Abstract
The philosophy and theory of film began with the skeptical question of whether film could be an art, given the mechanical way its moving pictures were produced. Theorists such as Noël Carroll and Victor Perkins have persuasively argued that the legacy of its defensive beginnings continues to compromise both philosophy and theory of film. This chapter seeks to contribute to an ongoing collective effort to overcome the effects of this legacy. It focuses on two films that invite comparisons not to painting or theater but to dance—Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. It argues that the right kind of attention to these films sheds new light on both what film is and how it is related to the other arts.
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Notes
- 1.
Victor Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 12 & 42.
- 2.
Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures ((Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 8. For a critique of this kind of view of photography, see Joel Snyder, What Happens by Itself in Photography? In The Pursuits of Reason, eds. Ted Cohen, Paul Guyer and Joel Snyder (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 361–374).
- 3.
André Bazin, What is Cinema? Volume I (Berkley: University of Califonia Press, 1967), 15; quoted in Perkins, Film as Film, 29.
- 4.
Bazin, What is Cinema?, 18, quoted from Perkins, Film as Film, 31.
- 5.
Perkins, Film as Film, 11.
- 6.
Perkins, Film as Film, 42.
- 7.
Perkins, Film as Film, 40.
- 8.
George Bernard Shaw, Bernard Shaw on Cinema, edited by Bernard F. Dukore (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 25.
- 9.
Bazin, What is Cinema?, 12.
- 10.
Perkins, Film as Film, 45.
- 11.
In recent work on Loïe Fuller, Tom Gunning has argued that both theory and film itself have neglected the utopian possibilities that come into view if one directs attention to the relationship between the art form of dance and that of film. Cf. Tom Gunning, “Loïe Fuller and the Art of Motion,” in Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, eds. Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003) and Tom Gunning, “Light, Motion, Cinema!: The Heritage of Loïe Fuller and Germaine Dulac,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and media 46.1 (2005), 106–29.
- 12.
Describing one of the earliest proponents of dance, Jean-Georges Noverre, Carroll writes, Noverre “was a man with a mission. As a choreographer, he was committed to getting dance taken seriously … he wasn’t interested in describing dance as it was. He was concerned with saying what dance should become—what dance should become in order to be considered art,” and this committed him to making dance which could be understood to meet the specifications of the “presiding theory of art” at the time: the imitation theory (Noël Carroll, “Art History, Dance and the 1960s,” in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, ed. Sally Banes (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 90–1).
- 13.
Susan Langer, “From Feeling and Form.” In What is Dance?, ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 28–46.
- 14.
Frank Kermode, “Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev,” in What is Dance?, Ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 145–60.
- 15.
Footnote about the Archers’ identification of other models, most importantly Alexander Korda.
- 16.
Ballets Russes dancer and choreographer, Leonide Massine, danced in and choreographed for both films.
- 17.
The sequence begins at 1:01:56 with a close-up of a Program and ends at 1:22:33 with Vicky’s curtain call to thunderous applause.
- 18.
Darcey Bussell, Interview in Profile of The Red Shoes. (Criterion Collection 2010, disc 2).
- 19.
I explore Cavell and Fried’s conception of modernism more fully in “In the Condition of Modernism: Philosophy, Literature and The Sacred Fount,” in Wittgenstein and Literary Modernism, eds. Karen Zumhagen-Yekple and Michael LeMahieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) and “the Thinking Body: Philosophy, Dance and Modernism,” in Thinking Through Dance: The Philosophy of Dance Performance and Practices, eds. Jenny Bunker, Anna Pakes and Bonnie Rowell (Hampshire: Dance Books, 2012).
- 20.
Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 99.
- 21.
Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 216.
- 22.
Scorsese’s admiration for the Archers eventually led him to seek out Powell himself, who was living in a trailer at the time and astonished to learn of the interest that the Archers’ films had inspired not only in Scorsese and Romero but also Spielberg, Schrader, Coppola and de Palma as well. Scorsese worked tirelessly to re-establish Powell’s position within the film industry and, after his death, continued to foster his legacy by financing and overseeing the restoration of The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann among others.
- 23.
Dave Itzkoff, “‘Red Shoes’ Stirs Martin Scorsese’s Cinematic Passion,” in The New York Times 11/04/2009: https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/cinema-as-music-martin-scorsese-on-the-red-shoes/
- 24.
John Hopewell, “Schoonmaker, Scorsese on Powell and Pressburger’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’,” in Variety (November 15, 2014): http://variety.com/2014/film/festivals/shoonmaker-scorsese-talk-up-tales-of-Hoffmann-1201329816/
- 25.
Acknowledge Schoonmaker’s independent interest in dance and film, which is evident in her involvement in the collaborations with the Judson Dance Theater—her earlier collaboration.
- 26.
Hopewell, “Schoonmaker, Scorsese on ‘Hoffmann’.”
- 27.
Sheila O’Malley, “From ‘Tales of Hoffmann’ to ‘Taxi Driver’: An Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker”: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/from-tales-of-Hoffmann-to-taxi-driver-an-interview-with-thelma-schoonmaker
- 28.
O’Malley, “From ‘Hoffmann’ to ‘Taxi Driver’.”
- 29.
Stanely Cavell, The World Viewed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 72, emphasis mine.
- 30.
Perkins, Film as Film, 42.
- 31.
footnote re: the literature about the relationship between automata and dancing as well as to the role of the automaton in Scorsese’ Hugo.
- 32.
Bazin, What is Cinema?, 21.
- 33.
Bazin, What is Cinema?, 20–1.
- 34.
Owe this phrase to Gunning.
- 35.
Carroll, Moving Image, 359.
- 36.
Carroll, Moving Image, 359 & 362.
- 37.
Annie Baker, “Annie Baker’s Top 10,” at https://www.criterion.com/explore/241-annie-baker’s-top-10.
- 38.
Cavell, World Viewed, 31.
- 39.
Wilfred Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Limited, 1967), 1.
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———. 2016. In the Condition of Modernism: Philosophy, Literature and The Sacred Fount. In Wittgenstein and Literary Modernism, ed. Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé and Michael LeMahieu, 153–175. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Shaw, George Bernard. 1997. Bernard Shaw On Cinema, ed. Bernard F. Dukore. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
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Boyce, K. (2019). Film and Fine Art: Automatism, Automata and “The Myth of Total Cinema” in The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. In: Carroll, N., Di Summa, L.T., Loht, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_33
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