Warren Buckland wrote:
> .... it was Metz who cleared up the confusion created by=20
> the previous generation of film theorists.>
> Metz called his early collection *Essais sur la signification au=20
> cinema*, and it was the English translator who imposed the title *Film=20
> Language*.
The original French title of the collection cannot absolve Metz from the
"guilt" of throwing film theory into irrelevant issues, coming from a search
for a direct resemblance between patterns of film articulation and
linguistics. A simple illustration of such irrelevant issues is his
wondering whether a shot is the equivalent of a word or a sentence, whether
a gun of the screen means "a gun" or "here is a gun" ("un pistolet" ou
"voici un pistolet"), instead of comprehending that the cinematographic
reproduction of an object has no meaning other than being such
reproduction, which acquires significance only according to its placement
along other images on the screen, in a dynamic flow that produces meaning,
within a system of abstraction, which is very far from language and
linguistics.
Haim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Buckland" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 11:42 PM
Subject: film language
> Haim Callev wrote
>
> avoid the metaphorical connection to verbal language and sever once and=20
> for all the confusion introduced by the allegorical simplistic=20
> connections between the two and repair the damage caused to film theory=20
> by Metz and other practitioners of the term.
>
> Haim =E2=80=93 this is a false problem. As I pointed out in my Wednesday
> pos=
> t=20
> (reproduced below), it was Metz who cleared up the confusion created by=20
> the previous generation of film theorists.
>
> Metz called his early collection *Essais sur la signification au=20
> cinema*, and it was the English translator who imposed the title *Film=20
> Language*.
>
>
>
> Post from Wednesday
> For the record, the semioticians' analysis of film is not premised on=20
> identifying any direct resemblance between film and natural language.=20
> Only pre-semiotic scholars such as Raymond Spottiswoode made that=20
> category mistake. Instead, film semioticians simply borrowed methods=20
> from linguistics to analyse their non-linguistic medium - in fact, to=20
> define its 'specificity', to bring the discussion around to the debate=20
> on what is filmic/cinematic?
>
> Warren Buckland
>
> Latest book: "Directed by Steven Spielberg:
> Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster"
>
> Editor, New Review of Film and Television Studies:
> http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17400309.asp
>
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