Page 71 - Studio International - July August 1972

The wish for invisibility world to exhibit itself, and instead its taking dialectical relation between the two possibilities,
over the task of exhibition, against its nature.' it does not seem as if a modernist mode of
The World Viewed: Remarks on the Ontology The conclusion is that film 'must declare, in filmmaking could alter or need alter the
of Film by Stanley Cavell. i74 pp, order not to risk denying' its own limits, 'in th is movement toward diminishing images of
Viking Press. $5.95. case, its outsideness to its world, and my absence humanness. Because one thing that is even less
from it.' (By the former he means the fact that clear in relation to a popular art form than in
Why should it be so difficult to locate or place the camera never includes itself in the world it relation to painting is on what level and for
one's experience of a film within the experience records, even if a mirror is present.) whom do modernist strategies operate ? Cavell
of the world ? Yet how often does film criticism In my experience, the only recent commercial has deliberately set out to write about the kinds
succeed in doing this for us or in providing an films in which the loss Cavell describes is of movies everyone sees, at least in the United
example of how to do it ? At some point everyone registered and the compensation he requires States, but despite an obvious effort he has not
realizes the total susceptibility of the visible appears are those of Godard. If any commercial written about them for the people who see
world to incorporation in film and perhaps feels filmmaker has a claim to having faced the them. So one wonders even more here than
his sense of the world's boundaries alter, not modernist challenge and having even superseded in reference to criticism of the elitist art of
just the sense of where those boundaries are it on occasion, it is Godard. Unfortunately painting, who does the author speak for
but of what they consist. That realization is Cavell misunderstands Godard, I think, almost besides himself, and need he speak for anyone
directly connected with one's ease or systematically. For this reason alone, I find the else ?
discomfiture at one's own visibility and with argument that film is about to pass into a The last chapter of the book is the most
one's worry or complacency or indifference modernist phase very dubious; Cavell does not difficult, indeed opaque on first reading, but
over how one's self is presented to other people. seem, except in one reference to Contempt, to after many readings it yielded up a fairly
(It is no accident that beginning film students so have recognized Godard's modernism at all. In beautiful account of how synchronous sound
frequently want to shoot an 'autobiographical' addition, being familiar with Cavell's interest expresses the risk and reward of having language
movie.) in modernism, I cannot help feeling when I read in our possession, or our being in its possession.
`Apart from the wish for selfhood (hence the text that he is forcing a familiar construction, `For the world is silent to us; the silence is
the always simultaneous granting of otherness one he has mastered to be sure, on his admittedly merely forever broken.' q
as well), I do not understand the value of art.' unsatisfying experience of movies during the KENNETH BAKER
Stanley Cavell might have used this statement past decade. It would be possible to go through
as a warning to the reader of the peculiar depth point by point and offer equally plausible
and narrowness of his recent book on film. The alternative explanations for every occurrence
subtitle, Reflections on the Ontology of Film, he sees as signalling the onset of a modernist
provokes irresistible curiosity, especially among situation in moviemaking. (The area he Sickert as a bunny
people who know the brilliance of Cavell's deliberately chooses not to discuss is
earlier work or of his teaching (he is Professor of experimental film; his notion of how film Sickert — The Painter and his Circle by Marjorie
Philosophy at Harvard). And who doesn't want modernism might occur would perhaps be Lilly. 174 pp, 38 black and white illustrations.
to know what kind of beings screen presences altered by seeing the films of, say, Michael Elek Books. £3 .75.
are, how they stand in relation to us ? And as Snow and Richard Serra.).
long as Cavell is answering ontological questions, There seems to be a sort of submerged Marjorie Lilly has written a nice book if you
he is satisfying. 'The world of a moving picture political theme which surfaces now and then like Sickert, and if you don't there's not much
is screened. The screen is not a support, not in the book depending upon the concept of the here to change your mind. The small section
like a canvas; there is nothing to support, that self's privacy. The idea seems to be that the on his work and the few black and white
way. It holds a projection, as light as light. A privacy of consciousness is a notion with which illustrations — largely used as biographical
screen is a barrier ... It screens me from the we try to defend ourselves against self-knowledge documents — are offered on the unargued
world it holds—that is, makes me invisible. And and the knowledge of and by others. This is assumption that 'today, he is considered by
it screens that world from me—that is, screens expressed partly by reference to common most experts to be the greatest English artist
its existence from me.' assumptions about other peoples' fantasies, for since Turner.' It seems odd that Miss Lilly
But having established that film gratifies the instance, 'We no longer grant, or take it for should not make a case for this conclusion since
ancient wish for invisibility on our part, he granted, that a man who expresses no feeling she remarks on the public neglect of Sickert's
cannot help raising the philosophical issue of has fires banked within him; or if we do grant paintings due to their inaccessibility as part of
privacy, or rather it comes up inevitably. And it him depth, we are likely not to endow him with largely private collections, and on the damage
is at this point that Cavell begins steering his a commitment to his own originality, but to done to Sickert's reputation by his constant
whole study toward the conclusion that film, suppose him banking destructive feeling.' That shifting between France and England and by
commercial film even primarily, has moved into kind of assumption is what film is supposed to his refusal to involve himself more closely with
a situation in which it must become modernist be able to speak to by virtue of its automatic schools such as the Camden Town Group. Some
in character if it is continue as art. The assurance of our invisibility while watching it. such analysis of Sickert's work is needed, for
argument is probably more convincing to people If that assurance begins to erode, for whatever the reverential approach of studies like this one
who are not familiar with Michael Fried's reason, one may expect a change in the kind of cover up the fact of Sickert's great unevenness
writings on modernist painting. (Cavell heartily subjectivity that a spectator will grant a film as a painter, ignoring his experiments in
acknowledges Fried's influence.) Cavell draws character and grant as true of himself. Certainly different styles and those elements of his work
almost exclusively upon his own experience of by now film characters generally are appearing which he imported from France and left
movies over the years to suggest that film is more and more crudely drawn, as if they could permanently in the work of others. These are
gradually losing the ability to convince us that only contain shallow or misshapen motives. But sides of Sickert's painting which are too often
it is a world (real or possible) that we are being the sociological point is left unclear. Do suffocated under the weight of such references
shown. And loss of that conviction reopens the commonplace assumptions about strangers' as Sir Anthony Blunt's to his 'record of steady
question whether or in what sense one is a self motives and intentions initially alter the public's and solid performance' and Miss Lilly's book
in agreeing to accept or reject the worldlikeness demands and expectations of new movies, or are does little to alter the picture of Sickert as an
of what a movie presents us with. He speaks of the movies primarily informing the public eminent but rather dull Edwardian painter.
`film's growing doubt of its ability to allow the imagination of motive ? Even if there is a If this book avoids analysis of Sickert's work,
57