Abstract
As mentioned in the introduction, recent film theory has been afraid of using the notion of the auteur and is quite dismissive of the Nouvelle Vague’s belief in style as marking the most salient thematic and formal characteristics of some filmmakers. This critical attitude is in line with the rejection of subjectivity that was thematized by the most avant-garde theoretical approaches of the 1960s and 1970s, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. Unfortunately, the fear of falling into the Romantic myth of the artist has created a split between academia and the rest of the world; and so-called ‘theory’ ends up being confined to academic studies and separated out from the everyday relationship with art. Names of various types of artists or authors circulate; their usage belongs to our linguistic exchanges, to the normal flow of mean-ing. Strangely enough, the rejection of a mild form of authorship — and the confusion of this with the idolatry of genius — maintains a Romantic vein: the very one of the nihilist outcomes of some forms of Romanticism, such as the belief in the end of intentionality; the belief that, as phrased by Jacques Lacan, we are ‘spoken’ through language and that the notion of representation would deny the rights of the signifier. I am therefore putting the case for the middle ground; namely the conviction that the fact that some authors have specific styles does not detract from the amount of impersonality that is inherent in any creative act.
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Notes
See Pierre Bourdieu (1979) La Distinction, critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Minuit). For Bourdieu to seek a distinction means to state one’s own attitude in our consumer society, exhibiting agreements and refusals, tying up with some social groups or others. For a very good synthesis of the various contem-porary tendencies in understanding the notion of style and ‘stylization’
see Laurent Jennny (2000) ‘Du style comme pratique’, Littérature, 118, 98–117.
See Jean-Loup Bourget (1998) Hollywood: La Norme et la Marge (Paris: Nathan), pp. 9–90.
On the essay in film see S. Liandrat-Guigues and M. Gagnebin eds. (2004) L’Essai et le Cinéma (Seyssel: Champ Vallon).
See Meyer Schapiro (1961) ‘Style’ in Morris H. Philipson ed. Aesthetics Today (Cleveland: World), pp. 81–113; ‘Style’ Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society. Selected Papers (New York: Braziller), pp. 51–102.
See David Bordwell (2006) The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press), pp. 117–189.
See Andre Bazin (1972, 1971) ‘De Sica: Metteur en scene’ in What is Cinema? trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press), pp. 61–82.
See André Bazin (1972) Orson Welles (Paris: Éd. du Cerf); (1991) Orson Welles: A Critical View (Venice, CA: First Acrobat Books), pp. 64–82.
See Peter Biskind (1998) Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood: (New York Simon & Schuster).
See Jacques Aumont (1990) L’Image (Paris: Nathan), pp. 222–226.
Marcel Proust (1971) ‘Notes sur le monde mystérieux de Gustave Moreau’ in Contre Sainte-Beuve: Essais et Articles (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’), p. 669.
Lawrence Friedman (1999) The Cinema of Martin Scorsese (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company), p. 8.
Baudelaire (1970 first ed. 1947) Paris Spleen II (New York: New Directions Books), p. X.
See ‘Quentin Tarantino in Furious Rant over Django Unchained Violence Questions’ in The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/ film-news/9 794854/Quentin-Tarantino-in-furious-rant-over-Dj ango-Unchained-violence-questions.html. Accessed 23 May 2013.
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© 2014 Patrizia Lombardo
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Lombardo, P. (2014). Style and Signature in Film. In: Memory and Imagination in Film. Language, Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319432_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319432_4
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