Translation by Annabelle J. de Croÿ

Introduction by Harriet Margolis

Uploaded 16 April 1999 | Modified 20 April 1999

This article first appeared in Revue international de filmologie 1.1 (Juillet-Août 1947): 36-38.

The religious function of cinema

If ethics is the opposite of religion, as labour is of talent, appropriation is of gift, then cinema will be to sport what religion is to ethics. Moreover, all permutations remain possible. The stadium may deteriorate into a circus. The spectator of a game, as much as that of a film, experiences the religious attitude; he is united with the hero who is fighting before his very eyes, blames himself for his defeat and triumphs if he triumphs: all this without commitment or risk, by the sole identifying power of the look. But that is only a secondary aspect of sport. One can easily imagine these same athletes struggling in the middle of an empty stadium. But what would a film be if it were screened in front of unseeing eyes?

More than theatre or sport, cinema requires a religious attitude. We shall treat here each technique of identification in this light. The rite that unites me with a god, that breaks down the barriers and makes of me his son or his image, is a religious one. But one must prepare the residence of a god. Also, every sacrifice involves two phases: purification, communion; death of the old man, resurrection of the chosen one. At the conclusion of the drama a new man is born. “I am no longer in my own life …” This Eleusinian rhythm of death and birth, of a dive into darkness and vision of felicity [visitation heureuse], has been adopted by the cinema for its own use. [1]  It is ensuring the continuation of the religious values betrayed by the theatre.

Although born out of worship, theatre today has separated itself from it. At best, it could be considered a state cult, an exhibition that the group presents to itself of itself. The shape of the auditorium forces one to see and to be seen, and sanctifies the reign of others. One dresses, one dons the social uniform, one arms oneself as if for a test. Nowhere are the taboos more despotic. Nowhere does one remain more irremediably oneself. It is impossible to leave one’s old self behind in the cloakroom, to drown in anonymity. Darkness does not hide things well in the theatre. At each interval, society’s eye opens again. There is no hope of making room for a god.

Theatre has betrayed the preludes to sacrifice; the central act is no less compromised. A stage too vast and a visual field too wide compel the eye to choose, to follow, to exclude. Its identifying force deteriorates into a critical force. Perceiving prevents it from seeing. Compelled to centre itself on an entire field that is too detailed to favour this or that form, that is too weak to be made out later against the perceptible background, the eye tires and wanders. One cannot give and receive at the same time; identification is blocked by action. The god that we go to seek will not enter us. On stage the actor identifies with himself but the audience does not follow; the attitude of the spectator remains totally  spectacular.

The realistic attitude and the spectacular attitude

One knows how Janet[2] , following Bernard-Leroy, defines the spectacular:

When we have a realistic attitude, when we are walking down the street in real life, we are especially preoccupied with the material content of our action … with the effect that it is going to have in the external world: One of our gestures will cause us to bump into or avoid a passer-by, another one will cause us to break a window pane. In order to watch these externally efficacious actions in the best possible way we add to the first action a number of complications, stops, improvements … In the view of the people who surround us, these beginnings of action play an even more significant rôle. One of our peers is always in our eyes a man, a woman, or a child, a friend or an enemy … In his presence we carry out or we sketch out particular actions, be they sexual, aggressive, or defensive … Finally we have thoughts with respect to objects or people, reflections that we are ready to communicate to our neighbour … and we experience all manner of feelings about this. [3]

In contrast to this group of secondary attitudes and reactions, which define the realistic consciousness, is the spectacular state.

In this state, a considerable number of our secondary actions has disappeared. We have abandoned the tendencies that relate to the correct material execution of our walk … We do not prepare ourselves to avoid bumping into passers-by nor to greet an acquaintance … But we have preserved the last group of secondary actions: We are ready to express our many impressions to our neighbours or to ourselves … we are ready to share the sentiments of the public, to applaud or to boo with them … The spectacular attitude is an activity whose secondary parts are incomplete and reduced to some social and personal behaviour. [4]

Such an attitude excludes identification. Although reduced, the checking persists. One remains  on guard and at a distance. The function of the real, far from weakening, is enriched and grows more complex; the consciousness of the object remains. At the play I remain myself; I toy with the object, am far from melting into it; I declare it magically inoffensive. If I lower my defence, it is because I know myself to be out of harm’s way. There is no penetration to be feared. The spectator’s consciousness lends itself without giving itself. Laughter and tears, at the theatre, move apart from each other in opposite directions and negate identification. If I laugh, I demand that my neighbour laughs as I do, I want him to enter into the game, for I know that it is a game and that everyone must be accomplices to keep the illusion at arm’s length. I remain the judge of the consent given; I know it to be freely given and revocable. Far from laughing because I am fooled, I laugh because I am not fooled. My emotion is that of an accomplice.

The phases of fascination

The filmic attitude – or better, the filmic state – excludes all complicity. It is hardly even a matter of an attitude. I am asked only to renounce myself. No more stepping back, no more being on one’s guard: I no longer keep my distance, I no longer defend myself, I cease being in attitude. At the theatre I remained myself; I still played my part. Here I abdicate and I free myself of my ego; I escape from these looks that constrain me to obey the conventions and to respond to their expectations. No-one sees me; I no longer see anyone. No-one can fill me with his hope or his fear; here I am, irresponsible. I have put to one side, and as if entrusted to shadowy parentheses, this present that I was, this past that I am. Circular, the auditorium puts everyone in perspective, in sight of everybody else. Here, my eyes follow, without fear, a path that others can respect. The night, which washes over me, will not fail; a sure guardian, it will hide me until the end. The shadow of the theatre was temporary, threatened, unfaithful. Its weapons, here, reassure my empty hands. People may come in; I have given up my seat.

Someone comes in. I do not have to guide this visitor; he knows the way, knows where he is going. The filmic image requires no perceptual effort at all. It is given to us already perceived, already centred. I know whom I must distinguish. I count for naught in this tableau that overwhelms me. What marvellous passivity, unique in mental life. In dreams or hallucinations, the image still remained my own work. I held it in my arms [á bout de bras] ; I was its dupe and its accomplice. I could not really manage it, knowing all too well what I would find there, knowing all too well that I would put everything into it. A consciousness that dreams is fascinated by itself ; at the cinema, I am fascinated from without.

A thing cannot fascinate; one gives in to things. Only love fascinates and subdues. Every suggestion rests, according to Freud, on an erotic attachment. The hypnotist magically takes the place of the terrible father or the beloved mother. Also, two types of hypnosis may be distinguished: that which results from “a calming suggestion, as if accompanied by caresses, and that which is produced by a threatening command. The former may be considered to be maternal hypnosis, the latter paternal hypnosis.” [5] Both cause the archaic depths of the being to surge up. In both, identification plays a part. “There is not a huge difference between being in love and the state of hypnosis … One demonstrates towards the hypnotist the same humility in submission, the same abandon, the same absence of criticism as towards one’s beloved … There is no doubt that the hypnotist has taken the place of the ego ideal” [l’idéal du moi ] [6] . The material methods currently used to trigger hypnosis are only pretexts. One may certainly “cause the subject to stare at a shiny object” (and how can we not think of the movie screen, resplendent spot in the filmic night?). But “this process serves only to divert and engage the conscious attention. It is as if the hypnotist were to say to his subject: Now that you no longer occupy yourself except in my person, the world has lost its interest.” [7] The screen plays a parallel rôle in the origin of filmic hypnosis. But it does more than play this rôle and is used, in filmic fascination, both as a direct and an auxiliary object.

Identification according to being and according to action

Identification possesses, in Freudian terms, two qualities: regressive and morbid when it concerns the  being of the object; fertile and progressive when it rises to the level of action. [8] The male child will see his father as the guarantee of his future virility, or as the obstacle to his present love for his mother. When the Œdipus complex resolves itself naturally, the son behaves in turn like a man, detaches himself from his mother, becomes like his father. If the complex cannot resolve itself, he will magically identify with his father, will set him up as a super-ego, and will turn the energy blocked by the conflict against himself in an autopunitive paroxysm. In a more general sense, one will magically compensate for the loss of someone dear by setting up in oneself the image of this being, under the influence of the pleasure principle. Identification through action is thus born of a renunciation of immediate pleasure, and of an acceptance of the vital task; it releases a mixture of positive actions and is oriented towards the outside. Identification through being is essentially regressive. Born of a morbid attachment to immediate pleasure, it resuscitates archaic mechanisms of the oral libido in which the loved one is incorporated. It is a narcissistic retreat into oneself, a return to infantile erotic forms. It will not generate behaviour, but will express itself magically through dreams and symptoms.

Must filmic identification be attached to it? Without pretending to encroach on more concrete research, we shall point out two types of argument:

The setting of filmic hypnosis is essentially regressive. A nocturnal world, maternal, where attention to what is real is relaxed; an atmosphere similar to that of secret religious cults. Everything in it creates a climate, which each person will treat, according to his value system, as marvellous or infantile.

The content of identification, not well studied as yet, also contains some archaic aspects. The spectator, as Cohen-Séat remarks [9] , identifies in the exact sense of the word only with actors of his own sex. Is this, in connection with the regressive attitude, a return to the narcissistic choice of the object? People will counter this by pointing to the activity, the mobility, and the life of the filmic image; people will point to the stars as creating new types of humans. But these facts simply confirm our thesis. An image with positive content can be assimilated in a regressive way; it will act, but in the opposite direction both to effective progress and to the intention that caused it to be born; it will fulfil the narcissistic wish for invulnerability, the infantile belief in the omnipotence of desires. Without a doubt this is the ambiguity of the filmic image: presented against a hypnotic background, it will lose its force and its primitive sense. The subject, in a state of transitory regression, will choose of it only what might make its regression lasting. A contradiction exists between the filmic attitude and the filmed image. This contradiction is not found in the cinema alone. All therapeutics founded on direction  stumble into it. Psychoanalytical treatment overcomes the contradiction by using influence to render influence impossible. Does there exist in the same sense a filmic transference ? It is towards the definition of this transference, we believe, that future research should be directed.

Footnotes:
[1] The Eleusinian mysteries were “the most famous of the religious ceremonies of Greece, celebrated in honour of Demeter and Persephone, at Eleusis near Athens. They arose from an agrarian festival and appear to have been originally a feast of purification and fertility having reference to the autumn sowing of the corn. With this came to be connected the idea of the gods of the lower world, the descent into Hades, and the future life. The mysteries culminated in a rite carried out in a darkened hall, where the worshippers were shown visions in flashes of light” (Oxford Companion to English Literature , 3rd ed., 1946, 256). This latter point suggests a comparison with the hypnotic qualities of cinema. (Translator’s note.)
[2] Pierre Janet (1859-1947) was a leading figure of French psychological studies in his time. Although he began as a teacher of philosophy in Le Havre and Paris (Björn Sjövall, Psychology of Tension: An Analysis of Pierre Janet’s Concept of “Tension Psychologique” Together with an Historical Aspect , trans. Alan Dixon [Stockholm: Scandinavian Univesity Books, 1967], 30), he became a student of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), who offered him a position in 1889 at La Salpêtrière (Sjövall, 37), the famous Parisian mental hospital and centre of French psychological studies.
Janet claimed that Freudian psychoanalysis originated in Janet’s work, a very sore point for Freud and his adherents. Ernest Jones speaks of defending Freud in “a duel between Janet and [himself] at the International Congress of Medecine [in 1913], which put an end to his pretensions of having founded psychoanalysis and then seeing it spoilt by Freud” (Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work  Vol. II [London: Hogarth Press, 1955], 112). Yet as late as 1950 a German psychologist was proclaiming Janet “the true father of psycho-analysis”. (Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work , Vol. III [London: Hogarth Press, 1957], 25), while a French biography of Charcot published in 1955 continued to assert that Freud got his ideas from Janet (Jones, Vol. III, 211).
One problem with this assertion is that, although Freud did study in Paris with Charcot from October 1883 till February 1886 (Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work , Vol. I [London: Hogarth Press, 1954], 227), Janet had yet to leave Le Havre. The two men never met, neither then nor later (Jones, Vol. III, 211). Yet Josef Breuer, Freud’s co-author of Studies in Hysteria , was familiar with Janet’s research into hysteria. According to Sjövall, because Breuer delayed publishing some of his own research results, Freud acknowledged that Janet deserved credit for “the literary priority” of certain discoveries relating to hysteria. Janet was Freud’s ultimate de-emphasis of physiological causes in favor of the psychological basis for mental illness. According to Jones: ‘Freud took the opportunity [in “On psycho-analysis,” written for and published in Transactions of the Australasian Medical Congress  Ninth Session, Sept. 1911, Part VIII, 839-42] of pointing out three respects in which his work came into sharp antagonism to Janet’s: (1) It refused to trace hysteria directly to a congenital hereditary degeneration. (2) It offered in place of a mere description a dynamic explanation by a play of mental forces. (3) It referred psychical dissociation not to a congenital disability but to a special process called “repression.”‘ (Vol. II, 240). (HM’s note.)
[3] V. P. Janet, De l’angoisse à l’extase , t. II, 174-75.
[4] V. P. Janet, De l’angoisse à l’extase , t. II, 175-76.
[5] Freud, Essais de psychanalyse , 151.
[6] Freud, Essais de psychanalyse , 136-37.
[7] Freud, Essais de psychanalyse , 150.
[8] This distinction does not exist in Freud; however, see an indication of this meaning in  Essais de psychanalyse , 127. The definitive text on this point remains  Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse , especially in Chapter VII. See also Trauer und Melancholie .
[9] “Born in Algeria in 1907, Gilbert Cohen-Séat completed his schooling in Bordeaux and Paris, and in 1929 embarked on a career as a journalist. The founder of at least two film production companies, Orsay-Films and Bertho-Films (with A. Berthomieu), he became the chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee of Cinema in 1936, and in 1938 served as the president of the master craftsman program for the French film industry. In 1946, . . . his Essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du cinéma appeared. . . . He demonstrated a concern for the social role of the cinema by directing such educational shorts as Classe enfantine. As a filmmaker, scholar, statesman, author and businessman, Cohen-Séat was a figure respected by those in French academia, politics and the film industry at the time his Essai first appeared” (Lowry 28). Cohen-Séat directed the Institut de Filmologie in the ’40s and ’50s (Lowry 141), lecturing and directing research. [HM’s note].