Word to Image: Cinema inspired by poems

curated and notes by Konrad Steiner


Cinema is used here in a response to poetry. These tapes and films were chosen out of the American experimental tradition to exemplify various techniques of marrying the two arts. Poetry as the art of utterence and cinema the art of showing, both whole on their own, don't easily make a good couple. But these film and videomakers have taken up the challenge anyway by responding to the spirit and the letter of the poet, creating an original cinematic writing. Cinema and language meet head on, not unified as in conventional film, but remaining distinct and dancing, stepping on toes, wooing each other with the charms of mouth and eye and mind. You'll see images' own syntax shuffled, blended, chafing and dovetailing with language, you'll hear and read poets' work while seeing and hearing filmmakers' work. It's like having two extra senses!

• Peter Herwitz, Songs of Degrees: With a Valentine (the 12 February) As To How Much
  Super 8mm, 5min color/sound on cassette (1990)
• Thad Povey, Under a Broad Gray Sky
  16mm, 5min, color/sound (1995)
• Rick Hancox, Waterworx
  16mm, 6min, color/sound (1986)
• Marcus Nascimento, Video Haikai
  video, 8min
• Nathaniel Dorsky, excerpts from "What Happened to Kerouac?"
  video transfer, 8min

I N T E R M I S S I O N

• Abigail Child, Prefaces
  16mm, 10min, color/sound (1981)
• Henry Hills, Kino Da!
  16mm, 4min, color/sound (1981)
• Martha Colburn, What's On
  16mm, 2min, color sound (1997)
• Jim Flannery, Photoheliograph
  16mm, 12min, color/sound
• Stan Brakhage, First Hymn to the Night -- Novalis
  16mm 3min color/silent (1994)"To write 'purely visual perception' is to write a meaningless phrase. Obviously. Because every time we want to make words do a real job of transference, every time we want to make them express something other han words, they align themselves in such a way as to cancel each other out. This, no doubt, is what gives life so much charm. Because it is by no means a matter of awareness, but of vision, of simply seeing. Simply! And the only field of vision that occasionally allows one merely to see, that doesn't always insist on being misunderstood, that sometimes allows its followers to ignore everything in it that is not appearance, the inner field."
  Samuel Beckett,  Le Monde et le pantalon, [1945]
  

Film Semiotics: A Metalinguistic Analysis

A language, by definition, is a semiotic process through which thought may be conveyed, but a language system (or linguistic system) enables a response to that thought using the degrees and kinds of signs and signifiers produced by the language. Film uses not only words, but also different kinds of shots, angles and speeds; therefore, while the audience can react to a film's semantic intent, that audience cannot address its concerns regarding the film in the same language the film used to convey its argument. For that reason, Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis advance Christian Metz’s argument that while the means by which film expresses itself to its audience constitutes a language, it cannot constitute a linguistic system. Metz argues that

one might call ‘language’…any unity defined in terms of its matter of expression…Literary language, in this sense, is the set of messages whose matter of expression is writing; cinematic language is the set of messages whose matter of expression consists of five tracks or channels: moving photographic image, recorded phonetic sound, recorded noises, recorded musical sound, and writing…Thus cinema is a language in the sense that it is a ‘technico-sensorial unity’ graspable in perceptual experience. (37)

The language of cinema, as a result, cannot be answered by the language of literature because the two systems use different modes of expression. In support of this point, Raymond Bellour argues that film is the "Unattainable Text":

the film-text, unlike the literary text, is not ‘quotable.’ Whereas literature and literary criticism share the same medium – words – film and film analysis do not. While the film medium entails five tracks – image, dialogue, noise, music, written materials – the analysis of the film consists of a single track – words. Critical language is therefore inadequate to its object; the film always escapes the language that attempts to constitute it. (56)

To appropriately respond to a film, consequently, one would have to generate a film of his or her own using the same methods employed by the director in a manner dialogic to the film being addressed, and this is problematic for most of the viewing audience. In spite of our inability to respond to a film in its language through natural means of discourse, understanding the nature of film semiotics makes us critically aware of the language being used, and that results in an enhanced understanding of the way in which film is representative of cultural and counter-cultural values.

The book is divided into five parts, the first of which develops the terminology and history of semiotics in a chapter entitled "The Origins of Semiotics." It begins with an introduction of two seemingly interchangeable terms: semiology and semiotics. The former is defined by Ferdinand de Saussure as:

A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology, I shall call it semiology (from Greek semeion ‘sign’). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. (Course in General Linguistics 4)

The latter is derived from Charles Sanders Pierce, who proffered a similar definition of the term (4). Regardless of this semantic distinction in terminology, Stam et al. explains that the "sign is for Saussure the central fact of language, and the primordial opposition of signifier/signified constitutes the founding principle of structural linguistics" (8). The dichotomy between these two is reconciled in the following formula:

The identity of any linguistic sign is determined by the sum total of paradigmatic [involving choosing] and syntagmatic [involving combining] relations into which it enters with other linguistic signs in the same language system. (9)

The Paradigmatic is defined as "a virtual or ‘vertical’ set of units which have in common the fact that they entertain relations of similarity and contrast," and the Syntagmatic⁴ deals with "the sequential characteristics of speech, their ‘horizontal’ arrangement into a signifying whole" (9). This formula loosely resembles the linguistic system of Tagmemics, wherein diction and syntax are construed in a slot-plus-class (syntagm-plus-paradigm) relationship, which enables them to be better understood in their functional grammatology.

The use that Stam makes of this in its relationship to cinematic forms lies in the concept of translinguistics, which entails a "theory of the role of signs in human life and thought" (13), in that signs have multiple significances depending on the views of conflicting classes. This multi-accentuality⁴ is "the capacity of the sign to elicit variable social tones and ‘evaluations’ as it is deployed within specific social and historical conditions" (13). In contrast to Saussure’s structuralism, Derrida proposed a vision that went beyond it--post-structuralism. This line of thought "demonstrated a thoroughgoing distrust of any centered, totalizing theory, a radical skepticism about the possibility of constructing a metalanguage which might position, stabilize or explain all of the other discourses, since the signs of the metalanguage are themselves subject to slippage and indeterminacy" (23). By entailing "a critique of the concepts of the stable sign, of the unified subject, of identity and of truth" (23), post-structuralism

exists in both continuity and rupture with structuralism. It shares the structuralist premise of the determining, constitutive role of language, and generally continues within the structuralist problematic, especially the assumption that signification is based on difference. At the same time, it rejects structuralism’s ‘dream of scientificity,’ its hopes of stabilizing the play of difference within an all-encompassing master-system. (27)

The Saussure-Derrida disagreement’s significance to film is discussed in the second chapter entitled "Cine-Semiology," in which Christian Metz is introduced by way of transition.

The question which oriented Metz’s early work was whether the cinema was Langue (language system) or Language (language) and his well-known conclusion…was that the cinema was not a language system but that it was a language. (34)

His argument is that "langue is a system of signs intended for two-way communication, while the cinema allows only for deferred communication" (34). In today’s world, however, this assertion will eventually have to be rethought because it does not allow for interactive cinema (like porn chatrooms) or Internet conference calling where role play is being done by either party—either of which can technically be considered film-making, especially if the parts of dialogue and imagery are manipulated to produce a contrived result. Metz further argues that cinema is not a language system because "it lacks the equivalent of the arbitrary linguistic sign," replacing it instead with a ‘motivated’ sign. So, the relationship between signifier and signified differs from literature to film (35). Metz argues against the idea that the camera/cinematic shot is like the word while the sequence is like the sentence. He states as evidence that "(1) shots are infinite in number…(2) shots are the creations of the film-maker…(3) the shot provides an inordinate amount of information…(4) the shot is an actualized unit [meaning that it generates an exact representation of its intended meaning]…(and) (5) shots, unlike words, do not gain meaning by paradigmatic contrast with other shots that might have occurred in the same place on the syntagmatic chain" (35-6). Also, cinema "does not constitute a language widely available as a code" (35), for while all speakers of English can produce English, not all can produce the talent, training and access produced by filmic utterances (35). Again, this would have to be qualified in respect to advances in technology that put Internet cameras on everyone’s desktops or enabled lightweight camcorders to be used in independent film-making efforts like The Blair Witch Project. Stam argues further that language and film are both discursive "through paradigmatic and syntagmatic operations" (37).

Language selects and combines phonemes and morphemes to form sentences; film selects and combines images and sounds to form syntagmas, i.e. units of narrative autonomy in which elements interact semantically. (37)

The idea that there was one grand syntagmatic code, moreover, was refuted by others who argued that he was setting up a system too rigid to be viable. In response, Metz modified his argument to allow room for other cinematic codes. Stam explains that

like any artistic language, the cinema manifests a plurality of codes. In cinema, numerous codes remain constant across all or most films; unlike language, however, film has no ‘master code’ shared by all films. Filmic texts, for Metz, form a structured network produced by the interweaving of specific cinematic codes, i.e. codes that appear only in the cinema, and non-specific codes, i.e. codes shared with languages other than the cinema. (48-9)

The sense Metz makes of these codes, to give meaning to the plot of any given film, is discussed in the third chapter entitled "Film-narratology." Within this chapter, Stam explains the means by which the idea of a lengthy feature film is sold to an audience.

Metz argued that the organization of images into a narrative was one of the most important ways that film was like a language. The Grand Syntagmatic sought to designate and classify the specifically narrative segments of film language, which Metz understood in terms of sequences of shots, called syntagmas. These eight syntagmas [see footnote above], which were distinguished primarily through editing, expressed the spatial temporal and logical connections that form the universe of the fabula. (79)

Implicit in the need for a cohesive plot structure driven by a recognizable and powerful theme lies the necessity for these syntagmas to be sutured, or stitched, together in a way that enhances the flow of the film and generates the realism necessary for the audience to maintain credulity. The way in which those shots are sutured together is another form of communication between the film and its audience, but it is not a dialogue any more than the actors on the screen are influenced by the mood of the spectators sitting in the theater⁵. By choosing how to cut the story the film is trying to relate to the viewer, the director decides how that story is going to speak to the outside world.

That the outside world responds to film in a certain way is predicated upon its having been pre-conditioned through an innate desire to find the self in the gaze of the other. The fourth chapter, entitled "Psychoanalysis," describes one of the aims of psychoanalytic film theory as "a systematic comparison of the cinema as a specific kind of spectacle and the structure of the socially and psychically constituted individual" (123). Stam explains

If psychoanalysis examines the relations of the subject in discourse, then psychoanalytic film theory meant integrating questions of subjectivity into notions of meaning-production. Moreover, it meant that film-viewing and subject-formation were reciprocal processes: something about our unconscious identity as subjects is reinforced in film viewing, and film viewing is effective because of our unconscious participation. Moving from the interpretation of individual films to a systematic comprehension of the cinematic institution itself, some film theorists saw psycho-analysis as a way of accounting for the cinema’s immediate and pervasive social power. For them the cinema ‘reinscribes’ those very deep and globally structuring processes which form the human psyche, and it does so in such a way that we continually yearn to repeat (or re-enact) the experience. (124)

The idea that individuals can be influenced by films that mirror their latent desires within a broad range of their birth culture is interesting in the sense that it defines the culture as the macrocosm of the individual. It further seems to explain the voyeurism and vicarious living undergone by each audience member who sits alone surrounded by a crowd of other people who are alone, too. Theaters, therefore, are not social gathering places in the sense of a community’s coming together to enjoy a shared experience. They are, rather, places in which the lone individual, even if surrounded by his or her friends, can experience nascent predilections and explore formative moments within or outside of the safety of his or her own cultural norms. Spectators are able to do this as individuals either because they have already developed beyond the confines of their own understanding of the world and, therefore, are open to the suggestions of others that lay outside their realms of experience, or because they have yet to grow beyond their earliest attachments and rediscover those within the context of film.

This idea of the self as both a part of culture and as an autonomous unit with a very specific inner sense of identity helps us recognize the effect any given sequence of images may have upon us and distinguish the roles played by those images in relation to dominant cultural values. The book concludes with a chapter entitled "From Realism to Intertextuality," which lists the Comolli and Narboni taxonomy of the possible relations between a film and the dominant ideology of the culture in which the film was made. These include:

1) Dominant films, i.e. those films thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology

2) Resistant films, which attack the dominant ideology on the level both of the signified and of the signifier

3) Formally resistant films, those films which, while not explicitly political, practice formal subversion

4) Content-oriented political films, explicitly political and critical films...whose critique of the ideological system is undermined by the adoption of dominant language and imagery

5) Fissure films, i.e. films which superficially belong to dominant cinema but where an internal criticism opens up a ‘rupture’

6) Live cinema I, i.e. films depicting social events critically but which fail to challenge the cinema’s traditional ideologically conditioned method of depiction

7) Live cinema II, direct cinema films which simultaneously depict contemporary events critically and question traditional representation (196)

In each of these film types, there is a means for the spectator to either identify with or rebel against the image offered. The choice the movie offers is not necessarily compatible with the spectator’s ability to answer back with the language of the ideology, just like there is no possibility of the spectator’s being able to answer back in the language of the cinema. However, the spectator’s reaction to those choices helps that spectator define his or her place in that culture in comparison to or contrast with the values being witnessed. The signs and signifiers of the film media can, therefore, be accessed and responded to even though they engage the audience in a language the audience itself cannot speak.

Works Cited

Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Shakespeare in Translation: Foreign Film Versions of Shakespeare's Plays

Shakespeare is unquestionably one of the most distinguished writers of all time, possibly even the most distinguished.

Since the time when he wrote his plays, however, they have been interpreted in many interesting and unique ways. This is a result of the varied ways in which Shakespeare’s plays resonate with their directors, and each of these directors, despite their differences of interpretation, can justify their interpretations of the text based on what each of them has discovered written between the lines.

The last eighty or so years have seen a new medium for these interpretations, that of film. Since the early days of silent film, directors have sought to interpret the words of Shakespeare into the heavily visual medium of film, with varying success. An additional problem presents itself in the very language, however. What if the director literally does not speak the Bard’s language? How then do the plays of Shakespeare speak to these directors?

A translation, no matter how good, always changes the original in some way. A foreign director also has another problem. The culture of Renaissance England often differs greatly from modern English culture, let alone the modern culture of foreign nations. Thus a foreign film director who wishes to film Shakespeare is presented with a three-fold problem; transferring the dialogue-heavy Shakespearian text into the visually intensive film medium, translating the English text into an accessible form for the foreign audience, and making cultural concessions in order to keep the context of the play understandable to the audience.

I intend to examine these problems in the context of two directors and three plays: Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet (Gamlet, 1964), Akira Kurosawa’s Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood (Kumonoso jô, 1957), and both directors’ adaptations of the play King Lear, Kozintsev’s King Lear (Korol Lir, 1969) and Kurosawa’s Ran (1984). At times these can be extreme examples of the problems in translating Shakespeare, but I often find that extreme examples are often the most informative.

Read more http://www.filmint.nu/?q=node/18

© Copyright Film International 2001-2007. Legally responsible: Pär Linnertz.

Two Takes on "The Postman Always Rings Twice"

According to one critic, there are no fewer than six film versions of James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (Yakir). This 1934 American roman noir was so influential, in fact, that the existentialist author Albert Camus penned his classic L’Etranger after reading Cain’s text. 

The novel tells the story of a drifter who goes to work for the owner of a roadside restaurant and gas-station and his younger and fatally attractive wife. Frank, the drifter, forms an obsessive attachment to this woman, Cora, and the two embark on a torrid affair that results in the murder of Cora’s husband, Nick. When the two are caught and taken to trial, however, they turn on each other, and the story spirals to a climax in which the lovers reap their own self-destruction. 

The novel’s shocking violence and unbridled sexuality has repeatedly caused scandal in its various adaptations to the silver screen. This paper will examine two of these versions, the 1946 film directed by Tay Garnett and starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, a classic film noir that relies heavily upon symbolic imagery to depict sex and violence; and, the 1981 film version adapted by David Mamet, directed by Bob Rafelson, and starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, a “neo-noir” which reflects the relaxation of industry censorship in its graphic depiction of sex and violence. It would not be unusual to assume that the liberalization of Hollywood’s censorship codes would reflect a general liberalization of cultural attitudes, but as the following discussion will show, both film versions work to mediate their particular cultural concerns, and neither can be so easily classified as more liberal or progressive than the other. 

By investigating the filmic representations of concerns over sex and violence, gender roles, and race in these two films, it can be shown that despite a decreased censorship in the more contemporary filmmaking era, there are still many cultural issues and anxieties that are not made explicit but are symbolically present and problematized in the text of these films. Read More...

© Copyright Film International 2001-2007. Legally responsible: Pär Linnertz.

From Short Story to Film to Autobiography: Intermedial Variations in Ingmar Bergman's Writings and Films

[These are excerpts from In the Beginning Was the Word. Ingmar Bergman and His Early Writings (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002), originally published in Film International #1.]

One autumn a few years ago the author of this article was in the process of editing a special issue about Ingmar Bergman for a now-defunct cinematic journal. The idea was to focus on Bergman the author in some sort of interartial or intermedial spirit, and for this purpose we wanted to print his never-produced screenplay “The Fish. Farce for Film” from 1950, written in prose form.

The only thing we now needed was the author’s permission. Thus, a strictly businesslike request for the right to use “The Fish” was sent off. But we did not necessarily expect any answer. I myself had been in personal contact with Ingmar Bergman only once before when, a week after defending my doctoral dissertation about his films ( Plays and Mirrors. A Study in the Cinematic Aesthetics of Ingmar Bergman, 1993), he had completely unexpectedly phoned me up. “Of course Bergman wants to check up on who that person is who has the gall to write a dissertation about his films without contacting him personally,” explained a clear-headed woman friend, at the same time touching on the reason why I had kept my distance: a certain concern about the author’s possible desire to interfere. read more

Selected Bibliography on adaptation

Andrew, D. (1980) ‘The Well-Worn Muse: Adaptation in Film History and Theory’, in S. M. Conger and J. R. Welsch (eds.) Narrative Strategies: Original Essays in Film and Prose Fic­tion. Macomb, Ill.: Western Illinois University Press, 9-17. Repr. in D. Andrew (1984) Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press; in L. Braudy and M. Cohen (eds.) (1999 (1974)) Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Read­ings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 452-60; and in J. Naremore (ed.) (2000) Film Adaptation. London: Athlone, 28-37.

—— (1993) ‘The Unauthorized Auteur Today’, in J. Collins et al. (eds.) Film Theory Goes to the Movies. New York and Lon­don: Routledge, 77-85.

Astruc, A. (1999 (1948)) ‘The Birth of a New Avant Garde: La Caméra-Stylo’, in T. Corrigan, Film and Literature: An Intro­duction and a Reader. Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 158-62.

Barthes, R. (1988 (1968)) ‘The Death of the Author’, in D. Lodge (ed.) Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. London and New York: Longman, 167-72.

Bassnett, S. (2002 (1980)) Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge.

Bazin, A. (1967a (1958)) ‘In Defense of Mixed Cinema’, in H. Grady (ed. and trans.) What is Cinema?, vol. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 53-75.

—— (1967b (1951)) ‘Theater and Cinema’, in H. Grady (ed. and

trans.) What is Cinema?, vol. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 76-124. —— (1981 (1957)) ‘La politique des auteurs’ [extract], in J. Caughie

(ed.) Theories of Authorship. London and New York:

Routledge, 44-6. —— (2000 (1948)) ‘Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest’, in J.

Naremore (ed.) Film Adaptation. London: Athlone, 19-27. Beja, M. (1979) Film and Literature. New York and London: Long­man. Belsey, C. (1980) Critical Practice. London and New York:

Routledge. Benjamin, W. (1968 (1936)) Illuminations. New York: Harcourt,

Brace & World. Bluestone, G. (1957) Novels into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction

into Cinema. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Boyum, J. G. (1985) Double Exposure: Fiction into Film. New York:

Universe Books. Buscombe, E. (1981 (1973)) ‘Ideas of Authorship’, in J. Caughie (ed.)

Theories of Authorship. London and New York: Routledge,

22-34. Cardwell, S. (2002) Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic

Novel. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cartmell, D. (1999) ‘Text to Screen: Introduction’, in D. Cartmell and

I. Whelehan (eds.) Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen

to Text. London and New York: Routledge, 23-8. Cattrysse, P. (1992a) Pour une théorie de l’adaptation filmique: Le film noir Américain. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. —— (1992b) ‘Film (Adaptation) as Translation: Some Methodologi­cal Proposals’, Target: International Journal of Translation

Studies 4 (1), 53-70. Cohen, K. (1979) Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of Exchange. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press. Corrigan, T. (1991) A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture

after Vietnam. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. —— (1999) Film and Literature: An Introduction and a Reader.

Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall. Eisenstein, S. (1999 (1944)) ‘Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today’,

in T. Corrigan Film and Literature: An Introduction and a

Reader. Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 135-47.

Elliott, K. (2003) Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ellis, J. (1982) ‘The Literary Adaptation: An Introduction’, Screen 23 (1), 3-5.

Foucault, M. (1986 (1969)) ‘What is an Author’, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 101-20.

Hodgdon, B. (2002) ‘From the Editor’, Shakespeare Quarterly 53 (2), iii-x.

Jauss, H. R. (1982) Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. T. Bahti. Intr. P. de Man. Brighton: Harvester.

Jameson, F. (1991 (1984)) ‘The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, in F. Jameson Postmodernism, or, the Cultuiral Logic of Late Capitalism. London and New York: Verso, 1-54.

Lehmann, C. (2001) Shakespeare Remains: Theater to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univer­sity Press.

McFarlane, B. (1996) Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon.

Marsden, J. I. (1995) The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adapta­tion, and Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

Naremore, J. (1990) ‘Authorship and the Cultural Politics of Film Criticism’, Film Quarterly 44 (1), 14-22.

—— (2000) ‘Introduction: Film and the Reign of Adaptation’, in J. Naremore (ed.) Film Adaptation. London: Athlone, 1-16.

Orr, C. (1984) ‘The Discourse on Adaptation: A Review’, Wide Angle 6 (2), 72-6.

Ray, R. B. (2000) ‘The Field of “Literature and Film”’, in J. Naremore (ed.) Film Adaptation. London: Athlone, 38-53.

Rothwell, K. S. (2004 (1999)) A History of Shakespeare on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sheen, E. (2000) ‘Introduction’, in R. Giddings and E. Sheen (eds.) The Classic Novel: From Page to Screen. Manchester: Man­chester University Press, 1-13.

Stam, R. (2000) ‘Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation’, in J. Naremore (ed.) Film Adaptation. London: Athlone, 54-76.

—— (2005a) Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell.