Last Week's Argument Today!

This is last week's argument, I suppose, but what can you do. I want to add a couple things to all the controversy about Jonathan Rosenbaum's take on Ingmar Bergman. It's been much hashed out on the blogs: here's Harry Tuttle on Rosenbaum, and Part 2. And Jonathan Lapper's rather similar response. Also see Girish, Scanners, (several posts, including quite a few comments from JR himself), Elusive Lucidity, and nearly everyone else on the planet. Including this, David Bordwell's comments on Rosenbaum on Bergman (and Antonioni, and Scorsese and Woody Allen on their favorites...) The Bordwell post gets at a couple things I've been thinking about - first, the constraints of space on Rosenbaum's argument - the fact that it really doesn't amount to an argument at all, but the summary of an argument, referring to things (Dreyer's use of space, to name one) that have inspired whole books. And second - he starts to address some of the terms of the debate: what did Bergman do, stylistically? There have been claims made about Bergman - he is too theatrical, he is not cinematic enough, he is not formally innovative - but these claims tend to be just laid out there, without much detail or definition. What do you mean, cinematic? That sort of thing is worth thinking about....

As for me - I don't have a lot to add to the debate. A couple notes, nothing too profound.... First - given a week or so to think about it all - I think the problems with Rosenbaum's article come down to three things: (1) space and format: he only has time to lay out what an argument would look like, not to make the argument. (2) the premise - that the best way to assess the value of an artist in in comparison to other artists: thus he writes an article that seems really about why Bergman is not as good as Godard or Bresson or Dreyer. (3) The rhetorical problem of presenting a comparative argument (Bergman is not as good as Bresson, etc.) in absolute terms (Bergman is not good.) That doesn't follow. It seems to me - the criteria you could use to show that Bergman is not as good as Bresson or Godard would still show that Bergman was damned good. In later comments, Rosenbaum seems to be saying that (see his comments at Emerson's place.) But the NYT article gave the strong impression that he was dismissing Bergman, a good deal more categorically.

And - moving on: thinking about these debates has gotten me thinking about some of the terms being thrown around in the middle. Like "theatrical." Some variation on the term comes up in a lot of this conversation, from Rosenbaum's article (claiming Bergman's cinematic innovations came from "his skill and experience as a theater director [rather] than a desire or capacity to change the language of cinema in order to say something new") onwards - but what does it mean? What does it mean when people answered that Dreyer or Rivette were as theatrical as Bergman? It's tempting to ask if it means anything - but I resist that temptation, and suggest, instead, that it can mean a bunch of things - that the term tends to function by pointing to certain elements of the theater that are relevant to the claims being made. Which better sound vague and obscure, because it is. At least shifty. But that's the point. The term is used to indicate any number of things associated with the theater (and its relationship with film), which can be quite incompatible with one another.

Such as? Theatrical can mean, looking like a play: the unity of time and space, the emphasis on the stage, specifically on the framing of the stage - limited audience point of view, maintaining the line between audience and action.... or, having almost nothing to do with that - Theatrical can refer to acting styles - projecting to the back of the room, outsized gestures, etc. - Warren William as Julius Caesar!... or - Theatrical can refer to a kind of notion of human nature - seeing human behavior as dominated by performance, the adoption of roles.... Etc.

Yet: to lump these types of things together raises all kinds of problems. The third example describes Renoir rather well, I think - but Renoir's use of space, the camera etc., has nothing to do with the first type of "theater." Or take "theatrical" acting - take Warren William if you want: how is his performance as Julius Caesar (in DeMille's Cleopatra) not cinematic? It fits the character certainly - he's Caesar! he's supposed to dominate the room when he comes in; the "theatricality" of the performance works within the film.

And more than that (building on a comment I made on Girish's post), in some ways, "theatrical" elements in films are more formally innovative and challenging than "cinematic" devices. Restricted use of space, emphasis on frames, on the proscenium arch, excessive acting styles, certain kinds of stagings and framings, inclusion of performances within the performance (a la Cassavetes or Rivette, or quite a few Bergmans), all create the formal breaks in the illusion that generate certain types of art. I'm thinking of Noel Burch, here - he wrote about the difference between presentational art and representational art. The latter attempts to make people forget the medium: to see the story being told. Presentational art, on the other hand, constantly calls your attention to the act of putting on a show. For Burch, conventional Hollywood continuity was representational - whereas primitive cinema, for example, was much more presentational - making the act of putting on a show manifest.

Enough... one of the things holding this post up has been that I don't have any of these thoughts worked out very well. And am cramming 2-3 different ideas together.... I want to think more about what makes something theatrical - what is meant when people call something "theatrical" - I'd love to see a kind of anatomy of things that can be called "theatrical" in films. And beyond that is the consideration of Burch's point: the ways theater can function in film, however we value them. The difference between presentational and representational art is an interesting one - and I find that a lot of the debate over Bergman is tied to issues like that. Or to the difference between expressionism and formalism - an even knottier set of definitions and categories that I shouldn't mention, though I think I mean by it something like what Zach Campbell wrote in comments to his piece:

My impression of Bergman is that he was always going for effects, conclusions. To put it very crudely, because I can't find a more articulate or eloquent way of stating it, when I'm moved by Bergman--unsettled, saddened, uplifted--I feel like this movement is the calculation of form, that the form did what it was "supposed" to do. This isn't a sin, but neither is it the pinnacle of film art as I experience it and choose to think it. Whereas in Dreyer, I am constantly challenged, shot-to-shot sometimes, by the frictions and (im)balances and of shots, pictorial compositions, cuts, camera movements, etc. I don't feel like Dreyer is leading me to conclusions at all; there's a richness and a weirdness to shot combinations or spatial articulations that just doesn't exist in most of what I've seen in Bergman.

Form can either signify, or resist (delay, complicate, exceed, etc.) signification. Formalism, presentational art, resists signification - forces attention on the act of signification. And - well, we all have our preferences, and that's where mines runs.... But I'd better leave this for now.