Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ...
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While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter shows that architecture and cinema had a privileged bond in the theorization of film (by critics such as André Malraux and Élie Faure) and its relationship to other arts in the 1930s, ...
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This chapter shows that architecture and cinema had a privileged bond in the theorization of film (by critics such as André Malraux and Élie Faure) and its relationship to other arts in the 1930s, through the utopian political conceptions the two inspired and shared. After the examination of theoretical context, the chapter offers a reading of Jean Renoir’s Boudu sauvé des eaux that focuses on Notre-Dame de Paris as a spatial intertext, at once literary (because of Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name) and architectural. This suggests a newly politicized way to understand Renoir’s location of bodies in social spaces. The chapter places the documentary value of location footage alongside a number of other artistic representations, thus relying upon a broader notion of social document than heretofore mobilized.Less
This chapter shows that architecture and cinema had a privileged bond in the theorization of film (by critics such as André Malraux and Élie Faure) and its relationship to other arts in the 1930s, through the utopian political conceptions the two inspired and shared. After the examination of theoretical context, the chapter offers a reading of Jean Renoir’s Boudu sauvé des eaux that focuses on Notre-Dame de Paris as a spatial intertext, at once literary (because of Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name) and architectural. This suggests a newly politicized way to understand Renoir’s location of bodies in social spaces. The chapter places the documentary value of location footage alongside a number of other artistic representations, thus relying upon a broader notion of social document than heretofore mobilized.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
If this book begins with the beginnings of the social mistake as a figure of strange social and formal importance, it ends with a meditation on the waning of the mistake’s centrality to social and ...
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If this book begins with the beginnings of the social mistake as a figure of strange social and formal importance, it ends with a meditation on the waning of the mistake’s centrality to social and narrative form. While reading Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game as a late theorization of the conditions that had made the classic realist novel possible, it argues that as a certain form of life has faded, so has the centrality of the mistakes that once nourished that life. There will always be mistakes, slips, moments of embarrassment. What The Rules of the Game shows is that as the world becomes less novelistic, so does the social mistake lose its at once constitutive and destabilizing force.Less
If this book begins with the beginnings of the social mistake as a figure of strange social and formal importance, it ends with a meditation on the waning of the mistake’s centrality to social and narrative form. While reading Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game as a late theorization of the conditions that had made the classic realist novel possible, it argues that as a certain form of life has faded, so has the centrality of the mistakes that once nourished that life. There will always be mistakes, slips, moments of embarrassment. What The Rules of the Game shows is that as the world becomes less novelistic, so does the social mistake lose its at once constitutive and destabilizing force.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about ...
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From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about construction workers, to poetic realism’s bittersweet portraits of populist neighborhoods: Social Architecture explores the construction, representation and experience of spaces and places in documentary and realist films of the French 1930s. In this book, Margaret C. Flinn tracks the relation between the emergent techniques of French sound cinema and its thematic, social and political preoccupations through analysis of discourse in contemporary press, theoretical texts and through readings of films themselves. New light is shed on works of canonical directors such as Jean Renoir, René Clair, Jean Vigo and Julien Duvivier by their consideration in relationship to little known documentary films of the era. Flinn argues that film has a readable architecture—a configuration of narrative and representations that informs, explains, and creates social identities, while reflecting upon the position of individuals within their societies.Less
From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about construction workers, to poetic realism’s bittersweet portraits of populist neighborhoods: Social Architecture explores the construction, representation and experience of spaces and places in documentary and realist films of the French 1930s. In this book, Margaret C. Flinn tracks the relation between the emergent techniques of French sound cinema and its thematic, social and political preoccupations through analysis of discourse in contemporary press, theoretical texts and through readings of films themselves. New light is shed on works of canonical directors such as Jean Renoir, René Clair, Jean Vigo and Julien Duvivier by their consideration in relationship to little known documentary films of the era. Flinn argues that film has a readable architecture—a configuration of narrative and representations that informs, explains, and creates social identities, while reflecting upon the position of individuals within their societies.
Peter Goldie
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320398
- eISBN:
- 9780199869534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320398.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, General
I argue that La Grande Illusion is not just an anti-war film—although it certainly is that. It is also a film about class: it shows how class separates people of a nation from each other; and it ...
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I argue that La Grande Illusion is not just an anti-war film—although it certainly is that. It is also a film about class: it shows how class separates people of a nation from each other; and it shows how it unites people of the same class across nations. Secondly, it is a film which shows that certain capacities or characteristics of human nature can be universal or pan-cultural, but disuniting rather than uniting: the capacity for language; the capacity for group conflict; and the sheer capacity for aggression. I close with a discussion of the relation between La Grande Illusion, philosophy, and art. I suggest that this great film is best thought of as a work of art, which is simply showing us, in wonderfully fine detail, a small fragment of human life which illustrates certain aspects of human nature. That La Grande Illusion is art, and not philosophical argument, in no way detracts from its having this value.Less
I argue that La Grande Illusion is not just an anti-war film—although it certainly is that. It is also a film about class: it shows how class separates people of a nation from each other; and it shows how it unites people of the same class across nations. Secondly, it is a film which shows that certain capacities or characteristics of human nature can be universal or pan-cultural, but disuniting rather than uniting: the capacity for language; the capacity for group conflict; and the sheer capacity for aggression. I close with a discussion of the relation between La Grande Illusion, philosophy, and art. I suggest that this great film is best thought of as a work of art, which is simply showing us, in wonderfully fine detail, a small fragment of human life which illustrates certain aspects of human nature. That La Grande Illusion is art, and not philosophical argument, in no way detracts from its having this value.
Marja Warehime
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068225
- eISBN:
- 9781781703267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068225.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel ...
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This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné. Pialat's outburst reflects his longstanding resentment over the fact that the young directors of the Nouvelle Vague had already begun to make names for themselves in the 1960s while he was still struggling to make films. His sense that he had not been given the same opportunities as the little group of friends at Cahiers led him to reject the Nouvelle Vague and belittle its importance. He turned elsewhere to find a model for a successful career in film, looking back to the popular cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, to films by major directors such as Pagnol, Carné or Renoir and the Saturday night cinema he had loved as a child. Yet the small-budget revolution associated with the Nouvelle Vague made it increasingly difficult for any filmmaker to aspire to a career in the mould of Pagnol or Carné.Less
This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné. Pialat's outburst reflects his longstanding resentment over the fact that the young directors of the Nouvelle Vague had already begun to make names for themselves in the 1960s while he was still struggling to make films. His sense that he had not been given the same opportunities as the little group of friends at Cahiers led him to reject the Nouvelle Vague and belittle its importance. He turned elsewhere to find a model for a successful career in film, looking back to the popular cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, to films by major directors such as Pagnol, Carné or Renoir and the Saturday night cinema he had loved as a child. Yet the small-budget revolution associated with the Nouvelle Vague made it increasingly difficult for any filmmaker to aspire to a career in the mould of Pagnol or Carné.
Maurice Samuels
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226397054
- eISBN:
- 9780226399324
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226399324.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Chapter Five analyzes debates about the Jews between the world wars by focusing on Jean Renoir’s classic film La Grande Illusion (1937). Produced against the backdrop of the growing threat of ...
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Chapter Five analyzes debates about the Jews between the world wars by focusing on Jean Renoir’s classic film La Grande Illusion (1937). Produced against the backdrop of the growing threat of fascism, Renoir’s film depicts the bonds formed by a group of French officers, one of whom is Jewish, in a series of German prison camps during World War One. Despite its anti-fascist message, the film has puzzled critics since its release because of its abundant recourse to antisemitic stereotypes. And yet, this chapter argues that it is precisely the fact that the Jewish officer is included in the symbolic national group despite his stereotypical traits that makes the film remarkable because the brand of universalism advocated by Renoir does not exclude Jewish particularism.Less
Chapter Five analyzes debates about the Jews between the world wars by focusing on Jean Renoir’s classic film La Grande Illusion (1937). Produced against the backdrop of the growing threat of fascism, Renoir’s film depicts the bonds formed by a group of French officers, one of whom is Jewish, in a series of German prison camps during World War One. Despite its anti-fascist message, the film has puzzled critics since its release because of its abundant recourse to antisemitic stereotypes. And yet, this chapter argues that it is precisely the fact that the Jewish officer is included in the symbolic national group despite his stereotypical traits that makes the film remarkable because the brand of universalism advocated by Renoir does not exclude Jewish particularism.
Hannah Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190635978
- eISBN:
- 9780190636012
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190635978.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era ...
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Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era films by filmmakers such as Jean Grémillon, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder, and perhaps most notably, Jean Renoir. The soundtracks of these filmmakers tended to favor a “realistic” incorporation of music into the narrative, an aesthetic decision grounded in a broader preference for direct recording, and frequently featured popular songs and street musicians to enhance the realism of a film’s setting. But diegetic music in early poetic realist films was multivalent, revealing the emotions or thoughts of characters, providing narrative commentary, and at times going against the expectations of a scene’s mood or actions. Considering diegetic music in early poetic realist sound films shows the ways in which audiovisual realism and stylization worked hand in hand.Less
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era films by filmmakers such as Jean Grémillon, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder, and perhaps most notably, Jean Renoir. The soundtracks of these filmmakers tended to favor a “realistic” incorporation of music into the narrative, an aesthetic decision grounded in a broader preference for direct recording, and frequently featured popular songs and street musicians to enhance the realism of a film’s setting. But diegetic music in early poetic realist films was multivalent, revealing the emotions or thoughts of characters, providing narrative commentary, and at times going against the expectations of a scene’s mood or actions. Considering diegetic music in early poetic realist sound films shows the ways in which audiovisual realism and stylization worked hand in hand.
Wheeler Winston Dixon
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623990
- eISBN:
- 9780748653614
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623990.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Women were among those who eagerly embraced the new world of film noir, having been cut out of the film industry since the 1920s. None did it with more style and verve than Ida Lupino, who directed ...
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Women were among those who eagerly embraced the new world of film noir, having been cut out of the film industry since the 1920s. None did it with more style and verve than Ida Lupino, who directed Not Wanted, a story of children born out of wedlock. Although there had been numerous women directors working in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, including Lois Weber, Ida May Park, Ruth Stonehouse, Cleo Madison, Dorothy Arzner, and a number of others, by 1943 women had effectively been dismissed from the director's chair. Arzner was the only woman director working in the Hollywood film industry in the early 1940s; her last film was First Comes Courage (1943). An example of noir during this period is John Brahm's Guest in the House (1944), in which the corrosive force is not greed, or the lust for money and power, but rather madness, and possessive jealousy. Other examples are Reginald LeBorg's Fall Guy (1947), D. (David) Ross Lederman's Escape from Crime (1942) and Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach (1947).Less
Women were among those who eagerly embraced the new world of film noir, having been cut out of the film industry since the 1920s. None did it with more style and verve than Ida Lupino, who directed Not Wanted, a story of children born out of wedlock. Although there had been numerous women directors working in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, including Lois Weber, Ida May Park, Ruth Stonehouse, Cleo Madison, Dorothy Arzner, and a number of others, by 1943 women had effectively been dismissed from the director's chair. Arzner was the only woman director working in the Hollywood film industry in the early 1940s; her last film was First Comes Courage (1943). An example of noir during this period is John Brahm's Guest in the House (1944), in which the corrosive force is not greed, or the lust for money and power, but rather madness, and possessive jealousy. Other examples are Reginald LeBorg's Fall Guy (1947), D. (David) Ross Lederman's Escape from Crime (1942) and Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach (1947).
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational ...
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The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational reality guarantors, but also the extremely ephemeral qualities of gasses—fog, smoke, etc. The thwarted spatialization accounts for the melancholy and alienation of poetic realist subjects.Less
The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational reality guarantors, but also the extremely ephemeral qualities of gasses—fog, smoke, etc. The thwarted spatialization accounts for the melancholy and alienation of poetic realist subjects.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social ...
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This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social cohesion. The stories being told by leftist militant filmmaking of the Popular front are analysed as a spatialized discourse where the crowd becomes a living construction. The portrayal of the worker as individual and member of the mass is crucially cinematographic: militant films cast their spectators as extensions of the films’ worlds. Furthermore, the visual rhetoric of these films opens avenues of insight into the spatial representations and politics of more mainstream products of 1930s cinema culture, such as Julien Duvivier’s La Belle équipe.Less
This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social cohesion. The stories being told by leftist militant filmmaking of the Popular front are analysed as a spatialized discourse where the crowd becomes a living construction. The portrayal of the worker as individual and member of the mass is crucially cinematographic: militant films cast their spectators as extensions of the films’ worlds. Furthermore, the visual rhetoric of these films opens avenues of insight into the spatial representations and politics of more mainstream products of 1930s cinema culture, such as Julien Duvivier’s La Belle équipe.
Reidar Due
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167338
- eISBN:
- 9780231850513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167338.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses love in film melodrama. Ivete Huppes—a Brazilian historian of melodrama in film—suggests that melodramatic films are concerned either with the undoing of past injustice or with ...
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This chapter discusses love in film melodrama. Ivete Huppes—a Brazilian historian of melodrama in film—suggests that melodramatic films are concerned either with the undoing of past injustice or with amorous self-realization. Melodrama is a combination of past and present, where the past constitutes a burden to which the present compensates with love to fill the “void” caused by past suffering, thereby opening up a new future, which is not the future of the subject's past but the future of its transformative present. Therefore, in film melodrama, love is typically an arena for the subject's redemption. An example of films with melodramatic redemption is Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach, which depicts a man battling with a war trauma that isolates him from the company of others.Less
This chapter discusses love in film melodrama. Ivete Huppes—a Brazilian historian of melodrama in film—suggests that melodramatic films are concerned either with the undoing of past injustice or with amorous self-realization. Melodrama is a combination of past and present, where the past constitutes a burden to which the present compensates with love to fill the “void” caused by past suffering, thereby opening up a new future, which is not the future of the subject's past but the future of its transformative present. Therefore, in film melodrama, love is typically an arena for the subject's redemption. An example of films with melodramatic redemption is Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach, which depicts a man battling with a war trauma that isolates him from the company of others.
Ray Zone
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136110
- eISBN:
- 9780813141183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136110.003.0036
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Artistic possibilities for the 3D film are discussed along with the theories of Andre Bazin and the films of Orson Welles, Jean Renoir and Norman McLaren.
Artistic possibilities for the 3D film are discussed along with the theories of Andre Bazin and the films of Orson Welles, Jean Renoir and Norman McLaren.
Richard Rushton
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082689
- eISBN:
- 9781781702994
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082689.003.0020
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's understanding of cinema, which is fleshed out in relation to his extraordinary claim that ‘cinema produces reality’. He argues that films offer orders of ...
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This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's understanding of cinema, which is fleshed out in relation to his extraordinary claim that ‘cinema produces reality’. He argues that films offer orders of experience that are normally hidden or unavailable in everyday life. Cinema presents new modes of perceiving and experiencing, modes which are not derivative of experiences in the ‘real’ world, and not modes that insist upon an adherence or faithfulness to the ‘real’ world. Rather, cinema produces modes of perceiving and experiencing that offer the possibility of another kind of world. Perhaps most challenging about his claim is that, in making it, Deleuze signals his intention to refrain from all forms of judgement. His discussions of films and types of films do not revolve around questions of which films are better or more valuable than others, they refuse to draw up tables of judgement which determine that some types of films are bad while others are good. Instead, he tries to uncover the significance of the system of reality that is proposed by Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952).Less
This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's understanding of cinema, which is fleshed out in relation to his extraordinary claim that ‘cinema produces reality’. He argues that films offer orders of experience that are normally hidden or unavailable in everyday life. Cinema presents new modes of perceiving and experiencing, modes which are not derivative of experiences in the ‘real’ world, and not modes that insist upon an adherence or faithfulness to the ‘real’ world. Rather, cinema produces modes of perceiving and experiencing that offer the possibility of another kind of world. Perhaps most challenging about his claim is that, in making it, Deleuze signals his intention to refrain from all forms of judgement. His discussions of films and types of films do not revolve around questions of which films are better or more valuable than others, they refuse to draw up tables of judgement which determine that some types of films are bad while others are good. Instead, he tries to uncover the significance of the system of reality that is proposed by Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952).
