Jean Mitry on Film Language
1974; University of Wisconsin Press; Volume: 3; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3684507
ISSN1527-2095
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoBefore linguists turned their attention to film, filmmakers, critics, and enthusiasts-turned-theorists--among them Sergei Eisenstein, Louis Delluc, and Jean Mitry--engaged consciously if sometimes naively in investigation of film as a language. Linguists has since provided a vocabulary and an approach to question of filmic signification, precipitating enormous progress in theory of film and much partisanship. Lines are now clearly drawn between old guard, responsible, in Stephen Heath's words, for the flow of (ideologically complicit)1drivel that currently and massively passes for 'film criticism' and avant-garde or scientists of film theory, semioticians. Jean Mitry's monumental Esthitique et psychologie du cinrma has been called most comprehensive statement by old, and Christian Metz's essay, Le cinema: langue ou langage? first of new.2 Mitry's work is hoped by Metz to be l'aboutissement de toute une epoque de la reflexion sur le cinema3 characterized by works highly intuitive and sometimes insightful on cinema in general. Metz and others would replace film theory in tradition of Eisenstein, Bazin, Balazs and Mitry with specific and scientific investigations of filmic signification. The difference is founded in method and focus. Mitry will explain film; Metz will determine cinetext. But Mitry's specific analysis of process of filmic signification is in large part praised by Metz,4 who accepts much of it as a point of departure for his own work. Indeed, Metz and Mitry occupy central positions on a continuum of claims relating to film and language. On that continuum there are film theorists and linguists who deny film status of language because it is a mere recording device, or because filmic signification fails to conform to patterns of verbal signification. There are those for whom film is aianguagedespite its essentially free and uncodified structurations. There are those who find a certain ele-
Referência(s)