Uploaded 16 April 1998

Introduction:

That filmologie is one of the more obscure byways of film history is surprising, given its influence on the development of film theory. Filmologie, a phenomenon of post-World War II France, is a direct predecessor of the sort of film theory associated with Christian Metz, both in his semiological and psychoanalytical phases. In fact, as Ed Lowry concluded,

As a pluralist orientation of various disciplines toward the object of film, unified by a positivist belief in science and a certain sociological rhetoric, filmology may finally be seen as the first coherent statement of a problematic for the comprehensive study of film and as something of a model for subsequent film study in the Western university. [1]

A product of its historical context, filmologie was the expression of a desire to use film for positive social purposes because of a perception that the medium had uniquely universal qualities. When Gilbert Cohen-Séat published his  Essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du cinema [2] , he hoped, among other things, to galvanize the French government into supporting the academic study of cinema in the Sorbonne. This he achieved, along with the publication of the Revue internationale de filmologie [3] and a number of international conferences on filmology.

At the initial conference and in the early issues of the Revue, filmology was set up as a scientific approach to the study of cinema that encompasses all appropriate methodologies, including psychology, sociology, philosophy, as well as physiology and economics. However, following the tendency of students working on filmology at the Sorbonne to pursue empirical studies of spectator responses to given films, or even to engage in experiments involving the simple perception of light or movement, the Revue increasingly limited its attention to such pragmatic analyses, a move that refelcts Cohen-Séat’s own practice as a researcher and as director of the Institut de Filmologie.

In its first two issues, though, it published work of a more speculative, abstract nature, including, for example, “Le Temps, l’espace et le sentiment de réalité” by Roman Ingarden (1.2 Septembre-Octobre 1947) and “De quelques problèmes psycho-physiologiques que pose le cinéma” by Henri Wallon (1.1 Juillet-Août 1947). Wallon was arguably the best known of the psychologists to publish on film in the Revue, but others inclined toward psychoanalytically influenced studies included Serge Lebovici and Robert Desoille. Although Lowry rightly notes that “psychoanalysis remained outside the main theoretical thrust of filmology” (135), the Revue published important arguments in favor of psychoanalysis’ ability to contribute to film studies, including the two essays by Jean Deprun translated and published here for the first time in English.

Deprun is not at all a well known figure; apart from these two articles, he seems not to have contributed to the development of film studies via filmologie or otherwise. Yet these two essays, “Cinéma et identification” and “Cinema et transfert,” lay out key issues that are fundamental to filmology’s early concerns and that remain of interest to film scholars, especially those with a focus on cinema’s ability to influence its audience.

In both articles, Deprun is identified as being associated with the Groupe de Filmologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure. Such an affiliation would have brought him under the influence of Cohen-Séat’s ideas about the audience for cinema. Yet Deprun differs in his thinking in various ways. By comparing the experience of watching a movie with watching a play, on the one hand, and of participating in a therapeutically controlled experience of transference, on the other, Deprun’s understanding of the spectator’s interaction with the cinema is somewhat more nuanced than that of Cohen-Séat. Deprun is less driven than Cohen-Séat by a political argument in favor of the cinema’s potential, and more curious about the specific mechanisms of its psychological effects. As a result, Deprun is more willing to consider the cinema in terms of its effects on the individual spectator rather than the group audience, as Cohen-Séat tends to do.

It is clear from Deprun’s references to various major and lesser-known figures – Baruk, Bernard-Leroy, Pierre Janet, and, above all, Jacques Lacan – that he was familiar with current French studies in psychology and psychoanalysis. He was also conversant with Freud’s own work. Although Deprun concludes both essays with the hint of more to come, he does not seem to have fulfilled the promise. It is tempting to speculate that he turned away from film to study psychology and psychoanalysis more specifically.

In any event, it was to be decades into the future and via the work of others that the questions Deprun raised were once again seriously considered.

Footnotes:
[1] Edward Lowry, The Filmology Movement and Film Study in France (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 170. All further references to this author are to this work: page numbers in brackets refer to this work.
[2] Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946.
[3] The Revue transferred its headquarters in 1962 to Milan, retitled itself Ikon, yet retained the subtitle La Revue Internationale de filmologie, and, at the time of Lowry’s research, it continued to publish articles in Italian, French and English (65). In fact, Ikon continues to publish; its full name has changed over the years to reflect changes in technology and research interests. The Bibliotéque Nationale (Paris) OPAC entry for the Revue Internationale de filmologie and for Ikon identify it from 1962 on as Ikon: cinema, television, iconographie: revue international de filmologie: organo ufficiale dell’Istituto Agostino Gemelli per lo studio sperimentale di problemi sociali dell’informazione visiva. The University of Geneva library holdings indicate that in 1980 its name changed again, to Ricerche sulla comunicazione and then in 1981 back to Ikon with the subtitle rivista dell’Istituto A. Gemelli.