The Matter of Vision. Peter Wyeth

is nature

      Nature becomes culture

Cinema is culture⁷⁸.

      ii

      Movement I.

      Cinema is moving images

      Movement is fundamental to existence

      Movement of a predator.

      Life is movement

      Death is no movement.

      Vision captures movement.

      Evolution favoured Vision

      The eye is the first sense.

      We follow the hero

      As we follow the predator

      A matter of life and death.

      iii

      Movement II.

      Cinema is Emotion

      Classical Hollywood made Emotion visible

The movement of Emotion became visible⁷⁹.

      We follow Emotional movement on the screen.

      The fortunes of the hero/ine carry our attention

      We watch their fate as it were our own.

      iv

      Movement III.

      Movement attracts Emotion

      Movement generates Emotion

      Movement creates Emotion.

      We are moved.

      Movement of the hero across the frame

      extended in time and space

      by metaphorical movement

      of emotions around him.

      We care about the fate of the hero

      Only because we care about our own.

      The mechanism of Cinema

      arouses the same processes

      In the human brain

      We follow the fate of the heroine

      New information all the time

      Adds to our knowledge about her.

      Stars suspend a negative conclusion

      Even when the hero is a baddie

(Hitchcock’s Uncle Charlie⁸⁰)

      The trajectory of the fate of the hero attracts us

      As our own fate at the hands of a predator.

      The graph of his rise and fall

      attracts our attention

      as he stands in for us.

      Like and dislike

      Love and hate.

      Life and death.

      An unbroken continuum.

      Cinema is Emotion in motion.

      v.

      Empathy I

The brain and the body are one⁸¹

      Our brains inhabit the bodies of others

      Our brains imitate the Emotions of others

Imitation is the mode of attachment to another.⁸²

      We see more than we know

      We cannot avoid knowing the mind of another None conscious, all Automatic

      opposite to the wisdom of philosophers.

      A hero in jeopardy puts us in jeopardy

Emotional identification/intuitive harmonisation⁸³

      We become the hero

      sharing what s/he feels.

      Light from the dark

      Illumination.

      vi

      Empathy II

      The fate of the hero.

      Ninety minutes

      to watch a predator.

      A short time

      When life is at stake.

      Cinema adds to our fascination with movement

      fascination with the fate of the hero

      Our own fate at the hands of the predator

      is turned into a fascination

      with the fate of the hero

      Involving the same emotions

      transferred from ourselves

      To her or him

      On the screen.

      vii

      Cinema dramatises Vision

      The quality of Vision exceeds our view

      Everything we know

      we know from Vision

      We see more than we know

      (than we are aware)

      Cinema taps into this power

      and intensifies it.

      Cinema dramatises Vision.

      Emotion keeps our eyes on the hero/ine.

      But of what we learn

      we Know only a fraction

      The iceberg effect

      The realm of the Automatic.

      To bring the Automatic to light

Is a matter for experiment⁸⁴.

      viii

      A film is not a text

      A film is not a piece of literature

Non-sense⁸⁵ to refer to a film as a text.

      Only under the hegemony of Logocentrism

      does such reduction make sense.

      Cinema is not structured like a language

Cinema is structured like the brain⁸⁶.

      ix

      Historicism:

      Classical Hollywood

      from Stagecoach (1939) to Marnie (1964).

      Defining characteristic of ‘Classical’ Cinema

      It made emotion visible.

      In Mildred Pierce I know where I am. I feel that I know the emotional status of the heroine.

      I am shown how she feels. Not ‘literally’ through the actor’s anguished facial expression. But dramatically: the narrative sets up dramatic situations which force to me to project onto her ambivalent expression her emotional status

      Kuleshov – as understood by Hitchcock:

      We see a character’s action

      We see another character watching that action

      And that character’s reaction to it.

      The reaction expresses a particular reaction

      Not the only one possible

      But one to guide us in the labyrinth of possible meanings.

      The crying baby

      The sad man

      The crying