Review: Signification in the Cinema

Reviewed Work(s):
Langage et cinéma. Language and Cinema
by Christian Metz and Donna Jean Umiker-Sebeok:
Essais sur la signification au cinéma. Vol. I. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema
by Michael Taylor
Review by: Paul Sandro
Source: Diacritics , Autumn, 1974, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 42-50
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/465112

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42

Paul Sandro

S igprificatiop ip the ?irpenma

Christian Metz. Langage et cinema.

Paris: Larousse, 1971; Language and
Cinema. Trans. Donna Jean Umiker-
Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton, 1974.
Essais sur la signification au cinema.
Vol. I. Paris: Klincksieck, 1968.
(Film Language: A Semiotics of the
( Cinema. Trans. Michael Taylor. New
York: Oxford University Press,
O 1974.) Essais. Vol. II. Paris: Klinck-
sieck, 1972.

In his first and perhaps best known

signification in the cinema, Christian Met
cinema as a means of expression without a code, a
discourse which lacks the coherent body of govern-
ing constraints and clear articulations of langue but
which signifies nevertheless as if by having already
mobilized features of the more general category of
langage (Communications, No. 4, 1964). As Metz
indicates, the extrapolation of these Saussurian con-
cepts from linguistics to the study of cinema is
problematic. Even the notion of cinema as a kind
of "langage without a code" is at best a loose image
for what resists explanation in systematic terms, and
the absence of a code raises a difficult theoretical
question. If at its core cinema does not have a gra
matical system comparable to langue, what organ
it as a langage whose process generates meaning?
While much of this article is directed against
the excesses of those montage theorists who com-
Paul Sandro is an editor-at-large of Diacritics and As- pared the splicing of shots to the creative manipula-
sistant Professor of French at Miami of Ohio. tion of words and against the guidebook gram-

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 marians of "cinematic language," this negative
gesture clears the way for some tentative affirmations
about cinema as a signifying process. The assertion
that even a close-up shot of a single object such as
a revolver would more likely correspond to the
speech utterance "Here is a revolver" than to the
single word "revolver" affirms the presence of a
visual discourse already at work in the shot (a con-
tinuous strip of film from one "take" which Metz
calls the minimal unit of montage). As a minimal
discursive unit, the shot is an actualized unit of sig-
nification, more like the speech utterance than the
linguistic seme; it is one of an infinite number of
constructions that may be generated. But unlike the
speech utterance, its semes are not articulated by
anything comparable to the discrete units of phone-
mic articulation. This actualized visual discourse,
the "discours image," thus becomes the tentative
basis for a permanent project, a semiology of the
cinema, aimed at discovering how cinema signifies
and attempting to be descriptive rather than norma-
tive. In the absence of a clearly defined "grammar"
which could be seen to govern the logical relations
among constitutive units, Metz initially seeks the
principle of intelligibility for this cursive visual ex-
pression in larger rhetorical patterns (Essais, I, p.
119).
Metz's first volume of essays, published four
years later and now translated as Film Language,
includes the Communications article, essays on the
impression of reality, on the phenomenology of the
narrative in cinema, and on theoretical problems in
modern cinema. But of crucial importance is one
essay (FL, pp. 108-46) which ascribes a partial code
to the temporal dimension of what Metz had previ-
ously described as a "langage without a code." It
applies specifically to the "bande-images" (image-
track), the succession of images which, together
with the "bande sonore" (sound track), comprises
the syntagmatic axis of filmic expression. The analyt-
ical model proposed in this key essay defines the
categories of spatio-temporal logic linked to various
kinds of sequential patterns that function as auton-
omous story segments in the image-track of the
classical narrative film (roughly from the early
thirties to 1955, with reservations as noted in Essais,
II, pp. 202 and 204). The "large-scale syntagmatics
of the image-track" is a paradigm of these sequential
types (syntagmata), a code which defines the mean-
ing of one syntagma in relation (or by opposition)
to the others. For Metz, the foundation of such a
code lies in the functional history of forms, the way
a cultural logic attaches itself to a material, rather
than in a pre-determined ontology: ever since its
invention, cinema has been used to tell stories, to
express spatio-temporal relationships; hence a code
of syntagmatic devices which responds to this nar-
rative function. The repeated intercutting of two
series of filmed events, for example, may be con-
sidered as an article of code (the alternating syn-
tagma) only because it has come to fill the need to
show simultaneity between the events, as in the
simplest chase scene or in scenes which depict
enemy camps preparing for battle. Some of the
syntagmata are not chronological (the parallel syn-
diacritiCS/Fall 1974
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43
tagma and bracketed syntagma), performing purely
associative functions; one syntagma is chronological
but not truly narrative (the descriptive syntagma:
successive views of different elements in the setting
to evoke a spatial state of being without directly ad-
vancing the story); others (the scene, the episodic
sequence, and the ordinary sequence) are narrative
and linear with varying degrees of continuity.
Yet as the only model of codification elabo-
rated, the large-scale syntagmatics raised several im-
portant questions from the outset. Was this to be
the code of cinematic language? If so, what would
account for the meaning produced by other aspects
of cinema not included in this schema, such as
camera movements, optical effects, cutting rhythm,
variations in lighting and color? And what about
cinema's claim to the representation of reality? What
system informs the animated icon which seems "al-
ways already" to signify by its "likeness" to "real"
objects before they are filmed? Finally, how are the
other expressive "materials" of cinema-words, mu-
sic, sound effects-organized in relation to the "vis-
ual discourse"? Metz himself acknowledges these
problems in his essays and in the accompanying
notes-many of which were written several years
after an essay was originally published in article
form and thus mark an evolution in his thinking.
But not until Langage et cindma does he situate the
large-scale syntagmatics in an extensive approach to
the semiology of cinema. This approach departs sig-
nificantly from the initial notion of cinema as a
"langage without a code," describing the film as a
discursive object informed by many codes, some-
like the large-scale syntagmatics-being more or less
specific to cinema as a signifying process, and others
-such as "iconic codes of analogy"-being to a
great degree "borrowed" from extra-cinematic re-
sources. Moreover, this approach entails a complete
re-evaluation of notions which underlie the idea of
cinema as a "langage without a code," such as the
relationship of a code to a given means of expres-
sion, the notion of specificity, and the notion of
minimal units in a system of signification.
In Language and Cinema Metz does not as-
sume the coherence of a body of codes which would
constitute "cinematic language." He holds that term
in abeyance for at least two reasons: first, the notion
of cinematic language calls for a means to isolate
what is specifically cinematic; second, any reference
to language evokes a series of terminological dis-
tinctions which result from methodology appropriate
for the analysis of strictly verbal expression and
might prejudice one's approach to cinema, a means
of expression with several semiotic dimensions.
MATERIAL OF EXPRESSION, CODE/ Metz treats
the question of specificity at several stages in his
development, each time adding criteria which in-
crease the difficulty of defining what "belongs" to
cinema as a signifying process and what does not.
Initially, he characterizes cinema as a composite of
different kinds of expression "which may be dis-
tinguished from one another by their physical na-
ture alone": cinema's "continuous moving photo-
44
graphs, its speech, its music, its sound effects." 1 In
this respect, cinema differs from other means of ex-
pression which are not physical composites, such as
classical music, where the "material" (matiere) of
the signifier "consists uniformly of 'musical sound,'
the spoken language where it is limited to phonetic
sound, writing where it is restricted to graphic lines,
etc." (LC, p. 36). For this reason, even an initial
definition of cinema in "technico-sensory terms"
should focus on "a specific combination of several
materials of expression" and not a single privileged
material of expression (LC, p. 36). Metz uses Louis
Hjelmslev's "matidre de l'expression" throughout his
study to designate what might be called the raw
material of expression, "the (physical, sensorial)
material nature of the signifier, or more exactly of
the 'fabric' into which the signifiers are woven (for
one reserves the term 'signifier' for the signifying
form)" (LC, p. 208). Defining cinema's specificity
in technico-sensory terms amounts to analyzing the
combination of phenomenal traits common to all
films; cinema would equal "the film" as a perceptual
object. But the semiology of cinema is intent upon
discovering how films signify, just as linguistics seeks
to discover how verbal expression signifies. Ap-
proached in this way, cinema no longer designates
the perceptual object film, but the body of relational
systems which informs it. Cinema in this sense is an
abstract, purely ideal whole formed by analysis
which anticipates "a certain unity, which has yet to
be determined. The film is an object in the real
world, cinema is not" (LC, p. 24).
This definition of cinema complicates the ques-
tion of specificity, for the diverse codes which in-
form various means of expression do not fall into
place neatly, each one relating to only one kind of
expression as defined by its "material." In fact, there
is much overlapping, because the homogeneity of
codes
is not a sensory one, but rather one of the order of log-
ical coherence, of explanatory power, of classification,
of generative capacity. If a code is a code it is because
it provides a unified field of commutation, i.e., a (recon-
structed) "domain" within which the transformations of
the signifier correspond to variations of the signified, and
within which a certain number of elements have mean-
ing only in relation to each other. (LC, pp. 28-29)
Metz gives examples of some codes ("s6mies he6-
tbrogenes") which call upon different materials of
expression within a single field of commutation, and
other codes in which the system of signifying opposi-
tions may be "transposed in its entirety from one
modality [material of expression] to another while
its internal relational structure (form according to
Hjelmslev) remains to a greater or lesser extent un-
changed" (LC, p. 29). Yet at the same time, Metz
cannot deny a certain correlation between material
of expression and relational systems in some in-
stances: "any rhythmic code-disregarding the fig-
urative senses of the word 'rhythm'-requires in
order to be manifested a material which presents the
physical characteristic of temporality, and this is
why rhythmic codes are only specific to langages
[means of expression] whose material of expression
satisfies this requirement."2 Here it is crucial to note
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the difference "between a specificity defined directly
according to material criteria and one that is defined
in terms of codes, even if the specification of codes
cannot be accomplished without a consideration of
certain traits of the material of the signifier (and
not of this material itself, taken as a whole and with-
out analysis)" (LC, p. 43).
One example serves to clarify this distinction.
The overall field of semiotic oppositions which char-
acterizes the system of light and shade known as
chiaroscuro passes essentially intact from painting
to color photography. The "migration of the entire
system" from painting to photography is possible
because both means of expression share material
characteristics that are pertinent to the manifesta-
tion of this system: both offer fixed, colored, visual
images to the viewer. But what if "the same sym-
bolism of chiaroscuro were adopted in a literary
description and expressed with words? The vehicle,
henceforth verbal, would have changed profoundly,
but the internal ordering of signifying oppositions
could, in the extreme, remain the same, or at least
largely isomorphic, throughout this new migration"
(LC. Larousse, p. 162). At this point Metz dis-
tinguishes between two kinds of codical transposi-
tion, one in which the change from one means of
expression to another does not involve the technico-
sensory characteristics which are pertinent to the
code in question and one in which it does:
Among the conditions necessary in order that a system
of chiaroscuro exist and remain authentically such, there
is none which specifies that it should be painted by hand
or photographed; on the other hand, a chiaroscuro which
would no longer be visual but expressed with the help
of words would, strictly speaking, no longer be a chia-
roscuro, but a description of chiaroscuro (the material
transposition, this time, would have involved character-
istics that are pertinent for any system of chiaroscuro).
(LC. Larousse, p. 163)
Only in the second case does Metz speak of true
codical transposition; in the first, the code remains
unchanged because the pertinent characteristics of
the material of expression that it informs remain
unchanged.
'Language and Cinema, p. 36. All material cited from
this work is taken from the Mouton translation unless
indicated by brackets or by reference to the original
Larousse edition. Those variations, and translations of
passages from the second volume of Essais, are mine.
'LC. Larousse ed., p. 31. As in many other passages
where Metz uses the French word langage in a delib-
erately general and ambiguous manner, the English term
"means of expression" seems preferable to the transla-
tor's term "language system," for the emphasis is not on
the system alone but on its link with the raw material
that it "articulates" and informs. Earlier in the book,
the translation "language system" merely forces a dis-
tinction which, for tactical reasons, Metz prefers to post-
pone until he can illustrate these links and relate them
to the notion of specificity. But in a critical passage such
as this one, where he begins to do so, the substitution of
"language system" for langage undermines the dialectical
value of the distinction by eliminating the general term
which implies the links between material of expression
and the codes which structure it.
 45
,DEGREES AND MODES OF SPECIFICITY/ If the of sound elements (speech, music, sound effects)
specificity of cinema is to be defined in terms of and written credits" (LC, p. 226). Metz has delib-
codes, these distinctions are crucial: a code which erately chosen these examples in order to "identify
informs a technico-sensory characteristic that is com- and enumerate (in the form of discrete units) the
mon to many kinds of expression (being able to do sensory characteristics to which a given code is
so in each case without codical transposition) would intrinsically linked" (LC, p. 222). When the tech-
be less specific than a code which informs a char- nical mode by which an image is produced has a
acteristic that is manifested in only one or a few bearing on the codes which may inform the image,
kinds of expression. One might thus speak of varying he also includes technical criteria; hence, the hybrid
degrees of codical specificity. Metz lists several sys- term "technico-sensory characteristics" and his dis-
tems of intelligibility that the viewer of cinema must tinction between the mechanically recorded image
have mastered for "the comprehension and integra- and the image rendered by hand. The specificity of
tion of the total message of the film" but which seem cinema defined in terms of codes is a notion of great
to have little or no cinematic specificity. Among internal complexity which Metz describes for il-
these are two which relate to the perception and lustrative purposes according to a schema of over-
identification of filmed objects: "1. visual and audi- lapping circles (concentric circles and secants). Each
tory perception itself (systems for structuring space, circle stands for a technico-sensory characteristic
'figures' and 'backgrounds,' etc.) to the extent that which is common to a group of langages (means of
it already constitutes a certain degree of intelligibil- expression) and which is informed by a class of
ity which is acquired and variable according to dif- codes requiring that characteristic in order to be
ferent cultures; 2. the recognition, identification, and manifested. The "iconic codes of visual analogy"
enumeration of visual or auditory objects which ap- constitute a first class for which only the character-
pear- on the screen, i.e., the capacity (which is cul- istic "visual image" is required. (For more on these
tural and acquired) to appropriately manipulate the codes see LC, pp. 227-28; Essais, II, pp. 151-62; and
material that the film presents" (LC, pp. 33-34). articles in Communications No. 15 (1970), espe-
One is tempted to call these systems of intelligibility cially "S6miologie des messages visuels" by Umberto
extra-cinematic or pre-cinematic because they are Eco whose work Metz frequently acknowledges.)
not linked directly to cinema as a signifying process. A second class of codes relates to the produc-
Yet, because they underlie the perception and iden- tion of the iconic image in cinema by photography,
tification of objects outside the film, they play a what Metz calls a means of "mechanical duplica-
major part in the iconic aspect of signification within tion" (LC, p. 228). The film shares these codes with
the film-that is, the representation of objects by the photograph and the photo-novel, but not with
visual analogy (partial likeness).3 Cinema, conceived the drawing, the painting, the fresco, the comic
narrowly as a means for reproducing "reality," is in strip, and the animated cartoon whose images are
this respect a process for transferring codes: "to say composed initially by hand. In this second category
that an image resembles its object is to say that, are "photographic" codifications linked to phe-
thanks to this resemblance, the decipherment of the nomena such as angular incidence (shooting angles),
image will be able to benefit from codes which shot scale (long shots, medium shots, close-ups),
intervened in the decipherment of the 'real object'" effects created by focal modifications such as filters,
(Essais, II, pp. 153-54). Perhaps more important is lenses of different powers, and depth-of-focus effects
the idea that resemblance itself is codified, subject to regulated by the diaphragm opening (LC, p. 29).
quantitative and qualitative variables that in every These technical codes raise two problems.
culture enter into the determination of resemblance. First, visual configurations linked to technical varia-
Here Metz refers to the work of Abraham Moles on tions seem to constitute signifiers without "fixed
"degrees of iconicity" and to that of Pierre Fran- signifieds," they serve to "denote" what is placed
castel on the axes of resemblance in a single culture before the camera but seem to have no fixed mean-
and on differences in the determination of resem- ing of their own. These configurations, as Metz ex-
blance among different cultures. plains later in relation to codes of movement, may
What Metz calls the "iconic codes of visual become codified according to their use in a particu-
analogy" have a low degree of specificity to cinema lar genre or period of films. Others take on a mean-
because they inform many other types of visual textsing only in the context of the film. Second, the
whose materials are structured to "re-present" real characteristic of mechanical duplication involves the
objects by visual analogy (e.g., the figurative paint- indexical aspect of signification which Metz stresses
ing, the photograph, the photo-novel or photo-essay, in an early essay on realism (FL, pp. 3-15) but does
the comic strip). At the same time, each of these not develop with regard to codes in LC. A photo-
means of expression is distinguished by more than graph implies the optical duplication performed by
its capacity to manifest a visual image whose con- a camera, thus a straightforward causal link between
figurations are informed by "iconic codes of visual
analogy." Figurative painting is characterized by a
single, immobile image obtained by hand; photog-
raphy by a single, immobile image obtained me- 3It is important to note that the cinematic image is not
chanically; the comic strip by an immobile, multiple exclusively iconic, but also shares indexical aspects of
signification (based on a causal or existential relation-
image obtained initially by hand; the photo-novel by ship between referent and configuration) and symbolic
an immobile, multiple image obtained mechanically; aspects (based on an unmotivated relationship). See
and cinema by a mobile and multiple image ob- Metz's discussion of Peirce's three-part distinction in
tained mechanically and "combined with three sorts Essais, II, pp. 151-62.

iacritiCS /Fall 1974

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46
the recorded image and its referent or model; the
still photograph presents what Barthes has called an
avoir-ete`-lc (Communications, No. 4 [1964]; p. 47).
By contrast, the characteristics of the hand-painted
image do not imply the prior existence of a real ob-
ject (model), only that of an artist (the brush-
cutting:
The period that my large-scale syntagmatics covers is
characterized by what Bazin used to call "classic cut-
ting": analytical cutting which, in order to capture a
complex segment of the action, preferred to fragment it
in several successive shots rather than to turn it in con-

strokes and boundaries of applied pigment present- tinuity; one finds oneself, then, in one of the last seven
types of my classification (autonomous segments formed
ing a "trace" or index of his prior activity). At stake
by several shots). (II, p. 204)
is the notion of pictorial realism, which, like that of
resemblance, is subject in every culture to variables But in one notable example, the sequence-shot or
that enter into the determination of realism. In a "long take," the "image units" which make up an
general codification of pictorial realism, elements ofautonomous sequential pattern are distinguished
the photographic codes to which Metz refers would within a single shot by a fourth characteristic of the
necessarily come into play. Indeed, Metz's emphasis film, movement (examples: "'linking through move-
on camera position and optical modifications sug-ment' from one image to the next, passage from a
gests that these codes involve many of the features medium long shot to a close-up shot [or the re-
which lead viewers in our culture to accept the verse] as a procedure of montage which puts two
photograph as an index of reality. different images in succession without recourse to
A third class of codes in Metz's schema of 'cutting,' certain movements of the actors (called
overlapping specificities relates to the image as it is 'entries and exits from the field of vision') which
placed in sequence with other images; the film isbring together several scenes in a single shot"; LC.
characterized in part by a series of images. The Larousse, p. 175). Because movement allows for a
single painting or photograph does not share thiskind of "internal montage," it too is pertinent to the
characteristic of "successive plurality," but the spatio-temporal logic of film narrative. This is why
fresco, the comic strip, the animated cartoon (allMetz has left open the possibility of a second codical
excluded from class two) and the photo-novel do.formulation that would indicate which categories of
"This third circle is thus concentric with the first, narrative logic manifested in a series of individual
that of general iconicity, and smaller than it (in-shots could also be manifested within the sequence-
cluded in it). But in relation to the second, that of shot.
the mechanical image, it is in a position of inter- The characteristic of movement, accompanied
section" (LC, p. 230). Psychologists and psycho- necessarily by that of sequentiality, thus comprises a
sociologists have studied the effects obtained byfourth circle in Metz's schema of overlapping
putting images into sequence. Of particular interest specificities. It is inside the third circle, which spe-
are: (1) the "logical relationships perceived by thecifically defines sequentiality, and it excludes those
spectator" among successive images (e.g., causality,means of expression with multiple but immobile
opposition, simple juxtaposition); (2) "diverse means images (e.g., comic strip, photo-novel, fresco). This
of expressing temporal relationships such as simul- fourth domain has a higher degree of cinematic
taneity, close consecution, remote consecution, be- specificity than group three because the film shares
tween actions represented by the different images ofit with fewer other means of expression. At this
the sequence"; (3) "more properly esthetic con- stage in the analysis, the overlapping of domains de-
figurations: echoes of. motifs or of graphic contours fines a fifth area in the center which represents the
from one image to another (with the problem oflogical product of circles two and four: means of
'transition'), violent contrasts between contiguous expression having mobile and multiple images pro-
images, etc." (LC, pp. 230-31). Similar construc- duced mechanically. Because the cartoon, the photo-
tions, of course, play a crucial part in cinematicgraph, and the photo-novel, etc., are excluded, cinema
montage. shares this fifth area only with television (which, al-
Metz has made it clear that his large-scale though distinguished by technical differences in
syntagmatics does not constitute an exclusive "cin&- transmission and psycho-sociological differences in
langue" extrapolated from the effects of montage: reception, is seen by Metz as largely isomorphic;
"it constitutes only an attempt to elucidate one ofLC, p. 237).
the codes of the film, the one which organizes the Linked to this fifth area are configurations
most common spatio-temporal logic within the se-which result from camera movements (e.g., dolly
quence; this logical combinatoire is only one of the shots, pan shots) or optical effects (e.g., zoom
systems which make up the 'grammar' of the cinema shots, dissolve, iris, fade) which may play an im-
(and thus a fortiori which inform the total message portant part in "interior montage," as already noted.
of the film)" (LC. Larousse, p. 143). (See FL, pp. However, these configurations and others belonging
119-82 for a detailed presentation of the large-scale to the cinematic process (e.g, slow motion, delib-
syntagmatics and a syntagmatic analysis of Jacques erate blur, wipe, stop-action shot) often have no
Rozier's Adieu Philippine.) signified in the sense of a stable and commonly ac-
For the most part, the "image units" which cepted meaning. The dolly shot, for example, can
make up the sequential patterns (syntagmata) of the "signify" in several ways. A forward dolly shot
large-scale syntagmatics are distinguished by thewhich moves in rapidly on a character's face can
physical boundaries of the shot, each syntagma con- announce "an impending transition to subjectivity,"
sisting of two or more single "takes." As Metz hasas in David Lean's Brief Encounter, "and thus signal
noted, the large-scale syntagmatics pertains mainly that the events which are henceforth going to appear
to a tradition of montage which relies heavily onon the screen are only mental evocations of the

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character whose face is in the process of filling the
screen"; it can describe a scene, "introducing the
spectator into a new setting which is presented to
him little by little"; and it can accompany characters
as they move when it is important to keep them at
a fixed distance (LC, p. 133). Slow motion, another
example, can create a dream atmosphere as in Vigo's
Zdro de conduite; it can also dramatize moments of
violence as in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch; or it
can "function in relation to time in the same way as
the magnifying glass in relation to space," as in the
German term Zeitluppe, temporal magnifying glass
(LC, p. 133). The standard approach to the pan-
semic tendency of certain figures is to say that they
"acquire a precise signified in each context, but that
'taken in themselves' they have no fixed value [. . .]
one can at the most draw up a disparate list of their
particularly frequent or particularly normalized uses"
(LC, p. 133). "Something else, in addition" to these
figures gives them meaning, but Metz notes that this
"something else" can be of two kinds, each being
supplemental in a different way.
The first kind, corresponding to common usage
of the term context, is what Metz calls "syntagmatic
context." It consists of elements which appear along
with the given figure in the unfolding ("deroule-
ment") of the film. But for these other elements to
clarify the figure in question, they must themselves
be made intelligible. (As "uninformed" configura-
tions they have meaning only at the barest phe-
nomenological level, thus signifying no more than
the figure in question; LC, p. 134.) The notion of a
clarifying context thus implies a textual operation;
we are no longer dealing with elements of the "raw"
filmic text but with those elements as they are
analyzed, informed by diverse systems of intelligibil-
ity. The meaning given to a problematic figure will
result only from a global operation, the production
of meaning within the text by the interplay of codes
as they inform the unique structure of selected and
combined elements which underlies the coherence
of every text. Metz's emphasis on textuality is im-that cinema is also auditory. What Metz calls the
portant, for it situates the notion of code (an ab-
stract system of differences) in relation to the ac-
tualized filmic discourse, "the activity of integration These include (1) codes for the syntagmatic ar-
(or of disintegration)-the process of composition
or 'writing'-by which the film, relying on [. . .]
codes, modifies them, combines them, plays them
one against the other, eventually arriving at its own
individual system" (LC, p. 100). As we shall note,
this distinction between code system and textual sys-
tem not only corresponds in some ways to Chom-
sky's notion of a model of performance being
generated from a model of competence, but it em-
phasizes as well the inescapable role of the inter-
preter in this operation. In the case of certain
cinematic figures "without fixed signifieds," the filmic calls the codes of "audio-visual composition" are
system alone may provide a necessary context.
But in other cases, a second kind of context
may inform the figure. What Metz calls, for illustra-
tive purposes, a "paradigmatic context" is not really
a context at all, but a partial code consisting of "a
relatively fixed number of 'meanings' [acceptations],
even if this number is rather large, even if the dif-
ferent uses have at first glance nothing in common,
and even if present studies are not in a position to
diacritics /Fall 1974
223.123.17.36 on Mon, 01 May 2023 10:37:22 +00:00
47
furnish an exhaustive list of them" (LC, pp. 134-
35). A given figure may have a more or less fixed
signified in relation to a certain genre of films (use
within the western, the psycho-drama, the horror or
science fiction story) or in relation to a period of
films. Metz calls this kind of partial codification a
sub-code because it concerns a smaller number of
films than a code and because it is only a partial
solution to a central "coding problem." In linguistics
"each sub-code ('level of language,' or 'linguistic
usage') augments and details in its own manner the
production of the code, but these productions are
already determined before any activity of this sort"
(LC, p. 138). At the present stage of research in
the semiology of cinema, these secondary codifica-
tions may appear as secondary only to a potential
primary code which has yet to be elaborated:
the place of the code (the common core) seems to be
made up of something which, in the absence of suf-
ficiently definite structures, is not yet a code but rather
the potential location (although already outlined) of
diverse possible or future codifications, a coding prob-
lem and not yet a code, a question and not yet a re-
sponse, a set of possibilities and not yet an organization
of these possibilities. The "responses," the positive or-
ganizations, come into play only with the sub-codes.
(LC, p. 138)
The sub-code as a paradigmatic "context" and the
textual system as a syntagmatic context are, of
course, interdependent; in fact, the sub-code as a
response to a "coding problem" is forged logically
by accumulated usage in textual systems, such that
the figures involved acquire "a relatively fixed num-
ber of 'acceptations' " (LC, p. 134).
While presenting problems for the semiology
of cinema, as Metz emphasizes, these codes and sub-
codes of group five are linked to the combination of
technico-sensory traits which are most specific to
cinema, a combination which goes the furthest to
distinguish cinematic expression from other means
of visual expression. One must not forget, however,
"codes of sound composition" are common to radio
(radioplays) as well as to cinema and television.
rangement of auditive elements among themselves
(e.g., musical codes, the language system [langue],
sound effect codes); (2) codes which involve con-
trasts between foreground and background sounds,
as elaborated, for example, in the work of Jean
Epstein; (3) codes which concern the gradual trans-
formation of noises into musical motifs; and (4)
codes of counterpoint-interruption of music by
words or vice versa (LC, pp. 232-33). Another
group of codifications concerns the relationships be-
tween visual and auditory configurations. What Metz
more specific to cinema because they are restricted
to those means of expression capable of manifesting
an audio-visual mixture. As examples, Metz men-
tions the reinforcement of the image-track by the
sound track (or vice versa) and possible effects of
contrast between them; relationships between ordi-
nary sound and sound-oft; more complex use of
sound-off called "asynchronism" by theorists of the
period c. 1928-33; and relationships between the
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48
image-track and speech-what could be called the
"registers of speech"; "the ordinary Speech of
'dialogue,' monologue said to be 'internal' but which
is not, 'sonorous first person,' external commentary
assigned to a speaker or an anonymous narrator"
(LC, p. 233).
ARELATIONS AMONG CODES/ Metz's listing of
codes does not purport to be exhaustive; nor is every
code elaborated to the same degree as his large-scale
syntagmatics. His purpose is rather to illustrate the
complexity of the notion of specificity when defined
in terms of codes. Not only is a given means of ex-
pression characterized by certain codes which, be-
cause they are linked to its more exclusive technico-
sensory traits, are more specific to it, but also by a
combination of codes, a specific set of codes which
informs that means of expression. This second no-
tion alone is insufficient to define the scope of a
"cinematic language system" because it merely "adds
up" the codes "taxonomically" without regard for
their interrelationships. That is why Metz needs the
first notion of codical specificity to present a more
dynamic picture of the combination of codes:
[Codes] are not regrouped, added to one another, or
juxtaposed in just any manner; they are organized, ar-
ticulated in terms of one another in accordance with a
certain order, they contract unilateral hierarchies, similar
in certain regards to those which, according to Julien adopted by a social body to permit individuals to
Greimas, are twisted about the semes of each lexeme or
of each sememe. Thus a veritable system of intercodical
relations is generated which is itself, in some sort, an-
other code, and which--on the level of the codical, not
of the material of expression-represents what is most
specific in each language system [langage]. (LC, p. 242)
Formulated in this manner, cinematic language
would be a "super-system" of codes, an abstract
body of systems conceptualized as a coherent whole
before (or apart from) the production of meaning
which results from its implication in filmic texts.
(The actual production of meaning in films-the
evidence of an activity of "construction-destruction,"
of selection and "relocation" [displacement], which
transforms elements of the cinematic language
system into the text's own logic [the textual sys-
tem]-should not be confused with the cinematic
language system which represents only potential
meanings. It has no discursive structure, only an
abstract, paradigmatic one, and in this regard it is
like Chomsky's model of competence.) Metz does
not elaborate this super-system in any kind of defin-
itive form; his schema of overlapping specificities
merely begins this task by illustrating "the relations
of unilateral implication which come to successively
'embed' the less specific groups of codes in more
specific groups of codes" (LC, p. 242). In fact, he
is quite modest about this undertaking, emphasizing
its incompleteness and maintaining a critical aware-
ness of the methodology that makes it possible.
Above all, Metz stresses what is perhaps the major
problem with the notion of cinematic language when
considered as a system of inter-codical relations: its
apparent lack of internal coherence when compared
to that of langue. Yet, curiously, these reservations
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taken altogether do not lead to an impasse, but help
overcome one. They prompt him to question, in fact,
the unitary status of langue itself, whose features,
such as the single material of expression (phonic
sound), the unmotivated sign, and the articulation
of semes by phonemes, have been almost hypos-
tatized as standards of comparison for the study of
cinema. Whether cinema has been found to re-
semble verbal language (the idea of "cine-langue
or not (Metz's initial notion of "langage without a
code"), the methodology of linguistics, which p
mits the abstraction of a structural model of lan-
guage in the first place, has remained deceptively
transparent. Contrary to the wishes of Saussure, who
envisioned the possibility of a general semiology, the
role of methodology in defining the object of lin-
guistics through an initial act of abstraction is often
forgotten when one attempts to "extrapolate" no-
tions from linguistics.
AvCOHERENCE, METHOD OF ABSTRACTION/ Saus-
sure gave his notion of langue a kind of objective
unity from the outset by basing it on the social func-
tion of verbal expression: langue is the system of
governing constraints, abstracted from speech, which
enables people to understand each other: "It is both
a social product of the faculty of speech and a col-
lection of necessary conventions that have been
exercise that faculty" (Course in General Linguistics.
Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1966; p. 9). The unified status of langue is assured
from the beginning by the assumption that some sys-
tem of intelligibility must account for the social
reality of bilateral verbal exchange. Conditions are
strikingly different in cinematic expression. Cine-
matic language is "used" only in one-way com-
munication, first by specialists whose influence on it
is strong, and then by viewers. Its status as a social
object is affected by its esthetic function. As Metz
has written, cinematic language is already an artistic
language, and as such is more susceptible to influ-
ence by signifying structures that are common to a
given period, genre, or film maker, structures whose
occurrence in textual systems is persistent enough to
become more or less stabilized in a "cinematic sub-
code."
Grounding the system of langue in social reality
justified a principle of selection capable of abstract-
ing that system. Saussure isolated what he thought
to be the common property of verbal expression, its
constitutive principles, from individual utterances
(parole) which include variations, distortions, and
aspects (such as accent and intonation) considered
to be non-pertinent to the system. The structural
coherence of langue depends to a large extent on the
discriminations of the analyst who draws the line
between what belongs to the system and what is
considered to be variation or excess. This line has
been repeatedly questioned in recent research. As
Metz points out, work in generative grammar, in
"secondary modeling systems" (the Soviet school),
and in socio-, psycho-, ethno-, and neurolinguistics
has begun to account for many aspects of parole
 49
that Saussure excluded from langue. By contrast true morpheme; it is not present as a terminal unit
with the apparent coherence of langue and the of the "syntagmatic" (or "categorial") phase of syn-
tendency of linguistic research even to systematize tactic generation, and is only introduced later in the
some of what was considered parole, cinema seems transformational phase. One may thus speak of two
at first glance to be all parole. But Metz insists that kinds of minimal significative units, depending on
"what one 'compares' most often, is, on the one their place in the linguistic process. Many of the
hand, the already largely analyzed spoken language minimal units at one level may coincide with mini-
(for linguists have been working for a long time), mal units at another (e.g., morphemes from the syn-
and, on the other, the cinematic language system tagmatic phase which remain identical throughout the
before any analysis (for the semiotics of the cinema transformation process), but this should not give the
does not yet exist)-such that this impression, which impression that there must be a "typical sign" or
is so vivid, and so often invoked, of a large in- universal minimal unit for there to be systematic re-
equality in systematization, actually constitutes a lations among codes.
situation which is rather delicate to interpret" (LC, Codes of verbal expression outside the strict
p. 287). definition of langue have minimal units of varying
dimension: in French, "s'il vous plait" is a minimal
unit of the code of etiquette, but this unit is com-
J MINIMAL UNITS/ Still another feature of Saus- posed of several units of langue. The units of myth
sure's initial act of abstraction compounds the situa- in Levi-Strauss's Structural Anthropology and the
units that Barthes isolates in codes of connotation
tion. Langue as a system of signification is based on
a single characteristic of verbal expression, articu- are also of varying dimensions. The point is that the
lated sound; the phoneme thus becomes the material notion of minimal unit is only pertinent to the in-
constituent of the speech chain, the minimal dis- dividual code which makes that unit significant, not
tinctive unit of articulated language. The "arbitrary" to the entire means of expression (langage in the
linking of a signifier and a signified in the mor- broadest sense) which can mobilize a multitude of
codes.
pheme, composed by one or more phonemes, was to
become the essential feature of Saussure's doctrine In cinema (or elsewhere) no sovereign code exists which
of the sign and provide one of the bases of structuralimposes its minimal units, which are always the same,
semantics. The absence in cinema of anything com- on all parts of all films. These films, on the contrary,
parable to the relatively fixed number of mor- have a textual surface-which is temporal and spatial-
phemes of langue led Metz initially to speak of a fabric in which multiple codes come to segment, each
for itself, their minimal units which, throughout the en-
cinema as a "langage without a code." The mistake,
tire length of the filmic discourse, are superimposed,
as he has noted subsequently, was in assuming that overlap, and intersect without their boundaries neces-
a given means of expression is defined by a single sarily coinciding. (LC, p. 194)
code whose minimal differential units are the basis
for all expressed meaning. Because langue accounts What characterizes a given means of expression in
only for the meaning of articulated "bits," and be- codical terms is thus "not a code, as those who
cause of its "privileged" position in relation to the search for 'the code of the cinema' would maintain,
whole of speech, one may forget that other aspects but a combination of several codes" (LC, p. 240).
of verbal expression (e.g., accent, intonation) pro- Metz's schema of overlapping specificities is an at-
duce meaning and that other codes may inform tempt to analyze this combination by abstracting
more complex combinations of these bits (e.g., units methodologically the codes which pertain to the
defined at the level of rhetoric or connotation). In various technico-sensory characteristics of the film.
order to free the semiology of cinema from the con- To the extent that Metz sees this formalizing as a
taminating influence of linguistic categories, Metz necessary step in the study of cinema, he is a struc-
felt obliged to emphasize the heterogeneity of verbal turalist, but clearly a wary one. For he knows at the
codes, a tactic which relativizes the status of langue same time that codes and systems of codes are prod-
with regard to the entire domain of verbal expres- ucts of the analyst, whose method for neutralizing
sion. This tactic is evident in the very fact that he the field of discourse, in order to abstract a differ-
titles his study Langage et cindma rather than Lan- ential system of potential meanings, carries its own
gage cindmatographique. epistemology. While acknowledging the need for
Studies in transformational grammar have methodology (and the need for it to remain visible),
shown that even langue, although it suggests a single Metz wishes to bring to the study of signification in
code of digital units, functions more like a machine cinema a concern for the dynamism involved in the
with several systemic components "(e.g., syntactic, production of meaning, the discursive force of the
transformational, and phonological components, lex- film which is lost by abstracting a static structural
ical matrices, etc.), each articulated one after the model. Hence, his insistence on codical hetero-
other so that the output of one becomes the input of geneity, on the link between codes and materials of
the next" (LC, p. 66). Metz points out that what is expression, and on the dynamic interrelationships
considered to be a minimal constitutive unit at one among the codes within a language system. Further-
stage of the process may not even exist at an earlier more, the reader who is sensitive to a certain re-
one. For example, the English do in negative and ductionism implicit in these analytical concepts will
interrogative phrases is considered in generative lin- find that Metz never "reduces" films to codes. Codes
guistics to be a pure formant, a simple grammatical are abstract, static, and general, while films are con-
tool lacking any particular signified, rather than a crete, discursive, and particular.

diacritics/Fau 1974
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50
would strangely carry within itself the promise of a
is A,, THE TEXTUAL
primarily SYSTEM/
a study of codes asLanguage and inCinema
they apply gen- future and unfailing creativity, but in relation to
eral to all films, but one may also study the individ- codes" (LC, p. 104). Metz's debt to recent literary
ual film as a unique text informed by a multitude criticism is evident here, especially to Julia Kristeva's
of codes. The two approaches are complementary notion of the double-edged process of destruction/
but distinct through a shift in emphasis: the study construction involved in the production of meaning
of codes concerns the potential meaning of a given of the text:
configuration which may appear in any film, while
Just as the literary work, which can only exist
the study of an individual film concerns the dis-
thanks to some natural language, is nevertheless con-
cursive or actualized meaning of that configuration structed against it rather than in it (since it is a working
in combination with others of the same film. What
of the language, and since it is nourished by what this
Metz calls the textual system (or singular system) language lacks as much as by what it possesses)-so the
represents an attempt to describe the dynamics of overall system of a film consists essentially of a double
this combination, to specify the force of meaning and unique movement, a movement by which are "mo-
bilized" diverse codes without which the film would have
implied in the unique ordering of codical elements
which underlies the intelligibility of each film. And nothing on which to maintain its drive, a movement
so, while Metz retains the notion of codes, he con- which relegates these very codes to a secondary position,
and by which the filmic system is detached from them,
siders the film's unique combination of codical ele-
by which it tells us that it is something more than these
ments to be evidence of an active process of integra- codes, that it is, strictly speaking, this difference itself,
tion and displacement of codes, which should be of this re-impulsion. (LC, p. 104)
major interest in a structural study:
Yet, finally, this comparison between literary
the system of the text is the process which displaces
production and filmic production points up the dif-
codes, deforming each of them by the presence of the
others, contaminating some by means of others, mean-
ficult situation of cinema semiology. Because struc-
while replacing one by another, and finally-as a tem- tural linguistics constitutes its object as the common
porarily "arrested' result of this general displacement- property of verbal expression, the literary text may
placing each code in a particular position in regard to be readily viewed as evidence of a productive opera-
the overall structure, a displacement which thus finishes tion, carried on by specialists, both with and against
by a positioning which is itself destined to be displaced "ordinary language" and with/against the systems of
by another text. (LC, p. 193) other texts. By contrast, cinema appears to have no
Locating the force of meaning in the implied "work" "ordinary language" with/against which its texts can
of the textual system allows one to bypass considera- be constructed. It obviously does not have such a
tion of the infinite variables of viewer affectivity. language if one defines language narrowly as a sys-
It also offers a way to discuss cinema in terms tem which permits bilateral communication. Yet
of a creative activity without resorting to an es- cinema is too clearly a signifying practice, with con-
sentialist notion of creative origin and speculating ventions of its own, to have no systematic under-
about intention. The text is evidence of a creative pinnings. The difficulty is in dealing with cinema's
activity which produces meaning in the strict sense status as an esthetic practice. As such, cinema ap-
of value-added: "Whether the film is 'invention' or pears from the beginning to be a specialized lan-
'creation' is dependent solely upon the degree to guage of visual and auditory devices, and the temp-
which it is operation, i.e., to the extent to which it tation is great to discount its conventions as mere
adds something to pre-existent codes, producing technical knowhow, important only to film makers
structural configurations which none of them alone (since we "understand" the film anyway). But at
could have anticipated" (LC, p. 104). Perhaps more the same time, the unfolding of the film, due largely
than anything else in Metz's current work, his way to this technical knowhow, plays with/against per-
of analyzing this value-added marks the critical shift ceptual conventions that are so common (yet com-
he has made from his early writings. For the film's plex) that one takes them for granted. Metz's
discursive force cannot be created ex nihilo as the schema of overlapping codical specificities begins to
abandoned notion of "langage without a code" would show how these codifications are potentially brought
have it. Nor can it arise simply from the natural together in the cinematic process, and, in this way,
"expressivity of the world," an assumption in Metz's he guards against too hasty a distinction between
early writings which shows the influence of Andr6 what is cinematic and what is extra-cinematic, what
Bazin. What Metz once described as the immanent "belongs" to the film maker and what "belongs" to
meaning (sens immanent) of the world, which arisesthe viewer. The notion of "ordinary language" is
naturally and which the film takes up, is no longer built into this schema at the level of the least spe-
taken for granted. Reality cannot give the film its cific codes, those which shape the perception of
expressive impetus quite so directly or naturally, for reality and the identification of objects. These codes
what we call reality presupposes "a set of codes provide a basic level of intelligibility which the codes
without which this reality would not be accessiblemore specific to the cinematic process play upon.
or intelligible, such that nothing could be said of it,However, Metz's reflections on textuality go even
not even that it is reality" (LC, p. 103). Thus the further, suggesting that each film is also constructed
meaning that the signifying process generates "(the with/against the most specific cinematic codes and
coefficient of modification and work which is ap- with/against sub-codes that are forged by the textual
propriate to the text) does not intervene in relation systems of a given tradition or genre of films.
to a simple, basic reality, not in some void which

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