Man Ray, Observatory Time--the LoversThis week's readings:
1) Keathley, “The Cinephiliac Moment and the Panoramic Gaze” (coursepack)
2) Re-read Keathley's bit on Judy's Lips in "Five Cinephiliac Anecdotes" (earlier in coursepack)
3) Martin's "Delirious Enchantment" (available as a .pdf in the "Contents" area of D2L) is optional reading for this week. We'll refer to it in class, but Keathley's essay is more important for our purposes, as a model of critical method.
Post your responses in the comments field by 8pm Wednesday night, Oct. 17. Don't forget to pose a "research question" about a specific scene for discussion in class.
1) Sum up one (1) key idea of Keathley's essay ("The Cinephiliac Moment").
2) What "counts" as a "cinephiliac moment," and what doesn't? Why and how can a cinephiliac moment be used for serious film analysis?
3) Suggest one scene from Rebel without a Cause for us to look at in class. [NOTE: some of you have been suggesting scenes without doing this next part, but that's not sufficient.] What "research question" would you like to ask about that scene? Explain how and why this author's approach might be helpful or interesting to use when analyzing the scene. Be very specific.
10 comments:
In Christian Keathley’s “The Cinephiliac Moment and the Panoramic Gaze,” the author thoroughly describes the effect that cinephiliac moments have on the audience and how one was to create these moments. By using the five key components that illustrate a cinephiliac moment-ontology, movies as fragments, critical writing, phenomenology, and historiography- one can get a better sense of what really is a cinephiliac moment.
There is no really one decision as to what is or is not a cinephiliac moment is, due to the fact that cinephiliac moments are perceived in different ways by different people. Critic Walter Pater states that a cinephiliac moment is a “profoundly significant and animated instant, a mere gesture, a look, a smile, perhaps—some brief and wholly concrete moment” which can differ from person to person depending on their background and how they may view the gesture, look, etc.
One scene I would love to look at again is the scene in which Jim and Judy are talking at the mansion by themselves. This is known to have been a well known scene with many cinephiliac moments, including Judy’s lips, Jim’s attitude towards Judy, etc. So the question I would like to bring up is why is this scene still considered a cinephiliac moment even today or why is it so important to the overall film besides the fact of Judy becoming closer to Jim, as she starts to view him as a father figure, etc.
In his article “Delirious Enchantment”, Adrian Martin explores the often un-explored nonrepresentational side of cinema – “colour, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, camerawork”. He uses examples, from Almodovar’s “All About My Mother” to Scorsese’s “Age of Innocence” to articulate this often profoundly moving and important part of the movie experience. Perhaps this aspect of cinema has been understudied because of the subjective difficulty in defining the impact or meaning of color or music or rhythm. We can feel the non-representational more easily than we can break down its cause and effect.
One of the most obvious examples of the non-representational from “Rebel Without a Cause” is the use of the color red with Judy and Jim. Her bright red dress and lipstick in the opening scene say many things without explicitly saying them – about sex, primarily, but raw emotion as well. When Jim dons his red coat for the chicken race and runs from the house, the coat almost screams out danger, danger, danger. After the crash, it feels somewhat desaturated and more like the blood of death. Another smaller example is the intense blue color behind Judy when she meets Jim in his red coat after the crash. Intense colors, echoing the intense emotions in the scene.
While I don’t know Martin’s background, he seems to be utilizing the tools of more traditional arts analysis – namely painting – to examine the world of film. Abstract and non-representational art – as well as the works of the Great Masters – can inexpressibly move us in a similar fashion. The blue of Giotto is superiorly similar to the Nicholas Ray’s blue in “Rebel”. Art history, music history, interior design, theater, etc. can all provide enlightening entry points for close film analysis.
One research question we could consider is the use of color in this scene with Judy and Jim and red an blue, although I think a more illustrative research question would to follow the use of intense red throughout the film, perhaps narrowing the question to the coat in particular. Does the color of the red coat change throughout the picture, and what does it represent and evoke for the viewer?
Christian Keathley explores a related non-representational element of film in his article “The Cinephiliac Moment an Panoramic Perception”. He defines the cinephiliac moment as “…a marginal filmic detail exemplifies the most basic of cinephilic experiences… it perfectly characterizes the cinephile’s defining mode of vision: panoramic perception.” Although these details and moments are subjective and personal, they represent something more general – the pleasure generate between the screen and the viewer – a small detail as representative of a viewer’s obsession with the movie projected on the screen.
Similar to Martin, Keathley utilizes the language of art history – especially photography – to help explain his thesis. Just as in a great photograph, people are often drawn to a little detail that exemplifies the overall greatness of a piece. The little details – like Cary Grant’s socks in “North by Northwest” or Dennis Hopper’s striped good-boy shirt in “Rebel Without a Cause.” He also ventures into psychology with a description of fetishism’s role in the cinephiliac moment. Just as Plato fetishizes the red jacket and Martha fetishizes Ethan’s jacket, the cinephiliac fetishizes a detail from a movie as representation of a larger pleasure.
Christina Freiberg
Week Seven Blog
Once again, Keathley returns to discuss the cinephiliac movement, but this time, in relation to the panoramic perception. The title alone describes how the reading is laid out: how a cinephiliac experiences film moments coinciding with a wider screen frame to enhance the audience’s sensual perception. Since cinema relies more on the eyes and ears, the other minor senses, such as touch, taste, and smell, are usually left alone. By heightening a richer visual perception through widescreen or Cinemascope, a degree of synaesthia can be achieved by using one or more of the senses (usually together). Keathley states that by offering a tactile experience, the viewer must organize a set of responses: “recognition of the visual copy and stimulation of sensuous response, as if by physical contact.” (Keathley, 52) What is shown on the screen objectively can effect the viewer subjectively, as if they are experiencing the same thing at the exact time with the character. By almost adopting the same behavioral patterns, Keathley quotes Walter Benjamin, who concludes that there is a connection between the body of the perceiver and the perceived. (52)
Now, the cinephiliac moment is not just a love of a film or what makes it memorable. Also, it is not about visually striking or narratively important parts of the film.(33) It about self-reflexivity, how the images on the screen moves the viewer and thus helping them remember the film subjectively, making an unusual, sensual experience. Keathely describes the cinephiliac moment as something of a fetish by isolating one particular scene, style, object, color, etc.... When this isolation occurs, the viewer develops an obsession: an excessive and almost involuntary fascination. The one moment that stands out in the viewer’s mind is then repeated over and over (either inside the viewer’s mind or re-watching a scene) as if to dissect and understand why it occurs in the film. Finally, Keathley states how cinephiliac moments occur, at first, on a private, subjective level within the viewer. Then, it translates outward towards people who may have or have not developed the same reaction to the same moments within the film.
The scene, that could relate to being a cinephiliac moment, is the chateau. Upon first viewing, the chateau is seen as a hideout, a place for Jim, Judy, and Plato to escape from the real world. It is inside the house that their reality or fantasy can go on without the rest of the world barging in. Then, if one has seen the movie more than once (and studies film), the house starts to become familiar, until it dawns on them: that is the same house in “Sunset Boulevard.” The house could develop into a fetish and an excessive study into why and how Warner’s allowed filming to occur there (Paramount released “Sunset Boulevard”) Then the house can take on many interpretation, let alone an eerie sensual experience as well. For example, in “Sunset Boulevard,” the main character is killed in the pool while the gang uses it as an “in-ground” nursery and later corner Plato into as Buzz’s gang taunts him. Now, the question would be, how do these cinephiliac moments manifest throughout the film? Why do viewer’s tend to side with one style, while someone else finds another moment more captivating? And how does the movie’s back-story reflect the viewer’s observation of the movie?
In The Cinephiliac Moment and Panoramic Perception the author talked about how certain actions or objects in a film can have a profound effect on whoever is watching and can become an even more memorable part of the experience of watching, when you always know that that moment is going to occur and you are going to be connected to it.
I think that a true cinephiliac moment has to be when the person watching notices the art of acting or the art of filmmaking being executed on-screen, and you can only catch it if you are truly invested in watching. Like if you see an actor step into character so much that they have all the mannerisms perfectly tuned and the actors doesn’t even seem to be acting; or, if a filmmaker manages to add a minimal turn or a prop that adds a lot more to the shot, like if a character was talking about how he doesn’t have any family to another character, and the director has a picture of that character with a family on the night stand behind them. Its like you notice something that completely changes the way the scene means to you. These moments can be really interesting views into the people that the actors are, or how the director wants to tell a story.
In Rebel Without A Cause, the scene that I unconsciously analyzed the most was during the opening credits when James is playing with the toy monkey in the street. In my mind, this could definetly be a prop device to show that James connects with this toy that seems to just wind up and hit its cymbals together and it has no control over itself. Since these actions are overshadowed by the credits, it is less apparent than if you just watched it by itself and could warrant a further look.
In “The Cinephiliac Moment and the Panoramic Gaze,” Christian Keathley levels a clear distinction that demarcates the following two reasons: 1) to mark “Cinephilia” as a specifically theoretical approach to analyzing a film; 2) to further work loose such a theory of Cinephilia to locate its place in relation to “fetishism.” To begin, Keathley supplies readers with a lucid example/counterexample to elucidate what it means to experience a moment of Cinephilia. “While I do not want to deny for a second the extraordinary pleasure that filmic moments such as these--[for author Percy Walker, it’s the moment John Wayne kills three men at the conclusion to the film “Stagecoach,” or the way the kitten finds Orson Wells in “The Third Man”]--bring to both the cinephile and the ordinary movie fan, they do not qualify as “cinephiliac moments” as I am using that term because they are precisely designed to be memorable; and they are memorable because they are both visually striking and narratively important (the climax in “Stagecoach,” and important turning point in “The Third Man”) (106).” While I disagree with Keathley’s universal submission that “cinephiliac moments” and those that are visually striking are binary registers, I am in agreement with Keathley’s argument other argument above: that moments of Cinephilia are not bound to narrative by means of either plot or story.
Another central tenant to Keathley’s discussion on Cinephilia is his four-layered thesis on the theory’s genesis which, in part, leans on the ostensibly retrograde theory of Phenomenological film theory. Moreover, the way the spectator looks, and they fetishism within such a look, makes up the final half of Keathley’s study, during which he surmises: “In much time the same way that [a] fetish reanimates repressed materiality, the cinephiliac moment—an excess of exchange between a film’s makers and its viewers—reanimates the repressed materiality of the film’s image” (115). It is thus not judicious to dismiss cinephiliac moments as fetishistic ones with regard to a film’s excess, and it is perhaps more appropriate to understand Cinephilia as an effective means with which excess and be given meaning. The alternative is to risk becoming overly-formalist by apotheosizing a film’s narrative by way of trivializing it imagery—otherwise, what was the point of “looking” in the first place?
The first cinephiliac moment I experienced during "Rebel without a Cause" was the sequence in the police station when Jim is arguing with his father. Lost during this sequence is Jim’s reflection in both the glass to his left and the glass to his right. While Jim’s reflections in both panes of glass are more likely happen-chance than premeditated, they nonetheless exist in the film. These images are excess by definition, but they can nonetheless be assigned meaning and buttress a clearer understanding of Jim at this point of the film. Thus, my research question regarding this scene is: what double, and/or triple articulations exist in these three images of Jim (one real, two reflections?) that help us better understand his misery at this point of the film? Is there a presence of reflection of the real throughout the film that creates meaning in particular ways?
Christian Keathley discusses the private concept of a cinephiliac moment quoting tons of film critics, theorists and philosophers in a thorough explanation of this introspective notion. Through each of these sources Keathley repetitively re-approaches the concept over and over bringing along each time a new dimension of film viewing to question the nature of this phenomena. Keathley explains that while watching any film the viewer sometimes becomes fascinated with marginal filmic details that create a great sensation or fetish that not only attracts the eye but also uniquely stimulates the mind. He cites Lesley Stern identifying this sensation as “a strange and unexpected meeting with yourself.” Keathley then further explains that any moment which is purposefully designed to be visually striking, narratively important or memorable, is not a cinephiliac moment. One of Keathley’s examples of a cinephiliac moment is Cary Grant’s red socks as he dives down in front of the crop-duster in North by Northwest. However Keathley’s sources aren’t all agreeable when he cites David Bordwell’s opinion on the matter in Narration in the Fiction, which describes the source of this fascination as “excess” or “whatever cannot be assigned meaning or relevance in relation to the broadest sense of a film’s narrative.” However if these sensations are possible, and they are possible, then should this concept really be disregarded altogether or wrote off as “excess” during the viewing experience?
In terms of using this concept for “serious” film analysis it, to me, doesn’t apply unless you’re including a personal viewing experience alongside the discussion. Like Keathley explained before, this moment is a private one that pertains only to the specific individual. However, I could see how sharing these cinephiliac moments on an informal level with others could be quite enlightening and worthwhile when considering the affects of the film upon individuals’ senses and psyche.
I’d like to look at the nuances and gestures James Dean makes during the opening shot of the film and his subconscious drunken details/mannerisms throughout the beginning police station sequence. My research question is: Do these seemingly improvised gestures or any other aspect of method acting throughout the scene (or even film) produce valid instances of these cinephiliac moments for anyone in the class other than myself? One of Keathley’s listed examples of a cinephiliac moment actually happened to be body movement. “Beyond performance or even beauty is the sheer pleasure of watching someone, a specific body, moving on screen.”
In the article “The Cinephilliac Moment and Panoramic Perception,” Christian Keathley discuss five, crucial components of cinephillia. The first, ontology, pertains to the concept of metaphysics and a state of being. In association, cinema allows for a creation that is real, but not of this world at the same time since it is being reproduced. Second, “movies as fragments” deals with the idea of space and time and their relation to the viewer’s perception. Keathley describes Jean-Luc-Godard’s take on this when he writes, “these terms-as questions of space (what is shown) and time (for how long)” (Keathley 108). Another concept that is discussed is “critical writing.” This involves the idea of cinephillia as an experience for not one person, but groups of people. This means that a film lover’s relationship to a certain moment in cinema can be shared with many others through criticism. Critical writing allows for the evaluation of an individual’s relationship to cinema, but in reality usually contributes to that as a whole. Fourth, Keathley considers phenomenology to be a key component of cinephillia. He writes, “phenomenology has deeply influenced postwar cinephillic thinking about cinema. Phenomenology has been succeeded by structuralism, and that theory’s vocabulary and concepts dominated serious discussion of film” (Keathley 109). Finally, the concept of historiography is also being linked to cinephillia. This deals with the idea that film can be largely representative of history in that they mark places to begin a history of cinephillia.
Keathley begins the article by explaining the distinction between what qualifies as cinephillia and what doesn’t. He writes, “The cinephilliac moment is ‘not choreographed for you to see’- or rather, if it is, it is not choreographed for the viewer to dwell on excessively” (104). He explains the cinephilliac moment as a moment that evokes specific feelings or thoughts, rather than a moment that is just memorable or significant to the film. Overall, cinephilliac moments can be important for analyzing films because they may make suggestions about the history of film, as well as reminding viewers of where these moments have taken audiences in recent years.
A lot of people have already chosen the scene with Jim and Judy in the mansion, but I’m going to go with the same one. I think it can be used as a cinephilliac moment because it pertains to Keathley’s idea of historiography through film. It may ask questions about what films of the era expressed about teenage relationships, as well as how that concept has evolved through cinema.
In The Cinephiliac Moment, Keathly use a mixture of psychology, history and philosophical discussions to attempt to define a "cinephiliac moment."
In the five components he outlines; Ontology, Fragmentation, Phenomenology, Critical Writing, Historiography; he comes to basically one main point of cinephilia- that the cinephile's experience with film is a personal festishitic moment that could not be planned by the director. It is a moment in film that carries an effect on the cinephile because of a certain connection to film itself, or the nature of photography, or to the phenomenon of the cinematic experience. A cinephiliac moment then carries a connection to the viewer on a level other that the picture at hand, according to their acts and backgrounds as viewers and what they fetishize in the film. The panoramic perception for the cinephile then is a kind of wonder in the excess that speaks to them on a level of film theory fetish. Bazin as cinephile was apt to use moments in film to discuss the nature of photography and the imortality the photographic image imparted.
With Bazin as the example of cinephile, Keathly ends the article with a defining cinephiliac moment, "... it gains extra value for Bazin because of it's physical quality." Indeed, it is Bazin's ontological fascination and fetishism with photography that drives him to his moment. It is that moment when the cinephiliac viewer sees a personal love on the screen in the tiniest of details. It is useful in film analysis when that moment can be used to express a larger theory in a film because of that catalytic phenomenon.
When thinking about Rebel without a cause, and the two Keathly articles, I have to say I am most interested in the hold overs from the surrealist ideas in the script, specifically beginning with the use of lighting and wide angle lenses in the police station. It is so subtle, but very powerful. The specific scene to begin with is Jim in the office with the Officer Ray. At one point, the lighting and the wide angle distortion is so different as to become surreal. The next moment, the lighting is normal. My question then is whether that device continues throughout the film, since it's subtlety is so wonderful . Also, I would be interested in finding other scenes that discarded overt surrealism from the script for the more subtle approaches in the released film.
Keathley's arcticle "The Cinephiliac Moment and Panoramic Perception" is about cinephiliac moments. Basically a cinephiliac moment is something that sticks out to the viewer and is remembered. Some personal examples for me would be in the movie "The Thing" the magizine Windows is reading is Photoplay, and in the movie "Invincible" when he gets tackled his shoulder pads are revealled and they aren't the ones they showed him putting on and they weren't even invented for the time period the movie was showing. It's hard to pin down what causes these moments or say this what has to be for one to occur. Its hard because its soley on the viewer and what they are paying attention to. They can be useful because it can reveal things about the film that prolly weren't intended. It can also enhance the film going experience and make it more personal. Keathley came up with 5 things that she uses to try to define a cinephiliac moment; ontology, movies as fragments, critical writing, phenomenology, and historiography. She uses a lot of examples from other people, and it was hard to understand because I haven't seen most of the films she was using examples from.
The scene I would like to take another look at is the game of chicken. One part of that scene that really stood out to me was when the film all of a sudden was sped up because obviously they couldnt have James Dean jump out of a car if it really was going as fast as it looked. Its also a really complex scene in terms of the relationships with all the characters. Plato is talking to Judy like him and Jim have been best friends forever, and the bully starts to be nice to Jim and its just a really intersting scene to see what the characters are thinking.
Christian Keathley in his article “The Cinephiliac Moment and The Panoramic Gaze” goes into great detail of the “phenomena” known as the cinephilic moment. He borrows and adds to many great quotes and ideas, from many great film studies thinkers, as to how you can understand and dissect the cinephilic moment. Keathley starts of to tell us that the cinephilic moment is not something that is “choreographed for you to see” rather the directorial intent may not have been for the audience member to dwell on that moment or that object. He uses the words fleeting, variable moments, that give us the cue to recall all the moments in our film history, of times where we were fascinated by a certain detail of a film. Throughout the article he continued to come back to an idea of the viewer’s fetishistic response to the film. He quotes Walter Pater in regards to critical analysis of the cinephilic moment. “his [Paters] writings are mostly an account of his experiences of works (or fragments, moments of works) of art. He was more a master of reverie than of description.” This is precisely the way in which I describe the phenomena of the cinephilic moment. It is not something that can be processed down to a mixture of actions and reactions, it is a feeling, fleeted across the screen and we remember it forever. We connect to this feeling or image, in a way that is indescribable at times. This would lead me into the next question “what is a cinephiliac moment?” Are there ones that count and one that doesn’t count? Let’s recall al the way back to David Bordwell in his article “The Viewer’s Activity”, the moments in film that could be considered cinephilic are subjective and are created on a personal level. If a viewer has a moment in a film where they have a connection to it then it is a cinephilic moment for them.
One scene that would be useful to look up in “Rebel without a Cause” is when the three main characters Jim, Judy and Plato are at the abandoned mansion together and they are lying down. Jim has a cigarette and offers it to Plato; all the while they are discussing what it would be like if Jim was Plato’s father. The look that the two men give one another is one of my cinephilic moments. Father figures wouldn’t want their kids to smoke; Plato is in a dream land whereas Jim is in reality. Plato is only a friend.
Post a Comment