Page 178 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 178
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
lapping; in her case, between film theory and anthropology, which follows
from an encounter between film and so-called primitive culture. There is
no need to go over quite an extensive discussion concerning a comparison
between language and film. The semiotic trend in film theory quite clearly
proved that such a comparison, which gave way to an idea that film could
be treated as a language system or even as a grammar, was quite a bit mis-
guided. However, this does not mean that there is not a very complex struc-
tural relationship between language and film; also, it does not mean that
film could not be analysed as a discourse. Still, there is a comparison be-
tween language and film on the level of their functions as representations.
In elaborating her own consequences from Jean Epstein, Moore asserts that
“film is a more primitive form of language than words” and therefore the
effect of magic is greater in cinema than in naming things with words. This
“primitive language”, prelogical speech, was called “inner speech” by an-
other inventive film maker and theoretician of cinema, Sergey Eisenstein.
Further, we are reminded by Moore of Eisenstein’s liking of James Joyce for
his idea of “inner monologues”. Hence, what Rachel Moore reveals quite
clearly in her reading of filmmakers and writers, is the fact that from the
viewpoint of cinema some functions of language became more obvious.
On the other hand, cinema caused a development of a mode of percep-
tion, which is very well expressed in a quotation from Boris Eikhenbaum,
whom she quoted from Paul Willemen‘s book Looks and Frictions: “The
film spectator must perform a complicated mental task in linking together
the shots (the construction of cine-phrases and cine-periods), a task virtu-
ally absent in everyday usage where the word forms a covering and excludes
other means of expression” (Moore, 2000: p. 31).
Are we not yet again reminded of Bergson‘s and Deleuze‘s conceptual-
isation of the image and its inner movement, which prevents it from being
torn out from the movements that it makes itself a part of. Willemen him-
self then described inner speech as “the discourse that binds the psychoan-
alytic subject and the subject in history, functioning as a locus of conden-
sation” (Ibid.). Whatever relevance the psychoanalytic theory may have in
deciphering what sociologists Thomas Luckman and Peter Berger called
“the social construction of reality”, it is obvious that the age of photogra-
phy and film had a big impact on history as a science and as a collective
memory. Just try to make a parallel between the Willemen’s statements and
with what could be described as an everyday experience of anybody, who
owns a television set. Although history as a science is prevalently written,
176
lapping; in her case, between film theory and anthropology, which follows
from an encounter between film and so-called primitive culture. There is
no need to go over quite an extensive discussion concerning a comparison
between language and film. The semiotic trend in film theory quite clearly
proved that such a comparison, which gave way to an idea that film could
be treated as a language system or even as a grammar, was quite a bit mis-
guided. However, this does not mean that there is not a very complex struc-
tural relationship between language and film; also, it does not mean that
film could not be analysed as a discourse. Still, there is a comparison be-
tween language and film on the level of their functions as representations.
In elaborating her own consequences from Jean Epstein, Moore asserts that
“film is a more primitive form of language than words” and therefore the
effect of magic is greater in cinema than in naming things with words. This
“primitive language”, prelogical speech, was called “inner speech” by an-
other inventive film maker and theoretician of cinema, Sergey Eisenstein.
Further, we are reminded by Moore of Eisenstein’s liking of James Joyce for
his idea of “inner monologues”. Hence, what Rachel Moore reveals quite
clearly in her reading of filmmakers and writers, is the fact that from the
viewpoint of cinema some functions of language became more obvious.
On the other hand, cinema caused a development of a mode of percep-
tion, which is very well expressed in a quotation from Boris Eikhenbaum,
whom she quoted from Paul Willemen‘s book Looks and Frictions: “The
film spectator must perform a complicated mental task in linking together
the shots (the construction of cine-phrases and cine-periods), a task virtu-
ally absent in everyday usage where the word forms a covering and excludes
other means of expression” (Moore, 2000: p. 31).
Are we not yet again reminded of Bergson‘s and Deleuze‘s conceptual-
isation of the image and its inner movement, which prevents it from being
torn out from the movements that it makes itself a part of. Willemen him-
self then described inner speech as “the discourse that binds the psychoan-
alytic subject and the subject in history, functioning as a locus of conden-
sation” (Ibid.). Whatever relevance the psychoanalytic theory may have in
deciphering what sociologists Thomas Luckman and Peter Berger called
“the social construction of reality”, it is obvious that the age of photogra-
phy and film had a big impact on history as a science and as a collective
memory. Just try to make a parallel between the Willemen’s statements and
with what could be described as an everyday experience of anybody, who
owns a television set. Although history as a science is prevalently written,
176
