21. The Semiology of Cinema? It Is Necessary to Continue!

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

(1931-1993) is French film theoretician. His film research and analysis contributed to placing film studies amongst academic disciplines. Metz's writings influenced and inspired generations of film researchers. Christian Metz and the Codes of Cinema is a compilation of contributions and discussions at the conference held by the Department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich in 2013, intended as a tribute to 'the father of modern film theory' (p. 17). This book offers an extensive, encompassing reflection and analysis of Metz's oeuvre in English. Contributors place Metz's ideas and concepts in the context of twentiethcentury film research and investigate the genesis of his ideas.

Critics of semiology, and of Christian Metz's work in particular, often alleged that he was not a cinephile, that he had no interest in films (since he hardly ever analyzed a film), and that semiologists like Metz were putting aside everything that made cinema an art and a source of aesthetic pleasure. In short, Metz was frequently attacked for being indifferent to film as an aesthetic artefact. This chapter seeks to develop a more nuanced view by examining the place that the aesthetic occupies in Metz's intellectual trajectory as well as its links with semiology. This place can be divided, broadly speaking at least, into three 'sites' between which the aesthetic moves: expressiveness, stylistics, and poetics.

2018

The present paper investigates the ways through which semiosis in general and cinematic semiosis in particular reach toward the "exo-semiotic" realm. It attempts a meta-semiotic and epistemological approach, based on Ferdi­nand de Saussure's tradition of semiotics, and particularly on Louis Hjelsmlev's model of the sign-function, as introduced in his 1954 essay "La strat­ification du langage". It investigates the sign-function's relations to its ref­erent and to its expressive materials, and then attempts to apply Hjelmslev's model to cinema. I hope to achieve the double aim of re-situating some lin­gering debates in cinema theory, while also exemplifying some questions regarding semiosis in general. The paper starts by summarizing the main axes of Saussure's definition of the sign and its formalisation by Hjelmslev. It then shows how the de-essentialisation of semiosis leads to significant re-arrangements of the tradi­tional premises with reg...

French under the title Essais sur la signification au cinema-TRANSLATOR. ** Except in one case, where the repetitive passage was too long and was removed, the reader being informed of this deletion in a footnote. † It is principally in Chapters 3, 4, and 6 that the reader will encounter these rather exhaustive notes. This is especially true of Chapter 3, "The Cinema: Language or Language System?" which is the earliest of the articles reprinted ´ xi xii PREFACE On the other hand, I have allowed myself to make various minor corrections and adjustments in wording, for the purpose of clarification. The exception is Chapter 5, "Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film." I have taken this opportunity to bring together (and to add to considerably) three earlier articles bearing on related topics, but each one giving only a partial treatment (furthermore, there were certain discrepancies among the articles). This chapter has, therefore, not heretofore been published in its present form, although many of the passages in it have been published. In attempting to improve the phrasing of the original articles, in adding notes wherever necessary to account for more recent developments, and, finally, in striving, in Chapter 5, to give a general and current description of the main problems at issue, my goal has been, in the still new and developing field of film semiotics, to present the reader with a work as coherent and up-to-date as its nature permits. I wish to express my thanks to the five publications in which the texts that make up this volume originally appeared: Revue d'esthetique, La Linguistique, Cahiers du cinéma, Image et son, and Communications, as well as to the Centre d'Étude des Communications de Masse (École Pratique des Hautes Eludes, Paris) which publishes Communications, the Polish Academy of Sciences, which organized the international symposium where one of the papers that constitute Chapter 5 was first read, and the Festival of the New Cinema (Pesaro, Italy), which organized the round-table discussion during which the last chapter in this volume was originally presented.

Following Saussure’s tradition of semiotics, the present essay argues for the constructed character of cinematic semiosis. It is framed in the wider epistemological discussion regarding the arbitrary or motivated status of semiosis in general. The essay begins with a summary of the main onto-epistemological premises composing the definition of the sign at the level of langue. Then, it situates the areas of contestation of the premise of social construction, when cinema is the semiotic system under consideration. It proceeds with a critical presentation of two large groups of arguments against cinematic semiosis’ socially constructed status, and attempts to refute them. On the one hand, it investigates arguments founded on an assumed naturalness of the semiotic system’s relation to referent reality; on the other, arguments founded on the shared human nature of the sign users. Finally, the essay examines the way such arguments become significant in the context of the larger debates over aesthetic realism and the biological foundation of the social and human sciences. It concludes with certain observations on the ideological character of the naturalization of the social and its political implications.

Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans - Proceedings of the 13th World Congress of the International Association of Semiotic Studies, 2018

Declaring in an academic environment that one deals with semiotics of cinema, or with semiotics and cinema, is always a risk, often met with sceptical grimaces. The term “semiotics of cinema” evokes an era which is perceived as being antiquated, crystallized on the names of Eco and Metz and on a structuralism which many, perhaps justly, consider outdated. The problem is not to be underestimated: if semiotics does not possess the tools with which to approach the cinema fully in its epistemic horizon, then it has failed from the start, since much of the sense we experience daily has a filmic basis. Asserting the death of semiotics of cinema thus amounts to endorsing the death of semiotics itself. It seems suicidal for a discipline to exclude itself from one of the domains which it should regard as fundamentally preeminent. In order to overcome this impasse, therefore, it could be worth starting a programmed dialogue between the semiological apparatus and the instruments of film studies and aesthetics, abandoning a hegemonic propensity which is anachronistic in this era of crisis of the human sciences. The purpose of my contribution is to propose some theoretical bridges that demonstrate how this debate would be fruitful in order to attest how semiotics has never been more alive.

Gramma. Journal of Theory and Criticism, 2012

The paper investigates the ways through which semiosis in general and cinematic semiosis in particular reach toward the “exo-semiotic” realm. It attempts a meta-semiotic and epistemological approach, based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s tradition of semiotics, and particularly on Louis Hjelsmlev’s model of the sign-function, as introduced in his 1954 essay “La stratification du langage”. It investigates the sign-function’s relations to its referent and to its expressive materials, and then attempts to apply Hjelmslev’s model to cinema. I hope to achieve the double aim of re-situating some lingering debates in cinema theory, while also exemplifying some questions regarding semiosis in general. The paper starts by summarizing the main axes of Saussure’s definition of the sign and its formalisation by Hjelmslev. It then shows how the de-essentialisation of semiosis leads to significant re-arrangements of the traditional premises with regards to the sign’s relation to both the referent and the expressive medium. Finally, it surveys the central issues that formed the discipline of the semiotics of cinema, stressing the conventionality of the cinema sign-function and the heterogeneity of its expression-plane. The paper thus shows that Saussure’s and Hjelmslev’s insights with regard to general semiotics can assist in untangling theoretical misunderstandings with regard to how cinema functions, while understanding cinematic semiosis can contribute to deepening and enriching our understanding of the function of semiosis in general.

Christian Metz and the Codes of Cinema: Film Semiology and Beyond (eds. Margrit Tröhler & Guido Kirsten), Amsterdam University Press, 2018

This chapter discusses how Christian Metz was inspired by the French filmology movement. Filmology, having been founded in the years after WWII, endeavoured to study cinema in its psychological, sociological, and philosophical complexity. Metz was impressed by the distance filmology took from the institutions of film production and criticism. Also, several important terms introduced by filmology found their way into Metz's writings. Furthermore, the essay speculates about the more subcutaneous influence of two essays by Roland Barthes from the "Revue international de filmologie". Although Metz never discusses these texts in detail, they may have played an important role in formulating his own project. By sketching this possible line, this essay contributes to the genealogy of Metz's thinking.

Christian Metz and the Codes of Cinema, 2018

In three essays written in 1966-1967, Christian Metz retraces the debate on 'modern cinema' and foregrounds his own interpretation: 'new cinemas' are characterized on the one hand by unprecedented linguistic procedures -among them what Metz calls potential sequence -and on the other hand by an extension of the possibilities of 'saying' something -an extension of the 'sayable' or of the 'representable'. Such a novelty implies a greater role of the 'possible' and the 'potential', both in a discourse and in the linguistic system, as well as requiring a reconsideration of some of the axioms of structuralism. What emerges is a more flexible and comprehensive theoretical framework, which Metz and film semiotics would develop in the following years.

nodes, 2014

What’s the nature of the cinematographic sign? What’s the relation between movement-image and reality, according to semiotics? This article focuses on the problems faced by semiotics when it comes to define a sign within the context of audiovisual languages, by analysing connections and conflicts within the hypotheses developed by Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Umberto Eco.