10.54103/2036-461X/17978
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Daniel Morgan, The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, Oakland: University of California Press, 2021, 244 pages
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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2022-06-27
2022-05-31
2022-12-30
2022-12-30
141-143
Cinéma & Cie
Antonio Patrick D’Amico
2022/06/27
10.54103/2036-461X/17978
141
Yale University
2036-461X
38
en
143
Daniel Morgan, The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, Oakland: University of California Press, 2021, 244 pages
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/17978/15816
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                                                                                       Daniel Morgan
                                                                                       The Lure of the Image: Epistemic
                                                                                       Fantasies of the Moving Camera
                                                                                       Oakland: University of California Press, 2021, pp. 244
                                                                                       DOI 10.54103/2036-461X/17978




                                                                                          If film is an inherently ephemeral object,        film style), and Terence Malick. In contrast, the
                                                                                       the mobile camera is perhaps its most elusive        final chapter returns to theory, shifting its focus
                                                                                       aspect. Accordingly, Daniel Morgan’s theorization    to the proliferation of camera movement and
                                                                                       of camera movement in The Lure of the Image          cameras themselves in digital cinema. Rather
                                                                                       explores a topic film theory has hitherto largely    than taking the most obvious route, Morgan aptly
                                                                                       ignored in favor of Ontology and Montage. The        downplays the rhetorical calls for a paradigmatic
                                                                                       book sets out to articulate a systematic account     shift by gesturing towards the use of animation
                                                                                       of camera movement, venturing beyond Film            techniques throughout the pre-digital 20th
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       Studies’ disciplinary boundaries while keeping       century — “this long history matters […] New
                                                                                       a close eye on film itself. It comprises seven       technologies of the moving camera do not
                                                                                       chapters and is divided into two parts. Morgan       necessarily produce new conceptual problems”
                                                                                       engages with an impressive number of scholars        (pp. 221-222) — from Star Wars (1977) to early
                                                                                       and (both high-brow and low-brow) films,             phantom rides. The chapter’s unexpected turns
                                                                                       drawing from a wide range of sources, including      encapsulate the book’s conceptual richness, as
                                                                                       filmmaking manuals. His prose is devoid of           Morgan jumps (swish-pans?) from discussions
                                                                                       jargon and illustrates theoretical concepts with     on New Media and military drones to stereoscopy,
                                                                                       analytical precision. In addition, Morgan builds     Late Godard’s 3D films, Orson Welles and cinéma
                                                                                       his arguments through the close study of film,       vérité.
                                                                                       interweaving careful descriptions of the way            The author begins his discussion by offering a
                                                                                       the camera articulates spatial arrangements          survey of the existing scholarship on the subject,
                                                                                       and interpretations tying aesthetic operations to    situating himself in relation to Patrick Keating’s
                                                                                       narrative meaning.                                   examination of camera movement and the ideas
                                                                                          While the first three chapters raise the book’s   about it in classical Hollywood.1 Morgan’s key
                                                                                       film-theoretical stakes, the second section          insight is that “not all the ideas are good ones”
                                                                                       mobilizes its newly minted conceptual tools to       (p. 4) and the all-pervasive notion of the camera-
                                                                                       authorial case studies centered on canonical         eye is a particularly bad — or “deeply flawed”
                                                                                       directors such as Fritz Lang (examined               (p. 5) — one. The book’s opening movement
                                                                                       comparatively alongside Guru Dutt), Max Ophüls       endeavors to erode this fatal misconception
                                                                                       (a privileged site in discussions about virtuosic    from its dominant position by unraveling the


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                               141
conflation of theories of camera movement and        develops this model only after a lengthy meta-
point of view. The chief target of his critique      analysis of the reception of an ‘infamous’ shot
here is phenomenologically-inflected film theory,    in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo (1960) in French film
which Morgan characterizes as reductively built      criticism. This allows him to dispel Brechtian,
around a specific formal operation: subjective       Platonic, and Barthesian anxieties underpinning
shots in which the camera moves forward. As          politicized cinephobia (p. 40). It is interesting that
he rightly puts it, while certain narrative films    Morgan’s discussion of the aestheticization of
operate according to the conventions of point        the dead body does not consider Pontecorvo’s
of view, this is not always the case. Rather than    framing of tortured bodies accompanied by a
uphold film as an embodied experience, Morgan        liturgical tune in The Battle of Algiers (1966) and
puts our ability to identify with the camera into    thus its possible links to Catholic iconography,
doubt and gestures towards many instances            an intertext corroborating his relativization of
in which we sympathize with the characters           bad taste as context-specific.
on screen — Morgan mentions mirror neurons              In place of identification, the book invites us
in passing but the topic warrants a deeper           to think about our relation to the worlds films
engagement with neuroimaging. In addition, he        construct in terms of imagination, “buttressing”
upholds shots in which characters presumably         Richard Wolheim’s conceptualization of the
‘doing’ the looking emerge in the frame — but        “internal spectator” (p. 76) who is attuned to
fails to mention Roberto Rossellini’s fascist war    diegetic characters without being aligned to their
film Un Pilota Ritorna’s (1942) mobilization of      optical perspective, with Cristopher McCarrol’s
this aesthetic operation notwithstanding the         Sartrean work on “observer memories… in which
implications that its panning shot of a Prison-of-   we see ourselves from the outside” (pp. 80-81).2
war camp would have in relation to Neorealism        This Frankensteinian “path around” the impasse
and, as a consequence, to Bazinian and Deleuzian     of identification (p. 81) may initially appear
film theory — or are revealed to have not been       convoluted but is immediately clarified through
‘with’ the camera, as in Horror films tricking us    the analysis of two film moments featuring camera
into believing ‘subjective’ shot approaching an      movement which “attune” us to the characters’
oblivious victim belongs to a serial killer.         experience (p. 82). At the same time, by resorting
   According to Morgan, rather than identify         to Wollheim and especially McCarrol’s work,
with the camera, we merely desire to be with         Morgan undermines his self-professed attempt
the camera while knowing full well that this         to produce an organic theory stemming from the
is impossible, a process he describes as an          critical analysis of films (an approach advocated
epistemic fantasy. This immediately raises the       by Dudley Andrew) in opposition to the reductive
stakes as it questions much that has been written    imposition of frameworks from above. In fact,
about film. Morgan takes the work of various         Morgan too ultimately relies parasitically on
film scholars to task for relying all too heavily    exterior conceptualizations — in this case
(explicitly or implicitly) on the assumption that    developed in Art History and cognitive science
the camera’s position corresponds to that of         via the Philosophy of Mind. The fantasy of an
the spectator. He makes a persuasive claim           unmediated approach to film remains liable to the
and reiterates it across various paragraphs. At      same critique Hegel moved against empiricism
the same time, this repetition slows down the        for (unconsciously) reading the subject into the
flow of his argument. We remain bogged down          object rather than the unmediated object itself.
in the pars destruens long after recognizing            With regards to empiricism, the book would
the need for an alternative model, gripped by a      benefit from a deeper engagement with the
sense of totalizing skepticism. Indeed, Morgan       science of vision and the phenomenon of motion



142                                                                                 The Lure of the Image
sickness. If we genuinely identified with the
moving camera, would we not feel sick? This
is not unusual in first-person and third-person
videogames, and while Morgan mentions
videogames in passing, he does not consider this
distinction. In addition, moments of cinephilic
appreciation — such as the description of a crane
shot as “gorgeous” (p. 236) — feel unnecessary,
and Morgan could have dedicated a few words
to dispel Lacan’s theorization of the mirror
stage rather than bypass him via Ovid. Further
research could be developed in dialogue with
work emerging outside the boundaries of
Anglophone film scholarship, such as Masaki
Kondo’s Derridean analysis of the Cartesian
logic of Samuel Becket’s film about eyes and
non-being FILM (1965).3
   Nonetheless, the book is quite brilliant. It is
both innovative and rooted in tradition, remaining
deeply committed to film as film. Accordingly, it
should be required reading for any film theory
course which aims to (re)think “seriously” (p. 244)
about camera movement and, more generally,
film aesthetics.
                        Antonio Patrick D’Amico
                               [Yale University]




   Notes
     ¹ Patrick Keating, The Dynamic Frame. Camera Movement in Classical Hollywood (New York:
   Columbia University Press, 2019).
     ² Cristopher McCarrol (Remembering from the Outside: Personal Memory and the Perspectival
   Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
     ³ Masaki Kondo, ‘The Eye and the Gaze: Peering into Samuel Beckett’s Film’, Screen, 61.3 (2020),
   423–435 (427).



Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                               143
