E-Book Overview
The notion of film consciousness is one that has played around various film and philosophical discourses without ever really surfacing as a cogent theory. Representing the first major expression of film consciousness as a tangible concept, this critical study revisits notions of memory, retentional consciousness, narrative expectation, and spatio-temporal perception while also analyzing several major films. The first half of the book focuses on understanding the elements of the film experience-and its associated consciousness-through the descriptive tools of phenomenology. The second part develops the idea of film consciousness as a unique vision of the world and as a large element in the human understanding of reality. Throughout the work, the author combines the ideas of philosophers and film theorists from phenomenology-such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bazin, and Kracauer-with the postmodernist work of Deleuze and transitional theorists Bergson and Benjamin.
E-Book Content
Film. Consciousness From Phenomenology to Deleuze SPENCER SHAW
McFarland
&.
Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Acknowledgments My interest in scholarship and philosophy in particular first began when I had the privilege of studying under Dr. Walter Isaacson. I would like to thank Frank Henriksen, at Copenhagen University, for the original inspira tion to work in phenomenology and hermeneutics . At the University of Southern California, Alan Casebier, Marsha Kinder and the late Professor Beverle Houston were generous in their support, as was Daniel Dayan at the Annenberg School for Communication. Finally, for research into Deleuze I am indebted to the guidance of Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson at Warwick University, UK.
Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction '
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Vll
1
"
.
.
.
.
. .. .
.
.
. .. . .
.
.
.
.
. 3
1. PHENOMENOLOGY AND FILM
Origins ................ The Spectrum of Film Consciousness Dialectic Misgivings ..... .
21 24 29
2. PHENOMENOLOGICAL GROUNDING
Realist Theory .. Real to Reel . . Lifeworld Encounters Intentionality .... Phenomenological Hermeneutics Gadamer's Play ....... .
.
.
.
34
.
36
.
37 4S 49 S3
3. BODY AND TRANSCENDENCE S6
Merleau-Ponty's Embodiment Expression to Meaning Bazin's Ontology .. The Negating Self .. Transcendental Survival
61
.
66
.
71 74
4. REEL TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Temporal Objectivities
ix
Contents
x
Self-Constituting Flux 85 87 Internal Time-Consciousness 90 Future Expectation . . . . . Bergson: Movement and Intermediate Imagery 94 98 Reelising Memory . . .. . ... . . .. . .. . Bridging G aps .. .. . . .. . . . . . ... . . . . .. . . . 1 03 5. WALTER BENJAMIN: THE NEW REALM OF FILM CONSCIOUSNESS
Materialism and Allegory .. . .. .. .. Dialectical Image s .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Mechanical Reproduction and Aura Returning the Gaze: Aura Transformed Benjamin and Surrealism Distraction and Innervation .. 6. DELEUZE
1 06 11 1 119 1 26 1 32 1 40
AND CINEMA
Montage and Movement-Image Eisenstein Montage .. .. .. .. Imaging Thought Process Afectivity and the Interval Vertov and the Machinic Liquid Subjectivity
1 46 1 4