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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Mark Jancovich, Lucy Faire, with Sarah Stubbings, The Place of the Audience. Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (London: BFI, 2003)
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2004-10-01
2022-11-21
2004-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
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2004/10/01
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Mark Jancovich, Lucy Faire, with Sarah Stubbings, The Place of the Audience. Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (London: BFI, 2003)
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19065/16824
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dizione, dato che il rinnovamento è solo e                   pret text and to open up ways of studying film
sempre rielaborazione delle proprie radici.                  consumption as an activity” (p. 3).
Fra le ascendenze teatrali poi la Commedia                      Film Studies have long included the study of
dell’arte costituisce una vera e propria morfo-              the audience among their fields of research,
logia e tipologia che il cinema italiano sem-                recognizing an essential role to reception prac-
bra avere pienamente metabolizzato e spesso                  tices in the understanding of cinema. Yet the
riprende e rielabora, anche senza saperlo,                   experience of vision, with its complex inter-
anzi soprattutto quando non lo sa. E infine                  twining of relations with the context, is still
anche la direzione opposta, quella verso la                  relatively unexplored. The concept of cinemat-
realtà, con la metabolizzazione a tutti livelli,             ic experience emerges in the field of filmology
dal più alto e rarefatto cinema di poesia a                  after World War Two, mainly to indicate the
quello più schiettamente commerciale, dei                    psychological aspects involved in vision, from
generi, dove la grande esperienza neorealista,               the “need” of cinema to the “belief” in the rep-
come disse Alberto Farassino, ha “sporcato” il               resented reality. More recently it has grown to
cinema italiano.                                             a larger field of references, up to including cul-
  Il resto è la storia. Ma, partendo da questo               tural processes as well as the historical condi-
assunto e con questo teorema da dimostrare,                  tions underlying vision. Through a renewed
le altre cinquecento pagine diventano una                    reading of Benjamin, cinematographic experi-
affascinante e avvincente sfida, una corsa                   ence has appointed the place where cinema
attraverso gli anni e i film, che leggiamo quasi             and its consumption acquire meaning within
d’un fiato passando dagli autori alle strutture              daily life practices (Thomas Elsaesser has pre-
alle leggi, alle cadute ai rilanci, ai fallimenti ai         sented a dense paper on this theme at the
successi, arriviamo al cinema di ieri. Dal                   Conference of Ascona in honour of Noelle
Pinocchio di Antamoro a quello di Benigni,                   Brinkman). The study by Jankovich and Faire,
dalla Presa di Roma al caso Moro di Bellocchio.              with the collaboration of Stubbings, marks a
  Un cinema che sa coniugare il realismo e i                 significant advancement in this direction: not
modelli teatrali, sia in forme alte che in forme             only for the quality of their case history, but
basse. Scusate se è poco.                                    also for the thesis underlying the research: the
                                                             usefulness of an enlargement of frame in order
                                                             to understand why and how the spectator
1      David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Film                approaches the film.
       History. An Introduction (New York: Mc.Graw-             The activity of film consumption in
       Hill, 1994); trad. it. Storia del cinema e dei film   Nottingham is the object of the research, from
       (Milano: Il Castoro, 1998), vol. 1, p. 255.           the first appearance of the filmic spectacle in
                                                             the city fairs to the recent construction of a
                                                             futuristic multimedia centre. Transitions are
                                                             interpreted on the background of the changes
SELECTED BY: FRANCESCO                                       that invested the geography of the city, partic-
                                                             ularly urban transformation and the new
CASETTI, MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI                                  forms of relations brought by it. These transi-
                                                             tions are described keeping in consideration
Mark Jancovich, Lucy Faire, with Sarah
                                                             the complex of actions involved in the specta-
Stubbings, The Place of the Audience.
                                                             tor’s experience, including the choice of the
Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption
                                                             medium for film viewing. Those actions
(London: BFI, 2003)
                                                             reflect not only personal instances but also
  “The following study is an attempt to move
                                                             life style, social class, gender, the ties and pres-
beyond the analysis of how audiences inter-
                                                             sures of the social system, and they thus high-

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light how movie going has an exemplar value          teenth century modernity: they do not have a
within the environment and circumstances             repressive character, but they equally make
where it takes place. Besides the suggested          use of techniques such as spatial division, seri-
periodization and the detailed analysis of each      alization of behaviour, definition of programs
phase, the work of the authors has the merit         of action, and so forth… Their intervention
of introducing some new or less explored             aims at making the body of the spectator
issues. Let’s take as an example the topic of        meek, in a situation where at the same time a
security and social control.                         wide range of freedom is guaranteed, favoured
   In 1910 a law is issued in Great Britain,         by the darkness of the theatre and the partici-
named Cinematographic Act, in order to guar-         pation in a strongly identifying spectacle.
antee the audience’s safety against the dan-         Thus we can well say that “discipline” and
gers of fire. The application of the law brings      freedom are both present in cinema, and that
as a result the construction of specific sites for   the consumer activity sets itself as the site
cinema viewing, a practice that thus moves           where the two terms literally negotiate their
from city fairs and cafés to the                     reasons. We will not go further in this sugges-
Cinematographic Theatres. But to a close look        tion, which is at the centre of the ongoing
the act leads to even larger consequences. The       research of the authors of this review.
distribution of licences shows a precise intent        Getting back to Jankovich and Faire, we
of social control over the spectator’s experi-       must add to the appeal of their book the con-
ence, one example being the setting of the-          junct use of more traditional sources of refer-
atres in upper class city areas, another being       ence, such as local newspapers, and personal
the imposition of a strict separation between        remembrances, collected with an advanced
the filmic spectacle and other forms of con-         and aware use of the ethnographic method.
sumer goods, such as food and alcoholic bev-           Therefore, this work presents itself as a vir-
erages. The regulation of the filmic spectacle       tuous example also in its ability of creating a
is a clue to the understanding of the growing        dialogue between different approaches and
popularity of cinema at the beginning of the         disciplines.
century, but also of the discomfort and social
tension produced by the urbanization process
over the previous decades. Security and con-
trol re-emerge in the study’s historical             SELECTED BY: LORENZO CUCCU
overview also in later phases: in the fifties and
sixties, for example, the perception of a dereg-     Vito Zagarrio, Cinema e fascismo. Film, model-
ulation of the suburbs contributes to the            li, immaginari (Venezia: Marsilio, 2004)*
abandonment of local cinemas; or, more
recently, the building of a multiplex, attract-      *   Lorenzo Cuccu si scusa per non aver potuto
ing crowds of young people, in the same area             inviare la sua recensione.
as the theatre and music hall, is perceived by
the local population as a destabilizing factor.
   We insisted on control and safety because it
represents an essential element of the cine-         SELECTED BY: THOMAS ELSAESSER
matographic experience. We could go further:
movie going can be seen as characterized by          Heide Schönemann, Paul Wegener. Frühe
the intervention of a series of “disciplines” in     Moderne im Film (Stuttgart-London: Axel
the sense given to the term by Foucault. These       Menges, 2003)
are of course disciplines of a different nature        It has always been axiomatic – and not only
from those defining seventeenth and eigh-            thanks to Lotte Eisner’s The Haunted Screen –

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