Film semiotics
The film semiotics , a branch of film theory , deals with the semiotics in film . Each film consists of individual images that are put together to create sequences . These sequences of images convey feelings, events and other important content. The code exists in the visual language of the film so that this content can be “correctly” understood and interpreted . The film semiotics examines the relationship of the film to the depicted reality, its representation mechanisms and the effect of its levels of meaning.
Approaches to film semiotics in the 1960s
As early as the 1920s, Tynjanow and Eisenstein made comparisons between the mode of action of films and the sign and communication system of language . It was not until the 1960s that fundamental positional approaches emerged with the work of Jean Mitry , Jan Marie Lambert Peters and Christian Metz . For Mitry and Metz in particular, the relationship between object and representation of the object has cultural connotations, as in structural linguistics . You are in the footsteps of Ferdinand de Saussure .
Even Umberto Eco pursued, analogous to the consideration of the language, a structuralist approach, trying the smallest filmic unit, the frame to look at and its components, as the basic element of a sign system. The results of the psychology of perception show, however, that the mechanisms of action of the film do not correspond to those of natural language, that is, the film is an apparatus with content that functions according to rules other than linguistic ones.
Christian Metz took up a similar approach to Eco, but denied the importance of the individual image as the smallest unit of symbols, since it was not perceptible as such for the viewer. Rather, the larger unity is to be considered, the sequence, which also functions according to linguistic mechanisms, since it can act segmenting , isolating, opposing and so on. Considering various strategies of montage , Metz compiled a list of sequence types that he called the “ syntagms of film”.
Pier Paolo Pasolini represented a more cognitional aspect of film semiotics and stated that film is “a written language of reality” . The imitation of human action is the structuring principle of the film.
The drafts of understanding by Eco, Pasolini and Metz and the other pioneers of film semiotics such as Jan Marie Peters, Peter Wollen , Jurij M. Lotman and Hartmut Bitomsky , however, remained largely unreceived, as structural weaknesses could not be overlooked: the narrowing to comparison with language became the Film does not do its job justice.
Psychoanalytic Approaches in the 1970s
In the mid-1970s, the psychoanalytic film theory , based on Marxist principles and the interpretation of an unconscious symbolic language, became the focus of film semiotics. Christian Metz transferred psychoanalytic terms, based on Freud and Lacan , to the effective structure of the film. He emphasizes the viewer's pleasure in the deception.
Since the 1980s
The semiotics of film was increasingly no longer viewed as an independent, monolithic research area, but rather, in thinking about film, transferred to partial aspects of deciphering film language using specific film techniques. Dramaturgical film structures such as point of view , flashback or parallel montage , embedded in the context of film history and in the genre structure , were examined for their interpretability, as were isolated aspects such as light, color and sound in the film. Today's approaches are more pragmatic than the early theories and investigate the communicative interactions between film, filmmaker and viewer on a case-by-case basis.
literature
- Dennis Gräf et al .: Film semiotics. An introduction to audiovisual format analysis. Marburg, 2011.
- Sigrid Lange: Introduction to Film Studies. Darmstadt 2007 (Chapters 5 and 6).
- Christian Metz: Semiology of the film. Munich, 1972.
- Christian Metz: Language and Film. Frankfurt am Main, 1973.
- Karl-Dietmar Möller: film language. A critical history of theory. Münster, 1986.
- Peter Wollen: Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. London, 1969.
- Peter Wuss: Film Analysis and Psychology. Berlin, 1993.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan Marie Lambert Peters: Structure of Film Language , GRIN Verlag, kindle 2013.