Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 29, September 2002
Jerome Cornette
Identification of a Journal: _Studies in French Cinema_
Volume 1 Number 1 Bristol: Intellect
Press,
2001 ISSN 1471-5880 64 pp. A new, wonderfully lean film
journal has entered our homes and libraries, which begs the
question: what can or should a film journal be? _Studies in
French Cinema_ is made of a magnificent seven: seven
good-sized articles probe the 'seventh art', while what is
arguably the finest piece of this inaugural issue deals with
Benoit Jacquot's _Septieme ciel_. The journal's very title,
by including the word *cinema*, subtly links the enterprise
to the French tradition of film criticism. [1]
Moreover, the happy choice of a lovely silhouette of a
nineteenth-century travelling peep-show for its cover
illustration evidences that this new journal presents itself
under the best auspices. However, the opening
one-page 'Editorial Comment' is a slightly awkward
manifesto, at once too humble and too ambitious. The
humility resides in the journal's willingness to open itself
up to multiple critical approaches, all the while shying
away from articulating a strong line. Indeed, one is
nonplussed by the editors' contention that 'the journal's
purpose is a sustained investigation into three main areas',
namely 'film history', 'film genre', and 'film technique and
theory' (4). First of all, such division is in itself
questionable: film genre is hardly separable from film
technique, while the relationship between cinema and history
raises pressing theoretical questions. [2] Instead
of elaborating on their selection of these three areas, the
editors merely fill each one of them with the customary
buzzwords, such as 'francophone post-colonial cinema'
(illustrated by an inquiry into Sembene's _La Noire de . .
._) and 'women film-makers' (two articles on Dominique
Cabrera and Agnes Varda). [3] On the other hand, the
ambitious and sweeping 'compass' (4) advocated by the
journal pertains not only to the methods, but also to the
historical coverage, which in this issue ranges from the
aftermath of World War I (Elizabeth Ezra's illuminating
pre-September 11 contribution on 'French Disaster Films of
the 1920s') to the contemporary (Mireille Rosello on Agnes
Varda's 2000 _Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse_). Lastly,
_Studies in French Cinema_ vows to harbour 'both young and
established scholars' (4). One finds oneself somewhat
bewildered by this cornucopia of attentions: it is as if
anything goes! Still, what gives the
journal its overarching unity is its Gallic focus, prompting
the editors to boast, quite correctly, that 'a journal in
English devoted entirely to French cinema' constitutes a
world premiere (4). To borrow a word from the current
American president: swell! The journal's point seems to be
none other than to buttress an already established, albeit
jaded, national tradition. Wouldn't a _Studies in Iranian
Cinema_ or _Taiwanese Cinema_ be timelier? Yet a case can be
made for a journal on French cinema (though the editors of
_Studies in French Cinema_ refrain from any such claim) if
one agrees with Godard in _Histoire(s) du cinema_ that there
is a peculiarly French tradition of art criticism that harks
back to Diderot, and flourished with the advent of moving
pictures, a line of flight by which pass, say, Baudelaire,
Andre Bazin, and Serge Daney. [4] For Godard there
was no separation between writing criticism and making
movies. So the dignity of _Studies in French Cinema_
resides, to a large extent, in its capacity to engage the
best of French theory. That it winds up doing so, perhaps in
spite of itself, is a significant accomplishment. The journal's two
distinguished editors are based in the UK. [5] Phil
Powrie, a French Surrealism scholar, notably of the 'Grand
Jeu' around Rene Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, has
authored two survey books on French cinema from the past two
decades. For her part Susan Hayward, the journal's original
founder, has published a monograph on Luc Besson and a study
of French national cinema, although she is perhaps best
known for her handbook: _Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts_.
Little evidence of any conceptual elaboration is to be found
in the 'Editorial Comment'. One witnesses an odd
schizophrenia. Their books downplay philosophy, whereas the
journal welcomes philosophical investigations. Indeed, after
looking up Hayward's _Key Concepts_ (which, already in its
second edition, has become a standard reference work), I was
baffled not to find any entry on the philosophy of cinema;
nor could I find the name of Gilles Deleuze. How generous to
have opened themselves up to a philosophical investigation
which is not their type, not unlike Swann's Odette. In fact,
perhaps unfairly, they single out the two theoretical pieces
which, they hope, will 'provoke a debate that we can
subsequently pursue in this journal', thus welcoming
'responses to those two pieces in particular' (4).
[6] Indeed, these two pieces stand out, and their
strong theoretical bent, psychoanalytical in one instance
and philosophical in the other, make them of particular
interest to _Film-Philosophy_ readers. T. Jefferson Kline's 'Benoit
Jacquot's _Septieme ciel_: Revisiting the Boundaries Between
Cinema and Hypnosis' pinpoints a 'hermeneutic device' (39)
that illuminates the enigmatic relationship between
Mathilde, a depressed married woman, and an unnamed
Hypnotist, around which Jacquot's movie revolves. Such a
device takes the form of a book, Francois Roustang's
_Qu'est-ce que l'hypnose?_, which Mathilde reads at a moment
of impasse. Kline goes to some length to show how Roustang's
praise of hypnosis, which constitutes a departure from
Orthodox Freudian or, more pointedly, Lacanian theory of the
subject, [7] is played out both within the film's
diegesis (through a scene of hypnosis) and in the
'meta-cinematic elements of the work' (40). Drawing from
Roustang's concept of 'paradoxical waking state', itself
coined by analogy with the notion of 'paradoxical sleep',
Kline works out a deeper analogy between the 'generalised
waking state' of which the induced hypnotic state partakes
and the cinematic screen. The parallelism between the title
of Roustang's essay _What is Hypnosis?_ and the one of
Bazin's seminal volume, _What is Cinema?_, points to an
ontological closeness between cinema and hypnosis. Kline's
inquiry into the 'double questions' raised by Bazin and
Roustang doubles Jacquot's own beautiful 'meditation' (46).
Unfortunately, the parallel with Bazin is not really worked
out. One step in that direction might be, I think, to look
for the Bergsonian elements in Bazin. [8] The foregrounding of
Roustang's book had eluded me when I saw the movie three
years ago, but the discussion of its implications for a
critical reassessment of Jacquot's movie, and, more broadly,
of the Bazinian ontology of cinema, are indeed potentially
productive. Kline's insight that 'like dreams, the
paradoxical waking state's contents are *fictions*, cut off
from all exterior perturbations' (43) will resonate with
many films, notably Jacques Rivette's 1973 _Celine et Julie
vont en bateau_, for Marianne belongs to the same family of
unabated plotters, effectively challenging the boundaries
between the screen and the spectators. In Jonathan
Rosenbaum's eloquent words, 'the screen transforms
itself into a mirror, their laughter and amazement fuse with
ours, and in the netherworld between film and spectator,
dreaming and waking, a collaborative enterprise of creating
spectacle as well as watching it begins to take shape'.
[9] Several passages that Kline
quotes from Roustang come across as uncannily Deleuzian:
Roustang's unconscious 'is really composed of
over-connectedness and multi-connectedness . . . The realm
of our intuitions is immense in comparison with the few
representations that reach our conscious mind' (42). Kline
himself registers a Deleuzian echo by concluding that
Mathilde's 'very status lies somewhere between perception
and representation' (45). For its part, the other
theoretical piece of this premier issue, is, as we shall
see, more explicitly Deleuzian, which brings us to a closer
look at the relationship between film and
philosophy. Jerome Game's essay,
'Cinematic Bodies: The Blind Spot in Contemporary French
Theory on Corporeal Cinema', seems to dialog with Kline's,
which immediately precedes it, by adding to the latter's
twin questions a third ontological interrogation: 'What is a
body in cinema?' (47) However, by scrutinizing the two 1998
essays that hinge around this 'unusual concern in
cinematographic theory' (47), namely, Vincent Amiel's _Le
Corps au cinema: Keaton, Bresson, Cassavetes_ and Nicole
Brenez's _De la figure en general et du corps en
particulier_, Game is less interested in discussing the
validity of their arguments than in unveiling their unstated
philosophical assumptions, though the article begins by
masterfully summarizing the main thesis of each study.
Brenez, in her attempt to 'think a corporeity without
materiality' winds up attacking the classical model of film
as 're-presentation, mimesis' (49) to bring forward the
'concrete sensitive presence' of the medium. For his part,
Amiel's book complements Brenez's interrogation inasmuch as
it focuses on the capacity of the three eponymous film
directors to 'extract the corporeity of an image'. From that
perspective, the cinematic body takes the initiative and
becomes the agent, thus superseding the plot, not unlike
Mathilde's replacing of the analyst-hypnotist with the
screen in _Le Septieme ciel_ (44). To Amiel's autotelic
body, which 'autonomises itself by undoing itself' (49),
Game adds moving examples of his own, like the 'world before
the word' of Catherine Deneuve's solitary rejoining with her
lover at the beginning of Philippe Garrel's 1999 _Le Vent de
la nuit_ (50). The 'pure gesture' of putting her hair up
finds an uncanny echo in the way 'Cassavetes's stories are
supplanted by acts hypostatised in gestures'
(50). Game locates in the
philosophy of Gilles Deleuze the underpinnings of such a
'cinematographic theory of the body' (47). He convincingly
reassesses Amiel and Brenez's contribution in light of 'pure
immanence' (51) and its corollary shattering of the
traditional subject, as undertaken by Deleuze and Guattari
in the two volumes of _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_.
Indeed, in Brenez's book, the figure 'inhabits its body
while remaining autonomous' by 'always escaping
territorialisation' (48). Yet another Deleuzian concept. One
could multiply the examples. In the end, Game rules that
there is in these two books 'a philosophical radicality
which seems to elude its own authors' (52). It is especially
interesting that Game moves forward and urges us not to
limit ourselves to Deleuze's _Cinema_ by arguing that the
most productive concepts are to be extracted 'also -- and
foremost -- [from] _Anti-Oedipus_ (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1985), _A Thousand Trails_ (Deleuze and Guattari,
1987), _The Fold_ (Deleuze, 1993), and _Foucault_ (Deleuze,
1988)' (52). One can only marvel at
Game's forceful and brilliant injunction. Yet, it makes me
feel uneasy. Elie During, whom Game quotes, raises the
problem of the use of Deleuzian concepts after Deleuze,
[10] and one could raise the same problem for film
studies. Game should take During at his word and embark on a
genuine 'constructivism' (51), whereas he does not really
take off, in this piece at least, from a seemingly
hermeneutic undertaking. Keeping up with the Deleuzian
legacy would entail creating new concepts, or at least
assessing the use of Deleuzian concepts, instead of merely
producing a Deleuzian watchword. Uncovering the blind spot
of the theory of cinematic bodies risks blinding oneself to
the double bind entailed by the application of philosophical
concepts to artistic realms. Like Mathilde in Jacquot's
movie, our task is not to remain the receptacles of these
hypnotizing theoretical objects, but rather to manufacture
them as the end products of our reading. Yet, Game's joyful
assessment, bringing together the love for cinema and the
love for philosophy, cannot help but point us toward that
direction, so that the exhilarating coda of his article
would also, to some extent, apply to himself: 'film studies
-- and all the more when their goal is to assess the status
of filmic corporeity -- are at the very core of postmodern
theory, even if they do not always know it' (53). A
marvellous recent anthology, _The Brain Is the Screen:
Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema_, together with the
chapter on Deleuze and classicism in Jacques Ranciere's just
released _Fable cinematographique_, move toward an
assessment of the productivity of Deleuzian concepts for
film studies. [11] Game probably had not had a
chance to look at _The Brain Is the Screen_ when he wrote
his piece. In any case, it provides a fitting springboard
for any future investigations. No piece in the anthology
focuses on the body -- though its editor, Gregory Flaxman,
offers some interesting views on the body as image
[12] -- which makes Game's contribution all the more
precious. Beyond its commendable
precision, steeped more often than not in rigorous formal
analysis -- for instance, the use of black and white in
Sembene's movie (20) -- this first issue of _Studies in
French Cinema_ displays magnanimity in its kaleidoscopic
vision and hospitability to fresh voices. This somewhat
redeems the absence of a strong agenda. What lies ahead is
mainly the problem of realizing an unscripted potential. The
journal's theoretical investigations will be challenged to
keep up with the flurry of activities that have stemmed from
the journal's inception. [13] The task will be to
multiply intersections between film and philosophy. Deleuze
once stressed that 'cinema not only puts movement in the
image, it also puts movement in the mind. Spiritual life
*is* the movement of the mind. One naturally goes from
philosophy to cinema, but also from cinema to philosophy'.
[14] In the same spirit, Game's piece generously
identifies a maxim at the core of Brenez's book: 'an
interesting film is a film that makes us think, that
unsettles us, that puzzles us' (48). Providing that _Studies
in French Cinema_ cultivates that self-critical quality, it
promises to leave its mark. Columbia
University, New
York, USA Footnotes 1. A cursory library search
indicates that only a few serials published in English use
'cinema' as part of their title, a number of which cover
non-Western national cinemas (e.g. Indian Cinema, Korean
Cinema). _British Cinema Studies_ was defunct in 1967, so
the only other current academic publication would be the
American _Cinema Journal_ (Austin, Texas). Of the 237
English language periodicals dealing with the moving image,
the majority include 'film' in their title, whereas
virtually all French periodicals include 'cinema' in their
title, with the notable exception of _Positif_. 2. In this respect, see
first and foremost Jacques Ranciere's two books on cinema:
_Arret sur histoire_, edited with Jean-Louis Comolli (Paris:
BPI/Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1997), and _La Fable
cinematographique_ (Paris: Seuil, 2001). 3. The journal's
intermittent feminism is best played out in Agnes
Calatayud's mutual problematisation of gender and genre in
the films of Dominique Cabrera. Moreover, it is noteworthy
that four contributors out of seven are women, a distinctive
and welcome feminisation of film studies. 4. See the conversation
between Godard and Daney at the beginning of part 2a of
_Histoire(s) du cinema_. 5. _Studies in French
Cinema_ was incepted in the UK and its context is primarily
British. Yet two of this issue's contributors belong to the
American academy, while French institutions are represented
via Editorial Board and Advisory Board members. This
constitutes a nice triangulation, though one hopes
contributors from other areas will also feel welcome in the
future. 6. Special attention is also
given by the editors to the potentially incendiary impact of
the volume's final piece, Nicholas Harrisson's, which
challenges the politics of Truffaut's pastoral utopia in
_Fahrenheit 451_, sharply concluding that 'in important
respects, the bookpeople finally resemble censors as much as
the victims of censorship' (60). 7. Kline shrewdly
contextualises the longstanding anti-Lacanian stance of
Roustang against the backdrop of Jacquot's own television
documentary on Lacan, entitled _Television_ (see
39-40). 8. A useful point of
departure to do so could be Bazin's own review of Clouzot's
_Le Mystere Picasso_, which he labelled a 'Bergsonian
movie'. 9. Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Work
and Play in the House of Fiction: On Jacques Rivette', in
_Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism_ (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p.
150. 10. See Elie During,
'Deleuze, et apres?', _Critique_, no. 623, April 1999, pp.
291-310. 11. I also touch upon this
problem in my article, 'Raoul Ruiz: une pensee-cinema de
Proust', _Critique_, no. 646, March 2001, pp.
197-208. 12. See Gregory Flaxman,
'Cinema Year Zero', in Flaxman, ed., _The Brain Is the
Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema_ (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 94-95. 13. Indeed, the journal
dovetails with an association which is poised to organize
annual conferences: the first of these was held last March,
while the 2002 symposium will focus on the under-scrutinized
French cinema of the 70s. In addition, a new series of
anthologies entitled 'Studies in French Cinema' is in the
works. Updates on the association's projects can be found on
its Web site: <http://www.ncl.ac.uk/crif/sfc/default.htm>. 14. Deleuze, 'The Brain Is
the Screen', in Flaxman, ed., _The Brain Is the Screen_, p.
366. Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Jerome Cornette,
'Identification of a Journal: _Studies in French Cinema_',
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 29, September 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n29cornette>.
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