Arnheim for Film and Media Studies

300 Pages·2010·3.444 MB·English

by  Higgins, Scott (editor)

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ARNHEIM FOR FILM
AND
MEDIA STUDIES
Rudolf Arnheim (1904–2007) was a pioneering figure in film studies, best
known for his landmark book on silent cinema Film as Art. He ultimately
became more famous as a scholar in the fields of art and art history, largely
abandoning his theoretical workoncinema. However,his later aesthetic
theories on form, perception, and emotion should play an important role
in contemporary film and media studies.
In this enlightening new volume in the AFI Film Readers series, an inter-
national group of leading scholars revisits Arnheim’s legacy for film and
media studies. In fourteen essays, the contributors bring Arnheim’s later
work on the visual arts to bear on film and media, while also reassessing
the implications of his film theory to help refine our grasp of Film as Art
and related texts. The contributors discuss a broad range of topics including
Arnheim’sfilm writings in relation to modernism, his antipathy to sound
as well as color in film, the formation of his early ideas on film against the
social and political backdrop of the day, the wider uses of his methodology,
and the implications of his work for digital media.
This is essential reading for any film and media student or scholar seeking
to understand the meaning and contemporary impact of Arnheim’s
foundational work in film theory and aesthetics.
Scott Higginsis Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University.
He is author of Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s.
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Previously published in the AFI Film Readers series
Edited by Edward Branigan and Charles Wolfe
Psychoanalysis and Cinema Violence and American Cinema
E. Ann Kaplan, ed. J. David Slocum, ed.
Fabrications Masculinity
Jane M. Gaines and Peter Lehman, ed.
Charlotte Herzog, eds.
Westerns
Sound Theory/Sound Practice Janet Walker, ed.
Rick Altman, ed.
Authorship and Film
Film Theory Goes to the Movies David A. Gerstner and
Jim Collins, Ava Preacher Collins, Janet Staiger, eds.
and Hilary Radner, eds.
New Media
Theorizing Documentary Anna Everett and
Michael Renov, ed. John T. Caldwell, eds.
Black American Cinema East European Cinemas
Manthia Diawara, ed. Anikó Imre, ed.
Disney Discourse Landscape and Film
Eric Smoodin, ed. Martin Lefebvre, ed.
Classical Hollywood Comedy World Cinemas,Transnational
Henry Jenkins and Kristine Perspectives
Brunovska Karnick, eds. NataˇsaDˇurovicˇová and
Kathleen Newman, eds.
The Persistence of History
Vivian Sobchack, ed. Documentary Testimonies
Bhaskar Sarkar and
The Revolution Wasn’t Televised
Janet Walker, eds.
Lynn Spigel and
Michael Curtin, eds. Slapstick Comedy
Rob King and Tom Paulus, eds.
Black Women Film and Video Artists
Jacqueline Bobo, ed. The Epic Film in World Culture
Robert Burgoyne, ed.
Home, Exile, Homeland
Hamid Naficy, ed.
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ARNHEIM FOR FILM
AND
MEDIA STUDIES
EDITED BY
SCOTT HIGGINS
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First published 2011 Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Arnheim for film and media studies / edited by Scott Higgins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Arnheim, Rudolf—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Motion
pictures—Philosophy. 3. Motion pictures—Aesthetics.
PN1998.3.A7557A75 2013
791.4301—dc22
2010024136
ISBN 0-203-87691-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–80107–2 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–80108–9 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–87691–6 (ebk)
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contents
illustrations vii
foreword: rudolf arnheim in retrospect ix
dudley andrew
acknowledgements xv
introduction 1
scott higgins
1. rudolf arnheim: clarity, simplicity, balance 19
david bordwell
2. arnheim and modernism 31
malcolm turvey
3. rudolf arnheim’s early passage between social
and aesthetic film criticism 51
eric rentschler
4. screening out sound: arnheim and cinema’s
silence 69
nora m. alter
5. agestalt approach to film analysis 89
meraj dhir
6. deft trajectories for the eye: bringing arnheim to
vincente minnelli’s color design 107
scott higgins
7. perfecting the complete cinema: rudolf arnheim
and the digital intermediate 127
jinhee choi
8. art, accident, and the interpretation of the modern
world 141
patrick keating
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9. visual thinking of the avant-garde film 159
maureen turim
10. arnheim on radio: materialtheorieand beyond 177
shawn vancour
11. television from afar: arnheim’s understanding of
media 195
doron galili
s
nt
e 12. arnheim and comics 213
nt
o greg m. smith
c
13. arnheim on style history 229
colin burnett
14. arnheim on the ontology of the photographic
image 249
vincent bohlinger
bibliography 267
notes on contributors 271
index 275
vi
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illustrations
1.1a and b. From Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative
Eye,2nd ed., by Rudolf Arnheim © 1974 by the Regents
of the University of California. Courtesy University of
California Press 22
1.2. From Art and Visual Perception: A Psychologyof the Creative Eye,
2nd ed., by Rudolf Arnheim © 1974 by the Regents of the
University of California. Courtesy University of
California Press 27
6.1. Near-complementary contrast between cape and
background in Adventures of Robin Hood.Frame enlargement 114
6.2. Red accents include the soldier’s gift, the flowers, the sign
above the bar, and the no-entry symbols, against
uniformly gray mise en scène.Playtime,frame enlargement 115
6.3. Mother anddaughter are separated by color harmonies
andarchitecture in Umbrellas of Cherbourg.Frame enlargement 115
6.4. Leroy Daniel’s red and green Hawaiian shirt attracts
attentionin the backgroundof the 42ndStreet arcade in
The Band Wagon.Frame enlargement 116
6.5. Astaire’s blue socks connect with the blue neon sign in
The Band Wagon.Frame enlargement 117
6.6. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 119
6.7. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 120
6.8. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 121
6.9. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 123
6.10. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 123
6.11. Meet Me in St. Louisframe enlargement 124
8.1. In Umberto D.,the “open form” expresses Umberto’s
insignificance in the urban environment. Frame
enlargement 150
8.2. The composition gives almost equal weight to Umberto
and a minor character. Frame enlargement 152
8.3. A hierarchical composition with Umberto in a prominent
position. Frame enlargement 153
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8.4. Later in the sequence, the camera dollies in toward
Maria, as focus and lighting separate her from the
background. Frame enlargement 154
13.1. Arnheim’s droodle of three conceptions of style history 235
13.2. Camilleframe enlargement 236
13.3. Diary of a Country Priest’s expressionism. Frame enlargement 237
13.4. Bordwell’s functionalist theory of style 242
14.1. “Here there are blueberries” (22 July 1944) from the
s
n Karl Höcker album. Image courtesy of the United States
o
ati Holocaust Memorial Museum 260
r
t
us 14.2. Sabrina Harman with the corpse of Manadel al-Jamadi
ill (4 November 2003) 261
viii
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rudolf arnheim
in retrospect
f o r e w o r d
d u d l e y a n d r e w
The Rudolf Arnheim chapter of The Major Film Theorieswas composed in
Paris in Fall 1973, where I had gone—my first trip abroad—to research
André Bazin’slife, having recently defended mydissertation on his ideas in
light of Frenchphilosophy. You can imagine why Arnheim appears in that
bookmainly as a foil to Bazin, for he had laid out an aesthetics of the silent
cinema based on principles of “classical” art, whereas Bazin, as has become
increasingly clear, assumed sound cinema to be a natural development
of an artform whose “modern” phase he felt himself privileged to witness
in its prise de pouvoir. Arnheim wrote defensively and often nostalgically,
anxious over the coming collapse of everything he held dear, while Bazin
radiates optimism, expectantabout the technology andthe films to come.
Just a couple months after completing that chapter, Arnheim appeared
to me in a better light. I was lucky enough to be among the dozen
participants in Christian Metz’sannual seminar at the École Pratique des
Hautes Études. One week he announced a break in his suite of presentations
that would later appear as “The Imaginary Signifier,” for he wanted to
talk about Arnheim whose writings he had just encountered, seemingly for