noir began much earlier and never went away.2 One of the most comprehensive (but far from complete) references, Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedia of the American Style, begins in 1927 and ends in the present, listing over 500 motion pictures of various stylistic and generic descriptions.3 Encylopedic surveys of the Silver and Ward type can be educational and entertaining, but they also have a kinship with Jorge Luis Borges's fictional work of Chinese scholarship, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, which contains a whimsical taxonomy of the animal kingdom: those belonging to the Emperor; mermaids; stray dogs; those painted with a fine camel's-hair brush; those resembling flies from a distance; others; etc. Unfortunately, nothing links together all the things discussed as noir-not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings. Little wonder that no writer has been able to find the

American Film Noir: The History of an Idea

Peter Weir is one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful directors. Ever since Weir’s feature film debut with The Cars that Ate Paris in 1974, his work has been explored for unifying themes. Scholars have analysed his films from many perspectives: the establishment of identification and identity especially through binary oppositions in the diegesis; the creation of an oneiric atmosphere as a way of exploiting the spectator’s dream experience; a clash of value systems; the ambiguous nature of narrative structure and character motivations leading to the creation of a sense of wonder; the experience of the protagonist placed in a foreign culture wherein conflict arises from social clashes and personal misunderstandings; and at the particular ways his films adapt generic codes in service of a discernible ideological agenda. To the best of my knowledge there has been no study of the mystical element of Weir’s work in relation to the construction of a cinematic mystical gaze or act of spectatorship. Within a culture defined by its secularity and a national cinema marked by quirky comedies and social realism, almost all of Weir’s films have been described as mystical, arcane or interested in metaphysics. Such an observation could warrant no further investigation if it is held that this critical commentary is but hyperbole in its attempt to grasp what constitutes a Peter Weir film. If, however, language constructs meaning, then the recurrence of references to Weir’s mysticism needs to be taken seriously to see what effect this might have exerted on the nature and structure of the Weir text. I will argue that the major consequence of Weir’s fascination with the mystical has been the construction of a mystical mode of spectatorship. Furthermore, because other directors and films have been described in similar ways this study opens up a discussion about whether these observations about 1 Blonski A, Propositions on the Films of Peter Weir and his Place in Contemporary Australian Cinema, Unpublished minor thesis, Master of Arts (Preliminary), Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, February 1983, pp. 75-77. 2 Haltof J M, Film and Dream: the Films of Peter Weir, Major thesis, Master of Arts, Adelaide, Australia: Flinders University, 1988, pp. 122ff. 3 McMullen W, A Rhetorical Analysis of Peter Weir’s Witness, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 1989, pp. 3ff. 4 Corum E, Tantalizing Ambiguity: the Cinema of Peter Weir, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Kansas City, Missouri: University of Kansas, 1990, p. 170. 5 Haltof J M, Film and Dream: the Films of Peter Weir, 1988, pp. 4ff. 6 Rayner J, The Films of Peter Weir, London: Cassell, 1998, pp. 2-18.

The cinematic mystical gaze: the films of Peter Weir

Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body

of a critical history of the cinema / Salvador Dali.63 The marvelous is popular / Ado Kyrou.68 As in a wood / Andre Breton.72 Picture palaces / Robert Desnos.78 Plan for a cinema at the bottom of a lake / Bernard Roger.80 The lights go up / Jacques Brunius.82 Surrealism and cinema / Jean Goudal.84 Introduction to black-and-white magic / Albert Valentin.95 Crossing the bridge / Jacques Brunius.99 Sorcery and cinema / Antonin Artaud.103 The screen's prestige / Jacques Brunius.106 Remarks on cinematic oneirism / Robert Benayoun.107 The cinema, instrument of poetry / Luis Bunuel.112 Malombra, aura of absolute love / The Romanian Surrealist Group .... 117 Data toward the irrational enlargement of a film: The Shanghai Gesture / The Surrealist Group.121 The film and I / Ado Kyrou.130 Cinemage / Man Ray.133 Another kind of cinema / Marcel Marien.135 Intention and surprise / Nora Mitrani.147 The ideal summa / Petr Krai.149 Turkey broth and unlabeled love potions / Gerard Legrand.152 The fantastic the marvelous / Ado Kyrou.158 Concerning King Kong / Jean Ferry.161 Larry Semon's message / Petr Krai.166 Hands off love / The Surrealist Group.173 Chaplin, the copper's nark / Jean-Louis Bedouin.181 Manifesto of the Surrealists concerning L'Age d'or / The Surrealist Group.182 Zaroff; or, The prosperities of vice / Robert Benayoun.190 Eroticism / Robert Desnos.195 Eroticism = love / Ado Kyrou.197 Au repas des guerrieres / Nelly Kaplan.200 Female x film = fetish / Gerard Legrand.202 Mae Murray / Jacques Rigaut.205 "Enchanted wanderer": excerpt from a journey album for Hedy Lamarr / Joseph Cornell.206 Iron in the wound / Alain Joubert.209 Pornographers & Co. / Robert Lebel.213 Selected films made by Surrealists.219

Paul Hammond

Papers

The Shadow and its shadow: Surrealist writings on cinema