Introduction
Quoted from a text1. A collective text by the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma, “John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln,” originally published in Cahiers du Cinéma, No. 223, (August 1970), 29-47; also translated into English by Helene Lackner and Diana Matias and published in Screen, Vol. XIII, No. 3 (Autumn 1972), 5-44.
2. Charles Eckert, “The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner’s A Marked Woman,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Winter 1973־ .10-24 ,(74
3. Louis Althusser, Pour Marx (Paris: Maspero, Collection: “Théorie,” 1969).
Louis Althusser, Lire le Capital (in English), 2 vols. (Paris: Maspero, 1965 and rev. in 1969).
Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
Louis Althusser, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
Louis Althusser, “Lenin and Philosophy” and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1971).
4. Julia Kristeva, “Cinéma: Pratique analytique, pratique révolutionnaire,” in Cinéthique, No. 9/10, p. 73, trans. James MacBean.
1. Politics and Poetry in Two or Three Things I Know About Her and La Chinoise
5. Cahiers du Cinéma, No. 194 (October 1967), 13-26, 66-70; also translated into English by D.C.D. and published in Film Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 2 (Winter 1968-69), 20-35.
2. Politics, Poetry, and the Language of Signs in Made in USA
6. Ibid., 32 (English translation).
7. Ibid.
3. Weekend, or The Self-Critical Cinema of Cruelty
8. Theodore Η. Gaster, Thespis (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1966).
4. Le Gai Savoir: Critique Plus Auto-Critique du Critique
9. Quoted from Jonathan Cott’s interview with Godard, published in Rolling Stone, No. 35 (June 14, 1969), 20-22.
10. Mao Tse-tung, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art,” from Mao Tse-tung on Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Language Press), p. 30.
5. One Plus One, or The Praxis of History
11. Quoted from Jonathan Cott’s interview with Godard, published in Rolling Stone, No. 35 (June 14, 1969), 21.
6. “See You at Mao”: Godard’s Revolutionary British Sounds
12. Louis Althusser, “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’état,” La Pensée, No. 151 (June 1970), 3-38; also translated into English by Ben Brewster and published in Althusser, “Lenin and Philosophy.”
13. Quoted from a text called “Premiers ‘sons anglais’ ” (signed “on behalf of the Dziga Vertov Group: Jean-Luc Godard”) published in Cinéthique (Paris), No. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1969), 14. (English translations of this and other Godard texts are available by writing to Kinopraxis, 2533 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California.)
14. Translated by Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
15. See Gérard Gozlan’s critical reading of Bazin in Positif, nos. 46 and 47 (June and July, 1962).
16. The same conclusion is reached—specifically in regard to the way literature is studied (and taught) in America— by Frederick Crews. See his article “Do Literary Studies Have an Ideology?” in PMLA, Vol. 85, No. 3 (May 1970), 423-28.
7. Godard and Rocha at the Crossroads of Wind from the East
17. Glauber Rocha, “The Latest Godard Scandal,” Manchete (Rio de Janeiro), No. 928 (January 31, 1970), 52-53.
18. Bazin, What Is Cinema?, pp. 41-52.
19. See “Summary of the Forum on the Work in Literature and Art in the Armed Forces with which Lin Piao Entrusted Comrade Kiang Tsing” (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1968).
20. Quoted from “The Way to Make a Future: A Conversation with Glauber Rocha,” by Gordon Hitchens, Film Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Fall 1970), 28.
21. Lenin, Que faire? (What Is to Be Done?) (Paris: Éditions Sociales, p. 50). (All translations from the French edition are by James MacBean. )
22. Ibid., p. 52.
23. Ibid., p. 55.
24. Ibid., pp. 70-71.
8. Godard/Gorin/The Dziga Vertov Group: Film and Dialectics in Pravda, Struggle in Italy, and Vladimir and Rosa
25. Al Fatah was one of the first organizations to understand the Palestinian question as more than an Arab-Israeli confrontation and to concentrate on the urgent need for radical social and political change in the Arab countries, particularly in Jordan. Since the guerillas’ military setback in Jordan in 1971, the Fatah movement has gradually emerged as the official spokesman for the Palestinian cause. Al Fatah’s generally disapproving attitude toward airplane hijackings and other acts of publicity-oriented terrorism—such as the “Black September” group’s murderous raid on the Israeli Olympic team at Munich—has earned the movement some international respect. (It is argued in some quarters, however, that Al Fatah has secretly supported such terrorism all along, and that the organization’s public disclaimers are mere window-dressing to influence international opinion.)
26. For an intelligent but unnecessarily pedantic introduction to Vertov’s own efforts to lay the foundations of such an epistemology, see Annette Michelson’s “The Man with the Movie Camera: From Magician to Epistemologist,” Artforum (March 1972), 63-72.
27. Althusser, “Ideology and the Ideological Apparatuses of the State,” in “Lenin and Philosophy,” pp. 127-86.
28. For excellent material on this subject, see Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
29. I single out Brustein because he has been vociferous in denouncing both the growing “theatricalization of everyday life” and the avant-garde trends in drama (happenings, multimedia events, etc.) that encourage the breaking down of distinctions between theater and reality. For further discussion of these issues and of Brustein’s position on them, see the sections entitled “Event as Theatre/Theatre as Event” and “The Film Revolution” in Albert J. LaValley’s anthology, The New Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1972).
10. La Η ora de los Homos: “Let Them See Nothing but Flames!”
30. Quoted from Louis Marcorelles’ “Interview with Fernando Solanas,” Cahiers du Cinéma, No. 210 (March 1969), 64.
31. Althusser, “Ideology and the Ideological Apparatuses of the State,” in Lenin and Philosophy.
11. The Ice -man Cometh No More: He Gave His Balls to the Revolution
32. Quoted from “Newsreel,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 2 (Winter 1968-69), 46-47.
33. See “A Psychoanalyst Looks at Student Revolutionaries,” The New York Times Magazine (January 17, 1971 ).
34. See Charles Derber, “Terrorism and the Movement,” Monthly Review (February 1971).
12. Rossellinf’s Materialist Mise-en-Scène of La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV
35. See interview with Rossellini in Film Culture, No. 52 (Spring 1971).
13. Sex and Politics: Wilhelm Reich, World Revolution, and Makavejev’s WR: The Mysteries of the Organism
36. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass-Psychology of Fascism (originally written in 1933, revised and enlarged in 1935 and again in 1945), available now in a new authorized translation by Vincent Carfagno (New York: Noonday Edition, 1970).
Wilhelm Reich, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality, trans. Werner and Doreen Grossman (New York: Noonday Edition, 1971).
37. Joan Mellen, “Fascism in the Contemporary Film,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 4 (Summer 1971), 2-19.
38. For a penetrating analysis of Makavejev’s earlier films—Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair: The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, and Innocence Unprotected —see Robin Wood’s chapter “Dusan Makavejev,” Second Wave (New York: Praeger, 1970), pp. 7-33.
39. See interview with Makavejev in Postif (July-August 1971), 48-55.
15. The Working Class Goes Directly to Heaven, Without Passing Go: Or, The Name of the Game Is Still Monopoly
40. The call for a revolutionary, materialist psychoanalysis has recently been issued by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, whose book Capitalisme et Scizophrénie: L'Anti-Oédipe (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972) denounces the idealist emphasis on the Oedipus complex (with its bias toward the bourgeois, paternalistic, and patriarchal family) that reigns in Freudian psychoanalysis. (Incidentally, it was Godard and Gorin who first called this book to my attention during a conversation in which they also expressed their admiration for Elio Petri’s dramatization of the worker’s underlying character in The Working Class Goes to Heaven. )
16. Contra Semiology: A Critical Reading of Metz
41. In this chapter references to Metz’s Essais sur la signification au cinéma are to the original French editions (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, Tome I, 1968, and Tome II, 1972). For convenience I have used the abbreviation ESC, I or ESC, II followed by the page number for the passage cited. For Metz’s Langage et Cinema (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1971), I have used the abbreviation LC followed by the page number for the passage cited.
The English edition of Essais sur la signification au cinéma, translated by Michael Taylor and entitled Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) was not available when most of this chapter was written; nor was the English edition of Langage et Cinéma (The Hague: Mouton, 1974). Thus, the English translations of Metz quoted in this chapter are, wherever possible, borrowed from material published in Screen, Vol. XIV, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1973), and Vol. XIV, No. 3 (Autumn 1 973)• Where no English translation was available, I translated the passages myself from the original French editions.
42. Heath, “The Work of Christian Metz, Screen, Vol. XIV, No. 3 (Autumn 1973), 5-6.
43. Ibid., 8-9.
44. Eco, “Articulations of Cinematic Code,” Cinematics, No. 1 (January 1970).
45. Heath, 9.
46. Cegarra, “Cinema and Semiology,” Cinéthique, No. 7/8; translated and reprinted in Screen, Vol. XIV, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1973)•
47. Ibid., 146.
48. Ibid., 175.
49. Ibid., 170.
50. “Cinéthique on Langage et Cinéma “ Screen, Vol. XIV, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1973), 189-207.
51. Ibid., 192.
52. Heath, 13.
53. Ibid., 17.
54. Cinéthique, 198.
17. The Ideological Situation of Post-Bazin Film Criticism
55. John Hess, “Auteurism and After,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Winter 1973-74), 28-37.
Graham Petrie, “Auteurism: More Aftermath,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 (Spring 1974), 61-63.
56. Hess, 35.
57. Petrie, 62.
58. Hess, 36.
59. Petrie, 62.
60. See Charles Eckert, “The English Cine-Structuralists,” Film Comment, Vol. IX, No. 3 (May-June 1973), 46-51; and Brian Henderson’s two-part “Critique of Cine-Structuralism,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 5 (Fall 1973), 25-34, and Film Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Winter 1973-74), 37-46.
61. Charles Eckert, “Shall We Deport Lévi-Strauss?,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 (Spring 1974), 63-65.
62. A collective text by the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma, “John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln,” originally published in Cahiers du Cinéma, No. 223 (August 1970), 29-47; also translated into English by Helene Lackner and Diana Matias and published in Screen, Vol. XIII, No. 2 (Autumn 1972), 5-44.
63. Marx and Engels, of course, had already pointed this out in the following passage: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make one class the ruling one, hence the ideas of its dominance.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), p. 61.
64. Althusser, “Ideology and . . . the State,” ibid., pp. 127-86.
65. Jean-Louis Baudry, “Cinéma: effets idéologiques produits par l’appareil de base,” Cinéthique, No. 7/8, 1-8; also translated into English by Alan Williams and published in Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2 (Winter 1974-75), 39-47, under the title “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.”
66. In Positif, nos. 46 and 47 (June and July 1962).
67. In Art forum (Summer 1968), 67-71.
68. In Film Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 4 (Summer 1972).
69. For the Gray-Henderson exchange, see “Correspondence and Controversy,” Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 3 (Spring 1973).