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A Dissertation Presented to
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Critical Studies)
May 1994
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This dissertation, w ritten b y
Charles Shiro Tashiro
D ate
DISSERTATION COMMUTE
Acknowledgments
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
process would be misleading. On the other hand, if you start to include things
With those reservations in mind, I would like to start the list with my mother,
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
Jumping ahead, I would like to thank Petter Magnus Nordin, Neela Sastry and
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
doldrums.
As for USC, its 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
Johnson, Mark Wolf, Doug Troyan, and Susan Robinson, its not to overlook
others, but to recall those people with whom I most often discussed ideas. I would,
Schwartz and Tassilo Schneider, who always could be relied upon for their honest
I would like to mention the helpful support of the Administrative staff of the
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
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, Id 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
Contents
Acknowledgments ii
Preface vi
Introduction !
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
necessary for such mass duplication, all dissertations must conform to a format
situation be a combination of text and graphics. Although the format currently used
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
those students fortunate enough to have access to a computer with page layout
programs, and does not require greatly increased skill beyond normal word
experimentation.
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
least ten years out of date. Until that situation changes, we will have to make do
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
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 Id 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
But as I read about these filmmakers, and particularly about Loseys films, I
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
why didnt they deal with it? Indeed, why didnt they even define what they meant
2
by the process? At best, they would move from the observation to explain
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
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
designs 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 isnt any
justification.)
image, but really reduce it. Ready-made tropes are not terribly interesting,
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
from both. At one level, shadows of bars on the wall are only shadows of bars on
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
means of discussing space, decor and objects. This chapter starts from two related
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
resulting from the disruption to visual perception caused by the shifts in perspective
organic unity and the form of that economy is narrative, the narrativization of
film.6
Heaths 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:
Nor was the chain of desire and identification which Heath sees bridging
Describing the effect of the alternation of views achieved through cutting, an early
critic wrote:
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 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
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.
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,10 how does he recognize
the content of the image? Does he insist that the narrative redefines an object
complexities of the image, to make a plea, finally, for a multivalence and poetry
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
structures much of film design. But in the process of addressing the mediums
image, imbued with an ideology of more real than reality. This process of
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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 repeatsbut also, the degree to which design itself is a necessity to understand
History Films rely heavily on design simply to function. Like science fiction
and fantasy, History Films require the designer to create images immediately
examining the History Film on the basis of its stories and characters, in Chapter 4
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
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
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
recognizable as stylized, of the past; yet at the same time, that stylization will
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
can be, is, shown. It displays, to paraphrase Peter Greenaway an attitude towards
It is this very indeterminacy, this richness of the film image, and experiences
2 see, for example: Tom Milne (ed.), Losey on Losey, Joseph Leahy, The Cinema
o f Joseph Losey, Foster Hirsch, Joseph Losey.
4 Heath 31.
5 Heath 32.
6 Heath 43.
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 o f the Silent
Film , 96. Pratt quotes several contemporary complaints about the development of
what we now consider standard cinematic technique.
In Jorge Luis Borgess story, Averroes Search, the great Moorish scholar,
translating Aristotles 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
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
Viewed through the eyes of someone who has never witnessed it, dramatic
Averroess blindness, since both scholar and story identify a dramas primary
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 Aristotles
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
Film, dependent on the physical world for its power to persuade, throws this
place in reality. This relationship between image and referent is the mediums
spectacular.
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
process) + Designer (aesthetic shaper) = the person who finesses industry into
production context, overseen by David O. Selznick, the making of Gone With the
Wind (1939):
The creation of a new classification should never be taken lightly. Still, while
responsibilities exceed the normal functions of an art director, the distinction may
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 dont, their assumptions rather than their
intentions.
Caligaris Cabinet and other Grand Illusions6 by Leon Barsacq remains the
most thorough statement of the film design profession available in print. It is useful
industrial procedure and a clear expression of the assumptions and goals of his
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
jects. Meliess 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 Meliess 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 films expressive
chitectural one:
Barsacq assumes that because of the photographic nature of cinema, its purpose is
Since the image should provide the illusion of three dimensions, design becomes a
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
so only to the extent that it helps the film image to overcome its representational
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
suppressed nor resolved. Film design must be simultaneously realistic and stylized.
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
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
terms will be an architectural setting. Mamer and Stringer, writing a primer for
the film designer: As with stage design, art direction begins with the script. 14
18
A film image acquires exchange value when the recording function is viewed as
inadequate and the image is designed beyond its documentary function.15 When
meaning, the design contributes toward a fetish of the image, generated by the
the process, design draws on, re-structures and produces meaning through
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 towhich theresulting
images seem to derive not from the work of filmmakers, but from an infinite
While Pasolinis description is correct to the extent that any image is possible, once
objects, costumes, etc., he/she works from this vast, but limited cultural field.
19
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
The designer provides the details necessary for a physically plausible setting,
field. These compositional connotations provide the limits for the designs expres
sion (period, location, etc..) But individual design elements are external texts,
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
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.
Johns 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
enough to fit the scripts expressive demands. But nothing can be so distinctive that
greater than any one storys 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.18 Thus a design that depends on the illusion of
contemporary reality, while more immediately convincing, will date badly as the set
circumstance. Objects selected for their transparent resonance become opaque; those
new setting.
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
stable set of associations but runs the risk of an excess of personalism that will
intended, the set of meanings derived from cultural and compositional connotation
In order to understand design for its pre-narrative self, a theory of the spaces
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
since many film designers started as architects, a number of their tricks to create the
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-
series of spatial categories that start from the human subject as center of the
perceived world, extending ever wider away from that subject.19 Deriving his ideas
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
with a viewer.20
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.
traverses the spaces of the Duke of Milans 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
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
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
moments, our bodies are the characters bodies; our clothing theirs.
and ourselves at a close level of intimacy. They become the most apparent trace of
stylization. The more substantial the difference between the films 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 dont. 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 films costumes is
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,
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
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
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
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
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
Not just the thematic difference raised by the script between India and Britain, but a
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
scrutiny of male appearance traditionally reserved for women, the act of stylized
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:
But this threat of period reconstruction is merely the most extreme form of design
stylization.25
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
spectator desire to wear what is worn, to join the rhythm of spectacle, while
The Apprehensible
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
And Barsacqs injunction reminds that Here perhaps, is one of the fundamental
objects.28
towards the construction of the sense of a center and personal territory. The
more concrete existential concept, the concept of place, and places are the basic
two ways: 1) to ground the viewer by offering a blanket of security through a set of
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
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.
objects in narrative cinema are those whose primary allure is non-visual. Multiple,
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
revel in the sensual moment for itself, these objects are given inordinate emphasis,
throwing their stories off-balance. (In the case of taste, its a futile aim in any event,
since it derives from a negation of vision. You cant see what youre tasting,
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
significant visually as the man using it, it becomes difficult to insist on the special
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 its 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 As position in the room while still motivating
the points of view. Also, Seyrigs expression changes from more or less
her reaction? At least one plausible explanation results from the emphasis on
commodities are photographed with the same glossy care as Delphine Seyrig. As
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, Chans 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
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 Chans close-ups are intercut with two-shots of the couple to
29
whom hes talking. If we stayed focused in Chans close-up as in the two-shot,
wed 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
prominence.
outside the requirements of the story, a desire heightened by the combined success
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
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
While it must look right for a particular narrative setting, it serves almost purely a
possible design objects, a cigarette lighter and a chair. Both have been selected to
appearance affirms a mans economic status and taste. The objects functional dif
ferences lie in the lighters 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 familys
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 chair, on the other hand, cannot be used outside the protagonists
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 familys room, its
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
time. A piece of furniture implies stasis. We sit or lie down in order to be still. In
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
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
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
the house, gets its dimensions from the more extended bodily movements and
architecture in film, rather than o f film) gravitates towards two poles: the location,
In a location set, the space exists before the film. It possesses all the inconve
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
At the same time, a location provides what Barsacq describes as the absolute
This difference would appear to be a matter of scale. Sound stages and back lots are
greater impression of the wholeness of the location, while permitting the retreat to
The first measure of an interior sets semantic function is the extent to which it
general terms, then the use of a location may be not just sufficient, but preferable,
since it will have Barsacqs 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
example, the Hotel des Bains lobby in Morte e Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971), a
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
If the hotel lobby is a social space, its design must provide a sense of
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,
the armature of the classical story... .[but] If the character must act as the prime
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 41
It is not enough for the design to fulfill its minimal narrative function. It must
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
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
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
discrepancy between the crookedness of the setting and the organic shape of the
actors.43
35
While Caligari is an exception, Arnheims comments suggest that if a designer
wants to stylize, he/she cant 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
or arch do not threaten to collapse. Both have fulfilled Barsacqs dictum, however
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
furniture. Thus, despite Pauls 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 Jeannes 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
naires 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
When Paul chases Jeanne to the parents apartment, he notes that it has a lot of
the empty apartment expresses Pauls 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
the compositional contrast with the empty apartment.44 This example suggests that
in a relatively Realistic space, the balance struck between social and compositional
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
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
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
Norberg-Schulz suggests why exterior sets dont lend themselves to stylization: the
economic status, etc. But the social realm of the street is a stage for conflict. A
unified design concept. By definition, a street is a social expression, while even the
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
interact with the diegesis and create a facsimile of the real world. As a result, the
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
Zhivagos 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 scripts expressive needs perfectly. And neither approach
general social image with personalized interiors. Mamer and Stringer note:
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 locations 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 designs need to make a
Doctor Zhivago's budget allowed the construction of designed streets, but the
resulting set doesnt allow the flexibility of a location. In none of the films 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:
As soon as movement and life become designed, they lack the immediacy of an
reduced.
Landscape
level results from mans interaction with the natural environment."51 Nature is the
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
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 persons capacity
In Art and Visual Perception, Arnheim describes the discovery of the illusion of
geometry:
In order to produce the illusion of the world as it appears for one viewer
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 couldnt perceive.55 Through editing, the films
can provide a multiplicity of perspectives. But there will always be something more
landscape, built on the illusion of depth, must effectively destroy the indexical
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
substitute for the visceral effect of real space. The frisson of recognition at this
different object.
but neither function has much to do with the formal emphasis the landscapes
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 cameras, that is, the productions, 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,
the street location appropriates a slice of social life to add to diegetic variety, the
and time. One appropriate to that requirement is found. In the process, the
locations individual identity is lost in order to express place. Like illiterate serfs
spruced up by designers to look better for narrative service. But the terms of the
sprucing arent even necessarily socially accepted notions of beauty, but the
with enhanced impact, the location is a secondary prop, frequently trashed and
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
something beyond the image itself: This [tendency] explains the immense
proliferation of titles that attempted to imbue the subject matter of paintings with
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 Hinzs comments suggest, image inflation has
political consequences. There doesnt 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
company) and exploited (location) are on a relatively equal footing. The benefit may
even accrue to the locations 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
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
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-mans fantasy projection. That the owners of the field and
houses and members of the crowd were paid is likely, but their participation in the
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 images exchange value operates
Luis Pico Estrada has described this process in relation to Western productions
set in Latin America. Estrada acknowledges the value of attention to the regions
history:
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.60
Estrada sees the alienation of space and decor in these films as a political failure.
and American filmmakers drapes the native spectators norm in the clothes of the
exotic. Always subject to ever-greater heights of stylization and difference lest the
what they are: oppressed, exploited victims of the developed worlds addiction to
signification.
Cosmic Space
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
the film image itself. As with landscape, in order to achieve cosmic affect, cinema
perspective requires that the affect of cosmic space, again like landscape, be
subject, religious sentiment has no more physical presence than the emotions
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
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,
acquires the transcendental affect lacking in Protestant theology and late 18th, early
. . .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.62
reproduce this sense of the sublime in nature, difficulties deriving from its
materialist origins.
film occur in the genre most removed from the everyday material world, science
fiction. Yet the genres 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
Without resorting to the banality that science is a modem religion, empirical method
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?63 The question is critical,
since it implies that the spectator contains and perpetuates the scientific inquiry
counter to the illusion, but which is simultaneously the article of faith generating
the illusion.
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
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
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
In short, these films evoke the infinite or wondrously large by resorting to the
The ghosts of the Society of Jesus haunt the frames of the most materialist of
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 mans ability to transcend
through technical tricks, while the religious affect evoked looks elsewhere for
religious affect.
48
The Spaces of Narrative
While it has never been far beneath the surface of the preceding discussion, it
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 doesnt 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
connotation.)66 To underline his authority to survey the spaces of the station, for
example, his quarters are provided with surveillance and communication monitors
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 films production. They refer not to the future, but to the moments present.
49
Unintentionally, the film shows ONeil, not as a man of the future, but as a lover of
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.
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 objects
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
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
situation: Brute objects . . .do not exist in reality. All are sufficiently meaningful
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
between the filmmaker and his protagonist, who becomes a means of motivating the
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
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, its 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 Chiaromontes
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
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
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
Regardless, films like The Passenger create this potential through a dominant
structure. As Pasolini points out, the potential for figurative meaning is produced
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,
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,
the stemware is also inconsistently shaped from one person to another. None of the
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
present. Things werent as good in the past. Even the middle class couldnt drink
out of glasses, we might be led to think, as the social fabric of the films diegesis
reveals their lack. For example, while Barrys 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
meaning in the forms of glassware present, so too there can be shades of meaning
direct drinking from jugs, themselves noticeably non-Modern in form and material.
generated in negative, through contrast with presence, absence becomes part of the
But more connotative complications can occur when two dominant terms
motivate their presence adequately, design elements can begin to act in relative
autonomy, de-railing the storys forward drive. If too many implicit readings
Englishwoman:
Here you can see the deceptiveness of the visual if youre not
awfully careful. Richard MacDonald and I set out to make the ugliest
house that we could possibly make. Theres not one thing in that
house excepting the Magritte reproductions that either Richard or I
or anybody I know would w a n t. . .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!73
For another example, the tycoons office in Batman (1989) is designed around
(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, Palances
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 dont necessarily
subvert the dominant. But connotation can thwart narrative, send it in directions it
didnt mean to go, particularly if the implicit meaning of objects interact apart from
the dominant.
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 arent what they seem. It is not surface yielding
depth, but surface playing to surface, and in the process, obscuring what seemed
to the cultural field, nor privilege those developed within the composition.
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
chaos.
3 David O. Selznick, memo dated September 1, 1937, quoted in Memo from David
O. Selznick, 152.
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 films 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, Caligaris 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.
11 Barsacq 122.
12 Barsacq 123.
14 Heisner 3.
15 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.
20 The labels have been added both for descriptive convenience and to make them
more directly applicable to film.
21 Barsacq 128.
25 And the easiest? When asked Why is a period film easier to design than a
contemporary one? Production Designer Mel Bourne replied Its all prescribed for
you.. . .It is much more of a challenge to make a contemporary apartment
photogenic . . . LoBrutto 115.
26 Norberg-Schulz 27.
28 Barsacq 7.
29 Norberg-Schulz 20.
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.
34 Norberg-Schulz 27.
35 Norberg-Schulz 27.
36 Barsacq 122.
37 Barsacq 122.
39 David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood
Cinema: Film Style & Mode o f Production to I960, 13.
41 Barsacq 124-25.
46 Barsacq 178.
47 Barsacq 180.
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)
52 Norberg-Schulz 20.
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.
of all. Unlike fiction filmmaking, which at least contributes to the local economy
during production, documentary filmmakers dont 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.
62 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin o f our Ideas o f the
Sublime and Beautiful, 107-08.
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 Neils quarters painted in a
traditionally feminine color, such as pink.
67 Pasolini 171.
68 Pasolini 171.
71 This, essentially, was Eisensteins position. See, for example, The Filmic
Fourth Dimension, and Methods of Montage, Film Form, 64-83.
Mrs. Talmann taunts Mr. Neville with the paradox of all Realistic mimesis, to
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 Draughtsmans Contracts, 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
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
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
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.
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 Amheims and Sergei Eisensteins theories; and, derived from Lacanian
psychoanalysis, the film image as mirror. He stresses that this third metaphor arises
. . .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
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
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
window and frame metaphors. Under the former, the frame is centrifugally
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, Altmans 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
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:
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
Eisenstein too was among the most persistently frame oriented of film theorists.
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
on and off-screen space also ends up closer to the closed tradition than the
can add to a film images reality affect by implying a boundlessness to diegetic (or,
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. Burchs on-screen space draws off-screen space in; it isnt simply a part of
suggests that the cameras 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-
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
technology. If we accept the terms of Bazins distinction between theater and film,
centripetal), we must reach a conclusion precisely the opposite to Bazins: film must
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
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
68
characteristic element in any film is the way it presents all its objectsanimate as
well as inanimate.15
But even in this very attention to objects, Braudys 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. 16
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.17 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
Braudy includes open and closed form, avoiding Arnheims, Bazins and
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
design may be taken as the form of closed composition.21 He links open form
with the Baroque. Wolfflins 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
Wolfflin sums up the differences between the two styles succinctly. First as a
perception:
Movement
70
For cinema, Wolfflins 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 doesnt.)
Thus, closed framing, with its gravitation towards tectonic forms, will, in its
movement in the frame; a dearth of movement of the frame. But this second form of
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
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
cameras constant pans around the lobby give a strong sense of spatial reality and
able to catch a glimpse of the objects and people masked by the screens border.25
But even as camera movements provide a powerful aid in denying the frame,
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,
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
because of his contrary use of the zoom. The zoom, a false camera movement,
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
72
occasionally asserting themselves for directorial comment. (For example, zooming
Saturation
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 frames exclusionary functions tells us very little about the
effect of those functions on what is included. While Amheim and Eisenstein include
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.
We will start with very simple definitions, even though they may
have to be corrected later. We will call the determination o f a closed
system, a relatively closed system which includes everything which
is present in the imagesets, characters and props fram ing.30
But, lest we view this statement as merely a re-phrasing of the closed position,
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.
73
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
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.35
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
hierarchy) and Empty (rarefied, emphasis on single object, set emptied of sub-sets,
These axes provide four basic attitudes towards the frame, all at best relative:
tendencies, not truths, exhibited to greater or lesser degree from shot to shot,
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.39
This tendency to fill, rather than to empty out, accords well with production de
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
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
75
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
But the fetish potential of saturation also depends on the frames degree of
openness. Deleuze notes that closed frames can never reach completion. Every
set, the ultimate whole of which can never be apprehended. So while the closed
sucks the gaze towards a center embroidered with the lapidary excesses of material
production.41
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
acknowledges but which it excludes as much as the closed frame. As a result, its
saturation serves effectively the same purpose as a closed frames. Both types of
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
Formalism is valid. But the Closed/Full and Open/Full tendencies can move
films such as The Scarlet Empress (1935) or Ivan the Terrible (1940) are
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.
verite documentary, the label applies equally well to highly formalized endeavors as
(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
open/closed or full/empty, but rather the degree to which these four axes combine to
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
Obsessive Framing
With the frame sitting like a mule in the middle of the road, stubbornly refusing
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. Deleuzes
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, Deleuzes amplification helps only slightly, since what for one
spectator represents an example of making the camera felt may for another be
consciously poetic directors such as Antonioni and Godard, art historian Norman
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
can, through sheer skill of execution, provide the Megalographic, heroic depiction
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
79
Second, the art historical tradition with which Bryson associates heroic,
(technical excess, historical or religious subject matter) come together in the History
Film.
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:
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
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
exaggerated perspective noted in Chapter 1 is not the only source of religious affect
naissance architecture, derived from the same rules that produced its churches and
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:
At the same time this service of religion was performed within the Humanist
cosmos as perceived from the station point of an individual in space. This new
and the social fact of moving art work off the walls of cathedrals into more portable
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
religion) will be dictated by the degree to which perspective is made obvious in the
only along lines that maintain a single vanishing point. The most obvious means of
competition.54
blocked or otherwise, will almost inevitably evoke the religious, hierarchic past
chapter one, this religious affect can be expected in images with a closed, tectonic,
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,
system shaped by the same historical tradition. There is thus a strong link between
overall process with concrete historical precedents. This poetry should be seen as
comprehension of the universe resulting from a fixed stare at the physical world,
Cotans 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
are now obvious: specific devices, such as scenes beginning and ending on frames
work in the act of cinematic framing. But we should return to the first, fundamental
related to design: the shape of the cinematic frame. Why a rectangle, and why the
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
(1.33:1) and widescreen, which can be used to cover a large number of ratios and
processes.
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
John Belton notes that the development of the 1.33:1 ratio was itself the product of
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
since the late nineteenth century, and existed as a process as early as 1927.59
84
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
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,61 Barr
away from montage aesthetics, towards visual richness and viewer selection.
cinema with widescreen, despite its prior history of 1.33:1 composition. For the
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 Barrs argument further.
At the same time, Belton also adopts an argument about the invisible frames
rich spectacle and saturation. Its presence implies a partial replacement of the values
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
with greater freedom of selection for the viewer, is partially correct. But what he
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
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
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
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
stake a major investment in a spectacle and leave the films visual style to chance.
designers used to the traditional ratio, the capital intensive nature of Cinemascope
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 images art value through centripetal emphasis.
87
While an extensive use of camera movement might overcome the self-
Cinemascope production, The Robe noted how the widescreen image, far from
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
course enhances the effect of lateral movement.72 Obviously, such an affinity for
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
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
At the very least, widescreen composition shows equal tendencies towards closed
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
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 dont know which part audiences will be looking at.73) In addition,
taken for a closed canvas as it is for an engulfing experience. And since the shape
As we have seen in these two chapters, the production designers 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 mediums
selection of objects which provide a heightened, abstract, reality. The source of that
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
the part of the spectator to shift the plane of focus, for the material, physical context
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
Loseys films; the ponderous movement of actors into and out of depth in Welles,
framing.)
But whatever the intentions of the designer, the process of providing exchange
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 films physical environment re-acquires its voice,
construction.
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
artifacts. Images designed to connote chic inevitably after time denote their
production period. Walk-on appearances by actors who later became stars fix the
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.
films story requires Chan to get from Honolulu to Berlin for the Olympic games.
Because hes 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 films largely studio-controlled shots
and the newsreel footage, there is the inevitable fascination of watching a record of
91
the ship before its famous crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The ship is included
historically because of the traces it bears of an object vivid in the memory apart
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.75
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
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
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
have been. W hen 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
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
filler.76
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
The term of this self-objectification is, of course, fetishization of the image, the
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
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
o f their luster, despite the equal datedness of individual objects or fashions. This
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
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
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
the surfaces of a film can be expected to have a longer life than the stories they
contain.
Chinese and Japanese painting. We dont 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
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
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 cant be true. But such a wink implies a casualness (and humor) not usually
present in the twin exertions of overcoming the audiences disbelief and obsessive
framing. Maybe a better way to describe this subtle alienation is simply to label it.
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, Caligaris Cabinet and other Grand Illusions: a History o f Film
D esign, 4.
3 Altman 521.
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.
11 Burch 21.
13 Bazin 105.
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15 Braudy 37.
16 Braudy 41.
17 Braudy 15.
18 Braudy 77.
2* W olfflin 15.
28 W olfflin 135.
24 W olfflin 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 Viscontis Death in
Venice, in which the combination of a zoom forward, lateral track away and
opposing pan with Aschenbach crossing St. M arks Square has the peculiar effect
of making the visual field move while remaining simultaneously static. There is, of
course, also Hitchcocks famous Vertigo effect, the combination of a zoom in and
a track back.
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.
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
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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 (Antonionis deserted landscapes; Ozus
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.
40 Deleuze 16.
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 narratives movement in time.
44 Deleuze 74.
99
46 Regarding the relationship between cinematic spectacle and the Baroque, Neale
notes that integral to both is . .also the exhibition of the meansthe tricksused to
produce it. An awareness of artifice therefore, at some point, seems to be essential
to the overall effect. . . . Neale 68.
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 W olfflin 9-10.
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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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 Cinemascopes development, see p. 57.
60 Deleuze 12.
61 Charles Barr, Cinemascope: Before and After, in Film Theory and Criticism:
Introduction Readings, 3rd ed., 139-63.
63 Belton 196.
64 Belton 194-95.
66 Belton 187.
67 Barr 145.
Belton 194-95.
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 Barrs
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 M GM 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.
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 cant. The presence of Robert Clary, for example, probably best
known for his characterization of LeBeau in the TV series H ogans Heroes cannot
fail to tie a trail of farce to the films 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 Deleuzes 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 3History of the World, part I
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
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
measure of humanity and sophistication the mark of Cain. (Or the voice of Kane:
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 doesnt aspire. What seems
ultimately at stake in the film is not so much the debunking of particular historical
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-
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
104
the illusion, and thus the pretense of the entire construction-but the credits still
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.
Kahn, John Hurt, et al), the film re-instates the level of cultural pretension it
simulacra. The hero/ine disappears only to sneak in through the back door, cloaked
in a seven-figure salary.
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
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
start, then, by taking Aristotle at his word, and assume that spectacle is
Regardless of their motivations or goals, Brecht and Brooks start with well-
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
those works of which he approves from those he does not. Lukacs criticizes
past, believing that such a sense can only be based on a conception of the broad
Thus, even though he is discussing two literary ancestors of film, his theories are
environment.
point, then, in narrowing the field of inquiry. But in starting with Lukacs, we must
the object further. A film may be novelistic or theatrical; it will never be a novel or a
106
play. But by examining Lukacss description of the latter, the significant points of
overlap between media will illuminate their differences, thereby making it easier to
Lukacs himself provides the precedent for such a dialectical comparison. After
cinema derives many of its formal properties from the two media, The Historical
In effect, Lukacs has done some of the process of separation and abstraction for us,
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
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,
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
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
o f 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
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
Moreover, this mediocre figure frequently will be positioned not with the forces
o f 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
ability to connect with the popular needs and desires of the historical moment when
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
Thus the World Historical Individual is defined purely in social, rather than
personal terms:
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,
objects is the complete social fabric of a novels setting, which is defined in terms
making closer, not more distant. For Walter Scott, necessary anachronism
thoughts about real, historical relationships in a much clearer way than the actual
archaeologism, the attempt to recreate the past through external description.16 While
we will return to this distinction later, for the moment it is most important to note
For Lukacs, then, the Historical Novel represents a social, popular form that
the most economical means of connecting the story to the broad social tapestry of
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
the primary concern of the classical Historical Novel is a social investigation which,
with Balzac the historical novel which in Scott grew out of the English social novel,
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.18 To a certain extent, this concentration on the hero derives from
drama focuses on heroes because the way they lead their lives is inherently
dramatic.
essentially circular. (What about a heros life makes it dramatic? Because he/she
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
embodied in concrete human beings and concrete human destinies21 and . . .the
deepest individual and personal traits merge with historical authenticity and truth to
their personalities, can yet bear and reveal the fullness of their world.25
attitude towards the World Historical Individual in Historical Drama and Novel
result from similar aims for their depiction, namely, to connect them meaningfully
i.e. the concrete mission of the hero... this in the historical novel is unfolded in
Lukacs also discusses the public character of drama,28 resulting in the direct
Lukacs, again citing Hegel, notes the danger of allowing the World Historical
laws of development round the great historical collision.32 In the novel, collision
composition. Moreover, because the novel is more historical than drama (its
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
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
result not just from different exigencies of composition, but from a shared goal of
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 films 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
mediocre hero in the midst of historical crisis. Although the definition of historical
resolution serves the dual purpose of closing the social, historical crisis and the
At least partially, Ben Cameron in The Birth o f a Nation (1914) possesses the
the Civil W ar as a means of preserving the way of life of a conservative class. Like
Scotts heroes, he is a liminal figure, with strong ties to the other side of the conflict
114
(the Stoneman family.) His life and actions represent a general, historical situation,
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.
schema, since Abraham Lincoln is prevented by his assassination from healing the
tragedy because of the truncation of the World Historical Individuals 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. O f course, this failure of the film is produced by the terms of
than Lincoln. In perverse terms, he performs exactly the function of the Lukacsian
World Historical Individual, since his actions precipitate the sequences of events
Another civil war serves as backdrop to The Leopard (II Gattopardo, 1963).35
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 latters marriage to the beautiful,
bourgeois Angelica.
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-
noted:
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 films 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
Garibaldi is prevented from bringing the social crisis to a head. In Birth's, case, the
cutting short of the World Historical Individuals 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
In The Leopard's terms, Italy and Sicilys 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
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
As a result, had the cycle stopped with the first installment, it would not qualify
business. It is only in the second part that history as a subject enters the
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
Pope John Paul I guarantees the Corleones movement into legitimate finance, that
movement is secondary in the films 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 Michaels daughter or his own murder.
Yet, while successful in normalizing gangster life, The Godfather films do not
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
However, the films remain interesting in this context for their decidedly weak
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,
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
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 models past, while
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
fidelity.
Moreover, John Paul Is failure to effect meaningful change in part III results at
least as much from the ideology he represents as his death. A Pope exercising
the Christian principle to turn the other cheek. When Christ Himself is figured as
the W orld 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 H urs personal crisis, it is not in Lukacsian terms, since the
subordinated to his desire for vengeance. By a sleight of hand, the films political
content is subsumed within a private struggle. But the story doesnt stop when the
personal conflict is brought to an end with Messalas death. Instead, Hurs personal
Christs 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
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 storys central focus. But
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Christ doesnt 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
These examples suggest that the novelistic model for historical representation
(and, o f 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
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 dont 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 films historical struggle is
embodied in Hur and Messala; Christ has nothing to do with settling that dispute.
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
Similarly, in The Three and Four Musketeers (1974 and 1975), dArtagnans
struggles to stay alive at the court of Louis XIII are juxtaposed against the larger
member of the latter, fights for the king. But in historical terms, that position is
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 Artagnans personal crisis (hes been arrested); at the same time, by that action,
These examples are not offered facetiously. Rather, combined with the
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
moment exists, the tone of the film can afford to be light; historical conflict will be
swept away before the final fade o u t41 If no such person exists, or if the World
Historical Individual is cut down before being able to accomplish his/her task,
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
antagonists who embody the best of the political systems for which they fight.
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
1860s, the film shows Juarez as the all-wise defender of democracy. Maximilian,
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
description of Maximilian and his intentions quietly explains to him that this one
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
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
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
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.
124
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
figure who knows what History has in store for both himself and his people,
whereas Maximilian, full of good intentions, does not recognize hes on the wrong
side o f 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 films terms) a fatal mixture of personal and political motivation. Maximilian
and Carlotas desire for a child is not allowed to be just an expression of a parental
Maximilian and Carlotas mistake lies not in the somewhat selfish motivation of
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
Individual. On the one hand, a public narrative dramatizes the creation of a person
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
personal.
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 Lukacss 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.
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,
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
P ouvoirde 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
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
Pu Yi, The Last Emperor (1987) of China is doubly-cursed since the film presents
him. As Foster Hirsch expresses it: The epic hero, in general, does not have time
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
argues that to psychologize the world historical figure has two consequences: first,
from class consciousness; and second, it risks trivializing the hero/ine by reducing
fiction. But its presence is purely negative, a means of showing what the World
must first be present. This inevitable presence of the genre creates a series of edgy
motivation, and thus fail to deliver on the historical mission. Positively, the greater
Individual, thus making their eventual renunciation (if it occurs) that much more
powerful.
strength, rather than something to be gotten pastis 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
attachment, it must be balanced against the fact that Tsar is able to pursue his
policies only after Anastasias 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.
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
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,
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
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
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
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
accuracyeven 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
scene:
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.
Leaving aside the questions of 1) whether such irony in fact occurs or whether
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.
personal conflict and internal disruption resulting from external, social pressure to
order for the hero/ine to perform their historical mission. Sacrifice is seen as valid
question of victimization.53 The History Film is thus primarily a social rather than a
outward rather than inward. In short, the differences between the genres are the
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
But such a shift in emphasis towards personal concern violates the Lukacsian
social relevance. But if it is true that film derives from both novelistic and theatrical
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
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
(1951) seems in order, both for what it reveals about films relation to historical
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
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
The first, most striking change evident in the adaptation of Ivanhoe is the
simplification o f 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 periods 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 films major set-piece,
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 novels references to the Knights Templar (Sir
Richard.
Audience sympathy and identification have also been simplified. The novels
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
Particularly when combined with the films more active hero and reduced Richard,
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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 films physical
depiction.
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. B ut... the prejudices of the age rendered
such an union almost impossible.55
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
what some of the consequences are for the film by removing Ivanhoes 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-
between the two, suggesting that the narrative has a logic of its own which moves
successful romance with Rebecca. So, when at the end he chooses Joan Fontaine
To the extent that this choice expresses Ivanhoes character, it also effects the
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
resolve this problem in the novel only because he has previously earned Cecils
respect by fighting side-by-side with him in cognito as the Black Knight. Thus,
Richards personal qualities of leadership are, as Lukacs notes, necessary for the
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,
greeted with general acclaim (its the last shot of the film) this resolution remains
apart from Ivanhoes problems. He has already settled affairs with his father, who
early-on reconciles himself to Richards rule. Ivanhoe has also killed Bois de
Guilbert and made his choice between Rowena and Rebecca without Richards
help.
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Nor does Richards intercession make much sense in the films simplified terms
of the social conflict. The adaptation changes the complex allegiances between
Saxons and Jews on the one hand and oppressive Normans on the other. Richard,
ability to force the Normans to accept the Saxons (and Jews?) on equal terms
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 Ivanhoes personal
conflict, which he has fixed for himself, and which no longer serves as a
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 films absent World
Historical Individual, however, the absence itself is the issue. While the novel also
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
Thus, the central conflict for which Ivanhoe is meant to stand in shifts from the
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.)
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 Ivanhoes
choice. The visual codes used to describe Rowena and Rebecca, particularly the
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
Fontaine presents the pleasures of a bowl of after-dinner mints, while Taylors eyes
sparkle like two amethysts. Rebecca is therefore a central, visual presence. This
centrality not only makes Ivanhoes decision difficult to understand, it tilts the film
Rebeccas visual importance is all the more striking compared with the treatment
o f 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
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.61 The attempted patching up of the social fabric at
the end is both too much (Ivanhoe doesnt need it) and too little (we have no
evidence to suggest that Richard can solve the social conflicts as dramatized.)
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-
Englishmen makes little sense in the films 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
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
locations, costumes and makeup provide what the story cannot, the p ro o f of
history.
and painted mattes, turning history into a pastel playground. But the physical
environment remains the persuasion that these events are anything other than a
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
background.
The play and films conceit is simple: Henry II, King of England, his wife, Eleanor
(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 Eleanors 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,
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 films terms on the basis of their
This trivialization is the plays 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.
history takes place in closed quarters, bedrooms, hallways and dungeons. But
when these situations and spaces are transported to the screen, they undergo a
the movie-star and the movie set, by lending the play a greater physical substance
In the published screenplay for the film, James Goldman begins his discussion
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 w ere
used to seeing in King Arthur movies.64
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,
2), the decor of the theater is thus an area materially enclosed, limited,
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.67
relationship between the dialogue, as delivered by the actors, and the surrounding
decor. Film, by its photographic heritage, exposes spatial artifice. But theater,
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
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,
arrival at Chinon and a battle on the beach are the most egregious examples.) His
141
description of the opening of a filmic adaptation of Molieres 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.68
However, once past these sequences, the films 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
o f preserving the spatial contiguity of actors in a scene. (This service to the play is
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
shifts from the unfolding of narrative through cinematic device to the almost
Bazins 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, decors
Theatrical space frees the viewer to appreciate space as space rather than place,
because it isnt 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
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,
wholeness and self-containment, rather than for the accumulation of edited details
leading to narrative.
archaeologically, they dont 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. W e need only the
soundtrack to know whats going on in the film. But because they are gratuitous,
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
design, centered on character. The problem with the theatrical, then, may be its
virtuethe story is developed by the dialogue, and therefore does not require the
own.
fact, the more we examine Lukacss theories in relation to film, the more our
conclusions seem to point somewhere else, where Lukacs insists Historical Novel
Even more relevant to the discussion of film are two later comments he makes
dialogue etc. can lead to nothing else [but].. .archaeologism.72 And most tellingly,
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.73
cinemas historical recreations. Even more relevant is the description of the history
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
inanimate object has such enormous importance on the films. An object is already
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
characters of History Films. Yet the agreement among these diverse theorists
Lukacs condemns the late 19th century Historical Novel. Or, to put it in Lukacss
own terms, the Historical Novel as a separate genre makes the mistake of equating
Hegels 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
art arises during the same period of bourgeois decadence that produced the
Perhapsat 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
But our explorations suggest that we should turn to the 19th century to understand
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 isthe past is a museum. The
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
reveals the extent to which character and story are important only as fixed patterns,
With this in mind, Leon Barsacqs injunction about the role of the cinematic
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
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
didnt. 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
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
the title works parasitically on the stove-pipe hat, the beard and gaunt figure, which
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
Thus to Lukacs and Hegels Totality of Objects in the epic and novel, and the
Film, the illusion that the diegetic world extends indefinitely beyond the field of
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
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 Brechts 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 cant we? To insist, as Aristotle did, that spectacle is
gratuitous is to mis-understand the extent to which physicality is not just the appeal
creating the Totality of Space. And thus, it is not just to literature, but to the plastic
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 Loseys film of the play, which stylistically is as
refined as Brookss 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:
Laughtons Galileo, Brecht 236, emphases added.
3 Gyorgy Lukacs, The Historical Novel, translated from the German by Hannah
and Stanley Mitchell (London. Merlin Press. 1962.)
5 Lukacs 21.
6 Lukacs 23-24.
149
7 Lukacs 33.
8 Lukacs 36-37.
9 Lukacs 38.
10 Lukacs 49.
11 Lukacs 45.
12 Lukacs 47.
13 Lukacs 92-93.
14 Lukacs 61.
15 Lukacs 63.
17 Lukacs 85.
18 Lukacs 92.
19 Lukacs 104.
20 Lukacs 107.
21 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.
31 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 directors
own: Whereas in Senso Visconti retains a position of detachment above a central
character who is directly involved in the action, in The Leopard Viscontis 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-Smiths desire to absolve the director of the Princes narrow
class bias is a bit more difficult to accept.
37 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party in The
M arx-Engels Reader , 354.
38 For example, this line of dialogue from Michael: If history has taught us
anything, its that anyone can be killed. For an examination of the social critique
offered by the film see John Hess, Godfather II\ a Deal Coppola Couldnt
Refuse, in Movies and Methods, 1:81-90.
39 In the film s terms. Victor-L. Tapie suggests a more rounded view of Louiss
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 Richelieuthe 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.
41 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.
44 see Ralph Roeder, Juarez and his Mexico 2 volumes (New York. Greenwood
Press. 1968) for an account of Juarezs political and personal life.
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 Kaels comment of Lady Sings the Blues,
Paramounts 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.. . .its shocking to see a great black artists
experience poured into the same Hollywood mold, and to see that it worksand
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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.
50 Draper 58.
51 Draper 58.
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.
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.
61 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.
63 For a description of the plottings within Henry IIs family, even more complex
than those depicted in The Lion in Winter, see W. L. Warren, Henry II.
66 Bazin 104.
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
Goldmans 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
154
70 Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice, Image, Music, Text, 188.
72 Lukacs 198.
Lukacs 239.
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 doesnt even include costume or decor! Perhaps we should view that exclusion
as a testament to designs 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.
that it is watching an historical film and to place it, at least approximately. Sorlin
20.
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Chapter 4The 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
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 Lionhearts speech at the end of Ivanhoe (1951); Robin
Hoods speech in Sherwood Forest in The Adventures o f Robin Hood (1938); Sir
return to St. Petersburg in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971); his speech before the
Soviets at the end of October (1927); Hitlers appearances in Triumph o f the Will
Cleopatra (1964); most of Rosa Luxemburgs speeches (1985.) Even parody epics
like Monty Pythons Life o f Brian (1979) and History o f the World, part / (1981)
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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Hirsch does not develop these observations in great detail, and in any event is not
will provide a useful starting point for recognizing what History Film is not.
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
we take Elsaesser and other writers on melodrama at their word, the genre produces
associations generated by the film.4 Connections with the outside world are less
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
example, expresses the political differences between the Presidents 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 dont see them choosing the
clothes because the image of both exists before the film begins.
spaces and objects with accumulated significance, the History Film keeps decor and
the outside to lend significance. The decor does not belong to any character; it
narratives 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
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
In Conquest the chairs equally express economic status and taste but the
economic status is the productions ability to corral the objects together; the taste is
because they are motivated by a discourse beyond the film. Individual objects
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, decors significance lies in its total
antique, not of the present, measuring the visual appearance of a History Film
reality, the period image is defined and limited by our historical knowledge and the
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 somewhereusually, the edge of the frame. Thus
Conservative Stylization not only gathers some of the physical resources of the past
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
But the style evoked neednt be appropriate to the period depicted, just as the
rooms of a museum neednt rhyme with the art periods they contain. A 19th century
architectural epochs are important only in what is depicted, not the style in which
theyre depicted. Thus, it is not just the World Historical Individual who must
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
And this frame, derived from architectural organization, outlines the genre much
closed.
the illusion of the past having been recreated, the closed form provides the History
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
This space is the genres measure of normality and deviance. And as a result,
the History Film becomes equally a rhythm of editing and camera movement. The
framing. Shots so framed move differently than shots composed for juxtaposition
162
since paintings are not meant to follow one another.13 Composed as paintings, the
perfection. Thus History Films usually have few camera movements, except those
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-
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 jum p in the
imagery of the History Film as it shifts from one ideal image to another.
Frequently a single film will provide a range of framings and saturations. But
which produced the History Films visual codes. The general definition will thus be
Historical Genre
Theo Fiirstenau, after establishing the familiar link between nineteenth century
History Painting and cinematic History adds a valuable insight, the History Films
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.16
by compositions centered on the most important figure of the painting; 3) use of the
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
But this validation is ironic, since such painting in the nineteenth century was
Copley and John Trumbull, a gradual movement away from the depiction of
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 figure20 through accurate
portraiture. Wind concludes that . . .the final breach with the Academic rules of
These democratic ideas cause Wind to link these artists to the French Neo-
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
Moreover, these paintings were contemporary with, and often concomitant to, the
access becomes an appeal to a particular class and ideology through the effects of
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
diagonal view of the Baroque in favor of the rigorously frontal view . . .[and] the
Honour argues that Neo-classicism offered a slightly different kind of space from
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
following the fall of Napoleon, particularly during the reign of Louis Philippe
1830-1848, Michael Marrinan argues that French art of this period weds the
The particular expression that History Painting takes on during the Louis Philippe
era results from the contradictory nature of the regime, historical circumstances and
This change in History Painting came about at a time when the genres
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
These new easel paintings offered a new approach to history, apprehended through
commissioned paintings. The King shared the taste for history-made-familiar, while
The genre historique derives its emphasis on sharply defined forms from Neo-
dispersed across the frame, with multiple points of interest, rather than the central
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
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
For example, the portraits of Louis Philippe which Marrinan analyzes are
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.
uncomfortable: neither fish nor fowl, genre historique merged the traditionally low
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genre painting with the Academically valued History Painting.37 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
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
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.
Josephine (1808-10); in Juarez (1939), the filmmakers quote Goyas The Third o f
M ay 1808 (1810.) Films such as Barry Lyndon (1975), Elvira Madigan (1967) or
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
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 films 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
connotative terms overlooks the images material specificity. The filmmakers evoke
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
acquire value in the present, in a movement back and forth similar to that noted by
Kracauer.
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 genres formal codes. The low comedy shenanigans are
staged in a physically convincing environment; the props, costumes and settings are
Leonardos The Last Supper, with Brookss character Comicus supplying Jesuss
halo by holding a silver tray behind his head. A parody image, unquestionably, but
made a joke of one cultural icon, felt the need to re-assert sophistication, by
To repeat: the images contents are secondary. In fact, the more knowledge
possessed about the image, the more likely the films 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
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, Sorlins historical capital is not
just events, people, etc., but the museum images and objects used as the means of
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.
Describing the films quote of Davids painting of the death of Marat, King notes:
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
production, to produce an image obviously existing in the present. But under such
King insists that this reflexiveness is recuperated back into the film. But Leon
Barsacq seems to believe that the spectator starts from a position of disbelief. The
History Films impersonal hero/ines impersonally. Lukacs insisted that the World
spectacle, since the most economical way to represent the social visually is with a
crowd. The crowd scene shows the hero/ines ability to gather an assembly, 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
as a fantastic expenditure of money and ingenuity. How did they ever do it? and
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
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
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)
from the intimate into the public and social or 3) are themselves exotic objects
for example.
Spaces scaled to the human form arent lacking, but theyre centered on the
scale reconstruction of the past. Personal motivation has been subsumed within the
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
The History Films stylistic mean tends towards closed, saturated frames, of
historiques 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 films origins in a straight history book49 might
lead to an expectation of greater historical accuracy than usual, but in fact Nicholas
book may provide, both it and the film subsume history in favor of visual pleasure
The films 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 M assies
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
w orld.51
This convergence of melodrama and History can be viewed at least two ways:
(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
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, Nicholass diary, which
lacks the expressive language of his private letters, has proved a rich
mine for his detractors.52
personalizing the life of the powerful. Trotsky, for one, put a different gloss on the
diaries: The tzars diary is the best of all testimony [to the Tsars character]. From
day to day and from year to year drags along upon its pages the depressing record
The tzars outlook was not broader than that of a minor police
officialwith 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.54
example:
Massies book invites identification with royalty in moments of trial while stimu
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 books need to recreate the past. For example, . . .cream silk
gowns embroidered in silver and blue and worn with diamonds. . . may produce
Yet Massie does not face the filmmakers problem of providing spectacle
in silver and blue and worn with diamonds. . . arrests the gaze with a power and
immediacy that the phrase lacks. Where Massies spectacle covers over the lack of
historical analysis in the book by stimulating with physical tangibility, the film s
fulfills the same function for the film, substituting for a broad historical canvas of
European politics.
duration depends on the audiences willingness to sit through it. While a film can
easily capture the viewers gaze with . . .cream silk gowns embroidered in silver
and blue and worn with diamonds. . . it cannot depict a broad historical
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,59
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
family.
But production realities have their own logic that move beyond aesthetic
inexpensively.61 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
tragedy.) According to Massies 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
failure to engage their people and an example of their secretive handling of the
The sequence, typical of History Films 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.
178
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
personal desire.
In contrast to the crowds 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
In the third location, the Imperial couple rush to Alexiss 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 Tsarevichs 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.63
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
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
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
selected to show the Imperial couples 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 Tsarevichs 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 Dowagers birthday party, the sequence
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,
The narrative moment is trivial: the Dowager serves little dramatic function; the
space, the Grand Duke Nikolashas palace, never appears again in the film. Indeed,
the Grand Duke later complains that he wants to sell it. Only Alexandras
the story.64 The triviality announces itself through the Faberge egg, setting the
sequence immediately into the literally Apprehensible, held by the Dowager,65 but
also the fantastically rich, the realm of 1) a vanished Imperial past and 2) the
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
case of Nicholas and Alexandra become the same. In a press packet, producer Sam
Spiegel boasted that the marble used in the films sets is real, because it was
cheaper to use the real thing,67 guaranteeing that people who attend Nicholas and
Alexandra will get their moneys worth of spectacle. Its 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
consider the sequence as the Tsar and Tsaritsa leave for the Empress Dowagers
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
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.
While later scenes in the corridor will be far less unambiguously positive, here,
before the revelation of the Tsarevichs hemophilia, the space reads as triumphant,
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
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
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 sequences mixture of the spectacular and the intimate creates a
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
melodrama. When Nicholas returns from the front, stripped of rank and privilege,
his walk down the corridor acquires an irony built on the earlier sequences
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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
becomes pitiful.
Thus irony produces a pathos derived almost exclusively from our sense of
loss of the palace spaces. Nicholass fall from power and status is expressed in
physical, material terms as his, our, lack of control over sumptuous spaces
breakdown after his return from the front, undeniably contribute to compositional
connotation. But since nothing happens in any of these corridor scenes, they only
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 tsars and the productions ability to order human activity to
spectacular ends.
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
Leopard, 1963) shares with Nicholas and Alexandra a strong melodramatic plot
the film is based on a book, although in the case of II Gattopardo, the source is a
work o f fiction. Nonetheless, it shares with Massies book a tendency to evoke the
This passage describes a brief transition, from the Prince of Salinas estate
office to his astronomical study. Neither the transition nor its preceding scene
appears in the film.71 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 Pirrones
close-ups. A still life of coffee pot, cup, and presumably Monreale biscuits finds
The still lifes casual placement at the edge of the frame reproduces
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.
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
Lampedusa, writing fiction, has merely to motivate the coffee and cookies through
They are not alienated objects serving as impersonal historical verification, but
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 films 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
Pirrones 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
dont see him consuming coffee or biscuit. But they are adequate indicators of the
act o f consumption. They substitute visually for an olfactory fact, one following
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
Rustling skirts are no less materially true than coffee and cookies. But while the
rustling skirts and patriarchal ideology; their sensual facticity relates only to the
fabric. These differences suggest how films material image cannot deal with
emotionally, with characters, placing our bodies in the frame by senses other than
between viewer and characters, but they do not work inevitably to induce
Walter Korte, discussing a detail similar to Father Pirrones coffee notes that in
the book;
. . .of things that Lampedusa saw as depleted or corrupt. . ,75 The director
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
In light of this passage, Viscontis emphasis seems less a betrayal of Marx than an
their sensual life. That this world is available only to the aristocracy can be seen as
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
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
uselessness.
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
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.
-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 films 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
The affective circle of the Street and this distant perspective combine to produce
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,
the diegesis in social space, the emotional distance encouraged by wide framing
Outside the action, the cameras spatial position equals the temporal distance from
events.
frame, its total composition moves beyond cookies, coffee, skirts and tablecloths.
Undoubtedly, the accumulation of details remains key to the films success. But it
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 films
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
century art. The frames are designed to look like paintings whose historical
The films visualization relies not on French art, however, so much as mid
nineteenth century Italian art. Angela Dalle Vacche has suggested that the battles in
Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908);81 Korte implies a similar origin for the Battle of
Palermo sequence:
Presumably this pre-impressionist naturalism refers both to Fattori and the group
of which he was a member, the Macchia. In The A rt 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
rise o f the Italian historical novel in the early 19th century, Boime notes regarding
Painting.84 The Macchia extended this logic further by painting the contemporary
world:
The Macchias view of the world was distinctly bourgeois. Boime notes that
unlike the the aristocratically privileged view paintings of Italian cities produced
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.86
Fattori. He writes about the Fattori painting directly relevant to the visualization of
participatory perspective with the rising middle-class, Boime glosses over the
events.
stylizationthe selection of a mode apart from the neutral norm.89 And since Fattori
Indirectly, style reproduces its periods 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:
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 Cousins eclecticism are relevant to the evolution of the style of
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
(The opening two shots of the sequence come close.) The filmmakers emphasize
documentary effect. This observation links Fattori to the popular print sources
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 images
narrative.
dissolve the frame since movement in and out of the field and of the camera does its
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
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
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.
movement strategy. For example, in the sequence after the credits, as the Satina
family bustles about after receiving news of Garibaldis 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 films actual recreation.
195
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
For even as these strategies work to heighten the illusion of reality through false
detachment. Combined with the films art historical references, the camera always
in arguing how Visconti had veered from his earlier Gramscian (i.e. social
But it is the combination of the distant and the picturesque which enables II
stylization is part of the process of historical recreation, since such recognition adds
that distance is the reality of historical recreation, the wide frame and the open
audience and film. By recognizing our recognition, the film shares our perspective,
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
To the extent that this identification with space encourages the viewer to indulge
valid. By wrapping the viewer with aristocratic risorgimento splendors, the film
means. Yet this argument overlooks those parts of the film in which the evidence of
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
much at the physical discomfort caused by the characters period clothing. In fact,
precisely because the film so effectively forces identification between the viewers
senses and the diegetic space, these scenes are as likely to produce a parallel
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 Princes 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.
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
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
History Film & the Small ScreenLa Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV
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
regard, II Gattopardo goes even further than Nicholas and Alexandra, since the
latters protagonists are played by unknowns, while the former features well-
known stars.
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
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
Rossellinis. Thus the points of similarity between the films nonetheless result in
different notions of cinematic history. But these differences are a reflection less of
Much of the preceding analysis assumes that History Film is equivalent to Big-,
Early History Films like Birth o f a Nation or historical melodramas such as Cabiria
the design yearns to ignore technological and economic realities to transcend the
1.33 aspect ratio.95 Gances Napoleon in this light is the logical extension of the
developments. And while the initial association between Cinemascope and historical
picture and larger productions, there is a match between generic convention and
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
and widescreen may seem, it neednt have occurred. The early successes in
John Belton suggests Fox used History Films for Cinemascope as a means of
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
History Film but history itself becomes equated with widescreen visualization.
Thus Roberto Rossellinis series of History Films for television could expect
little critical support: History was a square subject for a new generation of
could expect little sympathy, and might deter those who would be otherwise
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
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
200
John Ellis has noted that For broadcast TV, the culturally respectable is
increasingly equated with the cinematic.100 That respectability gets equated with
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, crow ds.101
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: Its very important to make the film spectacular, because above all
you must entertain people.. . .They have to be spectacular and that means spending
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
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
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 W alshs critique of the film ,106 Peter Brunette
notes: This is a forceful and cogent critique, but it is by no means clear how a film
James Roy MacBean writes: Moreover, La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV
admittedly has a great deal of sumptuous spectacle to divert the spectator. . . . 109
Stanley Kauffmann begins his review of the film with a catalogue of its sensual
delights:
202
(Note here, too, the analogization between taste and sight.) Even Peter Burkes
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
traditional History F ilm ,113 noting that Rossellinis entire film cost approximately
what Elizabeth Taylors jewels, wigs, and costumes cost (about $130,000) . . .[in
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
describing it in precisely the vulgar material terms he insists the film transcends.
203
Bondanellas calmly patronizing juxtaposition encapsulates traditional attitudes
philosophy for the price a traditional spectacular pays for baubles. However,
designs ability to create the Totality of Space, which is to say, the films ability to
convince viewers that the world of Louis XIV has been presented to them.
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.
so many resources that the production becomes a reality unto itself. Thus, the
possible by the budget. The scene works strictly as designed. Each shot is
resulting spectacle impresses for its perfection, its scope, or, on being able to create
W hen 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
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
preserved through time, they are physical pieces o f the past, not diegetically
determined evocations of it. To say, This film has historical validity because we
specific set, on the other hand, is to attempt to subsume space within the
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
positions, to have a mastery over the space that merely reflects the productions
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
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
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.116
much the directors desire to connect character and environment as the productions
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 Fouquets
notable for its lack of spectacle. Only a few extras are present; the directors 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
206
banquet, this climax seems strangely anti-climactic, the lack of extras an
admission of poverty.
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
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
corridor sequence (lights, catwalks, flats, crew members) would instantly destroy
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
Rossellinis use of both hidden and obvious zooms contributes to this paucity,
calling attention to every use of the device.118 When Louis walks down the hallway
with him, while panning slightly, denying the vanishing point while remaining
King remains the central point of reference in a rush of movement. But the art and
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architecture of Louiss period is squarely tectonic. Peter Burke, for example, notes
that the successful court painter Charles Lebrun derived his style from the epitome
The combined pan and zoom erase attempts to evoke the surfaces of grand siecle
Thus, when Peter Brunette notes that Louis X IV opens with a static, painterly
long shot of peasants at a dock across the river from a castle. This painterliness will
painterliness he is citing. For example, the banquet scene evokes such genre
Library, Malden, Mass. 1862.) But the scenes 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.121
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.122 In Louis XIV, the space lives because
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 films cumulative
between men, ideas and things and 3) it displays the inevitable conflict between the
To the first and second points, it is necessary only to note that economic
analysis neednt equal Marxism, even when combined with the historical
history, Luxury and Capitalism argues that the stimulus to Western capitalism came
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 MacBeans argument seems to be the opening scene with the
peasants, who are dropped quickly once the film gets to the court and who are
realizes what Louis plans to do with the money raised from fiscal reform
demonstrates the class antagonisms between the two m en.126 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.127 This statement seems to paraphrase the following letter
relevant to the films design since the controversy arises from the need to interpret
spectacle to recreate the past, is exactly what these critics describe as unlike other
The film differs from other History Films in its disavowal of melodramatic
But the general movement of History Films, towards a political goal achieved by an
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
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
comparison with II Gattopardo and Nicholas and Alexandra may be useful since
T he Knowledge of A rchaeology
MacBean notes about Louis XIV:
Rossellinis 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 detailsthe Cardinals bedpan,
the blood-letting, the Kings morning toilet, the pastimes of the
court, the preparing and serving of the Kings dinner, and of
course, the all-important articles of clothingthat we begin to
understand the way in which mans social existence is intimately tied
to and strongly determined by this relationship to things.130
How does this detail compare to Viscontis Sensuous Event and Nicholas and
for this disregard by a schizoid critical response which alternately praises the films
under thematic respectability. But none of these critics asks whether La Prise de
pouvoir par Louis X IV has the same sensory impact as a film made directly for
theaters.131 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
shots.
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 spectators look at the
surface of the frame as opposed to what is within the fram e.132
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
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 images subject, duplicating space as
perceived from inside the viewers 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 productions ability to gather sufficient resources and
function to create Kings aesthetic spectator, above and apart from involvement in
the action.
Cardinal Mazarins 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 Fouquets arrest expose the limitations of the production, further
chilling the films effect. The film neither fetishizes objects, a la Nicholas and
The spectacle of Louis X IV relies largely on the human scale, and as a result, the
space of melodrama becomes the space of Costume, and in this particular instance,
directly relevant:
difference: from other films, from the spaces used, from the moment of
identification with the character inhabiting the costume, achieved by the use of a
This approach neither stimulates the commodity fetish, nor appeals with the
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,
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
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 o f the Will: Notes
on Documentary and Spectacle.
214
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)
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.
9 Hirsch 103-04.
11 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 Lindsays, Crowd Pictures, linked with conceptions of landscape,
215
Patriotic Films, linked to mural paintings and Religious Films, associated with
architecture.
16 For example, Alicia Annas has pointed out how rarely hair design in History
Film deviates from contemporary fashionexcept when an historical figures visual
appearance is so well-known that it transcends the movie audiences 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.
19 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 W ind 119.
2i W ind 126.
216
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 fo u r phases o f architectural style, 1420-
1900.
31 Marrinan 24-25.
217
32 Marrinan 20.
33 Marrinan 39.
34 Marrinan 25.
35 Marrinan 56.
37 Marrinan 53.
38 Marrinan suggests that Davids 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)
40 The films 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 Russells The Devils (1971.) The entire Revolution segment,
in fact, seems a re-make of Start the Revolution Without Me (1969) which similarly
burlesqued the worlds first great bourgeois revolution.
42 King 178.
43 King 179.
44 King 188.
45 Leon Barsacq, Caligaris Cabinet and other Grand Illusions: a History o f Film
Design', 3.
4^ Hirsch 36.
218
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 films 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 ere told the size of the films crew (over 1000); that more
cement was used to build the Alexandria set than was used for Italys 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 Cleopatras 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.
50 Massie vii.
51 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.
56 Massie 36. Letter from the Empress Maria Fedorovna to the Tsarevich Nicholas.
57 Massie 125.
219
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.)
61 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 boys 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 Schaffners arrival. (Kim 271.) The
stylistic evidence is inconclusive. While the sequences formal elegance suggests a
space more architectural than dramatic, thus favoring Boxs 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 films melodramatic concerns. The grandfather of all such scenes
is, o f course, the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. But the closed,
contained framing of Nicholas and Alexandra contrasts radically with the bursting
frames in Eisensteins film.
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 Lets not forget the universal prohibition of all museums: Please do not touch
the objects.
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 films actual costumes were made available to
theaters as lobby displays); promotional featurettes on the designer of the womens
gowns, Antonio Castillo and the makeup used in the film; even a tie-in with a brand
o f 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 whove seen the film, this is the
sequence they almost all remembered, even if they disliked the movie overall.
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 Lampedusas novel was never filmed.
Ludwig is virtually unknown in the U.S. For a detailed summary of its story and
production background, see Monica Stirling, A Screen o f Time: a Study o f Luchino
Visconti.
75 Korte 10.
76 Korte 10.
77 The problematic center of all Viscontis work, the dialectical tension between
Gramscian Marxism and formalism, is most explicitly expressed in this 1963 film,
[ie. The Leopard] Korte 11. Kortes 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.
79 Maeder 220.
81 Angela Dalle Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes o f History in Italian
Cinema.
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 spaces 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 Cousins relationship to the philosophy of 19th century art and
architecture, see Christopher Curtis Mead, Charles G a m iers Paris Opera:
Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance o f French Classicism, 204-06.
92 Deleuze 4.
94 This was among the sequences cut for the shortened American release.
223
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 Foxs 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
o f its novelistic origins, but of the French Revolution.
99 Peter Brunette notes: Another, more complicated question about this new work
for television concerns the formal relation between it and Rossellinis 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. Elliss 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.
105 For example, consider Stanley Kauffmanns comments: Louis X IV 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.
16 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
224
110 Kauffmann 8.
2 Bondanella 130-31.
115 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
Passers 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.
118 Both Bondanella and Bmnette discuss the directors 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.
122 Brunette suggests that just such an emphasis on the word also occurs in
Rossellinis 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
124 Consider Andrew Higsons 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 W erner Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. W.R. Dittmar. Sombarts
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 schools approach to history.
126 But the look on Colberts 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 MacBeans Marxist
hindsight to label it so.
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 Erlangers 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 [Louiss] 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.
131 Brunette refers to this question in a limited way in a footnote to his discussion
of Rossellinis 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
133 King suggests: From very early on in Gances 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) Kings
identification of deep space as melodramatic is more problematic than helpful,
however.
135 Brunette describes the spaces of Rossellinis History Films in the following
terms: Rossellinis 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. Rossellinis mise-en-scene and his
reconstructed sets attempt to be suggest of a given historical period without actually
trying to recreate i t... .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 eras
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 5Rich Man, poor Man
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
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
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
The first attitude would incorporate the second by insisting that it is precisely by
stealing the consumers fantasy life that the supertext victimizes the viewer. The
second would answer the first by insisting that whatever the corporate machinations
involved in the objects production, the act of selection enpowers the consumer
positions are probably correct within their limits; neither can be refuted because they
228
are both based on scenarios (corporate conspiracy; personal enpowerment) which
If one admits that clothing has to do with covering ones 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 ones 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,
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
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
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
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 nomadsHuns, Scythians, Alans and
Sarmatianswore 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
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
In the relatively un-exotic Russian setting, nomads and climate combine to produce
economic backwardnessand 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,
Moreover, hats themselves were, by the time of the films release, something of an
Barry Lyndon: if it is necessary to wear a warm hat, the climate must be cold.
Therefore, the fur reenforces the films 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.
protection. Yet, aside from the fact that a functionalist explanation for the hats
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 owners 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
231
unacknowledged admission through clothing that there is something else out there,
uncontrollable.
This social complexity derives, not in spite of, but because of the hats
function. As a means of retaining body heat that would escape through the scalp, it
overcome. The choice of style may reflect personal idiosyncrasy, but the hat itself
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 hats 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
the story.
T he History of an Actor
The image created by the hat relates equally to Sharif himself, to his history as
an object prior to the films release. Zhivago is the protagonist of Doctor Zhivago,
but Sharif is the films star. The character is the means of entry into the narrative, a
the composition, the actor works with the larger totality outside the diegesis,
films.
232
Doctor Zhivago was Omar Sharifs 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.
reenforced by Sharifs ethnicity. His name announces his Arab origins, and his
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
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
Edward Said has discussed how the tradition of Orientalism (the study of the
unfamiliar safe: . . .as early as Aeschyluss play The Persians the Orient is
transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that
(Middle) East: by erasing the actors 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
American norm. Sharif is Caucasian, but he isnt white; he can play an Arab
{Lawrence), a Slav {Rolls Royce) or a Eurasian {Zhivago) because all are perceived
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 films 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
Sharif s genuine Arabness (and the films 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
S harif s ethnicity in doubt (just as its Spanish locations cast doubts on the
authenticity of the films 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 Guinnesss Feisal
234
more effectively exploits acting codes as they relate to the films requirements, he,
not Sharif may register most effectively. Sharif is merely an Arab; Guinness/Feisal
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
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 doesnt matter. Always ethnic, he and the filmmakers who work with
him must erase our knowledge of his ethnicity even while exploiting it,
suppressing others (skin-tone) that get in the way. But as a result, Sharif s ethnic
historical design. Ethnic actors like Sharif provide perfect centers for History Films
(white, contemporary)-world. Of the thirty-five films Sharif has made since leaving
Egypt, at least nineteen have period settings,11 in which the eras and geography
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.
235
Mayerling may represent an extreme case of Jean-Louis Comollis body too
much, since the dissonance between Sharif as presence and Rudolf as historical
figure is too great to be orchestrated successfully.12 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 protagonists desire by an
Zhivago were equally attuned to exploiting this image. For example, among the
Radios program Firing Line, described in the following terms: One of the
between American and European women.13 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
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 its
a part that forces him to react to events rather than master them. Whether this set of
236
impersonations is negative (Sharif is denied his true ethnicity) or positive (the
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 films composition. Both bring meanings to the film;
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
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
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
237
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 Yevgrafs
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. 17
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 Zhivagos original sympathies for
the revolution are eventually destroyed. For example, in responding to the political
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
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
novel does not conform to Lukacss goal of a progressive development, the novel
does offer the rich historical tapestry praised in the novels of Scott. That this scope
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
238
revolutionary worker, appears during the 1905 revolution to figure in an incident
that eventually leads to the Moscow railway workers going on strike.21 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
appears, the Soviet has control over his future. Thus Pasternak is able through
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
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.
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
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 Pasternaks historical
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
Revolution on ordinary people. In the film, however, this absence fits all too neatly
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,
that was afterwards mis-laid.25 there is a huge painted image of Stalin as Laras
both demonstrate the complex relationships possible between physical detail and
system. This system must be grasped fully to discuss its interaction with
intertextual elements like Zhivagos hat, and the super-textual system which
poster images are gratuitous. Nothing in the narrative warrants their inclusion; they
are present as physical evidence in support of the films historical setting. The
parasitically on the material world and the viewers 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
sometimes contradictory, connotations, the images reenforce the same general one:
cases by the dull grey, blue and brown walls on which the murals are painted);
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. Laras step out of the frame is a step
representation of Stalin which dominates it. Laras 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.
over.28 It is thus not an objective, but subjective image, which means that the
retreat to infinity makes some sense as Y evgraf s wish fulfillment for Lara (if not an
image. But such sentiment makes no sense against the historical, social nature of
the image.
Nor can the actions location, a street, be overlooked. The location again
reenforces the shots 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
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
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
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 dont 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.
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,
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 Zhivagos 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
personality.) Hats work in the film as a general social phenomenon of turn of the
243
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
logic of its inclusion. (Hes described playfully as a nomad at one point, and the
funeral sequence at the films beginning clearly shows his origins on the Eurasian
steppes.) But at least one other reason problematizes these connotations, and relates
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
dialogue between Zhivago and Komarovsky, who has just been shot by Lara. As
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
Thus, explicit thematic linkage and physical similarity (hat, street space)
Yuri and Komarovsky, the villain. At the same time, Yuris 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
students cap, which rhymes with a similar cap worn by Pasha (Laras first
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husband.) It is also reminiscent in style with a soldiers cap (worn most
prominently in the film by Yevgraf) and with workers caps. We thus can see a
connotation generated by the hat. The similarities between Yevgraf, Pasha and
Zhivagos 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
sensitivity, etc.
But the selection of the woolen hat also marks Zhivago as similar to
not have to be known specifically by the viewer. But it certainly is necessary for the
hats exoticism and contradictory connotations do more, finally than mark Zhivago.
The hat marks itself as worthy of attention, something slightly apart from the
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 . . .)31
which filtered into several reviews. The films production designer, John Box, is
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.)
details the influence of the womens 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 m ens
Publicity for the film did not stop with clothes and sets. One of the more
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 films costumes, publicists encourage
acts of literal consumption, to ingest the world of the film into our bodies.33
All of this evidence would suggest that the producers of Doctor Zhivago were
scenario, the film, through a complex process hits with an audience. Other
capitalists, alert to the possibilities offered by the films physical depiction, exploit
producers, in turn, re-exploit that exploitation by using it as further publicity for the
film, etc.
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 films
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 films release. Virtually
every ad for womens clothing in the fall 1965 issues of both the New York and
Los Angeles Times, for example, prominently feature hats with passing similarities
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 hats presence in the Altmans 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 Altmans catalog is coincidental,
part of a broader context than the films promotion. Thus, the fact that the Zhivago
hat was a commercial success relates as much to existing fashion and taste as to the
films 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
similarly foreign men from the mid-1960s may have provided the unconscious
the year.35 His appearance would thus have been fresh in peoples minds at the
films release. A familiar component of Sukarnos style was his two-pointed cap.
While not made of fur, the hats overall shape is very close to Zhivagos, as well as
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 hats diegetic function, cloaking both President and actor in the exotic.
248
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 males
expressed itself through a sympathy with vaguely Eastern design. The June, 1966
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.38 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
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
Whoever controls the products appearance can control the fascinated public by
While films, unlike advertising, are not explicitly geared toward the sale of a
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
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
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
desire to sell. Films sell all the more effectively because they lack the explicit
250
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
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 storys terms, that
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.45
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
could easily have included the History Films attitude towards history itself.
251
While the museum metaphor may work more precisely to describe History
Films attitude towards the past than Ewens fashion show, both descriptions
suggest the evacuation of meaning from objects, extraction from physical and
implying that they can be possessed apart from struggle and by grounding them
Gromeko home appeals for its promise of luxury without effort, a soft cushion for
In this effortless luxury, History Films contribute towards Haugs larger regime
of commodity consumption. But his theory cannot explain much about single acts
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,
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
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
engaged in a daily struggle to survive lack this luxury; therefore such people will
As a result of these ever-greater distinctions, the excluded internalize the image the
Zhivago hat did so to the extent that he/she could afford it, and to which the image
economic class. While to some extent refining models like Haugs by suggesting
the social components of taste, Bourdieus schema simultaneously reduces all non
factor has an economic base. Yet Ewen, investigating the historical origins of the
After describing the emerging middle-class of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
Ewens description accords well with similar comments by Jean Baudrillard about a
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 Baudrillards scenarios, you are what you buy; under
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
Bourdieus 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
the stage of life, but as a further extension of a fundamental self. The Ewen
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
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
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
oneself in the diegesis of Doctor Zhivago, along with the historical threads attached
particular image is chosen. And even if, as Ewen suggests, credit makes that image
more generally available than Bourdieus 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,
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
by the texts (hat, film, character, etc.) that provide the spaces in which capital can
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
by the text. To return to an earlier point, the Persian connotation provided by the
supplemented by it. The label is important only to the extent that it stimulates
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
not, the unified self can establish a set of personal values different from gross
256
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 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 studios strategies to re-coup its
investment was to concentrate on the amount of money (and effort) which had been
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
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
generating currency on the basis of its cultural connotations, the hat now acquires
a single season. The association of blue jeans with freedom and self-expression, for
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
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
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 its necessary to dissect a
the importance of the stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys has to be known. The
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
can lead to personal satisfaction and enpowerment. A clerk in a staid bank, for
But if the clerks boss demanded the hats removal, off it would gounless
thwarted by economic and power realities and so easily incorporated into the style
market. Moreover, that potential subversion must be measured against the political
possession of the East as a source for style; the clerk expresses him/herself at the
nothing, of course, but very limited compared to the changes possible through the
muzzle of a gun.
others determine what is our correct image. Whatever the emotional satisfactions
259
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
economically advanced as our own even to speak of use value any longer.52 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
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.
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
260
life. And that frustration has no chance of ending unless he/she recognizes that the
grossly consumptive decade, why is the History Film largely lacking? If its only
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.)
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
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.
in the light of 1989s political consciousness inevitably encourage debate. That that
the 1991 Gulf War is secondary to the extent that film and war are both revealed as
part of a greater political tapestry. Lawrence o f Arabia's re-release did not cause the
Gulf War. But it is difficult to view their close proximity through the spectacles of
261
pure aesthetics, to insist that the films depiction of Arabs can be isolated from the
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
know about the past derives from these fictionalized, glamorized, designed visions
o f 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
critique offered by most History Films is useful to the extent that it encourages
more than the here-and-now. They offer an explicitly political discourse to which
him/herself. Through all of this, design channels, shapes, directs desires and
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
262
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
Thus the problem with History Films is not so much their explicitly
conservative political messages, but the state of mind encouraged by both their
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
privilege. There can be no escape from this cycle until privilege is exchanged for
1 Satch LaValley, Hollywood and Seventh Avenue: The Impact of Period Films on
Fashion Hollywood and History, 94.
3 Boucher 26.
4 Boucher 68.
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 Princes 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 fo r 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.
10 Said 58.
11 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.
14 Said 188.
15 Said 102.
16 This synopsis is based on the film; the novels story is considerably different in
several important ways, which will be discussed below.
17 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. W ell have forgotten what came first and what
followed, and we wont 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.
19 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 Bolts Drama of Revolution, 76.
21 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.
35 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
o f 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.
contemporary low-end brand, we can note that a single 16 oz. loaf of W ebers
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. Altmans hat, a contemporary 'price
for a similar hat would be approximately 88 times that of a loaf of bread, roughly
$154.00.
40 Haug 16.
41 Haug 17.
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.
47 Bourdieu 7.
49 Ewen 68.
critical of this process. Ewen too treads the thin line between ecstatically describing
his object and remaining critical of it.
53 Equally suggestive is the sudden spate of films with historical subjects in late
1992: Malcolm X, 1492 and Hoffa. Even Bram Stokers Dracula pays much
greater attention to the familiar storys 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 Lawrences re-release? The timing is too close to
ignore.
268
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