10.54103/2036-461X/19079
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Adriano D’Aloia, Neurofilmology of the Moving Image: Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021, pp. 254
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2023-01-24
2022-11-22
2023-01-24
2023-01-24
149-151
Cinéma & Cie
Enrico Carocci
2022
10.54103/2036-461X/19079
149
Università degli Studi Roma Tre
2036-461X
39
en
151
Adriano D’Aloia, Neurofilmology of the Moving Image: Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021, pp. 254
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19079/17546
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                                                                                       Adriano D’Aloia
                                                                                       Neurofilmology of the Moving Image:
                                                                                       Gravity and Vertigo
                                                                                       in Contemporary Cinema
                                                                                       Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021, pp. 254
                                                                                       DOI 10.54103/2036-461X/19079




                                                                                          In the conclusion of a 1964 seminal essay,           the focus on psychological processes and the
                                                                                       Christian Metz argued that, up to that point,           interest in empirical studies that characterized
                                                                                       there were four ways to approach cinema: film           filmology were subsequently included in what
                                                                                       criticism, film history, film theory and filmology.1    was sometimes called the ‘post-theoretical’
                                                                                       The latter two were distinct mainly because at          approach,      which     disregarded    dominant
                                                                                       that time ‘theory’ was widely practiced within          theoretical paradigms and tended to dismiss its
                                                                                       the film institution, i.e. by filmmakers and critics.   fundamental concepts and procedures.3
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                                                                                       Otherwise, filmology was practiced outside of              In sum, the new millennium inherited a film
                                                                                       any film institution by scholars and researchers        theory that was torn between two seemingly
                                                                                       from different academic disciplines. The label          incompatible models. The dialogue between
                                                                                       filmologie brought together studies in aesthetics,      theoretical frames, which was necessary in
                                                                                       psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and              order to address and understand contemporary
                                                                                       included speculative as well as empirical               society, was prevented for a quite some time.
                                                                                       contributions, which often shared a particular             This brief, simplified premise serves to
                                                                                       interest in the effects of moving images. Indeed,       highlight how references to filmology today do
                                                                                       one of the main focuses of the filmological             not imply a nostalgic attitude or vintage quirk,
                                                                                       approach was the receptivity and the sense-             rather they expresses the desire to recover an
                                                                                       making abilities of the viewer’s mind, understood       existing research paradigm to overstep the
                                                                                       in relation to its cultural and biological aspects.     divergences and emphasize the points of contact
                                                                                          After Metz, film theory acquired methodological      between different approaches. In fact, to recall
                                                                                       rigour and partly moved from the film institution       the filmological framework is a way of looking
                                                                                       to the academic one.2 At the same time, and for         forward by harking back to a notable tradition
                                                                                       many different reasons, the term ‘filmology’            that preceded the above-mentioned theoretical
                                                                                       was progressively abandoned, and part of                split.
                                                                                       the filmological project merged within that of             The disciplines that help us to understand the
                                                                                       film theory. Thus, at the origins of film studies,      impact of film on its viewer have evolved today,
                                                                                       concepts and results from French filmology              together with filmic experiences and theoretical
                                                                                       became part of the then emerging semio-                 sensibilities. Therefore, a new filmology
                                                                                       psychoanalytic paradigm. In other respects,             unavoidably takes into account new trends in


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 39 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                149
cognitive science, phenomenological aesthetics,        in which the book develops its framework.
or philosophy of the mind, and generally all           Indeed, the book is focused on the mechanisms
of those disciplines that have benefited from          of tension in mainstream cinema, especially in
the recent epistemological breakthrough                recent decades: an experientially intense cinema
made possible by neuroscience towards the              which addresses particularly the viewer’s body,
comprehension of the human mind.                       and whose major challenge is to put in motion
   A few years ago, Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero        a seated and motionless spectator, drawing on
Eugeni proposed a new frame of study labelled          ‘filmic motifs’ such as acrobatics, falls, impacts,
as ‘neurofilmology’,4 aiming to an informed            overturnings, and drifts in order to play with the
understanding of the viewer’s experience and           sense of loss and recovery of body weight and
the effectiveness of film form, in order to update     balance.
the agenda of film studies to include the state           Each of the book’s central chapters discusses
of art of cognitive science and in particular of       a particular figure — from violent impact on
neuroscientific knowledge, in both their theoretical   the ground to a more ethereal drift in the void
and empirical aspects. Among other things, this        — while the concluding chapter links up with
attitude sought to offer a partially alternative       the introduction to propose a framework for
research frame to the existing empirical ones,5        the study of the tensive experience evoked by
though the main goal was to hold different             contemporary film style. To explain how cinema
approaches together, by integrating different          engages the spectator’s body in an experience
theoretical backgrounds and analytical tools,          of distant immersion and ‘modulated continuity’,
and with a renewed attention to the ‘continental’      D’Aloia analyses excerpts from films such as
tradition of film studies. In a neurofilmological      The Dark Knight (C. Nolan, 2008), The Walk
framework, the variety of approaches collected         (R. Zemeckis, 2015), The Happening (M. Night
was seen as creating values and a strength             Shyamalan, 2008), Alice in Wonderland (T. Burton,
rather than as irreconcilable divides.                 2010), Gravity (A. Cuarón, 2013), not forgetting
   Neurofilmology of the Moving Image, the             the lesson of great classics such as Trapeze
latest book by Adriano D’Aloia, follows this spirit    (C. Reed, 1956) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (S.
by bringing together phenomenological and              Kubrick, 1968).
cognitivist perspectives within the theoretical           Neurofilmology of the Moving Image is a major
framework of the embodied and enactive                 book, and not only because it reinforces and
cognition, with a special attention to the             relaunches embodied cognition film theory. It
embodied simulation hypothesis.6 One of the            is also important for its ‘ecological’ sensibility,
main purposes of the book is to offer a ‘thick         which makes it relevant from the point of view of
comprehension’ of cinematic effectiveness, going       an incipient elemental approach to film analysis.
beyond the usual disembodied notion of gaze,           In this book the element is the air, but the author
and considering the vision within the bodily and       has also worked elsewhere on ‘enwaterment’,
multisensory complexity of filmic experience. To       and this promising perspective can be valuable
do this, D’Aloia also employs more traditional         for a new comprehension of the role of cinematic
approaches, which constitute a sort of genealogy:      elemental features in the viewer’s immersive
from late 19th century aesthetic theory to the         experience.
phenomenological tradition, from Gestalt to               I would only add, to conclude, that D’Aloia is also
Ecological Psychology, and of course from early        a very good writer, capable of making tangible
film theory to classic filmology.                      the sense of the filmic experience he describes.
   The subtitle, Gravity and Vertigo in                This is why this book is recommended, for the
Contemporary Cinema, indicates the direction           value both of the scholarly approach it presents



150                                                                    Neurofilmology of the Moving Image
and the journey through images, spaces and
acrobatics it offers to the reader.
                                 Enrico Carocci
             [Università degli Studi Roma Tre]




   Notes
    1
       Christian Metz, ‘The Cinema: Language or Language System, in Film Language: A Semiotics of the
   Cinema, trans. by Michael Taylor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 90.
     2
       See Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995 (Austin: The University of Texas Press,
   1999), 89-93.
     3
       Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. by David Bordwell, Noël Carroll (Madison: University
   of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
     4
       Neurofilmology. Audiovisual Studies and the Challenge of Neuroscience, ed. by Adriano D’Aloia
   and Ruggero Eugeni, Cinéma & Cie., 22-23 (Spring/Fall 2014).
     5
       See e.g. Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, ed. by Arthur P. Shimamura (Oxford-
   New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
     6
       See Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, The Empathic Screen: Cinema and Neuroscience [2015]
   (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).



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