Cartographic
Cinema
by Tom Conley
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
MN, 2007
264 pp. illus., 40 b/w. Trade, $75.00;
paper, $25.00
ISBN: 0-8166-4357-1; ISBN: 0-8166-4356-3.
Reviewed by Jan Baetens
University of Leuven
jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be
In the steadily growing literature on
maps and mapping in the fields of literary
theory, visual studies, and critical thinking,
Tom Conleys book can be called a
major achievement, both for the clarity
and profoundness of its theoretical insights
and the exceptional brio of its close
readings. Moreover, Cartographic Cinema
is not just a book that makes a strong
plea for close-reading but succeeds in
demonstrating the theoretical necessity
of this approach, provided it is articulated
with strong theoretical perspectives.
As such, Tom Conley has written a book
that is a major contribution to film studies
(and other related fields) as well as
an exciting collection of essays on the
history of 20th Century cinema,
starting from René Clairs
Paris qui dort (The Crazy Ray,
1923) to Ridley Scotts Gladiator
(2000).
How does Conley define the notions of
"map" and "mapping"?
A specialist of cartography himself, on
which he has widely published, inside
and outside the field of film studies,
Conley argues first of all that maps are
not just items or images that can be shown
or mentioned in movies, but that movies
themselves have to be considered maps
(in the rest of Cartographic Cinema, this
two-sidedness will be the leading thread
of each analysis), i.e. visual structures
that shape the imagination of the spectator
and can be used as tools for the deciphering
of the world that is referred to by the
movie. The meaning of maps and mapping
is, therefore, much broader than mere
geography (a map offers or imposes also
a worldview), while it cannot be reduced
to a linguistic approach of the world
(maps do not transcribe speech, even if
they happen to include many verbal and
written elements). As a matter of fact,
it is not only the film seen as a whole
that can function as a map, but also each
of its images, as they gradually unfold
and change before the eyes of the spectator.
For Tom Conley (and almost all the close
readings of the book will provide evidence
of the rightness of this conviction),
"everything" can obtain a cartographic
dimension: the logo of the film company,
the credits and intertitles, the very
images (with or without visible maps),
and so on. In all these occasions, movies
do function as actual maps, by showing
"where" we are and by linking
our identities to that cartographic issue
("who" we are cannot be separated
from "where" we are), and just
like maps this showing function is not
only referential but also ideological,
for maps and movies disclose relationships
that go otherwise unnoticed. In that regard,
it would be unfair to reduce the cartographic
function of maps to the appropriative,
controlling, and administrative functions
they are generally associated with.
Conleys theoretical preferences
and convictions go clearly into the direction
of the singular and the event. Claiming
that film studies should follow the hypothesis
"to each film its map", Cartographic
Cinema builds mainly on the work of
two other major theoreticians, André
Bazin (who had already developed a theory
of movies as maps) and Gilles Deleuze
(whose writings on Deleuze remain an essential
contribution to the modern theory of mapping).
From Bazins defence of neo-Realism
and his ideal of film as representation
of the real, Conley uses the idea of the
"image-field" which is not the
(secondary) background for what really
matters, namely the action, but an existential
space in which all places are as important
as any other and which is shifting itself
through time. From Deleuzes ideas
on the work as "open totality",
Conley borrows the suggestion that the
spatial field on screen is capable of
producing events that modify our perception
of the world itself. This openness to
what may happen on screen, instead of
being statically reproduced by the images,
makes that Conleys focusfollowing
in this also the majors beliefs of Deleuze
and Bazinis actually less
on the map than on mapping, less on the
display than on the making of history,
less on the map (and the film) as representation
than on the map (and the film) as becoming.
It is this active dynamic that is foregrounded
in the close-readings of the book, which
are often breathtaking. In 10 chapters,
Conley makes clear that the choice of
the map as a privileged reading tool of
cinema can be extremely illuminating and
that the selection of films including
maps is a very original and profound way
to inscribe the reading of movies into
the larger process of cognitive mapping,
which is, for Conley and Jameson whom
the author is following here, a way of
linking the close-reading of often tiny
details with contextual, historical, and
political issues. The reader of Cartographic
Cinema will, therefore, always hesitate
between two types of admirations, appreciating
both the cleverness and hermeneutic power
of the reading of so many details linked
with maps (or made visible thanks to the
emphasis put on fragments containing maps
or fragments read as maps) and the authors
capacity to link these details with a
larger inquiry on the historical and ideological
positioning of the analyzed movies. In
particular, one should mention here the
exciting rereading of Renoirs La
Règle du jeu, Rossellinis
Roma, città aperta, Truffauts
Les 400 Coups (three films one
thought to know by heart, but which Conley
manages to "reinvent" completely)
or Kassovitzs La Haine (whose
dialogues and various inscriptions the
author decodes with the same love and
intelligence as did Stanley Cavell with
the allegedly insignificant screwball
comedies in The Pursuit of Happiness,
a book which I think has quite some analogies
with Cartographic Cinema). But
all analyses by Conley are convincing
and rewarding, and since the author happily
mixes "art movies" and "commercial
movies" (from film noir to post-cinema
neo-cinema of attractions movies) it is
no exaggeration to hope that his cartography
may became a major paradigm in critical
film studies.