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F I L M - P H I L O S O P H Y
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Volume 3 Number 49, December 1999
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Tico Romao
The International Cinema of Poetry
John Orr
_Contemporary Cinema_
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998
ISBN: 0-7486-0836-2
xi + 243 pp.
In his forward to _Contemporary Cinema_ John Orr announces that the primary
intention of his book is to single out 'a dominant and guiding feature in
the development of the cinema over the last thirty years' (ix). Orr
designates this dominant trend as 'the cinema of poetry', taking up and
expanding upon notions initially advanced by Pasolini in his influential
1965 essay of the same name. In Orr's hands, 'the cinema of poetry' is used
to delineate certain thematic and stylistic tendencies that characterise
the European art cinema of the 1960s as a whole, and which he sees as
having been subsequently re-deployed internationally by a range of
filmmakers of various national origin.
On the basis of Orr's opening remarks, one is led to expect that
_Contemporary Cinema_ provides a historical account of the global
dissemination of these themes and techniques, and how they were eventually
incorporated into indigenous filmmaking traditions. What one gets instead
are close interpretations of the films of a select sampling of
internationally recognised auteurs -- figures such as Andrei Tarkovsky,
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Peter Greenaway, Atom Egoyan, David Lynch, Zhang
Yimou, Jane Campion and so forth -- that are examined from the perspective
of Orr's reworking of Pasolini's original framework. Judgements pertaining
to the success of his enterprise will probably vary depending upon whether
one is more interested in reading a historically oriented work or would
rather peruse a piece of philosophically inflected film criticism. I myself
prefer the former in that I believe that knowledge production is primarily
generated through carefully conducted empirical research. Be that as it
may, it would be nonetheless a categorical mistake to assess film criticism
solely on the basis of historiographical standards in that what criticism
often aims to produce is something more evaluative in nature. To anticipate
slightly the direction of my following discussion, it is my view that while
Orr's central thesis proves to be historiographically inadequate in terms
of its overall argumentative execution, _Contemporary Cinema_ still
supplies a set of stimulating readings of individual films for those who
are interested in the work of these filmmakers. [1]
It is in the book's opening chapter, appropriately entitled 'A Cinema of
Poetry', that Orr sets out to reframe Pasolini's initial discussion. The
central element that Orr retains from Pasolini's exposition on the cinema
of poetry is his notion of free indirect subjectivity. In its original
linguistic context, the term is meant to designate those discursive
constructs that intricately combine first-person and third-person forms.
[2] Pasolini re-extends the notion in his essay so that it is meant to
describe certain filmic instances in which subjective and objective
narration coalesce. Pasolini's most frequently cited example, and that with
which Orr begins his own discussion, is that of the narrational techniques
employed by Antonioni in _Red Desert_. 'Objective' narrative devices that
are not usually used to depict the optical or aural point-of-view of a
character (such as over-the-shoulder shots) are nonetheless employed by
Antonioni to indicate character subjectivity through the camera's own
aestheticized field of vision. Here, authorial and character vision become
fused.
Pasolini's remarks on free indirect subjectivity only serve as a starting
point for Orr's more elaborate treatment. In the remainder of the opening
chapter, Orr catalogues a variety of techniques that, in his view,
simultaneously invoke the dual narrational registers of authorial and
character perspective. For instance, not only can free indirect
subjectivity be expressed through visual devices, a film's soundtrack can
also play upon the ambiguity of such narrational frames (12). In addition,
Orr cites the dream sequences in Tarkovsky's _The Stalker_, and the
expressive use of black and white cinematography in Scorsese's _Raging
Bull_ as illustrative instances in which a film's form can manifest the
merger of authorial and character viewpoint (12,28). More significantly,
free indirect subjectivity is taken to encompass not just the formal issues
connected with the ambiguities of narrative frame but also includes certain
thematic concerns as well. For Orr, the dual registers of free indirect
subjectivity are equally capable of articulating particular thematic
tensions. Bernardo Bertolucci and Terence Davies, for example, manifest in
their work an interest in history yet tend to represent it through the
subjectively mediated fantasies and memories of their film characters (11).
Indeed, it is upon the basis of the thematic possibilities of the dual
registers of the cinema of poetry that Orr proceeds to structure the
remainder of his book. In chapter 2, 'The Sacrificial Unconscious', the
thematic dual register proposed is that of the secular and the profane,
which is then used by Orr to illuminate, amongst other things, the films of
Tarkovsky and Greenaway. In chapters 3 and 4, where Orr examines the notion
of the split subject, the dual register in these discussions pertains to
the doubling of characters within the diegesis. The fifth chapter, 'The
Camera as Double Vision', explores the reflexive uses of the cinema wherein
certain directors use film to meditate upon the representational
possibilities of another artistic medium. Finally, in the last three
remaining chapters of the book, Orr extends the formal and thematic senses
of the dual registers of the cinema of poetry to various aspects of
contemporary American cinema. After being presented with this diversity of
manifestations, Orr's book gives the impression that the cinema of poetry
is truly an international phenomenon and a significant branch of
contemporary film practice.
Despite such overall impressions, doubts soon arise when one begins to
inspect the purported soundness of Orr's central historical thesis. For
starters, one should note that it is uncertain whether Pasolini's original
scheme was ultimately successful in picking out a distinct approach to
filmmaking. In addition to Antonioni and Bertolucci, Pasolini also cites
Godard as one the major contributors to the cinema of poetry. But even upon
the most cursory viewing of his films does it become apparent that Godard's
corpus bears scant resemblance to that of the work of these two Italian
filmmakers and that the notion of free indirect subjectivity has little
value when applied to his films. [3] This problem becomes even more
discernible with Orr's endeavour to instate the cinema of poetry as a
general historical trend in world cinema. As already mentioned, Orr's
approach does not consist of an empirical research programme that
historically tracks the concrete dissemination of particular themes and
cinematic techniques; instead his mode of investigation consists of a
series of critical interpretations of the film texts themselves. As a
consequence, Orr tends to bolster his historical thesis by recourse to
metaphor and analogy as the principal means of establishing the requisite
connections between these diverse range of films.
Take, for instance, the pivotal notion of the 'dual register' that recurs
throughout his book. What once began as a concept originally meant to
capture the twin aspects of subjective and objective narration proceeds to
be used to cover a variety of thematic doublings and oppositions that
manifest themselves in the films under consideration. But what, one may
ask, has free indirect subjectivity got to do with the diegetic doubling of
character identities, or, for that matter, the penchant to use the film
medium as a means to reflect upon the representational limits of another
artistic practice? Such analogical extensions dilutes the original meaning
of the term and stretches the concept to its breaking point. Just as
problematically, metaphor and analogy are also used by Orr to structure his
more local arguments. Orr frequently notes how some aspect of a film
'echoes' or 'recalls' a previous aspect of an earlier work. For instance,
Orr sees thematic parallels in Mike Figgis's _Liebestraum_ and Bertolucci's
_The Spider's Stratagem_ (111), and compares the staging of apartment
scenes in _Raging Bull_ with those appearing in Godard's _Une Femme est une
femme_ (183). On another occasion, he compares the character doubling
taking place in Wong Kar-Wai's _Chunking Express_ with that of Hitchcock's
_Vertigo_ (105). Interesting as these comparisons may be, such easily
generated associations lack analytical weight and are more an artefact of
Orr's film literacy than indicative of any substantive historical
connections holding between these films.
Orr is only partially more successful in his opening chapter where he
restricts his analysis to the formal dimensions of free indirect
subjectivity. While it is no doubt useful to explore the other aesthetic
means by which objective and subjective narration coincide (rather than
exclusively concentrating upon the narrational status of shots), there is a
danger here of broadly equating free indirect subjectivity -- in the art
cinema sense -- with that of expressivity in general. If, as Orr claims,
free indirect subjectivity is equally manifest in expressive uses of the
soundtrack or cinematography, where such strategies are taken to be
indicative of the subjectivity of a character, how then is one to
distinguish mainstream cinema's own use of similar expressive techniques?
The classical orchestral score, for instance, often expresses the emotional
state of a film's central character, yet it is dubious that either Pasolini
or Orr would want to nominate classical Hollywood scoring to the order of
the cinema of poetry. The difficulty here, as before, is that the very
looseness of Orr's conceptual apparatus prevents him from identifying what
is most truly distinctive of the kind of filmmaking that he wants to
celebrate. Orr's project would have been much better served had he narrowed
his investigation to specifying one specific aspect, or set of aspects, of
the European art cinema (say, the narrative ambiguity arising from
competing narrational frames) to then track its dissemination and
re-extension in other filmmaking traditions.
As stated at the outset, it would be unfair to appraise _Contemporary
Cinema_ solely on the adequacy of its historical thesis. Operating in
conjunction with the book's historical aims is Orr's critical attempt to
valorise a particular form of filmmaking, namely, the European art cinema
of the 1960s and its putative historical descents. For some, such an
evaluative project will undoubtedly smack of a politically problematic
retention of the high and low art distinction, and on this score such a
criticism would not be unwarranted. In fact, _Contemporary Cinema_ is
replete with dismissive references to either conventional Hollywood fair or
to the products of television such that it is likely to alienate those
readers who are actively engaged in the study of popular culture. At one
point Orr denigrates Australian soap operas to all the better extol the
aesthetic superiority of Jane Campion's _Sweetie_ (92). Even more worrisome
is Orr's tendency to invoke the high and low art divide in the form of
elevating the cool reason of 'aesthetic distance' at the expense of what
Orr labels the 'sentimentality' of Hollywood and television productions.
There are a number of film theorists who find this disparagement of
sentimentality particularly suspect, in that it is seen to harbour a latent
hostility toward traditionally feminine cultural forms. [4] Despite such
troubling asides, Orr is still able to convey his arguably justified
admiration for the contemporary art cinema, and it is in his
interpretations of these films wherein the value of his book lies. Apart
from the occasional unconvincing reading, I found Orr's analyses of
individual films to be generally interesting, and often would illuminate
some aspect of the film under investigation in an informative fashion. To
provide just one example, here is a passage in which Orr discusses the
thematic ramifications of the cinematography used in Polanski's _Chinatown_:
'In its effective use of the latest camera technology to capture the past,
_Chinatown_ rivals _McCabe and Mrs Miller_. But its visual look is almost
the exact opposite. John Alonzo, Polanski's cinematographer, used a
Panavision anamorphic lens to produce the closest analogy which camera
technology had to human perception with a lens range of 43-45mm. Moreover,
Polanski insisted on using no diffusion, thus getting a clarity in the
colour image which ran against the grain of the noir tradition. Yet he
retained noir intimacy through the proximity of the camera to its
characters, often achieved through the use of a hand-held Panaflex. Thus
_Chinatown_ uses mimetic images of transparency in a world where truth lies
still concealed, creating a visual and diegetic counterpoint which it turns
into poetic narrative' (172).
What I find valuable in Orr's discussion is his ability to bring on board
certain production details as a means of teasing out some the ways in which
_Chinatown_ reworks noir conventions, thereby enabling the reader to come
away with a more appreciative understanding of the aesthetic operations of
the film. Orr exploits this tactic repeatedly in his discussions and its
one of the more successful interpretive strategies that he employs. Even if
one were to ultimately reject the significance that Orr attaches to a given
work, there is a good chance that there will be some dimension of the film
under consideration that his analysis will have opened up to the reader.
To say this is to acknowledge that _Contemporary Cinema_ occasionally
indulges in what I find best in evaluative criticism. Set aside the
frequently arbitrary yardsticks by which films get judged and the lack of
critical consensus that they command, and what remains is often informed
discussions that attempt to provide good reasons why one ought to enjoy
particular kinds of films. Even if Orr has failed to identify a distinct
historical trend in filmmaking, as I think he has, he has gone some way in
demonstrating that this heterogeneous set of films, however dissimilar, all
share at least one similarity, in that they are all examples of
accomplished forms of filmmaking.
University of East Anglia, Norwich, England
Footnotes
1. My general assessment of Orr's book is, consequently, the precise
reverse of that given by Stella Buzzi, who values the historical overview
advanced, yet questions certain readings of particular films.
2. To be precise, the original grammatical term is free indirect
*discourse*. Through the process of application to narrative film, the term
received a significant change in emphasis.
3. It is significant to note that David Bordwell, whose conception of the
art cinema has been similarly criticised for imposing a reductive framework
onto a heterogeneous ensemble of filmmaking practices, chose not to include
Godard in his category of the art cinema narration. See his _Narration in
the Fiction Film_, pp. 311-334.
4. Recent critiques of this attitude are to be found in Flo Leibowitz's
'Apt Feelings or Why 'Women's Films' Aren't Trivial', Carl Plantinga's
'Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film Criticism', and Ed Tan and
Nico Frijda's 'Sentiment in Film Viewing'. Apparently, this is not the
first time that Orr has been taken to task on this issue. In a review of
Orr's earlier work, _Cinema and Modernity_, Mark Jancovich similarly
criticised his disparagement of melodrama through its association with
'feminine' modes of reception.
Bibliography
David Bordwell, _Narration in the Fiction Film_ (Madison, Wisconsin:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
Stella Buzzi, 'Review: _Contemporary Cinema_', _Sight and Sound_, vol. 8
no. 8, August 1998.
Mark Jancovich, 'Review: _Cinema and Modernity_', _Sociological Review_,
vol. 43 no. 2, 1995.
Flo Leibowitz, 'Apt Feelings or Why 'Women's Films' Aren't Trivial', in
David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds, _Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film
Studies_ (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
Pier Paolo Pasolini, 'The Cinema of Poetry', in Bill Nichols, ed., _Movies
and Methods_ (University of California Press, 1976).
Carl Plantinga, 'Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film
Criticism', in Richard Allen and Murray Smith, eds, _ Film Theory and
Philosophy_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Ed Tan and Nico Frijda, 'Sentiment in Film Viewing', in Carl Plantinga,
ed., _Passionate Views_ (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1999).
Filmography
_Chinatown_, Roman Polanski, 1974.
_Chunking Express_ Wong Kar-Wai, 1994.
_Liebestraum_, Mike Figgis, 1991.
_Raging Bull_, Martin Scorsese, 1980.
_Red Desert_, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964.
_The Spider's Stratagem_, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970.
_The Stalker_, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979.
_Sweetie_, Jane Campion, 1989.
_Une Femme est une femme_, Jean-Luc Godard, 1961.
_Vertigo_, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958.
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 1999
Tico Romao, 'The International Cinema of Poetry', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3
no. 49, December 1999
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/romao2.html>.
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