Film Narrative: A study of three important film theorists and filmmakers.

by

Diane Busuttil

January 2016

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This essay will discuss three important thinkers and creative artists that have
made a significant contribution to my research topic in the field of filmdance,
film theory and subjective camera technique. The three key people are
Christian Metz (French film theorist), Sally Potter (British film maker and
choreographer) and Maya Deren, (Russian/American film theorist,
experimental film maker, dancer and poet). In my critical analyses of Metz, I
will specifically look at his theories on the musings of Pablo Pasolini, an Italian
filmmaker and critique of narrative cinematic language, and Metz’s critical
dialogue with Pasolini’s theorem, im-segni.

Christian Metz is a French film theorist whose book Film Language, a Semiotics
of the Cinema, has become somewhat of a bible for my various investigations
and historical references towards film theory and aesthetic semiotics. His
approach toward cinematic narrativity proposes that there are various dialects
in film (Metz, 1991:93), “and that each one of these dialects can become the
subject of specific analysis”. The dialect in which my investigation lays can be
categorized as filmdance and experimental. As Metz firmly believes, “It is
movement (one of the greatest differences, doubtless the greatest, between still
photography and the movies) that produces the strong impression of reality.”
(Metz, 1991) Reality being the key word here as the subject matter of
experimental and/or filmdance rarely, if ever, deals with reality.

Narrative films specialize in transforming enactments of stories into realism,

which is one reason why they are so popular and easily digestible as a film
language. Traditionally, narrative films use dialogue as a main communicative
device to tell a story, whereas experimental and filmdance works require an
articulated use of film aesthetics to convey a particular theme or mood within
their visual constructs, thereby negating the main purpose of narrative driven
films, i.e.: to tell a story. Although the outcomes of these two film genres may
be vastly different, their cinematic tools are the same: montage, camera
movements, scale of the shots, relationships between the image and speech,
sequences, and other large syntagmatic units (Metz, 1991:93). The assemblage
of the aforementioned units is what creates the aesthetic style from which the
film language is constructed.
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The focus toward my own films is the composition of what is referred to as
mise-en-scène1. Understandably, within the context of a film whose narrative
drive is not reduced to dialogue or narration, the placement and theatrical
construction of the mise-en-scène determines a broader creative and
communicative device than the use of dialogue in traditional spoken language
films. The historical definition of mise-en-scène can be categorized into two
forms: realism and expressionism. Lumières is attributed to the inception of
cinematic realism, whilst Méliès created a montage that is the precedent of the
fantasy mode. (Striuli, 2007) Although these two main forms rely on the same
cinematic syntax to create their genres, their assemblage in terms of
construction or dismantling the narrative language, vary considerably. It is
Metz’s understanding of cinematic narrative, in particular his swaying views
on Pasolini’s account of em-segni, or image-poems, that interest me.

Pablo Pasolini was a filmmaker and critique of narrative cinematic language,

and in the words of Carlorosi, “is perhaps the most important theorist of the
idea that cinema can stretch beyond the apparent limits of the objectivity of
things, thus destabilizing the more central point of view of narrative-based
films”. (Carlorosi, 2009) Pasolini’s doctorate of im-segni, or image poems can
be described as akin to his earlier attributions to poetry as “Pasolini’s dialect
poetry is an elision of the serious business of the postwar world, an ideal,
impossible space where the pressing questions of ideology, temporality, and
subjectivity can be finessed”. (Ward, 1995) Pasolini’s dogma is a relevant
addition to cinema’s poetic narrative and mise-en-scène syntax.

Carlorosi cleary defines Pasolini’s im-segni as, “If the eye behind the camera is
able to merge in mimesis with the protagonist's mind and be guided by its
irrational thoughts, subjective visions, interior feelings, it will gain the power
to disrupt the linear logic of a prose cinema, and thus begin to unveil an
alternate vision of the real” (Carlorosi, 2009). Metz initially disputed Pasolini’s

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The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing – actors, lighting, décor, props,
costume – is called mise-en-scène, a French term that means “placing on stage.” The frame
and camerawork are also considered part of the mise-en-scène of a movie. In cinema, placing
on the stage really means placing on the screen, and the director is in charge of deciding what
goes where, when, and how. http://www.elementsofcinema.com/directing/mise-en-scene-
in-films/
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im-segni by stating “ I am personally struck by the fact that the image belongs
to the iconography and iconology of our society much more than to
cinematographic language. And that is why I insist so much of the idea that,
for the properly cinematographic semiotics, the first level of organization (i.e.,
the one that is to the filmmaker as language is to the writer) is not made up of
“im-segni” but of visual and auditory analogies”. Metz believes that Pasolini’s
understanding of im-segni is located and grounded in literature and society
more than poetics, thus negating im-segni’s value as a “cinematographic
language”. (Metz, 1991) pg 215. Metz’s reflection on Pasolini’s musings is
relevant to my own critical enquiries toward a semiotic language of film, and
in particular the perspective on a subjective point of view (pov).

I believe that im-segni has various interpretations and can be seen through the
subjective vision of an artist, and therefore, have more possible explanations
than may be visually presented on screen. Metz’s own questioning of
Pasolini’s im-segni leads me to further investigate the true narrative
components of narrative structure, and ask, is narrative composition based on
a true understanding of visual content or linguistic knowledge? This final
question is the seed of my creative investigation toward an artistic and
subjective inquiry into narrative structure and the semiotics of cinema.

SALLY POTTER is a British film director, writer and composer, born in

London, England in 1949. Potter began dance training at an early age at the
London School of Contemporary Dance and later co-founded the Limited
Dance Company. Potter also studied music composition at St. Martin’s School
of Art. Her earlier artistic works combined live dance and music with screen
projections, often highlighted dance as a main narrative theme. (McKim, 2006)
Her most well known film is Orlando, made in 1992 starring Tilda Swinton,
followed by The Man Who Cried (2000), Yes (2004) and Ginger & Rosa (2012). In
2012 Potter was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire)
on the Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to film.

Potter is a prolific film maker, well know for her risk-taking ability to merge
political issues so reverently into her films, as Kevin Thomas of The Los
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Angeles Times writes, “Bold, vibrant and impassioned, YES is the work of a
high-risk film artist in command of her medium and gifted in propelling her
actors to soaring performances.” (Whitney, 2005). Potter has been able to
define a unique voice by using choreography as a stylistic tool to create
meaning and evoke emotions in her films. In an interview for her film YES,
Potter states, “This is not just about unsung identities but about the subtleties
and nuances of contemplation, the drifting spaces in which the worlds of the
very small and the very large collide. Camerawork is a part of that. We called
it ‘searching’ for the image.” (Whitney, 2005)

Potter’s strong sensibility toward illuminating human intimacy, allows her to

write and design her stories from a very human place. This ability can
transcend her spectators out of the everyday and closer to a mystical reality
that is uniquely hers. Potter has a radar awareness of how movement connects
the characters in her films and this kinesthetic relationship further invites the
spectators into her narrative. Most recently Potter published a book honing
her expertise in working with actors, titled Naked Cinema (2004). The book title
suggests her unique ability to be transparent with her refined technique of
understanding the working nuances of actors, directors and the audience in
cinema, weaving her thread of political formula through each role.

Potter takes time in the working process to find a language of filming that best
serves the story she is telling, whilst maintaining the integration of live
performance in her films. Potter states: “In the front of my mind was to try to
find an appropriate form, an explosion of language, that might work
cinematically.” (Whitney, 2005) In the world of Potter’s films, the spectator is
invited to look differently at the world. Differently because it is a world
through which our imagination is rarely guided to transverse, for example, in
Orlando when Tilda Swinton looks directly into the camera and talks candidly
to the spectator. This use of unconventional form serves to break the theatrical
“fourth wall” and invites the spectator directly into the scene, thereby, creating
somewhat of a haptic experience for the spectator, as Mayer (2009), referring to

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the work of Laura Marks2 on film phenomenology and haptic visuality (Marks,
2002), describes Potter’s films as ‘events that have happened to us’ (p. 7),
(Bolton, 2010).

I resonate with the work of Potter because of her unique ability to include her
politic beliefs as a strong voice successfully in each film. Her feminist stance
allows her female protagonists to view the world in their own (subjective)
terms, through the inquiring lens of Potter’s moving gaze. This literal and
actual mobility removes her protagonists from being objectified or sexualized
as tends to happen in mainstream, male-gaze driven feature films. As Fowler
states, “Potter’s films have at their heart the desire to free women from the
narrative conventions of patriarchal cinema, having an editing style and mise-
en-scene that never objectifies or fetishizes women”. (Bolton, 2010)

Potter’s strong use of theatricality both in audio and visual elements, such as
colour, framing and rhythmic editing style, have availed her to the unique
class of films that bridge the field of art and film. Her insistence of putting
female protagonists in the main roles and giving her characters a deeper sense
of experiencing the world than merely just being in it, is what attracts me to
Potter’s use of form and artistry. In setting new viewing parameters using the
form and artistry of both cinema and choreographic techniques, the spectators
in turn, begins to view the works and perceive visual and narrative scope,
with new-born vision. I intend to closely study her use of framing and
subjective approach as part of my practice-led research investigations.

Obscure camera angles, teamed with montage overlays of images such as the
reflection of a city through a glass window, explicit use of camera movement
as a highly defined tool to gauge intimate insight into the protagonist’s mind,
are clear markings of Potter’s unique aesthetic style. As our contemporary

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As a way of seeing and knowing which calls upon multiple senses, haptic visuality offers a
method of sensory analysis which does not depend on the presence of literal touch, smell, taste
or hearing. While many sensory analyses focus on the evocation of and interaction between
these literal senses (for example, the study of tactile interfaces, kinesthetics and textures),
Marks’s concept of haptic visuality provides an alternative framework for discussing online
new media works (too often understood as “simply” visual) in relation to multiple senses,
affect and embodiment.
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predecessors have professed, movement of the camera has deep and powerful
roots—moral roots, as Godard would maintain—and it’s one of the things that
make film an art. (Schrader, 2011) These traits are what I aspire to employ in
my own creative screen works, consisting of film and dance, to create an
overall visual narrative, or aesthetic.

Potter’s ultimate political act is how her visual devices deliberately create a
counter experience to codes of conventional realist cinema.3 She is one of the
rare contemporary filmmakers combining artistic risk-taking with popular
appeal. Potter uses film’s aesthetic devices to show her spectators how to look
at film rather than simply accepting a narrative aesthetic common to the
feature film genre.

MAYA DEREN, (née Eleanora Derenkowskaia) born in Kiev, Russia, 1917, is a

formidable presence in the genre of experimental, art film. Her early film
works, most of which included a high content of dance material, have helped
to classify her as the mother of American avant-garde cinema4. Deren initially
invented a unique aesthetic for combining dance and film that created the
genre of cinema as an art form coined the term “film-dance”. “Deren
determines that film art must marry the subjective and moral intelligence of
the artist to the relatively unexplored potential of the camera.”(Deren, 2005)
pg.10. This statement clarifies the focal points of my own artistic practice and
research regarding subjective camera and its expression of moral and political
intellect.

3
SMELIK, A. 1998. AND THE MIRROR CRACKED: FEMINIST CINEMA AND FILM THEORY, NEW YORK,
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN.
4
KAPPENBERG, C. A. R., DOUGLAS - EDITORS 2013. After Deren. The International Journal
of Screendance, 3.
Maya Deren (née Eleanora Derenkowskaia) is an uncontested pioneer of the American Avant-
Garde, if not its “mother”; but how American was this avant-garde, and should we insert an
“s” to signal multiple avant-gardes? Bill Nichols’s introduction to Maya Deren and the American
Avant-Garde (2001) begins with a biographical account of Deren’s origins in Kiev (where she
was born in 1917), and describes her emigration with her parents to the US in 1922 as they fled
anti-Semitic pogroms. Deren become a naturalized citizen in 1928 and later immersed herself
in a European émigré scene in Greenwich Village. Eventually she was joined by Czech
photographer and filmmaker Alexander Hammid (Alexandr Hackenschmied) who came to
the United States in 1942, twenty years after Deren. Just one year later they would make their
first collaboration, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

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Deren’s ideas stem from her empirical experiences combines with her studies
of enlightenment, political philosophy, poetry and psychology5. These topics
culminate in her artistic works as well as her writings and musings on
experimental cinema, which are currently regarded as significant scholarly
contributions for dancers and filmmakers. Her theorems on experimental
cinema avail her spectators an inside perspective of her artistic process and
inspirations. Her publication, An Anagram of Ideas on Form, Art and Film
confirm her believe that narrative structure need not be the central focus of
films, (Deren, 2005) pg.10, which is akin to my own believe. Harmony Bench
describes Deren’s mixed artistry in a Journal dedicated to Deren’s work:
“Equal parts artist, theorist, entrepreneur, and evangelist, it is difficult to
measure Maya Deren’s lingering, pervasive, and sometimes forgotten
influence on experimental cinema”. (Bench, 2013) pg.6. Even today, Deren’s
cinematic approach has influenced contemporary film culture through the
films of two contemporary American filmmakers, David Lynch and Barbara
Hammer.

Deren trained as a dancer and often features either herself or other dancers or
performers in her films. Her use of choreographic elements, either directly
situated as dance via her dancers, or as a tool for manipulating and organizing
space, time and form, are clearly evident in all her film works: “Deren
emphasized a choreographic aesthetic, regardless of whether or not onscreen
movement could be classified as “dancing” and she denounced what she saw
as the typical Hollywood style of treating film as though it were simply
another stage”. (Kappenberg, 2013) pg.6. Deren’s films created a counter-
culture to the mainstream Hollywood trends and were often described as
visual poetry and categorized within the surrealistic movement.

What Deren opposed of the mainstream cinematic dance in the 1940’s

Hollywood era, was the grandiose and sweeping camera work of Busby-
Berkley-style cinematic extravaganzas. Deren believed the camera did not
service the movement or choreography in a supporting manner, that the

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DEREN, M. 2005. Essential Deren, collected writings on film by Maya Deren, McPherson &
Company, New York. Pg. 10 & 11.
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cinematic visions were mere displays of technical prowess, which ultimately
created the dance and their subjects as spectacle. Deren states “If film is to
make any contribution to the realm of movement, if it is to stake out a claim in
an immeasurably rich territory, then it must be in the province of film-motion,
as a new dimension altogether of movement.” (Deren, 2005) ch:3, and
observed that the camera was still in a position that depicted the dance, or
dancers, in a proscenium arch setting, therefore negating the possibility of film
and dance forming a unique language that was equal parts one and the other.
I resonate strongly with Deren’s work because her cinematic approach
represents a subjective reality from a female perspective, as well as referencing
and engaging in social or cultural issues that are present at the time. As stated
by Kay and Peary, “In featuring the filmmaker as the woman whose
subjectivity in the domestic space is explored, the feminist dictum "the
personal is political" is fore-grounded. (Kay, 1977) Deren draws upon her
personal experiences to reflect a broader configuration of social and cultural
constructs.

Deren’s work was a two-fold expression emphasizing the visual field as well
as the moving body, as well as taking on the duel roles of filmmaker and
performer. Deren believes that filmdance is “so related to camera and cutting
that it cannot be ‘performed’ as a unit anywhere but in this particular film”6.
Deren also believes “The distinction of poetry is its construction (what I mean
by “a poetic structure”), and the poetic construct arises from the fact, if you
will, that it is a “vertical” investigation of a situation, in that it probes the
ramifications of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth,
so that you have poetry concerned in a sense not with what is occurring, but
with what it feels like or what it means.” (singaporeditor, 2011) ‘Deren
elaborates the “poetic” tendency of cinema as a temporal tendency, where
cinema should be made to explore time “vertically”7, like a poem, versus
horizontally, according to the casual logic one finds in narrative forms’
(Epstein, 2012). Deren’s perspective on vertical cinema is one of her strongest
contributions to the canon of experimental films and filmdance.
6
Ibid. Pg:222
7
A term quoted by film director Sergei Eisenstein, in 1930. “It is my desire to intone the hymn
of the male, the strong, the virile, active, vertical composition!”
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It is these aspects that resonate with my own artistic approach toward
filmmaking as my short experimental films and dance films exhibit moving
bodies as subjects and as a strong narrative device in the filmmaking process.

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References

BENCH, H. 2013. Maya Deren: A Prologue. The International Journal of

Screendance, 3.
BOLTON, L. 2010. The Cinema of Sally Potter: a Politics of Love (Directors
Cuts). screen. Oxford Journals [Online], 51.
CARLOROSI, S. 2009. Pier Paolo Pasolini's La Ricotta: The Power of
Cinepoiesis. Italica, 86, 254-271.
DEREN, M. 2005. Essential Deren, collected writings on film by Maya Deren,
McPherson & Company, New York.
EPSTEIN, J. 2012. Critical Essays and New Translations, Amsterdam University
Press.
KAPPENBERG, C. A. R., DOUGLAS - EDITORS 2013. After Deren. The
International Journal of Screendance, 3.
KAY, K. A. P., GERALD 1977. Women and the cinema : a critical anthology, New
York Dutton.
MARKS, L. U. 2002. Touch: Sensous Theory and Multisensory Media, Minneapolis
MN, USA, Unversity of Minnesota Press.
MCKIM, K. 2006. “A state of loving detachment”: Sally Potter’s Impassioned
and Intellectual Cinema. Senses of Cinema [Online]. Available:
http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/great-directors/potter/ [Accessed 20
October 2015].
METZ, C. 1991. Film Language, A Semiotics of the Cinema, The University of
Chicago Press.
SCHRADER, P. 2011. Game Changers: Camera Movement. Film Comment
[Online]. Available: http://www.filmcomment.com/article/game-
changers-camera-movement.
SINGAPOREDITOR. 2011. Vertical Cinema - Maya Deren. Available:
https://singaporeditor.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/vertical-cinema-
maya-deren/ [Accessed 15 November 2015].
SMELIK, A. 1998. And the mirror cracked: feminist cinema and film theory, New
York, Palgrave Macmillan.
STRIULI, G. 2007. Mise-en-scene and narrative strategies in the Tavianis and
Wertmuller.(Dream and Reality in Italian Cinema). Italica, 84, 495.
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WARD, D. 1995. A Poetics of Resistance: Narrative and the Writings of Pier Paolo
Pasolini, Fairleigh Dickinson Universtiy Press.
WHITNEY, J. 2005. Yes - An interview with director Sally Potter
. Available: https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/yes/ [Accessed 21
October 2015].

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