Dudley Andrew

The Core and the Flow of Film Studies

1. Film: Living Object, Field of Research, Discipline Decades ago, when the galaxy of film was gradually swirling into existence and becoming visible within the university, it wasn’t at all clear that academic oversight was pertinent or wholesome. From the perspective of the academy, movies could have the effect of devaluing the humanities, while from that of cinephiles the university might very well tamper with the organic rapport of audiences with movies, stunting or unnaturally twisting the development of both. Such a debate over the very propriety of its study seems primordial enough to distinguish film from English or any other longstanding field. You may believe the decision to have long since been rendered in favor of the academy; after all, the article you are reading was commissioned by Critical Inquiry for this issue devoted to the state of the disciplines. But suspend judgment, if you can, and imagine there to be a force in cinema still capable of tossing scholars from the saddle while they try to rein films into disciplinary paddocks. This contest involving a once youthful subject and a set of self-confident methodologies is chronicled and celebrated in a fine new anthology, Inventing Film Studies.1 Its final three essays stage a quiet debate that neatly exemplifies distinct perspectives on film (by any other name). D. N. Rodowick concludes the book on a sanguine note when he declares that the eclipse of film by new media both in the entertainment world and in the minds of the coming cohort of scholars need not trouble us. For historically the interest in films quickly led to film theory and that impressive array of concepts has grown strong enough to

The absent subject of The World

ABSTRACT Shijie (The World) has responded well to social and political readings because a complex structure supports a most weighty subject, absence. The pre-credit and credit scenes anticipate a search for this elusive ‘subject’, meaning its guiding consciousness and its ultimate topic. A panoply of strategies helps Shijie spread horizontally from its theme park center and troubled lovers to encompass an immense geography and a range of social types. More striking are the films vertical probes into the void of subjectivity. Two secondary characters, Anna and ‘Lil Sister’, who arrive in Beijing from more traditional situations uncovering The Worlds hollow core. The full spectacle of life as a theme park demands the moral annihilation of alternative ways of being. Global China offers paltry compensation for its lost souls.

Eric Rohmer’s Magnetic Fluid

One of the most delightful moments in the exceedingly delightful oeuvre of Eric Rohmer turns out as well to be among the most perplexing. Sitting at a cafe table one afternoon, Frederic (Bernard Verley), whose voiceover narrates L’Amour l’apres-midi (1972), has a fantasy. He realizes that he possesses a magical apparatus in the form of a pendant that emits a magnetic fluid capable of neutralizing the resistance of those women toward whom its owner projects it. We are then treated to a procession of six vignettes, one after the next, in which Frederic effectively disarms the various actresses from three of the previous five Contes moraux. Each woman submits to his desires, each except Beatrice Romand, the saucy adolescent from Le Genou de Claire (1970) whose commitment to her boyfriend is strong enough to repel even supernatural forces.

Concepts in Film Theory

This book is designed for anyone with a serious interest in the art of film. It is both a history of film theory and an introduction to the work of the most important and influential writers on the subject - Munsterberg, Arnheim, Eisenstein, Balazs, Kracauer, Bazin, Mitry, and Metz. Andrew sets out these major theorists one against the other forcing them to speak to common issues, thereby making them reveal the bases of their thought. He compares the formative tradition with that of the realist to illustrate the development of both theories. The final section deals with contemporary French film theory which is still in the process of developing. Andrew locates these film theories in the context of larger intellectual movements, including Gestalt Psychology, Russian Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, and Existentialism. The final chapters show that the most modern French theories are actively contributing to todays dominant intellectual movements, semiotics, and phenomenology, while deriving directly from classical film theory.