It is an apparatus destined to obtain a precise ideo-

logical effect, necessary to the dominant

ideology: creating a phantasmatization of the subject, it
collaborates with a marked efficacy in the maintenance
of idealism. Thus the cinema assumes the role played
throughout Western history by various artistic
formations.
Jean-Louis Baudry's 1970 essay, Ideological Effects of the Basic
Cinematographic Apparatus, explores how the mechanics of cinema create
ideological effects:
 The cinematic apparatus
The camera and editing are ideological because they create a reproduced
reality that disguises how it's put together.
 The spectator
The spectator's position within the composition is ideological.
 The viewing subject
The mechanics of film production affect how the viewing subject is
constructed.
 The illusion of continuity
The persistence of vision creates an illusion of continuity between
separate frames.
 The dimensions of the image
The dimensions of the image, such as the ratio of height to width, are
often taken from Western easel painting.
 The consciousness of the subject
The consciousness of the subject is projected onto the film, creating
interior meaning.
 The success of a film
A film's success is determined by its ability to hold the subject's
consciousness through a continuous visual image.
 The Marxist aspect
The idea is that passive viewers identify so strongly with the characters on
screen that they become susceptible to ideological positioning.
 Baudry's ideas were part of apparatus theory, which combines Louis
Althusser's concept of the Ideological State Apparatus with Jacques
Lacan's theory of the mirror stage.

Critical Film Theory: The Poetics and

Politics of Film
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 SAMPLE PAGE
JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY “IDEOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF
THE BASIC CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPARATUS” – A
REVIEW
JANUARY 30, 2015 TOBIAS SCHWARTZ 1
COMMENT
Jean Louis Baudry

Ideological Effects of the Basic

Cinematographic Apparatus

“In such a way, the cinematic apparatus conceals

its work and imposes an idealist ideology, rather
than producing critical awareness in a spectator.”

Baudry sets up the questions he will answer

throughout the rest of the text:

 How the “subject” is the

active center of meaning.
 How the cinematic apparatus
is actually more important for
transcendentalism in the
subject than the film itself.
  The hidden “work” of the
cinematic apparatus, that is,
the progression from the
“objective reality” (what is
filmed), through the
intermediary (the camera), to
the finished product (a
reconstructed, but false,
“objective reality”, not the
“objective reality” itself, but
instead a representation of it)

Baudry then discusses this “work”. This, he

claims, is what distinguishes cinema as an art
form. This process of transformation from
“objective reality” to finished product. He asks, in
this finished product is the “work” made evident,
does viewing the final product bring about a
“knowledge effect”, or in other words, a
recognition of the apparatus, or is the “work”
concealed?

He finishes the section by stating, “concealment

of the technical base will also bring about a
specific ideological effect. Its inscription, its
manifestation as such, on the other hand, would
produce a knowledge effect, as actualization of
the work process, as denunciation of ideology,
and as a critique of idealism.”
It’s important to stop here and question what
Baudry means by “idealism”?

Sociologically, idealism emphasizes how human

ideas – especially beliefs and values – shape
society. Philosophically it asserts that reality, or
reality as we can know it, is fundamentally
mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise
immaterial.

The Eye of the Subject

Baudry discusses the viewpoint of the “subject”

in both Greek and Renaissance art histories.
While both static, the Greeks “subject” is based
on a “multiplicity of points of view” while the
Renaissance paintings utilize a “centered space”.
“The center of this space coincides with the
eye…so justly called the “subject”.

Baudry then continues and discusses the

camera’s vision, which he calls Monocular.
“Based on the principle of a fixed point by
reference to which the visualized objects are
organized, it specifies in return the position of the
“subject” the very spot it must necessarily
occupy. What Baudry has done here is created
the “subject” for the finished product, the entity
into which the exterior world will attempt to
intrude and create meaning.

Question – If the subject is a “fixed point”, then

does one’s positioning in a theater affect the
ability for meaning to be created? Is the “mirror”
as affective?

Baudry then discusses the necessity of

transcendence which he will touch upon more
later in his essay. Briefly however, the ideal
vision of the “virtual image” with its hallucinatory
reality, creates a total vision which to Baudry,
“contributes…to the ideological function of art,
which is to provide the tangible representation of
metaphysics.”

Projection: The Difference Negated

Baudry discusses the paradox between the

projected film. It consists of individual frames,
separate, however minutely, from each other in
image. However, when projected the frames
create meaning, through the relationship
between them, creating a juxtapositioning and a
continuity. As Baudry states, “These separate
frames have between them differences that are
indispensable for the creation of an illusion of
continuity, of a continuous passage (movement,
time). But only on one condition can these
differences create this illusion: they must be
effaced as differences.” This is a critical notion as
we will see in just a moment.

“We should remember, moreoever, the disturbing

effects which result during a projection from
breakdowns in the recreation of movement, when
the spectator is brought abruptly back to
discontinuity, that is, to the body, to the technical
apparatus which he or she had forgotten. When
such discontinuity is made apparent then to
Baudry both transcendence, meaning in the
subject, and ideology can be impossible.

So what is the importance of this effacement of

discontinuity in frames. Baudry states, “We might
not be far from seeing what is in play on this
material basis, if we recall that the “language” of
the unconscious, as it is found in dreams, slips of
the tongue, or hysterical symptoms, manifests
itself as continuity destroyed, broken, and as the
unexpected surging forth of a marked
difference.” We must note the similarities
between Baudry’s Freudian idea of the
unconscious and of the language of the cinematic
apparatus. Both, fool the subject (the viewer and
the self) into believing in a continuity, while both
occasionally providing glimpses of the actual
discontinuity present in the construction. Thus a
relation is established between the unconscious
of the “subject” and what is being presented on
screen. Or as Baudry puts it….

“Thus one may assume that what was already at

work as the originating basid of the persepective
image, namely the eye, the “subject”, is put
forth, liberated by the operation which
transforms successive, discrete images (as
isolated images they have, strictly speaking, no
meaning, or at least no unity of meaning) into
continuity, movement, meaning; with continuity
restored both meaning and consciousness are
restored.”

The Transcendental Subject

Baudry begins by describing how when a camera

follows a trajectory, it becomes trajectory, seizes
a moment, becomes a moment. It’s a little clunky
but what I believe he is saying is this. As the
camera follows the arc of a ball flying through the
air, the frame itself mimics this arc, becomes an
arc itself. And if we believe that the
consciousness of the individual is projected upon
the screen then as Baudry puts it, “in this way
the eye-subject, the invisible base of artificial
perspective (which in fact only represents a
larger effot to produce an ordering, regulated
trascnedence) becomes absorbed in, “elevated”
to a vaster function”.

“The world will not only be constituted by this

eye but for it. The movability of the camera
seems to fulfill the most favorable conditions for
the manifestation of the “transcendental
subject”.

Baudry moves on to how he believes the subject

is so able to become consciously enmeshed in
the film. “There is both fantasmatization of an
objective reality (image, sounds, color) and of an
objective reality which, limiting its power of
constraint, seems equally to augment the
possibilities of the subject.” It is the belief in the
omnipotence of thought and viewpoint. The
subject sees all, he or she ascends to a nobler
status, a god perhaps, he or she sees all of the
world that is presented before them, the visual
image is the world, and the subject sees all. Add
to this that the ego believes that what is shown is
shown for a reason, that whatever it sees has
purpose, has meaning. And you have a subject
who is given great power and a world in which he
or she is entitled to meaning.

Film derives meaning from the subject.

The importance of narrative continuity as well,
“The search for such narrative continuity, so
difficult to obtain from the material base, can
only be explained by an essential ideological
stake projected in this point: it is a question of
preserving at any cost the synthetic unity of the
locus where meaning originates [the subject] –
the constituting transcendental function to which
narrative continuity points back as its natural
secretion.”

The Screen-Mirror: Specularization and

Double Identification

The physical confinements and atmosphere of

the theater help in the immersion of the subject.
Indeed Baudry notes that the atmosphere mimics
not only Plato’s analogy of the cave but also
Lacan’s formation of the imaginary self.

“This psychological phase, which occurs between

six and eighteen months of age, generates via
the mirror image of a unified body the
constitution or at least the first sketches of the
“I” as an imaginary function.

Lacan is so abstruse its as if he’s using a different

language, but here’s what I can gather. The child
upon seeing his or herself in the mirror for the
first time, is hitherto, a fragmented conscious
and unconscious, his or her recognition of his or
herself in a mirror creates an imaginary “I”,
imaginary in the sense that 1. The “I” is a
organic, singular unit, which contradicts the idea
that the being is actually a fragmented entity,
also paralleling the concept of the “continuous
image” upon the screen, and 2. The child takes
the mirrored image and makes it an “ideal self”.
This is problematic for two reasons, 1. The
mirrored image is not the child itself but instead
a reflected image, and 2. The reflected is image
presents a whole, something the child will
continually strive for but never reach. It is a
continually unfulfilled desire, an empty signifier.
Note the similarity between this and the
constructed image on screen.

The screen as a “mirror” but not one that reflects

an objective reality but one instead one that
reflects images.

“Thus the spectator identifies less with what is

represented, the spectacle itself, than with what
stages the spectacle, makes it seen, obliging him
to see what it sees; this is exactly the function
taken over by the camera as a sort of relay.” And
this is because..
“Just as a mirror assembles the fragmented body
in a sort of imaginary integration of the self, the
transcendental self unites the discontinuous
fragments of phenomena, of lived experience,
into unifying meaning. Through it each fragment
assumes meaning by being integrated into an
“organic” unity. Between the imaginary
gathering of the fragmented body into a unity
and the transcendentality of the self, giver of
unifying meaning, the current is indefinitely
reversible.

The relationship between the camera and the

subject. The camera needs to seize the subject in
a mode of specular reflection. The forms of
narrative adopted, the contents, are of little
importance so long as identification remains
possible.

“Everything happens as if, the subject himself,

unable to account for his own situation, it was
necessary to substitute secondary organs,
grafted on to replace his own defective ones,
instruments or ideological formations capable of
filling his function as subject.” The image
replaces the subjects own image as if it is now
the mirror.
“The cinema can thus appear as a sort of psychic
apparatus of substitution, corresponding to the
model defined by the dominant ideology.”

Think of it this way, the consciousness of the

individual, the subject, becomes projected upon
the film, as both the consciousness and the
cinematic apparatus work in similar ways. This
allows the exterior world, the “objective reality”,
to create interior meaning within the subject. The
success or failure of a film is therefore its ability
to hold this consciousness through a perpetual
continuity of the visual image and the
effacement of the means of production, therefore
allowing the subject a “transcendental
experience”.

“Film functions more as a metaphysiological

“mirror” that fulfills the spectator’s wish for
fullness, transcendental unity, and meaning.”

Questions

What is the dominant ideology?

How might one’s position in a theater affect their

reaction to a film according to Baudry?
What type of editing pattern would Baudry
believe to be most consistent with a “continuity”?

What is the difference between the meaning

between image and the meaning created within
the “subject”?

What might some criticisms of Baudry’s theory?

Do you believe it?

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Ideology and the Cinematographic Apparatus

Emily Pothast
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Published in
Form and Resonance
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8 min read
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Mar 31, 2021

61

A brief introduction to Jean-Louis Baudry’s

apparatus theory

Apparatus theory was an influential contribution

to film studies in the 1970s. The theory
combined Louis Althusser’s idea of
the ideological state apparatus with a
psychoanalytic approach inspired by Freud. The
purpose of this post is to provide a basic
introduction to this theory as expressed in the
works of Jean-Louis Baudry. (It is adapted from a
presentation I gave as a student in a graduate
film and media seminar, and is intended to be
used as a supplement to, not a replacement for,
the quoted texts.)

In his classic writings on the basic

cinematographic apparatus, Baudry returns
repeatedly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

In Plato’s famous allegory, the objects which are

paraded in front of the fire so as to create
shadows on the cave wall in front of the captive
observers are explicitly identified with artifice.
They are mere stage props, and the shadows
they create constitute a simulacrum. Although he
is conscious of the distortion he may be applying
to the allegory in saying so, Baudry sees in
Plato’s cave “the approximate construct of the
cinematographic apparatus. In other words,” he
writes, “a same apparatus was responsible for
the invention of the cinema and was already
present in Plato.”
What exactly is meant by “cinematographic
apparatus”?

In order to define the term, it is necessary to

first revisit Marx’s model of infrastructure or
“base” and superstructure, which resides atop
and is therefore dependent upon the material
and economic base. From here, we must consult
Althusser’s discussion of repressive and
ideological state apparatuses, which rely
primarily upon violence and ideology
respectively to ensure that the conditions
necessary to maintain the capitalist mode of
production are reproduced. Prior to the
European enlightenment, Althusser believes that
the church was the dominant ideological state
apparatus, at which point it was replaced by
education, which indoctrinates children in the
ruling bourgeois…

Apparatus theory

Apparatus theory, derived in part from Marxist film

theory, semiotics, and psychoanalysis, was a dominant
theory within cinema studies during the 1970s, following
the 1960s when psychoanalytical theories for film were
popular.
Overview[edit]
Apparatus theory maintains that cinema is by
nature ideological because its mechanics of
representation are ideological, and because the films
are created to represent reality. Its mechanics of
representation include the camera and editing. The
central position of the spectator within the perspective of
the composition is also ideological. In the simplest
instance the cinematic apparatus purports to set before
the eye and ear realistic images and sounds. However,
the technology disguises how that reality is put together
frame by frame.[1]
The meaning of a film, plus the way the viewing subject
is constructed and the mechanics of the actual process
and production of making the film affect the
representation of the subject. Apparatus theory also
states that within the text's perspective, the central
position of the viewer is ideological. This effect is
ideological because it is a reproduced reality and the
cinematic experience affects the viewer on a deep level.
This theory is explored in the work of Jean-Louis
Baudry. This is where the Marxist aspect of the theory
comes into play.
The idea is that the passive viewers (or Marx's
proletariat) cannot tell the difference between the world
of cinema and film and the real world.[2] These viewers
identify with the characters on screen so strongly that
they become susceptible to ideological positioning. In
Baudry's theory of the apparatus he likens the movie-
goer to someone in a dream. He relates the similarities
of being in a darkened room, having someone else
control your actions/what you do, and the inactivity and
passivity of the two activities. He goes on to say that
because movie-goers are not distracted by outside light,
noise, etc., due to the nature of a movie theater, they
are able to experience the film as if it were reality and
they were experiencing the events themselves.
Apparatus theory also argues that cinema maintains the
dominant ideology of the culture within the viewer.
Ideology is not imposed on cinema, but is part of its
nature and it shapes the way the audience thinks.
Apparatus theory follows an institutional model
of spectatorship.
Having read and re-read the assigned reading multiple times I just feel like it’s
such a waste to end the week without saying something about Jean-Louis Baudry.

Summary
 Thesis: The cinematic apparatus itself functions as a gateway
of sorts that allows for ideological effect to enter more easily
into narrative cinema
 (1) Baudry establishes this by talking about how the
conception of the image projected on the cinema screen is
based on the western easel painting that presupposes
a subject position
 The nature of the subject position is that this is the single point
of reference from which all else in the image is constructed in
reference to
 This subject is then placed in a Transcendental position by
having its vision enhanced by the mechanical eye of the
camera that can travel throughout the diegetic world in a
seemingly unfettered manner
 However, unbeknownst to the subject (spectator) all images
projected on the screen carry within them the “intention” of
the filmmaker
 So, even though the spectator has been led to believe by the
cinematic apparatus that s/he is in an empowered position,
s/he really isn’t.
 (2) Furthermore, the nature of the film strip and editing
functions on the assumption that the spectator
will willingly negate the infinitesimal differences that make up
the raw material of film (discontinuous shots cleverly edited
 together in order to hide the cuts and make them as invisible
as possible; and cells in a continuous strip of film that actually
contain a series of images that contain infinitesimal differences
from their adjacent cell) in preference of perceiving it as a
continuous whole
 (3) the platonian cave-like structure of the cinema allows for
spectators to regress into a child-like state of compromised
mobility with enhanced sight that opens one up the the
imaginary
Critique
 Of the 3 above mentioned parts, it’s been said to death in
class already that this assumption of passivity in the audiences
is a load of crock and I completely agree. We don’t just sit
there and let the cinema turn us into their dupes.
 But at the same time, it was an epiphanic moment for me,
personally, to see that embedded in the machinery of the
cinema itself are all these structures that persuade us to let
our guard down (presupposing a subject position; lulling an
audience into a false sense of security over the “empowered”
position they are supposedly in as the subject; getting us to
agree to negate the differences in the shots we see on screen
in order to enjoy/appreciate/take pleasure in the continuous
whole of the narrative or the shot).
 In Elsaesser and Hagener, we read that Baudry has been
criticized for his fettishistic obsession with the cinematic
apparatus but I can’t help but link Baudry’s detailed critique of
the cinematic apparatus to how Marshall McLuhan, talked
about how “The Medium is the Message“
 in McLuhan’s writing, he talks about the electric light and uses
it to explain the difference between the “content” of the
medium and the medium. If we use the lights to spell a word,
say the name of a bar, that’s the content of the medium. But
the medium itself holds meaning. A light in the dark means a
restructuring of human activity no longer bound by the diurnal
rhythms. And this of course has far reaching effects on other
aspects of life like business, economy, industry, labour,
politics, law, etc. (you go figure it out yourself… I’m to lazy to
name them one by one)
 So I think Baudry is right. Wholly, unambiguously,
incontrovertibly right. Narrative cinema of course contains its
own ideological effect but that’s just the content. It is the
cinematic apparatus, the medium, and its subtle workings that
open up the doorway and makes ready the spectator to be
manipulated by narrative cinema.
Clip
 This clip actually illustrates a lot of what Baudry talks about.
But because of time constraint and page limits I just feel like I
wasn’t able to do it justice? And I really want to do it justice.
 the clip opens with the film strip going into the projector
and focuses on the cinematic apparatus
 We hear the audiences responding to the film being screened
and we see Hitler laughing at something on screen. Clearly,
the audience is completely at ease and enjoying the film. This
would imply that they would have entered into the above
mentioned contract with the cinematic apparatus where in
order to be entertained by the film, their critical faculties have
been compromised, their guard has been lowered.
 The close up of Shoshanna’s face as she delivers her
monologue presupposes a subject who will hear her message
 But this subject is very quickly shown to be in a disempowered
position instead of an empowered position
 the audience is literally trapped in this sequence because they
have also literally let their guard down during the screening
and allowed themselves to be trapped in the cinema where
they will now be gunned down like fish in a barrel
 So where’s the ideology? There are two tiers to this. First tier is
the wishful/wish-fulfilment rewriting of history by having WWII
end with Hitler being gunned down in a cinema. But on a
second tier, it is also a reference to a whole host of
Nazisploitation films that perpetuate the fallacious view of
Nazis as the ultimate evil Other when the truth of the matter is
that the capacity of evil is in all of us, as captured in Hannah
Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality
of Evil
Baudry in Film Today: Films about Film
 While Baudry spoke of “concealment” in his essay, the current
trend of self-reflexivity in films makes certain that this
concealment of the ideological effect of the cinematic
apparatus is a thing of the past. Or is it?
 Like I covered in today’s presentation, audiences today are
more mature, more exposed to film not just in quantity but in
quality and are more well-versed in reading and appreciating
film. Combining this with the Postmodernist impulse to be
ironic, we have a rising trend of self-reflexivity in film.
 In class, I gave the examples of Cinema Paradiso (1988)
and Hugo (2011) because I think they were especially relevant
to Baudry and his fixation on the cinematic apparatus.
 Since we already discussed Cinema Paradiso at length in class
the previous week I’m just going to skip straight to Hugo

 Much like Cinema Paradiso that dealt on some level with the
materiality of film, there is a whole paraphernalia of film
scattered throughout the subconscious of Hugo. Although not
explicitly referenced the film is greatly concerned with the
mechanical nature of film particularly in the early black and
white films before narrative film became the dominant style of
filmmaking with D.W. Griffith’s success with Birth of a
Nation (1915)
 This is seen in the visual motifs in Hugo – Clocks, Clock towers,
clockwork, gears and machinery, trains, train stations and
schedules, the homage to Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895),
mechanical toys, automatons, Georges Méliès as the central
figure of interest, and known for his trick films and mechanical
effects.
 The fact that this is a tribute to Georges Méliès, who is also
known as the father of special effects, the film is also fittingly
filmed in 3D, some of the latest technology in special effects,
and thus becomes a meaningful marriage between form and
function in Hugo.
 In order to appreciate the subtle inflections the fill the
background of the narrative in Hugo, one needs to be not just
 an active audience but an active audience well-versed and
familiar with film history

JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY - “IDEOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF

THE BASIC CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPARATUS”
Psychoanalytic film theory occurred in two
distinct waves. The first, beginning in the late
1960s
and early 1970s, focused on a formal critique of
cinema’s dissemination of ideology, and
especially on the role of the cinematic apparatus
in this process. The main figures of this first
wave were Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry, and
Laura Mulvey. They took their primary
inspiration from the French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan, and they most often read Lacan
through the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s
account of subject formation. The second
wave of psychoanalytic film theory has also had
its basis in Lacan’s thought, though with a
significantly different emphasis. Beginning in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, this manifestation
of psychoanalytic film theory, which continues to
remain productive even today, shifted the focus
from cinema’s ideological work to the
relationship between cinema and a trauma that
disrupts
the functioning of ideology.
Although psychoanalytic film theorists continue
to discuss cinema’s relationship to ideology, they
have ceased looking for ideology in the cinematic
apparatus itself and begun to look for it in
filmic structure. Cinema remains a site for the
dissemination of ideology, but it has also become
a potential site of political and psychic disruption.
The main proponents of this second wave of
psychoanalytic film theory are Joan Copjec and
Slavoj Žižek.
The article is a combined influence of the
following major landmarks:
1. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological
State Apparatuses.”:: Originally published in
French, Althusser’s essay theorized the
fundamental operation of ideology as the
formation of
the subject. Though Althusser was not a
psychoanalyst or a psychoanalytic theorist,
traditional
psychoanalytic film theorists took up this idea as
foundational for their approach to the cinema
and began to see the cinema itself as a place
where the spectator was constituted ideologically
as a subject.
2. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of
Dreams.:: Freud interprets the dream as the
“disguised
fulfillment of a wish” or as a fantasy, and this
leads to the analysis of the cinema as a fantasy
space. — film is not mentioned in Freud— but
inspired the psychoanalytic film theorists
3. Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as
Formative of the I Function as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience.” :: Lacan’s essay on
the mirror stage was the defining theoretical
starting point for traditional psychoanalytic film
theorists. Lacan theorizes that the mirror stage
allows the infant to see its fragmentary self as an
imaginary whole, and film theorists would see
the cinema functioning as a mirror for spectators
in precisely the same way.
4. Plato’s allegory of the cave: In the allegory,
Plato likens people untutored in the “Theory of
Forms” to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to
turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of
the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the
fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along
which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who
are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets
that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The
prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the
real objects, that pass behind them. What the
prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes
cast by objects that they do not see. The
prisoners would mistake appearance for reality.
They
would think the things they see on the wall (the
shadows) were real; they would know nothing of
the real causes of the shadows.

Baudry questions the hidden “work” of the

cinematic apparatus, that is, the progression
from the
“objective reality” (what is filmed), through the
intermediary (the camera), to the finished
product
(a reconstructed, but false, “objective reality”,
not the “objective reality” itself, but instead a
representation of it.
Baudry elaborates how the film consists of
individual frames, separate and different,
however
minutely, from each other in image. However,
when projected the frames create meaning,
through the relationship between them, creating
a juxtapositioning and a continuity. It is through
the effacement of differences or negation of
differences that continuity and movement is
created. Cinema functions like the language -
through the inscription of discontinuous elements
and producing meaning out of it. It works like the
unconscious and the dreams as propounded
by Freud.
Baudry states that films are seen as finished
products but the “technical bases on which these
effects depend” has been quite often ignored.
“Between ‘objective reality’ and the camera, site
of inscription, and between inscription and the
projection are situated certain operations, a work
which has as a result a finished product.” The
problem is that this product, the film, hides the
work that creates this transformation. The film
goes through transformations, from decoupage,
the shot breakdown before shooting, to montage.
Between these phases of production a
“mutation of signifying material takes place…
precisely in the place occupied by the camera”.
That is, the decoupage, which operates as
language, is transformed through the apparatus
of
the camera into image, or exposed film, which is
then transformed again, through the
apparatuses that make editing possible, into a
finished product.
The finished film restores the movement of the
“objective reality” that the camera has filmed,
but
it does so by creating the illusion of movement
through a succession of separate, static images.
Baudry argues that this transformation, and the
instruments that help in achieving this , is
concealed from the viewer, is inherently
ideological.
Baudry brings about his argument of the
transcendental subject by borrowing the
concepts of
Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. The hitherto
centred subject is liberated by the favourable
conditions arisen by the movability of the
camera. Baudry argues that the objective reality
presented on the screen presupposes the image
which is a deliberate act of intentionality. The
world thus has lost the limitless and boundless
horizon. Instead, it is limited by framing.
Projection creates the illusion of movement from
a succession of static images, each of which is
almost identical to the one before it, but with
small differences that create the illusion of
continuous change. However, projection works by
effacing these differences. Baudry says that
projection is “difference denied”. The camera,
aligned with the eye produces a “transcendental
subject” who is granted an illusion of movement
and meaning.
Thus the role of film is to reproduce, through its
technological bases, an ideology of idealism, an
illusory sensation that what we see is indeed
“objective reality” and is so because we believe
we
are the eye that calls it into being. The entire
function of the filmic apparatus is to make us
forget
more_from

the filmic apparatus–we are only made aware of

the apparatus when it breaks.
The physical confinements and atmosphere of
the theater help in the immersion of the subject.
Indeed Baudry notes that the atmosphere mimics
not only Plato’s analogy of the cave but also
Lacan’s formation of the imaginary self in the
mirror-stage.
The child upon seeing his or herself in the mirror
for the first time, is hitherto, a fragmented
conscious and unconscious, his or her recognition
of his or herself in a mirror creates an
imaginary “I”, imaginary in the sense that 1. The
“I” is a organic, singular unit, which contradicts
the idea that the being is actually a fragmented
entity, also paralleling the concept of the
“continuous image” upon the screen, and 2. The
child takes the mirrored image and makes it
an “ideal self”.
The mirrored image is not the child itself but
instead a reflected image, and the reflected
image
presents a whole, something the child will
continually strive for but never reach. It is a
continually unfulfilled desire, an empty signifier.
Here Baudry draws out the similarity between
the constructed image of self during mirror stage
and the constructed image on screen while
watching a movie. As Lacan has clearly pointed
out in the context of Mirror -Stage and The
Imaginary order that the two conditions
complement this stage: suspension of mobility
and
maturity of visual organization. In the case of
films too they are applicable when there is a
suspension of mobility inside the theatre and the
visual functions predominates.
Thus the screen appears as a “mirror” but not
one that reflects an objective reality but instead
one that reflects images.
The consciousness of the individual, the subject,
becomes projected upon the film, as both the
consciousness and the cinematic apparatus work
in similar ways. This allows the exterior world,
the “objective reality”, to create interior meaning
within the subject. The success or failure of a
 film is therefore its ability to hold this
consciousness through a perpetual continuity of
the visual
image and the effacement of the means of
production, therefore allowing the subject a
“transcendental experience”. Thus Baudry
concludes that film, apart from the content part,
functions more as a ‘mirror’ that fulfils the
spectators’ wish for fulness, transcendental unity
Baudry’s Apparatus Theory and Duiker’s Cineac as Points of Critical Reference
In creating this work Graham could rely on a film theory that conceived of the projection screen in
the cinema in terms of a «mirror» in a metapsychological sense. [6] In a departure from the
semiological film theory of the 1970s, film was no longer treated as a text in itself, but rather as
part of a cinematic situation that influences the observer more deeply than any individual film ever
could. In his essay «The Ideological Effects of the Cinematographic Apparatus,» Jean Louis Baudry
initiated this turn in film theory to metapsychology. [7] He adopted the concept of the apparatus
from both Freud and Althusser, arguing that in the cinematic situation an effective linkage takes
place between the apparatus of the human psyche and the ideological state apparatus.

Baudry’s argument becomes comprehensible against the backdrop of the phenomenological film
theory of the 1950s. André Bazin described the film screen phenomenologically as a «window to
the universe» and the reality impression in the cinema as a mystical epiphany. As Baudry explains,
the plausibility of this film theory rests on the fact that the «conceptual apparatus of
phenomenology» and the cinematic apparatus correspond to one another exactly. Both
phenomenology and the cinema, the former theoretically, the latter practically, presume a subject
as the passive observer and phenomenological center of an event in which the subject does not
take part, for which however his or her perception alone is responsible. The cinematic apparatus
lends the film spectator the position of a transcendental subject and at the same time blocks the
insight that this position is something that is constructed. Baudry related the film-spectator’s self-
misrecognition to Lacan’s theory of the so-called mirror phase: at an age when it experiences its
own body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, the small child is provided with a visual impression of
individual physical wholene
Summary:
 Apparatus theory: The technical base of cinema (“cinematic
apparatus”) is not as neutral as it seems like. Instead, the concealment of
“the work” (including shooting, editing, projecting processes) will bring
about an “ideological effect”.
 The projection process is a way of creating meaning and it denies
the difference between adjacent images. The operation of projection
transforms “successive, discrete images” which “have no meaning or at
least no unity of meaning” into “continuity”, “movement” and “meaning”.
 The eye of the subject: Camera obscura “permits an image analogous
to the perspective projections” which place the viewer in the center of the
space. The center of this space coincides with the eye which Jean Pellerin
Viator will call the “subject”.
 The transcendental subject: The “subject” of cinematic experience is
privileged with “a total vision which corresponds to the idealist conception
of the fullness and homogeneity of ‘being’”. Thus, the “subject” could be
transcendental and his/her power is augmented by the “cinematic
apparatus”. Then, the “transcendental subject” would obtain a fantasy
 that the “objective reality” before him/her is the reality itself. But actually,
the “reality” is just an intentional object that has an ideological effect.
 Screen-Mirror: Lacan’s mirror stage assumes two complementary
conditions, i.e. immature powers of mobility and a precocious maturation
of visual organization. And the two conditions are repeated during
cinematographic projection. The effect of screen which is analogous to
mirror which could render spectator incapable to account for his/her own
situation and bring about an identification “relay” for spectators. They
would first identify with the character, then identify with the camera.
Here, spectators will be integrated into an “organic” unity, which means
they will be assured of the idealism of the dominant ideology.
 Unmask the potentialities implied in present states of
consciousness: In order not to be controlled by the ideological role of
cinema, the critical awareness of the ideological cinematic apparatus
should be emphasized.
Strengths and weaknesses:
 Strengths:
 Baudry’s key point of this article that the cinema is also an “ideological
apparatus” which is no dissimilar to other institutions like churches and
schools makes a difference in our understanding of the role of
cinematic apparatus. He points out the ideological effects of the
seemingly inviolate and neutral technical base and challenges previous
idea of Bazin who thinks that the film screen is just an unmediated
window to the world. His “apparatus theory” influenced by Althusser is
appropriately transported to cinema studies field and opens the
discussion/critics among following scholars such as Metz and Laura
Mulvey. And his warning that we need to be aware of the ideological
effect inherent in cinematic apparatus is quite profound.
 Weakness:
 Overlook the subjectivity of audience: The basic assumption of
Baudry’s article is the passive position of spectators when they sit in
the dark space. In some degree, it has overlooked their empirical
experience and psychological process: do they utilize their
individualized experience when they are watching? If he/she holds a
critical attitude towards the film before he enters the cinema, will
he/she feel hard to identify with the camera and the ideology?
 May not fit into cinematic spaces other than traditional
cinema: The mirror stage analogy presumes the condition that
spectators’ movement are confined. But when we are watching films
online with our PC or pad, will this apparatus lose its ideological
function? Or will the ideological function still work without projection in
a dark space? If the spectators always identify with the camera and are
subject to ideological effects no matter what the cinematographic
apparatus is, then, how do we know if the effects are produced by
content or apparatus? And to what degree do these two variables
affect the audience respectively?
Clip: The Man with the Movie Camera 22：09-24：09
Advertisement

Link: [Link]
This clip is a perfect illustration of Baudry’s argument on “projection: the difference
negated”. Still photographs are shown at first, including images of two women, a
street full of people, an old lady, a young boy and so forth. Then the still photographs
turn into moving image, showing the two women talking, the crowds of people
walking and the young boy laughing. The process of making frames into film is
explicitly shown in Vertov’s film, which proves that the editing and restoring process,
together with the projection could transform discrete images into a unity of meaning.
Normally, narrative films tend to hide the apparatus in order to create a mirror illusion
for spectators to identify with characters or the camera. However, in this
experimental and reflexive film, the camera, the projector, the editing machine are
exposed, and also, the ideological effects of cinematographic apparatus are
exposed.

One of the aims of critical theories has been to reveal the systemic oppression that flows from
the social structures of power, and critical theories have most typically turned to psychoanalysis
to provide the theory for how these social structures work and reproduce themselves through
the formation of their social subjects. Chapter 8 examines the influential film theory that
derived from the intersection of semiotics, Marxism, and psychoanalysis called “apparatus
theory.” This grand theory proved contentious but very influential, especially the concept of
suture, which provided a model for film spectatorship and subjectivity. This chapter concludes
with a section on neo-Lacanian theory and uses it to explicate the soundtrack theory of Michel
Chion.

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Un document de la revue Cinémas

Volume 14, numéro 1, automne 2003, p. 7–19
Dispositif(s) du cinéma (des premiers temps)
Tous droits réservés © Cinémas, 2003
 Feuilleter les articles de ce numéro

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La cinématographie comme dispositif (du) spectaculaire

Plan de l’article
 Retour au début

o The Evolving Relationship Between History and Theory in Film Studies: The Disciplinary Context for
Reconsidering the (Early) Cinematic Apparatus
o Historicizing Ways of Seeing
o (Early) Cinematic Apparatuses
 Note sur la collaboratrice
 Notes
 Bibliographical References
 Boîte à outils

 PDF
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

Corps de l’article
In June 2002, the Domitor conference,[1] taking place in Montreal, took as its organizing
theme a familiar concept in film studies: “the apparatus.” In the past, studies of early cinema
have been concerned with the history of the many and various optical devices that constitute
early film projection, its predecessors, and adjacent or competing visual technologies of the
period. But the cinematic apparatus is not simply a technological concern, of course, unless
by “technology” we refer to something more expansive, as in Herbert Marcuse’s definition
(1994, pp. 138-139), where a technology is “a mode of organizing and perpetuating (or
changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and behavior patterns, an
instrument for control and domination.” Indeed, since the 1970s, in film studies the term
“apparatus” is most often invoked in a theoretical context in relation to questions of
spectatorship and ideological power.
This issue of Cinémas has collected from the Montreal meeting of Domitor articles that
grapple with precisely this area of intersection—between cinema history and what has
become known as “grand” theory—wherein early cinema and related visual entertainments
(such as the phantasmagoria, panoramas, mutoscopes) are considered in terms of their
implications for theoretical models of spectatorship and/or historical reception practices that
might challenge such theories. The writers included here reconsider the continuing usefulness
of the concept of an “apparatus” for framing both our historical questions and theoretical
extrapolations, and in relation to the kind of viewing demanded by a variety of devices, texts,
and practices during the period of cinema’s earliest elaboration. The value of the notion of the
cinematic apparatus is not a question that should be taken for granted, as too much of cinema
scholarship had (before the last decade or so) simply separated historiography from theory, or
even set the two in irreconcilable opposition. While a rapprochement has undoubtedly taken
place in more recent years, it is certainly time to consider directly how for early cinema
studies the theoretical and historical can productively meet in the trope of the apparatus.

The Evolving Relationship Between History

and Theory in Film Studies: The
Disciplinary Context for Reconsidering the
(Early) Cinematic Apparatus
In an article that is now over twenty-five years old, Rick Altman traces the major
methodologies and reigning practices in U.S. film historiography of that period (the 1970s).
While the then-emblematic works in cinema history that he (quite comprehensively) surveys
and critiques are certainly no longer on the cutting edge of disciplinary historiography,
Altman’s “Towards a Historiography of American Film” nonetheless remains conceptually
valuable, clearly assaying a number of important approaches to writing film history, and
tackling the still troublesome issues of, for example, periodization and canon formation.
Altman (1977, p. 1) writes: “No longer can a film historian deal with all the facts, nor can he
[sic] pretend that they are objective phenomena divorced from a particular way of looking at
them.” Altman makes note of the consequences of each “particular way of looking at”—and,
thus, of discursively constituting—cinema history. He deals with thirteen organizing
principles of cinematic-historical explanation: those highlighting technology, technique,
personality, a comparison between film and other arts, chronicle forms, social history, studio
determinants, auteurism, film genre, ritual, legal, industrial, and sociological accounts
(Altman 1977, pp. 2-21). In other words, Altman is not simply suggesting a taxonomy of
popular “topics” within cinema historiography; in fact, his use of such categories does not
necessarily designate a particular object of historical study, but rather identifies a
privileged explanatory model applied to a variety of historical objects. In addition to outlining
this variety of “theor[ies] of coherence of filmic events” (Altman 1977, p. 2), he also
examines what such theories may suppress. And, based on existing U.S. film histories at the
time of the article’s writing, Altman is also able to point out which types of historiographical
explanation are generally deployed in relation to specific periods of film history, and with
what consequences.
Judged in relation to current trends in cinema studies, what is most strikingly absent from the
field of film historiography surveyed by Altman is a consideration of spectatorship itself as
either an object or organizing principle for cinema history. (This topic is raised peripherally
within several of Altman’s categories, but is given a larger measure of attention in his
discussion of “social,” “ritual,” and “sociological” history.) Spectatorship studies of any
kind[2] had only recently come into prominence in the 1970s, with the introduction of
ideological (Althusserian) and psychoanalytic (Freudian and Lacanian) theories of “subject
formation” in relation to cinematic “hailing” or identificatory mechanisms, for example. And
of course, the notion of a largely transhistorical cinematic “apparatus” as described by
Baudry and Metz is at the centre of such mechanisms.[3] The notion of theorizing
spectatorship’s historical specificity or historicizing spectatorship theory is a much more
recent phenomenon. It is thus hardly surprising that audiences and/or spectators are
considered only in diffuse and largely implicit ways both in the histories Altman surveys and
in a number of his own analytical appraisals of cinema historiography. In this era, history and
theory were most often deemed to be completely separate and unrelated undertakings within
film studies, if not opposed ones. Yet Altman’s article does both call for and itself move
toward an increased self-consciousness within film studies regarding historiographical
practices and the theoretical assumptions such practices entail.
More than a decade following Altman’s intervention, Robert Sklar’s meta-historiographical
article, “Oh! Althusser!: Historiography and the Rise of Cinema Studies,” explicitly takes up
the traditional separation and then-recent rapprochement of history and theory in cinema
studies:
More recently, as some historians have begun to utilize the approaches of theoretically grounded
literary criticism, and some film scholars have developed interests in social historians’ work,
these differences have begun to diminish, though not yet through much mutual familiarity or
common dialogue.
Sklar 1990, p. 13

But to a certain extent, this article describes a methodological battleground rather than a
happy fusion of formerly separated fields. Sklar argues that film studies quickly became
dominated by a “third generation” of academically trained scholars who were “swept away
by strong theoretical winds from Europe:” “Writing ‘theory’ made it possible for new
practitioners at all academic levels to achieve publication without having to wait to build a
base of knowledge through months and years of film viewing and archival research.”[4] Sklar
laments “hyperactive theory” and the disparagement heaped upon credentialed historians’
positivism: “Theory wore the doctor’s white coat; history sat in the waiting room, in need of
diagnosis and cure” (Sklar 1990, p. 16).
Continuing his rather pessimistic depiction of this initial disciplinary peculiarity and the
evolving relationship between history and theory, Sklar next draws a distinction between
(“real”) cinema historians and third-generation “revisionists.” He discusses in different ways
essays by Judith Mayne (1982) and Miriam Hansen (1983), each of which argue for a
proletarian audience of early cinema, but he ultimately characterizes both as too invested in
specific theoretical concerns and not “historical” enough:
On the one hand, works by revisionist film historians appear to be fueled by an underlying
ideological purpose that leads them to significant absences and distortions in their use of
evidence; on the other, theoretical approaches to the subject that are more sophisticated and
challenging ideologically also may appear, from the perspective of academic history, arcane and
abstract in terminology and woefully lacking in documentation.
Sklar 1990, p. 27

As an alternative to these options, Sklar turns away from film studies scholarship altogether
to assess the work of “radical social historians” who consider early cinema
as part of immigrant and working-class lives, as one of many sites of leisure and communal
activities—the dance halls, saloons, amusement parks, and other private and commercial
entertainments that have been the focus of the past decade’s resurgence of historical study on
working-class life and popular culture.[5]
Sklar 1990, p. 28

But Sklar argues that the theoretical and textual analyses of film scholars writing early
cinema history need to be balanced, not replaced, with such radical social history, which
itself has limitations:
[T]hese remarks point to difficulties inherent in social histories’ limiting their consideration of
cinema to the social interaction of persons within a theater space. Cinema in this sense is
different from the saloon and the dance hall and other cultural sites valorized in radical social
history of popular culture. Whatever cinema was as this type of social experience, it was also a
mass-communications medium with aesthetic, ideological, and psychological dimensions. Its
social contestation ultimately arose in relation to film spectatorship as a mental experience.
Sklar 1990, p. 31

In this sense, Sklar is acknowledging a need to consider spectatorship in its theoretical

dimension as well. Finally, then, Sklar advocates that cinema historiography begin a serious
reengagement with “Althusserian concepts not only concerning ideology as representation
but also concerning its purported capacity to interpellate sujects”. Invoking Benjamin to
resituate cinema history at the center of “any contemporary historiography,” Sklar (1990, p.
32) underlines the political importance of historicizing cultural reception.

Historicizing Ways of Seeing

To some extent Sklar’s call has been answered in a number of contemporary studies that
return to early cinema as a privileged site of cultural change, to the enabling conditions of
visual modernity preceding and surrounding the cinematic per se, and to a reconfiguration of
vision and viewers in the 19th century. The emergence of this intersecting domain of a
specific period (early and precinema) and theoretical issue (spectatorship) into
historiographical view is the result of the convergence of two largely separate strains of
inquiry in film studies during the 1980s. The first of these is the theorization of cinema
spectatorship itself. Relying on ideal models of ideological or psychoanalytic positioning,
spectatorship theory of the 1970s and early 1980s was concerned to establish the “universal”
spectatorial effects of cinema upon such categories as subjectivity, identification, and desire.
These effects were conceived as basic to the apparatus itself (projection in a darkened space,
the “keyhole” effect, the immobility of the viewer, etc.) or basic to “dominant” cinematic
codes and conventions (relays of looks, goal-oriented narrative arrested only by spectacle,
continuity or “illusionistic” editing techniques, etc.). And whether these effects were then
explained through an ideological conception of subject formation and maintenance (following
Althusserian “interpellation,” and considering Hollywood cinema among the ISAs), or
through a psychoanalytic paradigm (Freudian or Lacanian, emphasizing dream analogies,
pre-Oedipal relations, scopophilia, fetishism, sadism, disavowal of lack, fantasy, “suture,”
split subjectivity, Imaginary/Symbolic realms, misrecognition, etc.), they were nonetheless
considered ahistorically, as fundamentally unchanging, and, in some cases, unchangeable.
Differences in viewer positioning were admitted in these models of spectatorship only insofar
as predetermined positions in a capitalist or patriarchal social order were being differentiated
onscreen. This led to a fundamental problem for feminist theorists, who, in denouncing an
always-already patriarchal apparatus that necessarily positions the viewer as male,
increasingly found reason to resist a model of spectatorship that erased a place for feminine
subjectivity or female viewers’ pleasure as impossibilities. In addition to calls for developing
a feminist, countercinema aesthetics, theories attempting to specify female spectatorship of
Hollywood cinema—as passive, masochistic, male-identified drag, a performative
“masquerade,” or made fluid in the oscillating subject-object positions of fantasy—have
marked the development of this strain of feminist theorization. Totalizing models of cinema
spectatorship were also challenged by an increasingly felt need to recognize real subdivisions
among “the audience,” to theorize spectatorial positions from an analysis of constituent social
groups, and across an array of socially constituted subjectivities: how would not only gender
but class position, racial or ethnic identity, or sexual orientation affect viewing? Influenced
by a growing number of reception studies, sociological and/or ethnographic approaches
(primarily in television studies), and the field of cultural studies, spectatorship theory from
the mid to late 1980s began to grapple with the cultural heterogeneity and specificity of
cinema viewing (synchronically), as well as the historical changeability and diversity of the
cinematic apparatus, filmic techniques, viewing habits or experiences, and, presumably, the
subject effects of cinema as an institution (diachronically). In other words, film theorists
began to historicize spectatorship as both determined by and a determinant of the historical
variability of social subjectivity itself.
The second major development in 1980s cinema scholarship that contributes to this recent
attention to precinematic spectatorship was the burgeoning interest in early cinema (Altman’s
“archaeology” period) as a neglected period of historical analysis. This trend can similarly be
understood as a reaction against a dominant way of understanding U.S. film history, which
privileges the so-called classical era of Hollywood cinema (most inclusively considered as
spanning from approximately 1915 to 1960) as the telos of all previous (and thus
underdeveloped or “primitive”) cinematic forms. Already in 1977, Altman is critiquing this
tendency in technical histories, which document innovators, or first appearances, of cinematic
techniques (the close-up, crosscutting, etc.) as the first steps in the emergence of a stable
vocabulary of film signification, long before such usages became semiotically standardized in
the “classical” cinema (Altman 1977, pp. 5-6).
By the 1980s, this approach had come to seem overly systematized and reductive of both
synchronic and diachronic divergences from—as well as competing structures within—the
“classical” model. Scholars began to turn to earlier periods of cinema history, not simply to
claw this era back into an organic model of growth and development toward a “mature” form,
nor to point out a trajectory toward a consolidation of conventions, but instead to
problematize this model. Increasingly, early cinema came to be considered not a “primitive”
form of classical narrative cinema, but an entirely different type of spectacle with its own
aesthetic and cultural specificity, which needed to be understood historically. Instead of
contextualizing individual films and technical developments within an exclusively cinematic
tradition, early cinema was historicized within a field of other cultural practices linked to
modernity, which shared formal similarities, existed in similar social spaces, or relied upon a
similar spectacular appeal or “shock effect.” Historians of early cinema celebrated the lack of
firmly consolidated filmic practices (both in terms of textual codes and exhibition or viewing
conventions); the unsettled and sometimes unsettling aspects of these often rather bizarre
films suggested a much wider range of possibilities of function or use within their cultural
context. This in turn prompted a reconsideration of cinematic spectatorship in its earliest
years as addressing and/or constructing a much different viewing subject than that which had
been theorized more generally and universally, as described above. These historians of early
cinema located cinema among a range of other entertainments, attractions, new public spaces
and social practices that would inform our understanding of early spectators’ rather different
visual field, viewing habits, or cultural positioning as consumers of spectacle.[6]
A similar reconsideration of the writing of cinema’s “pre-history” also attended this renewed
interest in early cinema. As Altman notes (1977, p. 3), the early period of cinema, including
the years before its invention, has traditionally been reduced to the terrain of technological
history, which “attempts to chronicle the invention and commercialization of the mechanical
apparatus necessary for the production and the projection of the film image.” Most
commonly, the precinematic era is thus recast as the protocinematic era, in which a number
of primitive or failed devices and inventions stand as testimony to the teleological ideal of
cinema that will initially be realized in 1895, and gradually be perfected through a series of
further technological innovations during the ensuing century: “Zootropes and
phenakistoscopes, panchromatic film and cinemascope, Muybridge and Edison, Lumière and
Pathé—this is the technological historian’s domain” (Altman 1977, pp. 3-4). Once again, this
approach retroactively attributes greatest significance to those devices which seem to form
obvious steps in the most direct progression toward modern cinema, while reducing others to
missteps or failures, or even ignoring them altogether. But it is only with a directed hindsight
that such evaluations can be made, of course, and narrativizing technology in this fashion
tends to cast cinema as we know it as the logical or even “natural” outcome of history, rather
than foregrounding cinema as itself an organizing principle of the historical field of
technologies.
Another problem associated with this type of historiography is that it conceptually reduces all
possible developmental influences on cinema to one realm, the technological, ignoring the
overdetermination of factors such as economics, urbanization and industrialization, and other
forms of entertainment. In this way, technological histories of the precinematic era would
traditionally concentrate on the development of a litany of devices (sometimes going as far
back as the camera oscura, or even Plato’s cave) such as magic lantern shows, the
thaumatrope, the phenakistoscope, the zootrope, still photography, Muybridge’s
zoopraxiscope, Marey’s chronophotographic gun, Edison’s kinetograph/kinetoscope, and
Lumière’s cinématographe, all of which in some way prefigure or contribute to the invention
of “cinema.”
More recent historicizations of the precinematic, and especially precinematic spectatorship,
have rejected the central importance of an evolving technological (material) apparatus, and
instead turn to a much wider cultural contextualization for cinema’s eventual emergence:
amusement parks, train travel, panoramas, folk museums, morgues, freak shows, department
stores, serialized and illustrated newspaper stories, wax museums, traveling phonography,
illustrated lectures, vaudeville, and so on. In these cases, the element frequently posited as
shared with the eventual cinema is an audience, or a mode of viewing, rather than a particular
apparatus or certain textual strategies which position the viewer.
These two trends in cinema scholarship of the late1980s—the attempt to historicize
theorizations of spectatorship and the attempt to reconsider historical periods and objects
from the perspective of cultural viewing positions—has spawned some extremely interesting
work, much of it influenced by Foucault, the New Historicism, techniques of cultural history,
and/or cultural studies more generally.[7] And it is in continuation of this spirit that the
articles collected here have been chosen. The growing reciprocity of cinema historiography
and film theory (across a number of domains) suggests a possibility of reconfiguration for the
discipline as a whole, where history and theory will not necessarily be opposed but force
fundamental reassessments of accepted standards of “historical” or “theoretical” knowledge.
But at the moment, this theoretical historiography—or historiographical theory—of early
cinema spectatorship remains one of the few areas that is witnessing such a sustained
interrogation, as the seven articles that follow amply demonstrate.

(Early) Cinematic Apparatuses

Opening and closing the issue are two articles which directly address the question of the
continuing usefulness of the Baudrian/Metzian apparatus. Frank Kessler offers an excellent
recapitulation of the broad strokes of this theoretical model and some of the problems that
attend it; ultimately Kessler argues for the ongoing heuristic value of the apparatus when
properly historicized in relation to spectatorial positioning. In a concluding, and even more
expansive, article, Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan (coeditor of this issue of Cinémas) also details
the problematic aspects of this concept. Sirois-Trahan usefully distinguishes between what he
calls “apparatuses of reception” and “apparatuses of production” (dispositifs de réception et
de production) in reconsidering how the evolution of the language of cinema has been
conceptualized.
Between these two theoretical bookends, a number of fascinating historical case studies
intervene, in which questions of historical modes of spectatorship are tackled in relation to
specific visual apparatuses. Alison Griffiths focuses on the 19th century panorama (especially
those featuring faraway places or historical events): the kind of spectatorial address they
created and how this kind of viewing position related to genres of early cinematic spectacle.
Tom Gunning offers a model of fascination—of the uncanny—associated with the
phantasmagoria, where spectators were invited to question the certainties of their perceptions.
Dan Streible’s article on mutoscopes foregrounds a kind of social milieu (discursive and
material) accompanying their consumption, particularly by children, across different
historical periods. Both Jan Holmberg and Isabelle Raynauld compare early cinema with new
media technologies of our own times, to demonstrate certain commonalities around their
reception. Raynauld compares an early cinema text with a recent CD-ROM, highlighting how
discourses of “newness” or novelty influence a medium’s reception, before it is
“institutionalized” or fully conventionalized for its audiences. Holmberg’s comparison is
between early cinema and video games, wherein textual aesthetics and the resultant
viewer/player’s experience of “immersion” is the crucial commonality—a trope that, for
Holmberg, asks us to reconsider the totality of cinema’s development around the desire for
this experience.
 Taken together, these articles demonstrate that careful historicization of a theoretical model
of spectatorship can yield extremely fruitful results. Not only do the authors collectively
contribute a great deal to our understanding of early cinema and other surrounding visual
media, but they also point to the kinds of new theoretical questions that a serious engagement
with historical spectatorship can yield.

Parties annexes
Note sur la collaboratrice
Melanie Nash
Elle est doctorante en Film Studies à University of Iowa. Elle a enseigné à McGill University et ses
travaux sur les stars et la réception ont été publiés dans des revues comme The Velvet Light Trap et The
Canadian Journal of Film Studies. Elle a aussi participé à l’ouvrage collectif Titanic : Anatomy of a
Blockbuster (Kevin S. Sandler et Gaylyn Studlar (dir.), 1999).

Notes
1. [1]
Additional proceedings from this conference can be found in two other publications. See the special issue
of Cinéma & Cie: “Representational Technologies and the Discourse on Early Cinema’s Apparatus/Les
technologies de représentation et le discours sur le dispositif cinématographique des premiers temps”
(Maule 2003); and André Gaudreault, Catherine Russell, and Pierre Véronneau (eds.), Le
Cinématographe, nouvelle technologie du XXe siècle/The Cinema, a New Technology for the
20th Century, Lausanne, Payot Lausanne, forthcoming in 2004.
2. [2]
I am referring to academic treatments within the then newly formed discipline of film studies. Of course,
there were a number of “audience studies” produced by sociologists (and frequently used by moral
pressure groups against Hollywood), going at least as far back as the era of the First World War, and
becoming especially prevalent during the 1930s (most famously in the Payne Fund Studies). And
Hollywood itself conducted audience research. See Handel 1950. Studies of these types represent
contemporary social scientific work on movie audiences, often providing useful source information (acting
themselves as historical documents) for later cinema historians.

3. [3]
For Jean-Louis Baudry, see Baudry 1985 and Baudry 1986. For Christian Metz, the sections of The
Imaginary Signifier most relevant to the apparatus have been collected as excerpts. See Metz 1999 and
Metz 1985. While Louis Althusser’s work does not directly take up cinema, his influence on apparatus
theory has been enormous. See Althusser 1998.
4. [4]
This “third generation,” the “new practitioners” who apparently do not need to waste their time “build[ing]
a base of knowledge,” is apparently made up of young structuralist semioticians of the 1970s: “The sweep
of generations was encapsulated, albeit imperfectly, at a landmark conference… in 1975, where, among the
featured speakers, critic Andrew Sarris may be said to have represented the first generation, philosopher
Stanley Cavell the second, and semiologist Umberto Eco—not as a member but as a signifier of changing
discourses—the third” (Sklar 1990, p. 15).

5. [5]
 Sklar looks at two works in this vein, and even uses the latter’s findings to attack “the revisionists” one last
time. See Ewen 1980 and Rosenweig 1983. See also Peiss 1986.

6. [6]
It is interesting to note that Miriam Hansen differentiates between the use of the terms “audience” and
“spectator” not just as a theoretical or methodological distinction operative within viewer-oriented studies
(as do Kuhn, Mayne, Staiger and others who posit the former as a “real” social collective and the latter as a
hypothetical or ideal construct of the text); instead, Hansen argues that the emergence of the “spectator”
(and concomitant suppression of the “audience” as such) is historically specific, marking a paradigm shift
between early and later cinema (around 1909). See Hansen 1991 (pp. 23-24).

7. [7]
See for example Charney and Schwartz 1996; Williams 1994 (an anthology that includes relevant essays
by Jonathan Crary, Anne Friedberg, and Tom Gunning); Crary 1994; Hansen 1991; Iris 1990 (a special
issue on “Early Cinema Audiences”); Schivelbusch 1986; and Rabinovitz 1998.

Bibliographical References
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Michael Ryan (eds.), Literary Theory: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998, pp. 294-304.
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Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, pp. 531-542.
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4. Baudry 1986: Jean-Louis Baudry, “The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of
Reality in Cinema,” in Philip Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, New York, Columbia
University Press, 1986, pp. 299-318.
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5. Charney and Schwartz 1996: Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the
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6. Crary 1994: Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
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8. Handel 1950: Leo Handel, Hollywood Looks at Its Audience, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1950.
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9. Hansen 1983: Miriam Hansen, “Early Silent Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?,” New German Critique,
no. 29, 1983, pp. 147-184.
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10. Hansen 1991: Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film,
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11. Iris 1990:Iris, “Early Cinema Audiences,” Vol. 6, no. 2, 1990.

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 Critical Film Theory: The Poetics and Politics of Film
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Monthly Archives: January 2015

JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY “IDEOLOGICAL

EFFECTS OF THE BASIC
CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPARATUS” –
A REVIEW
JANUARY 30, 2015 TOBIAS SCHWARTZ 1 COMMENT

Jean Louis Baudry

Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus

“In such a way, the cinematic apparatus conceals its work and imposes an
idealist ideology, rather than producing critical awareness in a spectator.”

Baudry sets up the questions he will answer throughout the rest of the
text:
  How the “subject” is the active center of
meaning.
 How the cinematic apparatus is actually
more important for transcendentalism in the
subject than the film itself.
 The hidden “work” of the cinematic
apparatus, that is, the progression from the
“objective reality” (what is filmed), through
the intermediary (the camera), to the
finished product (a reconstructed, but false,
“objective reality”, not the “objective
reality” itself, but instead a representation
of it)

Baudry then discusses this “work”. This, he claims, is what distinguishes

cinema as an art form. This process of transformation from “objective
reality” to finished product. He asks, in this finished product is the “work”
made evident, does viewing the final product bring about a “knowledge
effect”, or in other words, a recognition of the apparatus, or is the “work”
concealed?

He finishes the section by stating, “concealment of the technical base will

also bring about a specific ideological effect. Its inscription, its
manifestation as such, on the other hand, would produce a knowledge
effect, as actualization of the work process, as denunciation of ideology,
and as a critique of idealism.”

It’s important to stop here and question what Baudry means by

“idealism”?

Sociologically, idealism emphasizes how human ideas – especially beliefs

and values – shape society. Philosophically it asserts that reality, or reality
as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or
otherwise immaterial.

The Eye of the Subject

Baudry discusses the viewpoint of the “subject” in both Greek and

Renaissance art histories. While both static, the Greeks “subject” is based
on a “multiplicity of points of view” while the Renaissance paintings utilize
a “centered space”. “The center of this space coincides with the eye…so
justly called the “subject”.

Baudry then continues and discusses the camera’s vision, which he calls
Monocular. “Based on the principle of a fixed point by reference to which
the visualized objects are organized, it specifies in return the position of
the “subject” the very spot it must necessarily occupy. What Baudry has
done here is created the “subject” for the finished product, the entity into
which the exterior world will attempt to intrude and create meaning.

Question – If the subject is a “fixed point”, then does one’s positioning in a

theater affect the ability for meaning to be created? Is the “mirror” as
affective?

Baudry then discusses the necessity of transcendence which he will touch

upon more later in his essay. Briefly however, the ideal vision of the
“virtual image” with its hallucinatory reality, creates a total vision which
to Baudry, “contributes…to the ideological function of art, which is to
provide the tangible representation of metaphysics.”

Projection: The Difference Negated

Baudry discusses the paradox between the projected film. It consists of

individual frames, separate, however minutely, from each other in image.
However, when projected the frames create meaning, through the
relationship between them, creating a juxtapositioning and a continuity.
As Baudry states, “These separate frames have between them differences
that are indispensable for the creation of an illusion of continuity, of a
continuous passage (movement, time). But only on one condition can
these differences create this illusion: they must be effaced as
differences.” This is a critical notion as we will see in just a moment.

“We should remember, moreoever, the disturbing effects which result

during a projection from breakdowns in the recreation of movement, when
the spectator is brought abruptly back to discontinuity, that is, to the
body, to the technical apparatus which he or she had forgotten. When
such discontinuity is made apparent then to Baudry both transcendence,
meaning in the subject, and ideology can be impossible.
So what is the importance of this effacement of discontinuity in frames.
Baudry states, “We might not be far from seeing what is in play on this
material basis, if we recall that the “language” of the unconscious, as it is
found in dreams, slips of the tongue, or hysterical symptoms, manifests
itself as continuity destroyed, broken, and as the unexpected surging
forth of a marked difference.” We must note the similarities between
Baudry’s Freudian idea of the unconscious and of the language of the
cinematic apparatus. Both, fool the subject (the viewer and the self) into
believing in a continuity, while both occasionally providing glimpses of the
actual discontinuity present in the construction. Thus a relation is
established between the unconscious of the “subject” and what is being
presented on screen. Or as Baudry puts it….

“Thus one may assume that what was already at work as the originating
basid of the persepective image, namely the eye, the “subject”, is put
forth, liberated by the operation which transforms successive, discrete
images (as isolated images they have, strictly speaking, no meaning, or at
least no unity of meaning) into continuity, movement, meaning; with
continuity restored both meaning and consciousness are restored.”

The Transcendental Subject

Baudry begins by describing how when a camera follows a trajectory, it

becomes trajectory, seizes a moment, becomes a moment. It’s a little
clunky but what I believe he is saying is this. As the camera follows the
arc of a ball flying through the air, the frame itself mimics this arc,
becomes an arc itself. And if we believe that the consciousness of the
individual is projected upon the screen then as Baudry puts it, “in this way
the eye-subject, the invisible base of artificial perspective (which in fact
only represents a larger effot to produce an ordering, regulated
trascnedence) becomes absorbed in, “elevated” to a vaster function”.

“The world will not only be constituted by this eye but for it. The
movability of the camera seems to fulfill the most favorable conditions for
the manifestation of the “transcendental subject”.
Baudry moves on to how he believes the subject is so able to become
consciously enmeshed in the film. “There is both fantasmatization of an
objective reality (image, sounds, color) and of an objective reality which,
limiting its power of constraint, seems equally to augment the possibilities
of the subject.” It is the belief in the omnipotence of thought and
viewpoint. The subject sees all, he or she ascends to a nobler status, a
god perhaps, he or she sees all of the world that is presented before
them, the visual image is the world, and the subject sees all. Add to this
that the ego believes that what is shown is shown for a reason, that
whatever it sees has purpose, has meaning. And you have a subject who
is given great power and a world in which he or she is entitled to meaning.

Film derives meaning from the subject.

The importance of narrative continuity as well, “The search for such

narrative continuity, so difficult to obtain from the material base, can only
be explained by an essential ideological stake projected in this point: it is
a question of preserving at any cost the synthetic unity of the locus where
meaning originates [the subject] – the constituting transcendental
function to which narrative continuity points back as its natural secretion.”

The Screen-Mirror: Specularization and Double Identification

The physical confinements and atmosphere of the theater help in the

immersion of the subject. Indeed Baudry notes that the atmosphere
mimics not only Plato’s analogy of the cave but also Lacan’s formation of
the imaginary self.

“This psychological phase, which occurs between six and eighteen months
of age, generates via the mirror image of a unified body the constitution
or at least the first sketches of the “I” as an imaginary function.

Lacan is so abstruse its as if he’s using a different language, but here’s

what I can gather. The child upon seeing his or herself in the mirror for the
first time, is hitherto, a fragmented conscious and unconscious, his or her
recognition of his or herself in a mirror creates an imaginary “I”, imaginary
in the sense that 1. The “I” is a organic, singular unit, which contradicts
the idea that the being is actually a fragmented entity, also paralleling the
concept of the “continuous image” upon the screen, and 2. The child
takes the mirrored image and makes it an “ideal self”. This is problematic
for two reasons, 1. The mirrored image is not the child itself but instead a
reflected image, and 2. The reflected is image presents a whole,
something the child will continually strive for but never reach. It is a
continually unfulfilled desire, an empty signifier. Note the similarity
between this and the constructed image on screen.

The screen as a “mirror” but not one that reflects an objective reality but
one instead one that reflects images.

“Thus the spectator identifies less with what is represented, the spectacle
itself, than with what stages the spectacle, makes it seen, obliging him to
see what it sees; this is exactly the function taken over by the camera as
a sort of relay.” And this is because..

“Just as a mirror assembles the fragmented body in a sort of imaginary

integration of the self, the transcendental self unites the discontinuous
fragments of phenomena, of lived experience, into unifying meaning.
Through it each fragment assumes meaning by being integrated into an
“organic” unity. Between the imaginary gathering of the fragmented body
into a unity and the transcendentality of the self, giver of unifying
meaning, the current is indefinitely reversible.

The relationship between the camera and the subject. The camera needs
to seize the subject in a mode of specular reflection. The forms of
narrative adopted, the contents, are of little importance so long as
identification remains possible.

“Everything happens as if, the subject himself, unable to account for his
own situation, it was necessary to substitute secondary organs, grafted on
to replace his own defective ones, instruments or ideological formations
capable of filling his function as subject.” The image replaces the subjects
own image as if it is now the mirror.
“The cinema can thus appear as a sort of psychic apparatus of
substitution, corresponding to the model defined by the dominant
ideology.”

Think of it this way, the consciousness of the individual, the subject,

becomes projected upon the film, as both the consciousness and the
cinematic apparatus work in similar ways. This allows the exterior world,
the “objective reality”, to create interior meaning within the subject. The
success or failure of a film is therefore its ability to hold this
consciousness through a perpetual continuity of the visual image and the
effacement of the means of production, therefore allowing the subject a
“transcendental experience”.

“Film functions more as a metaphysiological “mirror” that fulfills the

spectator’s wish for fullness, transcendental unity, and meaning.”

Questions

What is the dominant ideology?

How might one’s position in a theater affect their reaction to a film

according to Baudry?

What type of editing pattern would Baudry believe to be most consistent

with a “continuity”?

What is the difference between the meaning between image and the
meaning created within the “subject”?

What might some criticisms of Baudry’s theory? Do you believe it?

THOUGHT’S ON TRUFFAUT’S “LA

NUIT AMERICAINE”
JANUARY 30, 2015 CHRISTOPHER KELLY LEAVE A COMMENT

One thing that I noticed while watching Traffaut’s film “La Nuit
Americaine” was the different shoot techniques the director employed in
order to create a noticeable distinction between the film and “real life”.
This technique is especially evident in the first scene in which there is a
tracking shot that follows several characters while a score plays in the
background. Here the camera tracks characters as they walk through the
streets until it stops and focuses on Alphonse and Alexandre and once this
scene ends the camera shot ceases to be mobile and instead is stationary.
Here Traffaut makes a distinction between film and real life by shooting
the “Meet Pamela” scenes in a cinematic and mobile way to make them
appear less realistic and more contrived. Then once the Meet Pamela
shooting scene is done Truffaut switches his shots to static shots that are
realistic in nature to make it seem as though the “behind the scene shots”
are real life. This shooting style helps Truffaut to successfully create a
distinction between the film world and real world within his film, and in
doing so he creates a film that both celebrates and criticizes the film
making process.

Another thought I had while watching the film was it shared a lot of
similarities with Fellini’s film “8 1/2”. Much like “La Nuit Americaine”
Fellini’s “8 1/2” focuses on the life of a struggling director as he attempts
to make a film in hectic circumstances. One scene from “La Nuit
Americaine” that was particularly reminiscent of “8 1/2” was Ferrand’s
dream sequence in which he sees himself as a child stealing Citizen Kane
posters from the front of a movie theater. This childhood flashback scene
establishes that film is Ferand’s one true love and shows the audience
that his passion for the medium dates all the way back to his childhood,
which helps the viewer to understand why he is so intent on making a
successful production. Fellini’s film “8 1/2” features a similar scene in
which the director has a flashback to his childhood and he remembers the
time when him and his siblings jumped on the bed and chanted “asa nisi
masa”, a made up phrase that they yelled to bring the eyes of a painting
on their wall to life. In both of these scenes the directors use childhood
flashbacks to show the inner most desires of the protagonists and in doing
so they reveal a great deal about each main character’s past, which helps
the viewer to better understand how these men have become so
tormented.

OBSERVATIONS FROM TRUFFAUT’S

“LA NUIT AMERICAINE”
JANUARY 30, 2015 JACOB KNOPPING LEAVE A COMMENT
One of the first elements I noticed in Truffaut’s “La Nuit Americaine” was
the abundance of the color red at different times in the film. There were
various times where the color really dominated the shot, in an intentional
yet subtle manner. The crane, red car, and smaller objects such as the
jack all were a bright red, standing out in particular shots. The choice of
red could represent themes of lust, passion, and love, as well as the
breaking of relationships and the resulting anguish. Although it could be
easily overlooked, I enjoyed this detail in the film.

A major theme that began to develop over the course of the film was the
contrast between real life and film life, and specifically, which takes
dominance in one’s life. There are many usable quotes during the course
of the film that illustrate this. One such quote occurs when Alphonse is
talking to Julie, “Life is more important than films. Ferrard is wrong.”
Furthermore, the contrast between the life of actors and everyone else is
apparent in the discussion of kissing being an actor’s equivalent of a
handshake.

LA NUIT AMERICAINE – “NO ONE’S

PRIVATE LIFE RUNS SMOOTHLY,
THAT ONLY HAPPENS IN THE
MOVIES.”
JANUARY 30, 2015 GOLDFARR LEAVE A COMMENT

Truffaut’s master tale of filmmaking is all at once a structurally well made

film with excellent characters, a well directed adventure into filmmaking
and a commentary on the art form all of us are choosing to pursue in our
academics. For anyone passionate about film, this should be the kind of
film that we are immediately drawn to. The language is crisp, effective,
funny and well delivered by the actors. Does it feel dated? Of course – but
that only adds to the beauty. With the main theme being is film more
important than life, or, better yet, is film perfection and life imperfection?
Personally, what Truffaut touches upon in his film is exactly why I
(personally) find film so intriguing and why it is an art form I wish to
challenge myself in. This is not a painting. This is not music. And this is
not a book. Film is a collaborative process involving so many different
voices, suits, and set-backs that it is a true mystery how we find ourselves
watching the cinema that we do.

One element of the film I find fascinating is the character of Alphonse. I

love the fact that in all of his free time, he tells his cast and crew that he
is going to the movies. A man obsessed by cinema tries to live his life
according to the code of film. It’s a code I find myself living quite
frequently as well. I think many actors, writers and directors look at reality
through the lens of a camera… with an audience watching them. They
thrive on drama, try to create picturesque moments, and question their
faith in life when things go ‘off script’ in real life (as we see with Alphonse
being dumped). Rationally, filmmaking is a story telling form of art that
audiences watch for a variety of reasons… but it is not reality. I write
scripts and find myself constantly frustrated when my conversations in life
don’t follow the language and flow I give my characters… But it is
something we all must accept, no matter how much we love to get lost in
the world of cinema.

This is a film made by a man obsessed with his art form. He even plays
the fictional director in the movie! My favorite line so far is said by Ferrand
to Alphonse, now lost in despair – “No one’s private life runs smoothly,
that only happens in the movies.” We love movies… plain and simple. Our
personal preferences will vary, but that’s what makes film perhaps the
greatest art form ever. It takes so many different genres, tones, mediums
and voices and stuffs them together into moving images that dare to
dazzle us and transport us to a new world to forget about the one we are
currently in. “I’d drop a guy for a film… but I’d never drop a film for a
guy.” I’d say the same (about a woman) but the point is clear… This is
what we love. And the process might be like going to war… but when the
final product is something to be proud of, it sure feels like victory. This
was the perfect film to start with – and to answer day one’s question
about why we need to know film theory… It’s because we need to
understand what film is, it’s essence, and it’s relation to our lives and how
it shapes us. If you live and breathe film (like I know many in the class do),
you need to ask “what is my reality compared with my cinema.”

ARTIFICIALITY OF CINEMA VS.

REALITY OF PRODUCTION
JANUARY 30, 2015 SHQIPONJA MIFTARI LEAVE A COMMENT

The title of Truffaut’s “La Nui Americaine”, meaning Day of night,

originates from an American film technique in which a scene is filmed
during the day, and then in post production made to look like it was shot
at night. The significance of the title represents the artificiality of cinema.
Throughout the film, various illusions are created such as the use of the
stunt double, the candle light trick and much more. Film is a revolutionary
medium because of its ability to create deceptions that would otherwise
be realistically impossible. In Munsterberg’s “Why we go to the Movies,”
he highlights the same principal; film surpasses the limits of reality, which
is why they are so entertaining and why they differ greatly from theater
productions.

While special effects and grand illusions can be simulated in a film, hard
work and devotion off screen, can not be. One theme that was presented
throughout the piece was the overwhelming amount of effort and
dedication required in the filmmaking industry. Issues such as time
constraints, uncooperative casts, and restless nights only scratch the
surface in the grand realm of practical issues that arise during filmmaking.
At various points, it felt as though, for some characters, the film they were
working on, “Meet Pamela,” was more important than real life. One lady
on set even stated “I’d drop a man for a film but I’d never drop a film for a
man” indicating that films are more of a priority than aspects of her own
personal life. For Ferrand, the director, his devotion is unprecedented and
even conflicts with his sleep. Having had personal experience with film
production on a much smaller scale, I was always aware of the daunting
amount of innovation and commitment required in this field; however, it is
always shocking to be reminded of how much work is poured into a full-
length feature.

ENDLESS CREATIVITY OR PUTTING

OUT FIRES?
JANUARY 29, 2015 PRISCILLA COMPTON LEAVE A COMMENT

Truffaut’s La Nuit Americaine (1973) points to many of Munsterberg’s

examples of what makes films or “photoplays” unique. With its range of
camera angles, quick cuts, multiple story lines cutting back and forth, and
other devices, La Nuit Americaine shows the technical aspects of what
distinguishes film from theatre. The constructed sets, such as Julie and
Alphonse’s bedroom window that is raised on scaffolding to appear to be
facing his parent’s room, allow Truffaut to overcome the limitations of
space. With this liberation, “a freedom [is] gained which gives new wings
to the artistic imagination” (Munsterberg, Critical Visions). As argued by
Munsterberg, film provides a medium for endless creativity which is
demonstrated by the “behind the scenes” look into movie making as seen
in La Nuit Americaine. Although Munsterberg touts film as being the best
artistic medium of his time, he does not account for the accompanying
problems that it demands. Tight budgets and deadlines, emotionally
unstable actors, etc. are all inevitable issues that come along with making
a motion picture. So, while film provides a medium for endless creativity,
it also requires putting out a lot of fires. Watching this film, I cannot help
but think the effort it took to get some of my favorite movies to the box
office. As said by Truffaut (Director Ferrand) in the film, “Making a film is
like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for
a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive”.
TRUFFAUT’S “LA NUI AMERICAINE”
JANUARY 28, 2015 ONEILLB LEAVE A COMMENT

Francois Truffaut’s “La Nuit Americaine” presents a rather light-hearted

representation of what it takes to make a film. Many of the difficulties
associated with making a film to come light as the director finds himself
on an impossibly tight schedule and several of the actors suffer from
debilitating off-set issues. Though we have not finished the film, it is
already clear that the production of “Pamela” (the film within the film) will
not end without another series of stressful events.

Truffaut makes an effort to call attention to cinema’s inaccurate

depictions of both the reality of the world itself and the truth of what went
into making the ideal picture that millions view on screen. Scenes of
“Pamela” are shot over and over and over again with mounting frustration
after every attempt and a mental breakdown from one of the leading
actresses (Severine) to cap it all off. Seemingly unimportant logistics are
micromanaged to a fault, and poorly written contract-clauses force
Ferrand to make unsettling decisions about his cast. To paraphrase,
Ferrand notes that he originally intended to make a great movie, and now
he just hopes to be able to finish it, after being faced with a 7 week
ultimatum. I found all of this to be extremely enlightening, as I never
quite conceptualized exactly how difficult and frustrating it is to make all
of this happen. As Orson Welles so elegantly put it, “a writer needs a pen,
an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.” Ferrand
struggles to keep his army together, finding himself faced with little tiny
problems all the way down to a kitten that won’t drink the milk he puts
out for it. It doesn’t ever seem like anything will be easy, and the whole
thing is enough to make the whole operation seem like a complete drag.
Upon viewing the preview of one of her films, one actress declares, “I did
that? All I remember is the waiting.” I think that quote pretty effectively
sums up the point that Truffaut wants to make about film-making –
despite the glorification of the plot and the characters themselves, the
input is far, far uglier than the output.

A further comment on cinema’s departure from reality is made as the

stars of the film are all asked about the plot. The film is a tragedy by
genre, and Alphonse, Alexandre and Julie all point to this fact with
different interpretations of what that means. Regardless of what the
actors and actresses say to this point, what comes through to the viewer
is the fact that the storyline of the film within the film is quite linear – that
is to say their lives are pre-destined to resolve in some thematic or
predictable way based on the general requirements of a tragedy. In this
sense the film has automatically distanced itself from reality, and Truffaut
chooses to accentuate this by presenting a conversation between Ferrand
and Alphonse in which the distraught actor is consoled about the
departure of his girlfriend, whom he idealistically and selfishly presumed
to be his fiancé. Unable to cope with this “real” life tragedy, Alphonse
whines about the unexpected rupture of his relationship. Ferrand
responds by telling him that “movies go on like trains in the night.” What
he means by this is that in films, unlike in the real-world lives of the
people who represent characters, the plot will simply move forward
without any unintended hiccups. There is no room for a diversion from
the path. It seems as though Alphonse pictured his romance with Lilliane
to be as perfect and ideal as the instant and illicit love relationship
between the characters that Julie and Alexandre play in “Pamela,” and
could not come to terms with the fact that this just wasn’t meant to be.
To make things worse, Julie ends up sleeping with Alphonse after an effort
to explain to him that Lilliane would find herself alone and abandoned
after a brief stint with her British lover, contributing further to the harsh
and complicated emotions that Alphonse already felt. What a messy
situation. I guess Truffaut is trying to hammer home the point that
makers of films sometimes cannot escape the idealization of the world
themselves. Alphonse’s life looks to be more of a roll of the dice than a
straight path towards the eternal love he pictures in his mind.

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Home / 2016 / July / 28 / Baudry and Virtual Reality: A New Language for Cinema

BAUDRY AND VIRTUAL REALITY: A NEW

LANGUAGE FOR CINEMA
July 28, 2016 · by Josef Fairbanks · in Uncategorized
Building on the works of apparatus theorists Christian Metz and Jacques Lacan, Jean Louis Baudry
argues in his 1974 article, the “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,” that the
conditions under which cinematic effects are produced influence the spectator more that the individual
film itself. Baudry formulates his theories on the cinematic apparatus of the 1970s: theatrical
projection. In recent years, however, new technologies mean that Baudry’s ideal relationship between
spectator and screen is changing. One development in particular is live action virtual reality (VR). Live
action filmmakers now have a range of tools that could revolutionize the way we experience the
movies, and help filmmakers reconsider the relationship between their craft and their perceived
audiences. Rather than a spectacle, a live action virtual reality film is perceived, and must, therefore,
be conceived as a bodily experience.

According to Baudry, the cinematic apparatus is not just the camera and the projector, which
produces the images that make up the film, but it also includes the camera operator, as well as the
cinema theater. He argues that the role of film is to reproduce, through its technological bases, an
ideology of idealism. An effective film, therefore, creates the illusion what is seen is “objective reality”
and is so because the spectator believes he/she is the eye that calls it into being. Baudry relates the
spectator’s position in cinema to Plato’s cave allegory. Plato compares human beings to prisoners in a
cave who are chained in a way that only allows them to look in a single direction. Puppeteers outside
of the prisoners’ field of view cast shadows on a wall. Thus, Baudry views spectators as ‘glued’ to the
projection surface.

Furthermore, Baudry argues that the cinematic experience is cognitive. The spectator understands
the world represented on screen as meaningful because the camera makes it so. That is, the
spectator identifies less with “what is represented,” and more so with “what makes it seen:” the
camera (42). Baudry argues that theatrical projection of the static images produced by the camera
maintains the illusion of continuous movement in linear succession. This ensures the central position
of the spectator and enables the “transcendental subject” to combine dislocated fragments into a
coherent meaning he/she understands as the narrative (42).

Critiques of Baudry’s theory point out that it poses a one-way relationship between the spectator and
the filmic text. Many film theorists are critical of the way the spectator is manipulated to follow a single
narrative, and the underlying supposition that the spectator is an inactive victim subjected to the
ideology of the filmmaker. Moreover, the relationship between spectator and cinema is thought of as
purely visual. The cinematic experience, according to Baudry, therefore, presupposes the
disembodiment of the spectator, and fails to address the other sensory responses that a film can
stimulate.

Baudry’s conceptualization of the relationship between screen and spectator can be reworked with the
introduction of Virtual Reality technologies. Live action virtual reality experiences are meant to capture
the feeling of presence, which is not consumed cognitively but rather in a sensual fashion. Scenes are
designed with the physical presence of spectator in mind, incorporating both visual and aural spaces.
Live-action virtual reality experiences are developed by 360-degree 3D (stereoscopic) video
technologies, meaning that the cinematic apparatus is no longer theatrical projection as described by
Baudry. Rather than being “chained” to the projection surface, the spectator of a virtual reality film is
surrounded by the action. The action is not projected on screen, but viewed in virtual reality headsets
such as Samsung Gear VR or Oculus Rift. Virtual reality goggles immerse the viewer within a scene,
making him or her a part of the virtual environment.

As a spectator experiences a scene in a virtual reality headset, 360 audio follows the position of the
head, always matching the direction of the sound with the position of the sound source in relation to
the viewer. The spectator becomes a character in the narrative or (non-narrative). The spectator does
not identify with the gaze of Baudry’s “transcendental subject,” but instead assumes the gaze by
putting on a headset.

In this way, live-action virtual reality brings a new perspective to Baudry’s apparatus theory. New
technologies are changing the way films are experienced, and filmmakers must reconsider the logic
behind how films are made. According to Felix & Paul Studios, creators of the live action virtual reality
documentary, Herders (2015), when using virtual reality technology, directors aim to erase the sense
of visual manipulation. For example, filmmakers working with virtual reality try to avoid montage–the
main building block of filmmaking known as “the cut”–and instead present the spectator with longer
takes, similar to everyday perception. (Although, it’s thought that virtual reality works will employ
manipulation of the viewer’s gaze through the use of positional audio).

Live action virtual reality will not replace classical film; it will likely be a new medium of its own. These
new technologies bring new perspectives to Baudry’s apparatus theory. Virtual reality is a means to
“break out” of the cinematic apparatus and the one-way relationship between screen and spectator. A
film conceptualized to incorporate the physical presence of the spectator, and minimize visual
manipulation is, in some ways, a response to critiques of Baudry’s theory. Live action virtual reality is
an important step forward in moving the language of cinema forward in the digital age. It’s an example
of the way digital media is altering, perhaps fundamentally, what it means to be a film, and of how the
moving-image culture is constantly being redefined.

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