Christian Metz (1931-1993)

1. “A film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand . . .” Christian Metz (1931-1993)

2. “Cinéma: langue ou langage?” • Testing whether or not the analytical methods of semiology are indeed applicable to all nonverbal as well as verbal phenomena. • Film, which seems to be particularly resistant to the linguistic model, poses an especially interesting problem. • Moreover, the history of film theory is full of references to the idea of a "language" or "grammar" of film. • Metz is interested in sorting out these problems while developing a rigorous method for defining how films are meaningful for their audiences.

3. Cinéma: langue ou langage? • Metz's argument is established in three stages: • A. 31-59. Is the idea of "film language" an oxymoron? • B. 60-84. The linguistic approach: • Understanding film as distinct from a verbal language (langue). Testing the limits of the comparison of “film language” to verbal languages. • C. 84-91 + “Some Points” and "Problems of Denotation." • From the linguistic to the semiological approach--towards a syntagmatic analysis of the image track. How images are organized and grouped with a view toward narrative meaning.

4. Cinéma: langue ou language? • Montage roi vs. the syntagmatic mind, or montage vs. decoupage. • "The cinema is a ‘language’; the cinema is infinitely different than verbal language [langue]”. • Ciné-Langue and Verbal Languages, or silent and sound film. • The language of silent film; language disappears when pictures talk. • "The specific nature of film is defined by the presence of a langue tending toward art, within an art that tends toward language." • Film may not be a language, but it is a discourse, a "language of art."

5. Cinéma: langue ou langage? • "The cinema is a ‘language’; the cinema is infinitely different than verbal language." • Film is too obviously a message for one not to assume that it is coded. • Includes partially coded elements (elements of continuity editing, e. g.). • Conventional to a degree in organization of narrative space and time. • But is there a pre-established film syntax? No, it is learned, established historically as an aesthetic norm.

6. Cinéma: langue ou langage? • Ciné-Langue and Verbal Languages, or silent and sound film. • The metaphor of language in theories of silent film. • “Language” disappears when pictures talk. • The appearance of the sound films demonstrates how film images are unlike verbal language.

7. Cinéma: langue ou langage? • "The specific nature of film is defined by the presence of a langue tending toward art, within an art that tends toward language." • Distinction between filmic discourse and image discourse. • Image discourse is where film resembles photography: • an open, highly connotative system; • not easily codified because it cannot be divided into parts; • it is "naturally" intelligible; • motivated relation between signifier and signified. • Filmic discourse means a completely realized artistic expression. • It is a language that contains a langue in the sense of talking pictures: images + speech, but speech 'encased' in a specific narrative form of images.

8. Filmic narrativity is a "language without a langue." • Parole -- langue. Individual utterance vs. the linguistic system through which we know whether utterances are grammatical or not, meaningful or not; e.g. the unconscious rules of English, French, etc. • Langue: distinguishing the rigorous use (English, French, German) from a loose, aesthetic use. • For Metz, language in the sense of everyday speech has a precise definition: • "Language (langue) is a system of signs used for intercommunication.” • Three precise criteria: system - sign - intercommunication.

9. Filmic narrativity is a "language without a langue." • Narrative films fail all three basic criteria for defining a langue. • Intercommunication. Film communication is unilateral; there is no reciprocity. • Absence of a strictly codified system: a highly organized code that establishes the parameters for all that can be accepted as meaningful or grammatical in a natural language. • There are no filmic "signs," at least according to Saussure's model.

10. Filmic narrativity is a "language without a langue." • There are no filmic "signs." • There is nothing in film that resembles double articulation: • 2nd articulation: the level of the signifier. The combination of phonemes into meaningful sounds. • 1st articulation: the attachment of sounds to a denoted meaning; simply speaking, a word. • signifier sound / shot / / plã / phoneme • ------------ • signified concept "shot" "plan” morpheme

11. Filmic narrativity is a "language without a langue." • There are no filmic "signs" because • of the irreducibility or indivisibility of the shot. • Due to the overwhelming impression of reality in the cinema and its analogical fullness, the image (signifier) is inseparable from, and indeed coextensive with, what it refers to (its signified). • the photographic image is universally meaningful--a “natural” sign where there is a motivated or nonarbitrary relation between signifier and signified.. • film images escape definition as a langue because of their connotative richness.

12. Filmic narrativity is a "language without a langue." • For Metz, the closest linguistic equivalent for the shot is what he calls an enoncé, an oral sentence or statement. • The closest linguistic equivalent for an image of a gun is "Here is a gun!." • The image is, like a sentence, "a complete, assertive statement." • The film scene or sequence, with its complex and partially systematic articulation of image-statements, is more like the novel, an aesthetic discourse.