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    Vol. 5  No. 1, January 2001
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    Gregory L. Miller

    Casetti on Film Theory



Francesco Casetti
_Theories of Cinema: 1945-1995_
Translated by Francesca Chiostri and Elizabeth Gard Bartolini-Salimbeni,
with Thomas Kelso
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999
ISBN 0-292-71207-3
368 pp.

Francesco Casetti's _Theories of Cinema: 1945-1995_ deserves a place in
every film scholar's library, even though the project is quixotic and, in
the end, only partially successful. After World War II, Casetti suggests,
film theory entered a new era: as cinema became an acceptable focus for
intellectual inquiry, theory became more specialized, and the ensuing
debates were increasingly international. Casetti (who teaches at the
Universita Cattolica in Milan) attempts to delineate these fifty-odd years
of film theory, meticulously tying each strand back into a whole cloth. In
a cautious introduction, the author explains: 'It is the *productivity* of
a knowledge that ensures, perhaps more than anything else, its theoretical
status . . . [This] book is focused more on the frameworks of research, on
their development and their dynamics, than on isolated contributions' (3).

He divides his survey, reasonably enough, into three parts. The first (and
in many ways most successful) part considers ontological debates that
flourished in the 1950s. This section is followed by chapters on
methodological approaches, while the third section examines various 'field
theories' (including feminist film theory, political theory, critiques of
representation, and so on).

What is cinema? Andre Bazin was certainly not the first to pose this
question, but Casetti credits Bazin and a few others with imbuing the
debate with rigorous urgency in the post-war years. This debate was
stimulated by Italian neorealism; Casetti begins with some exemplary
Italian theorists. Cesare Zavattini, certain that the war had taught people
to appreciate what is real, argued that true cinema should therefore mirror
reality. Guido Aristarco aims for similar results, but instead -- taking
his cue from literature -- proposes an 'aesthetics of reconstruction' (27),
in which exploring the facts takes priority over mere recording. Casetti
surveys other Italian theorists and filmmakers (and notes the obvious
influence of writers from Lukacs to Gramsci) before moving on to clear
summaries of Bazin and Kracauer.

The next chapter, 'Cinema and the Imaginary', continues the ontological
section. In an unequivocal break from the realists, surrealists argued that
cinema was necessarily fantastic. Concerns with the subjective nature of
film led thinkers to explore paths away from neorealism. The sociologist
Edgar Morin is given pride of place in this chapter (as is the case with
other figures, Casetti covers him in later sections when appropriate).
Morin considers spectator participation, finding a duplicity of cinema in
the bond between observer and observed. For Morin (writes Casetti), cinema
functions as both 'a modern and ancestral machine . . . [allowing] us to
photograph ourselves, our interior states, our drives, our attitudes, to
the point where it becomes either an 'archive of souls' . . . or an
'anthropological mirror'' (52).

Casetti continues his survey of ontological film theory in Chapter Four,
'Cinema and Language'. Three thinkers are singled out: Galvano Della Volpe,
Albert Laffay, and Jean Mitry. Since cinematic images introduce precise
concepts, Casetti explains, theorists began relating these images to other
signs. Casetti begins, as he often does in these pages, with Italy.
Resisting Croce's 'reduction of language to a purely aesthetic fact' (65),
Della Volpe finds a rational component in images, and postulates a dynamic
between a symbolic structure, the structures of a single expression, and
concrete thought. Laffay's analysis of film narrative furthers the notion
of cinema as discourse by examining how a film's plot is supported by an
underlying logical plot. Mitry signals a third way to establish the
linguistic nature of cinema by emphasizing its logical and dialectical
organization. Since filmic images are never isolated -- rather, they are
connected to each other by similarity or contrast, or at the very least by
succession -- their value is always contingent. As such, a film initiates a
process of abstraction and generalization, and, in doing so, engenders a
*new* reality; for Mitry, then, when Bazin and others take a film image for
reality, they succumb to the illusion of *trompe-l'oeil*.

Casetti concludes his survey of ontological theory with Mitry. I have
provided a summary of a summary, which is perhaps unfair in that Casetti's
sixty-four pages here are significantly more detailed. The author's
presentation is reasonably broad and extremely clear and well organized;
still, a single volume summation of film theory can only cover so much.
While Casetti labors toward objectivity, readers will likely become
impatient with many of his choices. The limitations of his approach become
more noticeable in ensuing sections.

Consider, for instance, his division of disciplinary approaches into four
sections psychology, sociology, semiotics, and psychoanalysis. There can be
no question that psychological and psychoanalytic contributions to film
studies have been voluminous and profound. Still, a hierarchy is
established here that more or less maintains itself throughout the rest of
the book. The chapter on sociology, in particular, seems simplistic and
underdeveloped. His explanation of Adorno and Horkheimer is lucid, for
instance, but later objections to the Frankfurt School are given the final
word. Casetti sums up the section with the typically simplistic reversal of
Adorno's ideas that came later in an effort to escape from troubling
conclusions. Casetti writes,

'Consequently, art does not become consumer goods, but consumer goods
become art. We observe, therefore, an *aesthetization of the commodity* and
not a commodification of aesthetics, as Horkheimer and Adorno believed . .
.. [T]he readers' and spectators' involvement in actually 'productive
consumption' does not lead to their subjection to the machine. It makes
them assume its rhythms and potentials. A *technologization of the body*
occurs, not a loss of personal abilities, as Adorno and Horkheimer thought'
(124).

The problem isn't just that, at such moments, Casetti's own preferences
seem to interfere; more troubling is that, while Casetti's organizational
tidiness is often welcome (never more so than when he explains the theories
themselves), his insistence upon presenting each theorist as a component of
a developing whole leads to a normalizing and evolutionary discourse. Thus
Adorno is presented, essentially, as having been overcome. Occasionally,
Casetti's zeal for concise explanations can result in statements so
sweeping and, simultaneously, so qualified that they are difficult to
fathom. Here, as the author tries to explain how film theory's relation to
politics shifted after 1968, the meaning seems to dissolve as one reads
along: 'The movement was not from politics to the movies, but from movies
to politics. We will see shortly that this did not always hold true and
that, in any case, different interpretations emerged. It is, however, a
fact that a new path was inaugurated' (185).

Along with psychoanalytic theory, Casetti's own favored approach --
enunciation theory -- receives disproportionate attention in these pages.
Both theories have been criticized (rightly to my mind) for positing an
abstract, ideal spectator; hence, one assumes, Casetti's often unsatisfying
presentation of overtly political theories. This might also explain the
author's almost total reduction of concepts of identity to conventional
psychoanalytic structures. Nowhere in these pages, for instance, will one
find reference to queer theory or to race.

Meanwhile, idiosyncratic figures such as Gilles Deleuze are awkwardly
squeezed into Casetti's historicized system. Deleuze and Stanley Cavell are
Casetti's representative philosophers in a hodgepodge of a chapter
entitled, 'Culture, Art, Thought'. Readers of _Film-Philosophy_ may be
particularly interested in Casetti's odd conclusions regarding philosophy's
relation to film:

'It is as though philosophical thought found itself incapable of working
with existent forms and remade itself, using cinema as its representative,
its emblem. In short, it is as though philosophy, orphan of the world,
availed itself of cinema for its world. It is perhaps a loss (the
deterioration of the relation with actual facts) more than a desire for
wholeness that leads our philosophers to cinema' (288).

Despite the book's many drawbacks (and considering the shortage of books of
its kind), it remains extremely useful. Casetti excels at clearly
explaining abstruse ideas, and the fine bibliography and restrained, yet
excellent notes ensure its status as a valuable resource. Many lesser known
figures are covered (might this book help spur English translations of
Alberto Abruzzese and Hartmut Bitomsky?). I would also recommend the book
for classroom use, as long as teachers are willing to supplement its
limitations. Besides previously mentioned limitations, one should know
that, as the title perhaps implies, this is an overview of *Western*
theories; expect nothing from, for instance, Asia or Africa. Within this
framework, Casetti is good on French, Anglo-American, and, especially,
Italian theories (indeed, the book is slanted toward the latter, though
some might find this refreshing), but short on Germany (nothing from the
New German cinema), while Northern and Eastern Europe (Poland?) are
virtually ignored.

University of California at Davis, USA


Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2001

Gregory L. Miller, 'Casetti on Film Theory', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no.
1, January 2001 <http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n1miller>.

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