Robert Kolker,
Film, Form and Culture CD-Rom and book.
University of Maryland: McGraw Hill College, 1998
ISBN 0 0756170 21
US$34.80
(Review copy supplied by McGraw-Hill)
Uploaded 12 November 1999
At a moment when new technologies are changing the ways we conceive of diffusing information and when computer literacy is expanding rapidly, especially among students, the question of how cinema, a nineteenth-century technology, can be understood and appreciated for its specificities in the digital age has become an important matter for film studies. Since Film, Form and Culture is the first combined introductory CD-Rom and texbook in the field and that it fulfills its task convincingly, its publication is a significant event.
Film, Form and Culture aims to provide what a film textbook could never achieve: an integrated discussion of film style and language with actual clips which are discussed, analyzed, even dissected and can be seen repeatedly. What makes this CD-Rom the reference for other interactive film studies teaching tools is the fact that it deploys the traditional methodology of critical and close analysis in an interactive environment. Furthermore it communicates to, and shares with the reader an informed appreciation of filmic style. For those who are concerned that discourses and forms of new technologies will replace or undermine those of cinema, Kolker provides the clear demonstration that new technologies can expand our knowledge and understanding of cinema and become an indispensable learning tool.
Film, Form and Culture also sets a precedent for the use of film excerpts in educational material. The clips selected come from films which are either in the public domain or for which Kolker has obtained permission. It makes possible for film scholars what has been a reality for literary scholars, that is the direct quotation from the body of an analyzed text.
The CD-Rom is easy to use without being simplistic. It contains a large amount of information, useful and purposeful multiple windows with animations, stills, mpeg clips (some of them quite long), voice-over narration and written commentary as well as a glossary of terms. The interface is varied without being disorienting and it is never cluttered. The textbook is written in a discursive manner, enhanced with multiple examples and provides a good overview of the different approaches to film analysis. It sends the reader to the relevant areas in the CD-Rom and applies its critical methodology to a number of films, directors and theoretical issues. The changes in the discipline and the development of new forms of screen interactions are the subject of a useful chapter on new technologies.
Film, Form and Culture addresses an educated general audience. It can be used as a textbook for introductory film courses or a reference for a multiplicity of courses in media or cultural studies. Its American content, even though justified by the focus on the rules and dominance of classic cinema, its emphasis on narrative cinema and the limited presence of alternative forms of cinema may limit its use outside of the US (there may also be difficulties for its distribution outside of the US). However, if it is employed as a resource in conjunction with supplementary material, these limitations can be overcome.
Film, Form and Culture has a clear focus. “Film is not reality” is the first commentary on the CD-Rom, and Kolker gives the reader the means to observe the constructedness of film. He notably focuses on the rules of classic Hollywood cinema considered here as a normative discourse. However this is only a starting point: Kolker provides multiple examples of alternatives to the classical style and ways in which its most basic rules such as the shot/reverse shot structure can be subverted, or simply adapted to produce unexpected effects. Kolker’s interest lies in how film form shapes our response and perception in ways which are necessarily engaged with a sense of the world, with history and society.
This is what Kolker means by film culture: the inventiveness with which filmmakers engage with their material, the ways in which viewers are invited to participate in such shared and contested forms and most of all, the politics of creation and response to film. The success of this project is that it is an instrument which informs and promotes such a film culture, while simultaneously being aware of the historicity of this conception.
Kolker discusses, in both CD-Rom and book, the basic components of film language, the development of and responses to normative styles and specifically the classical style. Robert Kolker brings to this task his knowledge of film reflected in several books, some listed below. Kolker’s talent as a critic is his ability to enlighten with clarity and precision a filmmaker’s style, his or her interests and engagement with film history, culture and politics. Kolker’s analyses are rich with specific close readings of sequences which are always reinscribed in larger historical or political contexts. The Altering Eye remains the reference on the cinema of political modernism and specifically the relation between the dominance of the classic style and the articulation of alternatives and the politics of style.
This attention to details and ability to contextualize are found in both the book and the CD-Rom which never read as dry lists of terms, abstract or formal descriptions. Contrary to other introductory textbooks, Kolker does not describe film as an abstract object with a set of formal rules. There is always an aesthetic and critical point to Kolker’s discussion and he makes the task of engaging with the material a primary function of this introductory text. The fruitful paradox of Kolker’s approach is to insist on the constructedness of film but to demonstrate that its form and content are always already of reality, culture and history.
The CD-Rom is divided into nine segments: introduction, continuity editing, the long take, montage, point of view, mise-en-scène, lighting, camera, and music. Each segment contains four parts: an introduction which begins with a question or an objective, a definition of terms with specific examples, an analysis of sequences from one or several films where the formal aspects are contextualised in the narrative and discursive economy, and an extrapolation or comparative commentary.
In the case of continuity editing for instance, Kolker first introduces the segment by discussing the illusion of continuity. A definition of over-the-shoulder cutting and of the 180-degree rule follows with a small animation. The analysis describes a sequence from Meet John Doe (USA, 1941)where a dialogue sequence illustrates the classical style. A clip is played a first time and re-played several more times in segments, with written and oral commentaries. The analysis demonstrates the economy of cutting as an aesthetic and industrial practice. Kolker then provides a further example of continuity editing by using a sequence from Schrader’s Light Sleeper.(USA, 1991) Kolker not only describes what is happening but how it contributes to advancing the narrative. He then introduces another sequence from Light Sleeper which this time is presented as an example of unconventional cutting. This is a particularly potent methodology since it indicates to the reader that the same filmmaker will alternatively conform to and respond to the rules of continuity editing. It also serves one of Kolker’s main theses which is that filmmakers engage with conventions to further their own interests and that the practice of being a viewer is, among other things, that of noticing, understanding and responding to such gestures. In the final part of this segment Kolker introduces the concept of intertextuality by playing sequences from Bresson’s Pickpocket (France, 1959) and Light Sleeper simultaneously. Once again, the author invites the reader to conceive of a film as a specific text which inscribes itself in formal conventions and rules but which belongs to a history. This last point is emphasised in the book especially in chapter two since Kolker spends much time introducing the development of dominant cinematic conventions.
The CD-Rom contains many similar close analyses: segments from Hitchcock’s films are prominent and used convincingly. In addition to the “obvious” and well-integrated examples from Vertigo (USA, 1958) and Rear Window (USA, 1954) especially around the question of point of view, Kolker analyses a long sequence from Vertigo, the “slowest” and most easily overlooked sequence of the film, the encounter between Scottie and Madeleine’s husband, Gavin, in his shipyard office. The sequence is played in segments and the commentaries allow for an understanding of how Hitchcock orchestrates the sequence through shifting camera positions and framing. Ultimately, the long analysis demonstrates the relation between narrative and the construction of the gaze between characters and between characters and viewers. In this example and in every other such dissected clip, the reader controls the process at every step of the way while Kolker’s argument provides purposeful direction. Furthermore, the CD-Rom, rather than being a substitute for the experience of watching the film, invites an attentive (re-) viewing of the film where the recognition of Hitchcock’s strategies can be integrated.
In this and other examples, the textbook could have had a more integrated supportive role. One of the major obstacles that students who encounter film criticism for the first time have is the transition between developing acute observation techniques and aquiring the ability to translate these in an organised written and oral presentation. The sequences which are meticulously analyzed in the CD-Rom could have been the object of a write-up in the textbook in order to offer students a more clearly articulated critical methodology. In the above sequences, a written argument about Hitchcock’s strategies would have crystalized the insights of the CD-Rom. The same could be said of Kolker’s use of the critical methodology of cultural studies. In the third chapter, “Film as cultural practice” and in particular in a segment entitled “Cultural criticism applied to cinematic texts”, Kolker provides several examples of how film texts work culturally and historically. He draws a very interesting parallel between the significance of Vertigo and Die Hard (USA, 1988)in their respective cultures and demonstrates the means by which a film partakes in the culture at large. The principles are clearly expressed by Kolker but what is missing is a more explicit description of the methodology Kolker uses to reach his conclusions. For instance, if we are to argue that both Vertigo and Die Hard are films about the conception of masculinity in their respective periods, what kind of sources does one use to substantiate such a claim? What magazines does one look at, what popular and academic writing does one consult? How does one extrapolate from observations? An advanced student will deal competently with these questions but a beginning one will need more directions both in the oral and written analyses of a sequence and the methodology of using film for cultural criticism. Since an internet site supports the CD-Rom and textbook, such information could be made available there.
Most of all, what this projects inaugurates is a reflection on the use of digital media for the purpose of teaching film and media studies. Two further examples demonstrate the potentials and the stakes of such an enterprise.
In the segment on music, Kolker includes archival material, images and sound, and displays them in multiple windows. He illustrates the use and significance of music in Alexander Nevsky (Soviet Union, 1938)by including a clip of the first twelve shots at the beginning of the Battle of the Ice sequence, Eisenstein’s diagram of the relationship between music and images, and a transcript of the score. The reader can first watch the sequence then watch it again while following the succession of shots, the score and Eisenstein’s abstract diagram. The information is complex and diverse but the digital support allows for incisive insights without the need of extensive description. Clearly, this is an effective means of presenting this type of information and an extended use of hypertextual methodology can be envisaged.
Kolker not only presents material from a variety of sources but also transforms what he is studying. In one of the most interesting moments of the CD-Rom, he analyses “the dynamics of Wellesian space”in Citizen Kane (USA, 1941). The reader can play the clip of the long take of the signing of the deed by Mrs Kane in a variety of manners including with lines superimposed on the image. These lines make visible the lines of sight and the power relation between the different characters. In an essay published in Postmodern Culture (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v005/5.1kolker.html) Kolker justifies this method:
It’s quite possible to go beyond quoting images and actually intervene in their structure, inscribing the critical act within the images themselves. This is particularly useful in explaining how a filmmaker articulates narrative structure by framing and moving within a shot. A famous sequence from Welles’s Citizen Kane becomes an animated expression of the complex shiftings of narrative point of view as figures change position and dominate or become recessive in the frame. More than critical inquiry, this computer-assisted methodology becomes a kind of performance. The image is shared between filmmaker, critic, and reader, and its former inviolability is replaced by active intervention and presentation. The aura of the inviolable and inevitable text is diminished and the authority of the critic heightened by access.
This is another means for Kolker to define “film culture”: the viewer/critic is not simply a consumer of the text but a participant in it. Kolker argues that a film is never complete without a viewer and that the viewer will take on an expanded role in the reconfiguration of cinema into something different, something which we are only beginning to perceive at this point. There is a utopian dimension to this and one which is not entirely disconnected from Kolker’s Brechtian aesthetics and politics in his earlier work.
here are immediate limitations to this proposal: the amount of information one can put on a CD-Rom is, at this point, barely more than 500 megabytes. Furthermore, the reader does not have, within the CD-Rom, the possibility of intervening in the material, reassembling the images, grabbing shots or segments as part of the interaction. There is no doubt however that as the technology evolves more material will be compressed on a CD-Rom and therefore more interactive possibilities will be offered. But the focus on the technology as such may itself be a false issue since what Kolker’s project implicitly involves is a different way of mediating the relation between students/critics and film. What Kolker demonstrates in Film, Form and Culture is that the access to the image not only furthers the conceptual understanding of cinema and visual culture in general but participates in the development of visual literacy as a means of empowerment in contemporary culture. This is an essential debate for the future of the field.
Interesting links:
Kolker’s homepage (http://otal.umd.edu/~rkolker)
The Altering Eye (http://www.otal.umd.edu/~rkolker/AlteringEye/)
Demo of the CD-Rom (http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/art-film/kolker/)
Reclaiming the Image (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern-culture/v005/5.1kolker.html)
Special Issue of Postmodern Culture on Film and Digital Technology edited by Robert Kolker (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/toc/pmcv008.html)
References
Richard Kolker, The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) (available on line at http://otal.umd.edu/~rkolker/AlteringEye)
Richard Kolker, A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese, Speilberg, Altman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
Thierry Jutel