Posts

David Bordwell’s Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice aims to categorize the “art film,” as we now know it. Bordwell claims there are multiple attributes a film can utilize which would qualify a film as an “art film”. Bordwell’s aims in notating these attributes it to hopefully outline a system to categorize art cinema to then create a symbiotic relationship with traditional narrative cinema or, traditional Hollywood cinema, and the avant-garde or “art film.”

One of the most defining aspects of the art film which distinguishes it from traditional cinema is the narrative structure. Art cinema tends to play with traditional structure and allows for jumps in time and fragmentation that may not be immediately understood by the viewer as opposed to the usual linear structure of traditional Hollywood narrative. The process of altering narrative structure subsequently alters spectatorial activity. The way in which a viewer processes art film is inherently different from traditional cinema. Bordwell argues that there are two principles which motivate experimentation to narrative structure, “realism”, and “authorial expressivity.” (Bordwell 651.)

The notion of realism coming from experimentation may initially sound off. There is something jarring about the disruption of narrative structure initially, however when the disruption is done to prioritize the psychological states of the characters, one can find a complex and potentially more enriching character experience. An example can be found in Godard’s Weekend at approximately 1:10:45 in which the main characters are sitting, and waiting, for an undisclosed amount of time. The spectators have not had a system of consistent scene length within the film to make any assumptions about how long this scene may last. The main characters wait for their ride to continue as two men talk of Marxism. This a recurring trend in the film though the structure does not provide a consistent support system. We are allowed an extended time with the main characters on one of the films prevailing themes, yet we are not fully aware of their considerations on the topic, there is a complexity there. Bordwell notes this complexity as the intended realism of art cinema. Art cinema characters tend to be psychologically complex. (Bordwell 651.)

Art cinema according to Bordwell also offers an absurdism or lack of choice for the characters. There is a sense that actions occur. This is to further distinguish art cinema as a mode of cinema which concerns itself with the real and a commitment to realism. However, Bordwell notes that while the structure and character autonomy may both be loose, art cinema all does this in favor of the psychological richness and character exploration of its subjects.

Another key element in art cinema is the utilization of the “flash forward.” Bordwell notes the authorial presence this creates, specifically highlighting that there is a director who does have some answers which the character may not, or the viewer may not. In some cases, these flash forwards could even be captioning to denote information. In a sense, art cinema regardless of its aims—is inherently more prone to auteur theory. The presence of the director is not ignored. However, Peter Wollenen describes Godard’s Weekend as a film which gets around the dilemma of authorial focus through a heavy amount of reference. “The film can no longer be seen as a discourse with a single subject, the film maker/auteur. Just as there is a multiplicity of narrative worlds, so too there is a multiplicity of speaking voices.” (Wollen 423.)

Art cinema does not need to abide by these attributes as rules, rather, these are commonalities among the art cinema of the time during Bordwell’s writing of the article. However, one of the most significant points Bordwell makes is Hollywood’s adopting traits of art cinema to utilize in traditional narrative form. The sort of relationship Bordwell suggests can go both ways in that, traditional Hollywood cinema has a mass influence on the psyche of the general populous and subsequently, art cinema can work to explore that influence. There is a sort of mutual feedback loop which occurs when the two forms work in conjunction with one another rather than at odds.

Peter Wollen’s speaks to Godard’s art cinema as “counter cinema,” which notes the relationship Bordwell speaks on, if anything in a bit more of an antagonistic way. Wollen states “It can only exists in relation to the rest of the cinema. Its function is to struggle against the fantasies, ideologies, and aesthetic devices of one cinema with its own antagonistic fantasies, ideologies, and aesthetic devices.” (Wollen 426.)

Wollen’s arguments seem to indicate art cinema’s purpose is to counteract traditional cinema. Wollen is specifically speaking on Godard but I believe the techniques can be universalized amongst films which utilize some or any of the traits Bordwell outlines. Wollen is correct. You cannot have an alternative cinema if no primary or initial cinema exists. However, its purpose to counteract is questionable. I would argue art’s cinema’s purpose is to continue to articulate the real in a way in which traditional Hollywood may not aim to do.  The act of rebellion may exist, but it ceases to account for traditional Hollywood’s narratives’ long-term influence on people.  The influence and change in ideas over time is the subject matter for the art film, not the enemy.

Questions:

Was Weekend’s narrative structure difficult to latch onto? What did you prioritize in order to process the film?

What takes precedence to you as a spectator while watching art cinema? Plot, theme, characters, is it a singular experience?

Does the list of attributes Bordwell highlight hold true to contemporary art cinema? Has art cinema changed from that time?

Do traditional Hollywood Films still utilize art film traits the way the Godfather did? Has the focus shifted?

References:

Bordwell, D. (2016). The Art Cinema As A Mode of Film Practice (982205827 760626895 L. Braudy & 982205828 760626895 M. Cohen, Eds.). In Film theory and criticism: Introductory readings (pp. 649-657). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wollen, P. (2016). Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent D’est (982199755 760623028 L. Braudy & 982199756 760623028 M. Cohen, Eds.). In Film theory and criticism: Introductory readings (pp. 418-426). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In thinking of Peter Wollen’s “Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d’Est,” I’d like to consider Weekend’s early traffic scene [00:15:15], where Corinne and Roland set off to Corinne’s dying father in hopes of receiving an inheritance, as a means of examining counter-cinema’s relationship to narrative and foregrounding. The sequence lasts for over seven minutes, and although it is certainly engaging, its length is also felt. For me, there were multiple moments while viewing this sequence when I expected a change in location, an additional component of the narrative to be introduced, perhaps even hoped for a cut, but each time my expectations (most likely informed by classical narrative cinema norms) were subverted. This might suggest a connection to Wollen’s argument that the handling of narrative in Godard’s counter-cinema is in direct conversation with classical narrative cinema and therefore must be discussed “in relation to the rest of cinema” (Wollen 426). 

Bordwell cites Bazin as “the first major critic of the art cinema, not only because he praised a loose, accidental narrative structure that resembled life but also because he pinpointed privileged stylistic devices for representing a realistic continuum of space and time (deep-focus, deep space, the moving camera, and the long take)” (Bordwell 652). In addition to the long take, the use of the moving camera is arguably the primary mode of conveying “documentary realism” and “character subjectivity” within this scene (Bordwell 652). We enter through a sound bridge of honking cars, suggesting that traffic has been building up perhaps long before we’ve arrived, a gesture to realism where life has and will continue before and after the film. Roland and Corinne drive past the first cars stuck in traffic, ostensibly on the wrong side of the road. The camera moves in unison with their car, picking up pace through the stop-and-go traffic in a tracking shot, until their car drives out of frame [00:15:30]. 

We pass a red car with its door open, a rather subdued clue into the comic peculiarity that is to come. The camera catches up to Roland and Corinne, but at a pace that makes us, the audience, oddly (as in uncomfortably–another point made by Wollen as a characteristic of art cinema) aware of the camera. This trait of “foregrounding,” a self-referentiality (of course, there are greater moments of overt self-referentiality of the film’s presence, medium, and stylistic techniques later in the film) is one of Wollen’s categories in identifying Godard’s counter-cinema (Wollen 420). Two men play cards on the trunk of their car while a man tosses a ball with a child through the roof of his car. We get a sense that this is somehow terribly normal (within the film) through the banality of the landscape–a relatively unchanging beige field in the French countryside, and the slow and steady pace in which we participate in the gathering of images or “image building” (Wollen 421). In some ways, we are even made aware of the medium of film as a sequence of images by the length of the shot itself, and in the long, landscape quality of the camera movements like a strip of film.

[00:16:08] The camera outpaces the car to give the viewer more information than the film’s characters and reveals the first crashed car turned on its head, perhaps not unlike what Bordwell refers to as, “the game with the narrator” (654). Suddenly, children seem to hatch from behind the wrecked car. At this point, the continuous honking of the cars and their choral effect, become almost ‘normal’ or accepted in that they now make a degree of sense within the senselessness. Just as this happens, music is introduced, but the soft piano fades almost as quickly as it appears [00:16:13]. What might this signify? If the sound of honking horns has transformed into an element of the soundtrack, what new purpose does music serve throughout this scene? Another layer in the chaos? This begs the additional question: how does sound function as erasure, and therefore a foregrounding, throughout the film? What and who is muted or silenced by the interruption of another sound and why? To what effect?

Roland and Corinne catch up to the camera, pull over, and argue with a group of men standing outside of their cars, but as the camera continues to track, we realize it is not just another car, but a truck transporting animals. A literal zoo: lions, monkeys, and a llama (?). Then singing children are added into the mix, and the camera mimics a double-take back towards the animals, but soon enough this too is normalized by the continuation of the tracking shot, as it is then grouped into the everyday’s absurdities. The same red car reappears in the line of traffic perhaps suggesting the relevance of time, the subjectivity of the psychological experience of time, or restating the feeling that we are simply going nowhere.

As the camera continues to track alongside the traffic jam, we see someone fixing their car, a group of people sitting under a tree, and throughout, there is continual arguing. Although, we can’t make out the dialogue from the distance and over the honking, implying that the exact words hold little significance. If “art cinema is less concerned with action than reaction,” at times, might this include the lack thereof (Bordwell 651)? With each new driver or passenger, the camera passes, perhaps the expected reactions of an audience are repositioned, literally moving along by way of the tracking and pace. Our attention, as Bordwell suggests, is on the reaction of the characters to this bizarre or possibly entirely ordinary scenario, and whether their reactions are that of frustration (the insistent sound of honking), celebration (the children singing), anger (the recurring fighting), they are arguably more significant than the actual action of the scene. If we were to simplify the narrative at this moment, there is not much happening in the scene other than a line of cars waiting (for what, at this point, we do not know, other than the prospect of moving forward). 

By [00:17:39], music re-enters (for the length of the Shell oil truck–a new unit of measurement) with all of its unanswered questions, the back of a bus, then the title card reads: “13H40.” A reminder of time. Then, “WEEKEND” flashes, a reminder of the film itself, its title, what we are doing and experiencing as an audience. Then, at [00:17:48]: “14H10”–somehow in two seconds, thirty minutes have passed. The camera rushes toward the crowd standing in the traffic jam and towards the horse-drawn cart, perhaps suggesting the clashes of industry, technology, mechanization, and once again, time. Bordwell stresses, “art cinema defines itself explicitly against the classical narrative mode, and especially against the cause-effect linkages of events. These linkages become looser, more tenuous in art film” (Bordwell 650). The camera continues tracking, passing another wrecked car, and a new man and child playing catch from the roofs of their cars. If we are to think of art cinema’s rejection of the sequential cause and effect coherence, then are we to interpret each instance/car/animal/child/game as a collection that is being gathered? Wollen proposes, “Godard, like Eisenstein before him, is more concerned with ‘image building’ as a kind of pictography, in which images are liberated from their roles as elements of representation and given a semantic function within a genuine iconic code” (Wollen 421). And I would have to agree–although these images hold associations, the cinematic and stylistic choices intrinsic to art cinema allow them to free themselves from their representational confines. This provides the audience with an entirely different “film reading” than that of classical narrative cinema (Wollen 421). The backwards car, another upside-down car, the couple playing chess on the road–everything is absurd until nothing is, and a new expectation arises, an authorial expectation in which, “the text becomes a composite structure, like that of a medieval macaronic poem, using different codes and semantic systems” (Wollen 422). 

Roland and Corinne continue to inch their way past the line of traffic, aggravating most. Then the camera follows a different car that pulls out of the line of traffic and reveals the first bloody body splayed in the dried grass. The group of children walks past the corpse, like everyone and everything else. The entirety of the wreckage is displayed with the entrance of music and more severed victims of the crash that has held up all of the cars and the audience in this incredibly long sequence. The police whistles and gestures cars through, including that of Roland and Corinne. They drive through with more conventional normalcy than the entire sequence, but somehow this moment feels the most absurd of all. What is Godard asking us to question here? The car drives out of the frame and the countryside fades to black. 

What are some of the ways in which the audience is affected by unanswered questions and feelings of ambiguity within “a survey form of narrative” (Bordwell 651)? 

How might art cinema’s “multiple diegesis” and “plurality of worlds” be functioning within this scene and in relation to the greater film (Wollen 421, 422)?

References:

Weekend. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Athos Films, 1967.

Bordwell, David. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, pp. 649-657.

Wollen, Peter. “Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d’Est.” Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, pp. 418-426.

In her article, “Circles and Squares,” film critic Pauline Kael offers a biting rebuke of auteur theory as employed by Andrew Sarris. Kael’s central complaint about auteur theory is that it requires critics to devote themselves to an interpretation of film that is too formulaic and results in limited understanding of the work before them. Sarris believes that film directors are the true authors, or auteurs, of cinema and that understanding their contributions to the artform can only be ascertained after studying many samples of their work over a long period. Kael rejects this approach to film criticism by dissecting Sarris’ model of understanding directors and their art.

It may be easiest to start where Kael and Sarris agree. Kael and Sarris both believed—Pauline Kael passed away in 2001; Andrew Sarris in 2012—that directors were central to the success of a film and both critics seemed to genuinely love the cinema. These critics, particularly Kael, were also unreserved in voicing their disappointment when directors fell short of their expectations. So, it is not surprising that they approached their work with particular zeal.

Sarris’ describes auteur theory visually. He challenges his readers to think of concentric circles, each of which contains one of the theory’s key concepts. The first of these requires an evaluation of a director’s technical skills. It is here that the assessment of the filmmaker’s oeuvre can begin. Kael is most generous to this evaluative tactic because she believes technical competence is important. Her issue, though, lies in how it is applied in auteur theory. Because auteur theory requires a wholistic viewing of a director’s entire career, the methods of the first circle do not allow for the peaks and valleys of a director’s career. She does not believe skills are static or improve on an uninterrupted climb. Also noteworthy is the influence of studios. Because Sarris is writing in an American or English context, the studio system often pressed on a director in which issues of budget and schedule had the potential to cause breakdowns in the artistic integrity of directors, especially when the project they were working on may not have been one they were passionate about but had to complete because of contractual obligations. Directors, it must not be forgotten, were employees. In that context, it is understandable every film a director produced might not be appropriate to include in a decade’s long evaluation.

Auteur theory’s second theoretical principle revolves around the idea of personality. Artists certainly include aspects of their personality in their work, but it is also possible for artists to rebel against themselves. Sarris indicates that auteurs’ work should contain connective tissue. Camerawork, acting choices, and lighting can all be hallmarks of a director’s style and auteur theory posits that this style should be recognizable from one film to the next. Unsurprisingly, Kael rejects this notion. Her words are quite instructive, “…but that the distinguishability of personality should in itself be a criterion of value completely confuses normal judgement. The smell of a skunk is more distinguishable than the perfume of a rose; does that make it better?” To be fair to Sarris, he does admit that auteur theory is rather ill-defined. It may work better in a French or German cinematic world in which profit and studio preference do not influence art, or at least influence it to a lesser degree. Nevertheless, Kael’s point remains—an auteur cannot be deemed as such just because their work is easily recognizable.

The notion contained in the final circle, which Kael unmercifully thrashes, is that “interior meaning” is exposed because directors pit their personality against the material they have been given to film. This is, in Kael’s estimation, a recipe for disaster. Why on earth would a director fight the material they have been given? Why not just walk away? Kael believes that directors do their best work and produce the best films when the material and the personality of the director work in concert.

How, then, can we judge a film like Shadow of a Doubt and the career of Alfred Hitchcock? Using only one film we cannot assess Hitchcock’s greatness over a long career. In the case of Shadow of a Doubt, though, we might as well speculate as to which of Hitchcock’s techniques could define him using the template of auteur theory. We could also try to deduce what are some aspects of his personality by examining the choices he made when making Shadow of a Doubt.

The technical choices Hitchcock makes in Shadow of a Doubt serve his thematic preferences. One themes evident throughout Shadow of a Doubt is contrast. When both Charlies are introduced, they are lying in contemplative postures on their backs in bed. To set up a contrast there must be similarities and these mirrored settings do that. The contrast in the characters is set up in the arrangement of the shots and the mise-en-scéne of the scenes. When we meet uncle Charlie, although it is daytime, he is cast in shadow and there is a darkness to the setting. His conversation with the landlady reveals that he is concerned with stealth and self-preservation. Hitchcock frames this introduction with Charlie’s head to the right and his feet to the left. When we meet young Charlie, it is also daytime, but the lighting is much brighter. Her conversation reveals that she is concerned for her family and specifically her mother. Hitchcock’s use of contrast in these scenes conditions the spectator to believe certain things about the characters. The rest of the film is dedicated to either confirming these beliefs or casting them into doubt.

If the director’s personality is crucial to understanding their work through the lens of auteur theory, then signs of Hitchcock’s personality are revealed in Shadow of a Doubt. Although Hitchcock is known for suspense, this film includes playful moments. Young Charlie’s sister Ann is a mischievous child. When we first meet her, she is caught lying about being able to find a pencil to take down a message. Later, she exclaims that she never makes up anything because all of her information comes from her books, which are all true. She also plays the sidewalk hopping game, “Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back.” In a relatively short distance, she breaks her mother’s back three times. Ann is not a representative of childhood innocence. Instead, she is a representation of youthful rebellion. But this is shown in playful and harmless ways. Is this an aspect of Hitchcock’s personality? Does he see himself as an innocent rebel? Are there other aspects of Hitchcock’s personality worthy of discussion?

Pauline Kael believes that auteur theory is too cute by half. It is an answer in search of a problem. Is she right? Does the practice of auteur theory work when analyzing the careers and films of classical Hollywood and the studio system? Is auteur theory too formulaic and does it limit the ability of critics to judge films on their own? Why does auteur theory elicit such strong feelings?

“How much nonsense dare these men permit themselves?” (25) – Pauline Kael

Writing on the main characters of Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer state how Young Charlie and Uncle Charlie (YC and UC, respectively) are like twins, and then they cite François Truffaut arguing that the film “is based on the number two” (72). Similarly, Robin Wood writes that YC and UC are “the two sides of the same coin” (599) and argues that this point is the most obvious in the scene at the Til Two Bar. This confrontation between YC and UC is also the sequence I would like to talk about as it lays bare the layers of meaning and the subterfuge the narrative employs. However, before that, I feel it is necessary for us to take a little detour to the auteur theory to contextualize the relevance of this particular scene because I will interpret this sequence as a companion to Pauline Kael’s criticism of auteur theorists’ approach.

As he is one of the most discussed directors in film history, I find it hard to write something original about Hitchcock’s body of work. However, it becomes much more complicated once we invoke his name in relation to the auteur theory. Is it possible to talk about Shadow of a Doubt through auteur theory without making references to director’s earlier films, or to Hitchcock himself? Even though Peter Wollen writes “(…) the ‘auteur’ film (or structure) is not an archi-film at all in this sense [as a Platonic Idea]. It is an explanatory device which specifies partially how any individual film works” (468), he still ties that individual film to a body of work when he writes how Ford and Hawks “exhibit the same thematic preoccupations, the same recurring motifs and incidents, the same visual style and tempo” (457) throughout their individual filmographies. Similarly, Andrew Sarris also emphasizes the pattern with a rather interesting comparison: “An expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the director’s chair. How do you tell the genuine director from the quasichimpanzee? After a given number of films, a pattern is established” (453).

Then, it becomes a little challenging to analyze an individual film without connecting it to the director’s filmography if we are to use the auteur theory. Thus, the problem starts here, as Pauline Kael brilliantly identifies while discussing how certain directors are regarded as auteurs while others are not: “There is no rule or theory involved in any of this, just simple discrimination; we judge the man from his films and learn to predict a little about his next films, we don’t judge the films from the man” (23). Moreover, both Sarris and Wollen, who is writing 10 years after Sarris, emphasize the importance of the critic in applying auteur theory. That is, the critic finds the pattern going over the director’s filmography. In this sense, auteur theory is not only about “judging the film from the man,” as Kael implicitly puts it, it is also about centering the critic, in a way, as the meaning-maker.

Surely, interpretation and getting at a meaning is what a critic does. And I agree with Wollen in his statement that “to go to the cinema, to read books, or to listen to music is to be a partisan” (470), but I am confused about what kind of partisanship Wollen promotes. As Kael states in discussing Sarris’ phrase of “elan of a soul,” it seems this “partisanship” is more of “a cult of personality” (17) where the critic identifies with the cult which they create. The confrontation scene in Shadow of a Doubt, in this sense, is fitting when it is considered with Kael’s conclusion to her wonderfully acerbic “Circles and Squares:”

“Can we conclude that, in England and the United States, the auteur theory is an attempt by adult males to justify staying inside the small range of experience of their boyhood and adolescence -that period when masculinity looked so great and important but art was something talked about by poseurs and phonies and sensitive-feminine types? And is it perhaps also their way of making a comment on our civilization by the suggestion that trash is the true film art? I ask; I do not know.” (26)

Two shots featuring YC and UC until the bar scene (it is not an exhaustive list, rather a shot or two from each sequence)

Starting at 01:12:05 and running until 01:16:25, the confrontation sequence between YC and UC in the bar is the first time that there is an object separating them when they are the only characters in the same frame. It is also the first time they are positioned across each other after YC confirms her doubts about her uncle. As they confront one another, what they have been suspecting of the other -UC being the wanted criminal and YC knowing the truth about him- turn out to be true.

Beyond its textual importance, however, the scene is significant in the way that the camera identifies with UC: in the medium two shot, the camera follows UC’s movement and stays static when YC moves (notice the slight pan and tilt in the brief periods at 01:12:37 – 39 or 01:13:18 – 20 or 01:14:59 – 01:15:02). It could be argued that this is mostly because YC sits at the table almost motionless, showing her nervousness – so the frame is arranged following the UC’s body movement. However, in the 7-second period between 01:15:13 – 20, as YC stands up and makes a move to leave the bar (for a second the camera is shaky but does not follow YC’s movement), UC tells her to “sit down,” and after she complies with this “order,” the camera waits for UC to lean forward to fully get the YC in the frame.

The camera is shaky for a second, then stays put

Another way the camera identifies with UC is the perspectives. In the close up of YC at 01:13:57, we are seeing her right across, from the perspective of UC. The following close up of UC, however, is from an angle as if it is an over the shoulder shot. Similarly, the detail shot showing the napkin in UC’s hand (01:14:06), is not from the perspective YC looks at him but again from the same angle with UC’s close up.

Close up of YC – 01:13:57

Close up of UC – 01:14:00

The detail shot – 01:14:06

This is the point this sequence is connected to Kael’s questions and the reason we took that detour at the beginning. “You think you know something, don’t you? You think you’re the clever little girl who knows something. There’s so much you don’t know. So much!” says UC to YC, undermining her disillusionment with him. “Do you know the world is a foul sty,” he continues suggesting that YC is just a naïve, weak person to react the way she did upon learning her uncle is a serial killer pursuing wealthy women – as if that is a common thing, who does not have such an uncle? Gendered nature of the “twin characters” is much more emphasized here as UC’s justification for his actions is from a very adolescent place: he does not make a philosophical case for every crime being social, he specifically argues that the world is corrupt and this justifies his crimes. Doing so, he disregards YC’s emotional response to discovering what her uncle was up to. Thus, as Kael comments on the auteur theorists’ obsession with virility as “assurance that he [director] is not trying to express himself in an art form, but treats movie-making as a professional job” (26), UC stays clear of expressing his anger and disappointment and prefers crime as a profession to get back at the world.

Louise Finch, on the other hand, brings another layer to the scene. As the former classmate of YC, she seems to be on the same “dark side” as UC, having seen “the real world” through her job. Whether it is because of her struggle for survival as any other worker, or for completely other reasons, she seems aloof and apathetic. Even when she seems interested in the jewellery, she does not show a sense of excitement. Here, we could refer to Wood’s argument for classical Hollywood cinema promoting capitalist ideology (593) by saying this is the case because of deep awareness of the fact that she will not possess anything such as that ring. Similarly, neither YC nor UC actually own that ring as it was probably stolen from one of UC’s victims. What is critical in this scene is the alignment between Louise Finch and UC in the way they look down on YC. Not only the way the scene is framed but also the way Finch makes an offhand remark about seeing YC in that bar – clearly stating that she does not belong to the “real world.” This is the point of subterfuge, as Finch’s alignment with UC makes it seem like as if the dynamic between UC and YC is not about the gendered nature of the characters.

This recalls another point of criticism Kael brings to Sarris over his praise of Walsh (as “one of the screen’s most virile directors employ[ing] an essentially feminine narrative device to dramatize the emotional vulnerability of his heroes” (454)): “it is amusing that a critic can both support these cliches of the male world and be so happy when they are violated” (13). Thus, Finch’s addition fits into this conflicted perspective of the auteur theorists. Whether one agrees with Kael or Sarris, this sequence accompanies Kael’s criticism nicely as the way the camera moves with UC makes him the dominant character in the scene and promotes his adolescent worldview.

Works Cited

Kael, Pauline. “Circles and Squares .” Film Quarterly (1963): 12-26.

Rohmer, Eric and Claude Chabrol. Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films. n.d.

Sarris, Andrew. “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962.” Film Theory & Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford University Press, n.d. 451-454.

Wollen, Peter. “The Auteur Theory.” Film Theory & Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford University Press, n.d. 455-470.

Wood, Robin. “Ideology, Genre, Auteur.” Film Theory & Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. n.d. 592-601.

The juxtaposition of viewings this week naturally lends itself to a discussion of genre and form in Stagecoach and Deadwood. To hone in on a single piece of that discussion, my scrutiny blog post provides a reading of a sequence in Deadwood 1:5 beginning at 34:20 that has parallels to Nick Browne’s analysis in “The Spectator-In-The-Text.” Browne offers an interpretation here of the crucial table scene at Dry Fork’s station that elucidates the way the “implied spectator[’s]” (132) sympathy for Dallas is built from two competing camera setups: Lucy’s gaze and the representation of her perspective. Similarly, Deadwood 1:5 makes use of Alma’s interiority and perspective to advance the viewer’s regard for Trixie, another sex worker in a western drama who takes care of a child while negotiating tension between classes with an upper-class woman. However, the sympathy built for Trixie in the scene I’m examining differs from the way Browne suggests it’s built for Dallas, most obviously by the more complex portrayal of Trixie’s interiority. I’ll mention the three times we see Trixie, Alma, and the orphan child as a framework for a deeper dive into the mechanics of the middle scene. Overall, I propose that, despite the aforementioned similarities between the situations, the “implied narrator” (26) in Deadwood 1:5 weaves a narrative of sympathy for Trixie based on female agency and the moments of intimacy between Alma and Trixie throughout the episode.

Though I am primarily concerned with the second scene in Alma’s room after Trixie arrives, it’s worthwhile to view this scene in context with the ones before and after because each woman has a distinct character arc in this episode during the course of their time spent with the other. We first see Trixie enter Alma’s room at 27:30, and the close-ups of Alma’s face let us know that she finds Trixie’s presence to be awkward. We linger on Alma’s glaring discomfort when Trixie announces that she is not the disabled woman working at Swearengen’s—meaning that Alma can only assume she must be a prostitute. In fact, the only close-ups in the scene are of Alma’s face, here establishing a camera pattern that privileges her interiority. The shots of Trixie are mostly if not exclusively two-shots (either of medium close-ups or medium shots) with the orphan girl, suggesting that the implied narrator is more interested in how Alma sees the two of them together rather than Trixie’s point of view. This pattern is further developed when, in the shot closest to Trixie at 28:23, we linger on an even closer shot of Alma’s face a beat later as she glances between Trixie and child. In this instant, Alma seems to be trying to understand the beginning of the connection she senses between Trixie and the girl that she had not shared with the child herself. The camera exacerbates the intimacy established by the physical closeness of the women in the darkened bedroom, laying the groundwork even as it cuts away from this trio for when we see them again a few minutes later.

This camera pattern established in the first scene in Alma’s room is interesting because of the deviation from it in the second beginning at 34:20. Where we did not see a shot with only Trixie earlier, in this scene we see several medium close-ups and close-ups of Trixie, allowing the spectator access to the moment Trixie’s intent to give Alma the dope waivers. Trixie asks Alma about her symptoms presumably to give herself an opening, and the viewer can see the insincerity in Trixie’s expression when she asks “Does laudanum help?” Then, in the time between close-ups of Alma as she says first “It used to,” and then “It doesn’t anymore,” the camera presents its first close-up of only Trixie’s profile as she considers Alma’s words. When Trixie turns her head to Alma and asks her if she’s afraid, the viewer can sense the beginning of Trixie’s resolve to help Alma as she then makes herself vulnerable by sharing her own experiences with addiction as shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Screenshot from Deadwood 1:5 (34:56)

Though I will not go so far as to establish a fully fleshed-out theory of whose point of view we are seeing in this scene as Browne did in “The Spectator-in-the-Text,” I do have a couple of observations in a similar vein. The first is that closeups and interiority do not automatically equal point of view, and the focus on Trixie’s profile when she is wavering gives us something different than the gaze at Dallas’ reaction when she is being judged by Lucy shown (see fig 2). With Dallas, Browne suggests that we are looking at her from Lucy’s eyes, and we as the spectator are able to read and sympathize with Dallas’ emotions in a way that Lucy either ignores or does not note. He writes, “Though I share Lucy’s literal geographical position of viewing at this moment in the film, I am not committed to her figurative point of view. I can, in other words, repudiate Lucy’s view of or judgment on Dallas, without negating it as a view, in a way that Dallas herself, captive of the other’s image, cannot” (133). In other words, this gaze for Lucy is one of derision, but what the spectator sees makes them disagree with that assessment.

In a parallel shot of Trixie from the eyes of Alma, there is more going on. The spectator is aware of the elements of the plot and can read into the look the flash of indecision (see fig. 3). Again, the spectator sees more than the upper-class woman whose gaze they are trapped in—it’s similarly true that “our feelings as spectators are not ‘analogous’ to their interests and feelings of the characters” (133) — but that contrast does not necessitate disagreement with Alma’s perspective. Instead, this scene collapses the distance physically and emotionally between the two women (and the spectator) including class difference and their own unique motivations. In this shot/reverse shot conversation, the child is removed from the camera’s view as the point of empathy between women becomes more personal than mutual care of an orphan child. Where Dallas was a victim of the society that excluded her and Browne argues that the audience pitied her for the way the camera framed that exclusion, the camera here seems to highlight Alma’s gradual identification with Trixie as a recovering opiate addict.

Figure 2. Screenshot from Stagecoach (28:33)

Figure 3. Screenshot from Deadwood 1:5 (34:38)

My second observation on camera point of view relates to the full shot (see fig. 4) immediately following Trixie’s lines about being free from opium, and it explores the significance of the distinction between public and private spaces in these competing scenes. The intimate connection between the two women and the viewer is shattered when the camera cuts to the full shot of the three of them, bringing the child back into the scene and providing relief from the intensity for the spectator. Alma mimics that distance on the part of the viewer by looking away from Trixie’s gaze, signaling that she is the one to have created the distance emotionally. Full shots in the Stagecoach table scene, according to Browne, signal the perspective of society, and especially Lucy’s notion of that social order. He writes that the second setup of shots not tied to Lucy’s gaze “shows a field of vision that closely matches Lucy’s conception of her own place in that social world: its framing corresponds to her alliance with the group and to her intention to exclude the outsiders, to deny their claim to recognition” (131). The resulting empathy with Dallas depends on the view of the other people in the room and the performance of class delivered by Lucy.

By contrast, in Alma’s dimly lit bedroom with only a child who cannot even understand the conversation she overhears, the privacy of the moment allows the women to relate to one another in a way they would not be able to had they met in public where Trixie must show allegiance to Swearengen and Alma blames him for the death of her husband. Whose view is it then in the long shot where Alma looks away from Trixie? I might suggest that it belongs to the implied narrator as a neutral perspective with insight into both characters’ thoughts here rather than linked to the dominance of one character. Furthermore, the implied spectator is significant as the only other observer of this intimate exchange before Alma changes the conversation to something less personal. But I think there’s also room to propose a similar argument as Browne by implying that this full shot is still Alma’s perspective, but that the class distinction coded into the relationship between them has a different function here and is not something Alma is outright concerned with perpetuating in this scene.

Figure 4. Screenshot from Deadwood 1:5 (35:01)

Leaving that up for debate, I’ll mention the final scene with these three because it shows the trajectory of the women’s character arcs in this episode as resisting (but not necessarily overcoming) the things that oppress them and points to how those things are tied to gender. At 52:50, Trixie hands Alma a cup of tea with powder from Doc that might help her withdrawal symptoms while the camera makes a note of the marks on Trixie’s neck put there by the abuser she shot in the first episode. It’s no accident that the spectator is reminded of a physical symbol of Trixie’s abuse as she acts to defy Swearengen’s commands. Through the cuts between the close-up of Trixie’s profile, the extreme close-up on the tea, and the zooming out from the tea to a close-up on Alma, we switch focal points. If Trixie’s arc in this episode is her claiming some measure of agency by undermining her pimp, then Alma’s is taking the first steps simultaneously towards accepting Trixie and towards recovery. Alma looks up at Trixie when she accepts the tea, the only time in the episode when Trixie stands over her. Immediately after, Trixie returns to the floor to play with the child; she doesn’t hesitate to position herself on the orphan’s level and beneath Alma’s in this episode, but when Trixie was caring for Alma, exhibiting agency, Alma looks up, signaling that her estimation of Trixie has grown even if she doesn’t fully understand the significance of Trixie’s action the way that the spectator does.

Further discussion on these moments might continue speculation about the point of view of the camera and the position of the spectator. It might also include a comparison of the notion of insider and outsider between Stagecoach and Deadwood. Browne builds a contrast between “Lucy, an insider, a married woman and defender of custom; and Dallas, outsider and prostitute who violates the code of the table” (139). In Deadwood, this structuring of society is more complicated. When Alma’s husband was alive, the couple’s position was of outsiders in the society internal to the town. After his death, Alma, now a much more interesting character (or at least one with more agency now that she makes her own decisions), seems to be more a fabric of the town than she ever was before, even as she tries to untangle herself from it in this episode. Trixie would seem to be an insider in Deadwood due to her proximity to Al Swearengen in a way that Alma never could be, but the abuse and oppression she experiences show that this position as an insider does not offer her any advantages. In any case, the shared genre and story elements between the two narratives contrasted to the extreme distance of time and cultural values in which they were produced offer rich grounds for comparison on the role of the spectator and the construction of empathy for characters.

Works Cited

“The Trial of Jack McCall.” Deadwood Season One: Episode Five. Created by David Milch, performances by Molly Parker and Paula Malcomson, HBO, 2004.

Stagecoach. Directed by John Ford, performances by Louise Platt and Claire Trevor, Walter Wanger, 1939.

Browne, Nick. “The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach.” Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, pp. 125-140.

What would you say is the most prestigious category at the Oscars? I think it’s fair enough to guess that many – though perhaps not a majority – would say it is the Academy Award for Best Director. There seems to be a sort of allure to the director, to understand them as the key driving force behind a film. Thomas Schatz argues that we need to step back from that understanding of filmmaking (at least in the case of classical Hollywood). For Schatz it is not the director who is the driving force behind a film, but an ecological system wrangled (with varying degrees of success and actual control) by production executives. 

A black and white image of the Hollywood sign

Schatz begins his argument by focusing on film criticism from the 60s and 70s. At this time, Schatz argues, the theory of film history was based on a “notion of directorial authorship” which highlighted “author-artists… whose personal style emerged from a certain antagonism to the studio system at large” (524). This action effectively elevated a sole few directors and movies, those which supposedly transcended the system of their creation and rendered invisible both parts of the career of these auteurs and a vast amount of film history. Such a view is quite myopic, Schatz claims, since the authority to produce auteurist films “came only with commercial success and was won by filmmakers who proved not just that they had talent but that they could work profitably within the system” (524). Considering this, Schatz argues we need to take a more ecological look at the system from which these movies emerged to determine who – if anyone – can be pointed to as the creative center of film in this era.

Ultimately, Schatz argues that more than any particular director, writer, actor, or individual movies from the Hollywood system were the result of:

a melding of institutional forces [where] the style of a writer, director, star, – or even a cinematographer, art director, or costume designer – fused with the studio’s production operations and management structure, its resources and talent pool, its narrative traditions and market strategy. And ultimately, any individual’s style was no more than an inflection on an established studio style. (525)

Schatz demonstrates this point – somewhat convincingly – by examining how several studios tended to treat the narrateme of a late night storm, from noirish (Warner Bros.), to glossy and upbeat (MGM), to the macabre (Universal). However, despite films from the Hollywood system but the ecology of each studio’s system and the technological, economic, and cultural matrices in which the studio and film goers lived, one particular role functions as a sort of lynch pin that keeps the whole ecology in balance and functioning.

Darryl Zanuck, a production executive during the classical Hollywood period.

Production executives, Schatz claims, are this lynch pin. He writes:

these men – and they were always men – translated an annual budget… coordinated the operations of the entire planet, conducted contract negotiations, developed stories and scripts, screened ‘dailies’ as pictures were being shot, and supervised editing until a picture was ready for shipment to New York for release. (526)

For Schatz a film emerged from the studio ecology, but like a watering hole in the Savanna, production executives were the crucial element, both that which kept the ecology going and the place the ecology inevitably orbited. But Schatz is careful not to give too much authorial power to the production executive writing that, “isolating the producer or anyone else as artist or visionary gets us nowhere” (526). To punctuate this argument he quotes Bazin in saying “the American cinema is a classical art… so why not then admire in it what is most admirable – i.e, not only the talent of this or that filmmaker, but the genius of the system” (Bazin qtd. in Schatz 526). So, it is not the director, the actor, the writer, or producer who authors a film within the Hollywood system, though the producer has a particularly powerful function as the central nexus of filmic activity. 

I wonder three things. First, did the Hollywood system truely die in the 1950s? Second, considering the power (cultural and economic) possessed by corporations like Disney, Netflix, and HBO are we seeing a reemergence of a studio system similar to the system of classical Hollywood?  And, as a slightly far more reaching question, with the increasing ability of AI to produce startlingly coherent narratives are we moving into a place where authorship is very literally not the possession of any human agent?

In order to set the scene for a discussion regarding the different “spaces” inherent to the world of cinema dictated at least in part by sound, I will focus first on Mary Ann Doane’s writing in “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” and move on to relevant insights from John Belton’s “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound” and Jean-Pierre Geuens’ “Sound.” While moving through the readings for this week, I was fascinated by the authors’ careful dissections of how sound used in cinema creates different “layers” of cinematic space and engagement for the audience. The clearest and most insightful groundwork analysis of this phenomenon is in my opinion Doane’s “The Voice in Cinema,” so that reading will act as the core of my examination.

Textual Analysis:

To discuss the power of sound in cinema, I’ll start with arguments surrounding its birth. Silent film compensated for the lack of sound with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, but suffered from a distinct separation effect on the audience between what they were watching and what they were hearing. There was no opportunity for complete immersion because they were left too aware of their own bodies in the space of the theater, of the heartbeat in their ears and the shuffling and coughing of the audience around them. Some writers, like Jean-Pierre Geuens, claim that cinema lost a part of itself when it moved away from silent film as audio and dialogue became crutches for moving plot along and explaining emotions and interactions, when the exaggerated movements and expressions of the human body were sometimes equally if not more effective. However, the inclusion of sound allowed for something else that visuals alone could not: total immersion of the phantasmatic body.

According to Doane, when it comes to cinema there are three types of space put into play: that of the limitless diegesis found within the film itself, the visible frame acting as a window of sorts into the diegesis space, and the space of the theater or room in which the film is being watched and heard. Sound plays out in these spaces in a different way than the visuals. In the diegesis itself, audio expands the world by giving us context clues and interactions of the off-screen environment; in the camera frame, it connects to the visuals and works to unify the different aspects of the film into a cohesive whole; and in the audience space, it envelopes the viewers and links their sense of hearing directly to the film’s spatial environment. Somewhere between these three spaces, a crucial fourth space is created in the phantasmatic body.

The phantasmatic body is a non-physical body in which the audience can experience the entirety of the film’s world through an immersive space. This body is created through harmony and coherence of the audience’s senses, using visuals and audio in tandem to create a fuller and more organic sensation of being within the film’s world, of believing its authenticity. The visual space of the film seen in the frame can only go so far in convincing an audience of its reality, but it can be artificially expanded to give the illusion of a wider world and a sense of reality through sound. Audio creates this implication through the physical “environment” of the film’s space, carefully using ambient sound and dialogue to give the illusion of atmosphere and a world in the film beyond what we see on camera. Jean-Pierre Geuens explains this well, stating that although we may be visually focused on one area or scene, background sounds “imply an ever-receding landscape of human activity beyond that which is visually available….other sounds, from people and things we do not see, complete the picture so to speak, testifying to the presence of an entire world out there” (205).

Thanks to this “extended film world” stretching beyond the scope of the screen, cinema can take advantage of techniques such as “voice-off” in order to strengthen this sense of imagined environmental space and better guide the narrative. By hearing the voice or movements of a character who is not visible within the frame, we are made aware of another presence in the diegesis of the film, existing in that scene’s same space even if they are not visible. This placement within the film world’s space unconsciously encourages the idea of a singular, coherent and unbroken phantasmic space to the audience, a sort of “blank” that they are encouraged to fill in themselves with the information given, creating a uniquely personal revelation.

Although voice-off works well for expanding the world of the diegesis, it must be employed carefully or risk breaking audience immersion. If this immersion-breaking is done in a purposeful manner, however, it can function as a method for conveying voice outside of the strictly “real” diegesis: a character’s inner thoughts, the voice of a character outside of the visual timeline offering narration, the words of a higher power, and so on. The voice “displays what is inaccessible to the image, what exceeds the visible” (324). The extreme way in which this technique bends the “laws” of film dialogue and diegesis gives these voice-offs a format for speaking directly to the audience without having to filter through a character,

In “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound,” John Belton supports the use of voice-off audio to lend to the diegetic world, pointing out that more often than not the audio will be connected to a sensible source that “explains” its appearance, whether that be seen directly on screen at a later time, explained by character dialogue, or just alluded to through context and audience fill-in. He points out that this phenomenon is another example of the audience interacting with a pocket of non-real space created purely by sound, and that by using imagination to fill in the visual gaps, a “reality of a different order” is created that doesn’t correspond “directly to ‘objective reality’ but rather to a secondary representation of it” (334). Images become credible to their audience through being convincing in their reality; even clearly “unreal” worlds of animation typically follow some laws of physics and humanly recognizable levels of interaction. However, sounds must only be passingly recognizable as the “real” in that they support the visuals and the story without needing such scrutinization for authenticity. Sound strives to give the audience the audio they need to understand the visual and the story, not the audio of our real world.

Belton continues this point by comparing the inherently artificial capabilities of sound to the relatively ”truthful” visuals of the camera, since the camera directly records and reproduces the images set before it faithfully, despite any intentional distortion. Although this is perhaps less true nowadays after CGI has reached the point of indistinguishability from reality, it is significant that sound itself has always been in a “lesser” state of wholeness or authenticity, since the audible elements of a film—dialogue, sound effects, and music—can and often are recorded separately before being edited and mixed together into the overall soundtrack. Jean-Pierre Geuens offers a rebuttal for any that may take offense to this depiction of sound as negative, pointing to the important distinction explained by what Ernst Gombrich said about painting: “What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanisms of certain effects. His is a psychological problem—that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that no one individual shape [on the painting itself] corresponds to what we call ‘reality’”(216). This metaphor is great for describing why “artificial” does not necessarily mean “lesser” and how the purely constructed can evoke incredibly genuine emotions and reactions, just as much so as the “real.”

This play of artificiality and the authentic is present throughout all aspects of cinematic sound use, notably in how creators decide to use sound when deciding between the objectively real or the fictionally exaggerated. Is it better to vary the dialogue volume between a long shot and a close-up as actual sound would, for authenticity, or is the clarity of dialogue worth the disparity between angle changes? The answer, I think, lies in the immersive power of each decision and finding a balance at the highest point of audience acceptance. As Geuens states, “…the creative use of sound effects rests in keeping open a small but definite gap not only between the audio and the images but also between reality and the film” (206).

This same idea is expanded upon by Geuens when he lays out his analysis of how we as humans take in the sound arounds us in our everyday lives, and learn to categorize them into a hierarchy of prioritization and attention depending on our familiarity with said sounds. Cinema uses this fact of human function to mimic reality and create atmosphere but also to emphasize the key audio cues in a film. An example is muting the background sound in Deadwood and focusing entirely on heightened dialogue in order to emphasize that we should be paying attention to the words: a key driving force in understanding the series’ many unfolding plots and interactions. Similarly, M brings attention to important sounds by balancing unnerving silence with sudden, jarring, and attention-grabbing bursts of noise, such as shouts, gongs or car horns. This once again rides the balance of reality and fiction, citing how we filter sound in order to make audio decisions, while utilizing artificiality to emphasize the most important aspects.

A fascinating aspect of sound artificiality pointed out by Geuens is how the music score of a film also affects the phantasmic body of the audience and the space they immerse themselves in. Sometimes the score is a helpful supplement to the tone and events of a film, but despite being entirely artificial, this aspect is powerful enough that all too often it is used as a crutch instead for a weak cinematic setup. If the score goes further than strengthening an already powerful narrative and visual arrangement and instead fills in crucial gaps left in either aspect with an “instructed emotion” for the audience, then the reliance on the score has gone too far. Geuens claims that using the emotional pull of music in such a way is just using it as a “jumping off material for the release of vague emotional sentiments connected to our own experience of [emotion or situation]” (209). In short, he explains that music and sound are often used to take advantage of an audience’s existing emotions due to outside circumstances and use them to cover for the visual and story mistakes in a film, which would be more glaring if the audience was purely focused on visuals. Making sure that a film would hold strong on its own even if the sound and score were taken away is a good method for rooting out core issues and better conveying emotion to the audience in their immersive space.

All of the above analyses make it clear that while the visual is often placed above the audible in terms of cinematic worth, with sound often thought of as an after-thought for an existing image, its worth and impact in narrative cinema is invaluable. Sound is rarely if ever entirely absent, and if it is then it is pointedly and noticeably so in an effort to contrast the tone of the moments when sound is utilized. Hearing is a sense unlike sight in that it can receive information on a much wider plane—from any direction at any time, from within the body or outside of it—and Doane makes an interesting point about its power in a “hallucinatory” sense, in that it may be the most appropriate for creating a new sense of immersive space for those encased within its influence. The third space that Doane earlier mentioned, that of the theater or room around the audience itself, can become transformed into a cocoon of audio from behind and above and to the side, crafting a sort of imaginary space outside of what is the strictly real. Through cohesion between the sound and visuals of the film, such unity grounds the spectator in the world of the film through their phantasmic body, stepping into the illusion and letting their senses accept a fake reality, at least for a while. It’s interesting to think about the commentary regarding mise-en-scene and how through the power of sound in a real space, it can transcend the world of the film itself and touch the physical body of the audience to elevate their reception to another level of depth.

Belton contradicts Doane’s views in this regard, stating that sound is a secondary characteristic of film, and cannot be considered whole or complete on its own. According to him, sound only achieves authenticity when it is successfully paired with visuals that make sense of its presence. He cites dubbing, in which the dialogue does not match up to the visuals of the characters’ mouths, and its negative reception, as an example of sound’s secondary functioning and necessary connection to visuals for audience acceptance. Jean-Pierre Geuens, on the other hand, supports Doane’s claims in saying that sound in film ceased being a mere accessory long ago, and instead has become an equal partner to it. On an intellectual level, I personally see sound as a primary aspect of film on equal footing with visuals, but I do admit that as an animator I think I do have a tendency to award more attention and significance to a film’s visuals over its audio, which I would like to work on amending.

Viewings Analysis:

In regards to the media viewed this week, it’s clear that the audio of both M and Deadwood interacts well with the aforementioned texts, as many of the above discussion points can be found in either viewing. In M, we see this put into action at the very start of the film, when a loud, jarring gong sound is used to signify the beginning of the program and catch our attention in a startling way, boosting the sound of the film to the top of our hierarchical attentions. Immediately following this, we see an example of director Fritz Lang’s audio preference for eerie, unsettling silences interspersed with equally abrupt bursts of noise that demand audience attention, which is used repeatedly to show a clear divide between the fearful silence of death and the loud passion of life.

Another interesting audio aspect that Lang incorporates is that of the voice-off used both in dialogue and sound effects. He utilizes dialogue to narrate over and explain actions, such as when the police chief details his officers’ busy schedule and exhaustion with an almost illustrative montage of the officers playing alongside it. Lang also uses voice-off to lead the camera from one moment or setting into another through cohesive narrative connection, such as Elsie’s mother shouting for her daughter with increasing desperation as we switch visuals through different locations, ending on the ominous shot of the child’s ball bouncing to a stop. In using voice-off in these ways, especially in the 1930s, Lang pushed the boundaries of what film audio did for its story, better immersing the audience in the smooth continuation of the narrative not through objective reality or explanatory audio-visual dialogue, but in truly connecting the visuals to the deeper meanings and themes of what the story is discussing.

Throughout M, it’s clear that Lang put careful thought and significance into his sound design decisions, particularly so because he was so reluctant to include sound at all. He realized he could use sound as an expressive substitute for the exaggerated motions and expressions of the silent film era, distorting the diegetic world and audience’s perception of it through purposeful use of audio cues. A solid example of this is the moment in which we see a beggar cover his ears at the grating, squeaky start-up of a music machine. As soon as he claps his hands over his ears, the music stops and silence sinks in for both him and the audience, further immersing us in the film and putting us into the scene itself in his spot. This moment sets a precedence for a later shot in which the killer tries to plug his own ears to stop the incessant whistling that follows him, only for it to continue and for the audience to realize that the tune is in his mind and not actually present in his environment.

The killer’s signature whistling itself is a prime example of all that sound is narratively capable of. The tune he whistles is in reference to a terrifying and violent scene in another play, so those familiar with that connection will feel uneasy at the implications of its use. Those who aren’t familiar with it quickly learn to associate the upbeat melody with violence and death—it becomes a sort of intrinsic norm or symbol that tells us upon its arrival that an attempt at murder is soon to follow.

Interestingly, the whistling of the murderer and the singing of the children at the very beginning of the film are the only uses of music throughout the entire narrative, linking music as a device to the child murders and a horrifying loss of life. This choice to forego music as a backdrop throughout the film leaves the audience nervously balancing between large chunks of film that are either constant dialogue or total, staticky silence. This use of highly contrasted sound keeps the on-edge atmosphere of the situation at the forefront of the narrative while also making the audience unnervingly aware of the “reality” of the plot, of its base in actual real-world events. Even sound effects are used sparingly, often to emphasize key parts of the story such as pounding footsteps or the heavy panting of the killer hiding away from both the law and the criminal underworld.

The final use of sound I want to discuss regarding M is the ending of the film, in which we see the grieving mothers of the murdered girls crying in court. The mother speaking to the audience says that everyone needs to keep a closer eye on the children, and even before she is finished speaking the screen fades to black. Through this method, Lang disconnects the visuals of the narrative from the audience and returns the viewers to their own bodies, out of the immersive space, just enough to bring that final message out of the world of the film and into reality, asking watchers to take it as a word of advice spoken directly to them from the grieving mothers.

As for the sound design used in Deadwood, I would like to bring attention to the techniques used consistently throughout the series, and how establishing those methods as the baseline created the perfect setup for the contrasting music score present at the end of this week’s episode.

In the very first scene of this week’s episode, we are given a perfect example of the usual Deadwood audio setup: a low hum of background movements and dialogue to set up atmosphere and context, with all of it muted just enough for the dialogue spoken by the focus characters to stand out and be clearly heard and emphasized. In this setup, pertinent sounds in the “foreground” of the bubble of space, where the camera is focused, are also accentuated, such as the sharp clatter of poker chips being dropped onto the table. Sound that is significant or “close” to the camera is always strengthened so we stay in the moment and know what to pay attention to.

Another common audio mechanic used in Deadwood is the previously discussed “off-voice” technique, particularly for sound effects. We see it employed in the aforementioned clatter of poker chips at 01:45, where we know through intrinsic context and the environment that Bill Hickock is playing poker at the saloon table and that he’s throwing down a bet, even if we don’t see the chips themselves. Shortly after, around 3:33, this technique is used again for the loud, rhythmic hammering of Seth building up his shop, wherein we hear the noise before the camera reveals to us where the sound is originating from. This technique is used often throughout the series, either to keep visual attention elsewhere while informing us of a simultaneous action or to lead us into a new moment, such as when Mrs. Garret is off-camera, but we transition into her room through the audio cue of a crash of glass at 17:12, only to see the casualty is her bottle of laudanum.

The audience faces further sound immersion in Deadwood through frequent use of volume adjustment for environmental noise, most obviously in exterior scenes versus interior scenes. When Bill Hickock walks up to Seth hammering away at his shop, we hear dogs barking in the background, crickets chirping, and Bill’s footsteps crunching in the dirt. This atmospheric noise never drowns out the characters’ voices, but it is loud enough to be clearly noticeable. However, when we switch over to the next scene in which Bill returns to his room, the same environmental noise can be heard, now muffled through the walls and windows. This connects the two spaces and tells us that the scene is likely taking place right after the previous one, in terms of time. The shift in volume allows the viewer to sink into a quieter mood for the next scene, and to better focus on the characters’ dialogue and tense tones.

The final portion of Deadwood’s audio that I would like to discuss for this week would be the striking shift into musical score at 53:40. Deadwood is a series driven by its dialogue and atmospheric sound, and aside from the opening title, I honestly can’t recall a time when a music score was brought into the narrative, or at least not one powerful enough for conscious notice. When Bill Hickock is shot at the end of the episode, the ever-present atmospheric sound dies away to be replaced by the intense music score, overpowering dialogue and ambient sound entirely. This is significant, because through audio cue alone we the audience are being told that this is an important turning point in the narrative. It is also an emotional influencer, immersing us this time not in the physical environment of Deadwood, but instead in the inner turmoil, alarm, and grief of Seth, Jane, and the entire town. The music conveys the rising tension, and like a rush of blood pounding in your ears it drowns out everything else until the music is all you hear. The chilling rise of ominous notes feels like a setup for what’s to come next in the story, as we switch visuals between Bill’s bleeding body, the man riding into down with a decapitated Native American head, and the diseased Andy twitching in bed. The music itself is taking over the narrative and saying, “Here’s where fate takes a turn. Here’s where it all begins.”

…Well, that was entirely too lengthy of an analysis! Apologies. I do have a few questions for the class to discuss regarding the use of sound in film and particularly its use in our viewings this week. Namely:

1. Do you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with the readings for this week and their views on how important (or unimportant) sound is to a film? What specific claims or discussions?
2. What do you think of the “phantasmagoric” spaces created through sound in cinema? How crucial are they to the immersive elements and storytelling of films?
3. What do you think are some of the most powerful uses of sound design exhibited in the films/viewings we’ve had so far this semester? Why?

The first scene I would like to examine comes at, 10:30-12:08, right after the murder of Elsie, a man reads-aloud a newspaper article about the serial murders.

In the scene, we are first shown spectators trying to read a billboard with the news on display, but just as we think this conversation is happening in the current scene, we are transported to the next. To realize this was a separate conversation happening between men in a small room, not a crowd outside. What is interesting about this sequence is how sound works as a transition point.

In this moment, it seems that sound is put over the image. Mary Ann Doane’s article, “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space” talks explicitly about the relation between sound, image, and the space they both occupy in film. In her section about ‘voice-off’ she defines the term as: “the voice of a character who is not visible within the frame”, and that in order to promote the homogeneity and unity of the space, the voice is shown “by means of previous shots or other contextual determinants” (321) to be in the space. Showing the reliance on the visual image to provide information to the scene.

In this scene for M, there is a compelling displacement of this theory. Instead of the visible image transitioning the scene, we are first cued by the sound or dialogue we are hearing. At first, it appears the dialogue is coming from the present scene, but with a quick transition we, as the audience, are allowed to know that this (table with the men) is the proper time and place the audio is taking place. Throughout M, I find that sound encourages the stream of narrative being given to the audience verses the use of the image.

Question: Are there other instances in the movie that you find sound taking precedent over image?

The second scene comes from: 1:35:00-1:36:35, where the child murderer has been caught and brought to the council of citizens.

What is profound about this scene is the exclusion of sound (which is an occurrence that happens multiple times in the film), that is suddenly broken with the scream of Peter Lorre. Just like how the previous example establishes space using sound, so does this scene. Using Lorre’s voice, you can hear how it is vibrating through the huge room, even before you get to see the space through the camera.

But why was silence needed? As seen in Jean-Pierre Geuens’s piece in the book, Film Production Theory, without music “one pays much more attention to what we see on the screen, to the sounds we hear, and to the relation between the two tracks. One is also more aware of the shots, of the cuts, of the actors” (210). When there is no background noise in M, we are more intent at looking at the screen in anticipation of what is next. Using the ambient noise to gain the audience’s attention to the image he wants to show. As an example from the scene, witnessing the eerie silence of the council as they all stare the murderer down.

Question: Are there instances in M or other movies (or Deadwood) we have seen that the absence of sound (dialogue, sound effects, or music) is present? What impact does it have on the storytelling or images beings shown?

References:

Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space”

Jean-Pierre Geuens, from Film Production Theory

I would like to call attention to two scenes. The first being at 50:19-51:30, the physical comedown post-Karaoke and the oscillating perspectives of the landscape and the characters’ viewpoints

The second scene is nearing the end around 127:45-128:03 in which Bob Harris (Bill Murray) gazes at Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) ending their conversation and closing the elevator after returning his coat.

My choice for the first scene is largely prompted by the apparent advantages film has to written or static-visual narrative form. The utilization of non-diegetic sound, specifically “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine to eventually fade back into the diegetic sounds of the city and the taxi offer us a degree of involvement in the space which the characters occupy.  However, it’s a liminal phenomena, We, the viewers, are experiencing a gaze of cultural displacement, over-stimulation, and pleasure. Coppola’s choice to use “shoegaze” or “dreampop” here seems to inherently ground the audience through an emphasis via the soundtrack which the diegetic sounds may not have done as strongly. The distorted guitar builds up, the vocals are washed out underneath, it’s hard to focus in on any one thing that is being presented and as such, the phenomena of being taken by the scenery is shared between the characters and us, the spectators. We’re cued by this from what sounds like a radio or an amalgam of diegetic sounds bringing us back in to alter the viewpoint.

Charlotte’s view of Tokyo in the evening fulfills the Fruedian scopophilic  view which Mulvey highlights in a peculiarly multi-faceted way. The viewers gaze switches to Charlotte’s view, allowing the spectator to indulge in the same pleasures of viewing as Charlotte experiences before ultimately bringing us back to the traditional scophophilic view of the woman as the sexualized view, to ultimately alter the angle to Charlotte’s view of a sleeping Bob, an inversion of the traditional male gaze. This is not to say the gaze is intrinsically sexual as Mulvey notes that,  “according to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey, 716). However, the inversion we’re seeing is an alteration to a history of Hollywood’s traditional narrative structure: an autonomy is granted to Charlotte that may not have existed if this film were directed under traditional Hollywood settings.

The second scene nearing the closing of the film is peculiar to me because we view the male gaze traditionally. The spectator watches Charlotte’s rear figure as Bob views that same figure but again in a twist of the take, Charlotte is not powerless to this gaze. Rather, she has the autonomy to end it. Their character relations could have allowed for a myriad of options, several of which may have been more favorable to Bob’s desires—any of which Charlotte staying in the lobby and remaining in his view. However, Charlotte’s autonomy allows her to be the deciding factor in the gaze, granting her a power in a very quotidian task.

Lost in Translation routinely plays jump rope with the lines of the male gaze. This facet of the film is both a strength but seems to highlight some trouble for film. There seems to be an underlying tension between the real and film. Mulvey states “The image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the argument a step further into the structure of representation, adding a further layer demanded by the ideology of the patriarchal order as it is worked out in its favorite cinematic form—illusionistic narrative film.” (Mulvey, 721). Mulvey here highlights the underlying ideology of upholding the patriarchal system which fuels the male gaze in cinema. Mulvey’s claims in that regard are much like Pudovkin’s notion of film as a propaganda tool put into sinister praxis. (Pudovkin, 11). Psychical structures of society exist perversely and propagate through film as propaganda in a sort of feedback loop. We see breaks in this loop in the scenes where the diegesis allows these alternate viewpoints and the very removal of the sexual intimacy of Charlotte and Bob is very significant in this. However, the “real” pops up in the characterization of Charlotte. The film opens and is propped up with a lounging Charlotte, a personal intimacy in undergarments. This is a quotidian affair but the nature of sexualization effectively creates the male gaze despite attempting to offer an honest portrayal of a woman in cinema. Can this tension be undone purely through film alone?

My questions are largely, how important is extra-diegetic sound to a cinematic experience? (Was the soundtrack successful for Lost in Translation?)

Are narrative driven films able to maintain realism while attempting to disrupt norms of the real?

Is film trapped as a simulacrum of the real rather than a tool able to subvert it?

Can film only successfully serve as a tool of propaganda for the dominant class or does it have praxis utility universally?

References:

Mulvey, Laura. “Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism Introductory Readings, by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 711–722.

Pudovkin, Vsevolod. “[On Editing].” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 7–12.

I would like to focus primarily on Christian Metz’s “Identification, Mirror” from The Imaginary Signifier. My decision to address this piece is, in part, due to my partiality towards Metz’s assertion that psychoanalytic theory adds something unique and necessary to the field of film studies but I also felt that this article allowed the most expansive understanding of spectatorship and cinema.

Metz begins by delineating the unique conditions of perception afforded by cinema. He underscores that cinema is more perceptual than many other art forms as it engages both our visual and auditory senses. This sets it apart from architecture, for instance, which relies on the visual, and music which appeals to us through sound. Art forms such as theater and opera, which are similarly audiovisual, are distinct from film because their events occur in real time and space. The spectator shares the room with the performers. Film, on the other hand, creates a disjuncture between the time/space of the events it represents and the time/space of the spectator. All of the perceptions afforded by film—though at once more and less than the other arts—are thus “in a sense ‘false.’ Or rather, the activity of perception which it involves is real (the cinema is not a phantasy), but the perceived is not really the object, it is its shade, its phantom, its double, its replica in a new kind of mirror” (696). This, in Metz’s view, pushes film into the realm of the imaginary.

The remainder of Metz’s piece contends with the limitations and implications of the mirror that cinema provides. The primary difference that Metz asserts between film-as-mirror and the primordial mirror (in which the ego is formed) is that the one thing the screen is unable to reflect is the body of the spectator. It is only because the spectator has already progressed through the mirror stage that they are able to understand the film as mirror despite their absence from the projected image. “But, with what, then, does the spectator identify during the projection of the film?” asks Metz (696).

The answer to this question is split into two parts. The spectator identifies with himself and the spectator identifies with the camera. It is the latter that most interests me but (of course) the former warrants summary. The identification with self rests on the spectator’s position as an all-perceiving subject—“I know that I am perceiving something imaginary…and I know that it is I who am perceiving it” (697). It is in this all-powerful position the spectator necessarily identifies not only with himself but with the camera as well. The “look” of the camera becomes synonymous with that of the spectator. In this looking-perceiving-projecting, a series of duplications occur (the spectator duplicates the movement of the camera, the screen, already a duplicate of the film strip is again represented on the retina of the spectator etc). The mirror of cinema is then not simply a single representation but a “series of mirror-effects, organized in a chain” (699).

The most compelling passages of Metz’s piece, for me, has to do with those moments in which we are forcibly reminded of our identification with the camera. Metz locates these in those shots that do not correspond directly with our expectations of looking, in the uncommon angle or strange framing that jolts the spectator from their position of all-knowing. Metz does not understand these moments as being any more or less representative of the “author’s viewpoint” but instead asserts that they can be productively explored as disruptions in the ease of identification.

I found Lost in Translation to be largely free of jarring shots (other than the fact that they are oftentimes only occupied by a single character). This is not to say, however, that the film is free of disruptions in identification. While Metz, in this section, focuses primarily on the interruption of visual expectations, with Lost in Translation it might be more productive to look towards audio perception. We are not often challenged in our looking at the film but we are certainly denied hearing. The most notable occurrence of this is, of course, in the final moments of the film when Bob whispers something inaudible into Charlotte’s ear. This scene challenges our status as all-knowing spectator and, just as the bizarre angle might, it “reawakens me and (like the cure) teaches me what I already knew” (700). The audio, up until this point, while perhaps sparse, feels largely “unframed” or natural, though of course, it is not. I’d like to think further about the implications of Metz’s argument as they pertain to sound in film, perhaps this is something we can extend as a class.

Moving away from Metz’s article and towards a discussion of spectatorship at large, I want to bring up the questionnaire Prof. O’Sullivan distributed on the first day of class. The sheet ended with a question about the number of screenings each of us had attended in 2020. Personally, I have not been to a movie theater this year (a combination of graduate stipend budgeting and global pandemic). With particular reference to Baudry and Keathley’s respective pieces—which both speak to the theater/auditorium as the space of spectatorship—I am wondering about how other folks have 1) experienced spectatorship differently (or not) this year and 2) feel that the dark space of a theater lends something to the processes of identification that Metz outlines. I guess part of what I am curious about is that, although the mirror of cinema is unable to reflect me as spectator or the space that I occupy, there is something that feels different (maybe more intimate) about watching a film in my own space as opposed to that of a theater. This, ultimately, is a question of mise en scène, I suppose.