Scénario du film Passion

“…not creating a world, but the possibility of a world…” says Godard.

In the following link, there is a video in which Godard explains his process of developing the scenerio of Passion. I think, there are some clues in the video on Godard’s approach to film and thought. The video is not only of an interview with him; it is presumably produced by himself using his montage techniques. For those who are taking Andreas’ class, you will remember that I have mentioned this video in the discussion on Godard, but after reading the article of Deleuze, it has been a more interesting spectacle for me.

Segah Sak

A metaphor: American Beauty

After reading Thought and Cinema and Image part in Seven-film thinking, two rhyming words, which are metaphor and metonymy, led me to think about.  In the Thought and Cinema, metonymy is defined as which separates images whereas metaphor connects images together with the whole. Eisenstein mentions two different images can have the same harmonics for making metaphor.

At that point, American Beauty clearly exemplifies the concept of metaphor.  There are two striking metaphors in this movie or maybe we can also say first one is metaphor and second one is metonymy: The first one is rose imagery referring to beauty.  Mena Suvari is depicted as an object of desire because of Kevin Spacey’s fantasy about this girl and the rose image is detached herself with the imagination of Spacey.  Except this detachment, the red is apparently used as the color of door, flower standing on the table, Real Estate posters of Peter Gallagher, Annette’s clothes and Spacey’s new car.  Alan Ball, the screenwriter of American Beauty, uses red color in different ways during the film.  As for the question of what this color generally symbolizes is life force.  Every character defines their life force (soul, sex, assertion, individuality, ambition etc.) differently.  Also, Suvari is an object of hatred linked with Annette Bening that she cultivates the roses in her garden at the first scene.  Second one is the plastic bag dancing in the air also has a red wall behind it.  We can say this is another object symbolizes again beauty in more spiritual way.  Wes Bentley’s words explain why I said it is spiritual: “I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid”.  Also, this object is again used at the end of the film because now it is associated with Spacey’s death at peace.

Here, we can see the red color as a distinctive metaphor generally referred by viewer to the rose in the film and then embeds the other images.

Eisenstein also adds in the first article: “A circuit which includes simultaneously the author, the film and the viewer is elaborated.  The complete circuit thus includes the sensory shock which raises us from the images to conscious thought, then the thinking in figures which takes us back to the images and gives us an affective shock again.”  Here, the rose appears as a way of transmission from the image to thought, then coming back for recall of our sensory shock.

Lastly, Nietzsche declares On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense that truth is in fact ‘a movable host of metaphors and metonymies’ due to the fundamentally metaphorical nature of concept-formation, a series of creative leaps from nerve stimulus to retinal image (first metaphor) to sound as signifier (second metaphor).

I think our mind actually needs syntagmatic and synthetical connections between signifiers and signified or metaphors and metonymies in a movie to make meaningful, instead invasion of signs without any connection as Godard does in Histoire(s) du Cinema.  That’s why it gets help from our memory.

Actually, discussion about metaphor and metonymy goes on but now it is just a little end waiting for the new ones..

References:

“Metaphor in Philosophy”, Wikipedia

“Thought and Cinema”, (156-187)

“Seven-Film thinking”, Image

Aytul Demiray

Economic, industrial and technologic realities of cinema

After we had discussed the history of the cinema at the lesson, I just think about the unification of economic, industrial and technologic realities of cinema. By these developments, nobody focus on works and authors’ as much as latter works. The result of the financial and technological factors, these changes still effects and it seems that it will affect the future of cinema history.

Technology develops rapidly and at the each period of it, we use different equipments and styles for each of them (cameras, lenses, new techniques…). So, here is the question that how can we know the resistance of a technical device to time? Will it be resist to change or demise for ever?

By the technological change the succession of financing films may not be acceptable. I want to give an example that I saw in a music &film market a few weeks ago. A guy and his girlfriend asked to the salesperson of the shop, a movie that they could watch. He gave some CD to them then asked them in which media will they watch the movies. But it does not any meaning for them because they only wanted to watch it. Salesperson told them the CD is in HD quality and they could not watch them with high visual quality at DVD players. However, it again does not matter for them and they said “we only want to watch it, visual quality is unnecessary”. So, here I ask, where are these technological developments going for these kinds of people? Or, do they protest the technology to watch films at low prices? Therefore, it can be said that the economic processes are also important for cinema as technology.

The architectures and decorations of cinema halls had been changed, according to these changes; the ticket prices increased. Additionally, if we add the financial film price which has high technological devised at the production, we can ask: who will watch those films at cinemas. There is a cinema culture in our society. Some movies should be watched at the cinema saloon for the fans of films, but who will pay these high prices that are the results of the economic and technological factors or for whom are those films made for? In which class of people do producers produce those films, do they classify people according to their many by using the technology?

Also by these developments in technology, cinema always takes the benefits of it. I don’t think that people try to develop technological devises for cinema, I believe it develops and cinema affects from it.
However, by these developments, I just ask “for whom” for prices and now I am asking again it for the technological products. Technology develops very rapidly and the progress of the humanity has some difficulties to catch those developments in some cases. It changes every day in fact every minute. But do viewers intelligent enough to understand them as quick as it do. I believe a time period need for the people to understand what does it for and what it is describe.

I think the savior of the cinema technology is sound technology. It takes some of the loads on the viewer from some misunderstandings about the film and raises the intelligibility.

As a conclusion, I just criticized the economical and technological changes on cinema. But do not misunderstand me that I did not say technology is not necessary and nobody knows its worth. I believe technology add many technical data to cinema industry. I just discussed and ask do this industry make classification on people by playing their money.

Pelin Gezginer

Godard’s signifiers

I want to start with a quotation from the text “Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories” ;
“History is a mode of shared experience where all experiences are equivalent and where the signs of any one experience are capable of expressing all the others. Novalis succinctly summed up the poetics of the age of history in his famous dictum:”everything speaks”.

What does “everything speaks” mean though? And what are its connections to the cinema are main questions of following paragraphs.

First of all we can remember the Saussure’s semiology and its definitions of sing, signifier and the signified. We all read his text so I do not want to rediscover America, instead, I want to point out my ideas about what is this speaking of everything in Saussure’s terminology.

The “everything” in the motto-like sentence is, although it seems like it is commuting with “the sign”, this every thing in actually “the signifier” in cinema. I believe that the sentence can be reread as “signifiers are constantly creating each other”.

As an example lets consider any single image in Godard’s documentary. Every single shot signifies something in our mind, because of our personal experiences and the social conditions of ours(actually Hall explains in his encoding/decoding how complicated is this ‘because of’). And the sign lets say the table becomes a signifier which creates its meaning through the movie again and again.

My first claim is that: there exist no sign in a movie like Godard’s. Every single image perceived in our brain with its whole bunch of connections in our mind. I know this sentence seems a bit provocative, but lets focus more. In a movie with continuous narrative the images can be signs, which become(or not) a signifier later on. And again the process works; the thing finds its meaning again and again through the movie. Lets consider the ear in one of the very first scene of Blue Velvet. First it is pure ear but than, our mind tries to find the signifier. And this signifier change again and again till the end of the movie. If we think of the ear at the end of the move, it doesnt have the same signifier in our brain as it had in the beginning. Therefore, what a the time in the move makes is to lead us to change the signifier of images that it is showing to us.

For Lynch, I believe this process works in a very obvious way. I do not remember the source(maybe one of our readings), it was talking about a exposition in France, in which different objects from Lynch movies are gathered together. It is meaningful and possible to do such a exposition for Lynch because it plays with the signifiers of certain object through all the movie.

So what is going on is “everything” which is firstly a sign that immediately a signifier, talks, changes its connections, through the movie.

Now, lets turn back to Godard and my pretentious claim. There is no sign but a constant and powerfull change of signifiers in Godards documentery. Only sign is maybe the written words, or sentences in the documentary.

What Godard is trying to do is let the signifiers to change. He shows images one after the other, even sometimes we can not find the time to “understand” the image, but to see it. Sign become the signifier, and he plays with its meanings.

The narration in Godards documentary is this “talk” of signifiers and their fabulous dance of changing the meanings of the ones before.

In the Godards documentary every scene falls on the others. You can not think of any single image without the others; it includes all the images before and after. Therefore I am feeling something magnificent in this process. The scene in the 3th minute of the documentary is actually carries the one in the end. Some kind of future in the moment. Because Godard plays with the signifiers. You can not talk about his documentary in a time line like first this happened and than this and that. But what you can talk about is the movie whole. There is no separate image than the others, no lines no borders but kind of loops, and flows of meanings.
In the documentary of Godard everything speaks with us and with eachother.

Ozan Kamiloğlu

Uzak İhtimal (Wrong Rosary)

I watched Uzak İhtimal (Wrong Rosary) yesterday. It is the first feature of Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun and I think that it really deserves good criticism. Actually, I liked it since I’m an emotional one and I liked to see different kind of naïve love stories as a narrative. To feel naivety of love always makes me think deeper for the existence of love especially if there is any kind of spirituality in it. Anyway, here is the plot of it for who doesn’t know:  Musa, coming from Beypazarı, is a muezzin at a mosque in İstanbul; he moves to apartment where Clara, the Catholic Nurse, leaves in. Musa also works for bibliopole Yakup and he falls in love with Clara. Then, new dynamics are learned and suprises arise. Yes, like you see nothing special for this story and also there are clichés. There are a man and a woman who lead to story. It is a naïve, simple and average unfinished love story. Thus, the preferred meaning (if it exists) can be this:  A Muslim man falls in love with a Catholic woman. (Yes, it can be radical for some “others”) There can be other meanings and the movie can be analyzes from other aspects by considering what kind of person Musa is. How is it possible to save from (pre)judges and then fall in love with a Catholic? Or, is the love just about to be man and woman and their (luckily) encountering in any single moment? Or, is it their destiny and does God examine them in order to see their attitudes toward their encountering? Or, we can ask that should religion keep people out of humanitarian love? Since some regards religion as a thing that whatever meaning they add in, they can ask:  if Musa is a “real” Muslim how is it possible to ignore the women’s religion that he falls in love with? (but can we label people like they are “real” Muslim or not?)

Anyway, the questions can be increased. What I’d like talk about is technical side of this movie. At first, I really thank to Nuri Bilge Ceylan, I really don’t know what we would do without him… Thanks to him since he is the one leading to Turkish Cinema. Yes, Semih Kaplanoğlu, Reha Erdem, Zeki Demirkubuz, Yeşim Ustaoğlu and all other best do exist even Ceylan doesn’t exist… But he breaks new ground for real. In recent times, whatever I perceive/watch/see like I watch a shot from Ceylan. People imitate him. Thus, after this kind of pampering of him (as a matter of fact, I don’t think he needs it, but anyway) I’d like to pass Uzak İhtimal to compare its some parts with Ceylan and others.

The first familiar shot that I know its technique from Nuri Bilge is that voice comes from next shot but we still see the present shot, or namely there is contrast between audio and image. Consider İklimler, when we saw İsa and Bahar on the beach, there was a moment that Isa was talking with himself about their separation and we see Bahar’s swimming but then when he continued to talk, we were aware that Bahar has came and she has already been there when Isa lied back. However, in İklimler, that audio and image contrast (I don’t know how it is called) is really adorable and it is different from the one in Uzak İhtimal. However, in Uzak İhtimal we see that the director tries to make this kind of transition from one scene to another. Also, the color of scenes of Uzak İhtimal again reminds me techniques of Ceylan, and yes Uzak İhtimal imitates  İklimler in some sense. Yes, it reminds me cinema of Ceylan. That is why I see Nuri Bilge Ceylan effect in Uzak İhtimal.

The second thing about Uzak İhtimal which leads to think us the gaze of Demirkubuz is choice of charecters. As we know that Demirkubuz is a good observer of society, he knows what happens in the lower class of it and he reflects it to his cinema. Thus, when I see Musa’s relationship with the relative of him and aim of Musa’s relative, I think that the men came from Bekir’s territory. (Yes, Bekir in both sense; Bekir in Masumiyet and Kader) I mean the director treats as he is one of the observer of society like Demirkubuz (in reality, the relative of Musa looks like Bekir in Kader)

Also, there is small performance of ablution of Musa, after I see it I really think that the best instance of this ritual was performed by Erkan Can in Takva. However, the protagonist, Musa could stay hard for this performance.

By the way, the movie called “Wrong Rosary” which is Yanlış Tesbih in Turkish. When you see the scene causes this title, you understand why they’ve chosen it; it is so ironic and funny. I congratulate them.

Like we know some expressions of Nuri Bilge, we understand that some films are made for festivals. In addition to that, some films are made by knowing what the jury of festival would like to see. Maybe, Uzak İhtimal is a collage of the late Turkish movie style  which brings festival awards and thus that explains why it won awards in Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Maybe, it is better to thank to Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos for being an inspiration to Nuri Bilge. Anyway, if you like to naivety, minimalism, and purity of love (or, as a matter of fact, if you think that the naïve or pure love exists) or regard life as a harmonic unity with its chaos and if you want to see a part of this unity on screen, you can watch Uzak İhtimal.

Also, you can watch it even to see ending part.

Last comment: Since we live in Turkey, we don’t ignore the socio-political issues. If we think from all aspect, I’m sure that we can interpret this movie by saying that “yes, there is a dialogue issue in it”. Turkey becomes a “moderate” religious country like they want. Nonetheless, it is not about film itself, don’t take my comment seriously and enjoy the naivety of love.

It is just stream of thought thanks to space in our blog.

Sinem Aydınlı

Godard’s New Cave: Histoire(s) du Cinema

“Cinema is only industry of escapism because it is the only place where memory is slave” *

Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema… One of the cinematic manifestations for cinephilic love… I really don’t know how I can start but I know to use words. And yes, I’ll use the words and sentence-fragments as speeches like he did in his Histoire(s) du Cinema but with a huge difference: There is no image in here. There won’t be image-fragments in whatever I’ll do. Thus, I’m on the opposite side. I can only deal with the words. I left images to Godard.

According to Plato, the Ancient Greek philosopher, basically and simply, there are two worlds: The world, namely, the visible world which appears to our senses and fills with error; and the world called intelligible world which has perfect realms, namely forms. The world appearing to our senses is the image of the world of forms. The things we see are only mere images of forms. Furthermore, there is an allegory in order to tell the difference of these two worlds: Some men living in a cave where they’ve been chained by from their childhood and they cannot move. There is kind of wall in front them and an elevation behind them that people carry something and the other animals walk on; and there is a fire behind these beings. Thus, the chained persons only see the wall and they can see neither the other walking beings nor fire; they can only see the shadows of the walking beings projected on the wall. When they see a shadow and hear a voice, they assume that the sound is coming from the shadow. For these chained persons, the only reality is the shadows formed on the wall. They are in the cave and assume that the images that they see are real. Likewise, for Godard, the idea of cinema is the same as what the chained people regard reality, namely, shadow on the wall which is the image of the reality. Also, for him, the reality that we named for anything that we sense is was always already image so thus what’s left for cinema is the image of images. That is why he articulates Histoire(s) du Cinema in terms of experiencing “image of images”.

According to Godard, the world of image of images is the spirit of the forms; it is interiority of work of art (Ranciere 2006). The interiority combines artistic forms with shared form of life. The history, at first, is a shared “thing”. Thus, any image-form can be associated with other shared images and the number of combination of images can be made. It means that experience of them is the history, itself. In this sense, as an image, anything belongs to cinema and individual experience of forms of images can be named under history. According to Ranciere, history is the mode of shared experience where all experience are equivalent and where the signs of any one experience are capable of expressing each other (p.178) and so the dictum is on the scene: Everything speaks. This means that any sensible form can signify any sensible form of collective experience and it is open to relationship with other forms. That expression of history is the transformation of Histoire(s) du Cinema to the language. However, Godard wouldn’t like this transformation since he is the one who is only deal with the images. His images talk in the cinematic language i.e. in the audio-visual expression. That indicates that why he challenges the language and meaning and tries to save himself from chains of language. Thus, he turns his face to the video art by Histoire(s) du cinema since he mentions that essence of cinema should be present. However, by mentioning cinema’s betrayal, Godard tried to emphasize that cinema has already became tyranny of the words rather than record of images. His turning to video can be understood in this sense since video has instant feedback and also, by means of its feedback, it is surely known that anything that happens is recorded. As regards to recorded images, cinema is seen that it is the place where memory is slave since you can combine any image with any other images that you’d like to combine as long as your memory allows you to do. Also, Godard says that “Cinema, like Christianity, is not founded on historical truth, it supplies us with a story and says: Now believe”. He does not disallow historical truth and I really do understand what he means by this expression: Yes, he means image of images, yes he means personal cinematic history in the sense of  arbitrary integration and combination of different images and their re-combination in any other forms of images (Like he did in Histoire(s) du Cinema, take one shot from a notifiable cinema work of century and add other image from other work) In addition to that, yes, it really shows us the memory is the slave of it. Also, in dialectical perspective, this slave seems to depend on its master; in fact, its master cannot exist without slave. It means that images depend on the memory. The memory remembering images creates the other images. It makes any history of cinema i.e. any history of “image of images” personal history of “image of images”. In this sense, Godard really breaks new ground in the “history of cinema” and draws his ways to the video which is seen objective recording of “truth”. It is the new way to try to unfold the truth. Yes, it is the Later Godard who has seen this new technique but we also know that he was one of the masters of French New Wave in the years between 1960 and 1968. As a new wave director, Early Godard has tried to tell us there is no reality on the screen and we can see only the images; however, even he plays with images by using tracking shots or long shots (e.g. Week End) he wouldn’t escape territory of language since he has used the speeches to show image of “reality” in the sense of criticizing capitalism, exploitation of women and tendency to the gun. Thus, his cave, at least, his early cave, was surrounded by words not by images.

Ranciere, Jacques. “A Fable without a Moral: Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories, “in Film Fables pp.171-188

*  Histoire(s) du cinema: Une Historie seule [Chapter (1(b)] (Jean Luc Godard, 1989)

Sinem Aydınlı

Struggle for Exculpation After Apathy Towards the Tracking Shot in Kapo

Daney have already broken up with me: “I would definitely have nothing to do, nothing to share with anybody who wasn’t immediately upset by the abjection of ‘the tracking shot in Kapo’ “.

Before watching the scene, I was unaware of this divorce that was foreseen by Daney; even the quoted sentence did not take my attention at the first reading. The article was totally clear and agreeable for me with the images that I constructed in my mind of the tracking shot. I could no more agree with Daney on his uneasiness towards the “way of adding an extra parasitic beauty or complicit information to scenes that did not need it”. Such pornography was something that I was familiar and uncomfortable with.

The problem of me emerged after the screening of the scene at the class: I was not at all stroke by what I saw and I eventually got confused about what I had read. Now, I, as someone who is out of the profession of film-making, was convinced that it was my unfortunate illiteracy and/or, somehow, my dreadful insensitivity against the genocide to be not “immediately upset” by the scene in question. Yes, I seem to have taken it personal.

The struggle than began. I watched the scene over and over again. I read “On Abjection” of Rivette (can be retrieved from http://www.dvdbeaver.com/rivette/OK/abjection.html) and the article of Daney one more time.
The scene did not strike me in any of the consequent watches. It is not that the scene, for me, was beautiful or impressive. I, without enough knowledge on the techniques of film-making, could agree upon its vulgarity. Being able to differentiate the tracking shot in the scene, I could also consider the absurdity of the shot, because, I could not see the use of it as it seemed to be an excessive attempt to emphasize the death of the woman which was probably already grasped by the audience. Still, this shot was only an unnecessary or an inferior one for me; it was not a pornographic one that deserved such fevered attacks.

Perhaps, such a horror did really become a “part of the mental landscape of modern man” as Rivette claimed. Abasement accepted.

Watching Nuit et brouillard, which was compared to Kapo in the articles of Rivette and Daney, did not ease my confusion. I was certainly disturbed by and terrified of the history. In the film, the documented reality was so ugly that I find it hard to approach and discuss such documentation as an artifact. If the problem in consideration here is, as far as I understand, showing too much of death or aestheticizing death, then, I do question the showing of the vicious pauses on the open eyes of dead men in Nuit et brouillard. Why did not Resnais insisted on showing the scenes that concentrated on the eyes of the dead? Is this because the film judged not only the slaughter but also the coldblooded recording of it? Could be.

Then, is the issue the difference between showing the reality and narrating related to a reality? Perhaps, an emphasize on the spectacle of a dead wo/man in a documentary has its ground on reality which makes the scene reasonable (after all, the showing of such a harsh reality can not be worse than the reality itself), whereas in a fiction, in which everything is in the hands of the film maker, it is objected for redundantly aestheticizing death. Roughly, in the documentary the killer is someone else, whereas in the fiction the killer becomes the film-maker. What is the significance of Kapo? It seems to me that if the fiction is grounded on a historical reality, then aestheticization is perceived as being insensitive to the reality- the criticism targets at not only her/his artistic abilities but also her/his humanitarian side.

Being well aware of its irrelevancy to the discussion, I can not help questioning the screening of Nuit et brouillard at a middle school…

No conclusion. It is just me trying to understand what I read and watched and to exculpate myself.

Segah Sak

An Overview of Korean Cinema

When I think about the editing styles, I come think about the recent styles of uses of editing in the modern period. It is going to be like a repetition but being the most significant one of the pieces of the film world for me, I will again mention about the Korean films.

As I read through the piece on the styles of editing.  It was very interesting for me to read about the close-up style of editing at times of dialogue. Since, for instance, Kim-ki Duk rarely uses long periods of dialogues in his movies. I have realized that he has transformed the use of close-up on such shots into close-ups where he uses symbolic objects or facial expressions instead of words. When we observe such scenes in for instance 3-Iron, we can clearly get the continuity of the plot through the observation of the close-up scenes. Personally, I find the use of facial expressions on the close-ups to be rather symbolic as well. It thus also increases the potential of the film in terms of delaying the cinema, the sensation and the feeling of suspense by not clearly revealing all the emotional details of the movie and thus keeping the motives of the characters hidden. I find this strategy quite successful since it not only keeps the attention and intrigue of the audience alive but also performs an example of the close-up editing in a different but stylistic and successful manner.

On the other hand, I want to mention another aspect of the film, The Dolls by Takeshi Kitano or Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring by Kim-ki Duk. In both of them the visual imagery of the seasons, famous with the cherry tree and all kinds of different flowers of all colors, stand for different symbolic meanings, while the symbolism of nature in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring could be interpreted as the cyclic flow of one’s life time and experiences of wisdom, the visual imagery of the nature in The Dolls could well be said to stand for strength and resistance of love between two against the erosion of the flow of time. Of course the symbolism and the meaning behind it can be interpreted as different things by many, but it is something definite that they stand as a symbol like many different objects and mise an scenes in the films.

I cannot help, but look for things that carry multiple causes within and I believe that the films that are rich of them, thus, possess a greater potential within them.

Canan Gürel

The Reception Issue Regarding Hollywood Blockbusters

As far as the reception of Hollywood blockbusters is concerned, I believe that these movies are not simply products of the audience. No matter what is said about interpretation of the audience, a blockbuster has some fixed patterns and explicit ideologies encoded by the producers, which is essentially the white patriarchal capitalism. In this regard I believe that reception of an avant-garde movie and a conventionalized Hollywood movie is rather different by the audience.

First of all, a classical Hollywood movie’s objective is to be consumed by as many audiences as there can be. To achieve this goal, there are some certain standardization of style and structure applied by the producers:

1)      A classical Hollywood movie has an invisible style, because it contains no distinctive style which calls attention to it. In that way, the viewer stays emotionally trapped in a film’s story, and all aspects of mise-en-scene consistently help the audience remain in the domain of the film.

2)      All information about movie is explicit waiting to be taken by the audience without an effort.

3)      Stereotyping makes the reception easier. The stock characterization of a villain and a good guy draws upon pre-existing social and cultural stereotypes. In that way, the audience does not put much effort in distinguishing the good and the bad.

4)      All classical Hollywood movies have a beginning, middle and an ending.  A closure must tie up all of the story’s loose ends, which affirms that all problems are solved and the audience does not need to think about it further.

Regarding all of the traits of a classical movie, it can be said that they are not made for an interpretation but for consumption. In such movies, the audience just takes what s/he anticipates to take, no more no less. An interpretation of such movies would only draw attention to the same dominant ideologies since they are designed not to raise questions or explore social issues but to maintain the ideological status quo.

Thus, while interpreting a blockbuster movie, I do not think that there will be a clash between decoder and encoder since in such cases encoder tries to eliminate all the possible factors which can lead to misinterpretation of the film. Therefore, a Hollywood blockbuster has an apparent meaning in all social and cultural contexts as John Ellis states: “meaning in cinema is obvious: the average cinema film appears straightforward and can be understood immediately (with subtitles) by virtually everyone on the planet”. This is simply because they aim not to get the audience to participate in meaning making process but make them take always-already made meanings. In that way, the audience, who does not expect something more, will be satisfied with what they have seen.

To conclude, Hollywood blockbusters can give an idea about the historical context they are shot, they can highlight the dominant ideologies of the time, (which, in fact, have not been so diverse in America over the time) but the message they convey is unchallenging, meaning is evident in various contexts so you do not have to be a wise person to interpret and absorb it.

Merve Ersoy

Some notes on F for Fake

Let’s skip the intro for a while, i.e. the introduction part which I always hate, and begin with a sudden question: F FOR FAKE, what kind of film is it?

Since it is a multi-faced monument, it is not easy to put F FOR FAKE, Orson Welles’ 1974 dated magnum opus, under a definite category. So the question above which is easy to ask, but difficult answer seems inevitable to me. As a possible answer, in his book Orson Welles, Joseph McBridge says that it is a free-flowing and idiosyncratic essay film. For critic Stuart Byron, F FOR FAKE is grace-note metafilm (1996, p. 181).

May it be a documentary?  At a lunch with  Orson Welles in La Méditerranée Paris, Jonathan Rosenbaum asks a similar question. Probably with his cigar from which he just taken another puff is between his fingers, Welles replies, “No, not a documentary–a new kind of film” (2007, p. 289). Since it is consisted of different sequences and footages from different productions which were sophisticatedly re-edited and woven together, F FOR FAKE seems to deserve an adjective such as a new kind. “Girl-Watching” sequence in the beginning, footages from François Reichenbach’s BBC documentary on the famous and fabulous art forger Elmyr de Hory, EARTH vs. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast are some of these sequences and footages (McBridge, 1996, pp. 182-185).

Although “It isn’t even a film” for film historian Lotte Eisner, name of this new kind of film was also problematic. In 1972, when Orson Welles was working on it, it was called HOAX. One year later, now it was being called FAKE. Before the issue was settled film’s production company even announced that title of the film was QUESTION MARK. Finally Oja Kodar who was the assistant of Welles and co-writer of the film, suggested the name F FOR FAKE (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 290).

Because of the fact that F FOR FAKE was co-directed by Welles & Reichenbach (recall that it was largely reedited documentary of Reichenbach), and co-written by Welles & Kodar and leading actors such as Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving, it took a while for the names issue to be settled. So wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum with such a quizzical fashion in Film Comment:

For the time being, I am content to call it THE NEW ORSON WELLES FILM, co-directed by Irving and de Hory, written by Jorge Luis Borges, and produced by Howard Hughes…. As Welles remarks about Chartres, the most important thing is that it exists (2007, p. 291).

If I examine the name-issue in more detail, although I cannot say that all of them are intended, it is not difficult to find interesting and thought provoking connotations related with the names.

Take HOAX for example. THE HOAX is the name of the film directed by Lasse Hallström and is a section from Clifford Irving’s life, who was the author of the biography of Elmyr de Hory and fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. By the way if you have not watched THE HOAX yet, do watch it, because watching F FOR FAKE again, after watching THE HOAX becomes more enjoyable and significant.

As you can easily recall FAKE was the another alternative title for the film. It was also the name of the biography of Elmyr de Hory, written by Clifford Irving in 1969. It was Fake! that was made Elmyr de Hory was a famous and followed by Reichenbach’s BBC documentary about Elmyr and Welles’ F FOR FAKE.

Like one of its old names suggested, F FOR FAKE contains hoaxes which are quite interesting. For example, towards the end of “Girl-Watching” sequence in the beginning of the film, she is not Oja Kodar, but her sister Nina Kodar who is approaching to us in the frontal long shots (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 293). Although in 07:47 of the film, Welles says that “Her name is Oja,” she is not Oja, but Nina – I think.

If I am not wrong, I realized that in the 07:25 of the film, bracelets of Kodar that were on her right wrist before are seen on her left wrist.

Title sequence of F FOR FAKE also contains o hoax, i.e. in 05:19 of the film, “practioners” is written instead of “practitioners” (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 292).

One final note about film is that there is a nine-minute trailer of F FOR FAKE which was released three years later film’s production. This trailer contains excerpts that was not shown in the film and nude figure studies of Oja Kodar, which was especially filmed for the trailer. A four-minute excerpt from that trailer can be watched via YouTube. The trailer is as striking as the film itself. So it is also strongly recommended.

References

McBridge, J. (1996). Orson Welles. Da Capo Press.

Rosenbaum, J. (2007). Discovering Orson Welles. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

M. Kemal İz

In the mood for Reception: Back to the films themselves!

Here are the some comments of audiences for Mirror (1975) from Andrei Tarkovsky’s own book, Sculpting in Time:

A woman civil engineer wrote from Leningrad: ‘I saw your film, Mirror. I sat through to the end, despite the fact that after the first half hour I developed a severe headache as a result of my genuine efforts to analyze it, or just to have some idea of what was going on, of some connection between the characters and events and memories. . . .We poor cinema-goers see films that are good, bad, very bad, ordinary or highly original. But any of these one can understand, and be delighted or bored as the case may be; but this one?! . . .’ (p.8)

And another engineer, this time from Sverdlovsk, was unable to contain his deep antipathy: ‘How vulgar, what trash! Ugh, how revolting! Anyhow, I think your film’s a blank shot. It certainly didn’t reach the audience, which is all that matters. . (p.8)

A woman wrote from Gorky: ‘Thank you for Mirror. My childhood was like that. . . . Only how did you know about it? ‘There was that wind, and the thunderstorm . . . “Galka, put the cat out,” cried my Grandmother. . . . It was dark in the room . . . And the paraffin lamp went out, too, and the feeling of waiting for my mother to come back filled my entire soul . . . And how beautifully your film shows the awakening of a child’s consciousness, of this thought! . . . And Lord, how true . . . we really don’t know our mothers’ faces. And how simple . . . You know, in that dark cinema, looking at a piece of canvas lit up by your talent, I felt for the first time in my life that I was not alone . . .’ (p.10)

A worker in a Leningrad factory, an evening class student, wrote: ‘My reason for writing is Mirror, a film I can’t even talk about because I am living it. ‘It’s a great virtue to be able to listen and understand . . . That is, after all, a first principle of human relationships: the capacity to understand and forgive people their unintentional faults, their natural failures. If two people have been able to experience the something even once, they will be able to understand each other. Even if one lived in the era of the mammoth and the other in the age of electricity. And God grant that people may understand and experience only common, humane impulses—their own and those of others.’ (p.10)

A working woman from Novosibirsk wrote: ‘I’ve seen your film four times in the last week. And I didn’t go simply to sec it, but in order to spend just a few hours living a real life with real artists and real people. . . . Everything that torments me, everything I don’t have and that I long for, that makes me indignant, or sick, or suffocates me, everything that gives me a feeling of light and warmth, and by which I live, and everything that destroys me—it’s all there in your film, I see it as if in a mirror. For the first time ever a film has become something real for me, and that’s why I go to see it, I want to get right inside it, so that I can really be alive.‘ (p.12)

After giving comments of different audiences or recipients and how they see or read the Mirror, it can be continued by introducing briefly cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky in order to understand from which perspective they should read his movies. As a Russian director, Tarkovsky’s cinema is, by his own words: “In all my pictures the theme of roots was great importance: links with family house, childhood, country, Earth…”

When Tarkovsky talks about his movies, he points out that the aesthetically pressure of visual is more important than to know meaning of the film. Thus, he uses different colors to show transition from fantasy to real or emphasizing dreams. The colors are the unit of the meanings and he uses Technicolor and sepia to tell different level of reality. For instance, in Stalker (1979), the real life is shot in chrome; dreams, desired places and events in real time are colored. Also, he refuses symbolism and metaphors in his movies but audiences try to give different meanings that what they see as you read above. Actually, he mentions that he just reflects his own outlook to the world: “I never create allegories. I create my own world. That world does not signify anything unusual. It just exists, it has no other meaning. I think symbol and allegory rob the artist”.

For him, when someone talks about a book or remembers his memories, a bottle of milk can throw down at the same time but it is just a bottle of milk since these things happens in real life, too. In other words, that a bottle of milk does not signify anything. Also, when it is asked what the coins (e.g. Sacrifice) or what the black dog symbolizes (e.g. Stalker), he says that he doesn’t know but they are same things as what they are in dreams or real life. It means that he does not add any special meaning to images that he created.

Although he does not assign special meaning to his movies, it can be inferred from his sayings, Tarkovsky wants audiences read same meaning from his movies but how is it possible?

In reality, it is not simple as Tarkovsky’s expressions since the audiences cannot be alienated from the film, itself. Thus, this issue, namely, the meaning of the film or how to read a film is the controversial topic for the ones who are interested in film analysis or film interpretation since it has different aspects and it is made by “audience”. As an audience, you can criticize or analyze a movie from different perspectives. Whether or not every audience can be a film analyzer or critic of every movie that s/he watches and whether only selective audiences having academic background analyze a movie from some perspectives are really controversial issues.

However, now, I’d like to speculate one of that perspectives focusing on phenomenological film criticism, namely, interest of Stanley Cavell. According to Cavell, the audiences must let the films themselves teach them how to look at them and how to think about them (1981). As you see, it is contrary to what Tarkovsky expects since there is no “how to look” issue in his films; they are already reality itself (i.e. not appearances). On the contrary, the other controversial issue arises that if there is an auteur cinema like Tarkovsky’s one, i.e. the eye of director and his pen and if the director makes all film as his outlook to the life itself, without knowing his “life philosophy” how can an audience interpret the film, can the meaning that the audience took from it be the same as he’d like to give? If we leave the film teach us how to think about it, don’t we miss out opinions or thoughts of creator of this art?

Thus, all issue is about how you regard as the movie, you can say that the audiences create the meaning by being in relation with the film. Since the audiences come to scene, there can be different meanings based on audiences’ socio-cultural background and also their “life philosophy”.

By taking Cavell’s saying further, I also think that once a work of art is created, the recipient of it becomes the owner of that work; at least, in the context of the film, integration of audiences to the film creates the meaning and it means that there is no meaning-in-itself in the film-in-itself even the director – especially auteur one, as Tarkovsky, expects that audiences take the same meaning like the case of his Mirror. In other words, what if the film does not want to say that what the audience takes or reads from it? Yes, the question is this: Is there really meaning-in-itself in the film? The questions can go further and bring us to bigger issue that mentioned above: There is a work of art but to whom does it belong? In the case of cinema art, if the audience interprets the film and takes whatever meaning s/he attributes to film, then doesn’t the film belongs to that audience?

Or contrary to that, if the critics of audiences contradict with opinions of director or scriptwriter, can the critics of audiences be “true” for the meaning of the film in the context of film itself?

In this respect, it is plausible to consider combining phenomenological critic with pragmatism: while considering meaning in the film, can I say that the meaning in the film is determined by what I’ll do with the meaning? As a matter of fact, yes I can say. As an audience, I do not loot the film, I engage with it and then I interpret it. According to William James, the pragmatist philosopher, “Ideas … become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience” (1907: 34) so thus I’m in a relation with a film, I take the meaning and my relation with film makes the meaning true for me. It is all about my conscious experience with the film itself. No director, no scriptwriter, there are only me and the moving images.

References:

Tarkovsky, Andrei, Sculpting in Time, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair, 1987

King, Noel, “Hermeneutics, Reception Aesthetic, and Film Interpretation”, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, 212-23.

Sinem Aydınlı

What else is there to MGF’s?

Personally, I find the mind game films very entertaining. You always have to look for clues and subliminal messages just like a detective does! In this regard, the similarities between a classical detective story and a MGF are quite obvious. When we look at the structure of detective stories, we see that it usually starts off with a crime, continues with the clue finding process (in which we typically suspect more than one person) and ends with the detective’s success or failure of finding the suspect. In MGF’s we have a flow similar to the detective story except the ending. To give an example, when you look at Haneke’s “Cache”, the first two elements are visible whereas only the last one is lacking. The same thing is true for other films such as “The Unknown Code” and “Lost Highway”. In this sense the films we categorize as MGF’s begins to seem quite “uncomplicated”. Of course, than comes the question than what else might there be in these films, that makes them MGF’s? The example above shows that the story is not enough on its own. (I know we discussed all the other possible elements such as plot, narrative, psychology, etc.)


I believe that the essential part that makes us define a film as MGF, is our construction of identities as the audience. What I mean is this: we assume we know everything or at least, we are able to cope with situations that might appear during a film. This is the basic element that Hollywood construct while defining an audience. This is to say that over the time the cinema evolved, the viewer learned the language of cinema. Now everyone knows how to interpret a scene and the symbols that are typically used. The famous saying that “when a gun is shown in a scene , it means it will be used” explains this situation clearly. The audience knows what will happen or at least is in control of the situation since s/he is used to the language and the structure. MGF’s on the other hand, puts the audience just in the opposite place. We know nothing about the universe we are entering. That makes most people uncomfortable, which is understandable since they are used to being in control. MGF’s play tricks with the audience’s minds, deceits their understanding. To give an example from the film “Lost Highway”, a mystery man suddenly arrives at our protagonist, who is having problems of his own up until that moment, and says “We have met before, haven’t we.” When our protagonist says he doesn’t remember, he tells him that he is actually in his house right now. And proves this by making him phone his own number and speak to him on the phone while he is still standing there. Now, this realm is out of the ordinary for the audience. They think, a person cannot be in two places at the same time! But this is the reality taught to us since we were children. So the viewer is facing a dilemma and therefore is uncomfortable. The aim of MGF’s is this uncomfortable feeling, which makes you question the nature of reality. What is real? How can we prove something is real or not?, etc.


So this makes me think that the basic step in defining a film as MGF, is to look at the position of the audience. How do they relate to the events and characters in a film. This is actually disregarded in most articles but I think its very important.


Alev Degim

The New Perspective on the Plot

The most interesting part of the mind-game films is the choice of plot chronology for me. I find it quite interesting especially that the directors use certain kind of symbolism throughout the film. Whether, it be a color, or a certain object, or a certain word, or the appearance of a certain person. This kind of strategy makes the audience focused, intact and erect for all the time, in my opinion. The reason for I value this aspect of the film is that the audience, as well as the producers should spend some effort for the sake of the film. For me, a movie should not only be watched or the film should not only be equaled with the value of time. In this respect, the producers turn out to be more valuable for me, because, despite the fact that I don’t know anything about the production of a movie, I believe the director and the producers out to have spent more time and effort as well as care for the production of the film as well as organizing the script and plot. For me the organization of the plot reflects the hidden sparks of the intelligence behind the curtain during the production of the film.

I was actually thinking about the progress of the Korean production films all the time as I was reading through the texts. I am a huge fan of them, as a matter of fact. Especially watching the films directed by Kim-ki Duk are a source of huge inspiration and thrill for me. The ability of directing a movie using such few texts of scripts is, in my opinion a huge success. Though I sometimes confuse the characters from one another, because I think they look very much alike! But that’s another issue…

Canan Gürel