Showing papers in "Journal of Cinema and Media Studies in 1984"
TL;DR: For instance, the authors pointed out that the more genre criticism I read, the more uncertainty I note in the choice or extent of essential critical terms, and that these uncertainties reflect constitutive weaknesses of current notions of genre.
Abstract: Most comfortable in the seemingly uncomplicated world of Hollywood classics, genre critics have felt little need to reflect openly on the assumptions underlying their work. Everything seems so clear. Why bother to theorize, American pragmatism asks, when there are no problems to solve? We all know a genre when we see one. Scratch only where it itches. According to this view, genre theory would be called for only in the unlikely event that knowledgeable genre critics disagreed on basic issues. The task of the theorist is then to adjudicate among conflicting approaches, not so much by dismissing unsatisfactory positions, but by constructing a model which reveals the relationship between differing critical claims and their function within a broader cultural context. Whereas the French clearly view theory as a first principle, we Americans tend to see it as a last resort, something to turn to when all else fails. Even in this limited, pragmatic view, whereby theory is to be avoided at all costs, the time for theory is nevertheless upon us. The clock has struck thirteen; we had best call in the theoreticians. The more genre criticism I read, the more uncertainty I note in the choice or extent of essential critical terms. Often, what appears as hesitation in the terminology of a single critic will turn into a clear contradiction when studies by two or more critics are compared. Now, it would be one thing if these contradictions were simply a matter of fact. On the contrary, however, I suggest that these are not temporary problems, bound to disappear as soon as we have more information or better analysts. Instead, these uncertainties reflect constitutive weaknesses of current notions of genre. Three contradictions in particular seem worthy of a good scratch. When we establish the corpus of a genre we generally tend to do two things at once, and thus establish two alternate groups of texts, each corre-
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TL;DR: Ophuls' "letter from an unknown woman" as mentioned in this paper is a classic example of a movie about a man's word as a symbol of honor and a woman's silence.
Abstract: Max Ophuls' 1948 film, Letter from an Unknown Woman, which is set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, begins late at night with the hero of the story, Stefan, returning by coach to his home and promising to fight a duel at dawn. That his attitude toward the situation is utterly frivolous is obvious from his remark as he steps out of the coach: "Gentlemen, I don't so much mind being killed, but you know how I hate to get up in the morning." Reaching his home, he tells his mute servant, John, that they should prepare for immediate departure since he does not intend to fight the duel. At stake here is a man's word. "A man's word is his honor," and, as Adrienne Rich observes, this notion of honor usually has "something to do with killing."' The terms of the drama seem already to have been posed with utter clarity. Stefan lives a life of ease, indulgence, and irresponsibility, unwilling to accept the values of duty and sacrifice espoused by his patriarchal society. We might suspect, then, that the film's movement will involve Stefan's coming to repudiate the former childishness of his ways and to acknowledge the sway of patriarchal law. And indeed the final sequence of the film shows Stefan bravely setting off to keep his word and get himself killed. Thus, though the body of the film concerns the story of Lisa, the woman referred to in the title, it would appear that her story is really a story of and for the man, and, looked at this way, the film seems to provide exceptionally strong support for those critics who contend that there is no such thing as a woman's film, that Hollywood films are always dramas of and for the male. When Stefan enters the house, he is given a letter which begins, "By the time you read this, I may be dead." It is the letter from the unknown woman who has indeed lived her life in and for Stefan, has even had a child by him, and yet has remained silent about her life-long devotion until her words, written in death's shadow, can no longer possibly bring her any benefit. At stake, then, is not only a man's word, but a woman's silence. At one point in the film, Lisa explains her radical refusal to speak about her own and their
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TL;DR: The role of dance in the development of the integrated musical and particularly on the contribution of Fred Astaire to that development is discussed in this paper, where it is concluded that Astaire was probably integrating dance numbers into musicals-both on Broadway and in Hollywood-before anybody else and that his contributions to the story line was often profound.
Abstract: A considerable literature has grown in the quest for the ideally integrated musical-a musical where song, dance, and story are artfully blended to produce a combined effect. The two parts of this paper seek to add to this literature.l The first part sets out a series of distinctions, suggesting a method for distinguishing the plot relevance of various sorts of musical numbers. The second focuses on the role of dance in the development of the integrated musical and particularly on the contribution of Fred Astaire to that development. It is concluded that Astaire was probably integrating dance numbers into musicals-both on Broadway and in Hollywood-before anybody else and that the contribution of his dances to the story line was often profound.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the avoidance of narration is no guarantee of egalitarianism or objectivity, that "showing" is really just another and more covert form of "telling", about which one might have more political/moral squeamishness.
Abstract: We are currently in the midst of a theoretical re-examination of thirdperson voice-over narration. Rejected by documentarians and critics alike as authoritarian, elitist, oppressive, and offensive, the technique has been in disfavor for two decades, while other structures-cinema verite, the interview film-have held sway. Critical opinion has now come to the conclusion (presaged by Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961]), that the avoidance of narration is no guarantee of egalitarianism or objectivity, that "showing" is really just another and more covert form of "telling," about which one might have more political/moral squeamishness. Mary Ann Doane, following Pascal Bonitzer,' believes that documentaries which eschew narration actually promote: the illusion that reality speaks and is not spoken, that the film is not a constructed discourse. In effecting an "impression of knowledge," a knowledge which is given and not produced, the film conceals its own work and posits itself as a voice without a subject. The voice is even more powerful in silence. The solution, then, is not to banish the voice but to construct another politics.2
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TL;DR: Staiger and Thompson as mentioned in this paper show that businesses constantly use the process of law as part of their operating tactics for gaining greater control of an industrial market, and that the long-run monopoly problem in this case, as in others, perhaps is self-correcting and that, given time, new competitors and, indeed, new methods result in a dissipation of monopolistic control.
Abstract: Every history of the early U.S. film industry is obliged to account for the appearance and disappearance of the first major attempt at monopoly: the Motion Picture Patents Company, organized in 1908. In these histories, the federal antitrust suit and the competitive techniques of the independents are generally determined to have been the causes of the Patents Company's failure. Perhaps the most extensive study, and the one on which current scholars rely, is that by Ralph Cassady, Jr. His explanation has two 4parts. First, he believes that the federal government's intervention in filing the antitrist suit in 1912 was early enough to encourage vigorous independent competition. Secondly, he maintains "that the long-run monopoly problem in this case, as in others, perhaps is self-correcting and that, given time, new competitors and, indeed, new methods result in a dissipation of monopolistic control.'9 In two articles, Jeanne Thomas Allen has questioned Cassady's conclusions. As she pointsout, Cassadyis relying on a neoclassical economic model that presumes the effects of the State are sporadic, and that it intervenes only at necessary points. Furthermore, competition from new technology explains the industrial results. (Neoclassical economists would include the innovation of multiple-reel films under the term "technology.") Allen suggests that a Marxist analysis might provide a better account,2 and that is what this article will seek to provide. Among other points, this study will show that laws are not just used by businesses for appeal in the last resort nor are they static, but rather that businesses constantly use the process of law as part of their operating tactics for gaining greater control of an industrial market. For example, at stake might be the definition or extent of a law. Or the current interpretation of a law might be changed, allowing companies to use the period of adjudication to their advantage. In this case, ownership and the legal use of patents were at issue. In addition, since both the Patents Company and the so-called independents used forms of Janet Staiger teaches film theory and history at New York University. She is co-author with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson of The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (forthcoming).
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TL;DR: Artaud's work in film must bear upon a number of different, but interlocking issues: his cinematic theories, his relation to other filmmakers and artistic movements of the 1920's, the place occupied by his cinematic activities within his whole oeuvre, his role as an actor, the nature of his screenplays and especially of his only screenplay actually made into a film-La coquille et le clergyman-which was directed by Germaine Dulac, and the complex reasons behind his famous quarrel with the director as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Any discussion of Artaud's work in film must bear upon a number of different, but interlocking issues: his cinematic theories, his relation to other filmmakers and artistic movements of the 1920's, the place occupied by his cinematic activities within his whole oeuvre, his role as an actor, the nature of his screenplays and especially of his only screenplay actually made into a film-La coquille et le clergyman-which was directed by Germaine Dulac, and the complex reasons behind his famous quarrel with the director. In the past, some of these issues have received far more attention than others; here, I would like to concentrate principally on those I feel have been relatively neglected, in the belief that such a reconsideration will shed more light not only on Artaud himself, but on certain debates of the 1920s, and on some of the more enduring issues of film theory. It is hardly surprising that Artaud's relation to surrealism has been one of the most fully explored dimensions of his work. (In addition to by-now classic studies of Artaud seen in the context of surrealist cinema, recent books provide new perspectives in which to view this phenomenon.1) Not only was
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TL;DR: Sembene Ousmane's film Xala (1974) as discussed by the authors provides a dense and complex text for understanding what Sembene himself has called "engaged cinema." In his public statements and in his novels and films, he has sought to articulate and to practice a cinema which sets itself in opposition to dominant political ideas and cinematic forms.
Abstract: Sembene Ousmane's film, Xala (1974), based on his own novel of the same name,1 provides a dense and complex text for understanding what Sembene himself has called "engaged cinema." In his public statements and in his novels and films, he has sought to articulate and to practice a cinema which sets itself in opposition to dominant political ideas and cinematic forms. A student of Marxism-Leninism, Sembene employs the theories and methods of dialectical criticism in all of his work. His conceptions of cultural change are neither uncritical assimilations of European Marxism nor are they based on nostalgic fantasies of an African culture progressively destroyed by the early African slave trade, by the Muslims, and by European colonialism.2 His immediate concern is with the problems created for the Africans with the advent of political independence in the twentieth century, in particular with what he calls "cultural imperialism." Cultural imperialism, as he sees it, encourages false aspirations in the form of consumer capitalism, the continuing inequality of caste and class, and profound divisions between town and country, rich and poor, and foreign and indigenous cultures. Moreover, the new ruling class has continued to impose the use of French as a language rather than Wolof, the major native language, on the people through education and the media, and the language issue goes deeper than the literal uses of the Wolof language to encompass all forms of alternative human activity which could aid the majority of Senegalese in transforming their economic and social conditions. What does Sembene's film, Xala, reveal about the content and form of such a cinema? Xala, a satiric allegory, portrays, in comic fashion, the rise and fall of one of the new black African bourgeoisie, El Hadji Abdou Kadar Beye. The film begins at the moment when the French colonials are "leaving" to make way for their African replacements. Their departure is more symbolic than real as they actually remain in Senegal and continue, behind the scenes, to manipulate the new ruling class through financial control. While the new Senegalese ministers play at government and Africanity, the political and
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that description is more than a mere figure; it is for us a whole genre or mode or text-type parallel to and structurally contrasting with other text-types like narrative, exposition, lyric, and so on.
Abstract: That serves well enough, I think, except that the twentieth century would argue that description is more than a mere figure; it is for us a whole genre or mode or text-type parallel to and structurally contrasting with other text-types like narrative, exposition, lyric, and so on. I am chiefly concerned here with description in its relation to narrative, specifically, its function at the service of narrative, as in the classical nineteenth century novel. The chief structural property of description is its atemporality. Unlike narrative, whose textual principle is the sequence and sequencing of events in time from beginning to middle to end, that of description is, to elaborate on the Encyclopedie, an arraying or delineation of the properties and circumstances of objects in their spatial or conceptual field. Narrative time stays in abeyance as these properties and circumstances are presented. The most certain mark of description is the verb "to be" and its synonyms. Here, for instance, are sentences from the beginning of Balzac's Pere Goriot: The front of the lodging-house gives on a little garden and it is placed at
TL;DR: The camera demonstrates a curious inability or unwillingness to follow an action once initiated to its immediate conclusion in Bertolucci's Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution) as discussed by the authors, showing an extraordinarily frustrating inability to catch the exact sequence of Agostino's falls from his bike.
Abstract: In an unusual sequence early in Bertolucci's Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution), Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) meets his friend Agostino (Allen Migette), on the road in front of Cesare's house. As Fabrizio approaches the camera, we hear insistent circuslike music and the sound of a bike. For a few moments, Fabrizio passes out of range of the camera which has not yet located Agostino on his bike. Once Agostino appears, he begins a dance, a sort of "sarabande a bicyclette," moving around Fabrizio in a circle, and passing in and out of view. After he passes out of sight, we hear a crash and Agostino's words, "Don't come near me! That is for my father."1 The sound of a second crash, off, elicits, "And that's for my mother!" Bertolucci's camera reveals an extraordinarily frustrating inability to catch the exact sequence of Agostino's falls from his bike. In each of the five crashes. Agostino is variously lost from the camera's range, edited out or hidden by Fabrizio's body. The viewer never once sees a complete sequence. The final crash, hidden once more by Fabrizio's body, evokes, "And that's for me!" Fabrizio's only response is, "Hey, let's go to the movies together. Let's go see Red River." Up to this point in the film, Bertolucci's camera has demonstrated an exceptionally high degree of mobility. The film opens with a handheld shot of Fabrizio running and mixes close-ups, long shots, aerial travelling views of Parma, and an automotive travelling shot through Garibaldi Square in Parma. This initial activity of the camera is an almost vertiginous conceit, and yet in the Fabrizio-Agostino sequence, the camera demonstrates a curious inability or unwillingness to follow an action once initiated to its immediate conclusion. Five times the