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The Set of Films
Such an enterprise as this is immediately confronted with the problem that has been dubbed the "hermeneutic circle." In order to define a phenomenon, one must delimit a field of data; but a major criterion for delimiting a field of data is the definition of the phenomenon to be investigated. As Lucien Goldmann has suggested, in practice the investigator must break into the circle and work to and fro, so to speak, by successive approximations:
One starts from the hypothesis that one can assemble
a certain number of facts in a structural unity;
tries to establish among these facts a maximum of
comprehensive and explanatory relations, attempting
also to encompass other facts that seem alien to
the structure which is being adduced; thus comes
to the elimination of some of the facts with which one
began, adding others and modifying the initial hypo
thesis; and repeats this procedure in successive appro
ximat ions until one arrives (an ideal more or less
realized in different cases) at a structural hypo
thesis capable of accounting for a perfectly coherent
ensemble of facts. I have used a similar strategy of successive approximations. I have begun with several conventional external criteria for the set of films to be examined. Historical chronology was one such criterion: following standard historical periodization, the study was initially limited to French films made in the silent period. Another external cri
terion was that of authorship. Because of the hypothesized
homogeneity of the movement, films made by people prominent