_____________________............._____
F I L M - P H I L O S O P H Y
Journal | Salon | Portal
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD
http://www.film-philosophy.com
Vol. 4 No. 29, December 2000
_____________________............._____
Stan Jones
New 'Rules of the Game'?
Rejuvenating Cinema as a Field of Critical, Conceptual,
and Historical Study
_Film Studies: An International Review_
Issue 1, Spring 1999
ISBN 1900755288
97 pp.
This is the first issue of a new film journal. It's from a good stable, the
European Humanities Research Centre at Oxford, who are publishing it in
conjunction with the Department of Film Studies at the University of Kent
in England. Its editors, Ian Christie and Michael Grant, have assembled an
advisory panel of notable names, and their editorial leads off by comparing
their sense of their new venture to a 'seductive and ambiguous scene' (3)
from Renoir's _La Regle du jeu_ (without offering its title in English),
the displaying of the main character's pride-and-joy: a mechanical
fairground organ. What makes that scene so memorable is the way the
tracking camera integrates the uncertain owner in the shot, so that his
pride appears that of insecure vanity vested in a *contraption*. However,
it's not likely that in the case of this journal, its *audience* would
regard it as such.
Its look is stylish, with glossy cover images, front and back, reproduced
in negative on the inside faces (although the heavy black printing tends to
rub off unfortunately on the facing text). The 96 pages of text then appear
in single, two or three column format, with black and white illustrations,
which differentiates the editorial from the critical articles, a Dossier
section, and the final Reports and Reviews.
Through two issues a year, _Film Studies_ intends to provide an outlet for
what its editors have seen as valuable work which can't find an outlet, and
in this respect it might well be compared to _Film-Philosophy_. It declares
its further purpose as combating 'ideological and political pretensions to
possession of a single truth' in order to 'rejuvenate engagement with
cinema as a field of critical, conceptual and historical study' (3). The
envisaged contributions emphasise interdisciplinarity, but from a
Humanities background, or possibly, at one remove, that of cultural
studies. So it is not, in the first place, a journal for, say, 'media
education', for social scientists with an interest in the media, or, least
of all, for *wannabee* filmmakers, television producers, and so on. Instead
it wants to 'see film studies take its place as a critical and humane
discipline' (4).
Its range then demonstrates its purpose. French cinema figures with the
first two items on Renoir's film itself, and on surrealism as an
avant-garde phenomenon illustrated by the 'Fantomas' motif. Then comes
German cinema with Wenders's _Wings of Desire_ (unfortunately not granted
its original title: _Der Himmel uber Berlin_) as illustrating a concept of
history expressed through the motif of angels . The American industry
appears with one article considering Scorsese's treatment of the male body,
and a second traces 'the lines of sporting seduction' (51) in _The Tin
Cup_. The journal's central section then focuses on the Russian *auteur*
Aleksandr Sokurov, who appears in his own words, through a critical
article, an interview, and a filmography. The final third of _Film Studies_
is a 'where to look' section, with items on early German and British
cinema, on curating regional film history in (not surprisingly) South-East
England, and a review featuring Scorcese once again in a reading of his
_Kundun_.
The Dossier is clearly the first issue's centrepiece, and it is interesting
to note how a filmmaker who has worked exclusively in Russia is clearly
considered part of the European scene. Sokurov himself takes up this point
in 'The Solitary Voice' (73-77), an interview he did with Edwin Carels in
Rotterdam in 1991, and which _Film Studies_ reprints in translation from
its original Dutch source. He declares, ' I myself experience history as a
Eurasian, Russia occupies a separate place, being neither Europe nor Asia'
(73). However, he claims a place in a very wide tradition of creativity: 'I
am only a small link in world culture. If there [sic] were not the case,
then all my work is rubbish.' (73) This is a very self-conscious voice
compounded of aggression and spirituality from a man who describes himself
as almost self-destructive in his profession, 'I can hardly imagine what a
normal life looks like; for me everything is connected with film. I realise
this is bad, but filming is part of me like a poison.' (76) Not for nothing
is this self-aware artist so interested in the 19th century and its
fascination with death: Sokurov as a Romantic *auteur maudit* and, as such,
consciously seeking pre-Soviet traditions.
Physical violence, suffering and the potential for individual (self)
destruction, these form the sub-text to Mikhail Iampolski's survey of
Sokurov's work. Under the title 'Truth in the Flesh' it is another
translation into English, in this case from a Russian article first
published in 1990. Iampolski emphasises the filmmaker's fascination with
the death of the body, and refers to the Holbein Christ. With reference to
the philosopher Valeri Podoroga and his concept of 'micropolitical
relations' (72), he allots a political/cultural significance to Sokurov's
work as a Russian in his times: 'Sokurov makes it quite plain that the
ugliness of our repressive mechanism is inevitably reproduced precisely at
the level of bodily relations.' (72) And he stresses the violence the
filmmaker exhibits in his treatment of his images and of the film material
itself. To close, he returns to Holbein to place Sokurov in a very wide
perspective indeed: 'As a man of the late twentieth century, thoroughly
conversant with the human collective experience, which has provided ample
proof of the inadequacy and relativity of words, I feel that His crucified
body is undeniably absolute and not relative to anything.' (72) So this
contemporary Russian filmmaker, at the beginning of the 21st century, is a
form of prophet through his images of the human body, and one who maintains
the truth of that fundamental image of Christianity as something central to
Western, if not all human civilisation.
In the background to all Sokurov's work looms, of course, Tarkovsky. He
acknowledges the master's strong personal influence, but denies it in the
structure of his films (74). In his own account, 'Death, the Banal Leveller
(on Tarkovsky)', he relates how he came to terms with his compatriot's
death -- and all in translation, this time from an original German text.
(In this respect, Ian Christie's notes to the piece might have indicated
where the German text originated, as a 2nd-generation translation is a
somewhat curious thing in a scholarly journal). On a broad canvas of
cultural comparison -- 'Russia is the land of inspiration and illumination.
Europe is the domain of the disciplined intellect.' (64) -- Sokurov relates
time spent with Tarkovsky on the latter's visit to the University of
Leningrad. He claims him completely for the vision of a traditional
pre-Soviet Russia of mystery and spirituality which the reaction of
respectful admirers enshrines: 'These would look up to him fervently and
loved everything about him . . . Such people are the fulcrum and the
justification of Russian life.' (68) And they are so because they embody a
fundamental principle, 'that life is truly there to be spent in culture and
faith' (68). Sokurov recognises the sort of fervour he detects in
Tarkovsky-the-auteur and in his significance for his compatriots as perhaps
the defining criterion of Russian identity. But he also knows its dark side
in a capacity for victimisation and a fateful acceptance of suffering,
something that surfaces in his own case in an agonised self-flagellation
over his 'orphaned life' (69) to close his meditations: 'I was at the same
time, ultimately, only pitying myself. For this, my sin, God will punish
me.' (69) As he appears in _Film Studies_, Sokurov is a High Modernist
harking back to Romanticism, a sort of latter-day Expressionist with an
intriguing admixture of spiritual nationalism.
The same issue of _Film Studies_ offers an insight into the contemporary
American auteur, Martin Scorcese (who is pictured, both in positive and
negative on the back cover playing toy soldiers with the child-actor who
depicts the Dalai Lama in _Kundun_). Barry Corkliss's 'Cutting Patterns'
examines through close textual analysis the way Scorsese's filmmaking
depicts the male body. His premise is that all Scorsese's work interrogates
masculinity (46) and he focuses it on the body: 'The male body in Scorcese
is thus subject to an intensely scrutinising gaze and is presented in
blazon-like cinematic structures far more often than the female body which
critical consensus invariably associates with such a trope.' (45) Drawing
on a literary device from the Renaissance, and one ostensibly exploited by
feminist literary critics (41), Corkliss traces how the American auteur can
divide the male body into fragments which his editing then individually
amplifies. This then leads to a most intriguing conclusion: 'Scorsese's
intimate photographic presentation of his protagonists' lives, which Steven
Spielberg has said he finds so powerful as to be almost embarrassing,
allows the audience a backstage view of their performance of masculinity, a
view which the audience of a mainstream action movie is never afforded.'
(49) And it is this depiction of masculinity-as-performance that allows
this article to close with the potentially controversial assertion on the
work of the director of _Raging Bull_, _Cape Fear_ and _Goodfellas_ as
'powerfully feminist' (50) .
Another essentially American phenomenon (especially given the actual
celebration of Tiger Woods), the golfer-as-entertainer figures in Andrew
Klevan's reading of the Kevin Costner vehicle, _Tin Cup_. Directed by
Robert Shelton, the film depicts 'a species of male melodrama where the
hero feels fundamentally separate from others and maintains a sense of his
self by a compulsive theatricalisation' (60). Klevan carefully demonstrates
the aesthetics of Costner's performance as a brilliant maverick golfer in
order to support his perception of a piece of popular Hollywood filmmaking
which tries to reorient us to 'different criteria of success' (55). The
technical analysis is certainly convincing but it does not support the
conclusion on this film's ideological slant; it closes after all with a
totally reconciled image of the charismatic, self-fulfilling (male)
individual. In the idiom of the film itself: no cigar!
In his consideration of '_La Regle du Jeu_ and Modernity', Peter Wollen
locates Renoir's masterpiece in European cinema history and its dominant
cultural tradition. He is in no doubt of the film's significance:
'Seemingly doomed, it became the classic film maudit. But not only did it
survive its time, but, out of the ashes, it re-created the cinema itself,
modern, progressive and free.' (13) On this basis then there should be no
introductory course on cinema without this film. However, the cultural and
historical knowledge necessary to appreciate this work make it distinctly
unlikely that a course for contemporary, post-modern programmes and their
takers would take the risk of, as Wollen puts it, 'encountering the dark
side of modernity, its grim truth, its intrinsic violence' (13) in dealing
with something, for post-Tarantino sensibilities, as *old-fashioned* and
*other* as _La Regle du Jeu_.
The second analysis of French culture ranges more widely beyond cinema than
does Wollen's historical viewpoint. Murray Smith takes on 'the dialectic of
avant-garde and popular culture' (14) in a substantial study of 15 pages
with no less than 64 notes at the end of it. To look at French Surrealism,
for his purposes, he invokes a resounding name: 'we might term the
avant-garde's tactic *sublation* after the Hegelian concept *Aufhebung* --
*the dialectical transition in which a lower stage is both annulled and
preserved in a larger one*' (16) (a point of format here: quoted prose gets
translated, but unfortunately for those without French language there is no
attempt to render quoted poetry). In a broad sweep across Modernism --
citing Apollinaire, Brecht, Aragon, Duchamp -- Smith swings up to Warhol
and Lichtenberg from the plastic arts, Anger, the Kuchar brothers,
Vanderbeek, Craig Baldwin, and Douglas Gordon from cinema, to zero in on
the Fantomas motif and its significance for the surrealists, together with
their interest in American film. He sees the relationship culminating in a
fascination with a random violence which threatens established social
order: 'The recurring social contaminations in the narrative of Fantomas
are analogous to the Surrealists' own transgressions of social barriers.'
(28) And a 'Coda' closes the study with a definite evaluation of the notion
of this *avant-garde* -- 'we can agree with Peter Burger that Surrealism,
as a representative of the historical avant-garde, failed in the measure of
its most utopian ambitions of institutional transformation and social
revolution and was well on its way to becoming Burger's tamed
*Neo-avant-garde*' (29) -- to suggest a relevance for today. The late
reference to Dada in this last section perhaps disqualifies it as a 'Coda',
but Smith's particular interrogation of the avant-garde and its relation to
popular culture is convincing and does point to an area of film studies
which is perhaps less-than-fashionable at the moment.
The nature of *history* itself is central to Robert Smith's consideration
of 'Angels'. He considers the German director Wim Wenders's _Wings of
Desire_ but without taking into account the implications of its original,
as it were, its *real* title, _Der Himmel uber Berlin_. His conclusion
derives from what he develops as the contrasting angelic and human views of
the past and relates this to the function of cinema as a vehicle for
knowledge: 'The affective result of this difference is wonder, a knowledge
that has no mastery in it, that has given up its competence on both sides,
angelic and human, simply to gaze at the screen in all its uncanny
presence.' (40) Smith bases his reflections on the function of this film as
a self-reflexive allegory for cinema, a thematic and narrative device
well-known as one of Wenders's abiding concerns throughout his work. This
article adds a weighty derivation of the nature of the angels, and includes
Kundera, Sartre, Nietzsche, Rilke (inevitably), Gerald Manley Hopkins,
Benjamin, Klee, and Derrida in its exposition. Referring to Wenders's own
concept of his angels from his _Die Logik der Bilder_ / _The Logic of
Images_, Smith calls it a 'conceit' (33) but does not make clear what
Wenders set out as the metaphysical basis of his fictional figures in the
skies over Berlin, namely the fact that they are, in a sense, *fallen*, as
they were condemned to remain there pointlessly when they sought to
intercede on behalf of humanity with a God preparing to abandon His
creation in outrage at the crimes of the Second World War.
This entire interpretation of the film is itself marked by a style rich in
*conceits*: 'The angel falls simultaneously down and up into love: he falls
in love, in love he falls' (35); or: 'The dumbstruck gazer is held in
position by his own ironic gravity.' (39); or the coinage 'Hegelese' (35).
Such a style reflects a fascination with the film (which is not surprising
as it is Wenders's 'masterpiece' to date) but it is not a textual analysis.
At points, Smith has misread the narrative, as when he refers to the
'girlishness' (35) of the first sight of Marion on the trapeze, or has
passed over the significance of such figures as the ex-angel Peter Falk and
his role in the film set where the angels observe him. There is also no
consideration of the final *aria* spoken by Marion to Damiel when they
become lovers in the Hotel Esplanade, with the massive symbolism which
ensues through the image of her practising on the rope held by her new man.
And, above all, the figure of Homer, the storyteller of humanity, does not
register here. Smith's concept of the angels and the linking of it to the
nature of history as a feature of the film's overall allegory is then
interesting but limited for those interested in Wenders's work as film
rather than as a speculation on a motif that seems to have attracted
particular interest of late in Western (media) culture.
The third section of _Film Studies_, on 'Reports and Reviews', points to
some new developments in cinema history. Ian Christie presents a forgotten
pioneer from early German cinema, Robert Reinert, who still needs
integrating into his nation's film history. And for Britain he cites the
career of Maurice Elvey from 1913 to 1957 as a phenomenon still needing
investigation. In the same direction Stephen Bottomore recounts a more
satisfactory process as he traces the recent interest in the remarkably
energetic filmmaker, entrepreneur, inventor and collector, Will Day. The
account reinforces the truism that alongside its massive cultural
significance, filmmaking was a hard-headed business from the very
beginning. The practicalities behind collecting and preserving British
cinema history appear in Frank Gray's account of 'Discovering a Region's
Film History' where he relates the creation of an archive for South-East
England. Such basic organisational activity then throws up truly intriguing
implications: 'When did Friese-Greene produce his film of Chelsea? Was it
1891, and was it projectable?' (94) For those who care about the history of
the medium, such questions might foreshadow a need for a fundamental
correction of the books.
To close this first issue, Philip Horne reviews Scorsese's essay on
Bhuddism and tends to overwrite: 'Like _Casino_, _Kundun_ is the story of a
lost kingdom and way of life, ending in the ruler's exile.' (95) Here a
relatively short form unnecessarily broaches a topic which needs a much
wider examination. However, to conclude his reflections he offers the great
final speech from Prospero in _The Tempest_ to the effect that: 'The solemn
temples . . . all which inherit, shall.' Not a bad way to close a new
journal on film, especially as it's placed across from the negative image
of Scorcese and the *little llama* at play on the inside back cover.
_Film Studies_ has a lot to offer and deserves support, particularly from
those investigating what cinema is from a Humanities/ Arts background.
Certainly there are a few glitches: Sokurov figures as 'Sokorov' (73), the
syntax of a piece of translation from the Dutch interview needs clearing up
at one point (75), and there is the false plural 'country's' (80). And, to
counter a paradoxical sense of monoculturalism in the way it presents
studies on a range of European cinemas, it would be good to see the journal
offer quotations from non-English sources in their original language. Such
details could have considerable significance, as in the essay on Wenders's
angels.
For the future it would be good to see the journal compile an issue on a
couple of questions that underlie its first range of offerings: namely
national identity in filmmaking, and the relationship between the
discipline its title represents and the much-discussed and promulgated area
of cultural studies.
University of Waikato
Hamilton, New Zealand
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2000
Stan Jones, 'New 'Rules of the Game'?: Rejuvenating Cinema as a Field of
Critical, Conceptual, and Historical Study', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 4 no.
29, December 2000
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol4-2000/n29jones>.
________....
Discuss, contest, and continue this text by sending your thoughts to:
[log in to unmask]
______________....
|
