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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History ed. by Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 409
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2020-03-01
2021-09-06
2020-03-11
2024-03-11
Cinéma & Cie
Massimo Locatelli
2020/03/01
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan
2036-461X
34
en
The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History ed. by Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 409
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16233/20252
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The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History
ed. by Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers
London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 409




   Are we facing a new school of film historiography? Daniel Biltereyst, Richard
Maltby, Philippe Meers, and the other authors of this volume, as well as all
the contributors to that very productive network that goes by the name of
HoMER (History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception) firmly believe in
the commitment to examine ‘unexplored dimensions of the cinematographic
experience’ (p. 3). The advanced state of their research is presented here. The
volume is divided into two methodological sections and four themes, dedicated
to: a) film distribution and trade, b) exhibition and c) programming, as well as
d) ‘audiences’ cinemagoing practices, experiences and memories’ (ibidem). It
is precious first of all for its methodological clarity and its distinction between
different players in the production cycle of film in keeping with their specific
roles. Much of the volume’s lexicographic work is also of great interest, inviting
us to review the usual categories of analysis and standard periodizations: as in the
lucid analysis of the ‘evergreens and mayflies’ of distribution, by Karel Dibbets
(to whom the volume pays due posthumous homage), or in its reflection on the
notions of seriality and cyclicity proposed by Tim Snelson.
   The common thread that intersects the contributions is the inspiration that
comes explicitly from the French École des Annales; the authors accept its
challenge to broaden the historian’s horizon of observation through the discovery
of new objects and the study of the social sciences, potentially through increasingly
sophisticated quantitative methods and online research programs. Indeed, on
the one hand, Richard Abel and Eric Hoyt propose using investigative tools to
analyse the wealth of data respectively transmitted by the critical reception in
newspapers and the role of individual operators on the market. On the other,
explicitly or implicitly, Carlo Ginzburg’s call to give value to minor, small and
singular experiences, which are irreplaceable in their singularity, also returns
several times.1 Within a purposeful view, such a value can take on the meaning
of a ‘circumstantial’ trace (Mariagrazia Fanchi, p. 388), something that effectively
happens in many case studies presented here — and in particular those devoted
to the history of cinematographic companies and institutions: from the history

1
 Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press,
1980).

                                                Cinéma & Cie, vol. XX, no. 34, Spring 2020
                              Reviews / Comptes-rendus


of itinerant film exhibitions in the United States, reconstructed starting from the
1904 datebook of the exhibitor W. Frank Brinton (Kathryn Fuller-Sweeley), to
the reconstruction of the market panorama of early film exhibition in colonial
Indonesia, validated through a comparison with the geography of local transport
(Dafna Ruppin); from the clarification of the distribution policies that we often
understand only in broad terms, such as the practice of double billing in the
1930s (Richard Maltby), or the 1962 launch of ‘showcases’ as a ‘daring new
method of film circulating in New York’, by United Artists (Zoë Wallin, p. 173),
to system conflicts in international distribution, for example between the Motion
Picture Export Association and the Netherlands Cinema Association at the end
of World War II (Clara Pafort-Overduin and Douglas Gomery). In this context,
a multi-ethnic history of the first movie theatres in Smyrna in the early twentieth
century can become a circumstantial feature of the greater history of the ‘short’
century, with all its dramas and phantoms (Dilek Kaya).
    The examples given already indicate, in the selection of themes and
approaches, a further merit of the project and the volume. Everything and
everyone in these pages push for film studies to go beyond the comfort zone of
the English-language culture and market, and the distinctions of colonial and
Eurocentric heritage. This is a commitment that we can adopt as a litmus test
for the future of HoMERica’s undertaking. We know that new historiographies
move dangerously close to the crest of two steep slopes: the micro-history of
the peasant, with his worm-riddled cheese, and the macro-history of the court
of the Inquisition that overwhelms him. The use of the resources offered by
new, big data analytics can challenge this difficult balance, for example from
the point of view of the collection of data, which today is certainly more widely
available and completely digitalized in the English-speaking world, or at any rate
with substantial differences between countries even within old Europe. Can the
availability of indexed databases be the factor that guides historian’s choices?
More generally, what is the relationship between the individual case study, even
if it is exemplary, and big data, when the horizon becomes that of metadata or
the mere application of an algorithmic logic? And again: even if the history itself
at work selects the case studies as points of departure — perhaps simply because
they are the only surviving possibilities — is it still possible to operate between
micro and macro when we shift our gaze to the contemporary, when the data
becomes incommensurable? Not surprisingly, on some pages, almost timidly,
and despite all the opposing positions expressed by the authors, films themselves
finally emerge: the original capital of the discipline.
    In short, do we really need another new school of cinema historiography? The
answer, as for every Nouvelle Histoire, will lie in the project’s capacity to produce
other useful tools for the scientific community and to impose a paradigm. All
that remains is to wish the authors good luck.

               [Massimo Locatelli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan]


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