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Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema
A pioneer in the field, Christian Metz applies insights of structural linguistics to the language of film.
"The semiology of film . . . can be held to date from the publication in 1964 of the famous essay by Christian Metz, 'Le cinéma: langue ou langage?'"—Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement
"Modern film theory begins with Metz."—Constance Penley, coeditor of Camera Obscura
"Any consideration of semiology in relation to the particular field signifying practice of film passes inevitably through a reference to the work of Christian Metz. . . . The first book to be written in this field, [Film Language] is important not merely because of this primacy but also because of the issues it raises . . . issues that have become crucial to the contemporary argument."—Stephen Heath, Screen
"The semiology of film . . . can be held to date from the publication in 1964 of the famous essay by Christian Metz, 'Le cinéma: langue ou langage?'"—Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement
"Modern film theory begins with Metz."—Constance Penley, coeditor of Camera Obscura
"Any consideration of semiology in relation to the particular field signifying practice of film passes inevitably through a reference to the work of Christian Metz. . . . The first book to be written in this field, [Film Language] is important not merely because of this primacy but also because of the issues it raises . . . issues that have become crucial to the contemporary argument."—Stephen Heath, Screen
286 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 24, 2011
A reading of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics is a prerequisite for understanding Metz's book, or at least a basic understanding of structural linguistics and semiotics is. This is what makes Metz brilliant and at the same time a complete failure as far as film theorists go. The man's influence is widespread, but it may be in the sense that his writings offer us the sort of eclectic insight that was typical of the Cahiers du Cinema. And Film Language is basically a collection of his writings from that journal; essays that display a preoccupation with a structural analysis of film grammar and language.
Metz's basic theoretical aim is to apply the methods of structural linguistics to an image dependent medium. As is the case with structural linguistics, the whole of any one thing is broken down into its collection of units. With language, a sentence has meaning only after each unit of it is taken into consideration. Saussure once used the chess analogy; each piece's value is determined by its relationship to other pieces on the board. So letters and phonemes basically make up the single word forms (syntagmas) which compose the sentence, and a sequence of sentences make up a paragraph, etc. This of course, is a sort of crash-course explanation, but it gets the basic idea across. So the question then is; how can we apply these concepts to images? Not only that, but with the nature of the medium of cinema in mind; its stylistic evolution (which does not begin with sound, or any sort of phonetic language), how then can Metz apply this methodology in an adequate way?
He seems to consider a sequence within a scene to be the, more or less, smallest unit. It seems as though the single image or frame should be. This is where the english translation runs into difficulties with Metz. Sequence basically implies one shot or cut. Within the structure of any given cinematic narrative, these sequences, themselves part of single scenes, provide an entire film with a readable, image-based language. Therefore the cinematic medium provides the viewer with meaning or content (a word that Metz seems to dislike) through a language of images.
Of course, Metz's study is slightly more elaborate than this, especially when he discusses questions of semiotics in film. The thing is that, taken in a simplistic light, film language is really just another way of describing the intelligibility of montage. Film theory that is enslaved by a methodological application such as structural linguistics is bound to fail because its initial intention or use was for human language. The cinematic medium is basically too complex to be understood using Saussurian concepts. It's difficult to blame Metz too much though, and his tone is pretty self-effacing throughout this collection of essays. Which in a way, makes Film Language somewhat credulous, or if nothing else, yet another critical application that can be used and subsequently analyzed (itself) by generation after generation of film scholars and cinephiles.
Metz's basic theoretical aim is to apply the methods of structural linguistics to an image dependent medium. As is the case with structural linguistics, the whole of any one thing is broken down into its collection of units. With language, a sentence has meaning only after each unit of it is taken into consideration. Saussure once used the chess analogy; each piece's value is determined by its relationship to other pieces on the board. So letters and phonemes basically make up the single word forms (syntagmas) which compose the sentence, and a sequence of sentences make up a paragraph, etc. This of course, is a sort of crash-course explanation, but it gets the basic idea across. So the question then is; how can we apply these concepts to images? Not only that, but with the nature of the medium of cinema in mind; its stylistic evolution (which does not begin with sound, or any sort of phonetic language), how then can Metz apply this methodology in an adequate way?
He seems to consider a sequence within a scene to be the, more or less, smallest unit. It seems as though the single image or frame should be. This is where the english translation runs into difficulties with Metz. Sequence basically implies one shot or cut. Within the structure of any given cinematic narrative, these sequences, themselves part of single scenes, provide an entire film with a readable, image-based language. Therefore the cinematic medium provides the viewer with meaning or content (a word that Metz seems to dislike) through a language of images.
Of course, Metz's study is slightly more elaborate than this, especially when he discusses questions of semiotics in film. The thing is that, taken in a simplistic light, film language is really just another way of describing the intelligibility of montage. Film theory that is enslaved by a methodological application such as structural linguistics is bound to fail because its initial intention or use was for human language. The cinematic medium is basically too complex to be understood using Saussurian concepts. It's difficult to blame Metz too much though, and his tone is pretty self-effacing throughout this collection of essays. Which in a way, makes Film Language somewhat credulous, or if nothing else, yet another critical application that can be used and subsequently analyzed (itself) by generation after generation of film scholars and cinephiles.
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August 13, 2014i haven't even read the book cuz i haven't been able to aces it thanks
July 30, 2011
The ideas are pretty much garbage. But it stimulated my thinking back when I first started taking film seriously.
December 21, 2024
It’s like the Bible of film theory
June 21, 2024
This doesn’t work because structuralism doesn’t work. At least, not the way any structuralist wants it to. Still, he had some good stuff to say. But I like Barthes and Eco more. And I am much more on board with Stam and Deleuze.
I can’t wait to deconstruct the fuck out of this in my thesis paper.
I can’t wait to deconstruct the fuck out of this in my thesis paper.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews