Tom Conley,
Film Hieroglyphs: Ruptures in Classical Cinema (new introduction).
University of Minnesota Press, 1991; 2006.
ISBN 0-8166-4970-7
US$22.50 (pb)
296pp
Tom Conley,
Cartographic Cinema.
University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
ISBN 0-8166-4357-1
US$25.00 (pb)
336pp
(Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press)
If the increased production of cartographic knowledge in the seventeenth century was one of the earliest achievements of the Enlightenment then deciphering the Rosetta Stone in the nineteenth probably stands as one of the last: both activities were intimately related to modern formations of discipline and discovery, rationalism and imperialism. How such discourses relate to the language and history of cinema is a more complex matter and with the publication of Cartographic Cinema, alongside the republication of his 1991 book, Film Hieroglyphs, much of Tom Conley’s writings on such issues is now widely available.
In some respects, Conley is a cartographer of the long Enlightenment whose readings of – and translations from – literature and philosophy chart the contradictions inherent to that project. Some of this work has focused on correspondences between images-as-words and words-as-images, literature and écriture, logos and graphos. The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern France (1992), for example, traces the ways in which typographical shapes (lettering, rebuses, pictograms, etc.) resist interpretation. As literacy (printing, reading, and censorship) became more prevalent in modern Europe, so these graphic forms (‘hieroglyphs’) became increasingly unruly signs, prone to forming secret societies inside the text, capable of subverting the intentions of their author (and attentions of the authorities). In another book, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (1996), he examined relations between mapmaking (‘cartographs’) and literature during the Renaissance. Drawing from a diverse range of sources and contexts (Rabelais, Descartes, Geography, printing, Protestants, etc.), the book elucidates the ideological issues around which drawing and writing, the cartographic and the literary, science and art, converged at this time (and beyond). He has also written extensively on numerous major French intellectuals – including Deleuze, Ranciére, Michel de Certeau (and Certeau’s student, the Anthropologist, Marc Augé) – and terms and concepts derived from these and other French ‘theorists’ (Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Ropars-Wuilleumier, and Bazin too) often frequent his own writings on how given graphic forms (often commonplace props or seemingly incidental mise en scène configurations) breach the (‘classical’) narrative contract and re-orientate the intelligent spectator towards questions of ideology and history, memory and ontology.
Some of the approaches first developed in Film Hieroglyphs return in Cartographic Cinema. The opening chapter from the earlier book, for example, concentrates on Renoir’s Boudu sauvé des eaux (France 1932), and offers insights and associations that draw on Conley’s knowledge of other Renoir films (Madame Bovary[France 1933]), especially). The comparative analysis of Renoir’s films from the 1930s resonates into the second chapter of Cartographic Cinema, ‘Jean Renoir: Cartographies in Deep Focus’ where Conley offers detailed discussions on the significance of cartographic objects, and spaces, in Boudu, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (France 1935), La Grande Illusion (France 1937), La Règle du Jeu (France 1939). The kind of analytical work conducted in these studies, like the chapters on Rossellini in both books does present a case for believing that genuinely innovative filmmakers must be understood as ‘cartographers of cinema,’ and that their films ‘are folded into and through the maps [these films] portray.’ (Although his chapter on Roma, città aperta [Italy 1945] from Cartographic Cinema is always more interested in Ranciére than Rossellini.) Discussing the expressive significance of maps as props in a film (the classical maps in Lestingois’ shop, the blank globes on the terrace of Chesnaye’s chateau, the Resistance and Nazi maps in Roma, cittá aperta, or the wall maps in Les 400 coups [France 1959], etc.) is of course only one aspect of what Conley means by the ‘cartographic dimension’: ‘great auteurs make maps of their movies’. Films are not simply map-like, they are maps (i.e. ‘visible and discursive formations’) and from the opening pages of Cartographic Cinema one is struck by Conley’s conviction that the ‘force and beauty of cinema are enhanced when we think of it in light of cartography’. In the earlier book’s chapter on Objective, Burma! (Walsh, 1945), he argued that the array of ‘hieroglyphic’ elements and associations circulating within and around this film, including aerial photographs and maps, and the poses and positions of actors, eroticized the image field. This chapter complements (introduces, even) a chapter from Cartographic Cinema which looks at the disruptive power of maps in what Conley designates ‘the desperate journey’ genre, a genre that here includes Walsh’s High Sierra (USA 1941) and Desperate Journey (USA 1942), as well as Casablanca (USA 1942), and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (USA 1981).
One of the differences between the books is the attempt made in the new book to include what might be considered more ‘mainstream’ films such as Gladiator (UK/USA 2000) and Thelma and Louise (USA/France 1991). As with Casablanca and Indiana Jones, it is difficult to reconcile the notions of cartographic cinema (and cinematic cartography) explored in the preceding chapters of this book with films so reliant on generic gimmicks, complete simplicity of meaning, and the triumph of marketing over film-making. The problem with most contemporary cinema is that it does not exist, and the ‘blockbluster’ – whether its protagonists include Thelma Dickinson or Maximus Decimus Meridius – is by its very nature unavailable to genuinely creative critical engagement. This is not true of a film like Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong/France 2000) which (like Rohmer’s Conte d’automne (France 1998)) is only mentioned in passing, or Cronenberg’s Spider(Canada/UK 2002), or the Kill Bill ‘volumes’ (Tarantino, USA 2003 & 2004), etc. – although criticizing Conley for omitting this or that film would be churlish. His treatment of a film such as Les Amants (Malle, France 1958) is very persuasive but this achievement seems due as much to Conley’s knowledge of French culture and history rather than his ‘cartographic method’, per se. The choice of films in Film Hieroglyphs is more successful than those featured in the final stages of Cartographic Cinema. Such studies, particularly those on Thelma and Louise or La Haine (France 1995), will of course be of use to students and teachers of cultural and media studies but from a different intellectual perspective much of what concerns the book here is beside the point.
The notion that any film can be regarded as ‘cartographic’ or ‘hieroglyphic’ compromises the validity of an approach that also selects, attends to, and celebrates, certain films and film-makers on the basis of aesthetic merit. While Tom Conley’s critical practice can certainly transform incidental objects, gestures, and moments into something significant, at heart he prefers the elegance of paradigms to the ‘force and beauty of cinema’. This preference will not disappoint everyone.
Des O’Rawe,
Queen’s University, Belfast.
Created on: Wednesday, 17 September 2008