Take One (Jan 1978)

EE OO LET BOOKS ee ee ings, culture and society, form and function, design and purpose, sex and violence, syntagmas and paradigms, image and event, realism and expressionism, language and phenomenology..... The few shortcomings of the book I have mentioned are more distractions than detractions. My only serious criticism is that, with the exception of the discussions of Godard, the main emphasis of the book is narrative fiction film. Documentary, experimental film, personal and political cinema are mentioned, but are rot given the same attention and importance as are the more commercial aspects of the medium. Despite these shortcomings, How to Read a Film is an invaluable aid to the study of film. It would not surprise me if it became a classic. John Stuart Katz John Stuart Katz is Chairman of the Film Department at York University in Toronto. His published works include Perspective on the Study of Film [1971] and A Curriculum in Film [1972]. a Authorship and Narrative in the Cinema by William Luhr and Peter Lehman. Putnam. 1977. 320 pp. $10.50 and $4.95. (In Canada: Longman) The World in a Frame by Leo Braudy. Anchor Books. 1976. 274 pp. $4.50. (In Canada: $9.95 cloth) How to Read a Film by James Monaco. Oxford. 1977. 502 pp. $17.25 and $6.95. Every spring and. summer, teachers of introductory courses in film engage in their favourite futility rite: the search, for the definitive manual for students. Such a manual must try to join irreconcilable opposites: scholarly erudition and exciting reading, a solid base in theory and a primary concern for chronology and fact, depth of understanding and breadth of view, a clearly-defined thesis and an openended demonstration allowing a place for the student’s creativity, and so on. Needless to say, the rite is never exhausted, since this is a field in which methods of analysis are varied and inherently speculative, and in which pedagogical problems are poorly understood and rarely debated to good effect. Three new texts have been launched into this unstable market over the past year. Each presents its own view of the discipline, each its own historiographic model, each its own strategies for film analysis, and each its own epistemology. Each will serve the teacher and student of film in different. ways. None, of course, is perfect. The Luhr-Lehman and Braudy texts both view as the proper object of study the dramatic feature of commercial cinema. Each accepts the principle of directorial 44 authorship without elevating auteurism to the point where the primacy of the individual film (as text) is submerged. Monaco sees the medium itself in all its forms, all its relations, all its contexts as the proper object of study. His text offers students the fullest appreciation of the present state of film studies through a protracted discussion of the analytical methods proposed by semiology, and an overview of film history and film theory. Braudy’s text, on the other hand, redefines the domain of film studies by proposing its own models and dismissing the more systematic schools of film study as unnecessarily restrictive, saying that they narrow the field of study too stringently (the modernist aesthetic), develop hermetic systems and esoteric terminologies (semiology) or elevate a taxonomy to a sole criterion of value (the worst excesses of auteurism). The Luhr-Lehman text, sad to say, completely neglects the tradition of film scholarship for the domain of popular film journalism. Each text offers an approach which overtly or covertly discloses an attitude to film history. The Monaco text includes a section on the Shape of Film History and is the only one to offer a view of critical alternatives—the economic history, the political’and the aesthetic—but does not suggest a methodology by which these could be linked. It proposes a compattmentalized series of oppositions corresponding to different periods in the development of the cinema (Lumiere vs. Méliés for the primitives, realism vs. expressionism for the silent feature, genre vs. auteur for Hollywood in the thirties, etc.) which unfortunately omits as much as it includes; for instance, the growth of the pictorial emphasis in the early silent period or the challenge to traditional dramatic notions of plot in Europe in the later silent period. Braudy’s téxt offers am overall scheme. of oppositions founded on the essential distinction between the open film and the closed film. The open film uses frame (in both literal and metaphorical senses) as a window opening onto a broader world, while the closed film uses it as enclosure, limiting and defining its world by what is captured therein. This dichotomy is extended to film director, types of narrative, handling of genres, visual style, the direction of actors, and so on. In place of the hoary chestnut of the Lumiére-Méliés dichotomy, Braudy proposes Renoir and Lang, the former as the exponent of the open film, the latter of the closed film. Braudy’s notion of film history is one which progressively conforms to the model of criticism he proposes: a move away from the narrow, the restrictive and the systematic to the liberal humanist ideal of unpredictable individualism. Luhr and Lehman do not propose a historical model. Instead, they see the body of film production as discontinuous. Films or artists of value are those which transcend the restrictions of gente or narrative in the exercise of a coherent formal aesthetic, preferably complex and requiring rigorous analysis to become apparent. The interest and value of any film or oeuvre lies in the degree to which it escapes its historical moment. Such an approach will appeal to teachers who wish to avoid film history in favour of formal analysis in the initial stages. The programme for film analysis is handled very differently from text to text. Luhr and Lehman’s approach extends to film the tools of practical criticism or explication de texte derived from the prevailing academic models of literary criticism and adapted to the formal demands of the film medium. They assert the primacy of the medium over narrative and of the individual film within an author’s oeuvre, useful reminders to students who wish to proceed from the known and the specific to the unknown and the general. However, the method also has its dangers: the lack of a historical dimension in the study of style and convention can obscure the distinction between the stylistically significant and the recourse to established convention. Braudy’s method, while insisting on the importance of parallelism and _ polarities within the work, is altogether more committed to intertextuality. His approach is overtly eclectic and thus far more individualistic and less systematic. His discussion of works always takes into consideration the broad conventional framework in which they are operating. The disadvantage of such a method is that it places a high premium on the individual’s sensibility. Monaco’s text offers an account of the semiological approach to film. It is as lucid and thorough a précis as one can imagine in a book destined for students unfamiliar with the approach. But the teacher may find that this approach becomes too concerned with the perfection of its own system, so that an incautious student may lose sight of the primary object, the film. Ultimately, the test of the usefulness of such manuals lies in the epistemology they suggest. The value of the Luhr-Lehman text is its practical demonstration of protracted analysis of specific films. It teaches by example in a way that can be quickly learned. Its drawbacks are its lack of historical perspective and its desire to win battles that are no longer relevant to film scholarship. Braudy's book offers the encompassing pattern (open-closed) as a model—which requires considerable sophistication on the part of both student and teacher if it is to be harnessed or challenged. Monaco adopts the encyclopedic and pluralistic approach, allowing ample scope for. selection and reference by student and teacher alike. Where Braudy seeks synthesis in a speculative manner, Monaco offers