De la question formelle à la question du sens ?

• Main Author: Daniel Serceau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Française des Enseignants et Chercheurs en Cinéma et Audiovisuel 2009-08-01
• Series: Mise au Point
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/map/1264

In a recent text, Edgar Morin reminded us that in preceding centuries those who were “cultured” read the great literary texts, not only for their ornamental value (as Rossellini would have said) but for the inspiration that they brought to one’s own life and for what they offered as a means of reflection. The first recalls the other. Karl Popper asked “What allows culture to evolve?” then he answered his own question by saying “criticism”.If you examine carefully the films of the great directors, you will see that their approach reflects Popper’s answer. Using their main characters they develop a criticism which is often very severe. They establish a metaphorical link between the behavior of their characters and what this produces in the mind of their audience. This audience has often been called “new” because of the films they were watching. Based on Edgar Morin’s proposal, we should add they are also “new” because of the criticism itself.Even before questioning the purpose of research in film studies, wouldn’t it be more suitable to question what the cinema in itself is. And first we need to ask what we, university professors, critics, teachers, mean by the word “cinema”. Since we actually know only a small part of the world production of “animated image-sounds” ( a very limited recognition as the thesis of one of my students, who picked out the small number of quotations from films or directors that appear in our work, will show.Obviously, we are not trying to make the cinema unique which (luckily) it isn’t but to question the exact meaning of what one refers to as “how the film works” in a number of memorable films. We know how much Roberto Rossellini blamed France and, not without a certain bitterness, his friends of the “new wave” for having deserted the field of knowledge. In other words, in order to round out the question of film production itself, why should we analyze films, why should we study certain works? Should they remain “flattened out” in regards to the techniques used to construct them which they contribute to bring to light or should they be opened up to the dimension of the “referent of the imagination” the ultimate place for film projection ?