Cinema against Spectacle: Technique and Ideology Revisited [Paperback]

Jean-Louis Comollis six-part essay Technique and Ideology had a revolutionary effect on film theory and history when it first appeared inCahiers du Cin?main 1971. In 2009, Comolli revisited his earlier text, arguing that the present age, marked by the total dominance of media-filtered spectacle over image production, makes the need for an emancipated, critical spectator more pressing than ever. This volume brings together annotated translations of these two texts to provide an overview of Comollis activity as both a theorist and a filmmaker.

Jean-Louis Comolliis a French writer, editor, and film director. He was editor in chief of?Cahiers du Cin?ma?from 1966 to 1978.Daniel Fairfaxis a doctoral candidate in film studies and comparative literature at Yale University.

Preface
Philip Rosen
Introduction
Daniel Fairfax
 
Cinema against Spectacle
Introduction
Cinema against Spectacle
I. Opening the Window?
II. Inventing the Cinema?
III. Filming the Disaster?
IV. Cutting the Figure?
V. Changing the Spectator?
 
Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field
Introduction
I. On a Dual Origin
The ideological place of the “base apparatus”
Birth = deferral: The invention of the cinema
II. Depth of Field: The Double Scene
Bazin’s “surplus realism”
The work of “transparency”
For a materialist history of the cinema
“For the first time...”
III. “Primitive” Depth of Field
IV. Effacement of Depth/Advent of Speech
V. Which Speech?
 
Appendix I: Cinema/Ideology/Criticism
Appendix II: Machines of the Visible
Glossary of Terms
Publication History
Filmography
Bibliography
Translator’s Notes
InlÓ*