University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Production design and the history film

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Production design and the history film

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Content PRODUCTION DESIGN AND THE HISTORY FILM
by
Charles Shiro Tashiro
A Dissertation Presented to
THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Critical Studies)
May 1994
© 1994 Charles Shiro Tashiro
UMI Number: DP22283
All rights reserved
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a note will indicate the deletion.
Published by ProQ uest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
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This dissertation, w ritten by
Charles Shiro Tashiro
under the direction of h .M Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirem ents for the degree of
p h . v.
C » Y I
m
7i«n
3 H ob a.‘ to
D O C TO R OF PHILOSOPH Y
Dean of G raduate Studies
Date
DISSERTATION COMMUTE
Acknowledgments
Any author compiling a set of acknowledgments inevitably encounters the
problem of who to include, which in turn leads to the question of what to consider
part of the writing process. One way to limit the list would be to restrict it only to
those people directly related to the writing and researching of the dissertation.
Unfortunately, since many of the observations and ideas in this work derive from
my filmmaking practice, acknowledging only those directly involved in the writing
process would be misleading. On the other hand, if you start to include things
beyond basic research and writing, it is difficult to make an end.
With those reservations in mind, I would like to start the list with my mother,
Charlotte Tashiro who, in addition to providing financial support during my PhD
days more importantly is responsible for starting my thoughts about historical
representation way back with the first costume movie I made in Falmouth,
Massachusetts. It was also probably she who first made me aware of the sensual
qualities of fabric and its relation to the enrichment of the cinematic experience. In
this same regard, I would like to thank all those people who in the past have served
as actors in my film and video projects, particularly my sister Stephanie. Too
numerous to list, they contributed without knowing it to my thoughts about the
importance of the human form in relation to visual design.
Jumping ahead, I would like to thank Petter Magnus Nordin, Neela Sastry and
Sarma Bala Kameshwara Vrudhula for “conspiring” to send me back to graduate
school for a PhD. It is a safe bet I would never have done it were it not for their
encouragement and goading. I would also like to thank Dorab Patel for much the
same involvement, for reading an early draft of the dissertation, and for providing
many meals beyond the budget of a starving student. In the same spirit, I would
like to thank Scott and Jill Kalter, whose enthusiastic support and weekend
“retreats” in Malibu provided incalculable relief and refreshment from academic
doldrums.
As for USC, it’s difficult to single out fellow students for thanks, since part of
the process of graduate education is to test your ideas against the opinions of
others. If I mention Donna Cunningham, Harry Benshoff, Tracy Biga, Vicky
Johnson, Mark Wolf, Doug Troyan, and Susan Robinson, it’s not to overlook
others, but to recall those people with whom I most often discussed ideas. I would,
however, like to thank my chief “sparring partners” in the department, Jonathan
Schwartz and Tassilo Schneider, who always could be relied upon for their honest
opinions— which is another way of saying, could always be relied upon to tell me
when I was full of it.
I would like to mention the helpful support of the Administrative staff of the
Critical Studies Department and the School of Cinema-Television. Chief among
these would be Lee Stork, Owen Costello, Casandra Morgan, and Anne Bergman.
I would also like to thank Dean Elizabeth Daley for her support of several projects
on which I worked as a student. Thanks too to Gino Cheng of the School of
Engineering for his enthusiastic development of the MCTRC, for allowing me to
play around with the computers in the basement of Electrical Engineering, and for
financial support during the critical summer of 1993. On the same plain, I’d like to
thank the USC Graduate School for support during the 1993-94 academic year with
a Dissertation Fellowship.
I would like to thank Profs. Rick Jewell and David James for agreeing to sit on
my exam committee, and for reading an early draft of my dissertation. I would also
like to thank Dean Victor Regnier of the USC School of Architecture for gamely
IV
venturing into the unknown of PhD work with an unknown quantity such as
myself. To Prof. Lynn Spigel I offer special thanks for her always fresh and unique
perspective.
Finally, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Marsha Kinder, for her always
energetic, enthusiastic, honest and complete support. If the mark of a great teacher
is the ability to advance her ideas, while providing ample room for the student to
develop his own, Prof. Kinder has all the traits of greatness. It has been a privilege
to work with her for the past four years. Without her encouragement, this project
might well have withered on the vine of good intentions.
V
Contents
Acknowledgments ii
Preface vi
Introduction !
Chapter 1 — Design for Filming 12
Chapter 2— Fit for Framing 62
Chapter 3— History of the World, part I 103
Chapter 4- -The Knowledge of 156
Archaeology
Chapter 5— Rich Man, Poor Man 227
Bibliography 268
VI
Preface
It is currently necessary for all finishing PhD candidates to file a copy of their
dissertations with their University, who in turn file copies with their own library
and University Microfilms International. As a result of the standardization
necessary for such mass duplication, all dissertations must conform to a format
outlined by their respective universities.
The following dissertation is a text version of what would in an optimal
situation be a combination of text and graphics. Although the format currently used
by the University of Southern California allows for the inclusion of photographic
materials and other illustrations, it does not allow for a flexible page layout. Since
the subject of the dissertation is design, the quality of the page ideally should reflect
or interact with the discussion. Although such flexibility is currently available to
those students fortunate enough to have access to a computer with page layout
programs, and does not require greatly increased skill beyond normal word
processing, the approved formats for dissertations do not allow such
experimentation.
Therefore, the reader is warned in advance that what follows is at best an
approximation of what could be achieved through a less rigid format. The author
suggests that the reader wait for a published version of the dissertation in order to
understand the discussion fully. Our society has moved beyond simple text, but
universities, libraries and microtext services remain wedded to a state of affairs at
least ten years out of date. Until that situation changes, we will have to make do
with bare text as inadequate substitute for the designed page.
Introduction
For no matter how skillful film directors and actors are, they do not
use evocative symbols but images, the indicative unequivocal signs
made by the imprint of objects on the screen. Through the cinematic
images we can apprehend the world only from the outside, for
because of their nature, they are unable to render subjective
experience. . . .
Nicola Chiaromonte, “On Image and Word.”'
Of the “movie brat” generation, I started making, reading and writing about
films very early. But as I grew older, I began to notice something odd about both
the films I made and those I preferred to attend. Neither were particularly strong as
straight-forward narratives. Both seemed to be interested more in savoring images
for their own qualities than in contributing to the trajectory of characters through
space and time. When a friend teased me for making incoherent films, I had to
agree: my movies had stories, but were impossible to follow because I’d failed to
master the rules of classical narrative and spatial construction. However, far from
allowing that to bother me, I became more interested in filmmakers with a similar
“problem,” if it is one. I had already a strong interest in high art auteurs like
Resnais, Godard, Visconti and Bergman. To those, I added the films of Antonioni,
and in particular, Joseph Losey, partly because I saw in them a parallel dilemma of
on how much to rely on the image to communicate theme and characterization.
But as I read about these filmmakers, and particularly about Losey’s films, I
encountered an annoying consistency: one of the unique features of Losey’s work
was, according to his critics, his close working relationships with his designers.
These relationships suggested one possible explanation for the Losey “problem,”
but having raised the issue, virtually all of the writers dropped it promptly in favor
of thematic analysis.2 If, as these writers maintained, design was so important,
why didn’t they deal with it? Indeed, why didn’t they even define what they meant
2
by the process? At best, they would move from the observation to explain
decorative elements in the terms of the story (mirrors as a form of doubling,
window frames as metaphors for the act of looking at a film, etc.)
This kind of “reading” of an image can suggest previously unexplored avenues
of analysis. But at their worst, these figurative attributions are merely trite. The
presence of barred shadows in film noir, for example, gets read as a ‘metaphor’ for
the characters’ entrapment. Thus, cliches in visual presentation are compounded by
cliches of critical analysis, in which all figurative expression can be quickly, neatly
reduced to a set of pre-digested meanings. Even the best of such readings stilJ tie
design down to its dominant, narrative function. No attention is paid either to the
design’s connection with the non-diegetic world, nor to the complexities raised by
compositional position within the diegesis. Nor is there much attention paid to
questions such as why we are justified in labeling one moment metaphorical, while
accepting another as literal. (For good reason: frequently there isn’t any
justification.)
Such “metaphorical” interpretations of design are offered as enrichments of the
image, but really reduce it. Ready-made tropes are not terribly interesting,
particularly when applied mechanically. They merely substitute for an immediately
recognizable level of imagery (a room) a second-level of figurative expression,
from which a savvy viewer might draw (barred shadows=entrapment.)
“Metaphorical” readings explain decor in terms of the narrative, as if it had no
meaning apart from the story. The film image as narrativized becomes cut off from
the social reality which makes it intelligible. Or rather, that reality is introduced only
in terms of its effect on narrative and character. A lexicon for the initiated, these
“metaphors” remain impervious to questions, such as: if barred shadows are meant
to suggest a prison, why not simply show a prison?
3
Such literal minded skepticism may be more profound, and is certainly more
interesting, than reflexive assertions of highly debatable figurative expression. In
addition to offering a hard-nosed attendance to what the image contains, such
questions point to a deeply-rooted problem. Film has no “like” or “as if ’ except
those provided by critics, filmmakers’ statements and stylistic convention derived
from both. At one level, shadows of bars on the wall are only shadows of bars on
the wall. Before we can discuss compositional contribution or figurative meaning,
we have to confront what design is before it serves a story. “Metaphorical” readings
of design are merely a confession of cultural failure: recognizing the importance of a
non-verbal discourse, critics nonetheless scramble to re-subsume it within the
respectable confines of theme, story and character, refusing to admit that design can
have a life of its own which can bring more to a film than the literary constructions
with which they feel comfortable.
For this reason, in Chapter 1, I’ve turned to architectural theory as an alternative
means of discussing space, decor and objects. This chapter starts from two related
assumptions. First, that a film, despite its evanesence, is an object, existing in
space, as much as a process, unfolding in time. From this definition follows a
second assumption. This object and its represented contents can be viewed in
relation to a second volume, our bodies. These assumptions allow us to reverse the
normal priority of cinematic analysis, taking the physical environment as
foreground, the narrative environment as supportive background.
This approach runs counter to familiar means of discussing cinematic space.
One of the best statements of this position is provided by Stephen Heath’s
“Narrative Space.”3 Heath argues that movement in cinema presents problems
resulting from the disruption to visual perception caused by the shifts in perspective
in continuity editing.4 This disruption is a threat to plastic organization, which must
be minimized.5 Therefore, “The classical economy of film is its organization thus as
organic unity and the form of that economy is narrative, the narrativization of
film.”6
Heath’s position assumes that the photographic nature of the image creates
narrative, that the indexical relation between image and referent will always be
subordinated to a story created by the viewer. This ahistorical position works from
the backward glance of seventy years of narrative dominance. Yet Robert Allen has
suggested that, in the early days of cinema, the triumph of narrative was by no
means assured: ■
Documentary film types continued to occupy approximately forty
percent of American output, and some of these films were
enthusiastically received in vaudeville... .The popularity o f . . .
[documentaries and] .. .reenactments again points out that when
news events loomed large in the public consciousness, the news and
information function of the motion picture in vaudeville usually
came to the fore.7
Nor was the chain of desire and identification which Heath sees bridging
editing’s perspectival disruptions necessarily sufficient, even in the United States.
Describing the effect of the alternation of views achieved through cutting, an early
critic wrote:
Now, here was a total lack of uniformity, due entirely to a want of
intelligence on the part of the producer and the photographer, and
the effect on the minds of the people who saw this picture was
extreme dissatisfaction... .It is curious to reflect that in an hour’s
entertainment of a moving picture theater, the visitor sees an infinite
variation in the apparent sizes of things as shown by the moving
picture. This is absurd. On the vaudeville or talking stage, figures of
human beings do not expand or contract irrationally or eccentrically;
they remain the same size.8
Finally, Yuri Tsivian has shown that the popularity of the close-up in American
films was seen by some Russian viewers as an attempt to cover the inadequacies of
the set. One writer complained about Westerns, for example:
5
[The Western filmmakers] were aware that their rooms were sloppy
fakes, and so they decided to film the faces in “close-up” and to
have the actors looking directly “into the camera.” They hoped that
the audience would remember the beauty of the faces and the
“acting,” and that for a few seconds they would not notice the life
lessness of the decor; but afterwards that only made the falseness of
the room even more glaringly obvious.9
Such comments suggest the biases and limitations of insisting on the preeminence
of narrative. In fact, the spectacle of design has at least in some contexts been
viewed as an equal, if not greater, attraction than emotional identification.
We should recognize that Heath’s argument is circular. It is hardly surprising
that he concludes narrative subordinates the recording function of cinema to the
dramatic function, since he never describes that space by any name other than the
one given by the narrative. Thus “Narrative Space” presents a tendentious theory.
While Heath has demonstrated elsewhere a recognition of the indeterminacy of the
image, unfortunately, a tradition of prescriptive analyses based on Heath treats
objects and spaces as narrative constructs before physical facts. As a result,
thematic analysis, with its ease of discussion, its willingness itself to narrativize,
almost inevitably returns through the back door. But there is a certain dishonesty in
this insistence on the hegemony of narrative, since it must operate from a Realist
premise in order to identify the content of images as people, places and things. If,
for example, David Bordwell truly believes “the classical style makes the sheerly
graphic space of the film image a vehicle for narrative,”1 0 how does he recognize
the content of the image? Does he insist that the narrative redefines an object
completely, that narrative composition successfully re-names the world?
To advocate attention to the realistic properties of the film image is not to
denigrate the contributions of narrative analysis, nor to abandon its formalist
underpinnings. Neither should we indulge in a naive faith in the film image’s
transparency. Rather, it is to restore a necessary balance, to understand the
complexities of the image, to make a plea, finally, for a multivalence and poetry
which presumably motivates criticism. The image admits no easy formulas.
The theorist on whom Heath relies, Rudolf Arnheim, probably offers a more
useful approach in discussing design, since he recognizes that the film image is
inherently limited in its ability to reproduce depth.11 That limitation, in turn,
structures much of film design. But in the process of addressing the medium’s
representational failings, designers frequently “overdo” it, resulting in a fetishized
image, imbued with an ideology of more real than reality. This process of
fetishization results in the over-stimulation of one sense, vision, in order to
compensate for the frustration of the other senses.
For these reasons, Chapter 2 examines the issue of framing in detail,
particularly in relation to its saturation. Framing is an inevitability in any cinematic
operation; but it is also the first act of design, the moment when the decision to
include and exclude first occurs. But while granting that framing is inevitable and
inevitably exclusive, we can still make distinctions in the goals of different forms of
design. These forms depend on their relationship to the frame, or more precisely,
their attitudes towards it. The goal in this chapter is not so much to provide new
definitions of the frame but, by examining open and closed organization within their
historical development, and by combining them with attention to their degrees of
saturation, we can have a more precise idea of how design contributes to the
illusion of reality.
In this study, ‘designer’ is meant loosely, as a rubric embracing all those visual
technicians— director, director of photography, production designer, art director,
costume designer, makeup artist, ‘visual consultant,’ et al.— contributing to the
semantic impact of a film image, to the creation of a readable surface of spaces and
artifacts. Designers are an agency of meaning to the extent that they organize
connotation within the boundaries of the frame. But they are not authors in any
important sense, particularly since it is part of the contradictory nature of the
designer’s function to efface personality in favor of the ‘background’ effect.
But while individual designers may not be authors, design as an operation, a set
of semantic practices and resulting images, can be. We can thus speak of bodies of
films which are organized on the basis of their design principles, on particular uses
of the frame. It is perhaps misleading and counterproductive to speak of design
genres, since the latter term is inevitably associated with literary analysis. But that
very paradox, the juxtaposition of two terms not normally conjoined is precisely the
point. Perhaps on this basis, we can re-frame the modes of classification, to
suggest that division on the basis of story and character inevitably leads to
distortion. Instead, borrowing from other fields, we can recognize that while genre
is a useful means of classifying narrative films, that narrative need not be the most
salient common characteristic between films.
To demonstrate this limitation, in chapter 3 we examine History Films strictly
from the perspective of story, character and theme. Drawing on the literary theories
of Gy orgy Lukacs, we will isolate a set of films on the basis of their literary values,
as a means of understanding what visual patterns arise through narrative similarity.
In other words, beginning with a set of stories and situtations that are remarkably
limited and repetitive, we will examine the degree to which the design of these films
also repeats— but also, the degree to which design itself is a necessity to understand
the stories and characters.
History Films rely heavily on design simply to function. Like science fiction
and fantasy, History Films require the designer to create images immediately
recognizable as different from contemporary reality. All three groups of films
8
attempt the demiurgic, the creation of alternative realities. For this reason, after
examining the History Film on the basis of its stories and characters, in Chapter 4
we move on to detailed analyses of the genre’s form, particularly its mise-en-scene.
This emphasis is justified not only because of the high reliance the genre has on
design, but also because of the strikingly similar images appearing across films.
Yet inevitably, textual analysis encounters two immediate problems. The first is
the danger that the chosen examples are a-typical, that they reveal less about a
general form than a particular moment. I have chosen examples with this problem in
mind, but in order to make particular points, it may well be that the selections offer
more extreme instances of the issues at hand than the genre exhibits overall. This is
a calculated risk. But if it seems that the majority of my examples come from a too-
narrow span of time (a large number are from the 1950s through the early 1970s) I
would respond that that fact itself expresses a truth: that the genre should be defined
as much by the fashions o f representation current during this period as by the
stories enacted within the films.
As a result, in chapter 5, the concluding chapter, we will examine one text,
Doctor Zhivago re-connected to its context. Thus, having progressively narrowed
the field of examination from a general view of design as an operation, the focus of
the work narrows ever further, not just to a single film text, but to a single element
of design within that text. But in the process, we simultaneously funnel back
outwards, to join this ever-narrower field of view to the wider world around it. The
purpose of this two-fold movement is mainly to reveal the complexity of design, to
make it impossible in future to take for granted the “control” of a narrative over it.
At no point do we assume that the designer has any ambition or intention beyond
invisibly serving the script. Rather, we assume that in that self-denying process,
9
extraneous meaning inevitably accrues. And it is the use to which that particular
meaning is put that may be the most socially interesting aspect of design.
Yet, Historical Films and science fiction differ in their demiurgic operations in
at least one significant way. Whereas science fiction and fantasy must create a
completely unknown world, Historical Films operate with a referent, even if one
remembered only through the fog of time (or other films.) And while the demiurgic
frees the designer to play with objects as exotica, a freedom rarely allowed in
contemporary settings, it is a straight-jacketed freedom. For the recreation of the
past operates itself on a set of contradictions: the image must be immediately
recognizable as stylized, ‘of the past’; yet at the same time, that stylization will
always be related to a standard of historical authenticity dictated by the script.
This description might seem a mere re-phrasing of the paradox of classical
representation in general, and indeed, the contradictions involved in historical
design can probably be expanded to include most of classical cinema. But that is the
point: the design of History Films is worth exploring because the films foreground
the issue, not because they are unique. What remains peculiar to design as a
profession, however, is its reliance on objects, spaces, surfaces, appearances, as a
means of stimulating the stream of connotation. Design is restricted to that which
can be, is, shown. It displays, to paraphrase Peter Greenaway “an attitude towards
nature that is strictly material.”1 2
Thus, as we venture to understand the design of films, we can keep an attitude
in mind best expressed by Siegfried Kracauer:
10
Natural objects, then, are surrounded with a fringe of meanings
liable to touch off various moods, emotions, runs of inarticulate
thoughts; in other words, they have a theoretically unlimited number
of psychological and mental correspondences... .screen images
tend to reflect the indeterminacy of natural objects. However
selective, a film does not come into its own unless it incorporates
raw material with its multiple meanings. .. .1 3
It is this very indeterminacy, this richness of the film image, and experiences
derived from it, which this project strives to restore.
1 reprinted in The Movies as Medium, selected, arranged and introduced by Lewis
Jacobs, 37-50.
2 see, for example: Tom Milne (ed.), Losey on Losey, Joseph Leahy, The Cinema
o f Joseph Losey, Foster Hirsch, Joseph Losey.
3 Stephen Heath, Questions o f Cinema..
4 Heath 31.
5 Heath 32.
6 Heath 43.
7 Robert C. Allen, Vaudeville and Film 1895-1915: A study in Media Interaction ,
159-60.
8 “The Factor of Uniformity,” The Moving Pciture World, volume 5, no.4 July 24,
1909; quoted in George C. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness: a History of the Silent
Film , 96. Pratt quotes several contemporary complaints about the development of
what we now consider standard cinematic technique.
9 I. Surguchov, ‘Nesmyatye podushki (o kino-rezhisserakh)’ [Uncrumpled Pillows
(On Film Directors)], Kulisy [The Wings], 1917, nos. 26, 27, p. 12. quoted in Yuri
Tsivian, Unreliable Reality: The Perception o f Cinema in Russian Culture, 1896-
1919.
10 David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode o f Production to 1960, 50.
11 Rudolf Amheim, Film as A r t.
11
12 Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman’s Contract (1981).
12 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory o f Film: the Redemption o f Physical Reality, 68-69.
12
Chapter 1--Design for Filming
In Jorge Luis Borges’s story, “Averroes’ Search,” the great Moorish scholar,
translating Aristotle’s Poetics from Greek to Arabic, stumbles over the words
“tragedy” and “comedy.”1 Pausing from his labors to visit a friend, Averroes meets
a traveller recently returned from the East. The traveller relates how, in a peculiar
Chinese practice, people behave as if they were participating in a story, instead of
narrating it aloud, as if the events had a reality of their own. Averroes and the
others listening to this tale first conclude these people to be mad. Assured by the
traveller that they are not, the guests decide that the Chinese practice is gratuitous,
since one person may tell a story as easily as twenty. Averroes then returns home to
struggle with the proper translation for “tragedy” and “comedy.”
Borges invites us to recognize the absurdity of something we take for granted.
Viewed through the eyes of someone who has never witnessed it, dramatic
performance is rendered ridiculous. But the fable unwittingly perpetuates
Averroes’s blindness, since both scholar and story identify a drama’s primary
purpose as narrative, a blindness derived from, appropriately enough, Aristotle:
.. .spectacle is emotionally powerful but is the least integral of all to
the poet’s art: for the potential of tragedy does not depend upon
public performance and actors; and, besides, the art of the mask-
maker carries more weight than the poet’s as regards the elaboration
of visual effects.2
In these terms, Averroes and his friends are correct: if “the potential of tragedy does
not depend upon public performance and actors,” one person will do as well as
twenty.
But asking why “spectacle” exists at all throws this prejudice into doubt. If
story and character were enough, why did performance ever move beyond
recitation and description? Too often, the answer to that question restates Aristotle’s
13
condescension: sensual pleasure is “an attraction,” it adds to an experience, but the
meat of a drama (or film) is its plot and characters. This weighty tradition puts the
discussion in the wrong terms, implying a fundamental difference between what
“really matters,” (story and character) and the means of description.
Film, dependent on the physical world for its power to persuade, throws this
question into greater relief. While narrative films concentrate on story,
subordinating all composition to it, the medium depends on an illusion of taking
place in reality. This relationship between image and referent is the medium’s
strength and weakness, allowing for an immediacy of presentation while narrowing
the range of expression to that which is external, visualizable, material— in short,
spectacular.
As the person most responsible for creating a compelling physical background
for the narrative, the Production Designer sits at a point of conjunction and
negotiation with the world outside the story. The designer must create a “spectacle”
distinctive enough to provide a project with particular detail, yet general enough to
be mistaken for a world free of diegetic control. In fact, the label “Production
Designer” describes the profession’s aesthetic function through a dialectical
construction which simultaneously reveals its social function: Production (industrial
process) + Designer (aesthetic shaper) = the person who finesses industry into
aesthetically pleasing forms.
This dialectical construction serving as a label derives from a specific
production context, overseen by David O. Selznick, the making of Gone With the
Wind (1939):
Menzies may turn out to be one of the most valuable factors in
properly producing this picture. One of the minor problems in
connection with this arrangement is the matter of Menzies’s credit.
Menzies is terribly anxious not to get back to art direction as such,
and of course his work on this picture, as I see it, will be a lot
14
greater in scope than is normally associated with the term “art
direction.” Accordingly, I would probably give him some such
credit as “Production Designed by William Cameron Menzies.”3
The creation of a new classification should never be taken lightly. Still, while
Selznick’s memo suggests that a Production Designer is someone whose
responsibilities exceed the normal functions of an art director, the distinction may
not be that clearly-cut, except in economic terms.
The flow of ideas in any work situation makes it difficult to point to an
individual as primarily responsible for a final product.4 Therefore, the creative
difference between art director and production designer may be more a question of
individual circumstance than anything else. While some production designers have
more responsibility than the art directors working under them, others do not,
particularly when working for a director with a strong design sense.5 But to
understand their profession, designers’ statements make a useful starting point, less
for what they say than what they don’t, their assumptions rather than their
intentions.
Caligari’ s Cabinet and other Grand Illusions6 by Leon Barsacq remains the
most thorough statement of the film design profession available in print. It is useful
as a general history of the profession and as the statement of an experienced
designer. His descriptions of production practices provide documentary evidence of
industrial procedure and a clear expression of the assumptions and goals of his
profession.7 But instead of clarifying the design profession, Barsacq’s book, at
least initially, confuses.
Barsacq begins his historical overview of design with a distinction between the
Lumiere and Melies traditions, with the latter a progressive step out of the former.
He gives Melies credit for inventing the set, arguing that his films suggest: “. . .the
15
laws governing film sets: an illusion of depth; a judicious choice of the elements
composing the set; their detailed, realistic execution; and, finally, their effective
presentation.”8 He continues: “Here, perhaps, is one of the fundamental
requirements of the cinema: to give the impression of having photographed real ob
jects.” Melies’s sets move beyond the simple recording of reality in the Lumiere
tradition but also render the image a greater density and depth than life as lived.
But Melies’s painted backdrops provided only a partial solution to the rendering
of the three dimensional illusion. Barsacq continues to argue that film escaped its
‘primitive’ phase only at the point when it moved away from backdrops a la Melies
to the use of three-dimensional sets and objects. He suggests that film’s expressive
potential could be realized only after it had undergone a fundamental change in
spatial conception, from a scenic or graphic conception of filmic space to an ar
chitectural one:
[The development in film scenery] can be explained by the existence
of a film perspective very different from that of the theater. It is no
longer the spectator who follow the action taking place on the stage
in front of him, but the camera, which penetrates the intimate world
of the characters and accents this or that facial expression, this or
that aspect of an object, setting, or landscape.9
Barsacq assumes that because of the photographic nature of cinema, its purpose is
to record reality as it exists. However, because he is writing a history of design, he
must justify the process as something in excess of a simple recording of nature.
Since the image should provide the illusion of three dimensions, design becomes a
matter of spatial manipulation. The “designed” image by definition becomes a
spatialized, architecturalized image.
16
Moreover, by suggesting that the stylized fantasies of Melies are an improve
ment over the Lumiere tradition, rather than a movement in another direction,
Barsacq introduces the possibility of design qua design as a value. But to valorize a
I’artpour Vart approach to film design contradicts one of Barsacq’s “laws” of
design: “detailed, realistic execution.” Therefore, having foregrounded design, he
immediately backgrounds it again, so that design ultimately gives “the impression
of having photographed real objects.” In short, design is not a value in itself, it is
so only to the extent that it helps the film image to overcome its representational
deficiencies in order to render a Reality dictated by the scenario.1 0 Cinematic
architecture is created in order to be moved through, not noticed or pondered.
Design provides atmosphere that is there, but not there, assertive when it has to
be, but basically, essentially passive. Thus Barsacq is able to claim that a set “is a
discreet but ever-present character .. .the setting best calculated to situate the action
geographically, socially, and dramatically.” 1 1 Yet it is obvious that Barsacq has
introduced a fundamental tension to his argument which is never completely
suppressed nor resolved. Film design must be simultaneously realistic and stylized.
Individual success depends largely on “the requirements of the production that
should guide the designer in drawing up his plans,” 1 2 in short on a relativist
standard of evaluation that subverts any notion of design “laws.” Once those “laws”
have been recognized as arbitrary, the contradictory nature of the design function is
exposed.
17
Despite, or perhaps because of the contradictory nature of film design, Barsacq
introduces the terms for a meaningful discussion. If film started out as a recording
device and only became “cinema” when it started to stylize, design exists in excess
of a use value (recording raw nature.) The terms of that excess are determined by
the compositional requirements of individual productions. The expression of those
terms will be an architectural setting. Mamer and Stringer, writing a primer for
potential film designers, express this function in terms similar to Barsacq’s:
The Art Director contributes the vitally important visual background
of the feature film. He is an artist who adapts his style to any
number of various types of film. He integrates himself and his
associates totally into the mood and feeling of the particular film
whether it be a comedy, a musical, an adventure, a fantasy, or a
very intimate social drama. The range of his material is
inexhaustible, the scope of his design is limitless and the Art of Art
Direction is to make the imagination soar to seemingly impossible
heights within a practical and economic framework.1 3
More succinctly, Beverly Heisner in Hollywood Art describes the assumptions of
the film designer: “As with stage design, art direction begins with the script.” 1 4
18
A film image acquires exchange value when the recording function is viewed as
inadequate and the image is designed beyond its documentary function.1 5 When
recognition of the design as material process is discouraged, when the indexical
bond between image and referent is suppressed in favor of its non-documentary
meaning, the design contributes toward a fetish of the image, generated by the
narrative, which serves as the basis of composition and acquisition of value.1 6 In
the process, design draws on, re-structures and produces meaning through
connotation. In its exploitation of potentialities, design attempts to perform
simultaneously two contradictory operations: to create a world that does not exist
outside of the film moment, to start from ground zero, a blank field of meaning; to
connect the film to the outside world, to convince the spectator that the images
he/she sees exist in, are a vital part of, that world.
The measure of the success of this process is the extent to which the resulting
images seem to derive not from the work of filmmakers, but from an infinite
dictionary described by Pier Paolo Pasolini:
There is no dictionary of images. There is no pigeonholed image,
ready to be used. If by any chance we wanted to imagine a
dictionary of images, we would have to imagine an infinite
dictionary, as infinite as the dictionary of possible words}1
While Pasolini’s description is correct to the extent that any image is possible, once
conceived, an image becomes limited by the cultural moment of its conception, to a
finite sub-set of an infinite potential. As the designer masses architectural spaces,
objects, costumes, etc., he/she works from this vast, but limited cultural field.
19
The requirements of the script truncate potential further, by providing a set of
situations and characters which generate a “design concept” that attempts a unified
presentation of the physical world. The character field individuates design, detailing
the sets and spaces. Of course, since characters are a part of the diegesis, script
control hasn’t so much been superseded as augmented. The ideal movement of
design, a general funnelling downward from an infinity of possibilities, converges
on the single object, tracing an illusory trajectory toward precision.
The designer provides the details necessary for a physically plausible setting,
determined by the requirements of the story. These details, selected on the
dominant, provide a set of compositional connotations motivated by the diegetic
field. These compositional connotations provide the limits for the design’s expres
sion (period, location, etc..) But individual design elements are external texts,
equally limited, channelled, circumscribed by reasons that have nothing to do with
the film. As design limits the range of options available, it simultaneously re-opens
the film to the outside by the inclusion of texts whose participation is, in cultural,
social terms, arbitrary. Only the need to produce exchange value through image
stylization dictates their inclusion.
In order to perform its dominant function, the design must connect to a general,
socially shared set of images and connotations which can be grasped immediately.
“John’s house” must read as a house before it can belong to John; it must fit an
accepted notion of how houses look. This is the paradox of design: in order for
John’s house to be recognized at a glance, to be able to be ignored, it must first be
sufficiently present and assertive to be taken for granted. It must be individuated
enough to fit the script’s expressive demands. But nothing can be so distinctive that
the design moves to the foreground.
20
The social connotations that make such insouciant readings possible are
powerful, but volatile. Powerful, because they answer to a set of associations
greater than any one story’s needs, re-connecting the design to the larger cultural
field. Thus their volatility: the social circumstances producing connotative power
are constantly in flux. Indeed, individual films contribute towards that flux by
placing the object in a new context.1 8 Thus a design that depends on the illusion of
contemporary reality, while more immediately convincing, will date badly as the set
of cultural assumptions around the design shifts in response to changing historical
circumstance. Objects selected for their transparent resonance become opaque; those
included as neutral filler acquire unexpected prominence within the obsessions of a
new setting.
On the other hand, the interdependence of social and compositional connotation
means that no narrative film can offer completely hermetic design. Even those with
a tendency in that direction are relatively rare since a social reality always has to be
invoked in order to fulfill the objects’ narrative function. Simply put, objects must
be recognizable. A design operating more on internal connotation creates a relatively
stable set of associations but runs the risk of an excess of personalism that will
degenerate into meaninglessness. But, regardless of the degree of verisimilitude
intended, the set of meanings derived from cultural and compositional connotation
results in an unsteady mixture of associations. By opening the diegesis to the
outside world, connotative imprecision becomes inevitable.
In order to understand design for its pre-narrative self, a theory of the spaces
and objects photographed has to allow them a relative independence from
signification. Architectural theory, which takes space and objects as its subject,
provides one set of options. It is also appropriate since Barsacq suggests that the
illusion of space on a two-dimensional surface requires a knowledge of architectural
21
practice in order to provide the film image with its power to persuade. Moreover,
since many film designers started as architects, a number of their tricks to create the
illusion of depth derive from architectural practice.
Perhaps most critically, as a technology derived from one-point perspective,
cinema results from optical theory employed first by Renaissance architects and
artists. The rules of architectural depth are ground into film lenses. There is an
affinity between the fields because they are kindred technologies, or better, film is
itself an architectural technology. To be able fully to exploit the depth illusion possi
ble from a lens, the filmmaker must have a knowledge of the rules employed by its
ancestral art. To the extent that they assign camera positions, and therefore one-
point views on the world, filmmakers fundamentally are architects.
In Existence, Space and Architecture, Christian Norberg-Schulz proposes a
series of spatial categories that start from the human subject as center of the
perceived world, extending ever wider away from that subject.1 9 Deriving his ideas
from the developmental psychological theories of Piaget, Norberg-Schulz fixes the
affective relationship such spaces have with the subject. Taking as a given that the
camera is a stand in for the viewer, that the act of watching a film is analogous to a
person moving through space, his categories provide a first step towards un
derstanding the emotional relationships recorded cinematic spaces may establish
with a viewer.20
Norberg-Schulz’s categories, move outward from the subject, first
encountering graspable objects (The Apprehensible); next, objects under less direct
control (Furniture); third, the setting for objects and furniture, interior space (The
House/The Set); fourth, the exterior, urban scale (The Street); fifth, Landscape. To
these five basic categories, can be added two directly applicable to production
22
design, but irrelevant to architecture: at one end of the scale, costume; at the other,
cosmic space.
Makeup, Jewelry & Costume
In the opening credits to Prospero’ s Books (1991), a long tracking shot
traverses the spaces of the Duke of Milan’s island home, punctuated with countless
naked figures. The opening provokes a gasp, both because of the technical
showmanship, and the sheer exceptionality of the presentation of naked bodies. The
film continues to exploit that shock, our constant surprise at seeing the human form
unclothed. Nakedness in cinema as anything other than the prelude to sex is an
exception, a moment always to be explained, motivated. Clothing masks nakedness
as a literal second skin, the true epidermis that meets the elements and seduces the
eye. Moving outward from the body, makeup, jewelry and costume are virtually
identical, since all three occupy a point in space so intimately close to the skin as to
be part of it, thin applications to the quintessentially us.
Yet if the film camera is a stand-in for the viewer, there is an immediate
paradox. For the clothing that matters most in the cinema is not that worn by the
actors, but what we wear as we watch. If the body, our body, is the center of the
spatial universe set in motion by the cinematic apparatus, ours is the clothing most
immediately felt. This paradox becomes heightened in those moments of
subjectivity when we are placed inside a character’s perspective. For at such
moments, our bodies are the characters’ bodies; our clothing theirs.
Costume and makeup immediately establish a difference between the diegesis
and ourselves at a close level of intimacy. They become the most apparent trace of
stylization. The more substantial the difference between the film’s costumes and our
own, the more critical the disjuncture between what we see and what we know.
This difference moves beyond vision into the tactile, since as the characters clothes
23
change clothes, ours don’t. We experience the rapidly changing clothing of the im
age from within a single shell of fabric, the same sensations from beginning to end
of the film.
Far from trivial, this difference between our clothing and the film’s costumes is
fundamental to the viewing experience. Barsacq makes a revealing observation
about costume in film:
It is interesting to note that the novels that periodically inspire
filmmakers .. .belong with few exceptions to a period when male
dress already prefigured what it is today: that is, one century of
history from 1815 to 1915. (Fashion has rendered the public less
sensitive to the metamorphoses of women’s clothes.) The spectator,
neither distracted nor disoriented by a hero in wig, tights, doublet,
or toga, quickly forgets the minor differences in the outward
appearance of the setting and costumes. This brings the characters
and their emotions closer to him, to his sensibility, with the added
charm of a previous era.2 1
The implications of this passage are fairly profound. 1815 to 1915 is, of
course, the century of the Industrial Revolution, nascent capitalism, positivism, the
triumph of the bourgeois ethic throughout the West, the development of mass
literacy through public education, newspapers and novels, mass imagery through
lithographs, photographs, cinema, advertising and off-the- rack fashion. And one
of the images taken off the rack is that of the modem bourgeois male: austere,
tailored, subdued in color, eschewing display.2 2
By noting the relative ease with which filmmakers can recreate the recent past,
Barsacq suggests that the success of period representation depends on how the men
look, rather than the women. If correct, this observation raises an important
question, since it assumes a closer scrutiny of male than of female appearance.
Because we have been trained to objectify women, to view their appearance as a
matter of constantly changing surface, their costumes are less of an issue than
24
those worn by the men. Presumably, male attire must answer to a higher level of
verisimilitude, a justification for stylization.2 3
If that justification is provided, the characters can be “brought closer,” while
graced with period charm. The description is particularly apt, since it is a metaphor
for emotional identification in spatial terms. If the costume is the first point of
contact between us and the diegesis, an interface with stylization, than a “bringing
closer” through costume is a dressing of ourselves in the clothes of the diegesis.
But that dressing must be done within the fundamental difference created by the act
of watching, that difference confronted through tactile fact. If the era depicted is too
far removed from modem attire, the difference widens.
As a result, any story that requires a sartorial setting too far removed in space or
time from the requirements of modem Western male attire, must resort to additional
signifiers to achieve the illusion of reality. The design will have to rely more heavily
on background detail, in a sense to distract us from the odd appearance of the men.
Costume and fashion, far from superficial attractions, sensual diversions, fripperies
set loose to distract from the lack of a center, are in fact prerequisites to successful
cinematic illusion.
Any deviation from this norm becomes a challenge to the capacities of cinematic
representation. For example, in Passage to India (1985), when Dr. Aziz sheds his
Western, bourgeois clothing in favor of the Indian kurta, his action has obvious
narrative and thematic significance. But Aziz in effect sheds the values of cinema at
the same time, throwing away its proper visual subject, bridge between spectacle
and spectator, in favor of a garment that heightens sensation, therefore, difference.
Not just the thematic difference raised by the script between India and Britain, but a
conceptual, sensual difference between image and point of consumption.
25
This dependence on costume and makeup may point to why History Films are
traditionally viewed as “mere” spectacle, and thus denigrated by several critical
traditions: the terms of their construction continually problematize the act of viewing
by threatening always to call attention to the differences between themselves and the
spectator, at a most intimate, undeniable level. Moreover, by inviting a critical
scrutiny of male appearance traditionally reserved for women, the act of stylized
clothing threatens to create a feminized masculinity.
This need to address the modern, always to keep cinema close to its temporal
home may help to explain observations made by costume historian Edward Maeder:
Costume wardrobe creates the illusion of a past era by including
elements from the period fashion but rarely abandons the distinctive
traits of twentieth-century dress. When recreating a period garment—
be it a toga or a hoop skirt— the designer, consciously or subcon
sciously, adapts it to contemporary fashion. One can see a number
of trends in the way that period costumes fuse past and present.2 4
But this threat of period reconstruction is merely the most extreme form of design
stylization.2 5
In fact, virtually every narrative film will dress its characters differently from its
expected audience as part of its drive towards visual spectacle. Thus, costume and
makeup are the first, but perhaps most fundamental steps in anthropocentric
cinema. It creates an exchange value based on a suspect procedure: to make the
spectator desire to wear what is worn, to join the rhythm of spectacle, while
simultaneously remaining fixed as a working consumer of the image.
The Apprehensible
Norberg-Schulz starts with objects immediately graspable by the hand. “The
lowest level [of space] is determined by the hand. The sizes and shapes of articles
for use are related to the functions of grasping, carrying and in general for
extending the actions of the hand.”26 But it is impossible, of course, ever to grasp
26
anything in a film. This situation would hold true even if film re-created the full-
bodied object, since projection keeps the image at a remove from the viewer. At the
same time, the shifting perspectives offered by film editing produce the illusion of
being physically close to objects. Apprehensible objects, while frequently
overlooked, (except, of course, in terms of narrative contribution) are trivial neither
in film nor architecture. In the former case, Rudolf Arnheim writes:
Film can make inanimate objects attract attention to themselves. In a
film . . .these roles played by accessories, are exactly of the same
types as the “macroscopic” ones, those represented by the human
actors.. . .27
And Barsacq’s injunction reminds that “Here perhaps, is one of the fundamental
requirements of the cinema: to give the impression of having photographed real
objects.”28
As regards actual objects, Norberg-Schulz points out that they contribute
towards the construction of the sense of a center and personal territory. “The
notions of proximity, centralization and closure therefore work together to form a
more concrete existential concept, the concept of place, and places are the basic
elements of existential space.”29 Thus, objects emphasized in close-up operate in
two ways: 1) to ground the viewer by offering a blanket of security through a set of
details easily understood and theoretically manipulatable; 2) to render objects and
actors equal through magnification.30
In the first function, magnified objects serve as sensory substitution required by
cinematic experience. The physical proximity of the recorded object to the camera is
a means only of visually “grasping” the object. We must use our eyes as we would
use our hands if we could. As Arnheim describes this limitation:
Sensations of smell, equilibrium, or touch are, of course, never
conveyed in a film through direct stimuli, but are suggested
indirectly through sight. Thence arise the important rule that it is
27
improper to make films of occurrences whose central features cannot
be expressed visually.3 1
Like beggars outside a pastry shop, the cinematic spectator is forced into a position
of consuming only with the eyes and ears what remains tantalizingly tangible, yet
inadequate.
As a result, it is no coincidence that some of the most consistently fetishized
objects in narrative cinema are those whose primary allure is non-visual. Multiple,
essentially redundant layers of visual delectation have to be employed to suggest
olfactory or tactile appeal. For example, in Elvira Madigan (1967), the care
lavished on the presentation of blueberries, cream, pears, wine and cheese; or the
shimmer of opera scarves and damask in L ’ innocente (1978) obviously are meant to
approximate taste and touch through visual analogization.32 However, in order to
revel in the sensual moment for itself, these objects are given inordinate emphasis,
throwing their stories off-balance. (In the case of taste, it’s a futile aim in any event,
since it derives from a negation of vision. You can’t see what you’re tasting,
because it’s in your mouth as you eat.)
The equivalence of inanimate objects with actors is perhaps the more radical of
the two results of emphasizing objects, since it implies not just the elevation of the
former, but the demotion of the latter. While such magnifications frequently are
placed within the frame of diegetic desire, narrative cannot completely obscure the
visual fascination of the object itself. (Indeed, frequently such magnifications are
deliberately predicated on visual fascination.) When a cigarette lighter becomes as
significant visually as the man using it, it becomes difficult to insist on the special
status of the latter.
An example of the disruption through over-emphasis on objects can be seen in
an eight shot sequence from Last Year at Marienbad. In close-up, Delphine Seyrig
28
(A) moves her head. At the completion of each movement, there is a cut-in on an
object. By the conclusion of the series of shots it’s unclear which shots are
motivating which. Is A looking at the objects, or is she the subject of their look?
The ambiguity is helped by a shift in A’s position in the room while still motivating
the points of view. Also, Seyrig’s expression changes from more or less
impassivity to a conventional reaction of shock, fear or horror. But what produces
her reaction? At least one plausible explanation results from the emphasis on
objects, particularly since they have no narrative significance. Certainly the
commodities are photographed with the same glossy care as Delphine Seyrig. As
Robbe-Grillet described his attitude towards objects:
To describe things, as a matter of fact, is deliberately to place
oneself outside them, confronting them. It is no longer a matter of
appropriating them to oneself, of projecting anything onto them.
Posited, from the start, as not being man, they remain constantly out
of reach and are, ultimately, neither comprehended in a natural
alliance nor recovered by suffering.3 3
Marienbad and Robbe-Grillet are not special cases. For example in Charlie
Chan at the Race Track (1936), during a brief conversation with a young white
couple, Chan’s close-ups in the shot/reverse shot sequence are framed so that his
face occupies equal space with a Chinese vase sitting behind him. Slightly out of
focus, the vase has an assertive, odd presence. Nowhere else in the depicted room
is there a trace of Chinese or even “Chinese” decor; nor are other close-ups
similarly composed. In the film’s classical representational strategies, the vase is a
secondary signifier of Chan’s ethnicity, an added layer necessitated by the shadow
play of a white actor playing an Asian character.
But the vase also reads as a physical fact, particularly since it is a decorative
anomaly in the space. The cutting and framing patterns of the scene focus attention
on the vase, since Chan’s close-ups are intercut with two-shots of the couple to
29
whom he’s talking. If we stayed focused in Chan’s close-up as in the two-shot,
we’d be as likely to look at the vase as the actor. Thus, visual attention must shift
back and forth in the frame in order to center Chan. The vase, in fulfilling its
supportive, connotative function of “Chineseness,” must be placed assertively,
becoming equivalent to the character, elevating the commodity to visual
prominence.
If consistently combined, the use of graspable objects for sensory substitution
and object/human equivalence disrupts. Substituting vision for the tactile or
olfactory creates an alternative set of pleasures which threaten narrative
significance. Or, magnification of objects, a product of narrative significance,
threatens the significance of narrative by stimulating a desire for a commodity
outside the requirements of the story, a desire heightened by the combined success
and failure of the image as representation, while creating an equivalence between
object and actor. Films satisfy eye and ear, but frustrate skin, nose and mouth. The
perfect combination for the commercial, the medium levels the human to commodity
form.
Furniture
Norberg-Schulz’s next circle of space centers on furniture. “The next level,
furniture, is determined by the size of the body, especially in relation to such
activities as sitting, bending and lying down.”34 It is logical from an architectural
perspective to move from apprehensible objects to furniture, as the next circle in
space, moving away from the body. And it is certainly true that in architectural
settings, furniture is a major contributor to spatial effect. Yet, curiously, the use of
furniture in film as anything other than passive backdrop to events is exceptional.
While it must “look right” for a particular narrative setting, it serves almost purely a
visual function, supporting both characters and objects placed on it.
30
To understand why furniture should work relatively impersonally, consider two
possible design objects, a cigarette lighter and a chair. Both have been selected to
‘express’ an aspect of character. In this case, assume obviously ostentatious
appearance affirms a man’s economic status and taste. The objects’ functional dif
ferences lie in the lighter’s portability. We know it can be taken easily by a person
moving in space. Thus, if the protagonist visits a poor family and forgets his
lighter, it becomes a marker of his presence. Out of ‘character’ with the family’s
surroundings, the lighter is in ‘character’ for the protagonist. But he does not have
to be present for his visit to register, nor do we have to see him entering or leaving
the space because the lighter’s portability implies movement.
The chair, on the other hand, cannot be used outside the protagonist’s
immediate surroundings. If sitting behind his desk at work, for example, it would
be just one of many signifiers used to describe his wealth and taste. It would be
difficult to establish the synechdochic link between the chair and the character so
easily established with a portable object like the lighter unless some explicit
dramatic action were linked to it. If the chair appeared in the poor family’s room, its
presence would have to be explained through action or dialogue. For it to appear
without explanation would raise too many questions. Too big to ignore, too rich for
its impoverished setting, its background function in the office would change to a
foreground function in the family’s room.
Compositional connotation depends on change resulting from movement in
time. A piece of furniture implies stasis. We sit or lie down in order to be still. In
order for a piece of furniture to accrete compositional connotation from narrative
development, it must be emphasized to make clear that it is the furniture that is the
point of emphasis. For example, the patriarchs’ empty chairs at the end of The
Long Gray Line (1955) or the beginning of The Godfather, Part 7/(1974) evoke
31
the presence, through absence, of their previous occupants. But in neither case
would the chairs acquire their emotional weight if they had not been previously
shown as supporting particular characters. The chairs appear as part of the image of
the character, as direct extensions of their bodies.
Ultimately, the problem of furniture is a problem of framing and scale. Since
furniture is geared to the human form, it can’t be photographed without also
showing the human being occupying it. If unoccupied, most furniture is just big
enough that a shot framed to include its entirety must also include a fair amount of
its surroundings. For example, in the numerous love-making scenes which could
be cited to show the importance of the bed to narrative cinema, it is rare to find one
that registers much in the way of specific characteristics. For example, in American
Gigolo (1980), male prostitute Julian Kay identifies himself with his bed by telling
his lover that the bed is all she needs to know about him. But in this unusual
example of a piece of furniture directly linked to a character’s expression, we don’t
get much sense of what the bed looks like, an odd omission for a film otherwise
obsessed with clothing, cars, cocaine and other early eighties emblems of California
commodity consumption.
These examples suggest that the primary purpose of furniture in film will be
impersonal, the weight of connotation in most cases falling on the side of the social,
rather than the compositional. Even the consistent exception of the films of Ozu
helps to prove the rule: traditional Japanese furniture is light, flexible, relatively
mobile. Unlike individual objects which can be grasped, therefore, moved about in
the diegesis, pieces of Western furniture are too big to be used as bridge between
body and floor. It can only serve as a support, obstruction or decorative alibi, proof
that the design logic fills the frame. In short, even though purportedly under the
32
control of the character whose tastes dress the set, furniture actually serves more
general, social demands of the design.
The House/the Set
It is at Norberg-Schulz’s next level that “architecture” appears. “The third level,
the house, gets its dimensions from the more extended bodily movements and
actions, as well as from ‘territorial’ demands.”3 5 Cinematic architecture (that is,
architecture in film, rather than o f film) gravitates towards two poles: the location,
or the soundstage set.
In a location set, the space exists before the film. It possesses all the inconve
niences of a constructed environment. As such, it exercises a greater control over
the film than is exercised over it. Presumably it has been selected because it is
appropriate to the needs of the production and the story, but its selection closes off
opportunities available on a sound stage. As Barsacq notes “Every dramatic or
comic scene demanding a certain precision of execution faces such technical
difficulties .. .that the advantages of the real setting are outweighed.”3 6
At the same time, a location provides what Barsacq describes as “the absolute
authenticity of the setting,”37 a physically tangible presence which can’t be faked.
This difference would appear to be a matter of scale. Sound stages and back lots are
limited in scope.3 8 Locations, while offering fewer camera positions, allow a
greater impression of the wholeness of the location, while permitting the retreat to
infinity, the sense of depth.
The first measure of an interior set’s semantic function is the extent to which it
answers to social or compositional connotation. If its primary purpose is to read in
general terms, then the use of a location may be not just sufficient, but preferable,
since it will have Barsacq’s “absolute authenticity.” On the other hand, if the space
must express specific compositional demands, such as the way of life of a given
33
character, then a soundstage set may be preferred for the greater control of the
physical material of the set and camera position. The former situation represents an
effacement of design; the latter, its potential valorization.
This distinction proves fallible measured against specific productions. For
example, the Hotel des Bains lobby in Morte e Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971), a
constructed set, convinces as a real space, providing the sense of authenticity
available only to a location. This trick is largely formal: 360 degree circular
movements normally not possible on a set with only two or three walls provide an
ability to encompass the room fully. It is this ability which gives the set its sense of
reality. In short, a trivial skill, being able to turn about in a full circle without
worrying about intruding architectural details, is made possible only by the
flexibility of a soundstage; but it is a camera movement usually associated with
locations that convinces of the reality of the space.
If the hotel lobby is a social space, its design must provide a sense of
authenticity necessitated by social interaction (see below.) But in Norberg-Schulz’s
terms, public spaces like lobbies are a second-degree term; as we move outwards
from our bodies, we are more likely first to encounter intimate spaces, under our
direct control, more direct reflections of our experiences and tastes. In film terms,
such spaces would come under the control of ‘character.’
David Bordwell has described the importance of character to the construction of
classical narrative: “Character-centered— i.e., personal or psychological— causality is
the armature of the classical story... .[but] If the character must act as the prime
causal agent, he or she must be defined as a bundle of qualities, or traits.”3 9
The specifics of those traits have been described by Alain Robbe-Grillet:
A character must have a proper name, two if possible: a surname
and a given name. He must have parents, a heredity. He must have a
profession. If he has possessions as well, so much the better.
34
Finally, he must possess a “character,” a face which reflects it, a
past which has mold that face and that character.40
To which Barsacq seems to add, a house that reflects it:
The designer must at all costs avoid stereotypes and see the
particular; he must eschew the facilely picturesque to choose a
framework with character... .A set must take into account. . .the
psychology and behavior of those intended to inhabit i t 4 1
It is not enough for the design to fulfill its minimal narrative function. It must
produce a more specific “character,” generated by character. As the design fulfills
its story requirements, another thread of connotation is interwoven by character
psychology and motivation 42
When sets reflect a particular character’s emotional, material, physical state, we
can call it “Expressive Decor,” (this room is expensively furnished because the man
who owns it is wealthy, etc.) To the extent that the subordination of the design to
character is warranted by the story, Expressive Decor is subsumed within narrative
requirements. But because the description of character on the basis of a few limited
traits relies heavily on social connotation, even an Expressive set intersects with the
social sphere.
In fact, it is at the level of the set where design mediates most consistently
between social and compositional connotation. Since set design is most likely to
come down on the side of character-generated, compositional connotations,
extremes of stylization can be justified, although there are limits as to how far the
designer may veer from generally accepted social norms of “houseness.” For
example, as Arnheim noted about The Cabinet o f Dr. Caligari: “. . .the
“Expressionist” architecture and furniture created an unintentionally hilarious
discrepancy between the crookedness of the setting and the organic shape of the
actors.”43
35
While Caligari is an exception, Arnheim’s comments suggest that if a designer
wants to stylize, he/she can’t go this far. Stylization is all right so long as there is a
sense that people could inhabit the space if necessary. Consider The Scarlet
Empress (1935) or Ivan the Terrible (1940.) Both offer excessive, stylized visions
of Russian history; neither attempts Realistic verisimilitude. But when Catherine
charges up a staircase, or when Ivan broods in the shadows of an archway, stairs
or arch do not threaten to collapse. Both have fulfilled Barsacq’s dictum, however
elaborately: the film seems to have “photographed real objects.”
More typical examples occur in Last Tango in Paris (1973.) The apartment in
which Paul and Jeanne meet is initially empty, the few objects visible presumably
traces of previous inhabitants. This emptiness can be seen as a metaphor of Paul’s
emotional bankruptcy at the moment of their meeting (though even this is
problematic, since theirs is largely a struggle of equals. It is therefore arbitrary to
ascribe the apartment to a projection of Paul’s psyche.) As their relationship
develops, the physical trace of the development is the increased amount of
furniture. Thus, despite Paul’s stated desire that they remain strangers, as each
brings objects into the apartment, they turn it into a reflection of the state of their
affair.
On the other hand, when the film visits Jeanne’s parents’ apartment for two
scenes, the connotations of the space must register quickly, therefore, more
generally. While the parents’ apartment is no less genuinely “owned” by the char
acters than the empty apartment shared by Jeanne and Paul, it does not appear on
screen long enough for specifics of character to register. Aside from the Legion
naire’s uniform and pistol with which Jeanne plays in early scenes (thus placed
within the immediate grasp of a character) the parents’ apartment is reduced to its
36
social connotations. The general atmosphere of “bourgeois prosperity” is achieved
through dark colors, somber lighting, clogged bookshelves, overstuffed furniture
and frames. Specific reflections of character are largely effaced.
When Paul chases Jeanne to the parents’ apartment, he notes that it has “a lot of
memories,” which binds its decorative saturation to thematic significance. Just as
the empty apartment expresses Paul’s desire to keep their relationship at a level of
simple sex, the full apartment expresses “a lot of memories,” that is, the
complexities of domestic relations continued over several years. But because these
spaces are mutually dependent in the composition, the comment serves not only to
thematize the parents’ apartment, but through negative reversal, the empty
apartment as well.
The emptiness of the first apartment can be read expressively partly because the
full apartment has been explicitly thematized. That thematization is dependent on
immediately recognizable connotations of “bourgeois living” which help to generate
the compositional contrast with the empty apartment.44 This example suggests that
in a relatively Realistic space, the balance struck between social and compositional
connotation is frequently achieved through contrasts of compositional significance,
sneaking social connotation into Expressive Decor through negative image
reflections.
The Street
Norberg-Schulz now moves outside. “The urban level (which comprises sub-
levels) is mainly determined by social interaction, that is, by the common ‘form of
life.’”45 As this passage suggests, the urban level expresses the social. Like
individual houses and interior sets, the film designer faced with visualizing a street
has a choice between real locations or constmcted sets on the backlot. But it is at the
level of the street set that cinema begins to show the limits of its expressive abilities.
37
Real streets exist trivially at the level of human experience. But that experience now
approaches a scale which is outside the ability of most films to reproduce.
Barsacq describes the options available for shooting on a street set: “Filming in
existing exteriors may be ruled out for various reasons. . . For historical films these
difficulties may be compounded by the presence of modern buildings . . . ,”46
Although arguing in favor of the greater expressive potential of the designed set,
even Barsacq later admits: “Apart from special kinds of films such as ballets or mu
sicals, exterior sets are ill adapted to stylization or simplification.”47
Norberg-Schulz suggests why exterior sets don’t lend themselves to stylization: the
social component of the street.
It remains relatively easy to express a script’s themes through objects, furniture
and sets, justified as the logical purchases of a character, reflections of his/her
economic status, etc. But the social realm of the street is a stage for conflict. A
street set cannot be designed as the expression of a single character, or even of a
unified design concept. By definition, a street is a social expression, while even the
most expansive film narratives remain fixed on a small set of characters.
For example, in Doctor Zhivago (1965), several scenes are staged on a
Moscow street set, outside where Zhivago and his family live before the Russian
Revolution. All of the major characters are shown at various points on the street. In
addition, a protest march that turns into a massacre, conscripts leaving for the First
World War, proletarian Christmas celebrations, are staged on the street on a scale
large enough to reenforce its public function.
This set is a space of social negotiation, a stage on which characters meet,
interact with the diegesis and create a facsimile of the real world. As a result, the
street’s social connotations must supersede the embracing affective circles of
individual characters. To express this social function, the design could allow the
38
heterogeneity of the script and characters to be reflected in the set. But to do so
encounters the fundamental contradiction of the diegesis: the urban street is a social,
public space that is present in the film only as a backdrop to a limited set of
characters and events.
The result is to abandon heterogeneity, to neutralize the design, to efface the
conflict of connotation in a general, semantic blandness based on a limited set of
thematic dominants, “Russianness” and “tum-of-the-centuiy,” rather than
“Zhivago’s street.” To use a real street for Doctor Zhivago, on the other hand,
incorporating the social by the act of production, submits the script to the tyranny of
circumstance. A street may succeed in expressing the action of the script. But it is
unlikely to meet the script’s expressive needs perfectly. And neither approach
addresses a larger issue, namely, the problems raised by the intercutting of a
general social image with personalized interiors. Mamer and Stringer note:
Location exteriors are often used to give greater reality to a scene
which is mainly shot within the studio. The exterior of a large house
can set the mood mainly shot within the studio. .. .Quite obviously
the interior built in the studio has to be convincing not only as an
interior but the interior to a very particular exterior.48
The street will read as itself before it reads as a particular street in a particular
story; that is the purpose of using a location, to achieve lived, social expression.
The location’s reality will poke through even more vigorously if recognized. The
narrative halts, as the location as physical fact triumphs over narrative servitude.
Such danger of recognition always exists because of the design’s need to make a
connection with external reality. Objects must convince as physical representations
before we can project into the actions and situations of characters.
Doctor Zhivago's budget allowed the construction of designed streets, but the
resulting set doesn’t allow the flexibility of a location. In none of the film’s street
39
scenes is there a fully unencumbered view; the wide angles tend to look down on
the action, so that the vanishing point is blocked in the image.49 Even the largest
sets lack the vitality, variety, the chaos of an average urban street. Siegfried
Kracauer describes the affinity between film and the street as one based exactly on
its chaos:
The affinity of film for haphazard contingencies is most strikingly
demonstrated by its unwavering susceptibility to the “street” . .
.Within the present context the street.. .is of interest as a region
where the accidental prevails over the providential, and happenings
in the nature of unexpected incidents are all but the rule.50
As soon as movement and life become designed, they lack the immediacy of an
untouched location. The social dimension, the purpose of a street, is inevitably
reduced.
Landscape
Norberg-Schulz first moves outdoors at the level of Landscape. “The landscape
level results from man’s interaction with the natural environment."5 1 Nature is the
determining limit of architectural space, that which architecture is not, a structure
determined by forces largely outside human control. Norberg-Schulz’s emphasis on
the interaction between man and the natural environment implies a fundamental
difference and independence. At the same time, his distinction can lead to a
conflation between “nature,” the entire natural world, which is beyond the
perceptual capacity of any single person, and “landscape,” the perception of nature
from a fixed point in space. Norberg-Schulz notes further “The place is experienced
as an ‘inside’ in contrast to the surrounding ‘outside.’”5 2 Architectural space
simultaneously creates landscape, by fixing the human space as a point in nature.
Cinema also embraces nature as a constituent space, one among others to be
controlled by human perception. In the process of that control, however, film ends
40
up rendering nature as landscape, reducing that which is beyond a person’s capacity
of sight to the perspectival demands of a single person occupying a point in space.
In Art and Visual Perception, Arnheim describes the discovery of the illusion of
depth through geometry as “dangerous,”5 3 because of the distortions to the natural
world created by its submission to a single viewer’s perspective, enhanced by
geometry:
This explicit acknowledgment of the viewer is at the same time a
violent imposition upon the world represented in the picture. The
perspective distortions are not caused by forces inherent in the
represented world itself. They are the visual expression of the fact
that this world is being sighted. And the construct of geometrical
optics determines and prescribes the viewer’s station point.5 4
In order to produce the illusion of the world as it appears for one viewer
standing at a fixed point, perspective distorts space. Cinematic representations of
nature, derived from the geometrical principles of Renaissance architecture, are thus
inherently viewed as human beings see them. Even as the film image pulls back, it
provides nothing that a human eye couldn’t perceive.5 5 Through editing, the films
can provide a multiplicity of perspectives. But there will always be something more
to nature beyond the ability of the eye or the lens to record.
While all photography contains this distortion, a large-scale subject such as a
landscape, built on the illusion of depth, must effectively destroy the indexical
relationship between object and image through a distortion so great that
photography itself becomes a stylization. The lens reduces to human scale what is
by definition beyond that scale. This difference between object and image can be
bridged only with multiple signifiers, including narrative. Emotional responses
generated by the story, contained within the powers of cinematic representation,
substitute for the visceral effect of real space. The frisson of recognition at this
momentary confluence of codes may be equal to the sensation experienced in the
41
space photographed. But it is a different response, produced by different rules, to a
different object.
But landscape imagery in film is almost always narratively gratuitous.56 The
Western landscape, for example, may provide a space to be traversed or overcome,
but neither function has much to do with the formal emphasis the landscapes
receive. At best, the aestheticized landscapes serve a contradictory expressive
function, since they answer to a perception of beauty that the characters, engaged in
a struggle with the forces of nature, do not possess. The landscape shot (and its
more humanized cousin, the epic spectacle) offers an impersonal perspective that
can only be described as the camera’s, that is, the production’s, or the social
circumstances that created the production and exhibition. However, since both
landscape and the location set operate primarily at the level of social connotation,
questions of semantic function cannot be dissociated from production facts. As the
landscape appeals to the spectator through the position of superior viewing; or as
the street location appropriates a slice of social life to add to diegetic variety, the
demand for social connotation leads to structures of literal dominance.
The process is simple. A script requires that a location be in a particular place
and time. One appropriate to that requirement is found. In the process, the
location’s individual identity is lost in order to express “place.” Like illiterate serfs
dressed in livery to serve their masters, aestheticized locations are temporarily
spruced up by designers to look better for narrative service. But the terms of the
sprucing aren’t even necessarily socially accepted notions of beauty, but the
production's individual requirements. Thus, while individual shots may register
with enhanced impact, the location is a secondary prop, frequently trashed and
polluted off-cameraby the film’s own industrial traces.
42
In My Darling Clementine (1946), for example, Monument Valley lends greater
cultural capital to the story of Wyatt Earp than the location acquires by the
exploitation. Although it is relatively easy for a familiar location like this one to
poke through the story, the story has acquired an undeserved visual richness. A
mundane narrative is made epic by the scope and beauty of the backdrops. Berthold
Hinz has noted how in a similar tendency, banal paintings from the Third Reich
were “Substantialized” by grandiose titles which always seemed to refer to
something beyond the image itself: “This [tendency] explains the immense
proliferation of titles that attempted to imbue the subject matter of paintings with
symbolic profundity even though the subjects themselves remained perfectly
obvious.”57
Hollywood films reverse the terms of the equation, inflating trivial stories with
imagery beyond the perception of the characters, privileging the spectator through
the excesses of production. But as Hinz’s comments suggest, image inflation has
political consequences. There doesn’t have to be a copper smelter outside the film
frame; film production, with its tracks across the landscape, litter from mobile
commissaries and noise from inflated egos, is no less an industrial process. The
case of My Darling Clementine is fairly mild in that both exploiter (movie
company) and exploited (location) are on a relatively equal footing. The benefit may
even accrue to the location’s favor if, for example, the pure images presented in the
film create a tourist industry in the shadow of the smelter. But when the production
requires an intrusion into less developed spaces, the political consequences of the
privileged image move questions of signification into the actively political.
For example, Bum! (1969), while attempting to offer a sympathetic view of a
Third World struggle reproduces the structures it wants to criticize by its own pro
43
duction. Of course, no single film can be held responsible for the realities of
capitalist production. But neither can the material facts of signification be changed
by political intentions. As Africa, Colombia and Caribbean islands stand in for
Quemada, the fictional island nation in the story, real fields are burned to produce
the swirls of fire and smoke; real people give the director the baroque dynamism of
the crowd scenes he seems to desire; real buildings become stage sets for a plot part
operetta, part white-man’s fantasy projection. That the owners of the field and
houses and members of the crowd were paid is likely, but their participation in the
production is as much an exploitation of a disadvantaged population as the sugar
cane workers depicted in revolt.
Nor is exploitation restricted to big-budget productions. All films, to the extent
they use actual spaces for compositional purposes, appropriate exploitively.5 8
(“Appropriation,” after all, is synonymous with theft.) Filmmaking imposes a
story, a name, an image on spaces, while projecting the cone of perspective away
from the camera, our stand-in. The political value of this relationship can be
evaluated only in terms of the relative benefits and losses to each side. But the
semantic process set in motion to produce the film image’s exchange value operates
in a political arena wider than mere signification.
Luis Pico Estrada has described this process in relation to Western productions
set in Latin America. Estrada acknowledges the value of attention to the region’s
history:
.. .an international cinema which we may provisionally call “liberal”
.. .pictured the revolutionary struggles of Latin America.
Eisenstein’s epic, documentary-type treatment, Aldrich’s dramatic
effect style, Kazan’s politico-psychological manner and
Pontecorvo’s manifestly dialectic approach opened the door to a
deeper and more daring interpretation of the real social and political
situation in Latin America.5 9
44
He also points out the problems of such depiction from the outside.
It must be added that, for the Latin American market, every one of
these films suffered from the natural remoteness of a work designed
for international markets and not for specific ones. So in the
“liberal” international filming of Latin American themes we find a
lack of verisimilitude in the details (scenes, equipment, costumes
and even gestures and attitudes), the absence of a certain complicity
“from within” and finally the barrier of a different language,
especially in the treatment of historical subjects.6 0
Estrada sees the alienation of space and decor in these films as a political failure.
The “appropriation” of Latin American history to the thematic concerns of European
and American filmmakers drapes the native spectator’s norm in the clothes of the
exotic. Always subject to ever-greater heights of stylization and difference lest the
limits of representation be exposed, these spaces are never allowed simply to be
what they are: oppressed, exploited victims of the developed world’s addiction to
signification.
Cosmic Space
Norberg-Schulz stops here, which is understandable since his theory is based
on a body-, therefore ego-centered conception of space. He overlooks religious
architecture, which has consistently sought to go beyond ego-centered experience,
evoking, if not containing the cosmic. Filmmakers have no less often tried to merge
cosmic and cinematic. Yet any attempt at creating cosmic cinematic space is founded
on a fundamental limitation, the materialist approach to representation involved in
the film image itself. As with landscape, in order to achieve cosmic affect, cinema
must resort to a combination of signifiers, including a deeply problematic evocation
of its architectural origins.
Film’s inability to represent anything other than the cone of one-point
perspective requires that the affect of cosmic space, again like landscape, be
simulated by subordinating it to a parallel, unequal emotion of a character. But
45
where a landscape is at least physical, therefore conceivable as a photographic
subject, religious sentiment has no more physical presence than the emotions
expressed by “Expressive Decor.” But where Expressive Decor relies on the
existence of its opposite within the same composition, what generally accepted
social image can be used to suggest the absence of religious feeling? There are
reasons why film should have difficulty presenting religious subjects, problems that
move beyond the convictions of individual filmmakers. Its very systems of
representation are the product of an earth-bound, material philosophy.
The attempt to locate the cosmic in the material does not begin with film. Robert
Rosenblum, in Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition, has argued
that there is a tradition in Western art, beginning with Caspar David Friedrich,
which attempts to re-locate the Godhead in the sublime landscape.6 1 Nature
acquires the transcendental affect lacking in Protestant theology and late 18th, early
19th century secular philosophy. The notion of the sublime, as theorized by
Edmund Burke, for example, is a product of limitless scale:
. . .let it be considered that hardly any thing can strike the mind with
its greatness, which does not make some sort of approach towards
infinity; which nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its
bounds; but to see an object distinctly and to perceive its bounds, is
one and the same thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a
little idea.6 2
But we have seen how cinematic landscape encounters difficulties attempting to
reproduce this sense of the sublime in nature, difficulties deriving from its
materialist origins.
Thus, the most consistent attempts to represent cosmic, transcendental space in
film occur in the genre most removed from the everyday material world, science
fiction. Yet the genre’s appropriateness to this task is not merely negative. In fact,
there is a triple, positive motivation to link science fiction to cosmic space. First,
46
with subjects frequently set in outer space, science fiction is often literally cosmic in
outlook. Second, in a materialist age, the genre most dedicated to the depiction of
the technology produced by materialism comes closest to expressing its self-image.
Without resorting to the banality that science is a modem religion, empirical method
remains a bedrock of faith on which all ideas are expected to be built.
Third, in its attempt to produce special effects which trick the eye (transcend the
physical limitations of the medium), science fiction embodies one aspect of a reli
gion (as opposed to the religious) in its ability to produce a double sense of wonder:
“how wonderful,” and “I wonder how they did that?”6 3 The question is critical,
since it implies that the spectator contains and perpetuates the scientific inquiry
depicted in the stories. The spectator possesses a critical consciousness running
counter to the illusion, but which is simultaneously the article of faith generating
the illusion.
This third link between transcendental purpose and science fiction is
simultaneously a formal means. Science fiction is unique in the way it includes a
technical apparatus as part of its definition. In order to achieve its narrative setting,
it must resort to the widest range of technological tricks available at the moment of
production. Its spaces are the most purely “placed” of all narrative cinema, since
they have no existence outside the illusion created on the screen. The films are
physical expressions of the values depicted, even when the conclusion is dystopian
rather than Utopian.
Yet, with arguable exceptions, the dystopian vision does not sit well in outer
space. Most science fiction films set either in space or other planets struggle to
achieve the sense of awe which can only be called “religious.”64 Although 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968) is the most obvious example of finding religion in outer
space, others include the Star Wars trilogy (1977-84), the first Star Trek film
47
(1979) and Forbidden Planet (1956.) In all of these cases, attempts to evoke the
cosmic resort to the same device: exaggerated perspective.
In 2001, the depiction of the Star Gate, which gives Bowman access to the
infinite, is created by two rapidly receding planes, vanishing to a point at the center
of the screen. In both the Star Wars and Star Trek films, the moment that velocities
greater than the speed of light are achieved, the filmmakers blur space into lines of
light rushing to the vanishing point. In Forbidden Planet, the achievements of the
super-human Krell are shown as a series of architectural wonders made wondrous
by a scale so huge that they retreat to the vanishing point.
In short, these films evoke the infinite or wondrously large by resorting to the
spatial conception of Baroque religious architecture and painting. Siegfried Giedion
describes this development:
In the late seventeenth century we find the baroque universality
working with the infinite in the field of mathematics as a basis for
practical calculations. In painting and in architecture the impression
of infinity— the infinite in a linear sense, as an indefinitely extended
perspective— is being used as a means for artistic effect...
.somewhat later the Roman architects succeed in realizing the same
mystical feeling of endlessness— often in astonishingly small
churches— through a simultaneous exploitation of all the resources of
painting, sculpture, architecture, and optical theory.6 5
The ghosts of the Society of Jesus haunt the frames of the most materialist of
generic spaces, revealing the transcendental affect as an historical construct, rushing
towards the vanishing point and a conception of God contradicted by the film itself.
It is thus a rush both towards and away simultaneously, since the materialist vision
which makes the image possible expresses a faith in man’s ability to transcend
through technical tricks, while the religious affect evoked looks elsewhere for
Man’s redemption. A Christian religious tradition is used to create a non-Christian
religious affect.
48
The Spaces of Narrative
While it has never been far beneath the surface of the preceding discussion, it
may be necessary to return to narrative, to understand how it controls the flow of
connotation. Social connotations, while a necessity for meaning, are imported only
to contribute to the story; once placed in a narrative, the objects and spaces change
meaning. Having changed, they re-enter the cultural field in new clothing.
Designers try to serve the script with a unified concept, derived from narrative
setting, action and the demands of character. As noted earlier, to a certain extent this
distinction between narrative and character is a false one, since design doesn’t so
much express character instead o f action, as dress action in the clothes of character.
The goal is a unity of purpose between them, although, as our discussion of the set
has already indicated, conflicts can arise between narrative and character
expression.
For example, in Outland (1981), early scenes show O ’Neil, a futuristic sheriff
patrolling a colony on one of the moons of Jupiter in his domestic quarters. The
designers were thus presented with two tasks on the design dominant: 1) an overall
sense of futuricity as read through a domestic space (a social connotation) and 2)
the more specific expression of O’Neil’s character in that space (a compositional
connotation.)66 To underline his authority to survey the spaces of the station, for
example, his quarters are provided with surveillance and communication monitors
not apparent in other personal spaces depicted.
But the futuricity is immediately dated. For example, although the story is set in
the 25th century, most of the visible technology consists of High Tech signifiers
such as exposed metallic tubing, microwave ovens, TV and computer monitors and
push-button phones. These design elements are futuristic only within the moment
of the film’s production. They refer not to the future, but to the moment’s present.
49
Unintentionally, the film shows O’Neil, not as a man of the future, but as a lover of
antiques, rather as if a contemporary undercover drug agent were shown relaxing at
home amidst Renaissance memorabilia. These implicit connotations are as
immediately, superficially present as the dominant image of futuricity. Another de
signer working on a film about an early ’80s upper-middle class home might well
select the same oven. In that context, it would be selected for a dominant image of
contemporaneity. The object remains the same; only the connotation, determined by
narrative, changes.
But since a narrative must rely on external association in order to produce
meaning, it is always at the mercy of meaning beyond itself, even if consumed
close to the moment of production. Objects selected for a set of dominants risk
being read implicitly, thus introducing semantic sour notes derived from the greater
cultural field. Once introduced, these implicit connotations also effect an object’s
compositional role. Thus, the absurdity of placing a 20th century appliance in a
25th century story is recognized, it becomes difficult to see that object as neutral
filler. It will stick out of the background every time it appears, because it is recog
nizably wrong. It may even appear funny, implying a spectatorial position in
opposition to the narrative as told.
However, such facile games of “Spot the Anachronism” should perhaps be left
to the giddy, as they are among the least interesting examples of formal irony to
result from the play of connotation. For it is the exploitation of implicit connotation
that leads to the possibility of figurative expression. As Pasolini describes this
situation: ‘“Brute objects’ . . .do not exist in reality. All are sufficiently meaningful
in nature to become symbolic signs .. .the pregrammatical qualities of objects will
have the right to citizenship in the style of a filmmaker.”6 7 Pasolini, in discussing
several films from the early ’60s which attempt to create non-literal meaning
50
through cinematic expression, makes a parallel between such “poetic” prose and the
free indirect discourse in literature. Critical to this style is a complete identification
between the filmmaker and his protagonist, who becomes a means of motivating the
filmmaker’s projection on to the external world. Chief among Pasolini’s examples
are the films of Antonioni, in particular Red Desert.
Another might be The Passenger (1974.) When Locke, an alienated Western
journalist goes into the African desert in order to interview a group of rebels
fighting the local government, his car breaks down while returning. These desert
sequences can be read as a figurative expression of Locke’s state of mind. Thus,
just as Locke is “empty” of emotion, the desert is “empty” of anything other than
sand and sun. This reading is based on implicit connotations of the desert: hot,
parched, unpleasant.
At the same time, it’s a desert. As Pasolini admits, “the filmmaker can never
collect abstract term s... .images are always concrete, never abstract.”68 Thus the
contradiction: the designer can stage and cut in a fashion that suggests a “something
else” in the image. But that excess must remain vague, potential, never quite there
in the same way that the desert as physical fact is there. Thus Nicola Chiaromonte’s
criticisms of films like those Pasolini praised makes some sense:
I regard [these types of films] as perfect representatives of a type of
false and tedious film which presumes to use images as if they were
words full of profound meaning. Now, of course, everybody is free
to read as many meanings as he wishes into a series of photographs;
or to enjoy as many meanings as they evoke in his mind. In a certain
sense, the function of the image has always been to spur the mind to
reverie.69
The desert sequences from The Passenger, in fact, offer an even richer paradox
than that between concrete fact and attempted figurative meaning in the beauty of the
desert images. If this is the Hell of Alienation, damnation might not be so bad.
51
Thus, on the one hand, the implicit connotations suggest loneliness, emptiness,
alienation, etc. But another set of implicit connotations suggest something very
different: Club Med, or Realities, or perhaps we regret we don’t have Pasquilino de
Santis to take our vacation snapshots.70
Even granting the possibility of reading these images metaphorically, there is no
control adequate to link a particular vehicle to a particular tenor. Compositional
connotation can never be read except in terms of social connotation; a metaphor can
never transcend physical fact. Therefore, a visual metaphor can never be relied on
to be perceived. It remains a hope, sighing at the edges of the frame, a potential,
waiting for the sensitive viewer. While a compositional context can provide some
control, pushing the viewer to read metaphorically, the leap into the abyss of
figuration remains an act of faith.7 1 If the viewer insists on seeing a desert as a
desert, there is nothing in the image to prove him/her wrong.
Regardless, films like The Passenger create this potential through a dominant
structure. As Pasolini points out, the potential for figurative meaning is produced
by an identification on the part of the filmmaker with the protagonist’s actions.
Since the stories are structured around the revelation of character through events,
dominance has simply moved from narrative to wrinkles of character. To read the
desert in The Passenger as a reflection of the state of mind of the journalist is, then,
merely to switch its primary significance from narrative, to character function,
which has replaced narrative at the center of the composition.
But by definition, implicit connotation works at the edges and background of a
film. Therefore, in order to get a deeper sense of the contribution of design, an
object or space’s compositional position must be examined first. Particular should
be paid to those design elements which try to go unnoticed. In short, instead of
resorting to “metaphorical” explanations, in which the dominant simply switches
52
from story to character, examining what dominance tries to suppress may explain a
design’s meaning, the full implications of the play of connotation.
For example, Barry Lyndon (1975) contains scenes in which characters drink
alcohol, or in which glasses figure in the background decor. The variety of glasses
changes from scene to scene, character to character, but none of those included
violate a norm of design appropriate to the 18th century. Most are made of thin,
unevenly finished glass, in somewhat unfamiliar shapes. In Barry’s uncle’s house,
the stemware is also inconsistently shaped from one person to another. None of the
crystal shows the surface perfection of 20th century machine-turned stemware.
We can say that these glasses from Barry Lyndon contribute a dominant conno
tation to the narrative by fixing the story in time, while answering a functional need
to show characters drinking. Once presented in the diegesis, the glasses begin to
accrue compositionally generated connotations that work in concert with the social
connotations. Drinking becomes a motif of the action, glasses the physical means to
display it. But both social and compositional connotations are founded on a notion
of presence, or to put it another way, glasses can acquire significance only if they
are allowed to appear. Once they have, their subsequent appearances will be frosted
with both externally and internally generated meaning.
Among the compositionally generated connotations, then, would be an absence
of glasses in contexts we might otherwise expect them, producing a second level
connotation, the primitive, a lack of economic development compared to the
present. “Things weren’t as good in the past. Even the middle class couldn’t drink
out of glasses,” we might be led to think, as the social fabric of the film’s diegesis
reveals their lack. For example, while Barry’s relatively wealthy uncle is able to lay
out a lunch spread with pewter, ceramic and stem ware, the German woman with
whom he stays after deserting the army has only earthenware mugs.
53
This second level connotation (lack of stemware implies economic
underdevelopment) can lead in turn to a third level connotation derived from
accumulated social and compositional association. The new connotation of
“underdevelopment” can itself be exploited, so that just as there are shades of
meaning in the forms of glassware present, so too there can be shades of meaning
attached to its absence. For example, rowdy dissipation is conveyed through a
direct drinking from jugs, themselves noticeably non-Modern in form and material.
Thus, a third level of connotation develops, underdevelopment implying
dissipation. Therefore, to the extent that some expressive connotations are
generated in negative, through contrast with presence, absence becomes part of the
dominant. Subsidiary meanings begin to develop almost independently. (The
glasses’ absence would have no significance if they didn’t first appear.)
But more connotative complications can occur when two dominant terms
conflict, leading to uncertainty as to which should be given greater weight. A
common example would be differences between the demands of narrative clarity
and outward expressions of character. As the dominant and implicit connotations
interact, an unpredictable set of secondary meanings result. If the narrative fails to
motivate their presence adequately, design elements can begin to act in relative
autonomy, de-railing the story’s forward drive. If too many implicit readings
obtrude, a dominant reading may become, if not impossible, at least difficult.72
Joseph Losey complained about one such mis-interpretation in The Romantic
Englishwoman:
Here you can see the deceptiveness of the visual if you’re not
awfully careful. Richard MacDonald and I set out to make the ugliest
house that we could possibly make. There’s not one thing in that
house excepting the Magritte reproductions that either Richard or I
or anybody I know would w ant. . .yet the people who wrote about
54
that picture spoke again about this lush and beautiful house of
Losey. It was meant to be sheer nightmare horror!7 3
For another example, the tycoon’s office in Batman (1989) is designed around
dominant connotations of power, wealth, masculinity, etc. The grey-blue color
scheme contributes traditional connotations of masculinity. The large desk evokes
business offices, bureaucratic settings, while the symmetrical compositions
(Palance and Nicholson are framed in centered shot/reverse shots), evoke Fascist
architecture, reinforced by the overblown scale of the space, etc. At the same time,
some details, like the murals, the Art Nouveau/Deco architectural accents, Palance’s
dressing gown, while all adding to the wealth, power, masculinity triumvirate, also
contain implicit connotations (the boudoir, Symbolist decadence, taste for decor as
an end in itself) which work against these connotations. They don’t necessarily
subvert the dominant. But connotation can thwart narrative, send it in directions it
didn’t mean to go, particularly if the implicit meaning of objects interact apart from
the dominant.
It is this possibility, the importunate crash of connotative cymbals, that leads to
the possibility of figurative meaning derived from material objects. But it is likely to
be an unexpected figurative content, even though the connotations are implicit in the
image. The play of connotation creates a formal irony, in which design works apart
from the dominant. It is not so much a question of things not being as they appear,
but because they appear that they aren’t what they seem. It is not surface yielding
depth, but surface playing to surface, and in the process, obscuring what seemed
perfectly straightforward. Gilles Deleuze, in discussing the Bergsonian concept of
the “interval,” describes the situation thus:
It is an operation which is exactly described as a framing: certain
actions undergone are isolated by the frame and hence, as . . .they
are forestalled, anticipated.. . .An essential consequence follows—
55
the existence of a double system, of a double regime of reference of
images. There is firstly a system in which each image varies for it
self, and all the images act and react as a function of each other, on
all their facets and in all their parts. But to this is added another
system where all vary principally for a single one, which receives
the action of the other images on one of its facets and reacts to them
on another facet.74
In order fully to understand design, it is not enough to relate connotations back
to the cultural field, nor privilege those developed within the composition.
Concentration on the interaction of both in terms of compositional position, while
moving us closer to an understanding, is also ultimately insufficient. We must
examine the frame itself and recognize design as a placement of the border around a
graphic organization. The frame is the mask of inclusion and exclusion, a final
mark of determination of the general funnelling down and out of the design
trajectory, a protecting shield of privileged, organized space against the surrounding
chaos.
1 Borges, Jorge Luis, “Averroes’ Search” Labyrinths, 148-55.
2 Aristotle, The Poetics o f Aristotle, 38-39.
3 David O. Selznick, memo dated September 1, 1937, quoted in Memo from David
O. Selznick, 152.
4 For a thorough description of Hollywood art department practice, see Beverly
Heisner, Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days o f the Great Studios. Heisner
sets out to show how the departments worked and to document the contribution of
individual designers. Although her emphasis is on the latter, she ably demonstrates
the interdependent nature of studio art departments.
5 For example: ‘“Most directors are hyphenates,’ explains [Blade Runner art
director David] Snyder. “They can be actor-directors or editor-directors. Because
Ridley [Scott] was an art director-director, he spent the majority of his time with the
art department.’ In fact, when Snyder was first introduced as the film’s art director,
Scott, in a hint of things to come, shot a look at the man and said simply, ‘Too bad
for you, chap.’” Kenneth Turran, “Blade Runner,” Los Angeles Times Magazine,
September 13, 1992, 20.
6 Leon Barsacq, Caligari’ s Cabinet and other Grand Illusions: a History o f Film
Design.
56
7 At least in France. For a “how-to” primer from the British perspective, see Film
Design, compiled by Terence St. John Mamer in collaboration with Michael
Stringer. In addition to its pedagogical function, this book provides an excellent set
of brief quotations from design professionals in relation to specific projects and
design dilemmas. See also Vincent LoBrutto, By Design: Interviews with Film
Production Designers and Heisner for a discussion of Hollywood practice.
Together, the books suggest no significant divergence in approach between the
design professions in these three major film industries.
8 Barsacq 6-7.
9 Barsacq 4.
1 0 Rudolf Arnheim’s Film as Art remains the most fully-developed argument
regarding the shaping of expressive possibility through the limitations of cinematic
representation.
1 1 Barsacq 122.
1 2 Barsacq 123.
1 3 Mamer and Stringer 9.
14 Heisner 3.
1 5 Heisner argues (see in particular Chapter 1, 7-23) that Hollywood design makes
most sense as an expression of studio style, thus a means of product differentiation.
For a thorough discussion of the relationship between design and the creation of
exchange value, see Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Critique o f Commodity o f Aesthetics:
appearance, sexuality and advertising in capitalist society translated by Robert
Bock. This issue will be explored in detail in Chapter 5.
161 mean ‘composition’ here in the most general sense, rather than the specifics of
individual shots or frames.
1 7 Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The ‘Cinema of Poetry,”’ Heretical Empiricism, 169.
1 8 For a discussion of one such semantic transformation, see Donald Albrecht,
Designing Dreams: Modem Architecture in the Movies. Albrecht demonstrates the
popularization of Modernist architecture through the movies. In the process, an
aesthetic whose original goals included low-cost mass production became
associated with frivolous high-living.
57
1 9 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & Architecture. Gaston Bachelard,
in The Poetics o f Space offers a similar, body-centered description of space.
However, since he is also interested in expanding that position into a general,
metaphorical description of all space as essentially circular (because of the affective
circles radiating from our bodies), I have emphasized Norberg-Schulz to avoid
piling too many metaphors on a limited foundation. Bachelard’s observations are
nonetheless pertinent in understanding our affective relationships with architectural
spaces.
20 The labels have been added both for descriptive convenience and to make them
more directly applicable to film.
21 Barsacq 128.
22 For a discussion of the evolution of Western male fashion in the mid-nineteenth
century, particularly in relation to capitalist development, see Walter Benjamin,
Charles Baudelaire: a lyric poet in the Era o f High Capitalism, 76-77. For a
discussion of the representation of early 19th century male fashion, see my “The
Bourgeois Gentleman and the Hussar,” Spectator.
23 It is in this light that we should examine Jean-Louis Comolli’s discussions of the
importance of the actor’s body in historical representation. See “Historical Fiction:
A Body Too Much,” Screen.
24 Edward Maeder, organizer, Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film,
14.
25 And the easiest? When asked “Why is a period film easier to design than a
contemporary one?” Production Designer Mel Bourne replied “It’s all prescribed for
you.. . .It is much more of a challenge to make a contemporary apartment
photogenic ...” LoBrutto 115.
26 Norberg-Schulz 27.
27 Arnheim, Film as Art, 84-85.
28 Barsacq 7.
29 Norberg-Schulz 20.
30 A third, to produce a transcendental affect will be discussed in Chapter 2.
3 1 Arnheim, Film as Art, 34.
58
32 Dena Attar has suggested that the enrichment of the visual presentation of food at
the expense of its taste was accomplished in the 19th century, as a product of the
rise of a middle-class not quite rich enough to indulge in luxurious gastronomical
consumption consistently, but prosperous enough to lavish attention of more lasting
physical artifacts such as the place-setting. (“Keeping Up Appearances: The Genteel
Art of Dining in Middle-Class Victorian Britain, in ‘The Appetite and the Eye
Visual aspects o f food and its presentation within their historic context, 123-40.
Fetishized film images of food are the logical extension of this process: utterly
beautiful and tempting, completely unsatisfying.
33 Alain Robbe-Grillet, “Nature, Humanism, Tragedy” in For a New Novel essays
on fiction, 71. Another relevant comment in this context: “Nothing is more
fantastic, ultimately, than precision.” “From Realism to Reality” 165.
34 Norberg-Schulz 27.
35 Norberg-Schulz 27.
36 Barsacq 122.
37 Barsacq 122.
38 Patrizia Von Brandenstein provides an exception that proves this rule. To
suggest the outside of the plutonium plant set in Silkwood, the filmmakers used the
exterior of the studio in which they were shooting as the exterior for the plant. “1
think it was a fabulous decision, because it gave us a scale that we never could have
achieved. Using that hall gave us a whole other dimension.” LoBrutto 184.
39 David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood
Cinema: Film Style & Mode o f Production to I960, 13.
40 Robbe-Grillet, “On Several Obsolete Notions,” 27.
41 Barsacq 124-25.
42 For example, consider Paul Sylberf s description of designing the apartment of
Lowenstein in The Prince o f Tides: “We made a long list of adjectives that
represented this man: European, international, cosmopolitan, polished, elegant,
powerful, fascistic, talented, domineering. Then opposite to the column are all the
materials and styles that would match this list.” LoBrutto 76.
43 Rudolf Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form, 59. By breaking with
established traditions, such “unintelligible” films provide a precedent from which
other films may benefit. The Cabinet o f Dr. Caligari would probably have been
incomprehensible without the Expressionist painting and theatrical traditions
59
preceding it. Its success established “Expressionist” design as appropriate to the
irrational. The association is exploited, success repeated, a style rendered
appropriate to a subject. A connotation is bom.
44 Both the emptiness/freedom and the saturation/entrapment connotations are
products of Modernist architectural theory. For a thorough discussion of the tenets
of Modernist architectural space, see Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and
Architecture: the growth o f a new tradition.
45 Norberg-Schulz 27, emphases in original.
46 Barsacq 178.
47 Barsacq 180.
48 Mamer and Stringer 76, emphases in original.
49 Barsacq cautions in regard to the design of exterior sets “In drawing up the plans
for an exterior set, the designer has to take account of the least encumbered views
or, for a landscape, the most interesting views.” (178)
50 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory o f Film: the Redemption o f Physical Reality, 62.
5 1 Norberg-Schulz 27, emphases in original.
52 Norberg-Schulz 20.
53 Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 284.
54 Amheim, Art and Visual Perception, 294.
55 Wide angle lenses prove, rather than disprove this point, since their use is most
noticeable for the distortion to the normal rules of perspective introduced.
56 por a different take on the use of landscape in film, see Alain J. Silver, “The
Fragments of the Mirror: the Use of Landscape in Hitchcock” Wide Angle. While
recognizing that a viewer potentially brings greater knowledge to a cinematic space
than what can be contained by the narrative, his analysis is nonetheless entirely
narrative-bound.
57 Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich, 81.
58 Including, of course, documentary. In fact, in its exploitation of social problems
left behind after the act of filming, documentary is the most exploitive filmmaking
60
of all. Unlike fiction filmmaking, which at least contributes to the local economy
during production, documentary filmmakers don’t usually even pay their subjects.
59 Luis Pico Estrada, “Latin American Historical Films: The Epic of the
Underdogs,” in Flashback: Films and History, 169-95.
60 Estrada 178-79.
6 1 Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition:
Friedrich to Rothko. For another discussion of the relationship between the
Northern painting tradition, religious affect and cinema, see Anne Hollander,
Moving Pictures, particularly chapter 11.
62 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin o f our Ideas o f the
Sublime and Beautiful, 107-08.
63 “Another source of greatness is Difficulty. When any work seems to have
required immense force and labour to effect it, the idea is grand.” Burke 139.
64 Burke associates the “delightful terror” of the Sublime explicitly with awe (257.)
65 Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: the growth o f a new tradition,
109.
66 Though of course, filtered through other social connotations. Given his overt
machismo, for example, it is difficult to imagine O’Neil’s quarters painted in a
traditionally ‘feminine’ color, such as pink.
67 Pasolini 171.
68 Pasolini 171.
69 Nicola Chiaromonte, “On Image and Word,” reprinted in The Movies as
Medium, 41. Although my sympathies lie with the films and filmmakers defended
by Pasolini, Chiaromonte’s argument must be addressed by anyone interested in
film meaning. The chief fallacy of his discussion is his equation of cinematic form
with photography. Although he argues that the purpose of film is to move, he fails
to address the consequences of that assertion in terms of his own argument. If he
had considered connotation in relation to movement, he would have been able to
recognize what we’ve called ‘compositional connotation,’ the accrual of meaning
through the unfolding of a film in time. But his insistence on taking into account the
physical fact of an image represents a healthy corrective to the cliches of
‘metaphorical’ reading.
61
70 “In Blow-Up and The Passenger, Antonioni showed a talent (and a propensity)
for mystification; it would be a present to audiences if just once he would use his
talent frivolously—if, instead of his usual opaque metaphysical mystery, he’d make
a simply trashy mystery, preferably in those Realities travel spots he’s drawn to.”
Pauline Kael, “Notes on Evolving heroes, Morals, Audiences,” When the Lights
Go Down, 201.
7 1 This, essentially, was Eisenstein’s position. See, for example, “The Filmic
Fourth Dimension,” and “Methods of Montage,” Film Form, 64-83.
72 For an elaborated discussion of the overwhelming of the dominant by the minor,
see my “‘Reading’ Design in The Go-Between,” Cinema Journal.
73 Michel Ciment Conversations with Losey, 341-42.
74 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, 62.
62
Chapter 2— Fit for Framing
Sarah Talmann: Mr. Neville— I have grown to believe that a really
intelligent man makes an indifferent painter. For painting requires a
certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options. An
intelligent man will know more about what he is drawing than he
will see. And in the space between knowing and seeing, he will
become constrained, unable to pursue an idea strongly, fearing that
the discerning, those who he is eager to please will find him wanting
if he does not put in not only what he knows, but what they know as
well.
Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman’ s Contract
Mrs. Talmann taunts Mr. Neville with the paradox of all Realistic mimesis, to
reproduce a whole of which the artwork itself is a part. To achieve intelligibility, to
avoid that intellectual “constraint,” a representational artifact must play a game,
pretend that “this is where signification ends.” In the visual arts this “certain
blindness, a partial refusal” begins with the double act of framing out and in at the
same time. By necessity, what is framed out is the art and artist, the world
surrounding canvas and painter at the moment of execution. Yet even within what is
contained, as The Draughtsman’ s Contract’s , visual style amply attests, there are
other frames, marking off, blocking, excluding. For a painter, these secondary
frames presumably exist as part of the reality of the subject; for a narrative
filmmaker, these frames-within-frames are often produced by a set:
The film set serves as a frame not only for the movements of the
actors, but also for those of the camera, which passes through
doors, accompanies an actor going upstairs, takes the place of the
actor by leaning over the banisters in order to show the entrance hall
in a high-angle shot, and so on.1
However, even if the subject is not a set constructed for the occasion, physical
reality serves no less insistently as an element of design. Framing turns design’s
movement from infinity towards illusory precision into a set of Chinese boxes,
without the playful gift at the center to signal the end of the game. The frame tries to
work as a boundary, but can only make sense if it contains an infinity of routes
63
opening and closing on to other paths, flirting with what is not seen. The frame, as
the marker and reminder of the medium’s limitation, is integral to understanding
what design accomplishes because it stops the play of connotation short. But it is a
porous boundary, in that constrained space between knowing and seeing, soggy
with connotation.
According to Charles Altman,2 this attention to the frame is a metaphorical
operation, or rather, one of three metaphors often used to discuss the film
experience: the image as window, derived from the theories of Andre Bazin; the
image as frame, which Altman associates with Jean Mitry, but which also describes
Rudolf Amheim’s and Sergei Eisenstein’s theories; and, derived from Lacanian
psychoanalysis, the film image as mirror. He stresses that this third metaphor arises
only because in the other two
. . .the image is treated as pure signified, while the signifier and the
actual process of signification are neglected . . .emphasis is placed
on the organization of objects or the movement of people rather than
on the cinematic process whereby those objects and people are
evoked.3
The “mirror” metaphor falls outside our discussion for two major reasons. First,
we are not interested in describing the complete cinematic apparatus, but the act of
design, which by definition restricts itself to those processes Altman relegates to the
frame and window metaphors.
More importantly, the Lacanian scenario, and the film theory derived from it,
hinges on the notion of primary identification between the infant and a human
representation, its reflection in a mirror. This scenario creates the anthropocentric
orientation underpinning the subordination of design (and other non-verbalizable
discourses) to narrative, which also proceeds from the assumption of human
centrality. This identification in turn privileges sight over other senses, an equally
64
problematic assumption when discussing film design precisely because films are
limited to sight and sound. Design works to overcome limitations from which the
infant does not suffer, but which are conveniently removed from developmental
importance in the drive to privilege sight and representation. The Lacanian metaphor
works well for film theory because both work from a limited definition of
experience. Since the mirror scenario is content to assume that the mirror is
neutrally there to give the infant a passport to personality, we are justified in doing
the opposite, to let go of the reflection to grasp the mirror and that body of objects
with a corporeality apart from their service to humanity.4
Altman briefly distinguishes three major points of difference between the
‘window’ and ‘frame’ metaphors. Under the former, the frame is centrifugally
organized as it tries to create an illusion of perspective by emphasizing the object
plane. The frame metaphor, on the other hand, stresses centripetal orientation and
the graphic organization of the picture plane, with a resulting flatness of the image.
While these distinctions are useful, Altman’s casual identification of the window
with realism and the frame with formalism is more problematic.5 Without denying
the partial validity of his equation, the window/frame metaphors cannot simply be
made equivalent to these two styles, since both contain wide variance in their
representational procedures.
In Art and Visual Perception, Rudolf Amheim offers a plausible point of origin
for the frame.
The frame as we know it today developed during the Renaissance
from the facade-like construction of lintels and pilasters that
surrounded the altarpieces. As pictorial space emancipated itself
from the wall and created deep vistas, a clear visual distinction
became necessary between the physical space of the room and the
world of the picture. This world came to be conceived as boundless-
-not only in depth, but also laterally— so that the edges of the picture
designated the end of the composition, but not the end of
65
represented space. The frame was thought of as a window, through
which the observer peeped into an outer world, confined by the
opening of the peephole but unbounded in itself.6
Given this interest in the picture frame, it is hardly surprising that in his most
famous writings on the nature of the film image, Film as Art, Arnheim sees the
border as an essential:
The limitations of the [cinematic] picture are felt immediately. The
pictured space is visible to a certain extent, but then comes the edge
which cuts off what lies beyond. It is a mistake to deplore this
restriction as a drawback.7
The limitation of the image is as much a formative tool as
perspective... .Moreover, a frame is an absolute essential if the
decorative qualities of a picture are to be displayed; one can only
consider the filling of the canvas, the allotment of space, and so
forth, if there are definite limits to act as framework for the pictorial
design....8
Several of Arnheim’s observations are relevant to our discussion: 1) the early
distinction between inclusive (“the world of the picture”) and exclusive (“the
physical space of the room”) content; 2) the creation of the notion of the
“boundless” visual field, of which the frame was a fictional limitation; 3) the
particular period, the Renaissance, in which the evolution occurred; 4) the origin of
the frame as an architectural component.
Eisenstein too was among the most persistently frame oriented of film theorists.
In “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” for example, his theory of montage is
discussed entirely in terms of the contents of the shot, which, revealingly, he
introduces by way of an analogical relationship to painting.
What comprises the dynamic effect of a painting? The eye follows
the direction of an element in the painting. It retains a visual
impression, which then collides with the impression derived from
following the direction of a second element. The conflict of these
directions forms the dynamic effect in apprehending the whole.9
66
An element in the painting, not what it may allude to outside; a whole derived from
its parts, not a partial standin for something else. Meaning for Eisenstein may result
from juxtaposition and reside apart from any one shot. But the visual field itself is a
closed world organized for maximum dynamic conflict.
Occupying a somewhat middle position, Noel Burch’s influential discussion of
on and off-screen space also ends up closer to the “closed” tradition than the
“open.” His analysis begins from a discussion of the frame:
To understand cinematic space, it may prove useful to consider it as
in fact consisting of two different kinds of space', that included within
the frame and that outside the frame. For our purposes, screen space
can be defined very simply as including everything perceived on the
screen by the eye. Off-screen space is more complex . . . ' 0
Burch continues to demonstrate how a filmmaker exploiting off-screen space
can add to a film image’s reality affect by implying a boundlessness to diegetic (or,
in his terms, imaginary) space1 1 through movement on and off-camera. While
frequently created by the soundtrack, this off-screen space can also be established
visually by the movement of characters into and out of the picture. However, this
notion implies the centrality of the framed image, a privileged site moved towards
or away from, rather than an arbitrary site which the film “happens” to come
across. Burch’s on-screen space draws off-screen space in; it isn’t simply a part of
what isn’t shown.
In contrast to the centripetal emphasis of the frame, the window metaphor
suggests that the camera’s selection of material is arbitrary, that the world on-screen
is merely that which is shown, not all that could be shown. The most famous
advocate of the open cinematic frame is Andre Bazin, who in “Theater and Cinema-
-Part Two,” offers his most radically fundamentalist association of cinematic
expression with such organization. Discussing the differences between theater and
67
film, he notes: “There can be no theater without architecture.” As a result, the
theatrical stage is
. . .a privileged spot actually or virtually distinct from nature. It is
precisely in virtue of this locus dramaticus that decor exists.. .
.Because it is only part of the architecture of the stage, the decor of
the theater is thus an area materially enclosed, limited, circum
scribed, the only discoveries of which are those of our collusive
imagination.1 2
To this “circumscribed” theatrical space Bazin posits unlimited cinematic space:
The idea of a locus dramaticus is not only alien to, it is essentially a
contradiction of the concept of the screen. The screen is not a frame
like that of a picture but a mask which allows only a part of the
action to be seen.. . .In contrast to the stage the space of the screen
is centrifugal.1 3
For Bazin cinematic space is inherently centrifugal. But film is an architectural
technology. If we accept the terms of Bazin’s distinction between theater and film,
(theater depends on an architectural space, therefore is inherently “framed” and
centripetal), we must reach a conclusion precisely the opposite to Bazin’s: film must
be essentially centripetal since it too derives from an architectural origin. And of
course, films require an architectural setting no less than theatrical performances.
Why then is a theatrical theater centripetal, while a cinematic theater centrifugal?
Leo Braudy has attempted to synthesize these two positions by suggesting that
the open/closed metaphor describes not only graphic organization but also an entire
view of cinema and the world:
.. .the aesthetic motion in a closed film can be described as a
burrowing inward, an exploration of inner space, an effort to get as
far as possible into the invisible heart of things, where all
connections are clear... .an open film is more dialectic, an interplay
between artifice and the reality that refuses control, which escapes
interpretation not by its mysteriousness but by its simplicity.1 4
Braudy also offers an important attention to objects and spaces: “What does the
filmmaker and the cameraman love the way the writer loves words?.. .the most
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characteristic element in any film is the way it presents all its objects— animate as
well as inanimate.1 5
But even in this very attention to objects, Braudy’s model finally falls short of a
model for discussing cinematic design: “Unlike the art object, which demands
special attention because it is framed, moved out of time and continuity into a world
of eternal stasis, the film object exists in time, contextually and continually.” 1 6
As a result, Braudy’s otherwise urbane, inclusive approach founders on the
usual shoals of cinematic criticism, the need to narrativize. Criticizing both
semiotics and formalist film theory, he states explicitly that “The methodology of
film criticism must finally be brought into the world of story, whether fiction or
nonfiction.”1 7 He makes this assertion despite his own recognition that “The
different efforts to control and order the elements of a film must constantly face the
knowledge that facts escape, that objects have another life outside the film which
feeds the life within . . .”1 8
Braudy “includes” open and closed form, avoiding Arnheim’s, Bazin’s and
Eisenstein’s fundamentalism, only to shackle both to a new essentialism,
narrative.1 9 It may thus be necessary to return to the source of the distinction
between frame and window (or more properly between “closed” and “open” form),
art historian Heinrich Wolfflin. In Principles o f Art History: the Problem o f the
Development o f Style in Later Art, he defined the difference between “open”
(window) and “closed” (frame) organization in the following terms:
What is meant [by closed form] is a style of composition which,
with more or less tectonic means, makes of the picture a self-
contained entity, pointing everywhere back to itself, while,
conversely, the style of open form everywhere points out beyond
itself and purposely looks limitless, although, of course, secret
limits continue to exist, and make it possible for the picture to be
self-contained in the aesthetic sense.20
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Wolfflin associates closed form specifically with the High Renaissance: “classic
design may be taken as the form of closed composition.”2 1 He links open form
with the Baroque. Wolfflin’s conclusion relates directly to cinematic design: “The
final question is not one of full-face and profile, vertical and horizontal, tectonic and
a-tectonic, but whether the figure, the total picture as a visible form, looks
intentional or not.”22 Wolfflin sees the fundamental differences between open and
closed forms in terms of subject matter or execution only as they express an attitude
towards the frame. The classic style takes the frame as a given, accepts it as a
limitation, and concentrates attention on the included. The Baroque views the frame
as a necessary evil to be effaced by a composition which gives the impression of
unintentional framing of an otherwise boundless field.
Wolfflin sums up the differences between the two styles succinctly. First as a
matter of style: “The style of closed composition is an architectural style.. . .In a-
tectonic style .. .the picture ceases to be an architecture.”2 3 Second, as a matter of
perception:
The great contrast between linear and painterly style corresponds to
radically different interests in the world. In the former case, it is the
solid figure, in the latter, the changing appearance: in the former, the
enduring form, measurable, finite; in the latter, the movement, the
form in function; in the former, the thing in itself; in the latter, the
thing in its relations.24
Wolfflin describes the development of open form finally as a matter of intention.
Openness is produced by stylistic convention; neither closed nor open form is
fundamental to the arts discussed. While employing terminology such as “tectonic,”
“painterly,” and “linear,” Wolfflin demonstrates a general transformation of style
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Movement
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For cinema, Wolfflin’s critical distinction is the recognition that the open form
puts greater emphasis on movement. The closed frame is effectively static. This
stasis results from architectural form since an architectural space is meant to remain
fixed even as it invites movement into the space. (We move, the space doesn’t.)
Thus, closed framing, with its gravitation towards tectonic forms, will, in its
cinematic manifestations, be relatively static. This stasis will be two-fold: a lack of
movement in the frame; a dearth of movement of the frame. But this second form of
stasis is relative; in fact, camera movement can work centripetally.
For example, by emphasizing a volume in the shot, it can establish the object as
a static point around which the camera moves in emphasis. For example, in the
‘statue’ shots of Le Mepris (Contempt, 1961), the statuary seems to move because
the camera moves, but the statues themselves remain fixed at the center of the
frame. The camera can also move centripetally by accentuating a visible or easily
imaginable line, creating an architectonic composition. For example, in much of
L ’ Annee Demiere a Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961), the camera
creates literally architectonic camera movements as it tracks along perspective lines
or decorative details clinging to the lines of architecture. In such emphases, the
perspective construction, or line itself become visual subjects, leading the
movement.
Tracking shots always work towards or away from a fixed point in space and
generally create a more linear, architectonic movement, since they often involve the
use of literal ‘tracks’ (lines) across the space. Pans, on the other hand, as circular
movements, are more embracing and fluid, implying a rotating totality. For
example, in the lobby sequences of Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971), the
camera’s constant pans around the lobby give a strong sense of spatial reality and
tangibility, dissolving the frame so that, as Altman described Bazin’s window
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metaphor, “We feel that if we could move to the left or the right a bit, we would be
able to catch a glimpse of the objects and people masked by the screen’s border.”2 5
They thus work as strongly centrifugal movements.
But even as camera movements provide a powerful aid in denying the frame,
they risk re-asserting themselves as too noticeable a trace of production to be a
completely reliable Realist device. Generally, excessive camera movement is
synonymous with ‘baroque’ stylists like Max Ophuls, Bertolucci and Fellini.26
While these directors provide frames with porous boundaries, the resulting image
impresses less for its mimetic faithfulness to the source than as bravura technique,
part of a virtuosic form.27 A more direct use of movement to efface boundary is
simply to have characters move in and out of frame, in centrifugal movements away
from the center, as in any film by Renoir or Robert Altman. For example, in
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), much of the reality affect produced in the
gambling scenes results from the movement of characters in an out of frame,
bouncing ojf\h& central card-playing action.
Yet Altman’s seemingly chaotic organization never risks unintelligibility
because of his contrary use of the zoom. The zoom, a false camera movement,
changes spatial relations as it moves in or widens out, an assertive gesture that
constantly re-adjusts perspective, de-forming spatial representation.28 This self-
consciousness of the zoom is frequently overcome by combining it with another
camera movement, often a pan. The zoom alone is an assertively centripetal
movement since by definition it moves into or away from the center of the frame.
Combining it with another movement effaces its centrality, allowing its center
always to re-position.29 In McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the zooms squeeze and mold
the space invisibly with the help of pans and character movements, while
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occasionally asserting themselves for directorial comment. (For example, zooming
into the hands of a character picking on a violin.)
Saturation
On balance, the accumulated effect of camera movement is to efface the frame,
to open the space to the out-of-field (which, of course, is never really out; diegetic
space is never anything more or less than what a film reveals in aggregate.) But
attention solely to the frame’s exclusionary functions tells us very little about the
effect of those functions on what is included. While Amheim and Eisenstein include
a great deal of discussion of the graphic components of composition, neither has
much to say about the effect of the image as a totality. Gilles Deleuze offers another
approach to the question of the frame, one more directly relevant to design.
Viewing the question of open/closed form as secondary, he begins by defining the
frame in terms of what it contains:
We will start with very simple definitions, even though they may
have to be corrected later. We will call the determination of a closed
system, a relatively closed system which includes everything which
is present in the image— sets, characters and props — framing.3 0
But, lest we view this statement as merely a re-phrasing of the “closed” position,
Deleuze goes on to note:
. . .a system which is closed . . .only apparently suppresses the
out-of-field .. .The divisibility of content means that the parts
belong to various sets, which constantly subdivide into sub-sets or
are themselves the sub-set of a larger set, on to infinity. This is why
content is defined both by the tendency to constitute closed systems
and by the fact that this tendency never reaches completion. Every
closed system also communicates.3 1
The visual field only has significance as a sub-set of a whole of which it is merely a
marker, a stand-in, as it were, for a totality which we know exists, but which can
never be contained.
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Deleuze argues for a consideration of the degree to which the frame is filled or
empty. “The frame is therefore inseparable from two tendencies: towards saturation
or towards rarefaction.”32 Furthermore:
.. .the frame has always been geometrical or physical, depending
on whether it constitutes the closed system in relation to chosen
coordinates or in relation to selected variables. The frame is
therefore sometimes conceived of as a spatial composition of
parallels and diagonals, the constitution of a receptacle such that the
blocs and the lines of the image which come to occupy it will find an
equilibrium and their movements will find an invariant.3 3
This geometrical/physical distinction relates to the kind of material photographed:
[In the case of geometrical composition] the frame is inseparable
from rigid geometric distinctions.. . .On the other hand, the physical
or dynamic conception of the frame produces imprecise sets which
are now only divided into zones or bands. The frame is no longer
the object of geometric division, but of physical gradations.. . ,34
As a general rule, the powers of Nature are not framed in the same
way as people or things, and individuals are not framed in the same
way as crowds, and sub-elements are not framed in the same way as
terms, so that there are many different frames in the frame.3 5
Drawing on Deleuze’s observations, we will proceed from the following
assumptions:36 1) That all framing is a limitation; 2) that all limitation is, to a certain
extent, fictional since the contents of the visual field must have reference to the
outside in order to have meaning; 3) that within the frame, design will show
tendencies towards saturation or rarefaction, and that both tendencies can be dis
cussed in terms of their relationship to the frame; 4) that such relationships are in
turn dictated to some degree by the contents of the frame, that depending on the
visual appearance of the subject, individual acts of framing will gravitate more or
less towards the closed or open type.3 7
Deleuze and Wolfflin’s observations provide four axes on which to discuss
framing: Closed (definite horizontals and verticals, symmetrical composition,
filling of given space, harmony human/architecture, regularity, architectural
74
(tectonic) space, geometric divisions); Open (horizontals and verticals suppressed,
asymmetrical, ‘random’ relationship between space and filling, human/architecture
harmony effaced, a-tectonic, ‘freedom,’ physical gradation); Full (saturated,
multiplication of data, deep focus, widescreen, multiple objects of attention, lack of
hierarchy) and Empty (rarefied, emphasis on single object, set emptied of sub-sets,
literally empty frame.)
These axes provide four basic attitudes towards the frame, all at best relative:
Open/Empty; Open/Full; Closed/Empty; Closed/Full. The combinations chart
tendencies, not truths, exhibited to greater or lesser degree from shot to shot,
moment to moment, film to film, always complicated by movement. But the
“Empty” side of the equation appears infrequently. When introducing the idea,
Deleuze has recourse to only a few examples.38 This paucity of rarefied mise-en-
scene suggests that design is an additive process, a matter of filling the frame.3 9
This tendency to fill, rather than to empty out, accords well with production de
sign’s economic function, to provide value through product differentiation.
But a profusion of added objects complicates the semantic system. The more
objects contained, the more meaning introduced, the greater the possibility of
ambiguity to be controlled by the story. Thus, in narrative terms, the process of fill
ing the frame reaches a point of optimal, rather than maximal saturation, when the
meanings derived from objects and design contribute most to the dominant, and
conflict as little as possible with the narrative or each other.
As a result, the presence of many objects cannot grossly be equated with
increased exchange value. The fullest frame is merely the most saturated, not the
‘richest.’ Nor is an empty frame devoid of fetishization since emptiness can be used
as a tool to create the fetish. This possibility arises because of the dual nature of the
framed image. It delivers the objects it contains, but remains an object itself. If the
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empty frame is relatively rare in narrative cinema, its appearance will bear traces of
stylization because of its deviation from the norm. The frame clearly has to be
emptied by someone, since reality is rarely empty apart from human activity. Thus,
the empty frame becomes a self-conscious object both because of the operation it
performs and the awareness of authorial presence it almost inevitably creates. In the
process, the fetish moves from the objects no longer contained in the frame to the
image itself, to “visual style” as a mark of artistic value.
But the fetish potential of saturation also depends on the frame’s degree of
openness. Deleuze notes that closed frames can never reach completion. “Every
closed system communicates,”40 every visual field is merely a sub-set of a larger
set, the ultimate whole of which can never be apprehended. So while the closed
frame poses as a self-sufficient system, it will tend towards saturation in order to
include as much as possible to approximate the whole’s infinity. Thus, the
closed/full frame will be a tantalizing subject because its centripetal organization
sucks the gaze towards a center embroidered with the lapidary excesses of material
production.4 1
The open/full frame, while acknowledging the impossibility of self-sufficiency,
encourages another illusion. Its centrifugal organization succeeds as a Realist device
because its pretended disregard for frame boundaries creates a notion that the frame
can be ignored. The centrifugal frame, by presenting a “random” angle, exploits the
conventions of representation in order to suggest its connection to a world it
acknowledges but which it excludes as much as the closed frame. As a result, its
saturation serves effectively the same purpose as a closed frame’s. Both types of
framing exploit saturation as a stand-in for the outside, as a synecdoche of the
excluded field’s infinite richness.
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But if the purpose is the same for both open and closed framing, the results are
slightly different. As the closed image creates a self-sustaining world, it
simultaneously objectifies itself, inviting scrutiny as an image. To recognize the
frame marks it as an end to the imaginary and the beginning of reality, implicitly
acknowledging difference from the viewer, guiding the spectator to look at rather
than participate in. Closed frames, by accentuating spatial organization and by the
act of looking, are better at creating a sense of something else, the explicit
stylization with which design always flirts, that objectified Other of spectacular
display. In this limited sense, Altman’s equation of closed organization with
Formalism is valid. But the “Closed/Full” and “Open/Full” tendencies can move
equally towards Formalism or Realism. The self-referential decor of “formalist”
films such as The Scarlet Empress (1935) or Ivan the Terrible (1940) are
unquestionably “closed” and “full.” But if we accept as a definition of Realism any
style which tries to provide the illusion that the spectator is present at events, films
such as Lawrence o f Arabia (1962) or The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) are
certainly Realist, but also unquestionably “closed” and “full” in their framing.
Similarly, while the measure of the “Open/Full” tendency might be a cinema
verite documentary, the label applies equally well to highly formalized endeavors as
diverse as Citizen Kane (1940), II Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1961), II
conformista (The Conformist, 1969), Blade Runner (1982) or D on’t Look Now
(1973.) Even a paradigmatically “Realist” film, such as La regie du jeu (The Rules
o f the Game, 1939) impresses equally for its stylized saturation of the image as for
its “open” frame. (For example, consider how much of the romantic intrigue at La
Colinere is dependent on architectural protection and intrusion.) In fact, Deleuze
sees the use of deep focus as an integral part of saturation.
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The key distinction is not between Formalism and Realism, or between
open/closed or full/empty, but rather the degree to which these four axes combine to
encourage the spectator to contemplate the image as an object.42 This contradiction
between fascination and distance is fundamental to the creation of value and the
commodity form, since the seduction is merely the means of trapping the gaze,
which then can be halted for proper, frustrated appreciation. As it stylizes the image
in the terms of the diegesis, the design plays with this oscillation between
identification and aesthetic appreciation. Hence the importance of re-thinking our
bodies’ relationship to the screen and space, towards a recognition of cinema’s
sensual impoverishment and design’s role in substituting for that poverty.
Obsessive Framing
With the frame sitting like a mule in the middle of the road, stubbornly refusing
to disappear, it is easy to understand how some filmmakers develop what Pier
Paolo Pasolini has referred to as a tendency towards “obsessive framing.” In “The
Cinema of Poetry,” Pasolini sees two parts to this process:
1) the sequential juxtaposition of two insignificantly different points
of view of the same image;.. .This leads to an insistence that
becomes obsessive, as it becomes the myth of the actual,
distressing, autonomous beauty of things. 2) The technique of
making the characters enter and leave the frame, as a result of
which, in an occasionally obsessive manner, the editing comes to
consist of a series of “pictures.” . .leaving the picture once again to
its pure, absolute significance as picture....4 3
Pasolini’s definition provides a useful description of a limited set of stylistic
operations. But this process moves beyond his limited examples to include any self-
conscious use of the film frame as a means of increasing its “art value.” Of course,
almost every film will have at least some partially designed images. Deleuze’s
interpretation of Pasolini’s description makes “obsessive framing” somewhat more
precise;
. . .it is a case of going beyond the subjective and the objective
towards a pure Form which sets itself up as an autonomous vision
of the content. We are no longer faced with subjective or objective
images; we are caught in a correlation between a perception-image
and a camera-consciousness which transforms i t . . .It is a very
special kind of cinema which has acquired a taste for ‘making the
camera felt.’44
Unfortunately, Deleuze’s amplification helps only slightly, since what for one
spectator represents an example of ‘making the camera felt’ may for another be
transparency itself. While Pasolini’s description is based on the work of self
consciously “poetic” directors such as Antonioni and Godard, art historian Norman
Bryson offers a means of moving beyond individual filmmakers. In Looking at the
Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting,45 Bryson makes a distinction
between two kinds of still life artists, those with a Megalographic (larger than life,
heroic) approach to the image, and those with a Rhopographic (small-scale, domes
tic) attitude. He defines genre painting overall as Rhopographic depiction, which
can, through sheer skill of execution, provide the Megalographic, heroic depiction
usually associated with genres such as History or religious painting.
Bryson’s description provides three criteria to add to a definition of obsessive
framing. First, technical virtuosity, an obvious display of production excess
through visual spectacle, signals the effort to substantialize an image.46 While this
description might seem to move the definition down one level (what, after all,
constitutes “excessive” visual spectacle?), it at least suggests that some films are
more obviously “visual” in their appeal than others. The terms of that appeal may be
the resources gathered for production, the quality of the sets and photography,
special effects, etc. But they will assert their presence; they will not function in
neutral support.47
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Second, the art historical tradition with which Bryson associates ‘heroic,’
virtuosic, execution, history and religious painting, has strong cinematic
counterparts. Thus, paradoxically the film’s narrative provides a secondary means
of determining the obsessiveness of its framing. All of Bryson’s determinants
(technical excess, historical or religious subject matter) come together in the History
Film.
Finally, Bryson’s description of Megalographic still life suggests that moments
in film dedicated to commodity depiction can also be Megalographic to the extent
that they try to transcend triviality through super-presentation. In describing the still
life paintings of Juan Sanchez Cotan (1561-1627), for example, Bryson notes:
Cotan makes it the mission of his paintings to reverse this worldly
mode of seeing by taking what is of least importance in the world—
the disregarded contents of a larder— and by lavishing there the kind
of attention normally reserved for what is of supreme value.. . .the
result is that what is valueless becomes priceless.48
The object fetishization noted in Chapter 1 simultaneously aggrandizes the
production to the extent that technical presentation draws attention to itself. Thus
any definition of cinematic spectacle must include the small-scale as well as the
large, the display of the commodity, as well as the crowd.
The fixed stared encouraged by artists such as Cotan can be called
Transcendental Materialism since it attempts to yield more from the image than the
illusion of a simple physical fact. The label is paradoxical, but it suggests the roots
of religion in the everyday. (And we should remember that Marx49 introduced the
commodity fetish metaphor in terms of religious, rather than psychological,
obfuscation of the means of production.) Thus the emotional response produced by
exaggerated perspective noted in Chapter 1 is not the only source of religious affect
in film. “Obsessive framing” itself is a quasi-religious operation.
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One-point perspective, the source of the religious affect, has its origins in Re
naissance architecture, derived from the same rules that produced its churches and
cathedrals. Their ordered, simple, Platonic forms are a cosmic expression,
heightening religious affect through abstraction and idealization. Wolfflin described
this period in art in the following terms
The central idea of the Italian Renaissance is that of perfect
proportion. In the human figure as in the edifice, this epoch strove
to achieve the image of perfection at rest within itself. Every form
developed to self-existent being . .. nothing here but forms in
which the human being may find an existence satisfied in itself,
extending beyond human measure, but always accessible to the
imagination.50
But Rudolf Wittkower, in Architectural Principles in the Age o f Humanism
argues that Renaissance architecture itself expressed a contradictory world view. On
the one hand, the perfection of form embodied in Renaissance churches was an
example in small of the perfection of the cosmos, an analogy for the universe:
[Renaissance architects] were made to believe that they could re
create the universally valid ratios and expose them pure and
absolute, as close to abstract geometry as possible. And they were
convinced that universal harmony could not reveal itself entirely
unless it were realized in space through architecture conceived in the
service of religion.5 1
At the same time this “service of religion” was performed within the Humanist
confines of one-point perspective, thus representing an idealized view of the
cosmos as perceived from the station point of an individual in space. This new
importance of Man is expressed in both the perceptual abstractions of perspective
and the social fact of moving art work off the walls of cathedrals into more portable
and accessible media.
A similar contradiction, between emphasis on the human and the cosmos is
discussed by Arnheim as integral to perspective itself:
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Central perspective involves a significant paradox. On the one hand
it shows a centralized world.. . .In the complete projection of two-
dimensional space this center lies in the frontal plane. With
increasing depth, the center withdraws into the distance, and in
totally straightened-out space of 100 percent constancy it would lie
in the infinite.
Centrality and infinity had been contradictory ideas since antiquity..
. .The notion that not only God is infinite, as the philosophers of the
Middle Ages had maintained, but that the world is infinite as well is
a conception of the Renaissance age.. . .In central perspective the
precarious relation between the two spatial conceptions is fully
visible.52
If all perspective imagery contains this contradiction, it is reasonable to assume
that images will embody that contradiction in varying degrees, with emphases in
either direction. Some may fall on the side of “humanized” perception; others on the
“cosmic” or religious side. The terms of that emphasis (towards humanism or
religion) will be dictated by the degree to which perspective is made obvious in the
composition. To be obvious, the image must be at least partially static, or move
only along lines that maintain a single vanishing point. The most obvious means of
achieving one-point perspective, symmetry, has been described by Arnheim thus:
Quite properly . . .architecture is often symmetrical, .. .[and]
monumental images of gods and rulers often show symmetry. They
resemble architecture in proclaiming by their appearance that they are
not susceptible to change, interaction or interference.5 3
He notes further that symmetry is essentially a quality of verticality, and that in
turn, “vertically oriented living stresses hierarchy, isolation, ambition, and
competition.””54
Thus cinematic imagery attentive to the retreating lines of one-point perspective,
blocked or otherwise, will almost inevitably evoke the religious, hierarchic past
contained in that mode of representation. Just as in the Cosmic Space described in
chapter one, this religious affect can be expected in images with a closed, tectonic,
static, obvious composition, stretching the means of representation towards the
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inherent contradictions of one-point perspective and the theological component
contained in it. An image need only remain fixed long enough, obsessively framed,
to induce the Transcendental Materialist affect. But instead of rushing towards God,
the perspective lines of the fetishized rhopographic stop at the commodity.
If a film demonstrates graphic composition receding to infinity, we can expect a
strong affective response at a formal level. This response is created through a
cultural tradition of rational forms applied to irrational, mystical practice. When
combined with music, another mathematical, proportional art,55 particularly music
based on the harmonic system, this irrational affect is compounded by a signifying
system shaped by the same historical tradition. There is thus a strong link between
closed form, stasis, religious affect, and obsessive framing.
If so, the “poetry” Pasolini associates with obsessive framing describes an
overall process with concrete historical precedents. This “poetry” should be seen as
the Materialist subset of the Transcendental Materialist aesthetic. Instead of a
comprehension of the universe resulting from a fixed stare at the physical world,
Cotan’s revelation of the ineffable through the tangible, the “Cinema of Poetry”
pries a “something else” from the image through the mediating excuse of a neurotic,
alienated protagonist. The goal and motivation remain material, but the means of
achieving the emotional response are transcendental. The traces of transcendence
are now obvious: specific devices, such as scenes beginning and ending on frames
without human subjects or neurotic protagonists; unusual attention to visual
technique; interest in literally ‘spectacular’ genres, such as historical representation,
religious stories or science fiction; and an exploitation of the conventions of
perspective, derived from techniques of Renaissance architecture.
The Shape of Space
83
At least three oppositions (open/closed; full/empty; obsessive/casual) are at
work in the act of cinematic framing. But we should return to the first, fundamental
opposition, between inclusion and exclusion, in order to address another issue
related to design: the shape of the cinematic frame. Why a rectangle, and why the
original aspect ratio (ratio of horizontal to vertical dimensions) of 1.33:1 ? For
obviously, in order to understand what fills the frame in order to open or close it,
we have to understand what the frame can include. While space does not permit a
thorough examination of all theatrical aspect ratios,56 for the sake of our
discussion, we can make a coarse distinction between standard, “Academy” ratio
(1.33:1) and “widescreen,” which can be used to cover a large number of ratios and
processes.
In production terms “widescreen” refers to any aspect ratio of photography,
printing or projection greater than the standard 1.33:1 ratio although the label is
usually reserved for a noticeably wider ratio. Carr and Hayes, for example in Wide
Screen Movies: A History and Filmography o f Wide Gauge Filmmaking note that
some early film productions included ratios such as 1.37:1 or 1.4:1, which would
not qualify for what we normally think of as widescreen.5 7 In Widescreen Cinema,
John Belton notes that the development of the 1.33:1 ratio was itself the product of
a series of determinants (economic competition, conventions of artistic
composition, etc.) and was by no means inevitable.58 But because it was
standardized first, the 1.33:1 aspect ratio became the accepted basis of composition.
Yet from its inception, the cinema has lacked neither a host of “widescreen” aspect
ratios, nor the desire to broaden its horizons. Cinerama had been invented well
before its introduction in the early 1950s; Cinemascope, which produced a wider
than normal image through anamorphic compression, relied on principles known
since the late nineteenth century, and existed as a process as early as 1927.5 9
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The traditional means of explaining the eventual success of widescreen
processes is the competition from television. Part of this success obviously derives
from scale. But more important was the greater richness provided by the
“widescreen” image. (A projected 1.33 image is still larger than a TV screen.) As
Deleuze notes “The big screen and depth of field in particular have allowed the mul
tiplication of independent data.. .”60 The link between widescreen and saturation
was also noted early by Charles Barr. In “Cinemascope: Before and After,”6 1 Barr
tried to show the shift in filmmaking emphasis offered by widescreen processes
away from montage aesthetics, towards visual richness and viewer selection.
The introduction of widescreen as a mark of difference between film and TV
also produced an important shift in audience consciousness, a tendency to equate
cinema with widescreen, despite its prior history of 1.33:1 composition. For the
viewer raised with television, widescreen is by definition cinema; it is a
distinguishing modifier which can only be attached to film.62 This equation has not
only resulted in the virtual abandonment of 1.33:1 as a theatrical aspect ratio, but it
has subtly altered our expectations of the cinema towards the values best provided
by widescreen films.
Deleuze sees the importance of widescreen in its saturation; Barr, the greater
choice it offers to the viewer. John Belton develops Barr’s argument further.
Cinerama and CinemaScope, in particular, effectively transformed
the notion of frame, expanding the horizontal angle of view to such
an extent that there was, for all intents and purposes, no sense of
any borders at the edges of the frame.63
At the same time, Belton also adopts an argument about the “invisible” frame’s
content which echoes Deleuze:
Even though CinemaScope remained associated with classical
narrative films, it introduced a level of visual spectacle that often
threatened to overwhelm the narrative. This threat could be
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contained only by a shift in terms of the kinds of films that were
made— a shift to historical spectacle— which functioned to naturalize
pictorial spectacle. Yet this shift also involved a change in traditional
modes of address which, even in the genre of the historical
spectacle, carefully regulated tendencies toward spectacular excess.
With CinemaScope (and other large-screen processes), the situation
was initially reversed. Spectacular excess carefully regulated the
sorts of narratives selected. As Zanuck realized, the main value of
CinemaScope lay “in the production of large scale spectacles and big
outdoor film s.. Z’64
If these authors are correct, “widescreen,” as a general, descriptive term connotes
rich spectacle and saturation. Its presence implies a partial replacement of the values
of classical narrative with the terms of visual display.
The greater tendency towards saturation produced by widescreen composition
requires ever greater control in order not to overwhelm the narrative, thus an ever
greater need for design.65 But the multiplication of “independent data” inevitably
introduced by the designer into the widescreen frame cannot be controlled because
of the play of connotation. Thus Barr, in his association of widescreen framing
with greater freedom of selection for the viewer, is partially correct. But what he
underestimates is the cumulative density of the widescreen image, its tendency to
create imagery well beyond the absorption capacity of the diegesis, as well as the
viewer.
Moreover, both Barr and Belton, with different emphases, agree on the
widescreen image’s appeal to greater viewer participation in the spectacle. Belton,
for example, goes so far as to argue that widescreen offers a fundamentally
different spectator position from classical cinema:
Passive viewing became associated, in industry marketing discourse
at least, with traditional nairow-screen motion pictures; widescreen
cinema became identified with the notion of “audience
participation,” .. .The wide screen came to represent difference; it
marked a new kind of spectatorship. Something basic had changed
in the motion picture experience that redefined the spectator’s rela-
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tionship with the screen, which now entered further into the
spectator’s space.. ,66
But there is a potential contradiction involved in viewing the widescreen image
as, on the one hand, a vehicle for visual spectacle and, on the other, to insist on its
capacity for audience involvement. We have seen how visual spectacle is based on
both fascination and distance. In fact, far from encouraging greater audience
involvement in, widescreen’s visual spectacle elicits at least equal appreciation of
the image. Belton and Barr reach their conclusions because of their equation of
widescreen with the open frame. For Belton, the “effective” lack of a frame
engulfed the spectator, resulting in the participatory illusion. For Barr, this kind of
invisible frame was part of what CinemaScope was about:
Often when “use of CinemaScope” is picked out by a critic it
indicates an obtrusive style, with the director striving to
“compensate” for the openness of the frame, or indulging in flashy
compositional effects . . .In general, what they say about the camera
makes a good working rule for Scope: if you notice it, it’s bad.67
But of course, widescreen films were and are framed. It is difficult to imagine
otherwise. Belton argues that Cinemascope was naturalized in its early days
through use in historical spectacle.68 It is unlikely that a Hollywood studio would
stake a major investment in a spectacle and leave the film’s visual style to chance.
Whatever difficulties widescreen may have presented to cinematographers and
designers used to the traditional ratio, the capital intensive nature of Cinemascope
productions almost guaranteed that technicians would try to surmount those
problems as artistically as possible, that is, within culturally acceptable terms.6 9
Indeed, given their spectacular nature, it could be argued that early Cinemascope
films offered a greater, not lesser, likelihood for self-conscious framing, since a
closed frame would accentuate the image’s “art” value through centripetal emphasis.
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While an extensive use of camera movement might overcome the self-
consciousness of the framing, Leon Shamroy, cinematographer of the first
Cinemascope production, The Robe noted how the widescreen image, far from
inviting camera movement, encouraged exactly the opposite: “Cinemascope is most
effective if the characters, not the camera, do the moving. If the camera is moved
too much it wastes the ability of our lens to see more at once than ever before.”70
And to this greater camera stasis can be added an affinity for a static subject,
architecture. As Lyle Wheeler, supervising art director at 20th Century Fox during
production of The Robe noted: “Thanks to CinemaScope, sets will play a more
integrated part in the picture than ever before. Just as on the stage, width, not depth
will represent the typical setup.”7 1
Barr acknowledges the affinity of the Cinemascope frame for horizontal
composition. “Scope automatically gives images . . .more ‘weight,’ and it also of
course enhances the effect of lateral movement.”72 Obviously, such an affinity for
lateral composition is simultaneously an affinity for line, of exactly the variety
linked by Deleuze, Arnheim and Wolfflin with closed framing. In fact, in design
terms, the insistent horizontality of the widescreen frame inspired greater, not lesser
“obsessive framing” by making designers think in terms of line (geometry,
architecture) rather than space.
In short, while the tendency to engulf and dissolve the frame line which Barr
and Belton argue puts the spectator in a different position than that offered by
classical cinema, is at best a selective reading based on limited viewing situations.
At the very least, widescreen composition shows equal tendencies towards closed
or open framing. It may be that in first-run theaters, with wrap-around screens,
widescreen cinema offered an engulfing experience, in which frame lines
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disappeared at the periphery of vision. Under such (very limited) circumstances, the
widescreen frame might be said to dissolve.
But to essentialize the widescreen experience on the basis of such privileged
viewing, and to insist further that the aesthetic effects produced by that limited
experience are the truth of the process is to deny the insistent evidence provided by
production practice and most viewing experiences. In production terms, the
widescreen frame produces a strong logic in favor of obsessive framing, a
fastidious attention to every comer of the frame. (Leon Shamroy noted further
about Cinemascope: “We have to think in terms of keeping every bit of the set
“alive,” as we don’t know which part audiences will be looking at.”73) In addition,
in anything other than reserved seat bookings, the widescreen is as likely to be
taken for a closed canvas as it is for an engulfing experience. And since the shape
of the screen encourages a self-conscious exploitation of linearity, the shape is also
likely to encourage highly formalized compositions.7 4
The Effects of Framing
As we have seen in these two chapters, the production designer’s task is to cast
a unifying thread over a series of contradictory visual needs. Relying on the power
of the cinematic image to persuade the viewer that a convincing substitute for reality
has been provided, he/she must nonetheless work to compensate for the medium’s
limitations by accentuating depth cues on the two-dimensional surface, and by the
selection of objects which provide a heightened, abstract, reality. The source of that
heightening is a series of exclusions, based on a dominant theme, determined by the
narrative.
Yet at the same time, as the designer attempts to fill the empty frame with details
related to the story, those fragments simultaneously serve as standins for what has
been left out of the frame. Each element of design selected for its relationship to the
89
dominant can fulfill that function only to the extent that it provides a social life of its
own, a connection to the greater whole which must necessarily be excluded, but
also acknowledged. The greater the saturation, the greater the ties to the outside.
But at some point, this additive process overflows the needs of the diegesis,
allowing objects and spaces to re-acquire the presence that had been partially
obscured by narrative distraction. But this extraneous meaning is there from the
beginning; it takes only suitable emphasis, super-abundance, or a willingness on
the part of the spectator to shift the plane of focus, for the material, physical context
of a film to take precedence over the story’s imaginary events.
The emphasis which starts this process may result from a conscious artistic
choice to saturate the image (Blade Runner, The Scarlet Empress, Lola Montes,
Drowning by Numbers.) Or, the designer may employ elements of spatial and
temporal construction that deviate sufficiently from the classical norm to force
attention to objects as objects (the extra beat of emphasis on object close-ups in
Losey’s films; the ponderous movement of actors into and out of depth in Welles,
etc.) Or the precision of execution itself may be used as a hallmark of authorial
presence, providing the weight of a known gaze, implicitly acknowledging the
presence through absence of the means of production (Antonioni’s obsessive
framing.)
But whatever the intentions of the designer, the process of providing exchange
value to an image through stylization inevitably works in a wary compromise with
its narrative function, in a relationship of constant negotiation. Moreover, the
success or failure of the narrative in “containing” design will always be culturally
and historically specific, and the successful neutrality of a Realistic image cannot be
expected to be maintained as the codes of Realism change with the times. In fact,
the more successful a narrative may be in containing a design at the point of initial
90
release, the more likely it will be that the design will ultimately transcend the
narrative as the film retreats into history. “Datedness,” in fact, may at one level be
only that moment when the film’s physical environment re-acquires its voice,
avenging itself against the tyranny of narrative by exposing its conventional
construction.
Another way to express this relationship is to return to the recognition that
design is a process of stylization determined by a narrative dominant. Stylization,
however, is also a process of distortion, even if the goals are Realistic. Consumed
at a point in time close to its production, this distorted image will read as “true”
because the assumptions and attitudes of filmmakers and audiences will overlap
more than they will differ. But as time progresses and attitudes change, the film
remains a static record of a particular moment as expressed through physical
artifacts. Images designed to connote “chic” inevitably after time denote their
production period. Walk-on appearances by actors who later became stars fix the
gaze on the documentary evidence of a body’s appearance at a particular time,
forcing its character into the background. Characters crossing an urban street to
further the story get lost in the jumble of once trivial details now fascinating as
historical record.
A dramatic example is provided by Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1936.) The
film’s story requires Chan to get from Honolulu to Berlin for the Olympic games.
Because he’s racing someone with a headstart, he boards the Hindenburg in New
York and flies across the Atlantic to arrive before a Transatlantic steamer. The film
includes two brief newsreel shots of the Hindenburg in mid-air. But aside from the
obvious jump in visual quality between the film’s largely studio-controlled shots
and the newsreel footage, there is the inevitable fascination of watching a record of
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the ship before its famous crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The ship is included
diegetically as an example of state-of-the-art transportation. But the image fascinates
historically because of the traces it bears of an object vivid in the memory apart
from the story.
But even more revealing, because explicitly ideological, in at least one print of
the film, the swastikas on the tailfin of the Hindenburg have been scratched out.7 5
Made in 1936, before the symbols of National Socialism became synonymous with
a new demonology, the swastika would have served as no more than verification of
the truth of the image, ie., the Hindenburg, known to be a German airship would
sport obvious traces of its national origins. Its primary connotation would have
been its Germanness, not its associations with horror. (Indeed, jokes about
German efficiency serve as a running gag through the film.) But at some point, the
shift in connotation became too great, its potential disruptive effect on the story too
glaring for the censor to ignore it.
Scratching out the swastika is, of course, a directly political action, and reflects
a world wider than the field of aesthetics. But the censorship is necessary because
of the power of the image to exceed narrative bounds, for a design to acquire new
connotations in relation to the shifting context. That the shots are “actuality” footage
makes the censorship all the more interesting, since the film cannot escape those
political connotations if it is to exploit the reality of the image. These shots
obviously were included as minor filler, proof that because the dialogue had raised
the Hindenburg as a potential mode of transport, the film had the means to show it.
The political world around the airship (and the film) is a non-issue. But history has
shown the failure of such isolation, and evidence that a film from this period could
offer a neutral image of Nazism must be suppressed.
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Charlie Chan at the Olympics is not about Nazism; history suggests it should
have been. When The Hindenburg (1976) was made, the swastika on the tail
became de rigeur because of the explicit thematization of Nazism in the script. Yet
the film does not deal with Nazism in much greater depth than Charlie Chan at the
Olympics. Political repression remains little more than a threat hovering around the
characters, proven physically by the swastika overhead. What must be removed for
its connotative excess in an historical image must now be present because it has
been neutralized by narrative into a decorative detail. Because we know at some
level that the images in The Hindenburg are designed, manufactured, safely
produced in Hollywood rather than existing in history, the sign of a narrative rather
than an expression of a political philosophy, they can be included as “neutral”
filler.76
Thus, explicit, partially acknowledged stylization may be one of the most
powerful pillars supporting classical and Realistic representation, since it introduces
a negotiating distance between reality at the moment of production and physical
representation. Since an explicitly stylized film admits to an alienation between its
systems of representation and the Reality it dramatizes, it is better suited to weather
changes in Realistic codes. This alienation means, of course, that the stylized film is
slightly foreign to every time. Thus “classical endurance” is the lack of a complete,
empathic relationship with the spectator at any time. Self-objectifying, the stylized
text always is at a remove from direct participation.
The term of this self-objectification is, of course, fetishization of the image, the
fascination of the gaze at the moment of self-conscious spectacle. The various
modes of framing are means of organizing the fetish, which in turn is based on a
series of culturally assumed notions of value. As long as those codes do not shift
93
perceptibly, as long as there remains a fixed notion of what constitutes the “artistic”
image, designed films that appeal to the discourse of stylization before narrative
involvement can expect to maintain some degree of cultural worth.
These attitudes are more fixed than narrative hooks of Realistic representation.
The “Realistic” acting of the 50s, for example, may look grossly self-indulgent
today; but films with glossy production values from that period still maintain most
of their luster, despite the equal datedness of individual objects or fashions. This
truth tends to be hidden by an ideology which insists on the “deeper” resonances of
human identification, yet the fact remains that surfaces in film show more
endurance than “depths.” Even though period style changes, notions of Realistic
physical verisimilitude remain fixed. Acceptable subjects for stories shift with
ideological winds, but a 35mm lens ground in 1925 is still perfectly usable to
record a story from 1990 on film.
Thus the terror of aging for actors. Unless they are able to adapt the roles they
play to their visible, physical deterioration; or are able to glace their sagging
physiognomies with make-up, plastic surgery, etc., they can expect limited careers.
It is reasonable to assume that the older an actor becomes, the more capable he/she
would be in moving audiences. Therefore, if initially successful, it should be that
with greater experience, their “humanity” as expressed in acting would lead to ever-
greater achievement. But of course, in most cases, it is exactly the opposite; their
careers sag with their jowls; popularity recedes with their hairlines.
The actor is the chief object used to achieve the goal of emotional “depth.” But
emotional depth, and all the narrative trappings designed to reveal it, is imaginary
and subject to the whims of the ideological moment. It is, in a word, more
superficial. Surface is physical and the product of a survival need. It is therefore
more fundamental than constructed notions of internal, intellectual/emotional
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process. Perspective and the systems of representation that derive from it are highly
useful survival tools, enabling us to abstract surroundings into a persuasive, if
limited, substitute for actual, spatial, depth. Until an alternative means of
representation is developed which addresses those survival needs more adequately,
the surfaces of a film can be expected to have a longer life than the stories they
contain.
Anyone raised within the tradition of one-point perspective representation can
recognize immediately the stylization in Medieval art or the skewed perspective of
Chinese and Japanese painting. We don’t need an art historian to point it out, it is
immediately, physically plain. Until our vision has been transformed in similarly
radical fashion, until, for example, we are able to recognize the spatial distortion
inherent in one-point perspective at a glance, until it looks as foreign to us as
Egyptian hieroglyphics, it is unlikely that modes of stylization derived from its
optical rules will ever be exposed. And as long as those rules remain more or less in
place, all images developed within their norms of acceptable spatial representation
will have an immediate “art value.” Styles that try to subvert these rules (Cubism,
for example) may provide new modes of dressing material, but ultimately they
cannot overcome or replace the Academic image.77
And so, in order to move on to specific examples of design, to examine in detail
its function and effects, we should look at films with an immediate, implicit
distance between style and subject. Perhaps we can characterize this attitude as a
knowing wink between film and viewer, a shared willingness to overlook what we
know can’t be true. But such a wink implies a casualness (and humor) not usually
present in the twin exertions of overcoming the audience’s disbelief and obsessive
framing. Maybe a better way to describe this subtle alienation is simply to label it.
Thus, as we examine Conservative Stylization, we move to those films in which it
95
is most explicit and necessary, the optical rules of perspective most consistently
followed, the architectural heritage and the appeal to traditional notions of cultural
importance most flagrantly obvious, political and religious discourse and form
frequently conflated, the excesses of production most obviously marshalled for the
purpose of saturated spectacle, frequently within the widescreen frame: the History
Film.
1 Leon Barsacq, Caligari’ s Cabinet and other Grand Illusions: a History o f Film
Design, 4.
2 Charles F. Altman, “Psychoanalysis and Cinema: the Imaginary Discourse,” in
Movies and Methods, 2:517-31.
3 Altman 521.
4 Why does psychoanalysis have no “tactile” developmental phase? If it did,
‘original plenitude’ might well be defined as the desire to re-acquire the mirror, not
the reflection. Do we see in this absence a typical middle-class intellectual
repression of manual labor, a philosophical expression of a position of social
privilege?
5 “The entire history of film criticism and theory, often seen as a dialectic between
formalist and realist positions, might just as well be seen as a dialectic between
these two metaphors for the screen.” Altman 521.
6 Rudolf Amheim, Art and Visual Perception, 239.
7 Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art, 17.
8 Amheim, Film as Art, 73-74.
9 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, 50.
10 Noel Burch, Theory o f Film Practice , 17.
1 1 Burch 21.
1 2 Andre Bazin, “Theater and Cinema, part II” in What is Cinema? 1:104.
1 3 Bazin 105.
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14 Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: what we see in films, 65-66.
1 5 Braudy 37.
16 Braudy 41.
1 7 Braudy 15.
1 8 Braudy 77.
1 9 Braudy’s commitment to narrative leads him into dangerous territory when he
suggests that some stories may gravitate more towards open or closed form. His
synthesis is equally problematic when superimposed on other classification
systems. Discussing Losey’s Figures in a Landscape, for instance, he notes:
“Losey is a director whose basic images include many varieties of enclosure.” So
far, so good, although even here we should recognize that Braudy classifies Losey
on the basis of his early “gangster” films, i.e., he describes style on the basis of
story. But: “To the viewer familiar with Losey films [appears the question] how
could there be . . .so much space and sunlight and freedom?. . .then the larger
confinement appears.” (Braudy 75) Braudy thus uses thematics to help him
interpret the physical evidence which otherwise eludes his classification. Why can’t
it be that the director has simply changed style?
20 Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles o f Art History: the Problem o f the Development o f
Style in Later A r t, 124.
2* Wolfflin 15.
22 Wolfflin 126, emphases in original.
28 Wolfflin 135.
24 Wolfflin 27.
25 Altman 521.
26 See also Burch 29-30 for a discussion of camera movement and its relation to
spatial illusion.
27 For the importance of part/whole relationships in baroque form, see Paul Frankl,
Principles o f Architectural History: the four phases o f architectural style, 1420-
1900.
28 see John Belton and Lyle Tector, “The Bionic Eye: The Aesthetics of the Zoom”
for an overview of uses of the zoom and a proposed aesthetics for discussing it.
97
29 One of the most bewildering uses of the zoom occurs in Visconti’s Death in
Venice, in which the combination of a zoom forward, lateral track away and
opposing pan with Aschenbach crossing St. Mark’s Square has the peculiar effect
of making the visual field move while remaining simultaneously static. There is, of
course, also Hitchcock’s famous “Vertigo effect,” the combination of a zoom in and
a track back.
30 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, 12, emphases in original.
31 Deleuze 16.
32 Deleuze 12.
33 Deleuze 13. Compare this statement to Wolfflin: “Classic art [i.e., “closed”] is an
art of definite horizontal and vertical directions. The elements are manifested in their
full clearness and sharpness.. . .In contrast to this, the baroque [i.e., “open”]
inclines, not to suppress these elements, but to conceal their obvious opposition.”
(126); also Amheim: “The frame of the image consists of two vertical and two
horizontal lines. Every vertical and horizontal line occurring in the shot, therefore,
will be supported by these axes.” Arnheim, Film as Art 74.
34 Deleuze 13-14.
35 Deleuze 14.
36 Deleuze’s larger argument, that cinema has undergone in a short period an
evolution of epistemological outlook equal to the development of the other arts over
several centuries, lies outside the scope of this discussion. But we should note in
passing his agreement with Bazin that the critical moment in the shift from the
“Movement-Image,” (classical cinema) to the “Time-Image” (post-war cinema)
arrives with Italian NeoRealism. Moreover, this shift is expressed chiefly in relation
to framing, that there is an apparent shift away from viewing the cinematic field as a
means of composing towards viewing it as a necessarily limited, but nonetheless
representative image of the passing of time which makes framing, if not impossible,
secondary.
37 Wolfflin would argue otherwise (see his Introduction), that it is part of the
general shift in style between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, that the
overall conception of form affects all representation. For example, a tree painted in
the High Renaissance will be conceived tectonically, despite its organic form; static
objects in the Baroque will have their outlines and rigidity effaced in favor of a
general surface movement, despite their fixity. Film, as a photographic medium,
does not face this distinction, although it might be interesting to pursue this line of
98
argument in relation to the shifts in design approach between studio-confined
(classical) shooting and location work (post-war.)
38 . .rarefied images are produced, either when the whole accent is placed on a
single object (in Hitchcock, the glass of milk lit from inside, in Suspicion; the
glowing cigarette end in the black rectangle of the window in Rear Window) or
when the set is emptied of certain sub-sets (Antonioni’s deserted landscapes; Ozu’s
vacant interiors.) The highest degree of rarefaction seems to be attained with the
empty set, when the screen becomes completely black or completely white.
Hitchcock gives an example of this in Spellbound, when another glass of milk
invades the screen, leaving only an empty white image.” Deleuze 12.
39 It is as an example of this additive process that we should understand Joseph
Losey’s by-now familiar comment about Brecht’s approach to design, and its
importance for cinema. Losey claims that Brecht taught him the need for “The
stripping of reality and its precise reconstruction through selection of reality-
symbols.” (Joseph Losey, “The Individual Eye,” 14.) Thus first, a process of
exclusion, towards rarefaction; then a movement back towards saturation, within
the governing terms of the conception. It is ironic that this statement should come
from the former Marxist Losey about the leftist Brecht, since clearly both are
engaged in the process of producing exchange value through image stylization. In
these terms, the frequently noted contradiction between Brechtian theater’s
relatively bare stages and Losey’s opulently congested frames is a matter of degree,
not process. Yet this article should be read not only for its criticism of Academic
Brechtian theater, but for its implicit attack on the notion that bare equals “correct”
decor. Within our terms, Losey seems to argue that the exchange value of the
stylized image may be a necessity of artistic construction.
40 Deleuze 16.
41 Steve Neale in “Triumph o f the Will: Notes on Documentary and Spectacle”
writes about cinematic spectacle “All these forms of codification are designed to
exhibit the image for the gaze of the spectator and for the scopic drive that sustains
it, designed, precisely, to ‘catch’ (to lure) the eye.” We will return to Neale’s
observations in Chapter 4 in relation to the question of historical representation and
spectacle.
42 A good test will be the ease with which a film produces aesthetically pleasing
frame enlargements. If this can be done consistently throughout a film with relative
ease, its self-objectification is fairly pronounced, since it invites savoring of images
for their own sake rather than in service to the narrative’s movement in time.
43 Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The ‘Cinema of Poetry’” in Heretical Empiricism, 149.
44 Deleuze 74.
99
45 Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life
Painting, 60-95.
46 Regarding the relationship between cinematic spectacle and the Baroque, Neale
notes that integral to both is . .also the exhibition of the means— the tricks— used to
produce it. An awareness of artifice therefore, at some point, seems to be essential
to the overall effect. . . . ” Neale 68.
47 Popular reviews may provide an indication of visual appeal beyond subjective
response. If a consistent refrain of the reviews is the quality of the photography or
the beauty of the sets and costumes, the film should at least be considered a
candidate for obsessive framing. Academy Award nominations for either
cinematography or art direction would also be obvious indications of visual appeal.
48 Bryson 64.
49 “. . .the existence of the things qua commodities, and the value-relation between
the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations arising
therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their
eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an
analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious
world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent
beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the
human race.” Karl Marx, Capital: a Critique o f Political Economy, 1:77.
50 Wolfflin 9-10.
5 1 Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age o f Humanism, 29
52 Amheim, Art and Visual Perception, 297-98.
53 Arnheim, Dynamics o f Architectural Form, 217.
54 Amheim, Art and Visual Perception, 39.
55 For the importance of music in Renaissance thought, see Wittkower, 117-25.
The analogy between the two mathematical arts of music and architecture goes back
at least to Vitruvius in the first century B.C. See Vitmvius, Ten Books o f
Architecture, 139-45.
56 For the interested reader, Robert E. Carr and R.M. Hayes, Wide Screen Movies:
A History and Filmography o f Wide Gauge Filmmaking provides the most
exhaustive overview of widescreen technologies. The American Cinematographer
Manual gives short technical descriptions of technologies currently in use. John
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Belton, Widescreen Cinema provides an historical overview of the general
phenomenon of “widescreen” cinema. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson in
Film Art: an Introduction 4th ed., 202-09 provide a concise description of the
basics of the topic.
57 Robert E. Carr, and R.M. Hayes,Wide Screen Movies: A History and
Filmography o f Wide Gauge Filmmaking, 2.
58 John Belton,Widescreen Cinema, 11.
59 “Although Cinerama was not unveiled to the public until 1952, it had been tested
and refined in laboratory situations since the mid-1930s.” Carr and Hayes 11-13;
for Cinemascope’s development, see p. 57.
60 Deleuze 12.
6 1 Charles Barr, “Cinemascope: Before and After,” in Film Theory and Criticism:
Introduction Readings, 3rd ed., 139-63.
62 Recent efforts to advertise larger-than-average television screens as “widescreen”
obviously seek to exploit the association with cinema provided by the term. But that
attempt proves the point: the advertising is trying to suggest that these television
sets will provide the richness and clarity only film can provide.
63 Belton 196.
64 Belton 194-95.
65 “The greater density of the sound-Scope-color image requires a more precise
control than the simple “unit” image does.” Barr 144.
66 Belton 187.
67 Barr 145.
Belton 194-95.
69 The Academy Awards offer one measure of Hollywood’s notions of artistry,
particularly in the craft categories, in which nominations are left to the individual
guilds for selection. In the years 1953-60, widescreen films were consistent
nominees in the color Art Direction and Cinematography categories. The Robe, the
first Cinemascope feature, was nominated for best color Cinematography and
Picture and won for color Art Direction. As early as 1955, three of the five
nominees for best Picture were widescreen films {Love is a Many Splendored
Thing, Mr. Roberts and Picnic.) Although Fox as a matter of policy refused to
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lease ’Scope lenses for black-and-white productions in the early years of
Cinemascope, in 1955, both the black-and-white cinematography and art direction
awards were given to a widescreen (VistaVision) film, The Rose Tattoo. 1956 saw
the first best Picture Oscar for a widescreen (Todd-AO) film, Around the World in
Eighty Days-, by 1958, a Cinemascope film, Gigi, won best Picture, color Art
direction and Cinematography. In 1959 all of the nominees for color Art direction
and Cinematography were films shot in widescreen processes. That year,
widescreen films were given both black-and-white and color Art Direction and
Cinematography awards, along with best Picture {Ben Hur), a feat repeated in
1960. This evidence suggests that wider-than-standard ratios were from the
beginning viewed with an eye to artistic exploitation. A thorough formal analysis of
the nominees for these awards from this period might make us re-think the
association of widescreen with the ‘open’ frame. Academy Award information
culled from Academy Awards, compiled and introduced by Richard Shale, 105-40.
70 Leon Shamroy, “Filming the Big Dimension,” 232.
7 1 Lyle Wheeler, quoted in “CinemaScope— What It Is; How It Works,” 133.
72 Barr 146. Belton too admits the obvious: “The spectator occupied a succession
of different station points that stretched across the frame and that at each lateral
position extended into the depth of the frame” (Belton 199.) We might add to Barr’s
metaphorical ‘weight’ the greater physical weight of many widescreen cameras.
Sheer girth would probably discourage the too frequent movement of the camera,
while encouraging maximum framing precision. Carr and Hayes note, for example,
regarding MGM’s “Camera 65” process: “The cameras were extremely heavy,
oversized and difficult to maneuver.” (Carr and Hayes 174) Barr nonetheless denies
the importance of framing in CinemaScope films, a denial which time has tended to
contradict. Indeed, perhaps “obsessive framing” only enters the cinema after the
introduction of widescreen?
73 Shamroy 232.
74 Both Belton and Barr acknowledge the added importance of composition
required by Cinemascope. (Belton 197-201; Barr 145.) Yet Belton in particular
never confronts the contradictory nature of the claim he makes for widescreen
composition. On the one hand, he speaks of the “participatory” effect that the
multiplication of foci creates. At the same time, he emphasizes the overwhelming
nature of the widescreen experience. It is difficult to understand how both could be
true simultaneously. Can we be overwhelmed and still exercise choice in our point
of focus? Only in the sense of desperately trying to locate a point of fixity. Neither
Belton nor Barr seems to wish to acknowledge the obvious: if the widescreen frame
requires greater planning, its compositional “essence,” if it has one, is its
obsessiveness, not its openness.
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75 My basis for evaluation of the film is the video version broadcast on American
Movie Classics in late 1990.1 do not know if all prints have been similarly
censored.
76 But other details can’t. The presence of Robert Clary, for example, probably best
known for his characterization of LeBeau in the TV series Hogan’ s Heroes cannot
fail to tie a trail of farce to the film’s otherwise solemn proceedings.
77 Deleuze would seem to argue that such a transformation has, in fact, occurred, in
the general shift of film from the movement image to the time image (see the
“Preface to the English Edition,” Cinema 1.) Yet, even accepting his argument, his
discussion is firmly grounded in a Realist ontology of the image; at no point does
the perception of perspective dissolve between the movement and time images.
Deleuze may be correct that our expectations from a film have changed. But the
expectation that the image will be a convincing representation of spatial reality has,
in Deleuze’s terms intensified since the perception of an “image of time” must be all
the more convincing as an image of space in order to convince that time has passed
in the image.
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Chapter 3— History of the World, part I
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
Bertolt Brecht, Life o f Galileo1
Brecht’s famous, if questionable, aphorism expresses a world-view that for him
is a doctrine of faith. But for Mel Brooks it is a matter of course. In History o f the
World, part I (1981) the only heroes are those characters foolish enough to work
the wrong side of a movie parody. Aggressively, almost obsessively tasteless,
History offers not a bottom up, but a “bottoms up” view of the past, levelling Ro
man emperors, French kings, Jews, Christians, slaves, peasants and aristocrats
with the same ‘democratically’ scatological vision. For Brooks, the willingness to
indulge in bathroom humor, double entendres or predictable puns becomes a
measure of humanity and sophistication the mark of Cain. (Or the voice of Kane:
the straight, portentous, voice-of-God narration is delivered by Orson Welles.)
The juxtaposition with Brecht may see unfair at first, burdening History o f the
World, part I with a level of seriousness to which it doesn’t aspire. What seems
ultimately at stake in the film is not so much the debunking of particular historical
figures as the exposure of Hollywood’s vision of history. The “heroes” in History
are those peripheral characters just trying to survive in violent, repressive environ
ments (the Stone Age, ancient Rome, the Inquisition, pre-Revolutionary France.)
Their antics are the means of dirtying the Imperial spaces, rendered with impeccable
historical verisimilitude, then quickly defaced with behavioral graffiti. But the mise-
en-scene nonetheless appears archaeologically accurate. When, for example, in the
French Revolution segment, Mel Brooks flees down a palace hallway and suddenly
starts moving upward, the exposure of the forced perspective may draw attention to
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the illusion, and thus the pretense of the entire construction-but the credits still
reassure us the segment was shot in a real palace.
Nor has the hero disappeared. It is, after all, Mel Brooks running down the
hall. The movie star as fixed point replaces the historical figure as hero.
Identification remains focused on an individual possessing enviable characteristics.
In short, in the parade of cinematic figures (Brooks, Gregory Hines, Madeline
Kahn, John Hurt, et al), the film re-instates the level of cultural pretension it
supposedly despises. But instead of focusing on a Galileo or a George Washington
or a Michelangelo Buonoroti, we shift our identification to their cinematic
simulacra. The hero/ine disappears only to sneak in through the back door, cloaked
in a seven-figure salary.
So, in authors as different as Brecht and Brooks, we find two similarities in
historical recreation: the use of known figures for identification; evocation of the
past through visual design.2 We could begin our discussion of Historical films with
the latter, which would lead to the hypothesis that all films set in the past, what we
will for the moment call Period Films, are also simultaneously Historical Films. But
this definition would produce a category too diffuse to be meaningful. Thus,
paradoxically, in order to understand design, we have to narrow our field of discus
sion with the help of narrative. To start with the stories and characters of History
Films is not, once again, to subordinate design, but to recognize that the two
discourses operate together, in mutual reenforcement and justification. We will
start, then, by taking Aristotle at his word, and assume that spectacle is
unnecessary. Therefore, as a first step in understanding the design of History
Films, we must have at least a passing understanding of their narratives.
Regardless of their motivations or goals, Brecht and Brooks start with well-
known figures as a means of locating their narratives in time. Brecht chooses a
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character equally famous for his scientific contributions and his disavowal of them.
Brooks chooses historical figures (Nero, Louis XVI, Jesus, Moses) in order to
show that politicians and religious figures farted, lusted and could be addle-brained
and clumsy “just like us.” It remains a matter of taste which we prefer, but both
begin with what Gyorgy Lukacs (in a phrase borrowed from Hegel) has called the
“World Historical Individual,” famous people from history whose names (and to
some extent, images) are synonymous (or metonymical) with particular historical
moments.
The work in which Lukacs describes the World Historical Individual, The
Historical NoveP offers an obvious model for describing the content of the History
Film, particularly since it deals with historical representation in both novel and
theater. However, while not interested in questions of physical representation,
Lukacs nonetheless devotes a good deal of discussion to it, partly to distinguish
those works of which he approves from those he does not. Lukacs criticizes
excessive reliance on external description to provide a novel with a sense of the
past, believing that such a sense can only be based on a conception of the broad
movements of history. Nonetheless, in order to demonstrate why he thinks such
externalized description is unimportant or secondary, he has to raise the issue.
Thus, even though he is discussing two literary ancestors of film, his theories are
equally helpful in providing a framework for discussing film’s /ton-literary physical
environment.
Lukacs’s theories of novelistic and dramatic construction make a good starting
point, then, in narrowing the field of inquiry. But in starting with Lukacs, we must
be wary of mistaking a partial, metaphorical description for a total explanation. The
contradictions and problems exposed by the process of comparison, in fact, define
the object further. A film may be novelistic or theatrical; it will never be a novel or a
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play. But by examining Lukacs’s description of the latter, the significant points of
overlap between media will illuminate their differences, thereby making it easier to
find what is unique to cinematic historical recreation.
Lukacs himself provides the precedent for such a dialectical comparison. After
describing the classical form of the Historical Novel, he moves on to discuss
Historical Drama as an alternative mode of representation. In doing so, he heightens
the differences between forms as a means of greater understanding of both. Since
cinema derives many of its formal properties from the two media, The Historical
Novel becomes doubly appropriate as a starting point in examining Historical Film.
In effect, Lukacs has done some of the process of separation and abstraction for us,
by distinguishing the unique features of two of narrative cinema’s ancestors, while
providing a model for the analysis itself.
The Lukacsian Model
Lukacs begins his discussion of the Historical Novel by assuming that its form
results from a particular social moment that results from two specific historical
developments, the evolution of English capitalism, or more accurately, of English
political economy, after the 1688 revolution; and the development of mass, popular
consciousness after the French Revolution.4 But while England and France of the
18th century were more or less parallel in terms of economic and cultural
development,
Politically,...England is already a post-revolutionary country. Thus
where it is a question of mastering bourgeois society theoretically
and subjecting it to criticism, of working out the principle of political
economy, history is grasped as history more concretely than in
France.5
This greater political maturity in England enables English artists to provide an
historical perspective which is simultaneously social, that is, which provides a
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means of understanding the present by viewing the past as its pre-condition.
However, by the time that Scott wrote his novels, this historical perspective is
possible for a conservative class, because bourgeois dominance of the economy and
politics had already entered an advanced phase.
The contribution of the French Revolution to Scott’s perspective, on the other
hand, lies in the development of what, in contemporary terms, we would call the
popular.6 Combined with the perspective created by English history, the importance
of this new mass consciousness (or better, mass consciousness of self) “. . .is the
increasing historical awareness of the decisive role played in human progress by the
struggle of classes in history.” In this attention to mass consciousness Lukacs’s
moves beyond a naively reflectionist description of the milieu surrounding Scott’s
period of production.
It is the emergence from this particular social, historical moment that leads
Lukacs to conclude that the hero of the classical historical novel will not be,
contrary to expectation, a “hero” of the type discussed so far, a figure with high
name-recognition, but on the contrary, a mediocre figure.
The “hero” of a Scott novel is always a more or less mediocre,
average English gentleman. He generally possesses a certain,
though never outstanding, degree of practical intelligence, a certain
moral fortitude and decency which even rises to a capacity for self-
sacrifice, but which never grows into a sweeping human passion, is
never the enraptured devotion to a great cause.7
Moreover, this mediocre figure frequently will be positioned not with the forces
of social progress described in the novel, but between those forces and those of
reaction.8 The mediocre hero is the most economical means of embodying the
conflicting social aspirations of classes at the moment of crisis, whose personal
desires express a general social conflict.
The greatness of the World Historical Individual, when introduced, is his/her
ability to connect with the popular needs and desires of the historical moment when
their abilities are required:
For [Scott] the great historical personality is the representative of an
important and significant movement embracing large sections of the
people. He is great because his personal passion and personal aim
coincide with this great historical movement, because he concen
trates within himself its positive and negative sides, because he
gives to these popular strivings their clearest expressions, because
he is their standard-bearer in good and in evil.9
Thus, unlike the mediocre hero, whose motivations must be examined in some
detail in order to provide the social fabric necessary as background to the historical
story, the World Historical Individual in the Historical Novel is presented in a more
generalized fashion.10 He/she is allowed essential human characteristics, indeed,
must possess them. But:
The great historical figure, as a minor character, is able to live
himself out to the full as a human being, to display freely all his
splendid and petty human qualities. However, his place in the action
is such that he can only act and express himself in situations of
historical importance.1 1
Thus the World Historical Individual is defined purely in social, rather than
personal terms:
.. .Scott discovers the only possible means whereby the historical
novel can reflect historical reality adequately, without either
romantically monumentalizing the important figures of history of
dragging them down to the level of private, psychological trivia.1 2
This need to keep the World Historical Individual somewhat remote relates
equally to another purpose Lukacs sees for the Historical Novel, its ability to create,
in another phrase derived from Hegel, a “totality of objects.” 1 3 The totality of
objects is the complete social fabric of a novel’s setting, which is defined in terms
of human interaction, not external, archaeological accuracy. The goal of the
historical novelist is to create a believable world, which, while necessarily a partial
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representation of the period described, will nonetheless give a sense of totality in
terms of the novel’s own compositional requirements.
The means of achieving the period setting is Hegel’s “necessary anachronism”,
the past as a prehistory of the present.1 4 Necessary anachronism by definition is not
a means of stylization, which implies differentiation, but rather of clarification, of
making closer, not more distant. For Walter Scott, ‘“necessary anachronism’
consists, therefore, simply in allowing his characters to express feelings and
thoughts about real, historical relationships in a much clearer way than the actual
men and women of the time could have done.”1 5
Necessary anachronism is in direct opposition to two other, related tendencies:
modernization, the projection of contemporary concerns on to past subjects; and
archaeologism, the attempt to recreate the past through external description.1 6 While
we will return to this distinction later, for the moment it is most important to note
Lukacs’s equation of the totality of objects with a general social representation
rather than either emotional connection to present concerns or period detail.
For Lukacs, then, the Historical Novel represents a social, popular form that
emerges from a specific historical context. It concentrates on a mediocre hero/ine as
the most economical means of connecting the story to the broad social tapestry of
which his/her drama is a metonymy. History is understood as a pre-condition to the
present; it is apprehended through a set of understandable motivations which the
mediocre hero/ine embodies, but which he/she cannot resolve. Rather, it is left to
World Historical Individuals to appear to resolve particular social crises, and thus
simultaneously to close the personal conflict of the central character, whose inner
turmoil is a reflection of external events. But period setting is a secondary attribute;
the primary concern of the classical Historical Novel is a social investigation which,
because of the peculiarities of the moment in which it appears, must be expressed in
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historical, rather than contemporary terms. Once those social terms have changed,
social investigation as expressed in literature necessarily changes as well. “Thus
with Balzac the historical novel which in Scott grew out of the English social novel,
returns to the presentation of contemporary society.” 1 7 The classical Historical
Novel, in short, for Lukacs is in fact the social novel, expressed through history.
In contrast to the Historical Novel, Historical Drama begins with the World
Historical Individual. This difference of character focus derives from the different
formal solutions achieved in each medium to the specific problem of recreating the
“totality of life.”1 8 To a certain extent, this concentration on the hero derives from
his/her life directly: “The ‘world-historical individual’ has a dramatic character. He
is destined by life itself to be a hero, to be the central figure in drama.” 1 9 Thus,
drama focuses on heroes because the way they lead their lives is inherently
dramatic.
However, as Lukacs recognizes, this description is inadequate, since it is
essentially circular. (What about a hero’s life makes it dramatic? Because he/she
acts in a dramatic fashion, etc.) Therefore, discussing the peculiarities of dramatic
characterization, he notes that the “driving forces” of life are dramatic only to the
extent that they lead to a depiction that helps create the illusion of the total process
of life.20 Moreover, that totality, “history” in the broadest sense as “. . .represented
in drama is abstract in an artistic sense, if it is not adequately and obviously
embodied in concrete human beings and concrete human destinies”2 1 and “. . .the
deepest individual and personal traits merge with historical authenticity and truth to
form an organic, inseparable, directly effective unity.”22 Therefore, “the
individuality of the dramatic hero is the decisive problem.”2 3
However, this argument should not be taken for advocating an intense
scrutinization of character as the essence of drama:
I l l
The greatness of dramatic characterization, the ability to make
characters live dramatically does not only depend... on the
playwright’s ability to create character in itself, but rather, indeed
above all, upon how far it is given him ... to discover the characters
and collisions in reality that will correspond to these inner
requirements of dramatic form.24
In other words, drama is embodied in “ ...characters who, in the self-containment of
their personalities, can yet bear and reveal the fullness of their world.”2 5
Therefore, the relevance of the World Historical Individual lies in being
portrayed in a manner that allows his/her participation in action to demonstrate both
individual character and historical importance.26 Ironically, the differences in
attitude towards the World Historical Individual in Historical Drama and Novel
result from similar aims for their depiction, namely, to connect them meaningfully
to the world depicted. But “What in historical drama is necessarily presupposed,
i.e. the concrete mission of the hero... this in the historical novel is unfolded in
breadth and evolved gradually, step by step.”2 7
Lukacs also discusses the “public character of drama,”2 8 resulting in the “direct
expression to general destinies, destinies of whole nations, whole classes, indeed
whole epochs.”29 As a result of this tendency towards, need for, generalization,
Lukacs, again citing Hegel, notes the danger of allowing the World Historical
Individual’s character to lapse either into abstraction or the merely private.3 0
Furthermore, novels and dramas share another fundamental difference of form,
their relative freedom and economy of construction.
The novel, like drama, must represent the struggle of different
classes, strata, parties and trends. But its representation of them is
much less concentrated and economical. In drama everything must
serve to support the basic possible attitudes and concentrate upon
one central collision.3 1
As a result of its greater economy, “Drama concentrates its portrayal of the basic
laws of development round the great historical collision.”32 In the novel, collision
is only a part of a totality, which it does not have to use as an essential of
composition. Moreover, because the novel is more historical than drama (its
“totality” penetrates more deeply into the diegesis than in a drama)
It follows.. .that the possibility of ‘necessary anachronism’ is much
greater in drama than in the novel. In representing the quintessential
moments of a historically authentic collision, it may suffice if the
historical essence of the collision has been grasped in a deep and
genuinely historical manner. Thereby the intellectually heightened
speech necessary to drama may further transcend the real horizon of
the time, while still preserving the necessary faithfulness to
history.33
To sum up, Lukacs sees fundamental differences between Historical Novel and
Historical Drama, which arise from their formal solutions to similar expressive
aims. While attempting to create a “totality of life,” each seeks the means most
effective in achieving that goal. For the novel, the goal is achieved through a broad
social depiction, in which a mediocre hero embodies the relevant social conflicts. In
drama, because of the need for condensation and maximum economy, historical
forces are best represented by those World Historical Individuals who embody
them already by their actions in history. Since drama relies entirely on external
action to reveal character; and since character, in turn, is the only means of
providing the historical collision, the World Historical Individual emerges as the
most efficient means of heightening historical representation.
These differences result in a paradox: “We said that the possibility of “necessary
anachronism” was much greater in drama, yet at the same time showed that drama
uses authentic historical heroes more frequently than the novel.”34 But at the same
time, by providing a fictional hero to step through an historical environment, the
novel is able to provide a more genuinely historical overview of a period.
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The differences between theater and novel in their depiction of historical conflict
result not just from different exigencies of composition, but from a shared goal of
depicting the past as a precondition of the present. Assuming either a novelistic or
dramatic tendency in cinematic recreation, then, it is clear that the Lukacsian model
involves two fundamental issues: 1) the relative importance of the World Historical
Individual in a film’s story and 2) the compositional means employed to provide the
“totality of life” which Lukacs sees as the shared aim of Historical Novel and
Drama, and which we can assume is a shared goal of History Film. This second
consideration requires an attempt at extracting an “essence” from cinematic
historical recreation as fundamental as the Totality of Objects and the Totality of
Movement of Lukacs’s Historical Novel and Drama.
Historical Novel and History Film
To uncover the tendencies of cinema’s historical recreation, we can begin with
History Films clearly gravitating towards the novelistic, those centered on a
mediocre hero in the midst of historical crisis. Although the definition of “historical
crisis” is by necessity subjective, Lukacs’s model suggests a field restricted to films
depicting broad social change, such as revolution, civil war, nation-building,
economic dislocation and religious persecution. The hero/ine must participate
directly in these events, towards an historically determined resolution. This
resolution serves the dual purpose of closing the social, historical crisis and the
hero/ine’s internal, personal conflict.
At least partially, Ben Cameron in The Birth o f a Nation (1914) possesses the
qualities of a Lukacsian hero. He is a decent, family-loving man who participates in
the Civil War as a means of preserving the way of life of a conservative class. Like
Scott’s heroes, he is a liminal figure, with strong ties to the other side of the conflict
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(the Stoneman family.) His life and actions represent a general, historical situation,
of which he is a typical example.
But Cameron does not acquire a progressive consciousness from the war.
Griffith, the Victorian Southerner, like Scott, the displaced petty aristocrat, depicts
the dislocations produced by social conflict. But where Scott draws on his own
background as a means of identifying with the hero, only to make that hero
participate in the movement of progress, Griffith makes his hero move backwards.
The Civil War changes Cameron’s consciousness, towards the reactionary excesses
of the Ku Klux Klan.
But Cameron’s movement towards reaction indirectly supports the Lukacsian
schema, since Abraham Lincoln is prevented by his assassination from healing the
wounds of war. Thus, in Lukacsian terms, Birth o f a Nation presents history as
tragedy because of the truncation of the World Historical Individual’s life. Lincoln
would be the means of settling strife, but the story must be faithful to the historical
fact of his death. In effect, Ben Cameron is forced into reaction because the man
who could provide the social unity necessary for progress is killed at the moment he
is most needed. Of course, this “failure” of the film is produced by the terms of
Lukacs’s analysis. Booth, for example, is no less a World Historical Individual
than Lincoln. In perverse terms, he performs exactly the function of the Lukacsian
World Historical Individual, since his actions precipitate the sequences of events
that lead to the formation of the Klan.
Another civil war serves as backdrop to The Leopard (II Gattopardo, 1963).3 5
The protagonist, the Prince of Salina, is once again a conservative, land-owning
aristocrat, whose personal desires are bound to greater political and social events.
However, unlike Ben Cameron, who participates directly in armed struggle, the
Prince remains detached. Thus, while his nephew Tancredi joins the Garibaldini,
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the Prince exhibits a ‘progressive’ consciousness only by giving Tancredi money at
a moment he needs it, and by acquiescing to the latter’s marriage to the beautiful,
bourgeois Angelica.
The Prince remains a passive observer to events. From the beginning, he is
aware of the ramifications of the actions occurring around him. While he offers a
cogent critique of the new state of affairs, that critique is, as Geoffrey Nowell-
Smith has observed, class-bound:
The problem with the Prince is that although he is subjectively above
the action and is symbolically represented as having that role, he
remains a member of a particular class: his consciousness is class-
bound consciousness, and his actions form part of the class action
of the aristocracy to which he belongs.36
Thus, while the film presents a self-conscious awareness of historical
development, the Prince expresses a reactionary perspective. As Marx and Engels
noted:
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of
the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under
circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and that are
now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modem
proletariat never existed, they forget that the modem bourgeoisie is
the necessary offspring of their own form of society.... Christian
Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the
heart-burnings of the aristocrat.3 7
So, while the Prince performs the Lukacsian movement, he does so without
conviction and no true transformation. But the model still applies indirectly. The
Prince is not an active man; his means of moving into the new Italian state are a
matter of compromise. But in the film’s terms, that is the point. The House of
Salina weathers political storms because the Prince recognizes that doing as little as
possible is the best means of integrating into the new state of affairs. The
risorgimento is depicted as merely substituting a relatively robust monarchy for a
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withered, decadent one. The Prince’s maneuvers enable him to keep his family and
title, while changing very little.
Like Lincoln in Birth o f a Nation, Garibaldi serves as the absent World
Historical Individual. Frequently mentioned in the dialogue, though never shown,
Garibaldi is prevented from bringing the social crisis to a head. In Birth's, case, the
cutting short of the World Historical Individual’s life results in reaction. In The
Leopard, the movement of the hero off-stage results in maintenance of the status
quo in new clothes. Both films depict social, historical transformations which are
equally incomplete because of the absence of the World Historical Individual to
effect necessary change.
In The Leopard's terms, Italy and Sicily’s tragedy lies in their ability to
compromise without addressing the underlying social inequities that produce the
crisis. That conceit is embroidered more elaborately in the three Godfather films
(1972, 1974 and 1990), which also offer self-conscious explorations of an
historical crisis, the globalization of capitalism, as embodied in the Corleone
gangster family. But although they are gangsters, the Corleones are depicted as
excessively normal, with the same concerns and fears as the rest of us. The first
film in particular is dedicated to the literal domestication of the gangster genre.
As a result, had the cycle stopped with the first installment, it would not qualify
as a History Film. Michael’s transformation from war-hero to cold-blooded killer
is presented as a personal change, motivated by the desire to maintain “the family
business.” It is only in the second part that “history” as a subject enters the
picture.38 The Corleones’ manoeuvres are interwoven with a wider social
background, which is presented as the context which must be explored to
understand fully the phenomenon of organized crime.
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It is also in the second film that a World Historical Individual, Batista, appears.
But he has nothing to do with resolving the dramatized social crisis; Michael takes
care of things on his own. It is only in part three that a World Historical Individual
resolves conflict in Lukacsian fashion, and that participation is ambiguous. While
Pope John Paul I guarantees the Corleones’ movement into legitimate finance, that
movement is secondary in the film’s terms to defense of the family. But that
defense has also been effected without assistance. Moreover, the Pope can do
nothing to prevent either the death of Michael’s daughter or his own murder.
Yet, while successful in normalizing gangster life, The Godfather films do not
convince that the Corleones are historically inevitable. Late capitalism is a
bureaucratic system. It is therefore difficult to use one person or family as a
representation of what is essentially impersonal. The Corleones become more brutal
in the film’s progression, but not more bureaucratic. In fact, by the end of part
three, they have reverted to purely personal vendettas. They remain aberrant
examples, incapable of providing the metonymic social position necessary for a
comprehensive social indictment.
However, the films remain interesting in this context for their decidedly weak
World Historical Individuals. Batista (who is never named as such) is a cartoon
figure. His position as puppet prevents him from effecting necessary social change.
(And in any event, the general social crisis in The Godfather films is not a
specifically Cuban dilemma.) Pope John Paul I, on the other hand, was so limited
in his tenure that he had no time to accomplish any lasting achievement. In short,
we have a repetition of a familiar pattern: the World Historical Individual is
prevented from resolving the crisis created by events in the story.
We also begin to see the limitations of Lukacs’s model in his definition of a
World Historical Individual, which by its nature is prejudiced in favor of known
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figures of history. This prejudice has two consequences: 1) ordinary characters are
by definition at the mercy of impersonal historical forces greater than their ability to
control and 2) the World Historical Individual is to a certain extent limited by their
known position in history. The story cannot subvert public knowledge; it can at
best fill in the blanks between ‘historical’ events in which the World Historical
Individual participates. Pope John Paul I can meet Michael Corleone; this is a
permissible bit of fiction. But he must die after a short period in office. This is an
essential historical fact which must be respected in order to exploit the World
Historical Individual’s significance.
But there is a flip side to this limitation, which films like The Godfather, set in
the recent past, reveal. Real historical figures must conform to our knowledge of
them. But fictional characters based on real individuals, like the Hyman Roth/Meyer
Lansky character in part II, trade on our knowledge of the model’s past, while
allowing a freedom to manipulate that knowledge within the story’s requirements.
Thus, Roth, like Lansky, is shown as having had his request for Israeli citizenship
refused. But he can then be murdered at his airport press conference (unlike
Lansky) because the story demands his death. This/i/m a clef play gives Roth the
historical weight of Lansky, but without the inconveniences produced by historical
fidelity.
Moreover, John Paul I’s failure to effect meaningful change in part III results at
least as much from the ideology he represents as his death. A Pope exercising
sufficient power to resolve an historical crisis is, on paper at least, a contradiction to
the Christian principle to “turn the other cheek.” When Christ Himself is figured as
the World Historical Individual, that principle intmdes even more conspicuously.
For example, in Ben Hur (1959), Judah, Prince of the House of Hur intermittently
intersects with the life of Christ. The conflict between Zionism and Roman
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Imperialism on the other hand is personalized through the conflict of Hur and
Messala, solid examples of the personifying Lukacsian mediocre figure. But while
Christ resolves Ben Hur’s personal crisis, it is not in Lukacsian terms, since the
resolution fails to set the social crisis right.
The film engages in a series of ingenious multiple maneuvers which derive
directly from Christ’s nature as a World Historical Individual, or more precisely,
the ideology He espouses. In an early scene with Messala, Hur expresses a
nationalistic awareness, which, after his arrest and imprisonment, becomes
subordinated to his desire for vengeance. By a sleight of hand, the film’s political
content is subsumed within a private struggle. But the story doesn’t stop when the
personal conflict is brought to an end with Messala’s death. Instead, Hur’s personal
desires are re-directed towards helping his mother and sister.
It is this problem, their leprosy which Christ resolves. Displaying faith in
Christ’s powers, mother and sister are cured. In the process, Zionists acquire the
ideology of turn the other cheek which enables them (presumably) to exist under
Roman law apart from conflict. The Jews, now Christians, achieve a
transcendence beyond materialism. But the Romans are allowed to keep what they
want as well, domination of Judea. The historical crisis is resolved through an
ideology of personal passivity, parallel to Hur’s transformation of consciousness
from a socially directed individual to a privately directed one. In other words, it is a
transformation exactly the opposite of the usual Lukacsian hero/ine.
In general, Bible epics centered on peripheral figures come close to the
Lukacsian model. Yet all stumble in Lukacsian terms when it comes to the
participation of the World Historical Individual, since Christ and his disciples’
passivity prevent active resolution. For example, Marcellus in The Robe (1953)
undergoes a profound transformation which serves as the story’s central focus. But
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Christ doesn’t effect it. After his Crucifixion, He remains merely an off-screen
inspiration for the characters. St. Peter enables Marcellus to find his way to God,
and thus to overcome the “madness” that has afflicted him since his participation in
the Crucifixion. But he does nothing to help any of the Christians in their time of
need, since by definition their martyrdom is the proof of their transformation. Thus
the Christian myth is a poor vehicle for History Film at this level, since the
development of a Christian from a non-Christian is almost always depicted as a
movement away from action, towards acceptance and passivity.
These examples suggest that the novelistic model for historical representation
(and, of course, all were adapted at least in part from novels) offers significant
problems in applying the Lukacsian model too rigidly. All display aspects of the
model but they simultaneously show a discomfort in the use of non-historical
figures as the center of historical stories. As Lukacs insists, the World Historical
Individual figures on the side-lines in these films, but unlike the Historical Novel,
where they step into the center to resolve the central crisis, these films don’t seem to
know quite what to do with their historical heroes. Ben Hur comes closest to the
model, at least in terms of the relationship between the central figure and the World
Historical Individual, but we have to recognize that the film’s historical struggle is
embodied in Hur and Messala; Christ has nothing to do with settling that dispute.
In fact, the films which most consistently conform to Lukacs’s model of
historical representation are not those with pretensions to historical or religious
seriousness, but swashbucklers. The Adventures o f Robin Hood (1938), for
example, very explicitly positions Robin Hood at the center of an historical conflict
between Normans and Saxons. A petty aristocrat, unable personally to settle the
stmggle, he is able at least to keep it alive until the World Historical Individual,
Richard the Lionhearted, returns from Crusade. True to Lukacsian form, when
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Richard returns, he resolves the dramatic and historical struggles which have
become interwoven. In doing so, he also enables Robin to settle his personal
struggle with Sir Guy of Gisboume, and to possess Maid Marian.
Similarly, in The Three and Four Musketeers (1974 and 1975), d’Artagnan’s
struggles to stay alive at the court of Louis XIII are juxtaposed against the larger
historical struggle between the establishment of a centralized, impersonally
bureaucratic state and the claims of a feudalist, oligarchic aristocracy. D ’Artagnan, a
member of the latter, fights for the king. But in historical terms, that position is
regressive, since it is Richelieu, with his attempt to consolidate power, who
represents the modernizing force in the struggle; Louis, on the other hand, is an
ineffectual fool.39 Thus, in a very roundabout way, the ending of the two films
(d’Artagnan given a commission in the Musketeers by Richelieu) conforms to the
Lukacsian schema. The World Historical Individual (Richelieu) resolves
d ’Artagnan’s personal crisis (he’s been arrested); at the same time, by that action,
Richelieu puts d’Artagnan in debt to the forces of progress.40
These examples are not offered facetiously. Rather, combined with the
observations about straight-forward historical representation above, they help us
understand some of the problems involved in the novelistic model applied to film. It
could be argued that it is the absence of the World Historical Individual which leads
to the tragedy of history in cinematic terms. If a person adequate to the historical
moment exists, the tone of the film can afford to be light; historical conflict will be
swept away before the final fade o u t4 1 If no such person exists, or if the World
Historical Individual is cut down before being able to accomplish his/her task,
tragedy, “History” results.
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Historical Drama and History Film
If the absence of a World Historical Individual ends up the central problem in
cinema’s notion of history, if characters on the sidelines of historical crisis fail to
move to progressive conclusions because no one is there to show them the way,
then we might expect a different dynamic at work when the story is centered on
such an individual. But of course, as Lukacs points out, when emphasis shifts from
the mediocre character who embodies the forces at work in an historical conflict, to
a person who has the means both to set that conflict into motion and to resolve it,
we are talking about two different attitudes towards history. We might also seem to
be talking about a cinematic genre with another label, the Biopic. But as will
become clear, without denying the points of overlap, the World Historical
Individual History Film should not, ultimately, be conflated with the Biopic.
Juarez (1939), set during the same period as The Birth o f a Nation and The
Leopard, like them focuses on the establishment of a nation. It is unlike them,
however, in its concentration on a World Historical Individual as the protagonist.
Or rather, the film focuses on two World Historical Individuals as mutual
antagonists who embody the best of the political systems for which they fight.
Although this double focus creates some awkwardness of stmcture and
identification, the film very self-consciously posits Benito Juarez and Maximilian
von Hapsburg not only as individuals, but as mouthpieces for political rhetoric.42
And in that opposition, we can immediately begin to see the shape of a narrative
pattern which will remain doggedly fixed across the genre.
Dramatizing the events surrounding the French intervention in Mexico in the
1860s, the film shows Juarez as the all-wise defender of democracy. Maximilian,
portrayed sympathetically, represents the dying absolutist tradition. The critical
scene (or rather, two scenes, since it follows out of an earlier one) occurs when
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Porfirio Diaz, released from prison by Maximilian, visits Juarez to deliver a
message from the Emperor. Diaz tells Juarez that he and Maximilian share more
than they differ in their ambitions for Mexico, that they are separated by only one
word: “Democracy.” Juarez, after patiently listening to Diaz’s enthusiastic
description of Maximilian and his intentions quietly explains to him that this one
word, in fact, is all that matters.
The film thus forcefully argues for the virtues of democracy against all other
systems, regardless of the intentions of the rulers. And yet there is an obvious
contradiction involved in on the one hand expressing a faith in democracy through
the dialogue, while on the other concentrating all political wisdom (and power) in
the hands of one man. Nor should we forget to whom Juarez delivers this speech:
Diaz was, of course, a future President of Mexico and one of the ablest Republican
generals during the period of the Empire. The film thus shows Juarez dispensing
wisdom not to some ignorant peon who lacks political sophistication, but to one of
the most important of his followers.
This contradiction— that Juarez believes in democracy, while working on his
own— has an historical basis, which is dramatized in the film. The Constitution
under which Juarez was elected required new elections during the period of his
struggle with Maximilian. When the time came, Juarez discreetly ignored his legal
obligation on the grounds that to continue the struggle was more important than a
legal nicety. We should note how neatly this action, which is essentially
authoritarian, is excused by a dramatic structure focused on the World Historical
Individual. The action is dealt with efficiently by: 1) making Juarez the only person
capable of leading the straggle, most obviously demonstrated by his lecture to Diaz
and 2) making the man who argues against Juarez on legal grounds into a self-
serving fool.
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For with such an emphasis, the struggle between democracy and absolutism is
literally embodied in Juarez and Maximilian. To a certain extent, all the other
characters are gratuitous, since the ideological struggle could easily be expressed
through the two antagonists.43 Juarez is turned into a quasi-mythical, religious
figure who knows what History has in store for both himself and his people,
whereas Maximilian, full of good intentions, does not recognize he’s on the wrong
side of the story. But in the process of this apotheosizing of the historical hero, the
terms of his specific struggle are lost, while the hero becomes less human.
For example, Juarez is depicted entirely without a family life. While founded in
historical fact,44 this lack of emotional attachment allows the film to depict Juarez as
above personal consideration, while at the same time acting as a benign father of the
nation. The contrast with Maximilian is striking. Both the Emperor and his wife are
obsessed with the need for a successor to the throne. This obsession produces (in
the film’s terms) a fatal mixture of personal and political motivation. Maximilian
and Carlota’s desire for a child is not allowed to be just an expression of a parental
impulse; it expresses, instead, dynastic ambitions.
Another way of looking at this opposition, however, is even more revealing:
Maximilian and Carlota’s mistake lies not in the somewhat selfish motivation of
their desire for a child, but in absolutism’s inevitable grounding of politics in
personal, domestic structures. Hereditary monarchy is by definition the family
made directly political. Democratic structures, on the other hand, enable Juarez to
remain aloof from personal attachment in order to attain the general good. It is but a
small step from that opposition to the conclusion that the measure of a successful
leader will be his/her ability to suppress the personal in favor of greater social
advance. Juarez passes the test, leading without a personal fife; Maximilian and
Carlota fail by being enmeshed in theirs.
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Juarez, although not typical in its dual focus, presents an economical example
of the split psyche of historical recreation when centered on a World Historical
Individual. On the one hand, a public narrative dramatizes the creation of a person
who achieves an expanded awareness based on a greater, socially determined set of
values. On the other hand, the central figure must be sufficiently interesting as a
human being to bear the weight of (usually lengthy, frequently slow) stories.
Juarez takes this opposition and splits it between the World Historical Hero, who
embodies not only democratic principle, but principled self-denial, and Maximilian
and Carlota, the well-intended spokespeople of a system inherently inferior and
personal.
We thus can begin to understand how in those film narratives centered on
mediocre hero/ines the World Historical Individual tends to become a structuring
absence. Lincoln and Garibaldi are not allowed to demonstrate their historical
sagacity in Birth and The Leopard, for example, not only because events bring their
participation to a premature end, but because the story has not allowed them to
demonstrate the self-denial that would prove their wisdom and character. We
should return to Lukacs’s observation that the hero of historical drama can be
neither too abstract or too personalized. Rather, their character must be defined in
the social terms of the conflict, the person best suited to move the crisis to
resolution. But once the personal conflict of a World Historical Individual moves
into the picture, it overwhelms the rest of the story, since the historical weight of
his/her presence and influence on the course of events over-shadows the fictional
figures.
We see this pattern of personal renunciation occurring again and again. In
Gandhi (1981), the Indian leader is shown as the one man capable of leading his
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nation to independence. The price of this leadership is a withdrawal from normal,
domestic activity, self-imposed sainthood. In The Ten Commandments (1956),
Moses is able to lead the Jews out of Egypt only by renouncing all his worldly
pleasures as a Prince of Egypt. El Cid (1965) presents the story of a national leader
whose personal life is shattered because of his greater political vision which,
however, is never abandoned. In The Rise to Power o f Louis XIV (La Prise de
Pouvoirde Louis XTV, 1969), Louis is successful in quelling the nobility only after
denying all personal attachments and by turning himself into the middle of an
inhuman spectacle. Even Bum! (1969), which self-consciously attempts to move
beyond the Lukacsian schema by centering its story on a non-World Historical
Individual, nonetheless repeats the pattern of making its hero give up everything (in
his case, even his life) in order to lead his people to freedom.
No less striking are the contrary examples, film stories centered on the World
Historical Individuals’ domestic lives, in which the pattern is re-validated in
negative. In Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), for example, it is the Imperial
couple’s inability to overcome their domestic problems that leads to their
destruction. In Lawrence o f Arabia (1963), Lawrence’s struggle with his
psychological demons leads to ever-escalating bloodshed and personal disaster.4 5
Pu Yi, The Last Emperor (1987) of China is doubly-cursed since the film presents
him in search of a personal identity to renounce. In other words, he is not enough
of a World Historical Individual to create change. As a result, virtually every
decision he makes is at best ineffectual, at worst actively harmful to those around
him. As Foster Hirsch expresses it: “The epic hero, in general, does not have time
for emotional complications.”46
Another way to express this theme of renunciation, in terms of genre, is to
suggest that History Film, centered on a World Historical Individual always flirts
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with melodrama, the genre of domestic exploration, in order to deny it. Lukacs
warns against the danger of excessive subjectivity in depiction of the hero. He
argues that to psychologize the world historical figure has two consequences: first,
it trivializes history by suggesting that it can be effected by individual initiative apart
from class consciousness; and second, it risks trivializing the hero/ine by reducing
him/her to a series of subjective reactions to events.
Our examples show that “melodrama” is an integral component of historical
fiction. But its presence is purely negative, a means of showing what the World
Historical Individual is willing to live without. But in order to be a viable choice, it
must first be present. This inevitable presence of the genre creates a series of edgy
potentialities. Negatively, the World Historical Individual may succumb to personal
motivation, and thus fail to deliver on the historical mission. Positively, the greater
attention to personal concerns may help to humanize the World Historical
Individual, thus making their eventual renunciation (if it occurs) that much more
powerful.
Yet such a structure— in which personal attachment is viewed as a source of
strength, rather than something to be gotten past— is very rare in History Film.
Three examples help to demonstrate the problems that arise when it does occur. In
Ivan the Terrible, part I (1940), Ivan is shown as emotionally dependent on his
wife, Anastasia. It is for this reason that his aunt Efrosinia murders the Tsaritsa, in
the expectation that the Tsar will thus lose all his emotional stamina. Instead, the
murder galvinizes the Tsar for a relentless stmggle with the boyars. Yet while we
can read this melodramatic situation as a positive statement for emotional
attachment, it must be balanced against the fact that Tsar is able to pursue his
policies only after Anastasia’s death. In other words, she is something which, no
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matter how dear, must be overcome in order for the Tsar to perform his historical
mission.
In Wilson (1944), the American president is shown as incapacitated politically
when his wife dies. It is only when he re-marries that he is able to address the
political problems facing him. And yet, the pattern of renunciation is still present:
Wilson acknowledges the need for a wife to continue his work, but his choice for a
second wife is viewed as a political problem overcome at great cost.
In Spartacus (1960), he explicitly tells his wife, Varinia that he loves her “more
than life itself.” Nonetheless, Spartacus, while acquiring full humanity (and thus,
by implication, a greater political leadership) through his love of Varinia
nonetheless consistently warns her that “for us there can be no good-byes.”
Although he identifies his son and wife as a means of continuing their struggle,
they can do so only by his renouncing them at the end. There is also the obvious
fact that Spartacus/aiA. However moving his farewell to his wife, it occurs in a
grim context: Spartacus dying on a cross; Varinia and his son leaving with the very
man whose cruelty sparked the initial rebellion.
This edginess between History Film and melodrama, combined with the
presence of the Lukacsian mediocre hero in some of the former, suggests why we
should not simply superimpose “History Film” over the traditional “Biopic” label.
There will obviously be a significant overlap between the two genres. But in
addition to the World Historical Individual, the Biopic also includes a number of
hero/ines (frequently from show business) whose personal problems outweigh any
attempt at historical understanding.47 These Biopics veer much more towards pure
melodrama, in which the details of period recreation serve as exotic background to
self-pity than as attempts to recreate a plausible physical setting for the unfolding of
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history. As Lukacs described a similar tendency in the late Historical Novel, as
exemplified by Flaubert and Conrad Meyer:
We saw that in both cases their motives arose not from an
understanding of the connection between history and the present,
but on the contrary, from a repudiation of the present. . .The
representation of historical subjects is simply a question of costume
and decoration, simply a means for expressing their subjectivity.48
Ellen Draper, examining this issue from the perspective of melodrama, has also
noted the ‘aversion’ between melodrama and historical truth, asking the question:
“What is it about melodrama that gives the genre its apparent disregard for historical
accuracy— even when specific historical details are the basis of the film narrative?”49
Draper locates this antipathy between the genres in the un realistic aspects of
melodramatic discourse, particularly the genre’s tendency to create ironic mise-en-
scene:
We can begin by appreciating the melodrama’s tendency to set
narratives in historical contexts is not motivated by a desire to
represent historical contexts accurately....history has been treated as
an exotic locale in classical melodramas.50
Draper cites the need of melodramatic affect to require the illusion of events
happening in the here and now, a requirement that works against the recreation of
historical illusion.
If a viewer begins wondering about the historical accuracy of
costumes or incidents in a melodrama, all is lost, for a successful
melodrama must convince its viewers that fulfillment lies in the
triumph of expressiveness in the present. Self-consciousness about
how this melodrama is representing an historical incident is the last
thing a melodrama can afford.5 1
Leaving aside the questions of 1) whether such irony in fact occurs or whether
it performs as Draper suggests and 2) how it is possible for a genre to perform
ironic distancing while simultaneously swamping the viewer in the emotional here
and now, it is clear that emotional affect is central to the issue. If in fact an
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‘aversion’ exists between melodrama and historical representation, that aversion
almost certainly exists because of the relative importance given in both genres to
personal versus social identification and the values attached to those attitudes.
It is for this reason that attempts to appropriate History Films as Historical
Melodrama are more damaging than helpful.52 Unquestionably, History Films
usually contain a strong melodramatic component. And both genres create
emotional responses through personal sacrifice. But whereas melodrama shows
personal conflict and internal disruption resulting from external, social pressure to
conform, in History Films, personal conflict and desire must be transcended in
order for the hero/ine to perform their historical mission. Sacrifice is seen as valid
and important in order to enact a greater social good; in melodrama, sacrifice is a
question of victimization.53 The History Film is thus primarily a social rather than a
personal genre, in which the attempt to produce emotional identification is directed
outward rather than inward. In short, the differences between the genres are the
differences between heroism and martyrdom.
As a preliminary conclusion, then, we can assume that History Film, when
relying on the theatrical tradition, will center on a World Historical Individual. But,
instead of focusing on the broad social fabric which would enable such a figure to
demonstrate their political skill, the story shifts the attention to a question of
whether or not the hero/ine will show sufficient character to overcome personal
desire in order to effect general, social good. This importation of melodrama into
historical conflict creates more rounded World Historical Individuals. But in the
process, social conflict becomes secondary to personal dilemma; or social conflict is
expressed as personal dilemma.
But such a shift in emphasis towards personal concern violates the Lukacsian
schema, since by definition an historical hero/ine is defined first by their social
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necessity. Personal characteristics are relevant only to the extent they effect that
social relevance. But if it is true that film derives from both novelistic and theatrical
traditions, the mutually contradictory structures outlined by Lukacs in relation to
novel and drama suggest the impossibility of either working as a sufficient model
for the History Film. Does Lukacs, then, have any bearing on the History Film?
The answer is yes; but a final, detailed comparison between films may be necessary
to reveal the most relevant application of his theories.
Ivanhoe and The Lion in Winter
As a final point of comparison between films working on the novelistic model,
and those centered on World Historical Individuals, we fortunately have a logical
starting point in a film based on a Walter Scott novel. For if Lukacs has any validity
as the model for understanding the History Film, we can expect it in relation to one
of the books he discusses. Therefore, a look at MGM’s production of Ivanhoe
(1951) seems in order, both for what it reveals about film’s relation to historical
fiction and what it may suggest about film as a medium.
As a contrary example, drawn from a dramatic, rather than novelistic source,
the adaptation of The Lion in Winter (1968) has the advantage of being set in
roughly the same time period (actually some eleven years earlier)54 while sharing
two major characters (Richard the Lionhearted and Prince John.) While it could be
argued that the similarities end there, the temporal settings and shared World
Historical Individuals are enough to justify the comparison, since our interest lies in
questions of historical recreation and the extent to which film relies on the World
Historical Individual as a point of identification.
A sketch of the consequences of adaptation will necessarily be limited, but
might still provide insights which help us to understand the dynamics of History
Film. The question remains: what similarities are revealed by these two
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adaptations, from different media, and with therefore, different operating
principles? What does the logic of cinematic historical recreation impose on adapted
material? What do those impositions reveal about film as a medium and its attitude
towards history? Are, finally, story and character the most efficient means of
describing the genre?
The first, most striking change evident in the adaptation of Ivanhoe is the
simplification of structure. The novel introduces Ivanhoe early, only to push him
off-stage for much of the story, as he recovers from wounds received in a joust
with Sir Brian Bois du Guilbert. During his recovery, the reader is introduced to
other characters, who run the gamut of the period’s social milieu. The film, on the
other hand, remains almost constantly fixed on Ivanhoe, dispensing with his
wound quickly, to enable him to participate actively in the film’s major set-piece,
the attack on Torquilstone Castle. Other simplifications include a predictable
conflation and elimination of characters (Wamba the fool and Gurth the swineherd
are made into one character; Athelstane, the final scion of the Saxon royal family
has been eliminated); removal of the novel’s references to the Knights Templar (Sir
Brian is simply a Norman knight in the film); and a reduced participation by
Richard.
Audience sympathy and identification have also been simplified. The novel’s
relatively unsentimental depiction of Medieval anti-Semitism, in which all the
Gentile characters exhibit the trait in varying degrees, has been sanitized so that
only the villainous Normans are anti-Semitic, while the Saxons are universally
sympathetic. This shift in emphasis introduces a different complexity, however.
Particularly when combined with the film’s more active hero and reduced Richard,
the self-conscious foregrounding of Zionist issues (for example, Isaac makes a
\'
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speech about the Jews lack of a country) raises questions about the story which it is
unable to resolve, and which are further problematized by the film’s physical
depiction.
In the Introduction to the 1830 edition of the novel, Scott noted:
The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes of
some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when
arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not
assigned the hand of Wilfred [Ivanhoe] to Rebecca, rather than the
less interesting Rowena. But... the prejudices of the age rendered
such an union almost impossible.5 5
This comment is interesting not only in what it reveals about Scott, and why
Lukacs should have applauded his historical recreation (his refusal to pander to
contemporary tastes by introducing too great an historical implausibility) but also
what some of the consequences are for the film by removing Ivanhoe’s anti-
Semitism.56
In the novel, Scott makes Ivanhoe an ordinary, decent man, whose defense of
Isaac the Jew and Rebecca is based on the chivalric code. But he has no interest in
Rebecca, and the basis for that indifference is unambiguously described as his anti-
Semitism.57 Nonetheless, Scott’s contemporary readers strongly desired a romance
between the two, suggesting that the narrative has a logic of its own which moves
beyond historical verisimilitude. Therefore, when the filmmakers of Ivanhoe
removed his anti-Semitism, and sanitized it further by making it a characteristic
possessed only by the villains, they removed any impediment to Ivanhoe’s
successful romance with Rebecca. So, when at the end he chooses Joan Fontaine
over Elizabeth Taylor (and it is as a choice of actresses, not of characters that we
read the decision) it seems, at best, an inexplicable peculiarity.5 8
To the extent that this choice expresses Ivanhoe’s character, it also effects the
historical depiction as Lukacs describes it. The novel displays a wide-historical
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canvas, with lengthy descriptions of architecture, social mores, popular ballads,
armaments, etc., and a further attention to the political character of Prince John,
Richard and the Knights Templar.59 Ivanhoe is almost a cipher, used as an excuse
to construct the historical environment. Eliminated from much of the action, his
personal conflict is not, as in the film, the choice between Rowena and Rebecca,
but to reconcile himself with his father, Cecil. As a Saxon nationalist, his father
cannot forgive Ivanhoe for working with the Norman king Richard.
In Lukacsian terms, this is the historical crisis which Ivanhoe embodies and
which Richard, as World Historical Individual resolves. But Richard is able to
resolve this problem in the novel only because he has previously earned Cecil’s
respect by fighting side-by-side with him in cognito as the Black Knight. Thus,
Richard’s personal qualities of leadership are, as Lukacs notes, necessary for the
resolution of Ivanhoe’s conflict. By that resolution, and his personal allegiance to
Richard, Ivanhoe is able to integrate into the Norman power-structure. This
movement further expresses a general social reconciliation between Saxons and
Normans for which he merely stands in.
In the film, Richard appears only at the beginning, as a prisoner of the Duke of
Austria, and at the end, as he arrives to set things right. But, if we forget the source
novel for a moment, it is difficult to determine, exactly what Richard sets right in
the film. On paper, he arrives to settle the conflict between Normans and Saxons,
whom he exhorts to think of themselves henceforth only “Englishmen.” While
greeted with general acclaim (it’s the last shot of the film) this resolution remains
apart from Ivanhoe’s problems. He has already settled affairs with his father, who
early-on reconciles himself to Richard’s rule. Ivanhoe has also killed Bois de
Guilbert and made his choice between Rowena and Rebecca without Richard’s
help.
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Nor does Richard’s intercession make much sense in the film’s simplified terms
of the social conflict. The adaptation changes the complex allegiances between
Normans, Saxons and Jews60 into a melodramatic conflict between oppressed
Saxons and Jews on the one hand and oppressive Normans on the other. Richard,
as a Norman, and a non-entity in the diegesis, is at best an unknown quantity. His
ability to force the Normans to accept the Saxons (and Jews?) on equal terms
remains untested. Whereas the novel provides instances of Richard’s personal
courage and fortitude, the film makes him into a rex ex machina, wheeled in to fix
the general social conflict which we have no reason to assume he can resolve.
Furthermore, the social conflict has been separated from Ivanhoe’s personal
conflict, which he has fixed for himself, and which no longer serves as a
metonymy of the social fabric.
Nor should we overlook the other consequence of leaving Richard out of the
story until the end. The filmmakers have once again introduced the absent World
Historical Individual, whose absence is seen as the central cause of the historical
tragedy. This is a subtle but important distinction. In the Lukacsian model, the
World Historical Individual has nothing to do with the creation of the social crisis.
It results from impersonal historical forces. The World Historical Individual is only
the person best suited to provide a solution to the crisis. In film’s absent World
Historical Individual, however, the absence itself is the issue. While the novel also
addresses Richard’s absence as an issue, he is absent only as a monarch; he is
actively present as an agent of good. By virtually eliminating him from the story,
the film allows that power in only the most mechanical fashion. The real conflict in
the film is Ivanhoe’s choice between Rowena and Rebecca.
Thus, the central conflict for which Ivanhoe is meant to stand in shifts from the
construction of a Norman/Saxon kingdom to a Judgment of Paris between a Jew
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and a Gentile, from a social crisis expressed in class terms to a crisis of conscience
expressed in gender terms. (A shift further strengthened by the combination and
killing off of the Wamba/Gurth characters, the only underclass representatives in
the film. In the novel, both not only survive, but Gurth is able to reveal another
thread of the social fabric by moving from indentured servitude to freeman status.)
And if Ivanhoe’s emotional conflict is central, his choice of Rowena demonstrates
the lack of a transformation which Lukacs argues is central to the historical novel. If
the protagonist has failed to make this transformation, there is little reason to hope
Richard will be able to effect it with the general population, least of all with the
Norman nobility.
There is, finally, and most importantly, no physical, visual sense in Ivanhoe’s
choice. The visual codes used to describe Rowena and Rebecca, particularly the
lighting, construct Rebecca as the more desirable object. Rowena is photographed
in flat, diffused lighting. Her face is always fully exposed, never veiled or shaded.
Rebecca, on the other hand, is photographed in the traditional terms of the exotic:
veils across the face, accented cheekbones, “casual” shadows cast artistically; and
most especially, frequent high-lights on Elizabeth Taylor’s famous violet eyes.
Fontaine presents the pleasures of a bowl of after-dinner mints, while Taylor’s eyes
sparkle like two amethysts. Rebecca is therefore a central, visual presence. This
centrality not only makes Ivanhoe’s decision difficult to understand, it tilts the film
further towards the personal, rather than social conflict.
Rebecca’s visual importance is all the more striking compared with the treatment
of Richard. If, for example, the film had constructed a rhetorical image of the king
sufficiently coded with associations of power, prestige and omnipotence, the image
alone might have alleviated the imbalances produced by the shifts in narrative. But
in his two scenes, Richard is framed no more tightly than in medium close-up, and
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in those shots, he wears a helmet which obscures most of his face. We barely have
any sense of what the World Historical Individual looks like, while Rebecca stops
the camera cold. Richard the Lionhearted as an image of history is subordinated to
Elizabeth Taylor as an image of desire.
While it could be argued that the chaos present at the end of Ivanhoe makes the
film more complex than the novel, the alterations made in the story disqualify it as a
History Film in Lukacsian terms.6 1 The attempted patching up of the social fabric at
the end is both too much (Ivanhoe doesn’t need it) and too little (we have no
evidence to suggest that Richard can solve the social conflicts as dramatized.)
Ivanhoe undergoes no transformation of consciousness, even though the film’s
visual appeal strongly argues for a choice of Rebecca over Rowena. The wider
social world, the “totality of objects” depicted in the novel is simplified to a black-
and-white opposition between oppressors and oppressed.
This simplified morality play renders ‘historical’ labels like “Saxon” or
“Norman” meaningless. Even Richard’s call to the public to think of themselves as
“Englishmen” makes little sense in the film’s welter of accents and acting styles. If
the story seems an “historical” drama at all, it is because the physical recreation
makes it historically specific. We need only look at one of the few additions to the
story to understand the importance of the physical environment.
In the opening sequence, depicting action not in the novel, Ivanhoe searches for
Richard in the castles of Germany. Shot on location, these castles affirm the film’s
historicist pretensions. How do we know the film is set in the past? Because it has
been shot on locations that are remnants of that past. Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe is a
lie, a fictional doodle in the foreground which we accept as part of the suspension
of disbelief. These castles are physical, historical facts. In other words, the image
lends credibility to the story, not the other way around. The narrative provides the
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motivation to use the locations, but the locations provide the narrative with its
power.
In analyzing the relationship between still photographs and the captions that
accompany them, Roland Barthes noted a similar activity at work:
. . .the text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the
image . . .In other words, and this is an important historical
reversal, the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the
words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image.62
Ivanhoe's opening demonstrates the parasitic relationship of the story to the
cinematic image, a relationship continually reenforced throughout the film as
locations, costumes and makeup provide what the story cannot, the proof of
history.
The recreation is eclectic, mixing documentary locations with soundstage sets
and painted mattes, turning history into a pastel playground. But the physical
environment remains the persuasion that these events are anything other than a
standard story. And of course, the physical environment consistently works
against the story as well. Robert Taylor, for example, is a singularly unconvincing
knight in his early twenties. The film offers not so much a romanticized view of
history as a romanticized view of the possibilities of historical recreation, in which
Romance itself hopefully transcends glaring inconsistencies of narrative and
background.
The Lion in Winter is as stylized as Ivanhoe, but in a less contradictory fashion.
The play and film’s conceit is simple: Henry II, King of England, his wife, Eleanor
of Aquitaine, his mistress, Princess Alais of France, three English princes
(Geoffrey, Richard and John) and Philip, King of France are bottled up together for
a few days at Christmas. The drama derives from Henry and Eleanor’s maneuvers
to determine which prince will have the throne. The metonymic quality of the
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situation is not only explicit, but obviously known to the writer, since at one point,
Henry says to Philip “We are the world in small. What we do, men do.” But at the
same time, what they do, scheme for power and plot wars, is based on petty greed,
emotional slights and common ambition, in a word, melodrama.
The play does exactly what Lukacs says Historical Drama should not do, reduce
the historical figure to a series of petty, personal traits. Henry II, for example, is
shown bickering over who succeeds him less out of any real care about the outcome
than for his success at outmaneuvering his wife. Similarly, the historical animosity
between Philip and Richard is “explained” in the film’s terms on the basis of their
previous romance (which in turn is “explained” by Philip’s desire to avenge his
father’s humiliation at Henry’s hands).6 3
This trivialization is the play’s “totality of movement,” to show how the fate of
Western Europe could have been reduced to a cat fight between limited leaders. For
both play and film, this melodramatic construction creates spatial consequences.
Rather than unfolding outdoors, on the battlefields, in city streets, in marketplaces,
history takes place in closed quarters, bedrooms, hallways and dungeons. But
when these situations and spaces are transported to the screen, they undergo a
transformation. To anticipate: The Lion in Winter as film reverses somewhat the
trivialization produced by the play’s melodrama by re-introducing the hero through
the movie-star and the movie set, by lending the play a greater physical substance
which translates into a greater thematic substance.
In the published screenplay for the film, James Goldman begins his discussion
of adapting the play to film as largely a matter of decor:
The Lion in Winter was a special and peculiar sort of history play.
To make its style and intention clear on film, the look of the castle
where it occurs and the sense of castle life need to be earthily
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realistic and, at the same time, strikingly different from what we’re
used to seeing in King Arthur movies.64
In this emphasis on physical setting, Goldman seems to agree with an
assessment of the theater made by Andre Bazin: . .in the theater the drama
proceeds from the actor, in the cinema it goes from the decor to man.”65 Moreover,
due to the architectural component of dramatic performance (discussed in chapter
2), “the decor of the theater is thus an area materially enclosed, limited,
circumscribed, the only discoveries of which are those of our collusive
imagination.”66
In film, “The decor that surrounds [the human subject] is part of the solidity of
the world.” Whereas, what is specifically theatrical about plays “. . .is not their
action so much as the human, that is to say the verbal, priority given to their
dramatic structure.”6 7
Bazin seems to suggest that a fundamental component of an adapted play is the
relationship between the dialogue, as delivered by the actors, and the surrounding
decor. Film, by its photographic heritage, exposes spatial artifice. But theater,
based on a verbal, rather than visual presentation, provides a problematic
environment for a cinematic adapter, since its space is inherently artificial. The
solution, Bazin argues, lies in recognizing that artificiality and coming to terms with
it, finding cinematic expression that serves the theater, rather than trying to
overcome its limitations.
The Lion in Winter offers both kinds of cinematic adaptation. Bazin no doubt
would have scorned the opening sequences, which provide the only bits of visual,
cinematic spectacle, gratuitously added on to the dramatic development (Eleanor’s
arrival at Chinon and a battle on the beach are the most egregious examples.) His
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description of the opening of a filmic adaptation of Moliere’s Le Medecin malgre lui
differs only in details from these opening sequences of The Lion in Winter.
The first scene, with the bundles of wood, set in a real forest, opens
with an interminable travelling shot through the underbrush,
destined obviously to allow us to enjoy the effects of sunlight on the
underside of the branches before showing us two clownlike
characters who are presumably gathering mushrooms and whose
stage costumes, in this setting, look like nothing so much as
grotesque disguises.6 8
However, once past these sequences, the film’s focus remains fixed on a small
set of spaces, and the scenes are allowed to play themselves out in full, theatrical
fashion. In fact, the director seems to have gone out of his way to subordinate the
camera and editing to theatrical convention. There are, for example, very few point-
of-view sequences in the film; almost all dramatic movement is conveyed through
the dialogue and there is virtually no attempt made to use the out-of-field to motivate
spatial expansion. Even shot/reverse shot sequences are kept to a minimum in favor
of preserving the spatial contiguity of actors in a scene. (This service to the play is
all the more striking given the director’s origins as an editor.)
Yet it is in this very service of the play that the shift begins to occur towards re-
heroizing the situation. Except that the terms of the heroism no longer are Henry or
Richard as World Historical Individuals, but of Peter O’Toole, Anthony Hopkins,
Katherine Hepbum, et al., as actors, or as World Historical Performers. Emphasis
shifts from the unfolding of narrative through cinematic device to the almost
exclusive reliance on actors to communicate dialogue as crisply, dramatically and
efficiently as possible. The film becomes a record of the heroism of performance.69
Bazin’s comments suggest that the real subject of filmed theater is the play of
dialogue into and out of the spaces around it. In effect, the sounds and words worm
their ways in and out of the spaces much in the way a free camera would do. But
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while this new importance of sound shifts the normal emphases of the image, the
image is no less important. It has, rather, changed its operation, from a penetrator,
to a recorder of space and sound. The design remains important, but measured by
its success at echoing the voice and the body of the actor, who has become the
ultimate object, the sole narrative agent. The decor has become an extension not of
character, but of what Barthes called the ‘grain’ of the voice: “The ‘grain’ is the
body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs.”70 But
since that body is itself now objectified, reduced to external behavior, decor’s
subordination to it becomes a form of liberation, since it is one set of objects
subordinated only to another object.
Theatrical space frees the viewer to appreciate space as space rather than place,
because it isn’t being made to serve a narrative purpose. The story, delivered by
dialogue, proceeds through the voices; the space is free to exist on its own, not
chopped into bits to further character identification or narrative significance. But as
Bazin points out, theatre creates an essentially artificial space. Therefore, while the
design has been liberated, it is a liberation to perceive the cinematic image as image,
rather than as a space to be explored. The theatrical space revealed is essentially a
static, pictorial space, whose qualities are revealed in contemplation of their
wholeness and self-containment, rather than for the accumulation of edited details
leading to narrative.
If we look at the sets in The Lion in Winter, all presumably authentic
archaeologically, they don’t connect to the drama because they are irrelevant. The
stylization is more Realistic than Ivanhoe, but that extra realism is unnecessary to
the play, which could easily go on without the backdrops. We need only the
soundtrack to know what’s going on in the film. But because they are gratuitous,
the spaces assert themselves as physical fact, for to recognize something as
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gratuitous requires first questioning its presence, which in turn can arise only after
awareness of presence. Paradoxically, the backdrops to theatrical style, while less
important, acquire an independent significance.
Bazin begins his discussion of film and theater with the. film d ’ art tradition.
Barsacq also cites these static tableaux versions of theatrical production as what had
to be transcended in order for cinema to discover its “essence,” an architectural
conception of space. But Barsacq advocates an essentially invisible approach to
design, centered on character. The problem with the theatrical, then, may be its
ability to expose the randomness of subordinating space to narrative. A negative
virtue— the story is developed by the dialogue, and therefore does not require the
cinema— leads to a positive effect— the freeing of space and objects to exist on their
own.
The Relevance of Lukacs
Physical environment is not something with which Lukacs deals extensively. In
fact, the more we examine Lukacs’s theories in relation to film, the more our
conclusions seem to point somewhere else, where Lukacs insists Historical Novel
and Drama go only in periods of decadence: towards exoticism, archaeologism,
modernization, surface effect. He is unequivocal in his condemnation of these
tendencies. Criticizing Flaubert’s Salammbo, he notes:
[Flaubert] chooses an historical subject whose inner social-historical
nature is of no concern to him and to which he can only lend the
appearance of reality in an external, decorative, picturesque manner
by means of the conscientious application of archaeology....
Naturally [this historical portrayal] is a ghostly illusion of life. And
an illusion which dissolves the hyper-objective reality of the
objects... .In Flaubert there is no.. .connection between the outside
world and the psychology of the principal characters. And the effect
of this lack of connection is to degrade the archaeological exactness
of the outer world: it becomes a world of historically exact costumes
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and decorations, no more than a pictorial frame within which a
purely modem story is unfolded.7 1
Even more relevant to the discussion of film are two later comments he makes
about Naturalistic depiction and the establishment of the Historical Novel as a
separate genre: “The principle of the photographic authenticity of description and
dialogue etc. can lead to nothing else [but].. .archaeologism.”72 And most tellingly,
if we accept that a separate genre of History Film exists:
Thus the new historical novel as a genre in its own right is bom of
the weaknesses of a nascent decline, of the inability of even the most
important writers of this period to recognize the real social roots of
this development and to combat them genuinely and centrally.7 3
Ironically, Lukacs’s greatest application to film theory may lie in what he
condemns, rather than in what he applauds. For the “external, decorative,
picturesque manner” he derides in Flaubert is certainly a valid description of
cinema’s historical recreations. Even more relevant is the description of the history
depicted, “a world of historically exact costumes and decorations, no more than a
pictorial frame.” If we doubt the importance of the object world to cinema, we need
only consult a diverse range of theorists. Bazin: “The photographic image is the
object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern
it.”74 Amheim: “Film can make inanimate objects attract attention to themselves. In
a film .. .these roles played by accessories, are exactly of the same type as the
“macroscopic” ones, those represented by the human actors.”75 Pudovkin: “. . .the
inanimate object has such enormous importance on the films. An object is already
an expressive thing in itself, in so far as the spectator always associates with it a
number of images.76 Siegfried Kracauer:
.. .film is free to dwell on parts of [the actor’s] appearance and
detail the objects about him. In using its freedom to bring the
inanimate to the fore and make it a carrier of action, film only
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protests its peculiar requirement to explore all of physical existence,
human or nonhuman.77
Whatever their differences, these writers agree that cinema allows a significance for
objects lacking in the arts which preceded it, a significance that for Lukacs would
be merely decorative.
The Lukacsian model, while not the final measure of historical representation, is
sufficiently supple to reveal recurring patterns in the stories, situations and
characters of History Films. Yet the agreement among these diverse theorists
suggests a fundamental opposition between film as a medium and Lukacs’s notion
of valid representation. For it is an excess of attention to physical detail for which
Lukacs condemns the late 19th century Historical Novel. Or, to put it in Lukacs’s
own terms, the Historical Novel as a separate genre makes the mistake of equating
Hegel’s “Totality of Objects” for literal objects, rather than the social mores of a
particular period.
But if we must conclude that Lukacs would have condemned History Film, his
comments are helpful. If History Film, as a specialized genre, will, like its
novelistic equivalent, be fundamentally reactionary, Lukacs tells us why: film as an
art arises during the same period of “bourgeois decadence” that produced the
Historical Novel as a genre. We might therefore look to the nineteenth century to
understand some of the conventions of cinematic historical recreation. Philip Rosen
has suggested such an investigation: “Cinema a medium of the 19th century?
Perhaps— at least insofar as we admit that elements of this “19th century” persist
well into the 20th and continue to require response.”78 Rosen is interested in
uncovering the epistemological underpinnings of cinema’s historical recreations.
But our explorations suggest that we should turn to the 19th century to understand
why History Films look the way they do.
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We should also consider that Lukacs’s condemnation of the late Historical
Novel is based on his insistence that genuine historical representation is only
possible on the basis of assuming that the past is knowable. Historical Novels,
according to Lukacs, proceed from the assumption that the past is fundamentally
exotic. But History Films know what the past is— the past is a museum. The
archaeologism of the naturalistic Historical Novel which Lukacs condemns as a
foreign imposition of the form of the novel is for History Film a material base. The
repetition of thematic pattern that the Lukacsian model helps uncover in cinematic
History— across spatial and temporal boundaries, apart from putative subject—
reveals the extent to which character and story are important only as fixed patterns,
differentiated by physical detail.
In The Film in History: Re staging the Past Pierre Sorlin notes:
.. .the ‘historical nature’ of a film is never obvious in
itself.... ’Historicity’ is so weak and unstable that it has to be
underlined so as to force the audience to admit that it is seeing a
filmic reconstruction of the past.7 9
With this in mind, Leon Barsacq’s injunction about the role of the cinematic
image takes on new significance: “Here, perhaps, is one of the fundamental
requirements of the cinema: to give the impression of having photographed real ob
jects.” If the designer works from this premise, it is no mystery that History Films
should be galleries for vaguely foreign artifacts. The image must be constituted as a
physical totality; we know that the past required and used different objects. It
follows logically that the means of dramatizing the past is to visualize it through
physical detail which replicates our accumulated knowledge, or in Sorlin’s terms,
our “historical capital.”8 0
But as we noted earlier, a film cannot openly distort the ‘historical capital’ used
for the recreation. Abraham Lincoln, for example, cannot survive the assassination
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in The Birth o f a Nation because it is part of our historical knowledge that he
didn’t. The event cannot be introduced to support the temporal setting if it then sets
about to contradict what we know about the event. If the purpose is to bring the
past to life, then the details used to connect the diegetic past to our knowledge are
inviolate. Any other attitude destroys the whole process.
But how do we know it is Lincoln? Because the intertitle tells us so? Imagine
the same title intercut with an image of a twenty-year old surfer driving a
convertible with the top down, and we see the fallacy of assuming that narrative is
sufficient to explain the appeal of historical spectacle. As Barthes would suggest,
the title works parasitically on the stove-pipe hat, the beard and gaunt figure, which
convince us Lincoln is present. That such recognition depends on previous
education is the point: cinema knows the past as a series of dead objects and styles,
which we in turn know is the one part of the past accessible to film. But it is a part
which constructs the illusion of a totality, an illusion which cannot admit physical
detail which contradicts the temporal setting.
Thus to Lukacs and Hegel’s “Totality of Objects” in the epic and novel, and the
“Totality of Movement” of drama, can be added the “Totality of Space” of History
Film, the illusion that the diegetic world extends indefinitely beyond the field of
view, an historical recreation activated by physical detail acting as historical capital.
We therefore see the importance of framing in its contribution to the reality effect.
The more convincing the illusion of limitless, historical, space, the more believable
that a particular historical episode, rather than a general social myth, has been
enacted. It is the creation of a believable physical environment which convinces that
the repetitive narrative patterns of World Historical Individuals are about specific
characters or events.
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It is therefore perverse to emphasize the stories and characters of History Film
over their physical environments. Such an analysis performs the worst error of
invidious criticism: it measures the object in terms guaranteed to make it fall short.
In Brecht’s play, Galileo discovers that Aristotle was wrong in his description of
the properties of a needle placed on the surface of water. If the natural sciences can
question the classics, why can’t we? To insist, as Aristotle did, that spectacle is
gratuitous is to mis-understand the extent to which physicality is not just the appeal
but the subject of historical recreation. Spectacle is the fundamental component in
creating the Totality of Space. And thus, it is not just to literature, but to the plastic
arts, that we must turn to understand the History Film.
1 Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays, volume 5, “Life of Galileo” (New York.
Pantheon Books. 1972) 84-85.
2 Galileo is, of course, a play, not a film. But for reasons that will become
apparent, that distinction is for the moment secondary. If necessary, the comparison
can be justified on the basis of Losey’s film of the play, which stylistically is as
refined as Brooks’s is vulgar. Yet both rely on a degree of physical verisimilitude
which, at this level at least, makes them more similar than not. Interestingly, in an
interview, Losey begins his discussion of Galileo as having offered basically a
problem of design. (Michel Ciment, Conversations with Losey, 335.) Brecht
shared a lot with commercial film directors in his attitudes towards historical
reconstruction. For example, consider his description of the settings for Galileo:
“The background should show more than the scene directly surrounding Galileo; in
an imaginative and artistically pleasing way, it should show the historical setting,
but still remain background... .Furniture and props (including doors) should be
realistic and above all be of social and historical interest.. . .The characters’
groupings must have the quality of historical paintings..” “Building up a Part:
Laughton’s Galileo,” Brecht 236, emphases added.
3 Gyorgy Lukacs, The Historical Novel, translated from the German by Hannah
and Stanley Mitchell (London. Merlin Press. 1962.)
4 Gyorgy Lukacs, The Historical Novel, 17.
5 Lukacs 21.
6 Lukacs 23-24.
149
7 Lukacs 33.
8 Lukacs 36-37.
9 Lukacs 38.
10 Lukacs 49.
1 1 Lukacs 45.
1 2 Lukacs 47.
1 3 Lukacs 92-93.
14 Lukacs 61.
1 5 Lukacs 63.
1 6 Space does not permit a thorough investigation of Lukacs’s use of “necessary
anachronism,” and the opposition he constructs between it and archaeologism and
modernization. Obviously, however, this difference is at most a matter of degree.
1 7 Lukacs 85.
1 8 Lukacs 92.
1 9 Lukacs 104.
20 Lukacs 107.
2 1 Lukacs 109.
22 Lukacs 111.
23 Lukacs 112.
24 Lukacs 114.
25 Lukacs 119.
26 Lukacs 123.
27 Lukacs 127-28.
28 Lukacs 128.
150
29 Lukacs 130.
30 Lukacs 138.
3 1 Lukacs 140.
32 Lukacs 150.
33 Lukacs 151.
34 Lukacs 151.
35 For a more detailed examination of this, and other films by Visconti in relation to
the Lukacsian model, see Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti. Nowell-
Smith, in fact, largely restricts his discussion of the Lukacsian schema to Rocco
and his Brothers which is contemporary in setting.
36 Nowell-Smith also argues that the detachment of the Prince mirrors the director’s
own: “Whereas in Senso Visconti retains a position of detachment above a central
character who is directly involved in the action, in The Leopard Visconti’s position
is apparently one of identification with a central character who is himself as
detached as is humanly possible from the events that are taking place.” Nowell-
Smith 116. Nowell-Smith’s desire to absolve the director of the Prince’s narrow
class bias is a bit more difficult to accept.
37 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” in The
Marx-Engels Reader , 354.
38 For example, this line of dialogue from Michael: “If history has taught us
anything, it’s that anyone can be killed.” For an examination of the social critique
offered by the film see John Hess, “Godfather II\ a Deal Coppola Couldn’t
Refuse,” in Movies and Methods, 1:81-90.
39 In the film’s terms. Victor-L. Tapie suggests a more rounded view of Louis’s
character, his relationship with Richelieu and the complexities of 17th century
French social development. “With the name of the king the name of Richelieu will
always be associated: Louis XIII and Richelieu— the two are inseparable. As a man
the minister was superior to his master. He was more intelligent and more
cultivated; he had a broader outlook and a deeper insight into Europe, the world,
and the times in which they lived. However, the king was no cipher. There was an
element of greatness in him too. In addition he was endowed with common sense,
that invaluable quality which enables a person of moderate intelligence to enlist the
services and assistance that he needs in order to carry out his task.” Victor-L.
Tapie, France in the Age o f Louis XIII and Richelieu, trans. D. McN. Lockie
151
(London: Macmillan, 1974.) See also A.D. Lublinskaya, French Absolutism: the
crucial phase, 1620-1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) for a
discussion of the role of Richelieu and Louis XIII in the development of the modern
state. However, the point here is how history is described in cinematic terms, not
its degree of sophistication.
40 A debt delivered on in The Man in the Iron Mask, as d’Artagnan unwittingly
participates in the installation of the true, i.e., centralizing, authoritarian, Louis
XIV.
4 1 Perhaps the most bald example of this attitude is The Sea Hawk (1939), in which
the swashbuckling hero knows he can do whatever he wants because Elizabeth I
will bail him out, even though she has explicitly promised the Spanish ambassador
not to patronize the Sea Hawks’ piratical activities.
42 For a discussion of the Warner Bros, biopic, of which Juarez is an excellent
example, see Thomas Elsaesser, “Film History as Social History: the
DieterleAVamer Bros. Bio-pic” Wide Angle, volume 8 no. 2, 28.
43 In the play by Franz Werfel, “Juarez and Maximilian: a Dramatic History in
Three Phases and Thirteen Pictures,” which serves as partial basis for the film,
Juarez doesn’t appear. He remains a mythical presence referred to in the wings, but
never center-stage.
44 see Ralph Roeder, Juarez and his Mexico 2 volumes (New York. Greenwood
Press. 1968) for an account of Juarez’s political and personal life.
45 Lawrence is interesting in relation to this issue on another level, since it could be
argued that the first half is the only truly “historical” part of the film, while the
second half concentrates almost exclusively on Lawrence’s failure of character.
46 Foster Hirsch, The Hollywood Epic, 105. See particularly chapter 7 for the
discussion of the epic hero. Although Hirsch does not refer to Lukacs, there are
obvious similarities between his discussion and mine. Hirsch does not seem to be
interested in the depiction of History per se, so much as the relationship between
historical recreation and epic form.
47 Consider, as just one example Pauline Kael’s comment of Lady Sings the Blues,
Paramount’s early ’70s biography of Billie Holliday “Lady Sings the Blues fails to
do justice to the musical life of which Billie Holiday was a part, and it never shows
what made her a star, much less what made her an artist. The sad truth is that there
is no indication that those who made the picture understand that jazz is any different
from pop corruptions of jazz.. . .it’s shocking to see a great black artist’s
experience poured into the same Hollywood mold, and to see that it works— and
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works far better than it did on the white singers’ lives.” Pauline Kael, “Pop versus
Jazz” in Reeling, 35-36.
48 Lukacs 231.
49 Ellen Draper, ‘“Untrammeled by Historical “Fact’: That Hamilton Woman &
Melodrama’s Aversion to History,” Wide Angle, volume 14, number 1, January
1992, 58.
50 Draper 58.
51 Draper 58.
52 For examples of ‘melodramatic hegemony’, see Peter Brooks, The
Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode o f
Excess and Christine Gledhill, Home is Where the Heart Is. In The Body in the
Mirror: Shapes o f History in Italian Cinema, Angela Dalle Vacche displays some
of the consequences of this kind of analysis. Describing Livia, the protagonist of
Visconti’s historical melodrama Senso, whom she admits lacks any political self,
Dalle Vacche nonetheless concludes that Livia “.. .is the key to the director’s
private, conflicting identity, and, potentially, the most revolutionary character in the
whole film.” (154) Such politically questionable conclusions can be reached only
by asserting melodrama’s personalist values over the publicly directed discourse of
the History Film. Another way of thinking of this issue is to suggest that, just as
the History Film inevitably contains a melodramatic component which becomes the
test of the hero/ine’s political mettle, so too melodrama inevitably contains a social
component which works as the instrument of a martyr’s suffering.
53 “One of the characteristic features of melodramas in general is that they
concentrate on the point of view of the victim...” Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of
Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” 185.
54 The dialogue tells us that The Lion in Winter takes place during Christmas, 1183;
Richard I returned to England from the Third Crusade in 1194. Kenneth O.
Morgan, editor. The Oxford Illustrated History o f Britain, 127.
55 Sir Walter Scott, “The Bride of Lammermoor, A Legend of Montrose, Ivanhoe,”
The Waverley Novels, 4:352.
56 For a concise description of the period dramatized in Ivanhoe, see John T.
Appleby, England Without Richard, 1189-1199.
57 The opening paragraphs of Chapter 29, too lengthy to quote, make this prejudice
explicit.
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58 Baird Searles notes, for example in a caption accompanying a photo from the
film: “Despite the aristocratic beauty of Joan Fontaine.. .with Elizabeth Taylor as
Rebecca the movie only reinforced the question asked by a century of readers—
‘How could Ivanhoe prefer Rowena to Rebecca?’” Baird Searles, Epic!: History on
the Big Screen, 107. Jean-Louis Comolli goes so far as to argue that the differences
in body between the actor and the historical character they portray is the key to
historical fiction, establishing a representational game between viewer and
spectacle. See “Historical Fiction: A Body Too Much,” Screen, vol. 19, no. 2
(Summer 1978): 41-53.
59 One of the richest ironies to a modern reader is that the only character with a
modernistic ally ‘progressive’ view of Rebecca is Bois du Guilbert, the villain.
60 In the novel, for example, Isaac is funding Prince John.
6 1 And it is chaotic at just about every level. The sudden introduction of the King
and his command is comical because of their arbitrary insertion. Only one line of
earlier dialogue has prepared us for the fact that Richard is out of prison and on his
way back to England. His appearance out of nowhere in the final joust suggests a
very rapid return from Austria to England for twelfth century transportation.
62 Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” Image, Music, Text, 25.
63 For a description of the plottings within Henry II’s family, even more complex
than those depicted in The Lion in Winter, see W. L. Warren, Henry II.
64 James Goldman, The Lion in Winter (screenplay), 7.
65 Andre Bazin, “Theater and Cinema— part two,” What is Cinema?, 1:102.
66 Bazin 104.
67 Bazin 106. As noted in Chapter 2, we should remain skeptical about the
distinctions Bazin makes between theatrical and cinematic space. However, his
comments about the nature of theatrical space are helpful in this context as a means
of understanding the act of adaptation.
68 Bazin 85.
69 For example, Arthur Knight, in reviewing the film for Saturday Review
(November 2, 1968) begins: “Despite all its other virtues, which are many and
considerable, it is impossible to write of The Lion in Winter, based on James
Goldman’s play, without launching into a panegyric to Katharine Hepburn.” John
Mahoney, writing for the Hollywood Reporter noted “The action of the film is
almost solely in its language and character interaction.” (October 18, 1968.) Pauline
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Kael, in a less sympathetic review nonetheless noted: . .O’Toole, as Henry II, is
the brightest thing in the movie. He gives the most robust performance I’ve seen
from him; he isn’t that pale-eyed O’Toole, and he keeps his pink flesh covered.
He’s loud and fortunately, histrionic; underacting would really expose this
material, by making it pretentious, whereas O’Toole, by shouting and having a
good time, almost carries it off.” Pauline Kael, “The Lioness in Winter, Going
Steady, 175. Kael’s review offers a particularly interesting set of observations on
the film’s use of realistic settings and theatrical acting.
70 Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice,” Image, Music, Text, 188.
7 1 Lukacs 188-89, emphases in original.
72 Lukacs 198.
™ Lukacs 239.
74 Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” What is Cinema?, 1:14.
75 Rudolf Amheim, Film as Art, 84-85.
76 V.I. Pudovkin, Film Technique, 143.
77 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory o f Film: the Redemption o f Physical Reality, 45.
78 Philip Rosen, “History of Image, Image of History: Subject and Ontology in
Bazin,” Wide Angle volume 9, no. 4 (1987) 29.
79 Pierre Sorlin, The Film in History: Restaging the Past. (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1980) 60. Sorlin continues to outline the five types of ‘pieces of
evidence’ which contribute towards historical recognition (Sorlin 61.) Incredibly,
he doesn’t even include costume or decor! Perhaps we should view that exclusion
as a testament to design’s power. It appears so natural, a theorist discussing the
recreation of the past overlooks it completely because it is so intimately tied up with
the process as to be invisible.
80 “A spectator watching an unfamiliar film can type-cast it within minutes. In the
case of the historical film, what are the signs by which it can be recognized as such?
There must be details, not necessarily many of them, to set the action in a period
which the audience unhesitatingly places in the past— not a vague past but a past
considered as historical. The cultural heritage of every country and every
community includes dates, events and characters known to all members of the
community. This common basis is what we might call the group’s ‘historical
capital’, and it is enough to select a few details from this for the audience to know
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that it is watching an historical film and to place it, at least approximately.” Sorlin
20 .
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Chapter 4— The Knowledge of Archaeology
After the credits to The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), a group of quarry
workers passing a city are suddenly caught in the midst of a siege. They hide as an
armored figure on horseback appears, hacking a path through the opposing troops.
After a brief battle, the victorious horseman removes his helmet to reveal Pope
Julius II. After blessing the troops, they give him an ovation. The Pope stands
centered in the Todd-AO image surrounded by scores of cheering extras.
While it is unusual for it to appear so early, this composition repeats across the
History Film obsessively: Spartacus's victory speech at the end of the film’s first
half (1960); Richard the Lionheart’s speech at the end of Ivanhoe (1951); Robin
Hood’s speech in Sherwood Forest in The Adventures o f Robin Hood (1938); Sir
Thomas More’s investiture as chancellor in A Man fo r all Seasons (1966); Lenin’s
return to St. Petersburg in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971); his speech before the
Soviets at the end of October (1927); Hitler’s appearances in Triumph o f the Will
(1935); several of Henry’s speeches in Henry V (1940); Lawrence on top of the
train in Lawrence o f Arabia (1962); Marc Antony’s address to his troops in
Cleopatra (1964); most of Rosa Luxemburg’ ’s speeches (1985.) Even parody epics
like Monty Python’ s Life o f Brian (1979) and History o f the World, part / (1981)
include variations on the image: in Brian, he stands at a window to speak to his
“followers”; in History, Mel Brooks pleads with the crowd for his life while
waiting to be guillotined.
The narrative significance of these scenes1 is less interesting than the fact that
they should be shot and cut so similarly. Is the History Film so inflexible formally
that staging options are limited only to minor variations on a theme, across decades,
national borders and political intentions? In describing the Hollywood Epic, Foster
Hirsch notes:
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The Hollywood epic presents a conservative view of the ancient
world. Its sense of the past is based on visual conventions borrowed
from Victorian paintings, Nineteenth-century stage design, the decor
in the early Italian epics and in the pioneering work of Griffith and
DeMille.2
Hirsch does not develop these observations in great detail, and in any event is not
interested in examining either the roots or the consequences of the style he
describes. Paradoxically, although we have shown the incompatibility of
melodrama and historical representation, the former nonetheless provides a useful
model for discussing the consequences of mise-en-scene, since the importance of
design in melodrama is now largely acknowledged. If nothing else, this comparison
will provide a useful starting point for recognizing what History Film is not.
Mise-en-scene, Melodramatic and Historical
[In melodrama], lighting, composition, decor increase their semantic
and syntactic contribution to the aesthetic effect.. .[there is] a
sublimation of dramatic conflict into decor, colour, gesture and
composition of frame.3
In “Tales of Sound and Fury,” Thomas Elsaesser argues that the lighting, music
and decor of melodrama are based on excess. This aesthetic produces condensed
imagery which expresses emotions beyond literal depiction and which have
therefore been displaced into physical representation. Thus both History Film and
melodrama foreground visual spectacle to overcome the limitations of their
narratives. But they do so with different emphases. Melodrama emphasizes
individual problems at the expense of social engagement; History Film suppresses
personal desire in favor of a greater social good.
Compositional connotation, created and derived from compositional
association, works well with melodrama’s tendency to pose characters’ desires
against social context, to construct individuals as victims. Elsaesser, for example,
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after an overview of the history of melodrama and its relation to film, discusses the
genre’s mise-en-scene in almost exclusively a-historical, compositional fashion. If
we take Elsaesser and other writers on melodrama at their word, the genre produces
a hot-house narrative world which creates meaning through the string of
associations generated by the film.4 Connections with the outside world are less
important than emotional identification with the protagonist.
The History Film, on the other hand, relies on social connotation. Importance is
conveyed through familiar props of cultural weight.5 Design does not express
character specifics, except as a further historicizing of the image. Juarez, for
example, expresses the political differences between the President’s entourage and
the Imperial Court by a visual opposition between austerity on the one hand and
pomp on the other.6 But the decor says little about Maximilian or Juarez as
characters. They are dressed in their signifiers, but we don’t see them choosing the
clothes because the image of both exists before the film begins.
Thus, where melodrama chains the physical world to a character, investing
spaces and objects with accumulated significance, the History Film keeps decor and
character separate in favor of a pre-existing image. It borrows connotations from
the outside to lend significance. The decor does not “belong” to any character; it
functions as a general background of physical detail. This impersonality proves the
narrative’s social and historical validity, since the space is not controlled by the
potentially petty concerns of individuals, but the larger, social forces of history.
Consider the use of an Empire chair in Imitation o f Life (1934) and in Conquest
(1937) which, while a romantic melodrama, is based on Napoleon I ’s affair with
Marie Walewska. In the former, the chair is read in terms of individual taste and
economic status, the successful entrepreneur as social arriviste. Though not directly
involved in the action, the chairs are motivated compositionally by a character who
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is our surrogate in relation to them. Her proximity and emotional attachment to the
furniture are ours.
In Conquest the chairs equally express economic status and taste but the
economic status is the production’s ability to corral the objects together; the taste is
the designer's perspicacity in designing along an historically predetermined
dominant. The first connotations for Conquest’s chairs would be their
“Empireness,” their place in history. They don’t have to be motivated diegetically
because they are motivated by a discourse beyond the film. Individual objects
acquire importance in melodramas from the sum of associations generated by the
story and characters. In a History Film, individual objects rarely have particular
significance, with the exception of those objects, such as the Magna Charta, known
for their impersonal, social importance. Instead, decor’s significance lies in its total
effect of period correctness.7
Design’s call to something beyond the narrative requires familiarity with a
knowledge of archaeology in order to reenforce the film’s temporal setting. Precise
period knowledge is unnecessary. But the image must register immediately as
antique, not of the present, measuring the visual appearance of a History Film
against the moment of consumption. As Siegfried Kracauer expressed it:
Unlike the immediate past, the historical past must be staged in
terms of costumes and settings completely estranged from present-
day life. Consequently, it is inevitable that any movie goer
susceptible to the medium should feel uneasy about their irrevocable
staginess.. . .Identifying himself with the camera, that is, he does
not naively succumb to the magic of the allegedly recaptured past but
remains conscious of the efforts going into its construction.8
Simultaneously compared to the moment of viewing and to some imagined past
reality, the period image is defined and limited by our historical knowledge and the
film’s archaeological accuracy. But in order to be successful, this impersonal
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historical decor, with its partial representation of the past, must rely on our
inadequate knowledge.
The more the audience knows about the past, the more a History Film has to
work to, as much as from, that knowledge. A tacit agreement must be reached with
the viewer not to recognize the deficiencies of recreation. The quest for
archaeological accuracy must stop somewhere— usually, the edge of the frame. Thus
Conservative Stylization not only gathers some of the physical resources of the past
as a means of recreating it, but by working in a consciously archaic mode,
reenforces that sense of “pastness” with a stiff coat of style. Both the objects and
the means of display are out of the past. Whether this style is “irrevocably stagy” is
secondary to its self-consciousness, and our awareness of that self-consciousness.
But the style evoked needn’t be appropriate to the period depicted, just as the
rooms of a museum needn’t rhyme with the art periods they contain. A 19th century
aesthetic is used because it is recognizably out-dated, stylized. Specific art and
architectural epochs are important only in what is depicted, not the style in which
they’re depicted. Thus, it is not just the World Historical Individual who must
remain remote, but his/her surroundings. As Hirsch describes this tendency:
The epic-hero-as-saviour . . .is a spiritual, remote figure whose
extraordinary qualities are enhanced by such visual resources as
lighting, gesture, and composition.. . .This external presentation
forces the actors to function as models who have been selected for
their sculpturesque qualities.9
Therefore, in its efforts to create an impersonal style as surrogate for the
Totality of Space, the History Film should be seen as a particular kind of decor in a
specific use of the frame. Elsaesser, in describing the Warner Brothers bio-pics of
the thirties suggests:
. . .the mise-en-scene of [these films] could probably be
distinguished from other contemporary or earlier Warner genres by
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different kinds of spatial construction and a different sense of
continuity.. . .lives appear as if already set in the picture frame of
history.10
And this frame, derived from architectural organization, outlines the genre much
beyond the films Elsaesser examines.
As early as 1922, Vachel Lindsay noted a similarity between architecture and
cinematic spectacle, which he called “Splendour Pictures”:
The Action Pictures are sculpture-in-motion, the Intimate Pictures,
paintings-in-motion, the Splendor Pictures, many and diverse. It
seems far-fetched, perhaps to complete the analogy and say they are
architecture-in-motion; y e t.. .unless I am mistaken, that
assumption can be given a value in time without straining your
imagination.1 1
Wolfflin’s descriptions of architectonic composition demonstrate why the space
of classical cinematic History Film is so frequently centered, centripetal, rigid and
closed.
What is meant [by closed form] is a style of composition which,
with more or less tectonic means, makes of the picture a self-
contained entity, pointing everywhere back to itself. .. .1 2
Everywhere pointing back to itself, denying an out-of-field which would destroy
the illusion of the past having been recreated, the closed form provides the History
Film an efficient means of achieving the Totality of Space. The super-saturation
with period objects provides a means of including as much of the past as possible.
Through their accumulation, the play of connotation provides the illusion that the
past has been recreated.
This space is the genre’s measure of normality and deviance. And as a result,
the History Film becomes equally a rhythm of editing and camera movement. The
nineteenth century model of perfect composition creates problems for cinematic
framing. Shots so framed move differently than shots composed for juxtaposition
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since paintings are not meant to follow one another.1 3 Composed as paintings, the
shots in History Film have trouble moving along.
Movement works against tectonic composition, since it threatens compositional
perfection. Thus History Films usually have few camera movements, except those
motivated by action. Movement through editing is equally problematic. Since
pictorialist compositions are conceived in terms of static masses, with each shot a
self-contained unit, there frequently is no plastic motivation from one shot to the
next. And since History Film and History Painting frequently emphasize the long-
shot in order to display virtuoso production, it is difficult to provide narrative
motivation into the next shot through such devices as eye-line matches, point-of-
view sequences, and so on. As a result, there is often a tangible jump in the
imagery of the History Film as it shifts from one ideal image to another.
As with any norm, these rules will be violated by individual examples.
Frequently a single film will provide a range of framings and saturations. But
before examining specific examples it is necessary first to examine the tradition
which produced the History Film’s visual codes. The general definition will thus be
made more precise, and therefore discussion of examples more informed.
Historical Genre
Theo Fiirstenau, after establishing the familiar link between nineteenth century
History Painting and cinematic History adds a valuable insight, the History Film’s
recourse to familiar portraiture as expressed through genre painting:
Now it so happens that the historical realism so dear to the
nineteenth century gave an image of reality which was apparently
subtle but was in fact rigid and laboured. The paintings of Menzel
and Camphausen, with their story-telling aspect, and those of von
Werner, which emphasize the subject’s attitudes, the historical
accuracy of which is doubtful in spite of the pedantic accuracy of the
detail, could only inspire films which are merely nationalist
propaganda efforts for the edification of the masses.1 4
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Among the items in Pierre Sorlin’s notion of ‘historical capital,’ the body of
knowledge of the past available to an audience at a given point in time, is a sense of
the physical appearance of people such as Lukacsian World Historical
Individuals.1 5 It is impossible for any film with historical pretensions to contradict
that knowledge. Yet, the image of a known historical figure remains simultaneously
familiar and strange, intimate and distant, because of the historical position of the
person depicted. This edginess derives directly from the 19th century art historical
style invoked.1 6
The nineteenth century Academic tradition is based on several formal devices: 1)
clear formal delineation; 2) unambiguous linear perspective, frequently emphasized
by compositions centered on the most important figure of the painting; 3) use of the
medium for viewer edification; 4) “History” as a subject. This tradition is not
supple or fluid; it provides ideal views of depicted events. Images are uniformly
smooth and glossy. The measure of quality is not the depth of perception of the fre
quently remote subject but the extent to which the painting answers to Academic
standards of depiction. This “Tradition of Quality” paints the History Film in a
corner of cultural validation, one of its primary reasons for existence.1 7
But this validation is ironic, since such painting in the nineteenth century was
seen as a degenerate version of the original form. Linda Nochlin notes:
It is hardly paradoxical that the era in which history was canonized
as a scientific (or pseudo-scientific?) discipline also saw the end of
History Painting— that time-honoured pictorial assertion of
permanent values and eternal ideals centred around the nexus of
heroic antiquity. Painters did not cease to paint subjects from Greek
and Roman history . . .But what they now produced were, for the
most part, historical genre paintings. .. .[paintings of this period]
share a common attempt to place the daily life of a given
chronological period in a convincing and objectively accurate
milieu.1 8
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Edgar Wind argues that this more Realistic historical image began in the
eighteenth century.1 9 He detects in the paintings of Benjamin West, John Singleton
Copley and John Trumbull, a gradual movement away from the depiction of
historic events in antique costume in favor of contemporary events in modem dress.
These artists’ major contribution to the tradition were: 1) the choice of
contemporary events for historical depiction; 2) the use of contemporary, rather
than antique dress and 3) the “.. .desire to divest the tragic hero of his poetical
glamour and reduce him from an imaginary to a familiar figure”20 through accurate
portraiture. Wind concludes that “. . .the final breach with the Academic rules of
history painting was produced by an impact of democratic ideas proclaimed by a
group of American artists.”2 1
These “democratic” ideas cause Wind to link these artists to the French Neo-
classicists. Hugh Honour suggests that Neo-classicism’s primary contribution to
the development of history painting lay in its selection of events for depiction based
on their ability to edify.22 All Neo-classical art, especially history painting, was
meant simultaneously to instill the virtues of transcendent Reason and sentiment in
the face of suffering. And these virtues are of a particular type:
The virtues [commissioned history paintings] celebrate are those
expected of the nation at large— courage, sobriety, continence,
respect for the laws and, above all, patriotism. Their aim was not to
reflect the glory of the Crown but to educate the people.2 3
Moreover, these paintings were contemporary with, and often concomitant to, the
first public museums, spaces frequented by the middle-classes.24
Under Neo-classicism, the widening of availability of art implied by public
access becomes an appeal to a particular class and ideology through the effects of
the French Revolution. Developments in history painting continue in French art
because of the increased importance of the French middle-class. Perhaps because of
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this class-nature, even as this art is publicly directed, the appeal to sentiment
attempts . .to inject a dose of verite commune into the inflated rhetoric of history
painting.”25 thereby weakening the public nature of the image in favor of more
historically specific incident.
Neo-classicism’s innovations were not merely thematic. Painters abandoned the
diagonal view of the Baroque in favor of “the rigorously frontal view . . .[and] the
elementary clarity of a simple perspective box.”26 While Wolfflin describes this
change as a return to the High Renaissance’s architectonic spatial conception,
Honour argues that Neo-classicism offered a slightly different kind of space from
Renaissance classicism: “The closely integrated type of composition evolved in the
High Renaissance and developed under the Baroque has been rejected in favour of
one in which the various elements are deliberately separated from one another and
juxtaposed.”27 In place of the rigidly structured Renaissance spaces, Neo-
classicism permits a more diffuse compositional organization, though still strongly
controlled by an architectonic volume and line.
This increased physical accuracy, edification, sentiment and loosened
compositional organization, are developed further in the periods immediately
following the fall of Napoleon, particularly during the reign of Louis Philippe
(1830-48.) It is during this period28 that the conventions of historical visualization
most influential on cinematic style develop.29
In Painting Politics fo r Louis-Philippe: Art and Ideology in Orleanist France,
1830-1848, Michael Marrinan argues that French art of this period weds the
rhetoric of History Painting to the propaganda aims of the bourgeois monarchy.
The particular expression that History Painting takes on during the Louis Philippe
era results from the contradictory nature of the regime, historical circumstances and
a shift in artistic fashion.30 During the July Monarchy:
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. . .a new kind of image— the genre historique, with its modern
history subjects, authentic costumes, and entertaining episodes
rendered in a style of precise, clearly readable forms— came to center
stage as the most appropriate picture for the modem collector. Genre
historique, like most viable art forms, had more than a stylistic
history; it emerged as the necessary product of a complex set of
social, political, and technological changes.3 1
This change in History Painting came about at a time when the genre’s
traditional sponsors were on the wane socially, while the rising middle-classes
could not afford to purchase the usually huge canvases.32 In order to address this
potential market, History Paintings on easel-sized canvases began to be produced.
These new easel paintings offered a new approach to history, apprehended through
genre scenes (or, in cinematic terms, through melodrama), and because of
references to popular prints, a new form of compositional organization.
[Lecomte’s history paintings] . . .generate a meaning— one with
contemporary currency— by staying close to the prototypes offered
by popular prints and without invoking the standard narrative
devices taught in the art schools of the Academy. It is no
exaggeration to say that works like these wrought a revolution in
history painting, while their anti-connoisseurship accessibility
illustrates perfectly their potential value as carriers of premeditated
propaganda.33
This new “middle-class History” was given official approval by Louis-Philippe’s
commissioned paintings. The King shared the taste for history-made-familiar, while
simultaneously exploiting such intimacy in the creation of his public image.3 4
The genre historique derives its emphasis on sharply defined forms from Neo-
classicism; from the historical moment in which it appears comes an appeal to a
middle-class materialist aesthetic. This materialism uses archaeologically accurate
details to describe sentimental vignettes from history. Academically trained, genre
historique artists nonetheless incorporated the less sophisticated style of popular
media, shifting composition away from Neo-classicism’s architectonic structures to
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a more diffuse organization. This diffusion frequently results from a narrative
dispersed across the frame, with multiple points of interest, rather than the central
drama of classical art.3 5
Genre historique differs compositionally from History Film only in this last
aspect. These multiple points of interest are not necessary in film, since multiple
foci are provided by camera movement, editing and dramatic action unfolding in
time. However, while History Film partially re-instates the centripetal organization
from which genre historique evolved, movement within the film frame necessarily
works against the rigidity of a classically composed canvas.
Genre historique is materialist without being Realist. It derives its power from
the illusion of surface reality provided by the manipulation of line and color, but
continues to focus on History as created by either Great Men or Great Moments.
For example, the portraits of Louis Philippe which Marrinan analyzes are
occasionally intimate, providing a sense of character— but they remain portraits of a
king. There is a slight discrepancy between the means employed and the subject
depicted. The realism of detail seems excessive for such banal subject matter.
Even when applied to an Academically acceptable subject, this concern for
physical accuracy was criticized. John House notes, for example:
This concern for everyday details was fed by the discoveries of
archaeology, which had immeasurably extended the knowledge of
past epochs. Historically correct details came to be seen as proof of
a picture’s authenticity. Such an emphasis on attributes, often
incidental to the main theme of the narrative, worked against the
‘high art’ demand for generalisation and breadth of treatment.
Gerome’s historical scenes of the 1860s, such as The Death o f
Caesar were much criticised for over-emphasising unimportant
details . . .36
Marrinan suggests why these paintings made their contemporaries
uncomfortable: neither fish nor fowl, genre historique merged the traditionally low
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genre painting with the Academically valued History Painting.3 7 It may be difficult
for a modem viewer to discern this contradiction since the vocabulary of genre
historique, particularly as diffused through the History Film, has entered the public
notion of acceptable art. But however of a piece it may seem to us, genre historique
is an eclectic style, which to a certain extent offended contemporary tastes.
Importance of Spectacle
The images of the hero at the center are among the most consistent examples of
the evocation of the 19th century Academic painting tradition, the rendering of art as
spectacle.38 But motivated within their narratives, these vague references to the
genre historique remain invisible to the extent that the artistic source is not quoted
directly. A less frequent occurrence is the literal mimicking of a well-known
painting, or a more self-conscious evocation of artistic style. In such instances,
“design” becomes momentarily foregrounded, shifting the currency of historical
capital from the parade of famous events and names to almost equally famous
images. These images do not, however, have to relate directly to the content of the
film.
For example, Desiree (1954) stages David’s Coronation o f Napoleon and
Josephine (1808-10); in Juarez (1939), the filmmakers quote Goya’s The Third o f
May 1808 (1810.) Films such as Barry Lyndon (1975), Elvira Madigan (1967) or
The Duellists (1978) self-consciously periodize their stories through an evocation
of art styles contemporary with the stories’ settings. Biographies of artists, such as
Lust fo r Life (1956) or Moulin Rouge (1950) frequently attempt to make the lives as
dramatized look like the artists’ work.
Art historical style in History Films reminds us of the time by providing a visual
texture which reenforces the story. For example, in the case of the Goya quote in
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Juarez, the image seems first to be included for connotations of “Hispanicness,”
underlining the film’s setting by evoking a famous image. That this reference is
both geographically and temporally inaccurate is unimportant, since the point is not
to cement the film to a specific moment but to a general notion of Latin pastness.
But History Films also evoke art history as a form of self-importance, the style
signifying cultural authority. Thus, to discuss the Goya quotation strictly in
connotative terms overlooks the image’s material specificity. The filmmakers evoke
“Hispanicness” through a particular object, a painting. As a result, the shot refers
not to the unspecified event depicted, nor to the events to which the painting
alludes, but to the cultural pretensions of the filmmakers. Juarez acquires authority
because it is made by people educated enough to know Goya.39 Such quotations
refer to the contemporary moment of the commodity fetish, an appeal to the
viewer’s sophistication. The pretense of historical recreation is dropped in order to
acquire value in the present, in a movement back and forth similar to that noted by
Kracauer.
Brooks’s History o f the World, part I provides interesting confirming evidence.
As a parody of the History Film, one would expect it to subvert traditional genre
codes. In fact, History displays an uneasy desire to be taken seriously as art and
largely conforms to the genre’s formal codes. The low comedy shenanigans are
staged in a physically convincing environment; the props, costumes and settings are
as fetishistically over-determined as the most straight-laced historical epic. Even
moments of parody work to re-confirm the model.
For example, the Roman sequence builds to a final closing recreation of
Leonardo’s The Last Supper, with Brooks’s character Comicus supplying Jesus’s
halo by holding a silver tray behind his head. A parody image, unquestionably, but
still a literal-minded reproduction of a known work of art. And whatever
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subversion the moment may provide is undone by the next image, a literal
reproduction of a Piranesi prison, staged straight. It is as if the filmmakers, having
made a joke of one cultural icon, felt the need to re-assert sophistication, by
reverently reproducing a work of art.40
To repeat: the image’s contents are secondary. In fact, the more knowledge
possessed about the image, the more likely the film’s appropriation of it will be un
done. (What does Goya have to do with Mexico, or Piranesi with the Inquisition?)
The primary purpose is to be recognized as a staged art work. The quotations refer
to the production’s ability to supply these images, momentary stops in narrative
development, recourses to visual, rather than dramatic rules, notes in the rhythm of
punctuating set pieces, which then can be used in the perilous reconstruction of the
past.
The reference then sets an economy of affirmation into motion: the filmmakers
provide value by evoking a painting; the audience members who recognize the
quotation can feel knowing at the recognition. Thus, Sorlin’s historical capital is not
just events, people, etc., but the museum images and objects used as the means of
grounding a story’s period. Moreover, his economic metaphor is really a literal
description, since this circle of mutual congratulation serves ultimately to re-invest
the commodity with aura. The borrowed cultural capital is re-paid to the original
with interest by re-affirming its value as an object worth quoting in a popular art
form.
Norman King has discussed this phenomenon in relation to Gance’s Napoleon.
Describing the film’s quote of David’s painting of the death of Marat, King notes:
There is an address which operates over and above the narrative, a
change in the status of the look to one of recognition.. . .Marat’s
death reconstructs the David painting known to French spectators if
only through reproduction in school history books . . .The effect is
not to highlight authenticity .. .The iconic may serve as guarantee,
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but it is more important as an establishment of complicity, as direct
address to the spectator, invoking, through recognition, a
confirmatory response.4 1
This “confirmatory response” is part of the construction of an aesthetic spectator, in
which . .The object is the construction of the spectator as aesthetic person . .
” 4 2
Although ICing’s conclusion that the aesthetic spectator is a “victim” of spectacle
is debatable,43 his description of the implicit reflexiveness of visual spectacle is
more directly relevant: “When the spectator of Napoleon does indeed become a
participant, it is not in the action, but in a celebration of the film and its impact.”44
Part of creating the aesthetic spectator is to heighten awareness of the act of
production, to produce an image obviously existing in the present. But under such
circumstances, the spectator is not so much a victim as a joint participant in the
cycle of mutual affirmation.
King insists that this reflexiveness is “recuperated” back into the film. But Leon
Barsacq’s description of the appeal of film epics suggests other possibilities:
In a cinematic work the direction, as a determining element, is
evident to the majority of viewers chiefly in spectaculars with lavish
crowd scenes, sets, and costumes, or in musicals where the
production numbers are subject to strict rales and display a dazzling
richness. By the same token, sets attract the attention of the public
only by their vast scale or intentionally decorative appearance.45
Barsacq recognizes that such obvious display, rather than melodramatic
identification, is the point of large-scale historical recreation. Like Kracauer,
Barsacq seems to believe that the spectator starts from a position of disbelief. The
spectacle never “moves.”
This sequence of objectified, spectacular events derives from depicting the
History Film’s impersonal hero/ines impersonally. Lukacs insisted that the World
Historical Individual embody larger social and historical movements. Such a
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protagonist interacting with the public produces the social by motivating a
spectacle, since the most “economical” way to represent the social visually is with a
crowd. The crowd scene shows the hero/ine’s ability to gather an assembly, to
participate in social history. But it simultaneously proves the production’s ability to
gather and dress extras. Exotic objects are not enough; the representation must
extend equally into large-scale action which serves as a synecdochic standin for the
Whole.
Speeches with crowds, battles, political conventions, etc., are so much part of
the way we think of historical recreation, they can appear ‘natural,’ and yet there is
nothing natural about them. A History Film could be made without set pieces, but
to do so would fail to deliver the genre’s promise of spectacular display. Foster
Hirsch describes the reaction to spectacular history as “. . .a kind of double focus,
as a fantastic expenditure of money and ingenuity. How did they ever do it? and
How much did it cost?”46
But in effect, what is on display in these scenes is the production’s capacity to
bring them to us. It is conspicuous consumption of productive resources made into
an aesthetic. As Walter Benjamin pointed out:
The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a
spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents
a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a
viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such
extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery,
staff assistants, etc.— unless his eye were on a line parallel with the
lens.47
Large-scale set-pieces offer literal displays of the machinery of industry at work,
just as the parade of valued objects contributes a saturated version of the past based
on material production.48
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Thus historical mise-en-scene concentrates on two extremes of spatial
articulation. At one end, exotic details provide confirmation of the production’s
ability to corral the precious. At the other, large-scale set-pieces create synecdochic
situations which, by their scale, mask the necessarily partial representation. Both
extremes offer evidence of capital conspicuously consumed. Therefore History
Film’s spaces move between the Apprehensible and the Street and Landscape. The
middle regions of the house and the set are developed only to the extent that they 1)
serve as display cases for exotic Apprehensibles; 2) motivate a movement outdoors,
from the intimate into the public and social or 3) are themselves exotic objects
which provide further proof of conspicuous consumption, such as a palace interior,
for example.
Spaces scaled to the human form aren’t lacking, but they’re centered on the
human-as-object, draped in foreign attire, whose narratives are secondary to large-
scale reconstruction of the past. Personal motivation has been subsumed within the
space of History, wrapped in the pretense of a totality achieved through exploitation
of a vocabulary of venerable imagery and materials. Experiencing the past,
understanding the way people of an era took the world for granted, would mean
transcending the Positivist roots of a medium dug deeply into the soil of the
nineteenth century. Perhaps, then, we should see the visual style of History Film as
one long desire to return to the womb.
History Film & Closed Organization— Nicholas and Alexandra
The History Film’s stylistic mean tends towards closed, saturated frames, of
which Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) is an excellent example. The genre
historique’s depictive style has its parallel in the film in sharp, high-key
photography. Its compositions are Academically perfect, and as a result, the editing
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relies heavily on point-of-view sequences and eyeline matches to move from one
shot to another. What little movement there is within the frame is usually motivated
by action. In terms of content, the film’s origins in a straight history book49 might
lead to an expectation of greater historical accuracy than usual, but in fact Nicholas
and Alexandra has a strong melodramatic component. Whatever truth Massie’s
book may provide, both it and the film subsume history in favor of visual pleasure
and emotional affect.
The film’s melodrama presents a perfect example of the consequences meted out
to historical figures in History Films when they allow personal concern to triumph
over social obligation. In this regard, the film is merely faithful to Robert Massie’s
intentions: “Since the day . . .that my wife and I discovered that our son had
hemophilia, I have tried to learn how other families dealt with the problems raised
by this unique disease . .. .”50 But at the same time, the Romanovs were not just
any family:
. . .my purpose has been to weave together from all the threads, and
interpret in the light of modem medicine and psychiatry and of the
common experience which all families affected by hemophilia
necessarily share, an account of one family whose struggle with the
disease was to have momentous consequences for the entire
world.51
This convergence of melodrama and History can be viewed at least two ways:
as complementary (we feel history as ‘deeper’ by personalizing it); or contradictory
(the travails of one family are meaningless against large-scale events.) Massie relies
heavily on letters and diaries to construct his interpretation; the reader is assumed to
be aware of the larger historical currents at work. Massie abandons those
developments in favor of biographical portraiture. For example, Massie writes of
Nicholas that
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His own best qualities were gentleness, kindliness and friendliness..
. .[his] diary was identical to that of his cousin King George V; both
were kept primarily as a catalogue of engagements, written in a
terse, monotonous prose, and regarded as one of the daily
disciplines of an ordered life. Curiously, Nicholas’s diary, which
lacks the expressive language of his private letters, has proved a rich
mine for his detractors.52
That “curiously” shows Massie immersed in the melodramatic project of
personalizing the life of the powerful. Trotsky, for one, put a different gloss on the
diaries: “The tzar’s diary is the best of all testimony [to the Tsar’s character]. From
day to day and from year to year drags along upon its pages the depressing record
of spiritual emptiness.”5 3 From these same diaries, Trotsky concludes that
The tzar’s outlook was not broader than that of a minor police
official— with this difference, that the latter would have a better
knowledge of reality and be less burdened with superstitions.
Nicholas was not only unstable, but treacherous.. . .Nicholas
recoiled in hostility before everything gifted and significant.5 4
Massie’s blindness to Nicholas’s flaws results in a history based on an excess
of depiction,55 Large-scale social movement exists in the background to the
Imperial family’s personal problems, wrapped in satiny material detail. For
example:
“Your dear Alix already is quite like a daughter to me . . .Do tell
Alix that her [letter] has touched me so deeply— only— I don’t want
her to call me ‘Aunty-Mama’; ‘Mother dear’ that’s what I am to her
now.. . .Ask Alix which stones she likes most, sapphires or
emeralds? I would like to know for the future.”56
.. .Alexandra wore white or cream silk gowns embroidered in silver
and blue and worn with diamonds in her hair and pearls at her
throat.57
As [Rasputin’s] social position improved, his wardrobe became
more elegant. The rough linen shirts were exchanged for silk
blouses of pale-blue, brilliant red, violet and light yellow. . . 5 8
Massie’s book invites identification with royalty in moments of trial while stimu
lating visual imagination through the description of objects. He relies on both as a
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substitute for an analysis of the past. Massie himself, then, establishes the
precedent for an “archaeological” view of history.
As a result, his descriptions create a split between the “true,” psychological
selves of the Russian monarchs, and their sumptuous surroundings. Objects are
alienated as general material signifiers of the past. They originate outside and are
worn out of the book’s need to recreate the past. For example, “. . .cream silk
gowns embroidered in silver and blue and worn with diamonds. . .” may produce
flights of fancy, but it is unlikely to be lingered over when presented impersonally,
as a substitute for History.
Yet Massie does not face the filmmakers’ problem of providing spectacle
without overwhelming the domestic narrative. His approach is similar to cinematic
recreation, but a photographic representation of “. . .cream silk gowns embroidered
in silver and blue and worn with diamonds. . .” arrests the gaze with a power and
immediacy that the phrase lacks. Where Massie’s spectacle covers over the lack of
historical analysis in the book by stimulating with physical tangibility, the film’s
physical recreation must be kept in check. Yet the mise-en-scene simultaneously
fulfills the same function for the film, substituting for a broad historical canvas of
European politics.
Furthermore, a book’s length is dictated by the author’s interests. A film’s
duration depends on the audience’s willingness to sit through it. While a film can
easily capture the viewer’s gaze with “. . .cream silk gowns embroidered in silver
and blue and worn with diamonds. . .” it cannot depict a broad historical
environment without considerable narrative time. Given the temporal breadth
covered by the film (1904-18) it is clear that the film must fit a lot of information
into three hours. Yet, aside from the parade of well known historical figures,5 9
very little connects the story to events. The only large-scale historical moment
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depicted in detail is the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905. This absence of
historical incident no doubt results from the melodramatic attention to Nicholas’s
family.
But production realities have their own logic that move beyond aesthetic
questions. The cost of reproducing an Imperial past with scrupulous attention to
detail60 makes it impossible to produce a film like Nicholas and Alexandra
inexpensively.6 1 Even with no large-scale moments, the film still required a large
financial return for success. But a ‘spectacle’ that fails to deliver spectacle has little
chance of success. In short, generic conventions and expectations dictate large-scale
presentation, even if artistic sense argues against it.
The Bloody Sunday sequence is critical in understanding the film’s means of
addressing these contradictory goals, since it is an historical event defined by the
Imperial couple’s absence. (Again, it is an absence that produces historical
tragedy.) According to Massie’s book, the Tsar was not in St. Petersburg the day
of the demonstration, making it impossible for him to receive the list of grievances
presented by protesting workers and the police spy, Father Gapon.62 The film
motivates this absence by a hemophiliac attack on the infant Tsarevich. The
sequence therefore becomes a condensed incident illustrating the Imperial couple’s
failure to engage their people and an example of their secretive handling of the
Tsarevich’s affliction. Melodrama extracts the Imperial couple from History.
The sequence, typical of History Film’s architectonic space, builds three actions
in three locations: 1) the petitioning crowd, marching from left to right; 2) the
soldiers guarding the Winter Palace, moving in a single line from right to left; 3) the
Imperial quarters at Tsarskoe Selo as the Tsarevich recovers from his hemophiliac
attack. The Imperial couple appear only in this third space, which seems to have
been included in order to be able to intercut it with the riot for dramatic contrast.
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Token efforts to personalize the crowd through the characters of Petya, a
factory worker, his wife and child, and to historicize the march with the presence of
Father Gapon, are largely gratuitous since Gapon falls out of the story after the
sequence, Petya has only one more brief scene, and his wife is killed. Instead, the
first shot of the full crowd reduces the mass to a formal echo of the railway shed
behind them, turning both into near abstractions, two opposing triangles. This
elegantly spare formality is typical of the entire sequence. Figures in the crowd
remain impersonal, almost literally faceless, even when emphasized through
occasional long-lens shots. Movement is channelled by architectural detail— railway
lines, urban corridors, the rectilinear courtyard of the Winter Palace— not by
personal desire.
In contrast to the crowd’s geometric mass, the soldiers defending the Winter
Palace walk in a straight line across the palace courtyard, parallel to the architecture
behind them. When the critical moment arrives and an unidentified soldier lowers
his rifle from firing into the air to firing directly into the crowd, the action becomes
a single movement of line, in which the suddenly horizontal rifle contrasts with the
diagonally raised ones behind it. Historical tragedy becomes a conflict between line
and volume, rigidly framed towards the center.
In the third location, the Imperial couple rush to Alexis’s bedroom after he
recovers from his first attack. The Tsar and Tsarina are centered in the shot; their
importance is underlined by a combined pan and zoom. They attract the camera, in
a double movement that briefly opens the frame as the Tsarevich’s nurse extends
her arms to give the baby to the Tsarina, who then carries the baby in her out
stretched arms to her husband, who embraces both in his arms. The Apprehensible
envelops the space in a ballet of gestures which encourage us to enter the softly
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sensual mauves of Imperial space, a comfortable inside, against that dangerous
outside of History.6 3
Against these caresses, the static greys, browns and whites of the riot offer
chilly formality, framed at the level of the Street. The framing ties the action to the
illusion of a large-scale social reality tidied by abstraction into geometry. Realistic
settings are selected to serve as physical alibis for the historical recreation; the
number of extras proves that the enacted conflict moves beyond individual into
social and historical concern. But the geometrization of the street and the crowd,
filtered through the prettiness of winter, maintains the stylization, that sense of
period strangeness, which reads as historical recreation.
The design in this sequence works as part of the film’s overall emphasis on
melodrama over history. But a large-scale film about public, historical characters
must occasionally show those characters in large-scale situations, even at the threat
of overwhelming the intimate portrayal. To minimize that risk, the moments
selected to show the Imperial couple’s social function are largely gratuitous. In all
those large-scale scenes in which the Tsar and Tsaritsa appear, virtually nothing
happens.
For example, just prior to the Bloody Sunday sequence, the Imperial couple
bless departing troops from a railroad platform filled with soldiers, officers and
clergy. But aside from news of the Tsarevich’s health (which is told, not shown)
the scene lacks narrative significance. It exists sheerly as spectacle, proof that the
film is capable of re-staging the past on a large scale. At the other extreme, when
Nicholas and Alexandra attend the Empress Dowager’s birthday party, the sequence
begins on an extreme close-up of a Faberge egg, held by the Dowager. There is a
cut to a medium angle as Alexandra and Maria Fedorovna kiss, then a cut to a wider
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angle to take in the full spectacular revelation of dresses, uniforms, plates,
silverware, marble floors, columns, flowers.
The narrative moment is trivial: the Dowager serves little dramatic function; the
space, the Grand Duke Nikolasha’s palace, never appears again in the film. Indeed,
the Grand Duke later complains that he wants to sell it. Only Alexandra’s
introduction to Rasputin in an adjoining, intimate anteroom has any importance in
the story.64 The triviality announces itself through the Faberge egg, setting the
sequence immediately into the literally Apprehensible, held by the Dowager,6 5 but
also the fantastically rich, the realm of 1) a vanished Imperial past and 2) the
movies. As costume historian Edward Maeder has noted: “Hollywood has
produced hundreds of period films . . .people are drawn to these movies to see
places and times that they could never know. Hollywood usually offers its audience
an elaborate and excessive vision of the past.”6 6
The Faberge egg has a narrative gratuitousness equivalent to its social
gratuitousness, suggesting that aristocratic extravagance and cinema have in the
case of Nicholas and Alexandra become the same. In a press packet, producer Sam
Spiegel boasted that the marble used in the film’s sets is real, because it was
cheaper to use the real thing,67 guaranteeing that people who attend Nicholas and
Alexandra will get their money’s worth of spectacle. It’s not whether or not the
marble is real (who could tell?) but that the filmmakers have attended to a desire for
opulent surroundings.
In this sense, the story of Nicholas and Alexandra exists only to motivate the
spectacle, the real subject for a late twentieth century consumer. The events are not
neutral, since they shape the spectacle in particular directions. Nor is the film
precluded from providing historical insight. But that insight is an excess derived
from the parade of artfully composed images and exotic objects.6 8
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For an example of narrative rendered secondary to the march of commodities,
consider the sequence as the Tsar and Tsaritsa leave for the Empress Dowager’s
birthday party.69 No significant action takes place, and the spatial transition, from
the palace to the party, could be accomplished in a simple cut. Although the
Empress reveals that she would rather not go to the party, we already know this
information from an earlier scene, and it will be reiterated in greater detail in the
subsequent scene. Nicholas in turn says nothing to reveal his state of mind. The
sequence consists of six shots: 1) Full wide shot. Nicholas, in uniform, appears
camera right, emerging from an elevator, attended by a servant. He crosses to a
large open staircase, at the top of which stand the Imperial princesses. Nicholas
reaches the middle of the room, joining the Tsarina. Bidding their daughters good
night, Nicholas and Alexandra move towards the foreground, the Empress
complaining about having to go to the party. Their conversation is cut short by the
appearance of Count Fredericks. They return his bow, a music cue begins, they
look forward. 2) Point of view of the Imperial couple, a pair of ornate doors are
opened invisibly, revealing a long corridor lined with uniformed guards, who salute
with their swords. 3) Reverse angle, full shot, the Imperial couple walk through the
doors. Guards bow as they pass. 4) POV of the Imperial couple, the camera tracks
forward down the center of the corridor. 5) Full shot of the corridor. The imperial
couple reach a comer and change direction. 6) Wide angle overhead, a large room
lined with guards presenting arms; the Imperial couple walk between them.
If the narrative content is minimal, as spectacle, the sequence makes sense.
While later scenes in the corridor will be far less unambiguously positive, here,
before the revelation of the Tsarevich’s hemophilia, the space reads as ‘triumphant,’
even ‘exultant,’ laid out as experienced by Nicholas and Alexandra at their
emotional high point. This exultation is produced by placing the viewer in a
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position of centered spatial identification with the monarchs in shots 2 and 4,
allowing us to possess the objects, servants and spectacle as they do. Thus the
materials photographed produce both a sense of rich display and a direct affect as
the corridor as corridor extends into depth, invoking the ecstatic response of
transcendental perspective. The monarchs (and we) not only possess the space; we
have the point of view that leads directly to God. The visual codes converge to
produce a stylized omnipotence, a drastically privileged moment of intimacy (we
occupy the monarchs’ bodies) made spectacular.
Furthermore, the sequence strongly evokes a coronation. Both the Tsar and
Tsaritsa are dressed elaborately; with its arrangement of brasses, the re-working of
the main musical theme evokes a military procession; the monarchs’ movement
between rows of uniformed soldiers in shot 6 particularly suggests a ceremonial
movement, and so on. And since the viewer is put in a position of identification
with the monarchs, it is as if we were being crowned, made monarchs, if only for
six shots.
And so, the sequence’s mixture of the spectacular and the intimate creates a
cinematic history based on material production. Historical events are of little
importance; social, economic or political change even less so. The spell of
commodities colors the past; it is through a nostalgia for a time when (at least some)
people could possess limitless wealth that we are made to sympathize with actors
impersonating Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra. The actions are mere
backdrop to the tantalizing array of the nearly attainable, the fantastic just out of
reach, ordered for our delectation.
Later, the corridors acquire different connotations as history is subsumed by
melodrama. When Nicholas returns from the front, stripped of rank and privilege,
his walk down the corridor acquires an irony built on the earlier sequence’s
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exultation. Instead of the precise organization offered by the saluting guards, only
hostile workers and soldiers lounge in random disarray; instead of Nicholas moving
on a straight line to infinity, he must negotiate a slow, unsteady movement towards
a door he he has to open for himself. No longer master of luxury, Nicholas
becomes pitiful.
Thus irony produces a pathos derived almost exclusively from our sense of
‘loss’ of the palace spaces. Nicholas’s fall from power and status is expressed in
physical, material terms as his, our, lack of control over sumptuous spaces
previously possessed. The more directly pathetic moments, such as Nicholas’s
breakdown after his return from the front, undeniably contribute to compositional
connotation. But since nothing happens in any of these corridor scenes, they only
make sense as the loss of spectacle.
But it is a loss only of a particular kind of spectacle. The ‘decline’ scenes gather
as many resources as the “exultant” ones. But they lack the architectonic ordering of
men and matter towards the transcendent vanishing point of late Imperial excess.
Both the revolutionaries in the corridors and the earlier liveried servants appear
uniform, monotonous. But, dispersed across the frame, the revolutionaries are a
disruption, a slovenly intrusion. The liveried servants are part of the decor, their
uniforms matched to the carpets and furniture, their positions paired to Corinthian
columns, their servile postures attuned as much to the architecture as to their social
position. The line of guards exist not for any utilitarian purpose but as a line, visible
evidence of the tsar’s and the production’s ability to order human activity to
spectacular ends.
History Film & Open Organization— // Gattopardo
The evidence of Nicholas and Alexandra suggests that a History Film with a
closed frame organization may produce a strong fetishistic drive in the presentation
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of objects. Particularly when combined with a melodramatic narrative seeking to
place viewers in positions of spatial and emotional identification with characters, the
closed organization channels desire centripetally, re-constructing history as a series
of exquisitely dressed, atomized, personal incidents. The question remains: is this
fetishization an inevitability of Realist re-construction? Does an alternative form of
framing produce a different emotional response?
Luchino Visconti’s film of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s 1 1 Gattopardo (The
Leopard, 1963) shares with Nicholas and Alexandra a strong melodramatic plot
line and an equally elaborate physical production in the service of a Realist
(external, archaeological) historical reconstruction. Like Nicholas and Alexandra,
the film is based on a book, although in the case of II Gattopardo, the source is a
work of fiction. Nonetheless, it shares with Massie’s book a tendency to evoke the
past through trivial details. For example,
.. .[The Prince of Salina] climbed the stairs again, crossed rooms in
which his daughters sat chatting with friends from the Holy
Redeemer (at his passage the silken skirts rustled as the girls rose),
went up a long ladder, and came into the bright blue light of the
observatory. Father Pirrone, with the serene air of a priest who has
said Mass and drunk black coffee with Monreale biscuits, was
sitting immersed in algebraic formulas.70
This passage describes a brief transition, from the Prince of Salina’s estate
office to his astronomical study. Neither the transition nor its preceding scene
appears in the film.7 1 The scene in the study, however, is dramatized in detail great
enough to contain a trace of the transition, tucked into the edge of Father Pirrone’s
close-ups. A still life of coffee pot, cup, and presumably “Monreale biscuits” finds
in consumption what was lost in adaptation.
The still life’s ‘casual’ placement at the edge of the frame reproduces
Lampedusa’s insouciant description. In both cases, minor, trivial details ground
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description in intimate space, seducing emotionally by inviting physically with
apprehensible, delectable, objects. It is, of course, possible to see the film and miss
the still life. It places just a few objects in a film super-saturated with material
production.72 Like any design detail, the still life could be removed without
wreaking havoc. But remove all the details and you cease discussing II
Gattopardo.
Lampedusa has an advantage over Robert Massie by writing a work of
fiction.73 Where Massie describes actual, historically determined objects as a means
of evoking the physical environment of the court of the Tsars, he does so in order
to provoke sympathy for the monarchs by depicting their lavish way of life
removed from social consequences. In both book and film of Nicholas and
Alexandra, this description serves as substitute for social evaluation. But
Lampedusa, writing fiction, has merely to motivate the coffee and cookies through
character desire. We apprehend the objects compositionally, rather than socially.
They are not alienated objects serving as impersonal historical verification, but
materials directly used.
But another detail, nestled casually between parentheses, reveals more about
adaptation and the weight of cinematic form. For “(at his passage the silken skirts
rustled as the girls rose)” is both an event fully within the film’s abilities (II
Gattopardo is full of rustling skirts) and a condensed social insight which the film
presents only indirectly. The patriarchal authority of the Prince, displaced into
satiny sensuality, expresses an entire social structure. Thus, the two details do not
function at the same level.
II Gattopardo pays considerable attention to patriarchal institutions. But this
passage illustrates the relative weight offered by cinematic adaptation. Father
Pirrone’s dietary habits seep into the scene following the transition because they are
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materially based. The coffee and cookies are personalized, and can be introduced
whenever the priest is present. They are not literal visualizations of his actions; we
don’t see him consuming coffee or biscuit. But they are adequate indicators of the
act of consumption. They substitute visually for an olfactory fact, one following
logically from another.
The rustling skirts as signifier of patriarchy however, require an external
reference which can only be reproduced by direct visualization of the event. Film
offers no parentheses; the daughters’ rising could appear in the subsequent scene
only in dialogue, losing in sensual richness what it gained in thematic explicitness.
Rustling skirts are no less materially true than coffee and cookies. But while the
presence of food implies consumption, there is no inevitable relationship between
rustling skirts and patriarchal ideology; their sensual facticity relates only to the
fabric. These differences suggest how film’s material image cannot deal with
ideology except through words or compositional accrual.
As food stimulates hunger, it makes viewers identify sensually, not
emotionally, with characters, placing our bodies in the frame by senses other than
sight. Thus, food’s primary appeal is social, since it is based on a shared
experience, hunger. Rustling skirts work similarly to produce sensual identification
between viewer and characters, but they do not work inevitably to induce
ideological insight. But, while Lampedusa’s phrase works externally to refer to
patriarchy, its effect works from the compositional, internal accumulation of
connotation within the novel.
Walter Korte, discussing a detail similar to Father Pirrone’s coffee notes that in
the book;
. . .the author always speaks of the “slightly shabby grandeur then
customary in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,” of the abusive
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aspect of grandeur, of dwellings that resemble catacombs-and the
Prince’s dining table is spoken of as being covered with a fine but
mended lace cloth.74
For Korte, Visconti’s shift in emphasis leads to a process of “fantastic enlargement
. . .of things that Lampedusa saw as depleted or corrupt. . ,”75 The director
. . .expands the novel’s attention to detail, as if taking a meticulous
inventory. His contemplation of the textures and colors of objects,
of movements and symmetry, impoverishes the events, which, in
some scenes, are only ornamental memoranda for papier-mache
characters.76
Korte’s problematic condemnation does not detract from its phenomenological
accuracy. The film clearly elevates the Sensuous Event to the status of History. But
does such an elevation “impoverish the events” or enrich them? And is it, as Korte
argues, contradictory to the film’s attempted Marxist historical critique or simply a
variation on that critique?77 It was, after all, Marx who wrote:
To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective
being full of natural vigour is to say that he has real, sensuous,
objects as the objects of his being or of his life, or that he can only
express his life in real, sensuous objects.7 8
In light of this passage, Visconti’s emphasis seems less a betrayal of Marx than an
attempt to depict a world in which human beings possess a direct relationship to
their sensual life. That this world is available only to the aristocracy can be seen as
the point of the critique.
Korte’s criticisms are founded on a familiar fallacy, derived from Marx’s
critique of the commodity fetish. Marx exposes the mystification of exploitive
relations which causes us to view commodities as a series of disembodied things,
rather than as the product of alienated labor. Stripped of the fetish, the commodity
will presumably be recognized for its true function, and will cease to have any value
beyond utilitarian purpose. This assumption could be expressed by the equation:
Commodity - fetish = utility. But what does utility mean? Korte, as others,
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apparently equates utility with productive utility, which leads logically to a
Puritanical aesthetic since sensuousness adds little to production. But the passage
from Marx cited above suggests that the emotional value of a commodity cannot be
measured in terms of production. In fact, to express oneself in “true, sensuous
objects” suggests being able to enjoy commodities for their non-productive
uselessness.
A utilitarian critique of II Gattopardo can point to the lavish attention paid to
coffee, cookies, skirts and tablecloths and suggest that such sumptuous
presentation distracts from the depicted social inequalities. But on the other hand,
these objects do not cease to have a utilitarian value for the characters (and by
extension, us as viewers) for being fetishized. The question then becomes the
extent to which that utility embodies emotional attachment, and to what extent
fetishization produces that attachment.
Understanding this issue will help us to understand the History Film norm.
Clearly, II Gattopardo saturates the frame with objects for the same reason as
Nicholas and Alexandra: to convince through graphic organization that the past has
been recreated, that the necessarily partial representation is a suitable standin for the
Totality of Space. For example, consider these comments from Edward Maeder and
David Ehrenstein: “This film is arguably the greatest costume drama ever made.
Under Visconti’s scrupulous direction, every thread— dramatic, visual, and textual -
-is held in place. Even the corsets are correct in this masterpiece of period
recreation... .”79 That these authors can make such comments attests to the fact that
the goal of the film’s design remains historical accuracy as conveyed through
physical facts.
These facts are externalized not just through period-correct details, but large-
scale action which broadens the frame out to the level of the Street. The Battle of
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Palermo, for example, includes a number of condensed historical events to
demonstrate the larger historical tapestry of the Sicilian rebellion.80 Even when
Tancredi appears, the framing provides a consistently long view. In fact, there are
only two close-ups in the sequence, one of Tancredi, which serves largely to
demonstrate his presence, and one of Cavrighi, his Piedmontese friend, who will
re-appear later in the story.
The affective circle of the Street and this distant perspective combine to produce
a double-sense of historical reality. As the diegetic and social worlds commingle on
the Street, the space effectively connects events to the illusion of a larger social
reality. Yet, by combining the architecture with a consistently long-view, the Street
as social space becomes more the center of attention than characters. Tancredi
becomes no more important than anyone else, the political significance of which is
obvious. But the effects on historical recreation may not be. The absence of close-
ups also discourages the Apprehensible. The viewer cannot participate in events,
imaginatively picking up a cobblestone to wield it as a weapon. As the film places
the diegesis in social space, the emotional distance encouraged by wide framing
helps quaintify the image, removing it slightly from a contemporary perspective.
Outside the action, the camera’s spatial position equals the temporal distance from
events.
Thus while II Gattopardo might be the paradigmatic example of the saturated
frame, its total composition moves beyond cookies, coffee, skirts and tablecloths.
Undoubtedly, the accumulation of details remains key to the film’s success. But it
is difficult to claim that II Gattopardo offers a quantitatively more saturated frame
than the norm (however we would measure it.) Rather, it is the combination of
these details with the open frame and camera movement which produces the film’s
success in creating the Totality of Space and the Sensuous Event. In deviating from
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the static norm, II Gattopardo establishes the cinematic equivalent of genre
historique'& ‘casual’ composition. But of course, that ‘casual’ framing, that
willingness to abandon perfect organization, is a highly organized imitation of 19th
century art. The frames are designed to look like paintings whose historical
importance lies in their relatively undesigned composition.
The film’s visualization relies not on French art, however, so much as mid
nineteenth century Italian art. Angela Dalle Vacche has suggested that the battles in
Visconti’s other risorigimento film, Senso, were inspired by the paintings of
Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908);8 1 Korte implies a similar origin for the Battle of
Palermo sequence:
Whenever the director has seen reality through eighteenth-century
Neapolitan painting or pre-impressionist naturalism (as in the street
battles at Palermo and in the political conversations between the
Prince and Don Ciccio Tunneo) a slightly over-aesthetic veil of
unreality is inserted between us and the screen.82
Presumably this “pre-impressionist naturalism” refers both to Fattori and the group
of which he was a member, the Macchia. In The Art o f the Macchia and the
Risorgimento, Albert Boime has noted the connection between this group of
Tuscan artists and the Italian straggle for unity and independence, a connection
which makes them logical models for films set during the risorgimento.
Boime argues that the art of the Macchia should be evaluated in terms of its
articulation of a new nationalist consciousness. For example, after discussing the
rise of the Italian historical novel in the early 19th century, Boime notes regarding
the work of Francesco Hayez (1791-1882):
As in the case of the historical novelists including D ’Azeglio,
Hayez’s painting progressed in the direction of fidelity to the Italian
environment. The incorporation of Italian landmarks that function as
synecdoches for Italy parallels the historical novelist’s topographical
nationalism.8 3
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Hayez makes the radical move of depicting real Italian landscapes in History
Painting.84 The Macchia extended this logic further by painting the contemporary
world:
As the unification of Italy became reality, painters increasingly drew
inspiration from the contemporary world. No longer dependent on
the remote past for examples of patriotism, they were free to analyze
their immediate experience.8 5
The Macchias’ view of the world was distinctly bourgeois. Boime notes that
unlike the the aristocratically privileged “view” paintings of Italian cities produced
for foreign tourists in the period prior to the risorgimento,'.
The Macchiaioli push from the scenic to the participatory, from the
privileged to the liberal view, from watching the spectacle to taking
part in it.. . .The site is no longer the most famous or the most
memorable, but a slice of Tuscan country-side presented to permit a
more personal response, unmediated by guidebook rhetoric.8 6
However persuasive this equation of bourgeois perspective with engaged
involvement, Boime introduces a contradictory note when discussing the work of
Fattori. He writes about the Fattori painting directly relevant to the visualization of
II Gattopardo, Garibaldi a Palermo (Garibaldi at Palermo, 1860-62):
Fattori’s picture . . .eliminates all taint of romanticism and
melodram a... .[he] ingeniously suggests the continuity of the action
by depicting falling debris in midair, which even casts shadows on
the fa§ades of the buildings. It is a marvelously adept bit of painting
that imparts a documentary effect to the scene, perhaps inspired by
French illustrators... .even at the peak of Risorigmento glory the
painter imposes on his work the character of understatement.8 7
Boime also describes Fattori’s representations of military life in another painting as
“.. .breathtakingly detached and low-keyed as the newspaper graphics.”8 8
Thus, after raising the issue of aristocratic detachment, then equating a
“participatory” perspective with the rising middle-class, Boime glosses over the
potential class component of Fattori’s “detachment.” Like Visconti, profoundly
committed to a progressive cause, the artist nonetheless maintains a “detached”
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perspective on events. His work is thus not only temporally, but emotionally suited
to the II Gattopardo's simultaneous involvement in and distance from historical
events.
But a difference remains: Fattori’s detachment is towards contemporary events;
Visconti’s is towards history. Thus to imitate Fattori in a recreation of the past is no
longer a question of style— the inevitable expression of artistic personality— but of
stylization— the selection of a mode apart from the neutral norm.89 And since Fattori
is appropriate in only limited instances, II Gattopardo combines evocations of his
work with Neapolitan genre, Winterhalter, Corot, etc. in an eclectic pastiche.
Indirectly, style reproduces its period’s view of the world, but only because II
Gattopardo is set in the nineteenth century. Among the most influential spokesmen
for the philosophy of eclecticism, Victor Cousin advocated a method which looked
to history as a means of discovering Truth through emulation of the best of the past:
We believe th a t.. .all kinds of beauty, although most dissimilar in
appearance, may . . .be reduced to spiritual and moral beauty; that
expression, therefore, is at once the tme object and the first law of
art; that all arts are such only so far as they express the idea
concealed under the form, and are addressed to the soul through the
senses ....
There is not one [style] that does not represent in its own way some
side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to embrace all in an
impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in the arts as well as in
metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems,
and the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without enfeebling
our convictions; so, in the history of arts, while holding the opinion
that no school must be disdained .. .our eclecticism does not make
us waver in regard to the sentiment of tme beauty and the supreme
rule of art. What we demand of the different schools .. .is
something human, is the expression of a sentiment or an idea.90
Three aspects of Cousin’s eclecticism are relevant to the evolution of the style of
History Film: 1) Beauty can be apprehended through an historical search of styles;
2) borrowing freely from all styles is legitimate to the extent that 3) such borrowing
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reveals a unity of purpose. Random imitation is not legitimate; it must be done with
a goal of discovering a greater truth embodied in the original sources.
The evocation of Fattori and others in 1 1 Gattopardo is rarely achieved through
direct imitation of particular paintings. One can sense Fattori’s Garibaldi a
Palermo in the battle scenes in II Gattopardo, but no frame duplicates it exactly.
(The opening two shots of the sequence come close.) The filmmakers emphasize
aspects of Fattori’s form analogous to cinematic expression, an analogy necessary
because of differences between media, best expressed by Gilles Deleuze:
. . .the cinema is the system which reproduces movement as a
function of any-instant-whatever that is, as a function of equidistant
instants, selected so as to create an impression of continuity. Any
other system which reproduces movement through an order of
exposures projected in a such a way that they pass into one another,
or are ‘transformed,’ is foreign to the cinema.9 1
Painting, conversely, is an art of the privileged moment:
For antiquity, movement refers to intelligible elements, Forms or
Ideas which are themselves eternal and immobile. Of course, in
order to reconstitute movement, these forms will be grasped as close
as possible to their actualisation in a matter-flux. These are poten
tialities which can only be acted out by being embodied in matter.
But, conversely, movement merely expresses a ‘dialectic’ of forms,
an ideal synthesis which gives it order and measure. Movement,
conceived in this way, will thus be the regulated transition from one
form to another, that is, an order of poses or privileged instants, as
in a dance.92
In his description of Fattori’s Palermo, Boime notes how “catching” the
background debris in mid-action contributes towards the painting’s “nearly
documentary” effect. This observation links Fattori to the popular print sources
Boime cites, to Marrinan’s genre historique, and to photography. But most
importantly, it introduces motion as a possibility into the depicted field. It is the
sense of a moment having been “caught” by the painter as revealed by objects in
motion that heightens its momentary specificity, and thus its “realism.” The debris
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withers the privileged moment with an implicit before, after, apart, outside,
different from the field of view. From where did the debris come? Who threw it?
Where are they? Such questions expand the field by acknowledging the image’s
partiality and imperfection, while threatening the primacy of the foreground
narrative.
Debris falls in the Battle of Palermo in II Gattopardo, but it isn’t necessary to
dissolve the frame since movement in and out of the field and of the camera does its
work. While centripetal movements can work to accentuate framing, as noted in
Chapter 2, such movements are, in II Gattopardo, relatively rare. The most obvious
examples occur during the credits, as the camera glides slowly along the drive
towards the vanishing point.
The film normally employs centrifugal movements. But while the camera is in
nearly constant motion, it does not attract as motion for its own sake. More
typically, as in the trip to Donnafugata, the camera continually re-frames the
landscape, always stopping short of a full 360 degree description of the space but,
by its movement, creating the illusory possibility of continuing. Or, during the
Battle of Palermo, the camera begins on the bodies of victims of the Bourbons, then
pans slowly to the right, showing child walking dazedly down the empty street,
then gradually revealing the arrival of the Garibaldini, ‘casually’ entering the frame
from out-of-field.
This use of the out-of-field to dissolve the frame is II Gattopardo's chief
‘movement strategy.’ For example, in the sequence after the credits, as the Satina
family bustles about after receiving news of Garibaldi’s invasion, several of the
characters simply leave or enter the frame, extending the space into the out-of-field,
and by implication, extending the diegetic space beyond the film’s actual recreation.
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During the ball sequence, such movement is combined with the increasing fixity of
the Prince as he moves through the space, expressing the “distance” between the
Prince and his surroundings.
For even as these strategies work to heighten the illusion of reality through false
insouciance, the film simultaneously creates a spatial, temporal and kineasethetic
detachment. Combined with the film’s art historical references, the camera always
presents an impossibly perfect view. Korte describes this aesthetic distance
invidiously, his “slightly over-aesthetic veil of unreality.” Since Korte is interested
in arguing how Visconti had veered from his earlier “Gramscian” (i.e. social
realistic) view of history, that “veil of unreality” is his ultimate criticism.9 3
But it is the combination of the distant and the picturesque which enables II
Gattopardo to produce its strong sense of historical reality. Recognition of the
stylization is part of the process of historical recreation, since such recognition adds
to the emotional distance between viewer and event. By acknowledging graphically
that distance is the reality of historical recreation, the wide frame and the open
composition paradoxically make it possible for a stronger emotional bond between
audience and film. By recognizing our recognition, the film shares our perspective,
thus implicating each in the other. Three distances— spatial, temporal, emotional—
combine to create a strong sense of presence.
The Sensuous Event caps this paradoxical presence, moving identification from
the emotional to the physical. We identify not so much with the look of the space,
but with its feel. Unlike the corridor sequence in Nicholas and Alexandra, where
identification is achieved through traditional strategies of spatial placement and the
alternation of objective and subjective shots, 1 1 Gattopardo produces identification
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through sensual analogy, using the commingling of sights and sounds to stimulate
touch, taste and smell.
To the extent that this identification with space encourages the viewer to indulge
in the commodity fetish, Korte’s criticism of Visconti’s “failed” Gramsciism is
valid. By wrapping the viewer with aristocratic risorgimento splendors, the film
arguably encourages us to wallow in a guiltless luxury divorced from material
means. Yet this argument overlooks those parts of the film in which the evidence of
the senses presents a far from glamorous evocation of the past.
One can, for example, look at the picnic sequence during the trip to
Donnafugata, and conclude that its ravishing dejeuner sur I'herbe encourages sighs
of nostalgic regret. But it is difficult to believe that a contemporary viewer pines
much at the physical discomfort caused by the characters’ period clothing. In fact,
precisely because the film so effectively forces identification between the viewer’s
senses and the diegetic space, these scenes are as likely to produce a parallel
discomfort in the viewer as a desire for the commodity.
For example, the brief moment when Tancredi gives Concetta a moist towel to
cool her forehead is almost completely tangible as tactile relief. The squalid
conditions of the road-side inn in which the Salina family finds itself in the
following sequence will not attract contemporary tourists; Father Pirrone and the
peasants with whom he converses sit in spaces less revolting than the filthy
bedrooms occupied by the Prince’s family.94 Even the heavy sensualism of the
famous ball sequence works at least equally to exhaust the viewer as to exhalt the
voluptuous surroundings; certainly few movie balls have shown so much sweating.
“Contradictory” political views, aesthetics based on sensuality, emotional,
temporal and spatial distance, and the resources of a large production, combine to
heighten the affective relationship between people and things. But this heightening
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does not lead automatically to the over-valuation of materials. Instead, it restores to
those materials some of their historically determined specificity, the semiotic
independence of which they are usually deprived by narrative. This emphasis does
not necessarily or inevitably lead to the commodity fetish. Rather, the Sensuous
Event offers a privileged moment when the relationship between ourselves and
material production becomes the subject, when, however briefly, humanity . .has
real, sensuous, objects as the objects of [our] being. . . .”
History Film & the Small Screen— La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV
Both Nicholas and Alexandra and II Gattopardo can be described as Realist
works to the extent that no attempt is made in either film to destroy the illusion that
the past has been recreated. On the contrary, great effort is made to provide that
illusion. And despite the origins of the former in an historical biography, both films
attempt to engage the viewer through traditional narrative means, melodramatic
situations and professional acting substitutes for historical characters. In this
regard, II Gattopardo goes even further than Nicholas and Alexandra, since the
latter’s protagonists are played by unknowns, while the former features well-
known stars.
But Rossellini’s La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Rise to Power o f
Louis XIV, 1967) operates under apparently different rules. Here, political and
economic history are foregrounded as the subject of the narrative. While the film
does not rend the fabric of imagistic illusion, no attempt is made to make the viewer
identify with the protagonist, nor is the historical character played by a well-known
face. Instead, a non-actor paces through the part as a means of revealing the
historical currents at work in the court of Louis XIV. The heroism of performance
does not substitute for the heroism of history, nor do industrial exertions exalt the
protagonist by flaunting the spectacle of production. Yet, despite all of this effort,
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what marks the film is not so much its difference, its ability to make ‘real’ history
about Louis XIV, but it similarities to other films in the genre.
The film shares with both II Gattopardo and Nicholas and Alexandra an
attention to physical detail as the most effective means of recreating the past. But the
means available to the makers of Louis XIV are drastically reduced from those
available to Schaffner or Visconti, resulting in a difference between their films and
Rossellini’s. Thus the points of similarity between the films nonetheless result in
different notions of cinematic history. But these differences are a reflection less of
filmmaker intention or historical ambition than production realities.
Much of the preceding analysis assumes that History Film is equivalent to Big-,
if not WideScreen history. Ample circumstantial evidence supports this assumption.
Early History Films like Birth o f a Nation or historical melodramas such as Cabiria
or Intolerance, consistently employ wide shots to record the breadth of action, as if
the design yearns to ignore technological and economic realities to transcend the
1.33 aspect ratio.95 Gance’s Napoleon in this light is the logical extension of the
genre prior to general acceptance of widescreen and a precursor to future
developments. And while the initial association between Cinemascope and historical
spectacle is usually explained in terms of film competing with TV with a broader
picture and larger productions, there is a match between generic convention and
technological capability. Self-conscious framing and material saturation and its
history make the History Film very comfortable on the big screen.
Since both are big, History Paintings and their antecedents, murals, provided an
obvious model for the wide ratios’ capabilities, means of filling a wall with
imagery. The size of History Paintings and murals is integral to the publicly
directed address they share with History Film. In addition, Cinemascope was
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introduced by twentieth Century Fox, which had a long tradition of historical film
production.96 However, as “comfortable” as the marriage between the History Film
and widescreen may seem, it needn’t have occurred. The early successes in
Cinerama, for example, concentrated on travelogue footage and the sensational.
John Belton suggests Fox used History Films for Cinemascope as a means of
naturalizing the process within a narrative.
The narratives derive from the models described by Lukacs, and elementary
education. History Films therefore conflate at least four layers of the past: a
potential History known to have existed, but irretrievable; a public History filtered
through education; an heroic History seen through familiar faces; an imaged History
stylized through representations. Combined, these layers provide a sensually
powerful substitute for analytical historical knowledge.97 As a result, not just
History Film but history itself becomes equated with widescreen visualization.
Thus Roberto Rossellini’s series of History Films for television could expect
little critical support: History was a ‘square’ subject for a new generation of
filmmakers and critics girded against large-scale production; television as a medium
could expect little sympathy, and might deter those who would be otherwise
sympathetic to Rossellini’s work. Even those interested in historical subjects would
no doubt be disappointed by the reduced scope of the small picture. And although
historical films were popular at the time their audience was almost certainly not
Rossellini’s audience.98 Therefore, the spectacular nature of La Prise de pouvoir
par Louis XIV surprises because we expect a shift in media to result in a re-thinking
of the genre. But at the same time, the film’s traditional approach is predictable,
since it means only that the director chose to work within terms he already
understood.99
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John Ellis has noted that “For broadcast TV, the culturally respectable is
increasingly equated with the cinematic.”100 That “respectability” gets equated with
the spectacular display of the post-war cinematic image:
The cinema image is routinely more elaborate and detailed than the
TV image. In commercial cinema, the budgets for fiction films have
increased steadily since the 1930s, especially with American-based
or financed films. This budgetary increase has largely gone towards
detail in the image: towards larger, more sumptuous sets and set
dressings, to special effects, to costumes, to intricate camera-work..
. .This elaboration is largely one of detail: more objects appear in a
scene, street scenes are no longer staged with a few passers-by but a
whole street with traffic, ancillary activities, crowds.1 0 1
That Rossellini was aware of this expectation is obvious from his response to a
question about his incorporation of scenes from theatrical films in one of his TV
history films: “It’s very important to make the film spectacular, because above all
you must entertain people.. . .They have to be spectacular and that means spending
a lot of money, which you can’t do for TV.”1 0 2
But TV cannot achieve this saturation. As Ellis describes the TV image:
TV offers a radically different image from cinema, and a different
relation between sound and image. The TV image is of a lower
quality than the cinematic image in terms of its resolution of detail.. .
.Not only this, but the TV image is virtually always substantially
smaller than the cinema image.. . .The TV image shows things
smaller than they are ....
.. .It is a characteristic of broadcast TV that the viewer is larger than
the image: the opposite of cinema.. . . TV takes place in domestic
surroundings, and is usually viewed in normal light conditions . .
.TV does not encourage the same degree of spectator concentration.
There is no . . . rapt attention.. . ,1 03
These dissimilarities lead to a different expectation from the TV image:
TV’s lower level of sustained concentration on the image has had
another effect upon its characteristic regime of representation. The
image on broadcast TV, being a lower grade image than cinema’s,
has developed in a particular way. Contrasting with cinema’s
profusion (and sometimes excess) of detail, broadcast TV’s image is
stripped-down, lacking in detail . . ,1 04
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Ellis’s comments suggest that a made-for-TV History Film like La Prise de pouvoir
par Louis XIV sits on the horns of a dilemma. Conceived cinematically, a TV
History Film risks unintelligibility; conceived televisually, it risks failing to deliver
on genre expectations.
Despite the formal success of Louis XIV, its origins as a TV film should not be
overlooked. For if History Films are ultimately about their ability to provide
spectacle, a TV History Film on a limited budget suffers from a double handicap. It
will always be measured not just against the totality of historical space, but against
what it could do if it were a theatrical production. Thus to the extent that Louis XIV
gives the impression of a film, rather than a television program, it displays a
considerable triumph of design.1 0 5
Rossellini’s solution to this dilemma, an open, flagrant announcement of the
‘filmness’ of the image, suggests the victory of one medium over another,
especially since virtually all writers on the film stress its “spectacular” nature. For
example, responding to Martin Walsh’s critique of the film,1 0 6 Peter Brunette
notes: “This is a forceful and cogent critique, but it is by no means clear how a film
that demonstrates Louis’ fostering of spectacle can itself avoid being
spectacular.”107 Peter Bondanella argues:
.. .while retaining a scmpulous respect for historical fact and
accuracy, Rossellini elevates the principle of spectacle to a
philosophical level, demonstrating to his television audience that the
French monarch’s historical import lay precisely in his
understanding of the power of spectacle and ritual over his courtiers
and subjects.1 08
James Roy MacBean writes: “Moreover, La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV
admittedly has a great deal of sumptuous spectacle to divert the spectator. . . .”1 0 9
Stanley Kauffmann begins his review of the film with a catalogue of its sensual
delights:
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The photography for this film by Roberto Rossellini was done by
Georges LeClerc, the costumes were designed by Christiane Coste,
and I can describe the result only with the antique phrase “a feast for
the eyes”: because I had the figurative sensation of devouring scene
after scene.. . .Here, the exquisite fabrics, the richness of texture,
the modeling of space by light, all are used to validate a complex
reality.” 110
(Note here, too, the analogization between taste and sight.) Even Peter Burke’s
investigation1 1 1 of the spectacular ‘image policies’ of the historical Louis XIV
makes passing reference to Rossellini’s film.
But even as these writers admit to the attraction and thematic importance of the
film’s surfaces, they immediately insist on demonstrating why in this case the
spectacle is warranted. For example, Bondanella first establishes the traditional
historical film as benighted Other:
La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV represents an original twist in
the genre of the historical costume film, a genre extremely popular
during the 1960s in the commercial cinema of both Hollywood and
Italy. Not surprisingly, Rossellini’s treatment of the seizure of
power by Louis XIV, although shot with the traditional costumes
one expects from a traditional historical film, made important
changes in the genre.. . .Rossellini’s major transformation of the
historical genre film emptied the story of its traditional
swashbuckling or romantic subject matter.1 1 2
Bondanella then contrasts Rossellini’s “philosophical” use of visual design to the
traditional History Film ,1 1 3 noting that “Rossellini’s entire film cost approximately
what Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels, wigs, and costumes cost (about $130,000) . . .[in
the Mankiewicz version of Cleopatra]”114 As hard as he tries, Bondanella cannot
quite get past the budget and physical environment of Louis XIV and Cleopatra, if
only to prove what an achievement the former represents compared to the latter. As
a result, seeking to make Louis X IV s spectacle special, Bondanella ends up
describing it in precisely the vulgar material terms he insists the film transcends.
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Bondanella’s calmly patronizing juxtaposition encapsulates traditional attitudes
towards spectacle. Rossellini snaps up nuggets of grand siecle ambience and
philosophy for the price a traditional spectacular pays for baubles. However,
budgetary constraint is never neutral; the consequences of limited resources cannot
be overlooked glibly. Certainly among those consequences is the limitation set on
the production’s ability to impose itself on the physical environment, on the
design’s ability to create the Totality of Space, which is to say, the film’s ability to
convince viewers that the world of Louis XIV has been presented to them.
Filmmaking is an industrial procedure which, in order to produce perfect,
stylized images, manipulates the physical environment. The greater the resources of
the production, the more of the world it is able to marshal to its fiction.
Mankiewicz's Cleopatra, Bondanella’s counter example, carries this process to its
logical extreme by building a completely alternative reality and by bringing together
so many resources that the production becomes a reality unto itself. Thus, the
sequence of Cleopatra’s entrance into Rome has a self-enclosed totality made
possible by the budget. The scene works strictly as designed. Each shot is
composed for maximum visual impact, frequently in a centripetal organization. The
resulting spectacle impresses for its perfection, its scope, or, on being able to create
precise images on a large scale.
When Rossellini shoots in real palaces for La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV,
the gain in authenticity results in a loss of precision. The stagy quality Kracauer
described in all historical recreation, the double-awareness of historicity and
contemporaneity, creates a tension between spaces known to be historically true and
contrived, designed images. Thus a History Film that relies on real spaces and
objects to produce its historicity creates a paradox, since an historically true space
has validity only to the extent that we recognize it exists today, as a survivor from
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the past. Its value is its historicity, but historicity can only be measured against the
present, creating the inevitable contradiction between what the building contains and
the present. That contradiction is the purpose of the selection, an exploitation of
difference between the space and the moment of consumption.
So, instead of the neutral background space demanded by historical recreation,
authentic spaces assert themselves as relays of historical capital. Fragile shells
preserved through time, they are physical pieces of the past, not diegetically
determined evocations of it. To say, ‘This film has historical validity because we
shot in real interiors’ is to admit to a film’s production in the present. To design a
specific set, on the other hand, is to attempt to subsume space within the
requirements of the fiction.
For example, compare the corridor sequence in Nicholas and Alexandra to two
similar scenes in Louis XIV, when the King visits the chambers of Cardinal Mazarin
and his first self-consciously, ‘spectacular’ appearance. In Nicholas and
Alexandra, a constructed set allows the filmmakers to place spectators in ideal
positions, to have a mastery over the space that merely reflects the production’s
mastery of it.115 If it were necessary to widen a doorway, for example, to move the
camera down the hall for the point-of-view shots, this action was well within the
production’s means, reenforcing the ideal nature of the space.
When Rossellini shows Louis walking the halls, he has no such flexibility. If,
for example, he had desired to move the camera through the doorways and they
were too narrow, he would have to find an alternative means of shooting the scene.
The space limits the production, working against the creation of a self-referential,
ideal world. Moreover, for the filmmakers to have ignored the primarily historical
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nature of the space by breaking down a wall for industrial purposes would violate
the very logic of using a real location.
Of course, there is match between Rossellini’s cinematic world-view and the
physical restrictions imposed by a real interior. As Andre Bazin early-on described
the director’s attitude:
Rossellini is fond of saying that a love not only for his characters
but for the real world just as it is lies at the heart of his conception of
the way a film is to be directed, and that it is precisely this love that
precludes him from putting asunder what reality has joined together,
namely, the character and the setting.1 1 6
Thus, the film’s preponderance of medium to medium close-up framings express as
much the director’s desire to connect character and environment as the production’s
spatial limitations. Granting, however, the harmony between Rossellini’s approach
and the restrictions of low-budget shooting, the production does not transcend its
material limitations; they are still felt. For example, in the sequence of Fouquet’s
arrest. Brunette notes that
If there is a single recurring dramatic element (beyond that of the
idea of gaining power) that causes a kind of “suspense,” pulling the
viewer from episode to episode, it is manifested in the character of
Fouquet, who refuses to believe that the king is serious about ruling
directly, who tries to bribe the king’s mistress, and whose brilliantly
choreographed arrest constitutes whatever climax this film can be
said to have.117
“Brilliantly choreographed,” perhaps, but undernourished, for the arrest is most
notable for its lack of spectacle. Only a few extras are present; the director’s relaxed
framing discourages a directional gaze; the casual panning makes the frisson of a
perfect composition impossible. The point is not whether the sequence would have
been improved by an idealized spatial breakdown, but the fact that the scene as shot
feels impoverished. Particularly in contrast with large scale scenes, such as the
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banquet, this “climax” seems strangely anti-climactic, the lack of extras an
admission of poverty.
There is, in fact, a claustrophobic, hermetic quality to Louis XIV which almost
certainly results from shooting in real spaces. As noted earlier, a real space restricts
the number of angles available to the filmmakers, but its authenticity offers the
advantage of allowing a relative flexibility in exploiting the surroundings. So, by
shooting in real palace interiors, Rossellini has at least the potential of turning the
camera fully 360 degrees to reveal a genuine Totality of Space. But of course, it is
an extremely circumscribed totality.
Anything outside the ideal perspective offered in Nicholas and Alexandra’s
corridor sequence (lights, catwalks, flats, crew members) would instantly destroy
the illusion. However, each shot as photographed represents a maximum
confluence of codes structured around the narrative dominant, allowing an
imaginative opening of the space. In Louis XIV, authentic interiors allow the camera
to record as much as it likes within the architectural shell. But the space has a
semantic richness determined by its moment of design and construction. Less easily
harnessed to the narrative chariot, its codes gallop in relative independence, evoking
regality with or without the film crew, indifferent to its narrative requirements. As
a result, the narrative rarefies, abstracts, thins because of the paucity of connotation
gathered for its purpose.
Rossellini’s use of both hidden and obvious zooms contributes to this paucity,
calling attention to every use of the device.1 1 8 When Louis walks down the hallway
to Mazarin’s apartments, for example, the camera simultaneously zooms rapidly
with him, while panning slightly, denying the vanishing point while remaining
fixed on Louis. In a cinematic embodiment of the principle of baroque space, the
King remains the central point of reference in a rush of movement. But the art and
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architecture of Louis’s period is squarely tectonic. Peter Burke, for example, notes
that the successful court painter Charles Lebrun derived his style from the epitome
of the tectonic artist, Raphael:
In style, too, Renaissance Italy provided a model, or rather models,
since the Florentine and Venetian styles each had their partisans. The
‘grand manner’ of Lebrun was the style of the High Renaissance
and in particular of Raphael.1 1 9
The combined pan and zoom erase attempts to evoke the surfaces of grand siecle
art, even if embodying some analogy to its “philosophical” underpinnings.
Thus, when Peter Brunette notes that “Louis XIV opens with a static, painterly
long shot of peasants at a dock across the river from a castle. This painterliness will
continue throughout the film . . . ,”12 0 it is difficult to understand what definition of
“painterliness” he is citing. For example, the banquet scene evokes such genre
historique canvases as Jean-Leon Gerome’s Louis XIV and Moliere (Malden Public
Library, Malden, Mass. 1862.) But the scene’s overall effect is closer to the
“Theater State” Peter Burke describes in relation to the historical Louis XIV:
The royal meals were also ritualised. Louis might eat more formally
(the grand couvert) or less formally (the petit convert), but even the
least formal occasions, tres petit convert, included three courses and
many dishes. These meals were performances before an audience. It
was an honour to be allowed to watch the king eat, a greater honour
to be spoken to by the king during the meal, a supreme honour to be
invited to serve him his food or to eat with him. Everyone present
wore a hat except the king, but took it off to speak to the king or if
he spoke to them, unless they were at the table.1 2 1
Such theatrical tableau suggest yet another reason that the spaces in the film
should have their own power apart from narrative. In an adapted play, such as The
Lion in Winter, the space acquires independence through emphasis on the word,
but it is the independence of indifference.1 2 2 In Louis XIV, the space lives because
of the historical presence of the location. However problematic the relationship
between its mise-en-scene and the depicted events, the film cannot be reduced to its
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soundtrack. The images remain contradictory, but essential to the film’s cumulative
power. The Theatrical Quotidian relies, instead, on an accumulation of detail that
would be both impossible and gratuitous in a play.
MacBean describes this accumulation of detail as the film’s “materialist” mise-
en-scene, concluding that the director presents a Marxist dissection of history.
[Rossellini’s history films] like the writings of historian Childe,
evidence a very down-to-earth, commonsense materialist approach
which focuses on economic conditions, the organizing of society in
terms of economic functions, and the importance of technology in
social change— all of which . . .are keystones of Marx’s analysis of
history.. . .[But] Rossellini’s tendency to take refuge in the lame
and discredited notion of “pure research”— strikes me as possibly
disingenuous.. . .it hardly seems possible that he is unaware of the
essentially political nature of the act of demystifying history.1 2 3
MacBean’s argument is based on three points: 1) the film spends an unusual
amount of time discussing economics; 2) it demonstrates the historical relationship
between men, ideas and things and 3) it displays the inevitable conflict between the
“bourgeois” Colbert and the feudal Louis.
To the first and second points, it is necessary only to note that economic
analysis needn’t equal Marxism, even when combined with the historical
investigation of men and things.124 Werner Sombart’s non-Marxist economic
history, Luxury and Capitalism argues that the stimulus to Western capitalism came
from luxury consumption at court.1 2 5 If we look at Louis XIV as depicted, allowing
things to exist as things, Sombart provides a more apt metaphor than Marx. Nor
does the film provide a wide-ranging social depiction of the era that MacBean
suggests. The basis of MacBean’s argument seems to be the opening scene with the
peasants, who are dropped quickly once the film gets to the court and who are
shown only in servile labor. On the film’s physical evidence, luxury, as is
traditional in History Films, comes from nowhere, produced by no one.
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As for the third point, MacBean insists that a wince from Colbert when he
realizes what Louis plans to do with the money raised from fiscal reform
demonstrates the class antagonisms between the two men.12 6 But one of the most
blatant expressions of the rhetoric of display spoken by the king in the film is a
quote taken from Colbert. Louis says at the construction site of Versailles: “Nothing
marks the grandeur of rulers more than buildings. Posterity measures them by the
edifices they construct.”1 27 This statement seems to paraphrase the following letter
from Colbert to Louis:
Your Majesty knows that, except for outstanding military
engagements, nothing marks the grandeur and spirit of princes more
than buildings, and all posterity measures these qualities by the merit
of the splendid houses that they have raised during their lives.1 2 8
The debate around the film’s “materialism” is essentially meaningless (Would
Louis XIV be one frame different if conclusively pigeon-holed as “Marxist?”) but
relevant to the film’s design since the controversy arises from the need to interpret
the spectacle, which results in turn from justifying it thematically.1 2 9 That
justification is provided by Rossellini’s artistic bona fides, which assure a thematic
or political motivation for what would otherwise be dismissed as gratuitous display.
Bluntly put: spectacle is ‘all right’ aesthetically and justifiable thematically
manufactured by the right person. This attitude creates interpretative problems,
however, since La Prise de pouvoir par Louis X IV s reliance on commodities and
spectacle to recreate the past, is exactly what these critics describe as unlike other
History Films in order to demonstrate the film’s respectability.
The film differs from other History Films in its disavowal of melodramatic
entanglements, a disavowal reenforced formally by using a non-actor to play Louis.
But the general movement of History Films, towards a political goal achieved by an
isolated, alienated protagonist is, if anything, more forcefully presented in Louis
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XIV than in a melodramatic History Film. Thus the use of a non-actor in the lead
suggests the king’s emptiness at least as much by the performer’s lack of
expressive vocabulary as by his lack of expressive action.
Jean-Marie Patte’s appearance also offers a difference between Louis XIV and
standard historical mise-en-scene since there is no effort to make him resemble, for
example, the well-known images of the king by Rigaud or LeBrun. But the effort to
present presumably historically accurate costumes remains. The film goes just so
far in its deviation from known facts of physical reality. Suitable dress compensates
for Patte’s lack of resemblance to the historical Louis.
Of course, clothing and appearance are major subjects in Louis XIV. To this
extent, MacBean is correct describing the film as “materialist”. But can such
“materialism” dissect the social and intellectual relationships of the period,
signifying ideology through external appearance? To answer this question, a
comparison with II Gattopardo and Nicholas and Alexandra may be useful since
such a comparison moves us towards a greater understanding of historical
recreation as exemplified by these three films.
The Knowledge of Archaeology
MacBean notes about Louis XIV:
Rossellini’s eye for detail in this film is masterful. But the details are
not mere flourishes added on to the major dynamics of the film; on
the contrary, it is largely through the details— the Cardinal’s bedpan,
the blood-letting, the King’s morning toilet, the pastimes of the
court, the preparing and serving of the King’s dinner, and of
course, the all-important articles of clothing— that we begin to
understand the way in which man’s social existence is intimately tied
to and strongly determined by this relationship to things.1 3 0
How does this detail compare to Visconti’s Sensuous Event and Nicholas and
Alexandra's, alternation of the Apprehensible and the Street?
211
Rossellini’s solution to the problems offered by the “made-for-TV-movie”
phenomenon was largely to ignore the requirements of television. He was rewarded
for this disregard by a schizoid critical response which alternately praises the film’s
“spectacular” achievements, only to subsume that charged word spectacle quickly
under thematic respectability. But none of these critics asks whether La Prise de
pouvoir par Louis XIV has the same sensory impact as a film made directly for
theaters.1 3 1 The film’s air of ‘TVness’ derives from the production realities of
authentic locations, the zoom lens and its aspect ratio, which, to the extent it
encourages a different kind of composition, produces a different sensory effect.
Combined, these realities create a non-spectacular mise-en-scene based on medium
shots.
Norman King makes a distinction between melodramatic and spectacular mise-
en-scene:
The narrative look of melodrama draws the spectator into the frame;
the mediated look directs within the frame, constructing the
protagonist as spectacle; the film, as performance, operates not just
as metadiscourse but as ultimate spectacle. Indeed, we could define
filmic spectacle as that which arrests the spectator’s look at the
surface of the frame as opposed to what is within the frame.1 3 2
If we assume that melodrama’s purpose is to explore human relations at a personal
level, the medium shot can be equated grossly with melodrama, since it is the angle
most dependent on the human form, offering the most effective angles for recording
the interaction between a limited number of individuals.1 3 3
Extreme close-ups of objects, separating in space, accentuating appearance,
offering the possibility of possession, are well-suited to both the fetish and the
Apprehensible. For a genre dependent on the accrual of physical detail, these shots
provide powerful design alibis, making the viewer identify physically with a space
through the illusion of proximity. They encourage sensual entrance into the depicted
212
space because of the graspable nature of the image’s subject, duplicating space as
perceived from inside the viewer’s body. Long shots of Street and Landscape are
the framings at which the History Film most consistently convinces of the Totality
of Space, exploiting the spaces’ associations with social and public activity to allow
the film image to serve as synecdoche for a past era. Crowds, battles, crossing the
prairie, become proof of the production’s ability to gather sufficient resources and
function to create King’s “aesthetic spectator,” above and apart from involvement in
the action.
Doggedly undramatic, Louis X IV s mise-en-scene consistently relies on the
melodramatic frame while ignoring Street, Landscape and Apprehensible. In
Cardinal Mazarin’s bed-chamber, for example, the objects are never framed in
close-up, isolated from their surroundings, despite their plot significance, while the
long shots in Fouquet’s arrest expose the limitations of the production, further
chilling the film’s effect. The film neither fetishizes objects, a la Nicholas and
Alexandra, allowing us imaginative possession of them, nor allows them to become
direct extensions of the body, as in II Gattopardo.
The spectacle of Louis XIV relies largely on the human scale, and as a result, the
space of melodrama becomes the space of Costume, and in this particular instance,
male costume, making Leon Barsacq’s observations about historical costuming
directly relevant:
.. .It is interesting to note that the novels that periodically inspire
filmmakers . . .belong with few exceptions to a period when male
dress already prefigured what it is today: that is, one century of
history from 1815 to 1915. (Fashion . . .has rendered the public
less sensitive to the metamorphoses of women’s clothes.) The
spectator, neither distracted nor disoriented by a hero in wig, tights,
doublet, or toga, quickly forgets the minor differences in the
outward appearance of the setting and costumes. This brings the
characters and their emotions closer to him, to his sensibility, with
the added charm of a previous era.1 3 4
213
The body in Louis X IV becomes the primary means of establishing the film’s
difference: from other films, from the spaces used, from the moment of
consumption. These bodies are employed in a narrative calculated against
identification with the character inhabiting the costume, achieved by the use of a
non-professional as the only point of focus.
This approach neither stimulates the commodity fetish, nor appeals with the
virtues of sensual delight. Painting History in the space of melodrama while
removing emotional involvement, creates a fastidious museum world, in which
spaces act on their own as the humans wander through them, locations, objects and
narrative working at each other in oblique angles, related, but never quite meshed,
never synthesized into a Totality of Space.1 3 5
History Film’s designed image creates an aestheticized space, in which the
currency of extra-cinematic discourses (art, architecture, theater, gastronomy,
archaeology, etc.) substitutes for adequate representation. But historical spectacle is
not excessive; it is an impoverished attempt to create the illusion of an unachievable
total space. A movie camera parked for ten minutes at an urban intersection would
produce more spectacular images than the largest historical reproduction. But as
design papers over historical representation’s inadequacy, as it stimulates the
commodity fetish, as it places the spectator through sensual analogy into a
spectacular space while simultaneously removing us to the contemplative position
of a museum-goer, touring the ghostly halls of Fontainebleau on a chilly winter
afternoon, what results from this combination at the point of reception?
1 For a discussion of the narrative relationship between the hero, the crowd and
audience position, see Thomas Elsaesser, “Film History as Social History: the
Dieterle/Warner Bros. Bio-pic.”; see also Steve Neale, “Triumph of the Will: Notes
on Documentary and Spectacle.”
214
2 Foster Hirsch, The Hollywood Epic 29.
3 Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family
Melodrama.”
4 Consider, for example, this passage from Elsaesser. “A black silk ribbon gets
unstuck and is blown by the wind along the concrete path. The camera follows the
movement, dissolves and dollies in on a window, where Lauren Bacall, in an
oleander-green dress, is just about to disappear behind the curtains. The scene has
no plot significance whatsoever. But the colour parallels black/black, green/green,
white concrete/white lace curtains provide an extremely strong emotional resonance
in which the contrast of soft silk blown along the hard concrete is registered the
more forcefully as a disquieting visual association... (175)
5 For a discussion of the origins of some of these socially shared connotations, at
least within the architectural realm, see Egbert, The Beaux-Arts Tradition in French
Architecture, Illustrated by the Grands Prix de Rome.
6 Mendez, the Republican who questions Juarez about his right to remain President,
is signified as a turncoat early by his relatively excessive attention to his
appearance. The other Republicans remain drily undemonstrative visually. Mendez
wears a slightly more elaborate vest, and an obviously manicured mustache and
beard. And unlike Diaz, for example, we never see Mendez dirty.
7 This assumption that period decor must immediately “scream” its temporal setting
is also noted by Ken Adam regarding the design of Barry Lyndon: “I wanted Lady
Lyndon, who belonged to an old aristocratic family, also to have a house predating
the eighteenth century, for if not it would have seemed nouveau riche.” quoted in
Michel Ciment, Kubrick 205. In other words, Adam placed specific, character-
motivated attributes before general, historical ones. The question remains whether
the inclusion of pre-eighteenth century decor registers as anything other than the
general sense of “pastness” that more or less period-restricted decor would also
have produced.
8 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory o f Film: the Redemption o f Physical Reality 77.
9 Hirsch 103-04.
1 0 Elsaesser, “Film History as Social History: the DieterleAVamer Bros. Bio-pic”
28.
1 1 Vachel Lindsay, The Art o f the Moving Picture 141. Lindsay is particularly
useful in our discussion in his insistence on discussing genres in visual, rather than
narrative terms. It is also worth noting that subsumed under the “Splendor Pictures”
label are Lindsay’s, “Crowd Pictures,” linked with conceptions of landscape,
215
“Patriotic Films,” linked to mural paintings and “Religious Films,” associated with
architecture.
1 2 Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles o f Art History: the Problem o f the Development of
Style in Later Art, 124.
1 3 Although interested in an entirely different conception of film form, not to
mention historical representation, Eisenstein’s theories of pictorial composition and
montage as expressed in “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form” are relevant here, if
in reverse. Eisenstein begins with the assumption that collision is essential to
dialectical form. In order to maximize collision, the filmmaker should compose
his/her frames along graphically determined dominants. The greater the difference
between the dominants in each shot, the greater the collision. While traditional
History Films do not try to create Eisenstein’s dialectical form, they frequently
produce much the same formal jolts he advocates because of their accentuation of
the graphic organization of individual frames. Eisenstein, Sergei, “A Dialectic
Approach to Film Form” Film Form: Essays in Film Theory 45-63.
1 4 Theo Fiirstenau, “The Nature of Historical Films” in Flashback: Films and
History 35.
1 5 Pierre Sorlin, The Film in History: Restaging the Past.
1 6 For example, Alicia Annas has pointed out how rarely hair design in History
Film deviates from contemporary fashion— except when an historical figure’s visual
appearance is so well-known that it transcends the movie audience’s expectations
for the appearance of the star. Alicia Annas, “The Photogenic Formula: Hairstyles
and Makeup in Historical Films,” in Hollywood and History 52-77. See also, from
a very different perspective, Jean-Louis Comolli, “A Body Too Much.”
1 7 For discussions of French academicism, see Egbert, Honour, Neo-Classicism
and Grunchec, The Grand Prix de Rome: Paintings from the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, 1797-1863.
1 8 Linda Nochlin, Realism, 23-25.
1 9 Edgar Wind, “The Revolution of History Painting,” Journal o f the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 10 (1947): 159-62. We should note in passing the fact that
Wind attributes the ability of these artists to fly in the face of Academic tradition to
their American heritage. In effect, their ‘exotic’ backgrounds gave them a degree of
freedom not enjoyed by their English contemporaries.
20 Wind 119.
2i Wind 126.
216
22 Hugh Honour, Neo-classicism.
23 Honour 82.
24 Honour 85.
25 Honour 144.
26 Honour 20.
27 Wolfflin 41-42. For a more developed argument about the relationship between
Neo-classicism and its predecessors, at least in architecture, see Paul Frankl,
Principles o f Architectural History: the four phases o f architectural style, 1420-
1900.
28 It is also the period which roughly corresponds to the development of the
Historical Novel as Lukacs describes it; see also Walter Benjamin, Charles
Baudelaire: a Lyric Poet in the Era o f high Capitalism (New York; Verso, 1983)
for a description of the changing urban milieu during the period of early capitalist
development in France.
29 The absence of Romanticism from this discussion is not coincidental. The
personalist aesthetics of Romanticism, while influential on film as a whole, have
little to do with the development of the visual style of the History Film, outside of
isolated instances such as The Duellists (1977) or, very differently, Every Man for
Himself and God Against All (aka The Legend o f Kasper Hauser) 1975.) Triumph
o f the Will (1935) only seems to be an exception: shots are framed and lit as if they
were Romantic paintings, in reference to another discourse. But their compositional
organization remains tectonic, therefore, opposed to the more fluid frames of
Romanticism. On the other hand, the influence of the movement on both the
thematic content of History Film (isolated heroes fighting the odds) and musical
style is undeniable. Even in the latter case, however, it is more the late-Romantic,
Wagnerian tradition which is evoked, rather than the early 19th century style of,
say, Schubert or Berlioz. For a discussion of the late-Romantic heritage in classical
Hollywood film music, see Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film
Music, particularly chapter 4.
30 Michael Marrinan, Painting Politics fo r Louis-Philippe: Art and Ideology in
Orleanist France, 1830-1848. Marrian notes, for example that “. . .in 1831 the
establishment’s critical standards were already more committed to “historical truth”
than to preserving the stylistic hegemony of any one school.” Marrinan 91.
3 1 Marrinan 24-25.
217
32 Marrinan 20.
33 Marrinan 39.
34 Marrinan 25.
35 Marrinan 56.
36 John House, “Manet’s Maximilian: History Painting, Censorship and
Ambiguity,” in Wilson-Bareau, Manet: The Execution o f Maximilian: Painting,
Politics and Censorship, 88.
37 Marrinan 53.
38 Marrinan suggests that “David’s Oath of the Tennis Court, the canonical picture
of modem history, was willfully stmctured to lock every participant into the
collective passion of the moment.” (110)
39 See Thomas Elsaesser, “Film History as Social History: the Dieterle/Warner
Bros. Bio-pic,” 21-22 for a discussion of the importance of recognizable cultural
significance for Warner Brothers product in the late thirties.
40 The film’s cultural uneasiness is a subject unto itself, but in addition to the
above, we can note its references to other films with pretensions to cultural
seriousness. Thus, while the opening sequence is an obvious parody of the “Dawn
of Man” portion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one gruesome joke during the French
Revolution sequence, the use of extras as targets for royal shooting practice, is a
direct steal from Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971.) The entire Revolution segment,
in fact, seems a re-make of Start the Revolution Without Me (1969) which similarly
burlesqued the world’s first great bourgeois revolution.
41 Norman King, Abel Gance: a Politics o f Spectacle, 189-90.
42 King 178.
43 King 179.
44 King 188.
45 Leon Barsacq, Caligari’ s Cabinet and other Grand Illusions: a History o f Film
Design', 3.
4^ Hirsch 36.
218
47 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in
Illuminations, 232-33.
48 Consider how frequently historical epics are promoted on the basis of their cost
and the size of their productions. A useful, if admittedly extreme, example of this
kind of advertising is provided by the nine minute featurette produced by twentieth
Century Fox to promote Cleopatra (1964.) Entitled The Fourth Star o/'Cleopatra,
the film begins with a narrator reciting the film’s vital statistics: “Four major battles
with uniforms and weapons, all made to order; 26,000 costumes created for the
film; and 79 separate sets. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison all
will remain in the background in this tribute to the fourth star of Cleopatra, the
production itself.” W e’re told the size of the film’s crew (over 1000); that more
cement was used to build the Alexandria set than was used for Italy’s Olympic
stadium; that to clothe the army of extras, 8000 pairs of shoes were needed; that
makeup was by “assembly-line technique”; that 15,000 bows and 150,000 arrows
were used, etc., etc. To note the comment made regarding Cleopatra’s entrance into
Rome (one of the high-points of the film) that “she was coming to conquer by
spectacle” perhaps belabors the point. Fox no doubt would have preferred a
financial success, but could take some solace in the fact that, as the narration
informs us over shots of lithesome female dancers that “these scenes from
Cleopatra are renewing interest in ancient history all around the world.”
49 Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra.
50 Massie vii.
5 1 Massie viii.
52 Massie 16-17.
53 Leon Trotsky, The History o f the Russian Revolution, trans. Max Eastman,
1:53.
54 Trotsky 1:54-55.
55 Just how successful Massie was in his ‘personalist’ ignoring of historical
currents is attested to by two articles in the movie trade press that announced
production on the film, based on Massie’s novel. (Variety, 1/24/68; Film Daily,
1/25/68)
56 Massie 36. Letter from the Empress Maria Fedorovna to the Tsarevich Nicholas.
57 Massie 125.
219
58 Massie 205. Interestingly enough, this sartorial development is not depicted in
the film. Rasputin’s attire remains relatively restrained throughout the film, which
suggests a semiotic distinction attached to that ‘plainness’ in the film that overrides
questions of character development in favor of expressive clarity.
59 In addition to the immediate Imperial family, the film presents (in three hours):
Rasputin, the Dowager Empress, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Sverdlov, Krupskaya,
Kerensky, Witte, Stolypin, Count Fredericks, Grand Duke Nikolasha, Father
Gapon, Prince Yassoupov, Grand Duke Dmitri, other less important figures, such
as Imperial ministers, historically ‘real’ minor figures such as the sailor nurse,
Nagorny, the Imperial physician, Botkin, the tutor to the Imperial princesses,
Gilliard, and others.
60 “The designers did a masterful job on the costumes. The only noticeable error is
the placement of the hats on the royal children, which is awkward and non-period.”
Edward Maeder and David Ehrenstein, “Filmography,” in Hollywood and History:
Costume design in Film, organized by Edward Maeder, 236. Note too that the
producers originally wanted to shoot in the ‘real’ (i.e., Russian) locations. (Variety,
February 17, 1968.)
6 1 According to Variety, of August 5, 1970, the film was budgeted for $8 million, a
tidy sum to invest only in the story of one boy’s hemophilia.
62 Massie 103-04.
63 I have been unable to confirm who directed the Bloody Sunday sequence. This
kind of large-scale action would usually be handled by a second unit director and
the film’s production designer, John Box, is credited with second unit direction. In
his critical biography of Schaffner, {Franklin J. Schaffner), Erwin Kim notes:
“Being a man who stakes out a lot of ground whenever he works on a film, Box, at
one point, probably had strong notions of directing this film . . .In effect, the visual
look of the film had been determined before Schaffner’s arrival.” (Kim 271.) The
stylistic evidence is inconclusive. While the sequence’s formal elegance suggests a
space more architectural than dramatic, thus favoring Box’s influence, other
Schaffner films not designed by Box (Patton (1969) and Islands in the Stream
(1977) particularly) display similar visual elegance.
Regardless of whether or not the sequence was directed by Box or Schaffner,
however, its precision creates a cool, impersonal distance to the event out of
keeping with the film’s melodramatic concerns. The grandfather of all such scenes
is, of course, the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. But the closed,
contained framing of Nicholas and Alexandra contrasts radically with the bursting
frames in Eisenstein’s film.
64 The sequence-within-a-sequence of Alexandra’s introduction to, and seduction
by, Rasputin is equally telling. The two are placed in a side room, more or less
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alone, speaking in whispers, while intercut with their conversation, Nicholas and
the Grand Duke witness a public performance, a ballet in the adjoining room.
65 Let’s not forget the universal prohibition of all museums: “Please do not touch
the objects.”
66 Edward Maeder, “The Celluloid Image: Historical Dress in Film,” in Hollywood
and History: Costume Design in Film, 10.
67 Press kit, Horizon Films and Columbia Pictures.
68 And producers are aware of this desire. Included in the publicity tie-ins for
Nicholas and Alexandra was a Saks Fifth Avenue window display, featuring the
period style in clothing (and the film’s actual costumes were made available to
theaters as lobby displays); promotional featurettes on the designer of the women’s
gowns, Antonio Castillo and the makeup used in the film; even a tie-in with a brand
of Vodka. Nicholas and Alexandra publicity tie-ins, Horizon Films, 1971. See also
Hollywood and History, chapter 3, “Hollywood and Seventh Avenue: the impact of
period films on fashion.”
69 Not coincidentally, among those people I know who’ve seen the film, this is the
sequence they almost all remembered, even if they disliked the movie overall.
70 Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, 50.
71 This analysis is based on the 1983 re-release of the Italian language version of
the film. The re-release replaced most of the footage edited out by twentieth Century
Fox for the initial American release (1963.) Presumably, however, the scene
described in Lampedusa’s novel was never filmed.
72 In an interview regarding the 1983 re-release of the film, Burt Lancaster
recounted a story about the production. Standing before a dresser, Lancaster
opened a drawer to find that it was filled with fine silk shirts. When the cameraman
told him they were not in the shot, Lancaster asked Visconti what they were doing
there? The director replied that they were there for him, ie., as an extra detail to aid
him in realizing his character. “At the Movies,” New York Times, September 2,
1983.
73 This advantage is Visconti’s as much as Lampedusa’s. The most direct
comparison between Nicholas and Alexandra and The Rise to Power o f Louis XIV
in Visconti’s oeuvre would be Ludwig: the Mad King o f Bavaria(\912.) In the
latter film, Visconti largely abandoned the open organization of The Leopard in
favor of a more static, volumetric approach to the image. It is as if statesmanship
forces filmmakers into statuesque stateliness. I have chosen The Leopard over
Ludwig both because it foregrounds questions about open framing, and because
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Ludwig is virtually unknown in the U.S. For a detailed summary of its story and
production background, see Monica Stirling, A Screen of Time: a Study o f Luchino
Visconti.
74 Walter F. Korte, “Marxism and Formalism in the Films of Luchino Visconti,”
Cinema Journal 11, no. 1 (Fall 1971) 10, emphases in original. Denis Mack Smith
offers a telling description of the Sicilian aristocracy in Victor Emanuel, Cavour,
and the risorigimento, which supports Korte’s argument that Visconti’s
visualization “enlarges” the grandeur of the setting. However, Korte’s discussion is
largely devoid of historical references.
75 Korte 10.
76 Korte 10.
77 “The problematic center of all Visconti’s work, the dialectical tension between
Gramscian Marxism and formalism, is most explicitly expressed in this 1963 film,
[ie. The Leopard]” Korte 11. Korte’s argument is based on a somewhat vague and
assumptive definition of “formalism,” which he never explicates fully. He seems to
equate all visual spectacle with formalism, as opposed to some equally nebulous
“realism” that would be more true to the Marxist/Gramscian project. Such a
definition is, needless to say, problematic.
78 Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” The Marx-
Engels Reader, 93.
79 Maeder 220.
80 see Mack Smith for a detailed narrative of the Sicilian Rebellion.
8 1 Angela Dalle Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes o f History in Italian
Cinema.
82 Korte 11. It is typical of Korte’s selective reading of The Leopard that he
emphasizes those painterly origins (genre and politically motivated landscape) that
have consonance with the film’s progressive social classes, i.e., the petit
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He ignores, despite the continued popularity of their
works, the (probable) origins of the ball sequence in the works of society painters
like Franz-Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) or James-Jacques-Joseph Tissot (1836-
1902.)
83 Albert Boime, The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento: Representing
Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 57.
222
84 Peter Bondanella notes a similar aim among the “left-fascist” members of the
Italian film industry of the thirties. “Paradoxically, the voices calling for a realistic
cinema employing documentary techniques with the goal of presenting ‘authentic,’
‘believable,’ and specifically Italian landscapes or stories came from within the
ranks of the left-wing Fascists as well as from the group around Vittorio Mussolini,
most of whom became Communists after the fall of the regime.” Peter Bondanella,
The Films o f Roberto Rossellini, 7. We see here again the directly political
consequences of artistic appropriation of landscape noted in Chapter 1 and by
implication the political irresponsibility of emphasizing a space’s compositional
service.
85 Boime 70.
86 Boime 70.
87 Boime 159.
88 Boime 133.
89 In discussing films of the mid-1960s, Harriet Polt makes this useful distinction:
“What I wish to point out is that stylization, if it is to have a meaningful application,
has to become style: an inseparable and integral contribution to the film.” Harriet R.
Polt, “Notes on the New Stylization”, Film Quarterly, vol. 19, no.3 (Spring 1966)
29.
90 Victor Cousin, Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 178. For a
brief genealogy of Cousin’s relationship to the philosophy of 19th century art and
architecture, see Christopher Curtis Mead, Charles G am ier’ s Paris Opera:
Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance o f French Classicism, 204-06.
9 1 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, 5.
92 Deleuze 4.
93 Whether Korte is correct in ascribing a Gramscian world-view, even to
Visconti’s early works, is highly debatable. If we have to pigeon-hole the director’s
political ambitions, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s argument suggests that Visconti
would fit better in Lukacs’s nest than Gramsci’s What remains unclear is why the
director’s sensualist Marxism has to be measured against anyone else’s theories.
The Leopard’s mise-en-scene expresses a world-view at least as original as either
Lukacs’s or Gramsci’s.
94 This was among the sequences cut for the shortened American release.
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95 For a history of early widescreen technologies see Robert E. Carr and R.M.
Hayes, Wide Screen Movies: A History and Filmography o f Wide Gauge
Filmmaking and John Belton, Widescreen Cinema.
96 Fox’s contribution to the development of the History Film is a subject unto itself,
and outside the scope of this look at the genre. See, however, both Belton and
Beverly Heisner, Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days o f the Great Studio,
chapter 7.
97 For example, during my high school years, a 16mm print of the Selznick
production of A Tale o f Two Cities was presented as quasi-legitimate illustration not
of its novelistic origins, but of the French Revolution.
98 see Bondanella’s comments re: La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV.
99 Peter Brunette notes: “Another, more complicated question about this new work
for television concerns the formal relation between it and Rossellini’s previous
work destined for theatrical release. Now that he had denounced commercial
filmmaking it seemed important to him to insist that there was absolutely no
difference in the two media.” Brunette 259.
100 John Ellis, Visible fictions: Cinema: television: video, 116. Ellis’s discussion of
the aesthetics of television is, by his own admission, limited to the British context.
Nonetheless, some of his argument is at least as true for the United States, if not for
France.
Kh Ellis 53.
102 Roberto Rossellini, “A Panorama of History,” interview with Rossellini by
Francisco Llinas and Miguel Marias, Screen, volume 79, Winter, 1973-74, 86.
!03 Ellis 127-28.
104 Ellis 130.
10 5 For example, consider Stanley Kauffmann’s comments: “Louis XIV was made
for French television (which may give us a hint about the high quality of the TV
sets in French homes).” Kauffmann, Stanley, review of The Rise o f Louis XIV, in
Living Images: film comment and criticism (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) 8.
This comment is ironic since the film was shot in color even though French TV at
the time did not broadcast in color, see Peter Brunette, Roberto Rossellini, 288.
1°6 Martin Walsh, “ Rome, Open City, The Rise to Power o f Louis XIV: Re-
Evaluating Rossellini,” Jump Cut, 13-15. Walsh burdens Rossellini with the usual
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list of ‘materialist’ critical opprobrium: idealism, humanism, illusionism— in short,
just another bourgeois who successfully deceives because he deceives him/herself.
107 Brunette 286.
108 Peter Bondanella, The Films o f Roberto Rossellini, 131.
109 James Roy MacBean, “Rossellini’s Materialist Mise-en-Scene of La Prise de
Pouvoir par Louis XIV,” Film Quarterly, 29.
110 Kauffmann 8.
1 1 1 Peter Burke, The Fabrication o f Louis XIV, 199.
” 2 Bondanella 130-31.
113 Bondanella 131.
114 Bondanella 130.
1 1 5 The desire of the producers of Nicholas and Alexandra to shoot in the real
Winter Palace does not alter the fact that, having been denied access to the real
spaces, the filmmakers took full advantage of working on a sound-stage. Ivan
Passer’s made-for-TV film Stalin (1992) profited little by use of the actual
locations, which always (as in Louis XIV) have a greater presence than the story
enacted within them.
116 Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? 2:97-98.
117 Brunette 285.
1 1 8 Both Bondanella and Bmnette discuss the director’s use of the Pancinoor zoom
lens in some detail, but do so largely from the stand point of the degree of freedom
and control the lens offered the director.
119 Burke 191.
120 Brunette 282.
1 21 Burke 87.
122 Brunette suggests that just such an emphasis on the word also occurs in
Rossellini’s History Films: “Physical movement is also minimal, and the
consequently static nature of most visual compositions tends to focus attention, like
the words, on the ideas and historical forces at work.” (262)
225
1 23 MacBean 20.
124 Consider Andrew Higson’s discussion of the British “Heritage Film” of the
early 1980s, which no one would think to call Marxist. “. . .the heritage films
display their self-conscious artistry, their landscapes, their properties, their actors
and their performance qualities, their clothes, and their often archaic dialogue. The
gaze, therefore, is organized around props and settings . . . ” Andrew Higson, “Re
presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film” in Fires
were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 118.
125 Werner Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. W.R. Dittmar. Sombart’s
“materialist” approach to history did not prevent his eventual association with
National Socialism. In addition, we can also note the emphasis on physical reality
expressed in the Annales school’s approach to history.
126 “But the look on Colbert’s face, so evidently cautious and skeptical, tends to
highlight, by contrast, the inconsistencies and excesses of a scheme which
financially entails giving back with one hand more money than the other hand just
took in, and which requires that enormous sums of money be pumped continuously
into an almost totally nonproductive sector of the economy.” MacBean 27. Note
that there is no textual evidence to support the assertion that luxury consumption is
“unproductive” in Louis XIV; we have only the benefit of MacBean’s “Marxist”
hindsight to label it so.
127 Transcribed from the film’s English subtitles.
1 2 8 quoted in Egbert 111.
129 The source of this debate may not be MacBean, but historian Philippe Erlanger,
whose biography served as the basis for the film. While given credit as co
scenarist, the extent of Erlanger’s involvement in the production remains a matter
for debate. However, passages like the following might explain this critical mis
apprehension of the film: “Even more socialist was [Louis’s] attitude to the
bourgeois, who had taken advantage of the crisis to acquire government bonds at
low prices and were now receiving exorbitant interest.” Philippe Erlanger, Louis
XIV, 116.
130 MacBean 21.
1 3 1 Brunette refers to this question in a limited way in a footnote to his discussion
of Rossellini’s Socrates: “One practical matter that must be kept in mind, however,
is that, while these films are usually seen on the giant screen, they were intended
for television, where the matte shots would obviously be much less noticeable.”
(397)
226
132 King 201.
133 King suggests: “From very early on in Gance’s career as director, two main
trends are apparent in his experimentation: a concern with deep space and with
innovation on the level of distorted images, superimpression etc. The former,
opening up the possibilities of composition in depth and the exploration of character
relations, might initially seem to be particularly associated with the melodramatic
and I will refer to it as the narrative space of melodrama. The latter, operating a
change at the surface of the image and seemingly more appropriate to the epic, will
be called, provisionally, the discursive surface of the epic.” (179) King’s
identification of deep space as “melodramatic” is more problematic than helpful,
however.
134 Barsacq 128.
13 5 Brunette describes the spaces of Rossellini’s History Films in the following
terms: “Rossellini’s increased emphasis on dedramatiziation and his refusal to create
characters who would be convincing according to conventional codes of realism
parallel his lack of interest in making viewers lose themselves in the diegetic space,
making them feel that they are really there. Rather, a consistent yet unobtrusive,
low-grade alienation effect pervades these films. Rossellini’s mise-en-scene and his
reconstructed sets attempt to be suggest of a given historical period without actually
trying to recreate it... .virtually all elements of the set are there for a specific
reason: to convey an idea of the past era, or rather, to convey that particular era’s
ruling idea or ideas.. . .many of the films attempt to recreate their eras in terms of
the received visual images that have come down to us via the art of the period,
enabling Rossellini once again to be complexly in the past and the present at the
same time and also to suggest, self-reflexively, the source of our visual knowledge
of the past.” Brunette 263.
227
Chapter 5— Rich Man, poor Man
[in 1965] . . .garment manufacturers were again inspired by a period
picture, Doctor Zhivago (1965), with costumes by British designer
Phyllis D alton... .The Persian lamb hat worn by Omar Sharif was
copied by a number of manufacturers and was widely worn.1
In order to recognize design’s contribution to meaning, it was necessary first to
lay the groundwork for the analysis, to confront some of the issues raised by
detailed examples. But to isolate a single text without at least passing reference to its
context risks distorting meaning considerably. Therefore, in the following overview
of the “Persian lamb hat” worn by Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago (1965), it will be
necessary not only to evaluate the hat within the textual system of Zhivago itself,
but also within the larger social context which produced it and which made it
popular.
It is not difficult to anticipate the reasons people buy objects from films. At least
two obvious hypotheses immediately present themselves: 1) People buy such
commodities as victims of a larger, conspiratorial regime, interested only in creating
them as consumers; 2) people buy objects seen in films because they want to
perpetuate the fantasy that the film set in motion for them. These hypotheses
assume different relationships between the spectator and the supertext. In the first,
the consumer is duped into buying a gratuitous object. In the second, consumers
exercise a control over their personal lives by choosing to enact a fantasy.
The first attitude would incorporate the second by insisting that it is precisely by
stealing the consumer’s fantasy life that the supertext victimizes the viewer. The
second would answer the first by insisting that whatever the corporate machinations
involved in the object’s production, the act of selection enpowers the consumer
personally by re-contextualing the purchase to his/her needs and desires. Both
positions are probably correct within their limits; neither can be refuted because they
228
are both based on scenarios (corporate conspiracy; personal enpowerment) which
cannot be demonstrated conclusively, only asserted aggressively. Thus, as we
evaluate the supertext in light of these theories, it should be in a spirit of skepticism.
The History of a Hat
In his survey of the history of Western costume, Frangois Boucher asks if a
distinction between clothing and costume should be made:
If one admits that clothing has to do with covering one’s body, and
costume with the choice of a particular form of garment for a
particular use, is it then permissible to deduce that clothing depends
primarily on such physical conditions as climate and health, and on
textile manufacture, whereas costume reflects social factors such as
religious beliefs, magic, aesthetics, and personal status, the wish to
be distinguished from or to emulate one’s fellows, and so on?2
This distinction expresses in other terms the familiar difference between utility and
exchange value, between functionality and the fetish. Costume, Boucher concludes,
must be considered as existing beyond simple utility.
If costume exists in excess of utility, however, it is an excess that has a long
history. At least as early as the Bronze Age, for example, male costume in the
Nordic area consisted of “cloak, tunic-gown, shoes and cap.”3 Thus, head-gear is
among the first utilitarian garments produced. But if climate is a first determining
factor in the development of costume through utility, different regions should
produce different hats. One developed for a rainy climate, for example, would work
to drain water away from the head; one invented in a warm, dry climate might early
develop the visor as a means of shielding the eyes from the sun; one developed in a
cold climate, will concentrate more on trapping body heat, etc.
A second determinant in the evolution of style will be a society’s developed
means of subsistence (hunter gatherer, agricultural, etc.) A society based on the
hunting of animals, for example, might plausibly use the hides and furs from their
229
kills as means of protection. After those societies have evolved into a higher state of
civilization, these previously functional determinants might survive as stylistic
devices. For example, Boucher notes that
From roughly the early ninth to late eighth century BC, the
civilizations of the Middle East were subject to a series of invasions
from peoples of the steppes of Central Asia.
For a long time all the Steppe nomads— Huns, Scythians, Alans and
Sarmatians— wore the same fur and leather clothing, composed of a
tunic, long trousers with or without boots, and a tall fur or felt cap.4
This fur cap was subsequently integrated into the attire of the Persian empire after
the death of Alexander the Great. It also influenced the clothing of the Alexandrian
states of Bactria and Gandhara, from whence aspects of Central Asian style were
disseminated both to India and China. Therefore, it is a likely point of origin for the
Zhivago hat.
Thus the “Zhivago” hat expresses a cosmopolitan style with deep historical
roots and strong connections across cultures, which, to a Westerner, appear
profoundly foreign. Even Russia, the site of Doctor Zhivago'% story, and one of
the cultures to receive influence from Central Asia, has historically been caught
between East and West. As Trotsky described Russia’s history:
The fundamental and most stable feature of Russian history is the
slow tempo of her development, with the economic backwardness,
primitiveness of social forms and low level of culture resulting from
it.
The population of this gigantic and austere plain, open to eastern
winds and Asiatic migrations, was condemned by nature itself to a
long backwardness. The struggle with nomads lasted almost up to
the end of the seventeenth century. . . .5
In the relatively un-exotic Russian setting, nomads and climate combine to produce
economic backwardness— and the fur cap used as local color in Doctor Zhivago.
230
If the hat primarily connotes the exotic, secondary connotations derived from its
fabric, fur, will no doubt suggest warmth (sensual connotation) wildness and
barbarism (historical connotation) the past (fur as an exceptional fabric for the mid
1960s) and luxury consumption. This last connotation, a limited contradiction to the
wild and barbaric, derives from several factors. The film depicts the hat in a
luxurious setting; the “exotic” to some extent also implies the precious; fur,
regardless of its history, is a luxury commodity in contemporary society.
Moreover, hats themselves were, by the time of the film’s release, something of an
oddity for male attire.6
The “warmth” connotation also works negatively much as the glassware in
Barry Lyndon: if it is necessary to wear a “warm” hat, the climate must be cold.
Therefore, the fur reenforces the film’s diegetic setting, Russia, while deriving
connotations o/'Russianness from its placement in the setting. If the hat is in fact
made of Persian lambs’ wool, the obvious national connotation to attach to the hat
would be Persian (Iranian.) Set in the film, however, the material becomes
‘Russian.’
The cap’s complex range of connotations include a simple functional purpose,
protection. Yet, aside from the fact that a functionalist explanation for the hat’s
inclusion does nothing to explain why this particular hat is included in the film, it
assumes further that protection is itself a unified process. In fact, even in their
utilitarian purpose, hats are subject to a complex system of meanings. On the one
hand, a hat directly expresses the owner’s tastes and personality. On the other
hand, its function reflects a state of civilization that centers around personal activity,
and thus, paradoxically reveals the hat as a social object. Hats and coats are articles
for outside (the social); they are to be removed as soon as we enter inside (the
personal.) The hat comes off first and goes on last; it is the final mark, the
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unacknowledged admission through clothing that there is something else out there,
uncontrollable.
This social complexity derives, not in spite of, but because of the hat’s
function. As a means of retaining body heat that would escape through the scalp, it
is both an attempt to overcome nature and an admission that nature must be
overcome. The choice of style may reflect personal idiosyncrasy, but the hat itself
expresses general social values of protection and ornament, a shared set of
meanings to mark humanity as separate from nature. That there can be decorative
“uses” for a hat only proves the point: such display merely expresses a situation in
which the previously functional has been transmuted into the symbolic and iconic.
The hat’s lack of a function becomes its social expression, proof that the society
which produced it has moved beyond subsistence into the cultural.7 Thus when
Omar Sharif dons a Persian wool cap to express Zhivago’s character, he
simultaneously expresses a complex social interaction only partially subsumed by
the story.
The History of an Actor
The image created by the hat relates equally to Sharif himself, to his history as
an object prior to the film’s release. Zhivago is the protagonist of Doctor Zhivago,
but Sharif is the film’s star. The character is the means of entry into the narrative, a
generator and receiver of compositional connotation; the actor provides the
necessary connection to the contemporary world. And just as the character
establishes patterns of similarity and difference within the circumscribed world of
the composition, the actor works with the larger totality outside the diegesis,
bringing to it his/her history, taking from it new connotations to be added to future
films.
232
Doctor Zhivago was Omar Sharif’s fifteenth film.8 Most of his earlier work had
been done in his native Egypt. It is safe to assume that the majority of American, if
not Western, viewers first encountered him in the supporting role of Sherif Ali in
Lawrence o f Arabia (1962) since only five of his original fifteen appearances were
in films with American or British financing. While three of his five films between
Lawrence and Zhivago were either American or English productions (.Fall o f the
Roman Empire, Behold a Pale Horse, both released in 1964 and The Yellow Rolls
Royce, released in early 1965) he appeared in a leading role only in the latter, an
omnibus film.
Thus, the first-run English-speaking viewer of Doctor Zhivago was presented
with an actor either completely unfamiliar or perfumed heavily with an exoticism
reenforced by Sharif’s ethnicity. His name announces his Arab origins, and his
most famous previous performance would have underlined that identification. So to
viewers familiar with him from Lawrence o f Arabia (no doubt a significant
percentage of Zhivago's initial audience, since the films share the same director) his
casting as a Russian might have appeared bizarre. But the re-mapping of his
ethnicity had been prepared by his performances as an Armenian in Roman
Empire, a Spaniard in Pale Horse and a Serb in Rolls Royce. Sharif qualified to
play a Russian at least as much because he had been deracinated and was therefore
figurable as a vaguely exotic object.
Edward Said has discussed how the tradition of Orientalism (the study of the
“East” by “Western” scholars) depends on this double process of making the
unfamiliar safe: “. . .as early as Aeschylus’s play The Persians the Orient is
transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that
are relatively familiar.”9 Moreover, as Orientalist writers encountered the East,
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“Something patently foreign and distant acquires, for one reason or another, a
status more rather than less familiar.”1 0
Sharif s deracination is one double-edged expression of this attitude towards the
(Middle) East: by erasing the actor’s origins, film producers enabled him to advance
his career in a series of parts calculated, paradoxically, to exploit his ethnicity. The
accent and dark appearance enable Sharif to use audience ignorance in a series of
ethnic masquerades calculated on a variance from the western European and
American norm. Sharif is Caucasian, but he isn’t white; he can play an Arab
{Lawrence), a Slav {Rolls Royce) or a Eurasian {Zhivago) because all are perceived
as abnormal, exceptional, different.
Yet as a consequence, Sharif s “ethnicity” is constructed almost entirely on the
basis of his characterizations. In order for the Arab Sharif to play the Russian
Zhivago, his Arabness can be remembered only to the extent that 1) it constructs a
vague sense of exoticism and 2) can be re-configured for the film’s notions of
ethnic appearance. In Lawrence o f Arabia, for example, Sharif is the only Arab
actor in a major part, giving him an authenticity vis-a-vis Alec Guinness (Prince
Feisal) and Anthony Quinn (Auda abu-Tayi.) In a complex economy of parasitism,
Sharif s genuine “Arabness” (and the film’s Middle Eastern locations) provides the
film and its Western actors with a legitimacy they might otherwise lack.
But at the same time, if Sharif s appearance makes the Western actors’
impersonations in Lawrence all that more apparent, their masquerades in turn cast
Sharif s ethnicity in doubt (just as its Spanish locations cast doubts on the
authenticity of the film’s desert locations.) Who is the more convincingly ‘real’
Arab in Lawrence o f Arabia!} The answer to this question does not depend
exclusively on knowing that Sharif is truly an Arab, but at least as much on what
the film produces as an image of Arabness. If, for example, Alec Guinness’s Feisal
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more effectively exploits acting codes as they relate to the film’s requirements, he,
not Sharif may register most effectively. Sharif is merely an Arab; Guinness/Feisal
is an ‘Arab, Lawrence of.’
The same process is at work in Doctor Zhivago, though perhaps more to
Sharif s advantage. When the British Ralph Richardson, Tom Courtenay and Julie
Christie, the American Rod Steiger and the Egyptian Omar Sharif all play Russians,
who can claim the most authentically ‘Russian’ performance? The answer can only
be subjective, but the success or failure of Sharif’s ethnic impersonations depends
on his ability to keep his ethnicity a shapely, enamelled ewer around a wine filled
and emptied for each occasion. This week a Bordeaux, next week a Green
Hungarian, it doesn’t matter. Always ethnic, he and the filmmakers who work with
him must erase our knowledge of his ethnicity even while exploiting it,
emphasizing some appearances when convenient (accent, almond-eyes) denying or
suppressing others (skin-tone) that get in the way. But as a result, Sharif s ethnic
identity, even when playing Arabs, gets smudged.
This process of being/not being charts the same ambiguity negotiated by
historical design. Ethnic actors like Sharif provide perfect centers for History Films
or period melodramas, since voice and appearance mark them as not-quite-of-this-
(white, contemporary)-world. Of the thirty-five films Sharif has made since leaving
Egypt, at least nineteen have period settings,1 1 in which the eras and geography
remain equally vague and general. For example, in Mayerling (1968), a
British/French co-production, the Egyptian Sharif, the French Catherine Deneuve,
the American Ava Gardner and the British James Mason all pretend to be Austrians.
That Sharif as Archduke Rudolf is meant to be the son of the Emperor Franz Josef
I and Empress Elisabeth (Mason and Gardner) merely caps the absurdity of the
situation.
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Mayerling may represent an extreme case of Jean-Louis Comolli’s “body too
much,” since the dissonance between Sharif as presence and Rudolf as historical
figure is too great to be orchestrated successfully.1 2 But even when the period
setting is merely an excuse for melodrama, as in the American set Funny Girl
(1968), Sharif becomes the locus for the white female protagonist’s desire by an
exploitation of his ‘mysterious’ (Oriental) appearance. The publicists for Doctor
Zhivago were equally attuned to exploiting this image. For example, among the
publicity appearances scheduled by MGM for Sharif was an appearance on KNX
Radio’s program “Firing Line,” described in the following terms: “One of the
screen’s handsome leading men talks to audience of housewives on differences
between American and European women.”1 3 Sharif is exploited not for his opinion
of Arab women, who are, of course, merely the other half of the Other, but for his
view of those women economically positioned to consume his image. In this partial
denial of his background, Sharif was not, of course, the first male ethnic star to be
constructed as an object for white desire. But as an Arab, he may be uniquely
qualified to embody a general cultural fantasy. Writing about Gustave Flaubert’s
Oriental preoccupations, Said notes:
Woven through all of Flaubert’s Oriental experiences, exciting or
disappointing, is an almost uniform association between the Orient
and sex. In making this association Flaubert was neither the first nor
the most exaggerated instance of a remarkably persistent motif in
Western attitudes to the Orient.1 4
In all these cases, acknowledged, but scrupulously undefined ethnicity becomes
one more prop in the construction of the past as a collection of hot-house objects,
based finally, on that very Oriental image which has to be ignored even as it’s
acknowledged. Sharif is exotic, but de-natured; sexualized, but rendered passive by
a part that forces him to react to events rather than master them. Whether this set of
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impersonations is negative (Sharif is denied his “true” ethnicity) or positive (the
Other establishes power by pretending to be what he isn’t) we can leave to the
keepers of the categories to contest. As Said notes:
For the general category in advance offers the specific instance a
limited terrain in which to operate: no matter how deep the specific
exception, no matter how much a single Oriental can escape the
fences placed around him, he is first an Oriental, second a human
being, and last again an Oriental.1 5
Thus, Sharif wearing a “Persian wool” hat becomes multiply exotic, complexly
layered for a rich set of connotations derived from the history of object and actor
and the place of each in the film’s composition. Both bring meanings to the film;
both leave the film with new meanings.
The Hat in the Text
Doctor Zhivago (1965) dramatizes the life of a minor Russian poet caught in the
throes of the Russian Revolution. Orphaned at a young age, he is brought up in the
home of wealthy friends of his mother, the Gromekos. While he trains as a doctor
in order to be socially useful, he writes poetry on the side. Married at a young age
to his childhood companion, Tonia Gromeko, he falls in love with Lara, the
daughter of a dressmaker. When compelled to abandon his family, he spends an
extended period as the physician for a group of Red partisans, from whom he
escapes and returns to Lara. After a brief idyll, they are separated, and never meet
again.16
Yuri Zhivago in many ways represents a Lukacsian mediocre hero. In both
novel and film, Zhivago is posed as reactant to, rather than a participant in, the
Russian Revolution, the social crisis which forms the background to his story. As
in a Walter Scott novel, the hero emerges from a relatively privileged background
which permits him to have a critical distance on events. At the same time, he has a
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foot in both camps, most explicitly through his connections with his Bolshevik
half-brother, Yevgraf, but also to a certain extent in his own psyche. As Yevgraf’s
narration informs us “He told me what he thought about the Party, and I trembled
for him. He approved of us, but for reasons that were subtle, like his verse.” 1 7
On the other hand, Yuri undergoes no transformation of consciousness in the
film. Or rather, we have to judge his view of subsequent events on the basis of the
brief scene above, since Zhivago never again reveals his political sentiments. This
relative silence contrasts with the novel, in which Zhivago’s original sympathies for
the revolution are eventually destroyed. For example, in responding to the political
goading of the partisan leader, Liberius, Zhivago says:
.. .none of these cliches, these vulgar commonplaces, appeal to me.
Fll say A but I won’t say B— whatever you do. I’ll admit that you are
Russia’s liberators, the shining lights, that without you it would be
lost, sunk in misery and ignorance, and I still don’t give a damn for
any of you, I don’t like you and you can all go to the devil.1 8
Thus to the frankly reactionary position Zhivago develops in the novel, the film
posits a relatively tolerant, a-political one for the doctor. This relative tolerance
derives, no doubt, from the film’s greater emphasis on the love story more than any
conscious political even-handedness.1 9
Then again, most of the revolutionaries in the film are treated with considerably
less sympathy than they are in the novel, the perhaps inevitable consequence of
condensation.20 For although the political movement undergone by Zhivago in the
novel does not conform to Lukacs’s goal of a progressive development, the novel
does offer the rich historical tapestry praised in the novels of Scott. That this scope
is provided in the service of a vaguely Idealist philosophy, in which characters’
lives are intertwined by some transcendent Fate does not lessen the broad social
depiction such an approach allows. For example, the minor character Tiverzin, a
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revolutionary worker, appears during the 1905 revolution to figure in an incident
that eventually leads to the Moscow railway workers going on strike.2 1 He then
largely falls out of the story until he re-appears as part of a local Soviet.
Three or four were guests of honor and sat on chairs. They were old
workers, veterans of the revolution of 1905. Among them were
Tiverzin, morose and greatly changed since his Moscow days, and
his friend, old Antipov. . . .22
Tiverzin’s re-appearance is important for Zhivago’s story since when he re
appears, the Soviet has control over his future. Thus Pasternak is able through
Tiverzin to demonstrate several historical developments simultaneously: 1) the
events which can lead a man to become a revolutionary; 2) the consequences for
someone like Zhivago leading a privileged life unaware of the less fortunate; 3) the
changes that can occur in a person over time, and the effect those changes can have
on a person’s political judgment (Tiverzin’s “moroseness”), etc. Zhivago does not
know Tiverzin when he re-appears, but the reader does because we have been
privileged with the larger historical perspective that, for better or worse, Zhivago
lacks.
Although the scope of Doctor Zhivago as film is immense, it cannot, even at
)
three hours and three minutes, replicate all the historical detail that Pasternak sets in
motion. (The English translation runs to 519 pages, plus another 40 pages of
“Zhivago’s” poetry.) Tiverzin, and scores of similar characters, are dropped.
Others, such as Markel, the Gromekos’ obsequious servant, who demonstrates an
oily political aptitude after the Revolution, are displaced into more dramatically
efficient characters, such as the house Soviet in the Gromekos’ mansion. With each
lost character and condensed event, the film loses a thread of Pasternak’s historical
tapestry, the political specifics of which are, in Lukacsian terms, secondary.
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Instead, the novelist provides a totalizing view of history against the backdrop of
the Russian Revolution.
The reactionary politics result largely from the absence of a World Historical
Individual to set right the course of events. Both novel and film are notably lacking
in historical figures with name recognition. One suspects that in the novel this lack
is a deliberate strategy, employed in order to examine the consequences of the
Revolution on ordinary people. In the film, however, this absence fits all too neatly
into the recurring pattern discussed in Chapter 3, in which the absence of a
politically savvy individual leads to chaos and misery. True to the book, the film
never mentions any of the leaders of the Revolution. But we do see huge poster
heads of Lenin23 and Trotsky24 as the Zhivago family waits for a train out of
Moscow. More significantly, as Yevgraf tells us about the fate of Lara: “She died,
or vanished somewhere, in one of the labor camps. A nameless number on a list
that was afterwards mis-laid.”25 there is a huge painted image of Stalin as Lara’s
tiny figure disappears into the distance.26
The interaction between this image and Yevgraf s narration produces an
obvious figurative meaning, ‘Lara disappeared as a result of Stalin’s policies.’ Yet
both demonstrate the complex relationships possible between physical detail and
historical representation. In fact, it is the obviousness of the meaning which makes
it interesting and a good starting point in understanding Doctor Zhivago as a textual
system. This system must be grasped fully to discuss its interaction with
intertextual elements like Zhivago’s hat, and the super-textual system which
motivated its purchase.
First, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin are never present in the film as characters or
subjects of dialogue, but are nonetheless physically present as representations.
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Thus, at a thematic level, as expressed through action, character and dialogue, these
poster images are gratuitous. Nothing in the narrative warrants their inclusion; they
are present as physical evidence in support of the film’s historical setting. The
historical images of well-known political personages are used as redundant
groundings of events in temporal specifics, to allow the narrative to exist
parasitically on the material world and the viewer’s a priori historical knowledge.
All three images, despite their separation in projection time by over an hour and
narrative time by several years, are executed in the same style, red, black and white
murals. Murals’ large-scale have always had a specifically religious or political
connotation.27 Furthermore, combined with their limited palette, through multiple,
sometimes contradictory, connotations, the images reenforce the same general one:
red=Communism; black-and-white=Soviet life is mundane (reenforced in both
cases by the dull grey, blue and brown walls on which the murals are painted);
large-scale Realism=Socialist Realism; red, black, white=Constructivist
experimentation=early 1920s Soviet Russia; publicly political images=social
indoctrination through constant propaganda, etc. These are all dominant
connotations provided by the image, hopefully subsuming contradictions such as
evoking period through antagonistic movements like Socialist Realism and
Constructivism.
Second, the image ‘reads’ at the figurative congmence of depicted action and
verbal description. “She disappeared” (in a labor camp) is juxtaposed with a literal
image of her disappearance, out of the frame. Lara’s step out of the frame is a step
out of existence, out of History. That frame is depicted as History by the
representation of Stalin which dominates it. Lara’s figure, on the other hand, is
almost invisible from the beginning. And as she disappears, she does so along the
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insistent lines of the vanishing point, provided by the wall behind her, not only out
of the frame and History, but into the transcendent infinity of baroque composition.
Baroque transcendence ties the shot ambiguously to the film’s overall
composition. For this image is a remembered image on Yevgraf’s part. It is
explicitly grounded as his point of view, a grounding reenforced by his voice
over.28 It is thus not an objective, but subjective image, which means that the
dominant connotations of History revealed through physical detail above are
expressed through an individual, rather than a social consciousness. Thus, Lara’s
retreat to infinity makes some sense as Yevgraf s wish fulfillment for Lara (if not an
ascendance to Heaven, at least a vanishing towards something greater), as a fond
image. But such sentiment makes no sense against the historical, social nature of
the image.
Nor can the action’s location, a street, be overlooked. The location again
reenforces the shot’s contradictory functions: the point at which the production
engages the greater social life is here rendered as the memory of an individual,
looking at an individual. And yet, not an individual, since the mural forcibly
imposes the general motions of history into a subjective image. These
contradictions are made greater by the social world as depicted by the diegesis. The
simplicity of the image is made possible partly by its cleanliness, the absence of
refuse and distracting details which the film has associated with the immediate post-
Revolutionary period.29 This cleanliness, coming after the disorder and violence
with which these streets have been associated before, is a positive connotation
generated by the text itself.
Or perhaps not. Certainly it is on the Moscow street set that the majority of
social actions occur in the film. And most of the actions which precede the
Revolution (the massacre of the protesting workers; Lara’s seduction by
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Komarovsky; the Christmas drunkenness of the proletariat prior to Lara attempted
shooting of Komarovsky, etc.) are negative. Thus the clean post-Revolutionary
streets can be read against the dirty, violent pre-Revolutionary streets. But it is also
the space in which we see Tonia and Yuri kiss for the first time; it is the space in
which Lara and Zhivago first meet (although they don’t realize it) and so on. Thus
the street is not just the space in which the contradictory aims of the physical
representation battle for supremacy, but also where thematics compete for attention.
Thus even obvious figurative meaning is immediately problematized by the
range of connotations attached to the design. It is impossible to isolate an object
entirely on the basis of its compositional function, since it must have some
recognizability to the outside world to be readable inside it. At the same time, as an
object enters into a cinematic diegesis, it inevitably acquires new meaning as a result
of its inclusion. And just as the historical image is always measured against some
imagined ‘true’ image, lurking in the background, each element of design, such as a
hat, is also being measured against a field of hats, measured by similarity, purpose,
connotation, difference, and so on.
Thus, if we are to consider a hat as a text in order to understand how a film can
encourage luxury consumption, we have to examine not only Zhivago’s hat, but all
the hats in the film since the object acquires at least part of its naturalness by its
grounding in a context in which it is not exceptional, but one of many of the same
type. If Zhivago were the only man to wear a hat in the film, it would have much
more obvious presence. Instead, it is merely one of many bits of headgear in a
tapestry of hat association woven across the surface of the film.
This tapestry works as a horizontal movement of social function (hat as attire)
both with and against a vertical movement (hat as expression of Zhivago’s
personality.) Hats work in the film as a general social phenomenon of turn of the
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century Russia; individual hats reflect the character of the person wearing it. We can
add a few more reasons to those already mentioned why Zhivago should choose
this hat: as an exotic object, it reenforces the Gromekos’ class position, the ability
to buy precious objects. Zhivago/Sharif s physical Otherness also contributes to the
logic of its inclusion. (He’s described playfully as a “nomad” at one point, and the
funeral sequence at the film’s beginning clearly shows his origins on the Eurasian
steppes.) But at least one other reason problematizes these connotations, and relates
to the horizontal, social movement generated by the story.
Zhivago is not the only one to wear the woolen hat. Komarovsky also wears a
very similar hat the night he seduces/rapes Lara. This link between characters is
reenforced later when Yuri, wearing his fur hat, kisses Tonia as they ride down the
same street on which Komarovsky raped Lara, in the same mode of transport (a
sleigh.) The obvious rhyming of these two scenes is justified by an exchange of
dialogue between Zhivago and Komarovsky, who has just been shot by Lara. As
Zhivago dresses Komarovsky’s wounds, he asks:
Zhivago: What happens to a girl like that when a man like you is
finished with her?
Komarovsky: Interested? I give her to you.30
Zhivago’s disgust at Komarovksy’s attitude proves ironic, of course, when Yuri
has his extended affair with Lara.
Thus, explicit thematic linkage and physical similarity (hat, street space)
reenforce each other to establish a degree of complicity and equivalence between
Yuri and Komarovsky, the villain. At the same time, Yuri’s vertical set of
characteristics include other facets, student, poet, etc., which can be linked to other
characters and situations. For example, in early scenes, Yuri is shown wearing a
student’s cap, which rhymes with a similar cap worn by Pasha (Lara’s first
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husband.) It is also reminiscent in style with a soldier’s cap (worn most
prominently in the film by Yevgraf) and with workers’ caps. We thus can see a
complex interaction between hats within the diegesis.
Thus, similarity and difference combine to problematize compositional
connotation generated by the hat. The similarities between Yevgraf, Pasha and
Zhivago’s student caps link them visually, at least for a time. When Zhivago
abandons that cap for the woolen hat, he to some extent marks his entry into the
bourgeoisie, and certainly indicates his development as a character, since the new
hat is a physical marker of difference from his previous status. Pasha, as a contrary
example, abandons his students’ cap for a very similar soldiers’ cap, marking his
failure to develop emotionally. Read against Zhivago, Pasha’s failure to develop
becomes negative confirmation of Zhivago’s greater emotional maturity and
sensitivity, etc.
But the selection of the woolen hat also marks Zhivago as similar to
Komarovsky, while bringing with it those historical associations of barbarity which
contradict its image as a solid bourgeois artifact. These historical connotations do
not have to be known specifically by the viewer. But it certainly is necessary for the
hat to read generally as exotic for it to perform its semantic function of
‘Russianness,’ which, as we have noted, is tied to a string of associations that
exceed narrative requirements. Combined with Sharif s ambiguous ethnicity, the
hat’s exoticism and contradictory connotations do more, finally than mark Zhivago.
The hat marks itself as worthy of attention, something slightly apart from the
general narrative background, a stylish, slightly different, fetishizable object.
The Hat and the Super-text
That Doctor Zhivago was promoted on the basis of its spectacle and design is
not controversial. Page 11 of a fact booklet distributed to exhibitors, for example,
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gives statistics about the Moscow street set (“170,000 linear feet of pine, 46,200
square feet of hard board, 95,000 square feet of plywood, 42,000 feet of laths,
44,500 square feet of cane screening, 32,800 square feet of asbestos sheets . . .”)3 1
which filtered into several reviews. The film’s production designer, John Box, is
interviewed about creating “reality from illusion,” a process detailed enough to
extend to recreating in Russian newspapers that are never shown in close-up. Even
the published screenplay has pictures of the street set in its front and back covers
and title page. Only inside does the reader come across relatively close shots of the
actors.
Nor is it controversial that the film was a part of a campaign to sell hats. In a
follow-up publicity packet to the Academy Awards, there are interviews with
costume designer Phyllis Dalton (who won an Oscar for her designs in the film.)
Included among them is a sidebar “Accent on Furs in ‘Doctor Zhivago’” which
details the influence of the women’s furs worn in the film on the upcoming fashion
season. “The ‘Zhivago’ look has influenced and been incorporated in fashions from
the leading couture houses of the world and is featured in the collections of St.
Laurent, Dior . . . [etc.]” (This piece also includes side comments about the men’s
costumes, although nothing about Zhivago’s hat.)
Publicity for the film did not stop with clothes and sets. One of the more
intriguing suggestions from MGM’s publicity department is worth quoting in detail:
Vodka Gift to Movie Critics: In tune with the Russian background
of Doctor Zhivago, you might send a bottle of vodka to the local
paper’s amusement page staffers (or ajar of caviar to those whom
you have reason to believe are non-drinkers.) Daily columnists
might be included as well. An accompanying note with the vodka
could read as follows [in Russian, followed by] the English
translation: Here is a bottle of vodka with our compliments, and we
hope you enjoy Doctor Zhivago?1
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Movie exhibitors could not, of course, afford to give vodka or caviar to every
viewer, but this publicity idea extends to select viewers the logic of the commodity
fetish based on the body as site of consumption. Not content with adorning the
outside of our bodies with facsimiles of the film’s costumes, publicists encourage
acts of literal consumption, to ingest the world of the film into our bodies.3 3
All of this evidence would suggest that the producers of Doctor Zhivago were
successful in their exploitation of the ambience created by the film. By this
scenario, the film, through a complex process hits with an audience. Other
capitalists, alert to the possibilities offered by the film’s physical depiction, exploit
the film’s popularity by offering facsimilies of parts of its ambience. The
producers, in turn, re-exploit that exploitation by using it as further publicity for the
film, etc.
However, there is evidence to suggest that the MGM publicity department
created the “Zhivago” look in only a limited sense. For in fact, much of the fashion
craze that the film supposedly set in motion was already moving at the film’s
release. For example, in an advertisement of early 1964, a woman dressed in a fur
suit, with a fur hat very similar to those worn by the women in Doctor Zhivago is
used to sell VO Whiskey.34 This ad pre-dates the release of the film (December 22,
1965) by nearly two years. If newspaper advertisements are any indication, fur hats
for women were already highly popular at the time of the film’s release. Virtually
every ad for women’s clothing in the fall 1965 issues of both the New York and
Los Angeles Times, for example, prominently feature hats with passing similarities
to those worn by the women in the film.
Similarly, in an inserted catalog for B. Altman’s in the Sunday New York
Times of November 14, 1965, there is an ad for an “Embassy” hat which is
virtually identical to the one worn by Zhivago in the film. This example is
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admittedly ambiguous, since in the next issue of the Times, November 15, 1965,
there is the first advertisement for advanced booking of the premiere of Zhivago.
So, the hat’s presence in the Altman’s catalog might have been part of a saturation
campaign before release of the film. If so, however, there is remarkably little
evidence elsewhere to confirm such intentions, since this is the only advertising
appearance of the hat in the entire Fall and Winter months of 1965-66 in the New
York Times.
It seems more likely that the appearance in the Altman’s catalog is coincidental,
part of a broader context than the film’s promotion. Thus, the fact that the “Zhivago
hat” was a commercial success relates as much to existing fashion and taste as to the
film’s popularity. While explanations of that context must remain tentative and
partial, the evidence provided by Doctor Zhivago suggests one possible explanation
centered on male Eastern exoticism. Since both Sharif and the hat appeared
complexly, if obviously foreign to American and British audiences, images of
similarly foreign men from the mid-1960s may have provided the unconscious
contemporary texture around the exotic artifact.
In 1965, the most direct antecedent to Sharif/Zhivago’s appearance was
Sukarno, who was effectively stripped of power as President of Indonesia late in
the year.35 His appearance would thus have been fresh in people’s minds at the
film’s release. A familiar component of Sukarno’s style was his two-pointed cap.
While not made of fur, the hat’s overall shape is very close to Zhivago’s, as well as
to the “Embassy” hat advertised in Altman’s catalog. Sukarno offers an ambiguous,
potentially dangerous image to a Western viewer, triply Other— Third World,
socialist, Muslim. But this danger in fact could have helped reenforce the
connotation of ‘wildness’ associated with the hat, and therefore have worked to
underline the hat’s diegetic function, cloaking both President and actor in the exotic.
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Of course, even granting this possibility does little to explain why the mid-
1960s consumer would want to look like Sukarno (or any other similarly exotic
Eastern male.) However, evidence suggests that the middle-class American male’s
self-image underwent a change in the mid-1960s, which might temporarily have
expressed itself through a sympathy with vaguely Eastern design. The June, 1966
issue of Esquire, for example, noted:
Something .. .has persuaded the American man to spend
$400,000,000 a year to smell good and look pretty.. . .Depending
upon how the [male cosmetics] market is defined, estimates of its
total potential for 1966 range from $355,000,000 to $435,000,000.
Many of the manufacturers and distributors in the business have
experienced sales increases during the past two years of 300 to 400
percent.36
Doreen Yarwood writes about post-war male fashion:
Though less subject to the rapid changes in fashion seen in feminine
dress, men’s clothes since 1950 have altered dramatically. The trend
has been towards more variety of wear for different temperatures
and occasions, less formality and greater casualness.3 7
Whether labeled as a feminization of men, a new dandyism, exoticism or
Orientalism, this general phenomenon of a ‘new’ concern with grooming, vanity
and appearance suggests a movement away from a squarely Establishment image,
or at least a change in that image.
These shreds of evidence help to construct the mental image the 1965-66
consumer may have had at the moment of purchase. But even the concrete factor of
price must be measured relatively, as part of the mental calculus each consumer
undertakes at the moment of purchase.3 8 The decision to buy an item is, of course,
based on the relatively objective factors of price vs. available income. But it is
based at least as much on a subjective factor, value as created by the fetish, and an
objective factor tinged with subjectivity, potential utility. Wolfgang Haug describes
this mixture of subjectivity, objectivity and utility:
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.. .the motivation to exchange, that is to buy, is determined by the
aesthetic promise of use-value, that is by the use-value I subjectively
promise myself on the basis of what the commodity objectively
promises me.39
Put simply, we justify our desire for a commodity by the utility its possession sets
in motion. But that desire is based on a particular aesthetic form created apart from
the object’s utility.40 Aesthetic illusion enters as an independent force. As a result,
“Whoever controls the product’s appearance can control the fascinated public by
appealing to them sensually.”4 1
While films, unlike advertising, are not explicitly geared toward the sale of a
product other than themselves, most nonetheless are consciously designed to
provide an idealized perspective on their materials, inextricably linked with framing,
controlling and excluding 42 A narrative film may not be ‘designed’ to sell
products, but it does something perhaps even more important towards the creation
of the commodity fetish: it creates the idealized world of product identification from
which advertising can draw.
But like advertising, films draw on a shared set of cultural capital, images
vaguely recognized as artistic, that help to create the commodity affect43 But since
that affect is a fantasy projection shorn of the impetus to buy, the array of
commodities can acquire an even greater seductive power because of their
placement within a diegesis, almost always depicted as easily realizable apart from
economic struggle. Commodities are strewn with calculated casualness across the
frame, appearing somehow just there, attainable without effort, no more important
than a shrug, immediately, unproblematically available. Advertising, after all, is
explicitly presentational. It carries with its seduction an implicit admission of its
desire to sell. Films sell all the more effectively because they lack the explicit
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message to consume.44 The narrativized commodity is the ultimate alienated object,
for not only is the labor necessary for its production excluded; that needed to
purchase the object is suppressed.
In Doctor Zhivago, opulent visual stylization is typically divorced from
production and labor. The richly decorated and furnished home of the Gromekos,
for example, just is, apart from any obvious means of support. Of the people in the
household, only Yuri chooses a profession, and within the story’s terms, that
choice seems almost an idiosyncrasy to be indulged. A lushly appointed cocoon,
hermetically sealed against the outside world, the Gromeko home is merely the
example at hand; few films connect their rich surroundings with any productive
labor. But Doctor Zhivago compounds this general phenomenon by its closed
organization around a period setting, always pointing inward, drawing the gaze
centripetally into the frame cluttered with exotica, shutting out all intrusion.
Stuart Ewen has described this tendency to view the past apart from material
realities:
Films, faces, musical refrains and dance-steps, and various fads and
crazes that have been “picked up” by the media, each occupies its
pictorial place in a fragmentary and essentially stylistic depiction of
“an era.” This transvaluation of memory is of great significance. As
style becomes a rendition of social history, it silently and ineluctably
transforms that history from a process of human conflicts and
motivations, an engagement between social interests and forces, into
a market mechanism, a fashion show.4 5
Ewen describes the creation of new styles in fashion, and how that effects our
views of the past, but his description is as apt for the general tendency of period
recreation in film. And while he includes films as part of a texture which gives an
era its aura (Astaire/Rogers musicals, for example, as paradigmatically “30s”) he
could easily have included the History Film’s attitude towards history itself.
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While the museum metaphor may work more precisely to describe History
Film’s attitude towards the past than Ewen’s fashion show, both descriptions
suggest the evacuation of meaning from objects, extraction from physical and
material contexts to be re-set in a privileged, exhibitory frame. Thus, while not a
direct form of advertising, History Films work to fetishize commodities by
implying that they can be possessed apart from struggle and by grounding them
within patterns of character and plot identification. In Doctor Zhivago, the
Gromeko home appeals for its promise of luxury without effort, a soft cushion for
characters with whom the viewer identifies, embodied in cultivated, hot-house
objects, movie stars.
In this effortless luxury, History Films contribute towards Haug’s larger regime
of commodity consumption. But his theory cannot explain much about single acts
of consumption. As a description of a general phenomenon, Haug offers a
convincing model of large, supra-individual socioeconomic structures. But at most
this theory can provide plausible suggestions of the externals that may motivate a
person to buy an individual commodity. Yet not every person who saw Doctor
Zhivago bought a hat; it is reasonable to assume that not every person who saw the
film liked it; and there were probably some people who did not care for the film but
who bought the hat because they did like it. The individual act of consumption,
however determined it may be by external factors must ultimately be evaluated on
the ephemeral notion of taste.
Pierre Bourdieu suggests that taste itself is sociologically determined, and that
therefore individual acts of consumption must still be measured against the broader
field.46 For Bourdieu, the chief factor in any decision to purchase will be based on
two forms of capital, economic and cultural. Economic capital is the simple means
to purchase. Cultural capital is the education necessary to de-code the processes of
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stylization attached to an object which, in Haug’s terms, add to its value, and thus
are part of the process of fetishization. But cultural capital is itself grounded in an
economic reality: the ability to savor culture and make distinctions between artifacts
pre-supposes sufficient leisure time to be able to indulge such interests. Those
engaged in a daily struggle to survive lack this luxury; therefore such people will
always work at a disadvantage.
The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile— in a word,
natural— enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture,
implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be
satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous,
distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why
art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and
deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social
differences.47
As a result of these ever-greater distinctions, the excluded internalize the image the
dominant class has of them as their self-imago,, viewing themselves as inferior
because of their lack of education.
Bourdieu’s theory of taste suggests that an individual who purchased the
Zhivago hat did so to the extent that he/she could afford it, and to which the image
encoded in the hat conformed to an internalized self-image based on education and
economic class. While to some extent refining models like Haug’s by suggesting
the social components of taste, Bourdieu’s schema simultaneously reduces all non
utilitarian purchase to economics, since even the cultural capital he introduces as a
factor has an economic base. Yet Ewen, investigating the historical origins of the
American aesthetic, suggests:
.. .there emerged two distinct ways of apprehending the very
question of status and class. By the mid-nineteenth century, both of
these contending outlooks were being articulated. One way of
comprehending class focused on the social relations of power which
dominated and shaped the modern, industrial mode of production.
The other outlook— which has left an indelible imprint on the
meaning of style in contemporary American society— gave rise to a
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notion of class defined, almost exclusively, by patterns of
consumption,48
Ewen suggests that patterns of consumption themselves create a class image.
After describing the emerging middle-class of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, he goes on to note:
These discussions of the “middle class” and its anxieties have a
remarkably current ring to them. They point to the emergence of a
consumer society, filled with mass-produced status symbols, in
which judgment about a person is not based on what one does
within society, but rather upon what one has. Such an
understanding of class has moved away from the conception rooted
in the social relations of power, and toward a notion based, for the
most part, on income and credit. “Middle class” status was
becoming something founded purely on one’s ability to purchase,
construct, and present a viable social self. While this modem idea of
class invested more and more people with the iconography of status,
it also tended to mask the relations of power that prevailed within
society.49
Ewen’s description accords well with similar comments by Jean Baudrillard about a
universal system of signs:
One may regret that it supplants all others. But conversely, it could
be noted that the progressive decline of all other systems (of birth,
of class, of positions). . .necessitated the institution of a clear,
unambiguous, and universal code of recognition. In a world where
millions of strangers cross each other daily in the streets the code of
“social standing” fulfills an essential social function, while it
satisfies the vital need of people to be always informed about one
another. . . .[but] the constraint o f a single referent only acts to
exacerbate the desire fo r discrimination 50
Put simply, under Ewen and Baudrillard’s scenarios, you are what you buy; under
Bourdieu’s, you buy what you are.
Ewen’s description allows a degree of personal enpowerment, while at the same
time acknowledging the power relationships which this process hides. The objects
with which we clutter our lives are part of a self-conscious theatricalization in which
appearances are part of a role played at a given point in time. Under this model, the
viewer of Doctor Zhivago buys the hat as a means of perpetuating a personal
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fantasy set in motion by the film. The purchase then enters the dance of appearances
made possible by consumer society, confirming to him/herself the appropriateness
of the purchase by the participation with others in this dance.
Bourdieu’s model suggests that the person who buys the Zhivago hat does so to
the extent that the image as presented in the film and by the advertising super-text
conforms to an internalized self-image. He/she buys the hat not as a participant on
the stage of life, but as a further extension of a fundamental self. The Ewen
consumer purchases in a spirit of play; the Bourdieu consumer purchases in a spirit
of utility— even if that utility is based on a notion of self-expression rather than
functionalism.
At first glance, the Ewen model seems both more likely and attractive. It allows
sufficient elbow-room for individual personality, while not denying the social
determinants in the construction of personality. The Bourdieu model, on the other
hand, depends on an essentialist notion of both utility and class taste. This
essentialism can easily lead to the vulgarization that workers will always dress
‘badly’ while middle and upper class consumers will always have an advantage of
signification since they have control over the processes of classification which
define the parameters of taste.
But the Ewen model is ultimately just as flawed, not least because of the play
that is enacted under it. The Zhivago hat is purchased in quotes, as if its selection is
arbitrary. But participating in the play of appearances ultimately means dressing
oneself in the diegesis of Doctor Zhivago, along with the historical threads attached
to it. For if an individual act of consumption cannot be explained entirely in terms
of supra-textual machines of oppression, neither can it be dismissed as random. A
particular image is chosen. And even if, as Ewen suggests, credit makes that image
more generally available than Bourdieu’s strictly economistic model allows, there
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remains a bottom-line: credit is not arbitrarily awarded; it arises from the wages the
worker receives, which in turn derives from levels of skill, education, etc. In short,
the class component remains.
To avoid despairing of any explanation, however, a return to the text with these
theories in mind may help to explain the complex set of reasons that may motivate
an individual purchase. For it is the fissures of complexity and contradiction opened
by the texts (hat, film, character, etc.) that provide the spaces in which capital can
invest exploitive energies. It is the very multiplicity and diversity of meaning
provided by the hat’s grounding in a particular text which provides avenues of
appeal to equally fragmentary (though not random) consuming subjects. In this
process, diversity becomes the most efficient means of exploiting the most
consumers.
To sell the hat, then, it becomes necessary only for the capitalist to find in each
consumer either that one point or complex of associations which will motivate
him/her to purchase the object. Thus a narrativized hat is much more appealing than
one merely advertised in a catalog, because of the surplus of connotations generated
by the text. To return to an earlier point, the Persian connotation provided by the
hat’s material is not so much superseded by Doctor Zhivago's Russian setting as
supplemented by it. The label is important only to the extent that it stimulates
purchase; Persian, Russian or Bolivian— it doesn’t matter as long the consumer
buys.
In light of this situation, it could be argued that Bourdieu, not Ewen, offers the
more optimistic scenario. The unified self inherent in the notion of internalized
class-image may produce a sense of inferiority, but it also allows the possibility of
genuine resistance to hegemonic consumption. By recognizing “that which I am
not,” the unified self can establish a set of personal values different from gross
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consumption. The atomized, diverse consumer, on the other hand, presents a set of
facades to which the enterprising capitalist need only attach a fetishized scenario of
value to get him/her to buy. Lacking a self-image, this consumer has the virtue of
play, but lacks the ability to resist coercion, since he/she has no value to oppose to
the capitalist except the very diversity the capitalist exploits.
The eleven pages of suggested publicity offered by MGM to its exhibitors for
Doctor Zhivago may represent an extreme case because of their own investment in
the film. But that is part of the point. One of the reasons the film was so expensive
was because it was a History Film. One of the studio’s strategies to re-coup its
investment was to concentrate on the amount of money (and effort) which had been
expended in production. Another part included the promotion of aspects of its
physical environment, such as the costumes, which could be reproduced cheaply
and made readily available to consumers.
Whether or not the film created a fashion craze for woolen hats, or merely
exploited an existing context is, finally, secondary. More important is the degree to
which Zhivago fashions, present on the street, participated in the self-confirming
cycle of commodity consumption. The film exists, with hats. People see the film,
buy the hats. The hats enter the street as Zhivago hats and become popular. Popular
hats breed greater desire for those without in order to be part of an “in” group.
Meanwhile, as this contemporary texture of hats arises on the streets, the film
acquires new viewers, at least partially on the basis of the fashion crazes it has
exploited. For those viewers now familiar with the hat, it ceases being a foreign
object, but it participates no less strongly in the creation of value. Instead of
generating currency on the basis of its cultural connotations, the hat now acquires
significance as an item worthy of emulation, of proof of the film’s power.
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This cycle is not endless, though it is possible for fashion statements to survive
a single season. The association of blue jeans with freedom and self-expression, for
example has managed to continue by repeatedly associating them with ‘proletarian,
rebellious, youthful’ imagery, despite their production by a coercive corporation
and the fact that they express nothing other than the desire to look like everyone
else. But this kind of perpetuation may be an exception. Certainly it is not enough
for one film to perpetuate an object’s popularity.
The Zhivago hat would have had to be taken up in a general context and
repeated across other texts for it to have had the staying power of blue jeans. The
fact that it re-appears only briefly in Nicholas and Alexandra for example, which is
set during the same period, the same country, designed by the same person (John
Box) and produced only a few years after Zhivago, suggests that the hat had
insufficient staying power to become anything more than a recurring period detail.
This failure may result from its very exoticism, the fact that it is different enough to
call attention to itself, but for that very reason unsuitable for a society structured on
visual conformity. The hat does not move to the forefront as a normalized object,
something which proves our ‘hipness.’ Instead, it retreats into the background as
an exotic object and becomes a subject for doctoral dissertations.
The Moment of Privilege
Does this investigation of the success of the Zhivago hat reveal anything new?
The fact of consumption and a few theories to explain it still sit inert on the table,
waiting to be tricked into life with a unifying explanation. Nothing has happened
but to take what was simple and to make it complex. But it’s necessary to dissect a
body in order to reveal the organs working underneath. To understand digestion,
the importance of the stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys has to be known. The
combination of textual analysis and historical investigation provides a cultural
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anatomy lesson, revealing the textual organs that make up the body politic in their
complex interaction. And since complexity appears to be the device exploited by
capitalism as a means of securing ever more consumers, to show how it arises
brings something new to the topic.
But the complexity is a matter of signification; the fact of consumption is quite
simple: to buy is to participate in the economic structures produced by monopoly
capitalism as reenforced by the state, expressed through culture. It is in the act of
consuming that the directly political nature of the commodity appears. Diverse
connotation opens a space for negotiating signification. To the extent that it allows a
bit of subversive meaning to sneak into otherwise repressive contexts, consumption
can lead to personal satisfaction and enpowerment. A clerk in a staid bank, for
example, may purchase a Zhivago hat as a means of adding a dash of exoticism to
both his/her life and office.
But if the clerk’s boss demanded the hat’s removal, off it would go— unless
he/she had sufficient economic resources to exist without a job. Moments of
genuine subversion in signification quickly evaporate because they are so easily
thwarted by economic and power realities and so easily incorporated into the style
market. Moreover, that potential subversion must be measured against the political
realities of signification itself: exotic consumer goods express the West’s
possession of the East as a source for style; the clerk expresses him/herself at the
expense of a colonized people. Thus, at most, style merely subverts style— not
nothing, of course, but very limited compared to the changes possible through the
muzzle of a gun.
Does the choice made by a consumer express self? Yes— but it is a limited
definition of self, filtered through someone else’s definition, a willingness to have
others determine what is our correct image. Whatever the emotional satisfactions
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such consumption may achieve, we must assume that they would pale next to a self-
defined self. Ultimately, mass consumption provides the freedom to look and act
like everyone else, drunk on a specious diversity masking a very limited view of
human potential and creativity. That people now champion this washed-out
conformity merely expresses a society alienated from a reality it does not want to
admit exists beyond the accumulated sensations of atomized monads. As Jean
Baudrillard described this situation before giving in to it:
Consumption is therefore a powerful element in social control (by
atomizing individual consumers); yet at the same time it requires the
intensification of bureaucratic control over the processes of
consumption, which is subsequently heralded, with increased
intensity, as the reign o f freedom. We will never escape it.5 1
It may be impossible, as Baudrillard has also argued, in a society as
economically advanced as our own even to speak of use value any longer.5 2 Very
few commodities have a purely utilitarian purpose, and even those which clearly
enpower the user (such as a personal computer) do so largely within the rarefied
realm of the super-super structure. (Computers are only powerful because society
depends on them, not out of any inherent power.) Is it then possible for such a
thing as ‘progressive consumption?’ The answer to that question ultimately depends
on the consumer him/herself.
To slip back into the Puritanical Marxism which denies sensual pleasure in
favor of utility is not the answer. But neither is a giddy acceptance of everything.
Embracing everything respects nothing, least of all oneself. The decision to
purchase must be governed by a personal morality based on a knowledge of self in
relation to the greater social fabric. Only in this double sense of ‘self can any hope
of real empowerment occur. Our bank clerk in the Zhivago hat will inevitably feel
the ‘need’ to buy another commodity as long as he/she is frustrated with his/her
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life. And that frustration has no chance of ending unless he/she recognizes that the
hat, as the expression of an egotistical desire to establish individuality through
conformity, is as much a cause of the frustration as a relief from it.
The History Film participates in this process, inevitably, as any commodity
will. But an interesting question arises. If we accept the 1980s as a conservative,
grossly consumptive decade, why is the History Film largely lacking? If its only
effect is to de-historicize all conflict in order to support traditional messages, while
reveling in the commodity, isn’t it logical that their production should be
encouraged? Yet precisely the opposite is the case. The last American produced
History Film to be staged on a large scale, Reds (1980), can be so described only
with a very generous definition of the genre. Political biography during the decade
was largely confined to imports (e.g. Gandhi, 1981; Rosa Luxemburg, 1985.)
Historical representation, to the extent it existed was confined almost exclusively to
melodrama (e.g. Out o f Africa, 1985; Empire o f the Sun, 1989.) Audiences for
large scale history of any type had to content themselves with the reconstruction of
Lawrence o f Arabia in 1989.53
As Omar Sharif’s career suggests, Lawrence o f Arabia exemplifies the way
History Films rely on exotic objects derived from collective memory and mis
representation as a means of reconstructing the past. But the film also suggests why
the past should remain dangerous territory for an era wallowing in the moment.
Exposed to a different set of expectations, 1962’s representational systems viewed
in the light of 1989’s political consciousness inevitably encourage debate. That that
exposure was proven partial by the successful demonization of Saddam Hussein in
the 1991 Gulf War is secondary to the extent that film and war are both revealed as
part of a greater political tapestry. Lawrence of Arabia's re-release did not cause the
Gulf War. But it is difficult to view their close proximity through the spectacles of
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pure aesthetics, to insist that the film’s depiction of Arabs can be isolated from the
consequences of that depiction.
That History Films distort history by their externalized presentation is
inevitable. But they also provide some popular access to history. Merely keeping
the past alive as a subject may provide a service for a society which wants nothing
more than to forget the undertows and currents of accumulated guilt and tragedy
which enable it to float like froth on the surface of historical oceans. But as the
Lawrence/Gulf War juxtaposition suggests, externalized history is a very powerful
weapon which cannot be viewed irresponsibly. Too much of what we think we
know about the past derives from these fictionalized, glamorized, designed visions
of it.
Thus, even as fashion mills exploit a cinematic success, and as producers pre
sell a film on the basis of ancillary commodities, the dramatization of History sows
a potential minefield, since to be historical is to be political. The conservative
critique offered by most History Films is useful to the extent that it encourages
political analysis and dialogue. By providing a set of values beyond personal
gratification, the History Film at least implicitly offers a possibility of something
more than the here-and-now. They offer an explicitly political discourse to which
alternative, but equally social values can be advanced.
To make up for its representational limitations, film resorts to design,
simultaneously providing surfaces to which the viewer is invited to attach
him/herself. Through all of this, design channels, shapes, directs desires and
attitudes towards aesthetically pleasing, socially acceptable norms. The aesthetic
heightening provided in History Films carries this process one step further, adding
the codes of cultural weight and importance to an already idealized image. Each
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object is selected at a higher level of self-consciousness, as the expression of social
fact. That designers of History Films try to achieve that awareness while re-
subsuming it into story requirements does not alter the fact that historical design
always includes a self-assertiveness which can never fully be controlled. For it is
exactly as a marker of difference that it acquires validity and value.
Thus the problem with History Films is not so much their explicitly
conservative political messages, but the state of mind encouraged by both their
designed Moments of Privilege and the act of consumption. The conservatism of
these films lies not in their contradictory social messages, nor in the consumption
they arguably encourage, but in their unequivocal basking in the glow of the luxury
commodity, placing the spectator in an ideal perspective, inviting him/her to enjoy
the spectacle, to savor it with the expert delectation of a wine connoisseur, in a
moment of formal privilege which encourages egotistical isolation. When we
consume luxury artifacts, when we participate in the roundelay of commodities
through the concrete act of exchange, it is an act of equally egotistical economic
privilege. There can be no escape from this cycle until privilege is exchanged for
insight, and we recognize the Totality of Life based on a social identification.
1 Satch LaValley, “Hollywood and Seventh Avenue: The Impact of Period Films on
Fashion” Hollywood and History, 94.
2 Franqois Boucher, 20,000 Years o f Fashion: the History o f Costume and
Personal Adornment, 9.
3 Boucher 26.
4 Boucher 68.
5 Leon Trotsky, The History o f the Russian Revolution, 1:3.
6 “Hats are now [1950 onwards] only rarely part of the masculine wardrobe ...”
Doreen Yarwood, Fashion in the Western World 1500-1990, 155.
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7 An exaggeration? Consider the following story about the Prince of Wales (future
Edward VIII): “The Prince’s fondness for going out without a hat on annoyed both
his father [King George V] and the hat industry to such an extent that Thow Munro,
Chairman of the Executive Council of the Textile and Allied Trades section at the
British Industries Fair told the Prince that he was affecting their sales. Prince
Edward apologized and agreed to wear more hats in the future, and in 1932
promoted the straw boater to help the hatters of Luton. This royal example
improved sales.” Diana de Marly, Fashion for Men: an Illustrated History, 121.
8 The following discussion is based on information culled from Film Actors Guide,
compiled and edited by Steven A. LuKanic.
9 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 21.
10 Said 58.
1 1 This estimation is based only on those Sharif films which I have seen, of which
I’ve read descriptions, or whose titles clearly announce a period setting.
1 2 Jean-Louis Comolli, “Historical Fiction: A Body Too Much.”
1 3 quoted in MGM publicity packet available in the USC Cinema-Television library.
Unfortunately, it is unclear whether this packet contains one, or several publicity
packets. My references, therefore, must remain vague.
14 Said 188.
1 5 Said 102.
1 6 This synopsis is based on the film; the novel’s story is considerably different in
several important ways, which will be discussed below.
1 7 All film quotations are from the MGM-Carlo Ponti Production, Doctor Zhivago
(1965) as presented in the 1988 Turner Entertainment laserdisc. Hereafter, to be
cited as MGM, followed by side number (S#), minutes and seconds (00.00), e.g.,
this quotation, MGM S2:46.40. The disc will be preferred over the published
screenplay except except when the latter provides material not available in the film.
Such instances will be cited as Bolt. References to the novel will be cited as
Pasternak.
An equivalent passage to this description in the novel is a speech given by Yuri at a
party shortly after his return from the front: “‘I too think that Russia is destined to
become the first socialist state since the beginning of the world. When this comes to
pass, the event will stun us for a long time, and after awakening we shall have lost
half our memories forever. We’ll have forgotten what came first and what
followed, and we won’t look for causes. The new order of things will be all around
us and as familiar to us as the woods on the horizon or the clouds over our heads.
264
There will be nothing else left.’” Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 182. Hereafter,
Pasternak.
1 8 Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 339.
1 9 This relatively a-political attitude towards the Revolution may be the contribution
of Robert Bolt. John Mclnemey has argued that . .the balance Bolt aims for
should be evident. And that balance . . .is one of a network of deliberately induced
tensions. There is the balance between the overpowering forces of history and the
persistence of individual commitment; between realists and romantics; between the
reality of the past and the awareness of the present. . .between large-scale action
and personal drama; between a nuanced treatment of a complex theme and the
requirements of a popular ‘epic’ movie.” John Mclnemey, “77ze Mission and
Robert Bolt’s Drama of Revolution,” 76.
20 see Bolt ix-xv on the consequences of adapting the novel, particularly as a
product of condensation and of the differences between narrative and dramatic
form.
2 1 Pasternak 28.
22 Pasternak 318
22 MGM S2:48.31.
24 MGM S2:49.15.
25 MGM S4:39.19.
26 In the published screenplay, the painted images of Lenin and Trotsky were meant
to be followed by a similar image of Stalin (Bolt 126.) At some point, the decision
must have been made to remove it. The mural of Stalin at the end, however, is
described as showing him surrounded by admiring children (Bolt 220.) By painting
the last image in the same style as the earlier murals, it echoes the earlier examples.
But the stylistic similarity creates chronological problems, as noted above. Note too
that the screenplay calls for Lara to disappear into a crowd.
27 For a discussion of the mural tradition and its relation to historical representation,
see Vachel Lindsay, The Art o f the Moving Picture.
28 For a thorough overview of the various combinations of point-of-view, see
Edward Branigan, Point o f View in the Cinema : a Theory o f Narration and
Subjectivity in Classical Film.
29 The novel explicitly identifies this period as that of the New Economic Policy, or
NEP (Pasternak 473), but the film never makes this connection. There would thus
be a new contradiction in emphasizing Stalin’s importance, since Lenin and
Trotsky, not Stalin, were associated with the NEP. Such historical “smudging” is
typical of the film, which never quite makes sense as chronology.
30 MGM S2:14.11.
3 1 MGM publicity packet.
32 MGM publicity packet.
33 According to an article in the October 1966 issue of Esquire, page 96 “This is
the year when vodka may outsell gin. . . .” Appearing ten months after the release
of Doctor Zhivago, this bit of information is followed by a description of the then
new to the American market Stolichnaya vodka. Similar promotional tie-ins were
suggested for Nicholas and Alexandra (see chapter 4.)
34 As seen in Esquire, vol. 44, no. 2 (February 1964): 48.
3 5 In fact, Sukarno is only the most obvious of several political figures who wore
the two-pointed cap. Others include Jawaharlal Nehru of India (who died only in
1964, and was thus still probably familiar to audiences), Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana (pictured in the February 25, 1966 issue of the New York Times) and Ayub
Khan of Pakistan (pictured with Lyndon Johnson in the December 19, 1965 issue
of the Los Angeles Times.)
36Esquire, vol. 45, no.6 (June 1966) 111. The October 1965 issue (129) also
featured an article on Sukarno, pictured in his ubiquitous hat.
37 Yarwood 154.
38 Placed in a concrete, economic context, the $22.00 Altman’s purchase price
reveals its status as a luxury item. For example, in a supermarket advertisement in
the New York Times of September 15, 1965, a sixteen oz. box of Tide detergent
sold for $.29 ($.018/oz.); a 12 oz. box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes for $.27
($.022/oz.); a one pound can of Maxwell House coffee for $.79 ($.049/oz.); two
fifteen ounce loaves of white bread advertised in the November 1, 1965 issue of the
Los Angeles Times sold for the “everyday low price” of $.49 ($.016/oz.)
These prices should be compared to a contemporary (1993) context in order to be
understood fully. For example, prices for similar items in a local (Santa Monica)
supermarket as of October 27, 1993: a 23 oz. box of Tide, $2.84 ($. 123/oz.);
Kellogg’s corn flakes, 12 oz., $1.79 ($.149/oz.); Maxwell House Coffee, 13 oz.,
$1.99 ($.153/oz.). Without knowing specifics of the brand of bread advertised in
1965, a direct comparison with current prices is difficult. However, on the
assumption that a premium white bread from 1965 would be equivalent to a
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contemporary low-end brand, we can note that a single 16 oz. loaf of Weber’s
white bread sells for $1.75 ($.109/oz.) Comparisons with contemporary hats in the
Los Angeles area are virtually impossible. However, using the ratio established in
1965 between a loaf of white bread and the B. Altman’s hat, a contemporary 'price
for a similar hat would be approximately 88 times that of a loaf of bread, roughly
$154.00.
39 Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Critique o f Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality
and Advertising in Capitalist Society, 144.
40 Haug 16.
41 Haug 17.
42 Charles Eckert (“The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window”) suggests otherwise.
Investigating the relationship between several 1930s releases and product
placements and tie-ins, he demonstrates the usefulness Hollywood served in
disseminating positive images for products. However, aside from its temporal
boundaries, Eckert’s discussion is limited in relevance to this discussion, since he
wants to demonstrate the generation of desire for contemporary (1930s)
commodities, rather than the exotic period objects we are considering here. For a
more general discussion of the integration of “modem” commodities into public
consciousness, see Donald Albrecht, Designing Dreams: Modem Architecture in
the Movies.
43 see John Berger, Ways o f Seeing, for a discussion of the relationship between
advertising images and the art historical tradition.
44 see Eckert regarding the selling of the American way of life to overseas
audiences in the teens and twenties.
45 Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: the Politics of Style in Contemporary
Culture, 248, emphases in original.
46 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement o f Taste.
47 Bourdieu 7.
48 Ewen 61, emphases in original.
49 Ewen 68.
50 Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Objects,” Selected Writings, 20, emphases in
original. It should be noted that in this essay, if not later ones, Baudrillard is very
267
critical of this process. Ewen too treads the thin line between ecstatically describing
his object and remaining critical of it.
5 1 Jean Baudrillard, “Consumer Society,” in Selected Writings, 53, emphases in
original.
52 Jean Baudrillard, “The Political Economy of the Sign,” in Selected Writings.
53 Equally suggestive is the sudden spate of films with historical subjects in late
1992: Malcolm X, 1492 and Hoffa. Even Bram Stoker’ s Dracula pays much
greater attention to the familiar story’s historical background than is normal for its
cinematic adaptations. Should we view this sudden re-appearance of large-scale
History Film as a response to Lawrence’s re-release? The timing is too close to
ignore.
268
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Asset Metadata

Creator Tashiro, Charles Shiro (author)

Core Title Production design and the history film

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Critical Studies

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-684440

Unique identifier UC11342925

Identifier DP22283.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-684440 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22283.pdf

Dmrecord 684440

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Tashiro, Charles Shiro

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA