My thanks to Alan and Dean for their helpful responses to my citing of
the Hugo Munsterberg quote. I was happy to see Alan refer to
Hitchcock's VERTIGO (precisely the film I had in mind, besides THE WRONG
MAN, when I posted the quote) and no less happy to read Dean's
illustrations of how Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER is
'unsurpassed' for mediating and exploring the relationship of outer and
inner worlds. (Interestingly, VERTIGO, too, explores a city, San
Francisco, as part of its evocation of 'Madeleine'/Judy, making the two
- outer and inner - quite intertwined: e.g., the mystery of Madeleine is
linked to the Mission Dolores, where the city began. Another example:
just as Godard's film draws parallels [as Dean notes] 'between
Juliette's hopes and dreams and the shots of roads and buildings under
construction', so Hitchcock's does something similar, in having Scottie
'spiral' after Madeleine in his car, across the city, down hills and
around corners, past roadworks and other signs of 'life' and 'progress';
on the other hand, when he feels that he is losing her, on the visit to
the old stables, the film gives us a shot of a car disappearing down a
road, and the mood is forlorn. Btw, I've begun to take up these
particular illustrations on my website:
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html )
But something I was hoping that Film-Philosophy readers might comment on
was Munsterberg's reference to the forms of the outer world as 'space,
time and causality' and the forms of the inner world as 'attention,
memory, imagination and emotion'. Nearly a century later, we're happy
with those definitions, are we?
I'd also be interested in hearing of filmmakers who consciously
'specialise' in some of these forms - in the cinematic exploration of
space, or time, or causality or attention (showmanship?!), or memory,
etc. (Chris Marker comes to mind, on several counts. But I realise
that some of you may want to just say: ANY director worth his salt!)
Gratitude - Ken Mogg
*
*
Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon.
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
**
|