Three
Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Wells,
Renoir
by Irving Singer
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
312pp., illus. 4 b/w. Trade, $32.95
ISBN: 0-262-19501-1.
Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg
andrea.dahlberg@bakernet.com
Irving Singer analyses the writings and
films of Hitchcock, Wells and Renoir in
order to reveal what they have to say
about the human condition. He does not
argue that these film-makers were philosophers
or that they consciously sought to "do"
philosophy through the act of film-making.
His thesis is that because they were great
artists, they expressed a worldview that
is worthy of sustained examination because
of what it tells us about what it is to
be human. Naturally, this approach requires
a careful selection of directors as only
those who can justifiably merit the description
"auteur" will have been able to express
their personal world view through such
a complex and labour intensive creative
process such as film. His chosen directors
are also theorists who have left behind
a considerable legacy of written works
and interviews that Singer interrogates.
Finally, Singer has chosen these three
directors because, he maintains, in their
work the distinction between meaning and
technique is dissolved. It is Singer's
belief that "various problems of aesthetics
and ontology disintegrate once we recognise
the extensive interdependence between
meaning and technique".
When examining the work of each director,
Singer starts with their writings and
recorded comments on their films and their
views about the process of making a film.
His approach is one of sceptical enquiry,
and Singer accomplishes far more than
simply summarising the directors' views.
He sometimes takes issue with them and
shows how they were making glib remarks
in order to deflect real analysis of their
work. In some cases he also contrasts
their films with remakes such as Gus Van
Sant's 1998 remake of Hitchcock's Psycho.
Singer shows how the formal methods of
Hitchcock, which were integral to his
vision, do not achieve anything like the
same status in Van Sant's work.
Singer spends very little time on descriptions
of the plots of the films he examines.
He does, however, draw on the writings
of many film theorists. His analysis of
both the films and the directors' words
is lucid and rigorous and expressed in
precise language. His analysis of Bazin's
woolly thinking in "The Myth of Total
Cinema" and "The Ontology of the Photographic
Image" is outstanding. Singer writes that
Bazin "thought that the camera presents
us with the very being of any object whose
appearance it records" and shows how Bazin
recognises "the role of epiphany in the
creation and enjoyment of film". This,
he explains, is a Joycean concept expressed
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, where Joyce applied it to film
and photography too, not only literature.
Epiphany, writes Joyce, is when "its soul,
its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment
of its appearance
The object achieves
its epiphany". Singer goes on to trace
back the genealogy of the concept beyond
Joyce to Santayana and Aquinas.
Singer further develops this line of analysis
in the chapter on Renoir where he examines
Renoir's ideas about technology. Both
Bazin and Renoir, Singer argues, believed
that technology can advance man's quest
for profound contact with nature and his
desire to know the material world. Singer
draws on Hegel and Bergson in showing
how Renoir understood technology in two
different ways. On the one hand, it could
lead to an inhuman search for perfection,
but, on the other hand, in the context
of cinematic art its limitations can be
a stimulus to creativity and innovation.
In the latter context, technology can
further develop and advance what is human
when it remains subordinate to a human
goal. Here Singer returns to his argument
that dissolving the distinction between
form and content simultaneously dissolves
various aesthetic and ontological problems.
This book will interest anyone interested
in Hitchcock, Wells and Renoir because
Singer has new and interesting things
to say about each of them. It will be
of interest to anyone looking at realist
and formalist theories of film, and it
deserves a place on most Film Studies
courses because of the wonderful clarity
of language and precision of thought which
Singer brings to the study of film.