Steve’s Stuff

With the age of the digital upon us, Mulvey takes the opportunity to revisit some previous critiques of cinema concerning the relationship between still photography and film as well as the presence of still images within a film (or motion picture). This topic is worth reassessing because digital media technology allows the spectator a greater degree of control over issues of playback including stopping the film, pausing the film, rewinding and re-watching, and other such techniques. Barthes’ book, Camera Ludica, is critical of the cinema because its images are less focused on one specific moment in time, one specific composition of subjects; and therefore the images don’t have the strong indexical moment of still photography. She wonders if this relatively new ability of the spectator to view motion pictures in various temporalities will reveal any changes since Barthes’ time.

To begin, I feel that Barthes’ critique of the cinematic image may be biased due to his long-standing love of photography. Barthes knows photography, but does he know cinema in the way that he knows photography? Surely many stills from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary are nearly as effective as the expressionist paints that inspired its distinctive mise-en-scene. Similarly, Carl Th. Dreyer’s absolute mastery of mise-en-scene produces still images that communicate volumes as in The Passion of Joan of Arc or Ordet. His points on the indexical moment are well taken, but I wonder how different the indexical moment of a photographed dancer is from a still image taken from a film of the same dancer.

Although I know that the artist’s intentions are different between still photography and film, I believe that the masters of mise-en-scene always produce images that can function both in motion and still. Furthermore, I believe films, when viewed as still images have another important difference from photography: by looking at subsequent stills, we can see “what happens next”. A great mystery of photographs, especially portraits, is the conditions surrounding their production (e.g. why the Mona Lisa is smiling, what was the morbidly obese transsexual doing prior to his/her arrest when Weegee captured the image on film?). Film can provide a still image, but it can also provide a context, should we choose to be interested. Photographs of figures in motion are interesting in the fact that we can stop time and study them at our leisure, but they’re also limited in the fact that we don’t know what happens after Lois Greenfield’s dancers land, or if they land at all. I should note that this applies strictly to directors who use mise-en-scene effectively. There are plenty of films with a sort of “practical” mise-en-scene where the camera is simply there to record the action without much regard to framing, staging, sets, blocking, and the like.

Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles provides a particularly interesting case. The lack of activity in the frame allows us time to explore the image much in the way we would a still photograph. As we watch Jeanne for over four hours pealing potatoes, cleaning the house, or washing every single dish from supper, we have plenty of time to analyze minute details with only slight variations. Akerman’s film, or in a similar manner, De Sica’s Umberto D, functions almost as photographic portraits—the lack of onscreen activity gives the viewer time to examine the image in detail while the creative mise-en-scene and depth of character gives the viewer something worth looking at.

Mulvey brings up the issue of narrative linearity because narrative films have a certain forward momentum. Bellour makes an interesting point about the manner in which a still photograph within a film can “stop” the forward momentum of the film itself. Though thought provoking, I feel this is a bit short sighted. When we look at a photograph in real life, we don’t have a sense that time has stopped because we are in the act of looking, analyzing, and thinking. When we are presented with a still photograph in a film, we’re still looking, analyzing, and thinking, but there is an additional layer of complexity that Bellour seems content to ignore: namely, the act of looking through another’s eyes. Say there is a photograph of a clown in a film. We’re seeing the clown ourselves, but we’re also seeing the clown through the eyes of a diegetic character whose father was killed by a clown last year. We’re wondering how the character sees it and how they feel. The use of a POV shot requires us to search for clues to answer this: does the character stare for a long duration, is it a quick glance, does the camera move up and down the image as if to suggest the character is searching for something? Because of this, I don’t think a still photograph within a film necessarily has the halting, jarring effect that Bellour claims. Additionally, there is the popular “Ken Burnes Effect” that attempts to show still photographs in artificial motion. Would Bellour also feel this technique is a “jarring” sensation to the spectator?

Finally, to address Mulvey’s idea of the pensive spectator, I agree to the point that digital technology allows the curious cinephile new ways to view experience film, but to use such a loaded word as “fetishistic”, seems unnecessary. Her description of the “fetishistic” spectator seems, to me at least, in line with the work of a film scholar or a connoisseur. Then again, perhaps Roger Ebert’s famous frame-by-frame analyses at the University of Colorado are not entirely for the benefit of the students!