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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
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Introduction
2003-03-01
2021-10-01
2003-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Leonardo Quaresima
2003/03/01
Università degli Studi di Udine
2036-461X
2
en
Introduction
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16516/17213
2
INTRODUCTION




  The history of cinema is rife with models that have never established themselves, proj-
ects that have never taken form, “incorrect” theories. It is a history that began long ago,
and which saw the films, the technology, and the idea of cinema of the Lumière brothers
prevail over other models of showing images in motion, models destined to have a brief
and ephemeral existence. It is a history in which a narrative cinema – derivative of the
novel and French melodrama more than any other communicative, performing, or
expressive art forms – has constituted the central and dominant axis. Along the way, we
find numerous different directions, some ambitious and audacious, others simply inven-
tive and sensible, which have been thought of as different hypotheses of development, for
a radical transformation of the system, or as a corrective to some of its elements. In many
cases these are “micro projects,” unsystematic contributions, brief theoretical interven-
tions by writers who soon fell, or remained, in the shadows. In other cases, they are
greater elaborations, by well-known scholars not necessarily working within the field of
cinema studies. In still other cases, they are utopic visions, imaginative projections devel-
oping in the context of projects and experimentations of the avant-gardes. And yet, this
story is also made of concrete choices, “institutional” projects, paths of development
designed and used by productive sectors, which, however, were abandoned and replaced
by different models of development.
  Reconsidering the traces of these “detours,” these dead-end streets, is not only a schol-
arly and archaeological task. By looking knowledgeably at what cinema is not, we can bet-
ter evaluate what it is. Exploring the web of possibilities it could have followed, we can
see, behind the apparently natural course of events, the singularity, and possibly, the arbi-
trariness of the trajectory leading up to the present. Re-examining abandoned and dis-
carded models, we are better able to investigate the fundamentals of the new medium’s
resources and structures, as we now know them. Even more: by bringing to light the blind
alleys and the abandoned roads, we can get a better perspective on the directions that con-
temporary cinema is exploring and experimenting with.
  The visions of the avant-gardes are probably the most often visited chapter of this his-
tory. We have decided to set it aside on this occasion – without intending to downplay its
importance or influence – only because it is so well-known, at least with regard to those
imaginative visions linked more to an utopic and experimental dimension of cinema,
than to real “institutional” hypotheses of transformation. It is to the latter, I emphasize,
that we would like to draw attention, convinced that the evolution of cinema has been
less linear and “necessary” than it continues to seem.

  A perfect example, from this point of view, is the role played by the pantomime in early
cinema and in particular in the Twenties, during the intense phase of development that

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led to the hegemony of a stable narrative and communicative model, accepted on an inter-
national level (feature films, new formats of the cinematic “spectacle,” new distribution
systems, new exhibition sites). Ben Brewster’s investigation calls into question the com-
monplaces linked to the evaluation of the relationship between pantomime and film. He
also gives us the basis for analyzing the concrete results of grafting the principles of pan-
tomime onto the new medium – ranging from the artistic contribution of the
actors/mimes to the impact of the new forms of expression of the “new” pantomime at
the end of the century. Elena Mosconi reconstructs the theoretical debate that accompa-
nies this relationship in the Italian context and suggests, originally, some outcomes of
this relationship (in particular, in analyzing the “mimicry of the masses”). But it is also
true that in some cases (that of German Autorenfilm, for example), the pantomime
becomes, in effect, one of the models employed by the cinematic system in pursuit of new
developments: with concrete prototypes, the mobilization of authors, directors, and
actors, and the involvement of a critical and theoretical discourse. After a few tries, this
model too ran right into a dead end.
  In the case of pantomime, the hypothesis of development is constructed along the lines
of autonomous, pre-existing models of representation. And, we know, other systems (in
addition to those derived from the theater) are also called upon in the same time period:
painting (the idea of a film as a development of thematic and iconographic motives of a
painting, or of a cycle of paintings), sculpture, graphic art (culminating in some experi-
mental works, such as Von Morgens bis Mitternachts, in the early ‘20s). But cinema can
also be considered as a way of creating a more exhaustive representation of reality
because is capable of accommodating and reproducing its phenomenological data. Or it
can be seen as an instrument of the most extensive spectacularization of act of viewing,
capable of surpassing human perception itself. The recurring proposals to re-plan the
new medium in pursuit of the ideal of stereoscopic vision, discussed by Paola Valentini,
also fit into this picture. Before becoming the basis of a specialized sector of cinema
(although that plan also went unrealized) – or of a genre, as sustained by Valentini – stere-
oscopy had birthed projects for a “machine” for the spectacularization of representation,
still mostly unexplored (as shown by the discovery of Guazzoni’s photographs brought to
light by Claudio Domini and illustrated in the photo-essay appearing in this issue).
  But cinema could have been a quite different medium, precisely because it is a system
for revealing reality. No longer a form of spectacle, it could have become an instrument
for scientific inquiry. The experiments conducted by Marey and Muybridge, as everyone
knows, bring us to the idea of cinema as an apparatus making visible that which escapes
observation, a machine that acts as an extension of sight. Less known is the thread unfold-
ing from this concept, and which concerns what Michael Barchet calls, in his essay, the
“non-public spectacle.”

  Beyond the poetics of individual directors and the aesthetic projects aimed at overcom-
ing the limits of the cinematic system of representation and spectacularization, and cross-
ing the borders between cinema and other communicative and expressive fields, the theo-
ries and practices of expanded cinema of the ‘60s embodied the tendency to bring cinema
out of itself. This is a familiar situation in early cinema (the flexibility of the context and
forms of exhibition, its co-existence with other forms of entertainment) and accounts for a
system continuously facing its own exterior while being contaminated by it. It was with
the introduction of sound, with the rigid normativization of classical cinema, that these

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processes solidified, and seemingly disappeared from the history and even the genesis of
the new medium. Consequently, cinema became identified with a device that makes the
screen-as-frame the only basis of expression, which elects the direction that goes from the
screen to the audience as the only axis of communication, which makes the dream-like
state of the spectator the only model of spectatorship, and turns the film into a closed tex-
tual system. This is a model that Ruggero Eugeni invites us to interpret as linked to the
hypnotic state, in a way that is sometimes veiled but nonetheless strict. The institutional-
ization of classical cinema, he tells us, goes hand-in-hand with the constant thematization
of the hypnotic experience itself, as we can see in a range of genres from horror to film noir.
  The tenets of “expanded cinema,” on the other hand, called this fixity into question and reac-
tivated processes that, as already mentioned, were already inscribed in the history of cinema.

   We would have liked to bring to light other models and paths. For example, the idea of
cinema as a portrait, as a system that, parallel to other systems (painting, photography),
could have been primarily an instrument for recording a family’s memories, a gallery of
characters, a cultural archive; or as a form of visual thought (from Epstein to underground
cinema); or as a langue (Pasolini). Maybe this issue of CINEMA & Cie. will have a sequel:
it will depend on the interest that it is capable of generating, on the echo that the issues
raised here will create.
   Reflection needs to be done not only on these issues, but above all, on the ways in which
we approach them. I have used terms such as “dead end,” or “incorrect theories,” but I do
not believe, at all, that these terms are absolute. Contemporary cinema, the spectacular
forms currently employed, the new models of integration between vision and experience,
have re-opened paths that seem to belong to the archeology of missed opportunities.
Pantomime (as expressive system for organizing body language) has found, in hip-hop
culture, in music videos, or rather, in the new musical cinema, boundless possibilities of
expansion. The experiments of video art, the “fruitive” model of the installation, the wide
diffusion of digital supports, and the world of video games and the internet have made the
idea of expansion a common and a daily one. And these are not processes merely involv-
ing these new communicative and expressive systems, parallel to or bordering with cine-
ma. It is cinema itself which is implicated. It is the models of classical and modern cine-
ma that today appear as “dead ends.” The multiplex is more similar to the forms of
fruition of the “invisible cinema” of Peter Kubelka than to the hegemonic models of the
movie theater prevailing from the ‘20s to the ‘60s. IMAX is closer to the conditions of
stereoscopic vision than to the institutional model of movie theaters. Currently, not only
individual artist’s experiments (such as the contaminations of Peter Greenaway, the mul-
tiplications and the interactions of stories and screens of Mike Figgis, or the polyptychs of
Lucas Belvaux) but the tenets of every cinematic narration move further away from the
spatial and temporal categories of classical, and “modern,” cinema.
   Looking at the cinema as an open system, and looking at its history as a history of pos-
sibilities, can help us formulate models for understanding today’s cinema and the paths
it is following even now.
                                                                                        [l.q.]


  I would like to thank Francesco Pitassio, Paola Valentini, and Laura Vichi for their contribu-
tions to the planning and realization of this issue.

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