Take One (Oct 1976)

they have opened wide an essential enterprise of expectation. It is probably the nature of this enterprise that gives the impression that Image and Influence is all coming attractions. It isn’t really true, though, that Tudor is again sifting bibliographical sands, like he did in Theories of Film. For, while Tudor stays very much in the role of reader-reporter, the circumscribed character of Image and Influence serves a definite heuristic purpose. The basic lesson of this book is that no solid modern work in the sociology of film has been done. Almost all attempts have floundered into ‘media studies” and fallen for its “mass culture” thesis. Which is: whatever the media produce is either soCially predetermined by mass society or is itself a manipulator of that society. Simple. That, says Tudor, is the problem. This simplification is a deformation of the facts that has precluded any real study of the social dynamics of the media. We have to start over. Tudor’s concern, then, is to _ find a more useful theoretical NOW AVAILABLE FOR FALL BOOKINGS THE BRUTALIZATION OF FRANZ BLUM (Hauff) SIEGFRIED & KRIEMHILDE'S REVENGE (Lang) IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (Bel locchio) THE NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS (Abdelsalam) THE LION HAS SEVEN HEADS (Glauber Rocha) BOESMAN AND LENA (Devenish & Fugard) DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES (Osheroff/K1ingman) HENRY MILLER: ASLEEP AND AWAKE (Schiller) model of the complex interaction between film and society. While he offers diverse specific suggestions along the way, for Tudor, the skeleton for a general model lies in the sociology of knowledge. Drawing on Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman (and through them on the tradition of Durkheim and Weber), Tudor describes film culture as a social institution. In arguing that film culture is really a social institution Tudor makes explicit what he has taken from Berger and Luckman — film culture resembles religion. As a medium of communication, film culture creates its own kind of “sacred canopy.” This appropriation of the model of religion is very useful for Tudor because it allows him to emphasize that, as a_ social institution, film competes with other social institutions, including, of course, religion. Tudor takes two chapters — on the Hollywood industry and on film audiences — to show how this competitive character of the cinema is actually constitutative of film culture. In the life of society film not only competes with other social _insti NEW THEATRICAL RELEASES ee NOT A PRETTY PICTURE By Martha Coolidge DISTANCE By Anthony Lover and George Coe lEadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer Directed by Thom Andersen Write for our complete catalogue and ask on your official letterhead to have your name placed on our special list of Canadian film users, bookers and buyers who will be invited to sensational preview screenings of our new releases. QP 367 Queen St. W. Toronto, Ont. M5V 2A4 Tel: (416) 362-7672 tutions in the process of communication. One of the key ways in which film culture is created and develops is through this social competition. This is not only the obvious result of cinema’s commercial character. It is also a Consequence, says Tudor, of the fact that film audiences are actively involved in the web of communications created by competing _institutions. A film is never viewed by uncritical eyes. Rather, a film is seen through the eyes of an audience perpetually judging filmic communication against the other communications generated by all social institutions. This | complicated seems dependable in theory. But, says Tudor, it isn’t very useful unless we can show how the films themselves (in terms of styles, choice of subjects, characterizations, etc.) derive from, and contribute to, the process of social communication. In fact, we could not even say how films are part of film culture unless we can show film structure and style function sociologically. The second half of Image and Influence sets model out to say how we go about showing this. Predictably, it is the work of film critics and film historians that provide Tudors sources for this task. He selects the German silent cinema as an example of a “film movement”. In Tudor’s view, film movements are important because they are distinguished by their appearance during periods of social crisis. Although _ brief, because they posit a “revolutionary” aesthetic, film movements powerfully express the social dynamic which to a large extent generates them. Tudor’s description of the German films works very well and, as he claims, this approach would probably succeed even better with the more amply documented Soviet films of the twenties and Italian neorealism. Tudor then examines the contrasting “film genres.” He sees genres as a permanent, and so “evolving,” set of sub-cultures whose relation to society is abiding and more stable. The genre concept gives Tudor his worst problems because he fails to give a satisfactory explanation for ‘“‘evolu Movies and Methods Edited by Bill Nichols Fifty contributions from some of the most original modern film thinkers, including André Bazin, Andrew Sarris, Susan Sontag, Raymond Durgnat, Pasolini, Eisenstein, Solanas and Gettino, and Truffaut. 672 pages, 30 illustrations, $20.00 Now in paperback— The Parade’s Gone By O Kevin Brownlow “Not since Terry Ramsaye’s memorable A Million and One Nights was ublished back in 1926 ave the colorful early days of the movies . . beenre-createdandfreshly documented with such a ir and fervor. . .. The book is a must for movie buffs” —New York Times 606 pages, 294 illustrations, $9.95 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY 94720