Haim Callev wrote
avoid the metaphorical connection to verbal language and sever once and
for all the confusion introduced by the allegorical simplistic
connections between the two and repair the damage caused to film theory
by Metz and other practitioners of the term.
Haim – this is a false problem. As I pointed out in my Wednesday post
(reproduced below), it was Metz who cleared up the confusion created by
the previous generation of film theorists.
Metz called his early collection *Essais sur la signification au
cinema*, and it was the English translator who imposed the title *Film
Language*.
Post from Wednesday
For the record, the semioticians' analysis of film is not premised on
identifying any direct resemblance between film and natural language.
Only pre-semiotic scholars such as Raymond Spottiswoode made that
category mistake. Instead, film semioticians simply borrowed methods
from linguistics to analyse their non-linguistic medium - in fact, to
define its 'specificity', to bring the discussion around to the debate
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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