What is Cinema? Semiotics

‘Classical’ film theory

Lecture structure I. Film as a sign system II. Structuralism III. Ferdinand de Saussure and Christian Metz IV. Peter Wollen and Charles Sanders Peirce

I. Film as a sign system Saussure: semiotics is a ‘science that studies the life of signs within society’. Sign system is a form of language.

Eisenstein: interested in relationship between film and verbal language; emphasis on the dialectical production of meaning resonates with semiotic views of language as a system of differences.

Bazin: interested in the realist credentials of film Bazin: interested in the realist credentials of film. But ‘On the other hand, of course, cinema is also a language’ (‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’).

Semiotics of the Kitchen (Martha Rosler, 1975)

II. Structuralism it was not until the advent of structuralism in the 1950s and 1960s that semiotics also came to the fore of critical theory. focus on internal structures of film text.

Drawing on Saussure, Lévi-Strauss he argued that we need to study systems of signification such as languages, myths and folktales, and the differential elements of which they are composed, which enables the discovery of universal structures or patterns of thought.

Lévi-Strauss’s work has influenced approaches such as auteur-structuralism and structuralist theories of genre, which look for ‘structuring oppositions’.

III. Ferdinand de Saussure and Christian Metz Saussure brackets the referent and divides the sign into two parts: the signifier and the signified. Saussure’s definition of a ‘sign’: sign = signifier + signified. Motivated vs unmotivated signs.

Saussure argues that the meaning of a sign is partly determined by its difference from other signs: ‘In language there are only differences’.

Christian Metz, Film Language Drawing on Saussure, Metz asks how ‘film language’ relates to verbal language. Unlike verbal language, film does not allow reciprocal communication, and its signifier and signified are almost identical.

Metz’s main conclusion: film is a form of language, but a language without a code.

IV. Peter Wollen and Charles Sanders Peirce Wollen argues that Saussure’s emphasis on the unmotivated sign makes his theory too restrictive for studying film. In search of a more thorough discussion of ‘natural’, or motivated signs, Wollen turns to the work of Peirce.

Peirce’s second trichotomy of signs Index: signifier is not arbitrary but has an ‘existential bond’ with the signified Icon: signifier resembles the signified Symbol: signifier does not resemble the signified but is arbitrary or conventional

the three categories of index, icon and symbol frequently overlap in a single sign.

Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema ‘The aesthetic richness of cinema springs from the fact that it comprises all three dimensions of the sign: indexical, iconic and symbolic. […] It is only by considering the interaction of the three different dimensions of the cinema that we can understand its aesthetic effect’ (p. 97)

film as indexical: Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria de Sica, 1948) film as iconic or pictorial: Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

‘In [Godard’s] hands, as in Peirce’s perfect sign, the cinema has become an almost equal amalgam of the symbolic, the iconic and the indexical. His films have conceptual meaning, pictorial beauty and documentary truth’ (p. 106)