Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Film's InstitutionalMode of
Representationand the Soviet
Response
NOEL BURCH
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
78
OCTOBER
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
79
1903.
EdwinS. Porter.The GreatTrainRobbery.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
81
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
82
OCTOBER
5.
It should be noted that as oftenas not a contemporarypresentationof this or any otherfilm
would have been accompanied by a "lecture,"the task of which was to centertheseacentricimages.
it is my
Independentlyof thealien natureof thistypicallyprimitivesplittingof thenarrativesignifier,
contentionthat an audience which had been watchingsuch filmsforas many as ten yearsmay well
have been sufficiently
"on its toes," even without the help of a lecturer,to conduct spontaneouslya
slightlymore topological reading than we are normallycapable of today.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
83
6.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
84
OCTOBER
none other than Eisenstein (the paradox is only apparent) in his classes at the
Moscow Institute.7
The dominance of theWesternmode offilmicrepresentation
was determined
neitherby ideological factorsalone nor by sheereconomic opportunism.Rather,
it correspondsbroadlyto the mode of constitutionof the Subject in our culture,
and it developed into an ideological vehicle of unprecedentedpower. However
massive its political and social consequences, it was the resultof an overdetermined convergenceand not simplya class strategy.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
85
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
86
OCTOBER
Raymond Williams and Michael Orrom,Prefaceto Film, London, Film Drama, 1954.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
87
VsevolodPudovkin.The Mother.1926.
thinks of the bar scene in The Mother, which immediatelyfollows the one
describedabove. The livelyatmosphere,the throbof the music are suggestedby
theverydynamicsof thesuccessionofdetails,no longersubjectto causal orderbut
ratherswirlingabout in an impressionistdescription,a verticalequivalentof the
horizontaltransparencyof Griffithian
linearization.
It is a fact, however, that in many passages, especially those involving
confrontationsbetweenmore than two characters-hereI have in mind a scene
involvingthe mother,the son, and thetsaristsoldiers,or anotherin which "The
Heir to Genghis Khan" confrontstheEnglish furtraders-Pudovkin'sanalytical
penchant, his concern to make each picture into a "brick" as elementaryas
whichhe can controlas closelyas possible,does
possible in a chain ofsignification
indeed lead him to weaken the verisimilitudeof the diegeticspatial continuum.
And yet this verisimilitudewas a foundinghistoricalcondition of the system
which subtendshis whole endeavor.Wishingto carryto itsextremeconsequences
the logic of linearizationthroughediting,Pudovkin comes up against the same
obstacle encounteredby the pioneerswhen theywerecastingabout formethods
capable of overcoming the unfortunate"dissociative" effectwhich the first
interpolatedclose-ups had upon the unityof filmsthat still depended almost
exclusivelyon the layout of the primitivetableau. In both cases, thisdisintegration, as it were,was the price thathad to be paid foran increasein "expressive-
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
88
OCTOBER
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
89
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
90
OCTOBER
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
91
9.
In Lang's Metropolis,L'Herbier's L'Argent,Raymond Bernard'sLe Miracle des loups....
are clearlynot talkingabout the mistakesof amateurs.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
We
92
OCTOBER
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
93
Eisenstein'scomplex attitude.On the one hand, he rejectseverythingin therepresentational system which causes the spectator to see only "those elements
This is thecredo,
capable of being seen," in otherwords,he rejectstransparency.
as it were,thatunderlieshis "dialecticization"of thematchingsystemand all the
other "illusionist" strategies;his goal is to make theworkof thesignifiervisible.
into a spectacleof theclassical type,
Yet at the same timethisworkis reintegrated
one which is certainlyon a "higher plane" than the other, but one which
neverthelessmustin the last analysis submitto thesame linear,we mightevensay
totalitarian,model: what the spectatoris supposed to grasp at the end of the
process, whateverwork he or she may have been called upon to perform,is
assumed to be what the authorput into it. We findourselvesface to facewith the
old illusion thatholds theworkofartto be a mediator,a means ofcommunication
between two sensibilities.This will perhaps also help us to understandwhy
Eisensteinneversought (not even in Strike,despiteall claims to thecontrary)to
oppose thesystemby thenestablishedwithany notion of a tabula rasa. In spiteof
theirdifferences,
in spite of theirdisputes,he sharedwithPudovkinand Kuleshov
thedeep convictionthatthe "language" with which thename of Griffith
was then
so closely associated was tantamountto a basic language whose fundamental
who proclaimedhis attachmentto
componentswereintangible.Even a filmmaker
dialectical and historical materialismand who felthis task was to enrich that
systemthroughcriticalreappraisal was bound to remain within the conceptual
frameworkwhich it defined.This is the nervecenterof his polemic with Vertov.
Needless to say, it would in my estimationbe foolish to reproachhim forthis.
Among the Soviet masters,Dziga Vertovalone advocatedan uncompromistabula
rasa. In the USSR of the 1920s, such a position also involved
ing
contradictionswhich are far fromnegligible. The fact remains, however,that
Vertovwas the firstfilmmakerand theoreticianto have produced-in ways that
were at timescrude, at othersdeceptivelypolemical-a critical definitionof the
nature of cinematic representation,and to have undertaken,in his masterwork
The Man with a Movie Camera, a practicalcritique of it.
Reading certainVertovtextsoverlyliterally,commentatorshave oftenmade
of him the irrepressiblechampion of documentaryagainst the fictionfilm.
However, what this readingof his careerfails to reveal is that the reason Vertov
seemed to be combatingfictionper se was thathe perceivedin the fictionfilmof
thatera thehegemonyofa deeplyalienatingsystemofrepresentation.
This was in
part because of the ideological substancewhich in capitalist countriesit almost
invariablypurveyed-explicitlyor implicitly-and in part because of thepassive
attitudethatit requiredof thespectator.And if he attackedEisenstein,seemingto
confuse him with the mastersof Hollywood, it was because he feltthat in the
revolutionarycontexta tabula rasa strategywas indispensableto clean theeyesof
themasses,as he mighthave put it. Reading his texts,seeinghis films,it is hard to
believe that he did not realize that The Man witha Movie Camera (or Kino-Glaz,
forthatmatter)was as much, or as little,a fictionas Potemkinor The Mother.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
94
OCTOBER
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
95
iiOV?
4-1::::i:
.:::::i:-low
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
96
OCTOBER
we mustmake no mistakeabout
practicallyno opportunityto work.Nevertheless,
it: if theworkof Vertovstill containsan immensetheoreticalpotential,ifit helps
us to understandthe systemwhich still governs 99% of the world's filmand
televisionproduction,if it helps us to reflecton the possibilitiesof eventually
developing-within a political and social contextcomparable,at theveryleast,to
Vertov's--methodsof audio-visual education and propaganda which might
fromthebasic normsof cinematicrepresentation,
he invented
departsignificantly
no magic recipes.In particular,it is clearlya delusion to imagine thatreflexiveness has automatic pedagogical value. The key to educating the senses of the
masses, an education that would enable themto read the filmicsystem-to read
themselvesinside it ratherthan simplybeingwritteninto it again and again-lies
in changes a good deal more far-reaching.Even at the strictly
audio-visual level,
the education of the senses must pass through the schools of Kuleshov and
Eisensteinbeforethatof Vertov,mustmove,in otherwords,in an ascendingorder
of contradiction.
This content downloaded from 150.244.109.223 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:51:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions