temptation ( 1946 film )
temptation is a 1946 american drama film noir directed by irving pichel. the drama features merle oberon and george brent .
a two - for - one movie review by dan stumpf: bella donna (1934) and temptation (1946) .
» a two - for - one movie review by dan stumpf: bella donna (1934) and temptation (1946) .
5 responses to “a two - for - one movie review by dan stumpf: bella donna (1934) and temptation (1946). ”
( “the temptation of st. anthony”) starkly depicts this using very modern musical gestures .
epstein, jean. l’intelligence d’une machine. paris: jacques melot, 1946 .
temptation. universal pictures, 1946. merle oberon, george brent, charles korvin, paul lukas, lenore ulric, arnold moss. based on a novel by robert hichens. director: irving pichel .
the temptation of saint anthony is an often - repeated subject in history of art and literature, concerning the supernatural temptation reportedly faced by saint anthony the great during his sojourn in the egyptian desert. anthony' s temptation is first discussed by athanasius of alexandria, anthony' s contemporary, and from then became a popular theme in western culture .
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matthias grünewald, inner right wing of the isenheim altarpiece depicting the temptation of st. anthony, 1512 - 1516 (oil on panel )
perhaps the book was simply better timed than the film. again, the film was a success, raking in five million dollars throughout 1946 and' 47. still that number is less than half of what
the story was remade in hollywood in 1946 as temptation, directed by irving pichel, with merle oberon as the femme - would - be - fatale, who marries george brent over the objections of paul lukas and subsequently falls for charles korvin. temptation seems to have set the pattern for subsequent victorian noir films like ivy (1947) and so evil my love (1948) but it also shows the sad censorial effects of its time :
o. s. s. was presented on lux radio theatre november 18, 1946. the adaptation starred ladd and veronica lake. [ 9 ]
pudovkin, vsevolod. film technique and film acting. new york: bonanza books, 1949 .
in 1946 the david l. loew - albert lewin film production company held a contest for a painting on the theme of saint anthony' s temptation, with the winner to be used in the film the private affairs of bel ami. various artists produced paintings on this subject, and contest was won by max ernst, whose work was duly shown in the film. however, the most well - known of these paintings is a failed contestant, salvador dalí' s version .
in 1946, gilbert cohen séat published the first monograph on the philosophy of film (essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du film). jean epstein’s l’intelligence d’une machine, a truly philosophical book on film, appeared in the same year. in 1948, the interdisciplinary parisian école de filmologie began approaching film from a sociological, psychological, and philosophical angle. filmology can be considered as a precursor of the semiology of cinema .
the studio had hoped to cast sterling hayden who had served in the oss in real life. however he was still in uniform in early 1946 so the film was assigned to alan ladd, whose casting was announced in january 1946. it was one of three movies being made about the oss in hollywood around this time, the others being 13 rue madeleine and cloak and dagger. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] this resulted in filming taking place in extreme secrecy .
russell, bruce. “the philosophical limits of film” in film and philosophy, special edition, 2000, pp. 163 - 167 .
by way of report: presented by the royal air force by a. h. weiler. new york times (1923 - current file) [ new york, n. y ] 03 mar 1946: x3 .
o. s. s. is a 1946 war film starring alan ladd and geraldine fitzgerald about the office of strategic services, directed by irving pichel, who would soon be blacklisted and written by richard maibaum, a world war two vet who would later write 12 of the first 15 james bond films .
paramount' s' oss' to star alan ladd: film is one of three by major studios on same subject - - four arrivals in week of local origin special to the new york times. . new york times (1923 - current file) [ new york, n. y ] 07 jan 1946: 16 .
carroll, noël. philosophical problems of classical film theory. princeton university press .
despite some critics poking fun the razor' s edge did receive an academy award nomination for best picture in 1947, but lost to what was undeniably the film of the moment, the samuel goldwyn company' s post - war triumph the best years of our lives (1946). the razor' s edge never stood a chance .
maibaum and ladd later collaborated on another oss - related film, captain carey usa .
bordwell, david. narration in the fiction film. london: methuen, 1985 .
buckland, warren. the cognitive semiotics of film. cambridge university press, 2000 .
stam, robert. film theory: an introduction. oxford: blackwell, 1999 .
langer, susanne. “a note on film” in r. d. maccann (ed .), film: a montage of theories. new york: dutton, 1966 .
the william s. hart (1864 – 1946) collection consists 35 film scripts and 9 boxes of photographs documenting hart' s professional life as both actor and director in hollywood from 1917 to 1921. the images include portraits, production stills, credits, sketches, and background photos and were assembled by le roy stone, who produced many of hart' s features .
future learning and skills – giving everyone the opportunity to build a lifelong relationship with film .
balász, béla. theory of the film. new york: arno press, 1972 .
mulhall, stephen. on film: thinking in action. london: routledge, 2002 .
paramount buys harvesting story: studio will produce houston branch' s' the big haircut' - - lead to alan ladd special to the new york times. . new york times (1923 - current file) [ new york, n. y ] 11 may 1946: 34 .
article 3 - - no title: not - so - secret only the title remains hollwood - - chapter ii continued next week frend and spurs by fred stanley. new york times (1923 - current file) [ new york, n. y ] 31 mar 1946: 49 .
while the degrees of “philosophicality” vary within different interpretations of films, it is safe to assume that any reflective study of the nature of film is philosophical. whenever scholars attempt to spell out what film is (is film an art? how is film different from other arts ?), their discourse becomes necessarily philosophical. this reflective study is not limited to film, but is true for any academic field (it becomes most obvious in philosophy of science) .
balázs, béla. early film theory: visible man and the spirit of film (trans. rodney livingstone, ed. by erica carter). new york: berghahn, 2010 .
jacques aumont, in a quoi pensent les films? , insists that “film has the power of thinking”. in the introduction of this article, the idea to see film as a form of thinking has been addressed as an important part of the philosophy of film that begins with eisenstein .
eagle, herbert. russian formalist film theory. ann arbor: michigan slavic publica­tions, 1981 .
important note: strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point - of - view, or tone of a film. it is also helpful to realize that' film noir' usually refers to a distinct historical period of film history - the decade of film - making after world war ii, similar to the german expressionism or the french new wave periods. however, it was labeled as such only after the classic period - early noir film - makers didn' t even use the film designation (as they would the labels
western
or
musical
), and were not conscious that their films would be labeled noirs .
para - philosophical studies have also been conveniently labelled as ‘film theory’. strictly speaking, film theory, which develops concepts like ‘narrativity’, ‘diegesis’, ‘genre’ or ‘authorship’ is not a unique philosophy, but is very often part of it. although parts of film theory and philosophy of film do overlap in both traditions (and since münsterberg and arnheim many film theorists have maintained that what they do is also related to the philosophy of film), it is wrong to characterize every “theoretical” reflection on film as philosophical because film theory can also be limited to the analysis of mere technicalities or textual analysis. here, film theory is not different from literary theory where reflections on authorship or analyses of narrative and genre occur most typically without necessarily receiving the label “philosophy” unless they are imbedded in more “philosophical” considerations. the contemporary anglophone philosophy of film sees this perspective slightly differently since longstanding reflections on these subjects (by cavell, carroll, bordwell, gaut, and branigan) are usually classified as philosophy .
carroll, noel. philosophical problems of classical film theory. princeton: princeton university press, 1988 .
shaw, daniel. film and philosophy: taking movies seriously. london: wallflower press, 2008 .
wartenberg, thomas e. thinking on screen: film as philosophy. london: routledge, 2007 .
the four movies that nino frank cites in his primordial 1946 essay are “the maltese falcon, ” “laura, ” “murder, my sweet, ” and “double indemnity. ” all of them were made during the second world war (though “the maltese falcon” was made in 1941, before the united states was involved in combat). the film historian sheri chinen biesen makes a convincing case, in her book “ blackout, ” that there are two separate strains of film noir—one arose during wartime, the other followed it :
by way of report: fox drops oss from' 13 rue madeleine' - - metro to reissue old hits - - addenda up for reissue kilroy turns critic a trend? by thomas m. pryor. new york times (1923 - current file) [ new york, n. y ] 25 aug 1946: 52 .
allen, richard and murray smith. film theory and philosophy. oxford: oxford university press, 1997 .
andrew, dudley j. major film theories: an introduction. oxford: oxford university press, 1976 .
loewy, hanno. béla balázs – märchen, ritual und film. berlin: vorwerk 8, 2003 .
rushton, richard & gary bettinson. 2010. what is film theory? london: open university press .
shaw, spencer. film consciousness: from phenomenology to deleuze. jefferson, nc: mcfarland, 2008 .
in the 1960’s and 1970’s, many principal theoretical discussions (such as auteur theory and genre theory) were developed in the parisian journal les cahiers du cinéma, co - founded in 1951 by andré bazin. it was in this journal that french philosophy of film began to produce its characteristic mixtures of structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and marxism. paradoxically, the affiliation of filmology with semiotics and psychology – provocative as it might have seemed – provided the philosophy of film access to academia in the 1960’s. for european state - financed universities, film studies could never have been the economic boon as they have been in the united states. french philosophy departments remain resistant in the 21 st century and permit the teaching of the philosophy of film only in institutions that are considered off the mainstream or within the newly founded – relatively small – discipline of aesthetics. while the “sociological temptation” exists, overall, french philosophy of film has remained very distinct from the sociology of cinema .
edward small made the film in collaboration with columbia studios, using an old commitment he had with louis hayward .
livingston, paisley. cinema, philosophy, bergman: on film as philosophy. oxford university press, 2009 .
more recently, daniel frampton has added a brick to the wall called “film as thought” by insisting that film does not narrate or show things, characters, or actions. instead, it thinks them. when watching a film we observe a thinking process. in his book filmosophy (2006) frampton attempts to grasp this cinematic thinking process with the help of newly coined concepts such as ‘film - thinking’ and ‘filmind’ and assigns to ‘filmosophy’ the task of “conceptualizing all film as an organic intelligence” (p. 7). film - thinking is not a metaphorical way of arranging reality, but “the filmind has its own particular film - phenomenology, its own way of attending to its world” (p. 91). there is a film - like way of thinking. philosophers like bachelard, for example, were able to produce “a flow that weaves discourses together, yet still with rigor and meaning” (p. 179). although philosophers can learn from film - thinking, frampton insists that “film has its own kind of thinking” (p. 23), that it “cannot show us human thinking, [ but that ] it shows us ‘film - thinking’” (p. 47). thinking is radically removed from the activity of merely processing data .
aitken, ian. european film theory and cinema: a critical introduction. bloomington: indiana university press, 2001 .
branigan, edward. projecting a camera: language - games in film theory. new york: routledge, 2006 .
curran, angela & thomas wartenberg (eds .). the philosophy of film. london: blackwell, 2005 .
sobchack, vivian. the address of the eye: a phenomenology of film experience. princeton university press, 1992 .
philosophy of film cannot be seen only as a subfield of aesthetics or of the philosophy of art. philosophy of film also should not be labeled as ‘film aesthetics’. philosophy of film is able to approach a spectrum of questions so broad that its link with aesthetics can sometimes be maintained only by purely formal reasons. bergson’s philosophy of film, which has attained a central position in contemporary philosophy of film, was not developed out of an aesthetic interest at all; but film would have served bergson as merely an illustration for his general philosophical ideas. it is even possible to say that the philosophy of film, just because of its readiness to undertake paradoxical fusions that contrast aesthetics against fields other than aesthetics, develops a discourse that stands out in the entire body of philosophy. treating, for example, psychoanalytical or cognitive problems as aesthetical phenomena bears an immense critical potential that does not exist to the same extent in other sub - disciplines of philosophy .
films are similar to dreams and much of what the philosophical tradition has said about the “reality of the outer world” and its skeptical evaluation can be demonstrated through reflections on film. here film theory maintains a strong contact with philosophy. the distinction between appearance (that is, dream and poiesis) and reality has been on the agenda of film theory for almost eighty years. the “reality and dream” problem is not limited to the subjectivist approach that perceives film as a manifestation of fantasies and hallucinations. however “realists” like andré bazin have classified film as real, because film is able to capture an authentic reality independent of human subjectivity (see below). comparisons of films and dreams can reveal new concepts of space and time because dreams seem to take place in an intermediary domain of abstractness and concreteness. film is not, according to amédée ayfre, a thesis about the world; rather it presents the world. any abstractly existential stance contained in this presentation makes film a philosophical phenomenon. psychoanalysis represents another approach towards dreams and has a status within the philosophy of film which will be explained below .
the documentation on the subject is ample and fascinating, as provided in a richly detailed historical post by m. e. holmes at a web site devoted to the french critic nino frank, who coined the term in 1946. holmes’s meticulous discussion of the use and rise of the term cites frank’s work liberally, and highlights what he found so remarkable in the films in question :
metz, christian. “fiction film and its spectator: a metaphysical study” in new literary history 8: 1, 1976 .
ann savage (1921 – 2008) appeared in a number of low budget films such as saddles and sagebrush (1943), renegade girl (1946) and the woman they almost lynched (1953) for columbia, republic and the “poverty row” studios, but she is primarily known today for her role as the sneering cigarette smoking femme fatale in the classic film noir detour (1945). savage' s collection includes scripts, correspondence, posters, lobby cards, film stills and 16mm prints of some of her films including detour. of particular note is savage' s script for detour, the only copy known to survive .
carroll, noël. mystifying movies: fads and fallacies in contemporary film theory. new york: columbia university press, 1988 .
kawin, bruce f. mindscreen: bergman, godard and first - person film. princeton: princeton university press, 1975 .
philos - sophia can see film as one of its subjects, but film can also be its object, that is, film can be a philosophy through which a thinker attempts to see the world in other words, film can establish its own stances about essence, truth, or beauty. theoretically, this can be done with any art form: it is also possible to see painting, literature, or dance as philosophical activities. however, film has been found much more apt for such models because its integrative mode of time, space, images, and movement brings it much closer to thinking (as will be developed below) .
there are two terrific film - noir series taking place in new york right now, one at film forum, “femmes noir, ” the other, at the museum of modern art, “lady in the dark: crime films from columbia pictures, 1932 - 1957. ” but only the film forum series uses the word “noir, ” and moma ’s avoidance of the term makes perfect sense .
this list collects every film from the starting list that became they shoot pictures don' t they' s 1000 greatest films. this…
french philosophy of film is a unique phenomenon; no other european country has produced a similarly philosophical output on film. in italy, umberto eco and pier paolo pasolini published writings on film in the 1960s that would quickly be integrated into the french discourse. in germany, the journal filmkritik (launched in 1957), was the german equivalent of the cahiers du cinema, though earlier writings by frankfurt school members siegfried kracauer and walter benjamin turned out to be most compatible with french philosophy of film. different from french and american postwar developments, in germany, film studies never became institutionalized nor have they developed a consistent link with the praxis of film. german filmwissenschaft (filmology) – most prominently represented by thomas elsaesser – developed along the lines of comparative literature, theater science, and art history rather than plunge into an adventurous speculative discourse. it would be absorbed into academia through the disciplines of media - and communication science. the activities of filmwissenschaft are diverse though its dominant tendency may be characterized as sociological whereas systematical film analysis is highly empirical. aestheticians working in german philosophy departments (where the main tendency is analytical) continue the philosophical considerations of film, though hermeneutic film analysis has had some impact .
the novel also includes an additional scene with sophie where maugham runs into her on the french riviera after she' s slipped again. upon first meeting sophie again in europe maugham expertly describes her in the book as looking
more of a slut than any woman there and i had a suspicion that she was not only drunk but doped .
in the later chapter sophie is open to maugham about her drug use. but the foul - mouthed sophie of the novel tells maugham what led to her final fall in a scene that was once again better done in the film when we' re shown how isabel has lured sophie to temptation .
selznick began liquidation of sip in 1940, forming david o. selznick productions the same year and then vanguard films in 1942. he continued to produce his own pictures but also supported his enterprise by selling developed projects and loaning out his contract stars to other studios. in 1946, selznick created his own distribution company, selznick releasing organization. he entered into european coproduction beginning with the third man (1949), and he produced a live television special celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of electricity, light' s diamond jubilee, in 1954. a farewell to arms (1957) marked the last film selznick personally produced, though he continued to keep an active interest in the film business until his death in 1965 .
smith, murray & thomas wartenberg (eds .). thinking through cinema: film as philosophy. malden, ma: blackwell, 2006 .
žižek, slavoj. the fright of real tears: krszystof kieślowski between theory and post - theory. london: british film institute, 2001 .
the earliest paintings to employ the scene were italian frescoes of the 10th century. the later european middle ages one saw accumulation of the theme in book illumination and later in german woodcuts. about 1500 originated the famous paintings of martin schöngauer (ca. 1490), hieronymus bosch (ca. 1505) and mathias grünewald (1512 - 1516). in the modern era the theme has been treated by the spanish painter salvador dalí and the french author gustave flaubert, who considered his 1874 book the temptation of saint anthony to be his master work .
philos - sophia, the ancient greek term for ‘’love of wisdom’’, can be understood as an immense attempt at interpreting or questioning human existence and the world in its entirety. logically, film can be one of its subjects. when this is the case, the approach towards film usually exceeds the label of mere interpretation and places film in a relationship with classical philosophical questions such as (its own) essence, truth, or beauty .
kawin’s contribution to film theory consists of examining the validity of the dream screen (or mindscreen) in cinema providing clues to particularities of the narrative structure of film. in bergman’s persona, for example, there is “an impression of the mindscreen’s being generalized, ” so that the film’s self - consciousness appears to originate from within. being identified neither with a specific character nor with the filmmaker, the “potential linguistic focus” takes on the characteristics of a mindscreen: “the film becomes first - person, it speaks itself” (kawin, pp. 113 - 14). kawin anticipates frampton’s ‘filmind’ .
goodnow, katherine j. kristeva in focus: from theory to film analysis. fertility, reproduction & sexuality. new york: berghahn, 2010 .
in 1946, gilbert cohen - séat published the first monograph on film which bears the word “philosophy” in its title (essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du film). the revue internationale de filmologie was founded soon afterwards and cohen - séat’s name remains linked to filmology. arguably, his most important contribution to film studies was the distinction between “filmic facts” and “cinematic facts”: “the filmic fact consists of the expression of life (the life of the world, the spirit, the imagination, of beings and things) through a system of combined images (visual - natural or conventional - and auditory - sounds and words). the cinematic fact, instead, consists of social circulation of sensations, ideas, feelings, and materials that come from life itself and that cinema shapes according to its desires, ” (essai…, p. 57). cohen - séat’s scientific approach made him a precursor of the semiotics of cinema .
vsevolod illarionovitch pudovkin (1893 - 1953) elaborated in the late 1920s and early 1930s on a theory of film based on narrative and spatiotemporal continuity. in kinorezhisser i kinomaterial (1926), kinoszenarii: teoria szenarija (1926), and akter v fil’me (1934) (published in english as film technique and film acting), pudovkin examines such devices as contrast, parallelism, and symbolism. several of pudovkin’s formulations influenced rudolf arnheim (see below) .
bordwell, david and noël carroll, (ed .). post - theory: reconstructing film studies. madison: university of wisconsin press, 1996 .
storylines were often elliptical, non - linear and twisting. narratives were frequently complex, maze - like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), witty, razor - sharp and acerbic dialogue, and / or reflective and confessional, first - person voice - over narration. amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. revelations regarding the hero were made to explain / justify the hero' s own cynical perspective on life .
reflections on the relationship between the spectator and the film have become particularly central in french film theory since the publication of christian metz’s le signifiant imaginaire: psychoanalyse et cinéma (1977) and metz’s lacanian developments as well as the writings of jean louis baudry. for psychoanalysis, the proximity between film and dream is essential because film interpretation is seen as a sort of freudian dream interpretation. almost half a century after arnheim’s above remark, psychoanalytical film theory is still struggling to explain the ways in which unconscious elements obstruct the reception of films and to understand how films spark unconscious or irrational processes. this approach can be understood as diametrically opposed to that of cognitive science which is also interested in how spectators make sense of and respond to films, but which observes the viewer’s conscious processing of films .
' s star, merle oberon. some scenes in the film were shot on location at red rock canyon, in california' s mojave desert. according to
, are a 1915 paramount film, directed by edwin s. porter and hugh ford, starring pauline frederick, thomas holding and julian l' estrange (see
the ‘bakhtin school’ theorists mikhail m. bakhtin, pavel n. medvedev, and valentin n. voloshinov developed elements of formalism by emphasizing the dialogical and polyphonic character of texts and cultural phenomena. though the bakhtin school did not write explicitly on film, it should be mentioned here for two reasons. first, mikhail bakhtin’s (1895 - 1975) writings had indirect influence on the film semiotics of julia kristeva and tzvetan todorov. bakhtinian concepts of dialogism and polyphony are crucial because they can help to address fundamental questions about film form and reception. second, film is an extremely good example for polyphony. while in the novel we most typically encounter the monologic narrator, in the film, the narrative, the character’s appearance, the dialogues, and several other elements appear simultaneously within one time frame (cf. vice, p. 142). also, bakhtin’s central notion of the chronotope exemplifies the fusion of time and space that is typical for film .
roland barthes’ influence on film theory is similar to that of the bakhtin school. though having written almost nothing on film, his narratology that strives to see theatre, photography, and music as texts has deeply influenced our ways of seeing film as the interplay of voices or codes. paradoxically, this thinker who mused so much about “floating signifiers, ” found very disturbing the fact that in films, signifiers are in motion: “the filmic, very paradoxically, cannot be grasped in the film ‘in situation’, ‘in movement’, in its natural state’, but only in that major artifact, the still” (1977, p. 65) .
classic film noir developed during and after world war ii, taking advantage of the post - war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. it was a style of black and white american films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post - war era, and lasted in a classic
golden age
period until about 1960 (marked by the' last' film of the classic film noir era, orson welles' touch of evil (1958) ) .
susanne langer’s philosophy of film drew very much upon the analogy of film and dream. langer was an american pragmatist philosopher close to the continental tradition. she was also a frequent reference point in analytic philosophy of film (for example, in carroll). for langer, cinema is an art that has introduced the “dream mode” as its main artistic expression, a mode that finally enables cinema to estab­lish itself as an independent medium. still, film is not a daydream – which is but a wilful imitation of a dream. in her essay “a note on film, ” langer wrote: “ [ film ] is not any poetic art we have known before; it makes the primary illusion—virtual history—in its own mode. this is, essentially, the dream mode. i do not mean that it copies dream, or puts one into a daydream. not at all, no more than literature invokes memory, or makes us believe that we are remember­ing’’ (p. 200) .
the idea of “philosophy of film” is a little like kant’s “critique of pure reason” because it implies two ideas at the same time. kant’s title can be understood as (1) “pure reason being criticized” and as (2) “pure reason doing the criticizing. ” in the first case, pure reason is a passive object of research undergoing the scrutiny of critical thought while in the second case pure reason is actively imposing its standards on this critical thought. the same is true for the phrase “philosophy of film, ” which can mean (1) that film is undergoing a philosophical examination and (2) that film itself helps to develop a certain type of philosophical thinking that will subsequently be imposed upon various subjects of research. strictly speaking, any outline of the philosophy of film should be divided into two parts: (1) a philosophy about film and (2) film as an philosophy. the latter occupies a prominent place in many recent continental and anglo - american discourses, and has been defended by wartenberg (2006), mulhall (2002), frampton (2006), and smuts (2009), and has been criticized by russell (2000), murray smith (2006), livingston (2009), and davies (2009). however, in the practice of much of philosophy of film, both approaches often intermingle. film as a philosophic experience or philosophy as a filmic experience often appear as two sides of the same coin .
read, rupert and jerry goodenough (eds .). film as philosophy: essays on cinema after wittgenstein and cavell. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2005 .
analytical philosophy of film has profited greatly from its rich tradition of analytical aesthetics. a significant part of this philosophy has attempted to push its studies in the direction of evidence - based scientific models. continental thought has typically been inspired by the softer fields of humanities and has displayed a solid amount of political engagement. in the former soviet union, a complex discourse on the semiotics of film, inspired by a russian formalist heritage that has a natural affinity with film, has made numerous philosophical statements .
according to metz, cinematic language (langage) is not constituted by all elements that appear in a film, but only by those things that can only appear in film. film analysis should highlight only those signifying figures that are truly cinematographic. metz questioned eisenstein’s vision of cinema as a langue because a langue is a highly organized code, whereas language covers a much broader area. film should not be seen as langue because cinematic signs are reinvented or are updated in every film (essais sur la signification, p. 47). some might find metz’s approach anti - philosophical because it so vehemently denies the possibility of phenomenological considerations. on the other hand, metz’s work can be considered as philosophical because it deals with ethical implications (employing marxist themes) and it extensively discusses the matter of reality and of dreams through a freudian perspective .
' 40s and' 50' s film noir with some early influences from the' 30' s, plus some late stragglers, homages and significant neo - noirs .
many sources have claimed that director boris ingster' s and rko' s stranger on the third floor (1940) was the first full - featured film noir. the expressionistic film starred peter lorre as the sinister' stranger' (cast due to his creepy performance in m (1931) ), in a story about the nightmarish after - effects of circumstantial testimony during a murder trial. others claim orson welles' masterpiece citizen kane (1941) was also an early and influential pre - film noir .
i’m not sure that the distinction is as precise or as clear as she suggests. for instance, i don’t think that there’s a difference in kind between siodmak’s “phantom lady, ” from 1944, and “criss cross, ” from 1949, or between lang’s “the woman in the window, ” from 1944, and “while the city sleeps, ” from 1956. but i do think that she’s right to call attention to the historical specificities on which the genre (if, indeed, it’s a genre) thrived. many of the crime dramas of the nineteen - thirties had much to do with the depression; those of wartime reflected the war (though it’s a critical temptation to read the war into any film contemporaneous with it), and those that came after the war—well, by definition, they reflect postwar life .
the primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia .
and created her screen name merle oberon for her. her most critically acclaimed performance was in the 1939 film adaptation of wuthering heights as cathy, starring alongside laurence olivier’s heathcliff .
carroll, noël. “film / mind analogies: the case of hugo munsterberg“ in journal of aesthetics and art criticism 46: 4, 188, pp. 489 - 499 .
smuts, aaron. “film as philosophy: in defense of a bold thesis” in journal of aesthetics and art criticism 67: 3, 2009, pp. 409 - 420 .
selznick, in partnership with john hay
jock
whitney, formed his first independent film production company, selznick international pictures, in 1935. movies produced under the sip aegis include a star is born (1937), the prisoner of zenda (1937), nothing sacred (1937), the adventures of tom sawyer (1938), and gone with the wind (1939). selznick was responsible for bringing the swedish actress ingrid bergman and the british director alfred hitchcock to hollywood. while under contract to selznick, hitchcock directed such movies as rebecca (1940), spellbound (1945), and notorious (1946). the ransom center maintains sizable archives for these and other sip and selznick / hitchcock productions .
rudolf arnheim (1904 - 2007) published film als kunst (film as art) in 1932, defending film as a form of art distinct from the productions of the entertainment industry. historically, arnheim’s main writings on film can be situated between münsterberg and balász. later arnheim founded a full - fledged aesthetics on the theory of perception and gestalt theory (especially in art and visual perception, 1954). comments on film are sparse in arnheim’s later work, but the following quotation, which links film interpretation to freudian psychology, is remarkable because it addresses a possible extension of the freudian vision of dream into arnheim’s own domain. in visual thinking (1969), arnheim pointed to a fundamental link between film and dream that psychology should follow: “freud raises the question of how the important logical links of reasoning can be repre­sented in images. an analogous problem, he says, exists for the visual arts. there are indeed parallels between dream images and those created in art on the one hand, and the mental images serving as the vehicle of thought on the other; but by noting the resemblance one also becomes aware of the differences, and these can help to characterize thought imagery more precisely” (p. 241) .
the collection of edward carrick (edward anthony craig, 1905 - 1998), who was head of the art department at rank studios, contains over fourteen hundred original designs by some of the most prominent production designers and art directors for the british ﬁlm industry from 1930 to 1950. the collection includes designs for such films as the red shoes (1948), oliver twist (1948), brief encounter (1946), and caesar and cleopatra (1945). (see also edward gordon craig, who was carrick' s father, in performing arts. )
several russian formalists wrote on film mainly by establishing analogies between film and language. the idea to interpret film as language goes back, among other things, to shklovsky’s reaction to the writings of the ukrainian linguist alexander potebnja (1836 - 1891) who thought of poetry as “thinking in images. ” according to shklovsky, this leads to the false assumption that the creation of symbols is the main cognitive occupation. shklovsky suggested seeing the activity of thinking as a more abstract and relational way of thinking. this model of thinking comes close to a formalist idea of film. finally, all artistic activ­ity should be seen as a creative reorganization of pre - aesthetic materials: art need not express new content but should make a strange habitualized form .
french philosophy has played an outstanding role in the development of a philosophy of film. henri bergson was the first philosopher who adopted film as a conceptual model for philosophical thought. cinema helped him to imagine the distinction between spatialized time and duration, an idea that would remain essential for his entire philosophy. though bergson’s ideas bear no relation with the more contemporary language - based models of reason (and his interpreter gilles deleuze never used them in that way), bergson’s thought fused with the remaining field of french philosophy of cinema in an often paradoxical fashion. though french philosophy of film is composed of diverse elements, french or even continental philosophy of film can appear as amazingly coherent. deleuze’s bergsonian concept of the “time - image, ” for example, is very much compatible with ideas elaborated by the russian director andrei tarkovsky who derived his insights not from bergson, but from a critical evaluation of russian formalist film theory .
film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) thematically showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. an oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. the protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes .
for that matter, the term wasn’t even endemic in french cinephilic circles. when françois truffaut discussed his film “shoot the piano player” soon after its release, he spoke of it in terms of “b movies” and “gangster films”; when jean - luc godard talked about “breathless, ” he said that he wanted to make a “gangster film” and also referred to “films policiers. ”
shooting ended in march and the film was rushed into release. [ 6 ] o. s. s. was the first of the three films to reach cinemas. [ 7 ]
kracauer, siegfried. theorie des films. frankfurt: suhrkamp, 1973. engl. : theory of film: the redemption of physical reality. oxford: oxford university press, 1960 .
the popular noir couple were brought together again in george marshall' s post - war crime thriller the blue dahlia (1946), with an oscar - nominated screenplay by raymond chandler (the only work he ever wrote directly for the screen). alan ladd portrayed returning war veteran johnny morrison who discovered that his wife helen (doris dowling) was unfaithful during his absence. when she turned up dead and he became the prime suspect, he was aided in the case by the mysterious joyce harwood (lake) - the seductive ex - wife of his wife' s former lover .
that’s why it’s strange to think of film noir as a genre—at least, as an open - ended one. a western is a western is a western, whether it’s filmed by thomas h. ince in 1916, by john ford in 1939, or by clint eastwood in 1992. the same is true of war films, comedies, and, yes, crime movies. but the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter - day attempts at film noir, or so - called neo - noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia .
a significant amount of continental work developed around the british journal screen, which was very influential in the 1970s and has laid many of the foundations of lacanian and neo - marxist film theory .
i don' t think isabel is ever wholly evil, just very human. she' s driven by emotion and that takes on a tragic dimension when she' s left to fend off the unsuitable sophie as larry' s suitor. the first scene of the razor' s edge establishes that sophie is from the wrong class. louisa bradley, isabel' s mother, comments that sophie is only a last minute invitee to the party just to even out the seating. in that same scene sophie' s small talk with maugham reveals that she may have a problem with alcohol. the key scene between isabel and sophie involves temptation over a bottle of zubrovka, the green - tinted flavorful liquor that elliott and isabel rave over .
deleuze ’s (1925 - 1995) analysis of cinema was founded on bergson’s work matière et memoire and c. s. peirce’s taxonomy of signs. deleuze’s engagement with both represents a rupture with the saussureian linguistic semiotic tradition. deleuze rejected “linguistic” as well as psychoanalytic models of film theorisation. like mitry, deleuze believed that film, as it represents and reflects on time, is incompatible with language; for him, the pre - signifying ‘signaletic material’ that films are made of was not assimilable to models of semiotics. in this regard, deleuze anticipated a number of analytic - cognitivist film theorists .
another cinematic origin of film noir was from the plots and themes often taken from adaptations of american literary works - usually from best - selling, hard - boiled, pulp novels and crime fiction by raymond chandler, james m. cain, dashiell hammett, or cornell woolrich. as a result, the earliest film noirs were detective thrillers. film noir was also derived from the crime / gangster and detective / mystery sagas from the 1930s (i. e. , little caesar (1930), public enemy (1931) and scarface (1932) ), but very different in tone and characterization. notable film noir gangster films, such as they drive by night (1940), key largo (1948) and white heat (1949) each featured noir elements within the traditional gangster framework .
the collection of lester cowan (1907 - 1990), independent hollywood producer of ten films from the 1930s - 1950s, contains material relating to the 1945 film the story of g. i. joe, based on the writings of the journalist ernie pyle. of particular interest is arthur miller' s early work on the screenplay. miller was the first of several writers to work on the film .
analytical philosophy of film has been unwilling to identify psychoanalytical elements and some sociological elements, in particular approaches of critical theory or ideology critique, as “philosophical” because it deems that this theory does not satisfy more scientific standards. while a continental film scholar like christian metz would find the results of the french school of filmology relevant for the most scientific forms of experimental psychology, analytical philosophy usually rejects continental models based on language. these models are usually derived from the saussurean model of signification and are present in poetics, semiotics or lacanian psychology. instead analytical philosophy favors either cognition - based models or more “classical” questions related to problems such as the ontology of film, analyses of movement, realism, the nature of filmic representation, and explanations of our emotional engagement with fiction. further, there is in analytical philosophy a strong desire to limit work on the philosophy of film from critical theory and cultural studies practiced in english departments. this problem never occurred in the more eclectic and naturally open field of continental philosophy of film .
james l. neibaur of urltoken calls it :
one of the most interesting and important film books of the young year ,
adding ,
the documentation is original and significant .
full review .
some of the most prominent directors of film noir included orson welles, john huston, billy wilder, edgar ulmer, douglas sirk, robert siodmak, fritz lang, otto preminger, henry hathaway and howard hawks .
overbaked melodrama with lovely but stiff merle oberon playing a period femme fatale trying to poison her egyptologist husband (george brent) while relentlessly pursuing her faithless lover (charles korvin). amazing what a long and distinguished career merle oberon enjoyed without an iota of acting chops instead relying on her beauty, an initial hookup with producer alexander korda and a pretense of
good breeding
( which was later exposed). by the time she made this film she was married to lucien ballard who was the director of photography on the film and shoots her alluringly through shadows. campy film with no redeeming values as the silly protagonist makes no sense .
the future of continental philosophy of film will probably be developed in several areas. žižek’s lacanian approach, as long as it does not entirely enter the stream of cultural studies, will attract philosophers who deem that ideology should be the primary focus of cinema studies. another area that might develop is the one pioneered by bruce kawin and daniel frampton, who provide a vocabulary for describing our aesthetic experience of film that transcends both deleuze’s conceptual analyses of movement and time and phenomenological approaches. it clearly opens up philosophy to new ways of thinking. equally promising is a whole range of “crossovers, ” such as those that combine semiotic and cognitive paradigms of which warren buckland’s the cognitive semiotics of film (2000) is an example. other crossovers synthesize deleuzian film theory and phenomenology (shaw 2008), or the cavellian - wittgensteinian approach with continental philosophy (of which stephen mulhall is an example) .
the 1923 song
bella donna
( words by harry b. smith and arthur m. brilant, music by ted snyder) exploited the image of pola negri as a marketing device but was not composed for the film .
like bergson, merleau - ponty (1908 - 1961) criticized all attempts of representing the world in a purely scientific fashion as reductive. in film, the meaning of an image depends on the preceding image and their succession creates a new reality. merleau - ponty has had a considerable influence on cohen - séat (see andrew 1978: p. 46). in 1945, merleau - ponty devoted a lecture to the possibilities of phenomenological interpretations of cinema (“le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie” in sens et non - sens) where he depicted film not as a sum of images, but as a temporal phenomenon. the central term in merleau - ponty’s musings on film is the idea of immersion. for the phenomenologist, humans are thrown into a life world to which they remain attached in the most natural and inconspicuous way. film provides a phenomenological experience par excellence because in the cinema the human consciousness is consistently immersed in a world. merleau - ponty’s ideas never developed into a phenomenological theory of film, but have inspired theorists of neo - realism, such as ayfre and bazin and have been developed by vivian sobchack (1992).
temptation is a 1946 american thriller film noir directed by irving pichel starring merle oberon , george brent , charles korvin and paul lukas . the film was based on robert smythe hichens 's novel bella donna . the 1923 film bella donna , starring pola negri , which was directed by george fitzmaurice is also based on that novel . other versions were filmed in 1918 and 1935 . 
temptation is a 1946 american thriller film noir directed by irving pichel starring merle oberon, george brent, charles korvin and paul lukas. the film was based on robert smythe hichens's novel bella donna. the 1923 film bella donna, starring pola negri, which was directed by george fitzmaurice is also based on that novel. other versions were filmed in 1918 and 1935.
temptation is a 1946 american thriller film noir directed by irving pichel starring merle oberon, george brent, charles korvin and paul lukas. the film was based on robert smythe hichens's novel bella donna. the 1923 film bella donna, starring pola negri, which was directed by george fitzmaurice is also based on that novel. other versions were filmed in 1918 and 1935.