First, my thanks to Bill Harris who has given consideration to (part of)
the Hugo Munsterberg quote I posted.

He suggests substituting 'faculties' for 'inner world', and then using a
Bergsonian approach.

But may I say that I am happy with Munsterberg's terms in this respect -
'attention, memory, imagination and emotion'?  I mean, it makes perfect
sense to me to describe a Hitchcock film, e.g., VERTIGO or NORTH BY
NORTHWEST, as heightening the viewer's 'attention, memory, imagination
and emotion' - in order to make said viewer feel more 'alive' (cf
Thornhill, late in NxNW: 'I never felt more alive!').  Isn't that
Bergsonian enough?  There are even scenes in VERTIGO, in particular,
that seem designed to play on precisely these inner forms.  Think of the
bookshop scene with Pop Liebel, re memory.

What ARE the faculties, exactly, as opposed to Munsterberg's inner forms?

(Btw, nobody here has yet responded re the acceptability, or otherwise,
of Munsterberg on the OUTER forms: 'space, time and causality'!)

Next, re my request for examples of filmmakers and/or effects and/or
films that 'specialise' in some of these forms ...  I'm wondering if
anyone here can tell me more about Noel Burch's CORRECTION, PLEASE OR
HOW WE GOT INTO PICTURES (1979)?  There's a fascinating description of
it by Chris Auty in the 'Time Out' Film Guide: 'Using very early archive
material and studio-shot footage, Burch - author of Theory of Film
Practice - contrives a witty re-staging of the tropes of very early
silent American cinema: the use of space, dialogue, design and the
camera are seen evolving (degenerating?) into the recognisable form of
narrative cinema.'

Next, my thanks to Alan Fair for raising the matter of 'the voice' as a
go-between bridging  the body and the outer world.  (Why do I think of
Fred Walton's experiments with 'disembodied voice' in the thriller and
horor film genres ?!)

Also, my thanks to Eduardo Mauro, though I'm not sure how Derrida gets
credited with what Gilbert Ryle wrote in 1949 in 'The Concept of Mind'!
  As for there being no distinction possible between body and mind, so
that (in Eduardo's words) 'we can all be free together' - well, maybe,
but why not 'we can all be UNfree together'?!  The latter was
Schopenhauer's position re our common subjection to 'Will', a concept
which Bryan Magee's superb 'The Philosophy of Schopenhauer' (1983; 1998)
sees as anticipating Ryle.

Lastly, I savoured Paul Taberham's comment that Godard's ideas re
'creating a cinematic form which attempted to speak of a world before
language' 'remained "academic" and Brakhage did a better job'!  (For my
part, I again find British thinkers more to my taste on the whole matter
of language, post-Wittgenstein.  I mean, Iris Murdoch thought that much
of our everyday 'thinking' IS pre-linguistic thinking!  And because I
observe, I'm convinced,  ANIMALS and BIRDS using such
pre-linguistic thinking - not to mention that I communicate with them
non-verbally - I must suppose that I experience FILMS pre-linguistically
to some extent.  Also, I am of the opinion that Hitchcock's love of
animals was not wholly separable from his power to make audiences feel
and emote.)

Ask a simple question ...

- Ken Mogg

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