While I agree entirely with the spirit of the criticisms of Bill Flavell's
posting on cinephilia, there are one or two further points which could be
made.

To be sure, Bill's argument is thoroughly technicist, and lacking in any
philosophical subtlety. One of the problems with this is that it ignores the
context of viewing, so my own reaction, for example, was that he is simply
fetishising 35mm, and I say this because my own introduction to cinephilia,
after many years of cinema-going, was the school film society, which of
course used 16mm.

Nevertheless, I don't think Sean Delgado is quite right when he says 'My
favorite film, `Day for Night' I have seen projected (I assume 35mm), I have
studied in school (definitely 16mm) and I own on video. And it's always the
same movie.' Yes, on one level this is correct. But on another, there are
indeed critical differences, and not just in the size and luminosity of the
image. The soundtrack also counts. 35mm ensures best sound (other things
being equal). 16mm sound is necessarily inferior. Video sound is different
again: the technical quality of the recording is doubtless equal to 35mm but
not the sound reproduction system, because it comes from a tinny little
speaker with no 'depth' to it, which fails to fill the space of viewing as
it does in the cinema. As Michel Chion has observed, this loss of the
plastic quality of sound in the cinema (a space which is acoustically
adapted for the purpose) when viewing on video is a major difference in the
viewing context. Indeed unless you turn the sound up very high, you can't
hear the soundtrack properly, and turning the sound up is not a happy
solution because it's a form of distortion. Nor is this problem overcome by
preparing special mixes for video release.

Finally, a bigger paradox. The film you see depends, among other things, on
where you see it. Logically speaking, the film is exactly the same wherever
you watch it, but the truth is that the film you see depends on where that
is. Film scholars have long talked about the way that film positions the
viewer, but this is to talk of the situation of viewing, the place which is
occupied by the viewer positioned  by the screen in front of their eyes (and
ears). The projected image is the same, but the space between the screen and
your eyes is different.

I remember an experience I had years ago, when I saw a work of underground
cinema, Carolee Schneeman's Fuses, first on a large screen at the ICA in
London, and then not long afterwards, projected on the wall of her home at a
party. I had not much liked it the first time, but very much the second, and
it seemed very clear to me that this was because of the kind of film it was:
the neutral dull space of the cinema deadened something in the image, which
came alive on the domestic wall.

So where does this fit in to accounts of cinephilia?




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