Kaja Silverman writes in “Suture [Excerpt]” that the construction of the cinematic film as an object that creates a kind of anxiety for the viewer. Because the image is bound on all sides by the periphery of the camera, the viewer’s point of view is limited, reduced, and fixed (219-29). And because imaged are stitched together on the film stock into a series of images, a form of suturing is at play in constructing the narrative. Filmmakers get spectator to connect with the story by suturing them into the film. We, audiences find ourselves "in the story"; we get emotionally involved and identify with the character on screen. In this paper, I will connect the suture theory in relation to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), through the exploration of camera composition. The shot/ reverse shot has been identified as central to suture. Suture theorists, Jean-Pierre Oudart and Daniel Dayan “find the shot/reverse shot formation to be virtually synonymous with the operation if suture” (220). The use of shot/reverse shot aligns the spectator’s point-of-view with the character and urges the spectator to want to see the next shot. For example, in the scene of the trio decides to kill Cody, we see a shot of bandits going up the mountain. Then in reverse-shot, we are shown the reaction of the trio and Cody, whose point of view has supposedly determined the previous shot. Shot 1 has thus been converted into a signifier for shot 2, linking the field of the ‘Absent One’ to a fictional character’s gaze (220). Through this operation, spectators are stitched, sutured into the subject positions that the film constructed. The spectator is urged to identify with the gaze of the fictional character and to deny that the he/ she (the spectator) oc... ... middle of paper ... ... spectator, without ever suturing us into a position of identification with any character, although this is probably the most common way in which we are sutured into a film. However, we do not suture with a character in the film but rather with a position as that of a seeming observer of, or other fellow participant in, the story action. Works Cited Psycho. DVD. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1960; Universal City, CA: Universal Studios, 1999. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. DVD. Directed by John Huston. 1948; Burbank, CA; Turner Entertainment Co.: Warner Home Video, 2010. Silverman, Kaja. "Suture [Excerpts]." In Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, edited by Philip Rosen, 219-235. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Heath, Stephen. "Narrative Space." In Screen, edited by Philip Rosen, 379-420. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
Chatman, Seymour, "Existents." Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. 107-126, 131-145.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey asserts the fact that in mainstream films, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. That is to say, the woman is both an object of desire and a spectacle for the male voyeuristic gaze. The male's function is active; he advances the story and controls the gaze onto the women. Interestingly, the spectator identifies with the male through camera technique and style. In an effort to reproduce the so-called natural conditions of human perception, male point-of-view shots are often used along with deep focus. In addition, camera movements are usually determined by the actions of the male protagonist. Consequently, the gaze is dominated by the active male while the passive female exists to support desire within the film. In an attempt to change this structure, Mulvey stresses the importance of challenging the "look." One way this is accomplished, is in the film Reassemblage, where the look of the camera is free from male perspective and dominated more by passionate detachment. In doing this, the filmmaker, Trinh Minh-Ha attempts to destroy the satisfaction and pleasure derived from images of women in film, by highlighting the ways Hollywood depends on voyeuristic and fetishi...
In traditional Hollywood cinema, narrative film structures its gaze as masculine; films use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men, as well as symbolizing women as the desire for male. (483-94). The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) however, substitutes women with gold for male desire to fill in the narrative void.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
...ere also plays with the notion of suture in regards to the role of the audience. We enter into a dialogue with the film (using the shot/reverse/shot technique cutting/excluding/??), but then we realize that something is missing, the camera is hiding something from us (faces, names, speech, etc.). The scene is not complete, and we as an audience can only be passive observers. This is further demonstrated by the camera angles and how the camera seems to follow the protagonist as opposed to being side-by-side with him.
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print.
“of exhibitionist confrontation rather than absorption,” (Gunning, Tom 2000 p 232) as Gunning suggests the spectator is asking for an escape that is censored and delivered with a controlled element of movement and audiovisual. Gunning believes that the audience had a different relationship with film before 1906. (Gunning, Tom 2000 p 229)
Cinema studies: the key concepts (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. 2007. Lacey, N. (2005). The 'Standard'. Film Language.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Each chapter invents its own reality, a reality of the screen, of the movies, that is brought into closer contact by means of a literary text. The book as a whole, then, glorifies in the postmodern tradition multiple interpretations of reality. Movies themselves present alternative realities or interpretations of perceived realities, most often differing from our own individual constructions. Thus, by offering ...
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.