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All Films Are Political

Author(s): Christian Zimmer and Lee Leggett


Source: SubStance, Vol. 3, No. 9, Film (Spring, 1974), pp. 123-136
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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ALL FILMS ARE POLITICAL

ChristianZimmer

"...The man in government who


fears the street, because the
man in the street is always on
the verge of becoming political,
delights in being only a pro-
ducer of spectacle, clever at
lulling to sleep the citizen
in us in order to keep awake,
in the half-darkness of semi-
somnolence, merely the inde-
fatigable watcher of pictures."
Maurice Blanchot,
(THE ENDLESS CONVERSATION)

The polemic initiated between Cinethique and Les Cahiers


du Cinema involves, like most polemics, a few ridiculous and
paltry aspects that we won't even mention. Its very origins,
from what the arguments of the two reviews allow us to guess
about them, seem too obscure and ignoble (fear of competition
at Les Cahiers? Ill humor on the part of Cinethique faced with
publication by Les Cahiers of Eisenstein's theoretical writings;
and the adoption by the latter of the theses of Change, the
rival review to Tel Quel whose ties with Cinethique seem
close?) for us to dwell on them at any length. What is inter-
esting is that this polemic has induced both publications to
state, each from its own side, the bases of a true theory of
cinema criticism. And, curiously, while one would expect to
see violently antagonistic positions facing off, we find on the
contrary, confirmation of the proximity, often extreme, even
the coincidence of the points of view that are expressed. This
naturally leads each of the editorial staffs to congradulate it-
self on these convergences, as if it were a question of a rally-
ing to its own assertions. Yet it is right under the circum-
stances to point out the prior appearance of Cinethique's first

*Reprinted from Les Temps Modernes, October 1970, No. 291.

SUB-STANCE NO 9, 1974 123


124 Zimmer

statements in relation to those of Cahiers which, let us admit,


hardly prepared us for what the first of these reviews chose to
qualify rather ironically as "red tinting." But since, in any case,
Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, the editors in chief, present
us, whether spurred by the polemic or not, an ensemble of reflections
whose tone and content deal decisively with those things to which
Cahiers has accustomed us, why suspect their sincerity? Let us in-
stead question the substance of their proposals and the conclusions
they draw from them. And since in the essentials, or more exactly
in the precise bases of their research, the two magazines show an
almost perfect identity of views, let us examine at the same time,
inclusively, the theses they submit.
The first awareness that apparently produced the efforts of
Cinethique as well as those of Cahiers, is a milestone in the his-
tory of criticism: in effect it questions what until now has been
almost universally considered as the very foundations of the latter.
That this questioning is inspired by Marxist philosophy is not par-
ticularly surprising: in their haste to have cinema gain cultural
status, its commentators have in effect completely failed until now
to recognize the economic process that is at the origins of a film
production. Here is the fundamental new awareness: in equating
the director with the creator in other aesthetic disciplines, critics
have never ceased arguing as though this director maintained the
creative initiative under a capitalist regime. Moreover, as Cine-
thique has been emphasizing since the beginning with its issue num-
ber 4, devoted not to an auteur but, significantly, to the "notion
of production," it is possible to "make the universe of cinema
gravitate around the sole person of the director." And Les Cahiers
du Cinema realize on their side that a film is determined by the
"important economic forces" that intervene "at the very level of its
construction, and not only of its distribution." If someone, or
rather something therefore maintains the initiative, it is money.
And not merely any money: we are in a capitalist system. Therefore
Cinethique can write, with hardly a trace of paradox, that "what
this system (of which the producer makes himself the agent) buys from
the director is his non-work, his inertia, his idleness." (It might
be more exact -- but this is another question that we will examine
further on -- to say that he buys his name, if he has a certain
notoriety,at very least his status of creator, artist, therefore
free man, and not of simple worker-producer -- finding there the
mask for his enterprises that is required by all capitalist and lib-
eral systems.)
A film is therefore first a product, a merchandise embellished
according to the exact laws of industrial production. But a product
of idealogic nature; there we are at the heart of the problem. There
is no innocent film, we would say, no film without some political
incidence. Why? Because there is for the system, for the class in
power, but asingle way to veil, to completely disguise from the
masses what is really at the origin of film creation, that is to say
the productive work and the class rapports that it implies: ideology
(and first, of course, because at the mass culture level all
"entertainment" generates collective conduct). Gerard Leblanc writes
in Cinethique, "The cinematographic industry produces objects (more
or less 'beautiful') whose function consists of masking the class
All Films are Political 125

character of the production rapports (and the opposition of


technician/director-producer must be considered at this level)
while at the same time deducting the increment of meaning for
the film. In the impossible situation thrust on it of working
to trace its reality on the screen, cinema is reduced to giving
a presentation through intervening actors (and the opposition
actor/spectator must be considered at this level), of the thou-
sand and one spectacles that assure its viewing."
If, as we see it, the pair economy/ideology therefore
constitutes something indissoluble -- the two faces of a same
reality -- then ideology itself, we shall see, can cloak the
most diverse faces.
It would be naive and after all,very mistaken to believe
that financial gain alone counts in a capitalist economy under
the pretext that the producer is first of all a man who handles
money, invests it and looks to regain it. This view, simplis-
tic and unjust toward the producer, derives from a
grave lack of knowledge: the producer belongs to the system,
is no more than its instrument; it is the system that, at
last resort, conducts the whole operation (one would almost
be tempted to say, along with Cinethique, that after all a film
never has as auteur anything but the system in person). As for
this last, the ideological gain is still more important than
the financial gain. It is here, in another light, that the in-
dissolubility of the economic/ideologic tie can be verified:
production, at the service of the system, finds itself thereby
at the service of its ideology. But this is not an isolated
case: all those who contribute toward ideologically merchan-
dising films, so to speak, share the same complicity; and on
this point the critics, by their commentaries, join the pro-
ducers.
With the responsibilities set forth in this way, we can
give a rough outline of these "images" of official ideology in
the cinematographic universe.
First let us observe, causing no surprise, that these
"images" practically all assume the form of myths. And the
first of these myths is quite simply cinema. Cinema with a
big C. "This is cinema!" "This is not cinema!" "Is this
really cinema?" What precisely do similar assertions, similar
interrogation mask? Better: to what mysterious ideal, to what
universally recognized standard do such proposals refer? On
this subject Cinethique offers several observations that we will
adopt as our own. While no one would consider on hearing the
word "literature" that it had to do exclusively with the novel,
when anyone says "cinema," we fatally presume spectacZe-cinema,
even though there exist an amateur cinema, a scientific cinema,
a pornographic cinema, a militant cinema, a military cinema, a
publicity cinema... -- all, or almost all, structured like the
spectacle-cinema, sometimes numerically important in the pro-
duction scheme, sometimes even of a quality superior to films
called "entertainment." Cinethique under the pen of Jean-Paul
Fargier, concludes, "Spectacle-cinema becomes the general equi-
valent to which the other films of cinema must be compared to
judge their value, and it is true that those forms in actual
126 Zimmer

fact do submit to it: they all ape spectacle." What then is


spectacle? Obviously it is not the philosophic definition of
this notion that interests us: what we would like to know is
what it represents sociologically. But, there again, Cinethi-
que helps us. "Isn't the ideology that underlies the notion of
spectacle the very same one that causes the work of the prole-
tariat to disappear in the consumption of the product that he
has made?" we read in the issue devoted to "production." Two
ideas consequently meet here: the one of consumption, and the
other -- totally negative -- of absence of work. Let us draw
conclusions from them: spectacle is that magic object, marvel-
ous, free of all trace of effort, of labor, that offers itself
wholly to the appetite of the consumer; which means that it
totally dissolves in enjoyment without the least of its parti-
cles escaping the gluttony of the senses (to provide, for ex-
ample, nourishment for the intelligence). Whence the pseudo-
egality of everyone facing the screen, under the effects of the
common denominator of pleasure. Whence also the belief in a
mysterious secret of manufacture held by certain cineasts, by
certain schools (Hollywood, before the war), more or less in a
power analogous to that of the alchemists, that permits creation
of the spectacle-cinema by instinct, as if by a sort of grace,
in the same way that some, in other times, made gold. This last
myth, complacently upheld by a certain critic, clearly shows to
what degree this spectacle-cinema is irrational and unanalyzable.
From one myth flows another: this illusory egality in
front of spectacle has given birth to that notion, just as hazy,
just as ungraspable, of a public. No one knows what the public
is for cinema. Beginning with the producers who claim to be
powerless in forseeing its requirements, and disarmed before
its reactions. But there is a very simple reason for this: the
public -- since no one speaks of any but the public -- a global
entity, a totality hermetically sealed on itself -- does not
exist. Far from being an opaque mass, and without flaws, that
one cannot see where to penetrate, it is nothing but a perpe-
tual mutation, an amoebic organism ceaselessly seeking itself,
its stability, its structure. If it disconcerts by its sudden
infatuations or by disaffections that are just as unforseeable,
that is because these infatuations are not true tastes, true
needs, and that the disaffections are nothing but caprice, with-
out profound significance. Everything happens on the surface
and this is perfectly logical, since the film-product, the spec-
tacle, speaks only to the superficial individual, to the consumer.
The cinema spectator doesn't really have the requisite speech.
One is quite willing to make him think that the ticket he buys
at the door represents an opinion; but that ticket makes him
above all play precisely the role that is expected of him...
The production-consumption act is not a dialogue.
Cinethique and Les Cahiers du Cinema will not hold it
against us if, unsatisfied with simply repeating their theses
on this precise topic of the public, we expand them somewhat.
We do so because in our opinion the notion of "public" holds an
important place in the ideologic language of the system on cinema.
Once again it is a question of an alibi, of a false pretext. We
All Films are Political 127

pretend to treat this "public" with all the respect that it


deserves, since its needs are not of a material order at all,
but of an order that is cultural, spiritual. We deify it, we
make a sacred person of it. It was in the era when American
cinema was most closely dominated by the mastery of the trusts,
in the era when Hollywood producers flaunted their capitalistic
designs most cynically, that the famous formula was put out,
"The public is always right." The truth is that it is appar-
ently much harder to launch an ideological product than a soap
powder or a shaving cream, because the etiquette of absolute
novelty is not, in these circumstances, a guarantee of success;
quite the contrary, there is a risk of going against an ideo-
logic currant that is still subterranean but on the way to be-
coming a dominant tendency of opinion.
It is therefore safest to hold to a certain number of
rules, of principles, of conventions. Convention, indeed, holds
an important place in all art. But in cinema it is, if you will,
double: to a conscious and accepted convention, imposed by the
codes of a commercial order or a natural order, is added an
unconscious and spontaneous convention, a direct issue of the
social conditioning of those who make the films. In an inter-
esting study on Cinema and Politics, Philippe Esnault observes,
"Accustomed to certain forms of cinematographic speech, we
accept them as the norm when it is a question of contestably
dominant traits: our films are made by men... and this counts
when one defines the screen image of Woman; by adults... who
often speak of youth and appeal to them; by whites, imbued
with a superiority that is only technical... but who haven't
lost their annoying tendency to raise private dogmas to ab-
solute values -- a logic of Aristotelian tradition, a morality
derived, even on the left, from Christianity; by the bourgeois
in short, who appeal to a public that is essentially of the
common people, and who are induced, whatever their intentions,
to give a false vision of social life."l But these remarks,
however true, perhaps miss the essential: cinema secretes an
ideology of its own that is called -- to take up Cinethique's
terms again -- the "impression of reality." It is a primary
point on which we will expand at some length, for all problems
meet and culminate here: the economic, ideologic, technical,
and aesthetic.
Cinethique discusses the thing perhaps a bit rapidly: on
the screen, they say, there are only reflections and shadows.
Nevertheless, the spectator perceives reality itself.
"The screen is denied; it opens like a window, it is transparent."
This "impression of reality" thereby strengthens, reinforces
the manifestation of the ideology conveyed by the picture.
Whence the public's recognition of that ideology, and beyond
the recognition, the identification. But the ideology reflected
by the film being no more than dominant, and not universally
admissible the spectator can identify with it unawares. So
he is mystified .
Such an analysis immediately gives rise to a question:
where does this spontaneous identification come from and how
can one explain it? "It is involuntary," says Cinethique. Let
128 Zimmer

us interpret: identification is the direct product of the impres-


tion of reality. What is there in it, then, of that "recognition?"
This is no more than a false problem: Cinethique singles out two
phenomena where there is but one. Recognition and identifica-
tion are blended. (Besides, we will see further on that there is
already a confusion between the ideology expressed by the film
and all the ideologic apparatus that expresses it, in other terms,
between the said and the saying, this first confusion perhaps
explaining the second.) For the general public, one can if one
likes, speak of a "false recognition." At least if one sees
things in the economic aspect. Not if one sees them in the psy-
chological. Confronted with the ideology diffused by the screen,
the working class is doubly alienated, while the bourgeois class
is so only to a single degree: if both are in effect prisoners
of the same production/consumption cycle, the bourgeoisie at
least rediscovers on the screen the ideology that it brings with
itself into the theater. A sort of osmosis operates between the
imaginary of the film and the reality of the public, ("There is
no difference at all between the ideology present in the audi-
torium and that of the film," notes Les Cahiers du Cinema re-
garding certain spectacles), while the working masses partici-
pate economically, with the same efficiency as the exploiting
class, in a process from which they are totally absent in terms
of reality.
Cinethique, intentionally or not, takes no account of the
psychological and cultural mutations brought about by the coming
of the industrial era; that is why, finally, its analysis doesn't
satisfy us. It is the new "salaried stratus," as Edgar Morin
would say, created by industrialization, that has dictated its
laws and moulded the public mentality. It has imposed an average
and uniform type of participation. "Its needs," dixit Morin,
"have to do with the fundamental problems of man's pursuit of
happiness. Therefore they call not only for simple entertain- 2
ment, but also for content that addresses the inner human being."
"The pursuit of happiness": there are the words to remember.
The ideology that the bourgeois cinema dispenses is quite simply
happiness. That is to say, an ideology that is the most
individualistic; what better concept could be dreamed up to de-
cisively Stifle class feelings? But isn't spectacle in itself
already a negation of the class struggle? Isn't cinema, art of
the masses, at the same time a pre-eminently personal matter?
What does the screen suggest to me, if not ersatz solutions to
my intimate problems (you have only to think of the role played
by the young leading lady, the star, alter ego of superior species,
whose conduct I more or less force myself to imitate)? All of
this well justifies the verdict pronounced by Edgar Morin: cinema
has "bourgeoisied" itself. And in bourgeoisieing itself it has
bourgeoisied popular psychology. One reads in Les Stars,3 that
"Originally a plebeian spectacle, cinema had helped itself to
terms from pulp serials and melodrama where prime archetypes of
the imaginary in almost fantastic state are found: providential
chances, the magic of doubles (look-alikes, twins), extraordinary
adventures, Oedipal conflicts with paternal and maternal figures,
All Films are Political 129

orphans, secrets of birth, persecuted innocence, sacrificial


death of the hero. The hero, the psychologism, the happy end-
ing, the humor, all reveal precisely the bourgeois transforma-
tion of that imaginary."
We are not through with the "impression of reality," and
it is quite significant that a semiologist like Christian Metz
joins the sociologist Edgar Morin in this contention of the
"bourgeoisation" of the cinema. He does it apparently merely
by introducing a new motion, that of "probability." But the
probable is quite simply the form of "impression of reality"
that is most ideologic, most systematized, codified. It is its
prolongation, exploitation, duplication, that takes place in an
inverse direction from the one indicated by Cinethique: the
ideologic grafts itself onto the psychologic, not at all the
psychologic coming to the aid of the ideologic. This grafting
seems natural, and there is something like a logical thread be-
tween the spectator's psychic captivity ("impression of reality")
and his intellectual captivity ("probability"). Indeed things
would undoubtedly have turned out differently if -- admitting
this hypothesis is hardly plausible -- cinema had not acceded
to the industrial phase; at any rate, the technical perfecting
of the seventh art was inevitable, and this perfecting, inten-
tionally or not, took the direction of a simultaneous reinforce-
ment of the impression of reality and of the dictatorship of
probability. And our wonder today on seeing certain silent
films springs just as much from the primitiveness, from the
imperfection of the technique, as from the twists, the some-
times astonishing defiance of the law of "probability." The two
things seem to go together: the regret that a more elaborate
technique didn't allow the ideas of the cineast to acquire a
greater authority never occurs to us. A cultural "vision,"
perhaps one would say; none the less, for the public of that
epoch, the "impression of reality" was less strong and "proba-
bility" less felt as an absolute law.
To put it another way, the instrument was not yet ripe.
What shall we make of that? Allow us, in order to explicate
clearly, a return to that notion of "happiness." How shall we
define it exactly? Edgar Morin, in Les Stars suggests a formula
that seems as judicious as it is simple: "To dream one's life
and live one's dreams." Contradictory desires? Not at all,
precisely because cinema fulfills them both at the same time.
Thanks -- one might have guessed it -- to this "impression of
reality" that belongs most characteristically to cinema, of all
the spectacle arts. We refer here to the opening chapter of
Essais sur la Signification au Cinema of Christian Metz: it is
shown there how the injection of reality of movement in the
unreality of the screen image "realizes the imaginary to a point
never before attained."5 Cinema is therefore the imaginary
realized, which is to say that it remains an unreal spectacle,
takes place in a space incommensurable with ours, and that it
is nevertheless provided with enough indications of reality
for our perceptions to identify it as "concrete life" and "ob-
jective reality."6 It is this ambivalence which permits it to
130 Zimmer

answer fully the needs of the modern individual: the "imaginary"


produced the dream, its "realization" produces the illusion of
living. Let us repeat, cinema is absolutely alone in its ability
to satisfy exigencies that are so opposite. But so fundamental
as well; everything happens therefore as if cinema were the very
invention that industrial society awaited and clamored for. Its
political role was outlined in advance: it consisted of sticking
exactly to the new demands of the individual, thereby consoli-
dating the structure of the order that was also newly established.
The bourgeoisation of the seventh art is nothing else, consequent-
ly, than the perfecting of a political tool. And this perfect-
ing is the progressive establishment of the reign of the "prob-
able," over the base, the foundation, of the "impression of re-
ality."
Let's not delude outselves, then, about that "probability"
which has nothing to do with any realism whatever (it can even
turn its back on it, as in certain historic films where the ana-
chronism of the language or behavior is on the contrary required
by credibility). "Probability" would appear, rather, as Christian
Metz believes, under the aspect of a triple censure (official,
commercial, moral and personal). And Les Cahiers du Cinema are
not wrong, concerning discussion stirred up by the release granted
to La BataiZZe d'Alger, to recognize the existence of that "dif-
fuse censure" which, kindled by the official censure, is infin-
itely more effective and active than the latter.8 A diffuse
censure, but also working on the cineasts themselves, secretive,
instinctive, become almost reflexive. Christian Metz directly
connects the question of "probability" with that of censure in
general, which therefore appears as one of the principal deter-
mining elements of the cinematographic universe, beside the econ-
omic and ideologic ones. It is that which gives birth to the
genres, to conventions of all sorts and, contrary to what one
might think or insist, those are not positive phenomena. For
"the probable is from the start a reduction of the possible. It
represents a cultural and arbitrary restriction among the possi-
ble realities."9 Let us conclude with Metz, "It is an 'unac-
knowledged mutilation of the saying and of the said.'"10
The mention of that double notion of genre and of conven-
tion leads us directly to the critical discourse where it holds
a high place. Through that discourse a new form of the dominant
ideology appears: the myth of cinema as perfectly free artistic
activity, as pure language, comparable to music, to painting, to
literature. Indeed cinema can be used as a language, that is
now certain. But the history of cinema is not that of an aesthe-
tic language: it is that of an art which has never been able to
free itself from its ties with industry, that of an industrial
art. Because its vocation is narrative, because the pulp or
literary origins of its scenarios no doubt predisposed them, the
historians and aestheticians of cinema have over a long period,
without perhaps being very conscious of it, traced its evolution
in a curve that strangely resembles the evolution of the arts of
writing. As if these evolutions were independent of the form of
society, of political and economic structures, of the duration
All Films are Political 131

of historic periods. As if each art were free from obedience


not only to general laws of aesthetic creation, but also to speci-
fic laws that can in turn be modified by the whole context in
which they operate... Therefore it is surely from having fail-
ed to discover the real -- and complex -- bases of the changes
and transformations of spectacle, that historians and aestheti-
cians have up to now resorted to categories that in their termi-
nology admit their debt to literature: epic and tragic, clas-
sicism and romanticism, lyric style and linear style, etc. Was
this because they were actually literary people by training and
not scientific? The fact remains that cinematographic culture,
even today, seems monopolized by an intellectual class in which
men of letters and university people make up the vast majority.
The cinephile, who is rather the product of new ideas, virgin
of all culture other than cinematographic, is more recently ar-
rived and in conflict with that literary-university tradition.
Which doesn't prevent him from wielding the same system of con-
cepts while disguising it under technical terms, or from con-
cealing his purpose under a language that is willingly esoteric.
A fact well worth noting is that these two concepts of cinema
rest on the same idealistic postulates, postulates that are
questioned by the most recent critical approaches: those of the
linguists, the seminologists, sociologists such as Morin, or
historians such as Mitry.
No one, without a doubt, has formulated these idealistic
postulates better than Andre Bazin. In general, they rest on a
very simple idea whose fallacy Jean Mitry has demonstrated: the
transparence of the cinematographic spectacle. This idea has
generated an entire critical system, an entire vocabulary that
one sees endlessly reappearing in theoretical writings (the
screen is "a mirror," "a reflection," "a window" open on the
world), indeed it has produced several schools of thought that,
while sometimes violently opposed, forget that they have a com-
mon origin: the illusion of the spiritualists for whom cinema
borders on a manifestation of the "invisible" (Dryer, Bresson),
that of the "Hitchcock-Hawksiens" with their cult of "evidence,"
that of the "unconditionals" of Hollywood who -- like Jean
Domarchi for instance -- maintain that the more cinema is a fin-
ancial affair, the more it frees itself from money, and that it
is in submission to the dictates of production and to the
conventions of spectacle 1tat the director finds a way to ex-
press himself truly, etc. Domarchi's positions, based on a
profession of faith, can be reduced to the double equation
"cinema-spectacle" and"spectacle-dream" (because Hollywood it-
self, an entirely artificial city created by gold, is a city-
spectacle, city of dreams, and everything that comes out of it
therefore works toward true cinema. Which points, in short, to
the posing of the final equation "cinema-money." These posits
support an enormous ideologic mystification: the fabulous in-
vestments of American cinema have no other aim than to bring to
the whole world -- for Domarchi insists on the universality of
the Hollywood myths -- that evasiveness, that poetry which it
requires... Moreover, how could it fail to be obvious that what
132 Zimmer

is happening here on a global scale is exactly what happens on a


national scale, for all the movies of capitalistic structure?
How can we ignore the powerful aid that film has always and every-
where provided to American imperialism?
But let us return to Bazin: on reading his most important
works, one gets the impression that he had a veritable phobia
about montage. This montage that imposes a meaning on the screen
images, therefore on reality. As he sees it, one doesn't tamper
with reality. This last presents itself to the spectator as is,
in its natural ambiguity. Is it from his Christian convictions
that such an attitude developed for Bazin? This quasi-idolatrous
respect for reality -- sacred because it is the work of the
Creator? But, Bazin said, this respect is not an end in itself:
it is conditioned by a will to respect the spectator, for his
most noble, his most respectable quality, that is to say, his
liberty. It is up to him to discover the meaning of the film
that is suggested to him. If the meaning is dictated to him by
the artifice of art, his consciousness is violated just as real-
ity itself was. Apparently praiseworthy principles. But this
idealism supposes an innocent cineast without personal opinions
or leanings, a camera gifted with power that is magical much more
than technical, finally a spectator who arrives before the screen
with his liberty unmarred... Indeed Bazin, no doubt with some
reason, feared that cinema would bit by bit become distanced from
life, be reduced to a completely dry algebra of images. On the
other hand, there are incontestably cases where the montage in
fact does totally disqualify the vision of the cineast, for ex-
ample -- as Bazin brilliantly demonstrated -- in films on paint-
ing that are made up of fragments arbitrarily cut from canvases
without connecting links between them. It is also true that
the rejection of montage is sometimes an exigency that gives a
surfeit of truth to what is represented (truth at the level of
expression, not in the sense of "objective truth," of course.
This is striking in Stroheim's films, although with the auteur
unable to edit his own works, one cannot tell whether he would
have increased or diminished the part played by montage...).
Nonetheless, Bazin's theories rest on a gross error: the con-
fusion between the portrayed and the portrayal. The screen im-
age is not a fragment of concrete reality; it is already a pro-
duct of work, of action performed on reality. The presentation
is a utilisation of reality, an operation that departs from it,
that does not return it to its original pristine state. One
might ask oneself the source of such illusions. What we can say
is that on one hand Bazin's thought ran with all that current
of contemporary aesthetic that, if you will, tries to recreate
a virginity for art (this obsession with the concrete, with raw
reality, is striking enough in music and in sculpture), and that
on the other hand it was a party to that great tradition of
bourgeois humanism that sees an ideal for the artist in a realism
that is painstaking and without foregone conclusions, a photo-
graphic sort of prowess achieved apparently for its own sake.
That tradition did not originate yesterday, and indeed it took
a long while before painting succeeded in escaping it. But this
All Films are Political 133

is undoubtedly because it was tied to the domination of the


bourgeoisie and because it faithfully expressed that ideology.
In Un Realisme sans rivages Roger Garaudy writes, "Since the
14th century, let us say since Giotto, painting had been delib-
eratly oriented toward the conquest of reality, taking reality
as that which the bourgeoisie, then in full stride, held as
such -- that is to say the occasion of its business dealings
and enterprises, and the mathematical and mechanical definition
that the sciences gave it."14 We see then that this double res-
pect for reality and for the spectator can be seen from a very
different angle: quite simply as a manifestation of conserva-
tive thought as it is reflected in the aesthetic. Is it mere
chance that the morality of the films of Hawks -- cineast of
"evidence," who is so often reactionary, so Hitchcock, present-
ed by his apologists as a metaphysician in the guise of an
amuser -- has always displayed a frenzied anti-communism? Is
it by chance, finally, that John Ford, so admired for his total
absence of staging research, remained faithful throughout his
life to a traditionalist ethic?
Somewhat in spite of ourselves, we come to speak of what
are generally called auteurs of films. It is far from our in-
tentions, however, to plead in favor of the "politics of auteurs."
If, at the outset, this was possibly a way to rationalize, how-
ever slightly, the criticism of cinema, to introduce a semblance
of method into the anarchy that characterized it, to release it
from relativism and integral empiricism, that idea in fact
rapidly disintegrated, and today the "auteurs" are for the
cinephile no more than the equivalent of the stars for the pub-
lic. That is to say, a marketable value and a factor of aliena-
tion.
This question of the auteur of cinema introduces the last
part of our remarks. To date criticism has been no more than
a dialogue with the auteurs; from now on it must be an examina-
tion of the cinematographic phenomenon in its entirety. But
what does this mean? It means the forsaking of a criticism of
values. That is, first of all, a denial of the notion of per-
fection of form as top criterion, of accomplishment within the
chosen limits, as this success can be none other than that of
the system. Film is a product, and in appraising it as a
finished product, I am a party to the power game. I play the
exact role expected of the critic, whether his verdict is posi-
tive or negative: by indicating the imperfections of the mer-
chandise, I help the manufacturer to improve it.
The first product for the critic to resolve, and perhaps
the only one, is therefore this one: how to place oneself out-
side the system. Or, rather, how to work against it. It seems
to us that two major principles must be observed: first to pay
no attention to the "impression of reality," to treat spectacle
as a system of signs having a surface for support, or to put it
otherwise, to adopt a strictly materialistic point of view (that
is Cinethique's position). Next, refuse to appeal to the pub-
lic, a myth upheld by capitalism that completely screens the
notion of class, and to maintain on the contrary a language very
134 Zimmer

precisely aimed at one social stratum, a class language, in the


strict sense of the expression. To take up, if you will, the
interests of a specific category of spectators. It is easy to
understand that these interests could be only those of the work-
ers, since bourgeois criticism, deprived of its natural inter-
locutor -- that is to say, the public -- would be thereby de-
prived of an echo. For that dialogue is in fact a monologue,
and the public is, to a large degree, no more than a creation
of criticism, a justification of its activity -- an activity
that is actually no more than a reinforcement of that of publi-
city.
This second principle of criticism causes no difficulties.
The first, on the contrary, requires a few considerations. Con-
fronted with films, one can conceive of criticism's role as con-
sisting of the discernment of the " increment of meaning" re-
sulting from the productive work. Two views are possible here
for the critic. Either he actually attributes this "increment
of meaning" to the whole process of production, combing out the
converging bundle of elements that gave birth to the film:
ideologic, economic, personal. Or he extracts this "increment
of meaning" in its entirety from the genius characteristic of
an auteur, from the talent of an individual. In the second
case, the film's ties with the economic and the ideologic are
completely obscured; we are dealing with a deceitful criticism
(and one perfectly adapted to the system). In the first case,
if the critic accomplishes his task in a thorough and pain-
staking way, we reach a veritable deconstruction of the film.
A value judgement is no longer possible. The description aims
at the portrayal, not the portrayed. That is to say the effort,
not the oeuvre. Because signs present on a canvas are not mere-
ly those that define a personal universe, but also traces left
as much by the effort, strictly speaking, as by the tendencies,
either secretly or openly ideological, that were operating
throughout the creation of the piece. Bunuel's Milky Way and
Robert Bresson's Une Femme Douce provide Cinethique with a
double occasion to make us appreciate the fruits of such a
critical method.
Having stated this, we will not follow that review to its
conclusion. If, in fact, it is legitimate to judge the whole
production -- or almost all -- of capitalistic cinema as sub-
survient to the official ideology, one cannot be satisfied to
contrast it with the few rare films that, albeit realized with-
in the system, manage to escape it through their final meaning.
We are certainly not trying to minimize the merits of Marcel
Hanoun's Octobre a Madrid, Jean-Pierre Lajournade's Jouer de
quiZZes, and of Jean-Pierre Pollit's Mediterranee. But isn't
it profoundly utopian to hope that one day will see the esta-
blishment of a parallel distribution circuit well enough nour-
ished to enjoy a certain influence? Isn't it fitting, on the
contrary, to direct the most sustained attention, the most
opinionated, at capitalist film production in order to disclose
the contradictions of the system and expose them to the light
of day? In addition, to take the first of the films elected by
All Films are Political 135

Cinethique as examples of authentic revolutionary work -- we


refer to Octobre a Madrid -- it seems to us that such a choice
can be disputed. Indeed, Hanoun's work, that offers us the
story of a film in the making, the failure of a film, does not
adhere at all, as Cinethique believes, to the level of simple
revelation of a process of production, since from the moment
that it is filmed, that it becomes an object to be filmed,
this production deals in fiction like any other scenarist's
invention. On the other hand, Hanoun's film in no way avoids
the " increment of meaning" that characterizes traditional
cinema; for the spectator, the failure of the film is that of
a cineast, of a man. Only for Hanoun could the experience have
this character that is profoundly negating, subversive, anti-
commercial.
In short, the impression of reality still plays a part in
Octobre a Madrid: the cineast named Marcel Hanoun whom we see
on the screen is not the auteur of the film, because he cannot
be present there, only portrayed, taken by himself as subject.
Once more, therefore the portrayal here hides the reality of
the production process.
We must admit that not even the critic manages to escape
the effects of that impression of reality. It is the source
of all the errors of interpretation committed recently on films
that are purportedly progressive, critical, contestatious. Ex-
amples abound: Des Fraises et du Sang, M.A.S.H., They Shoot
Horses Don't They, L'Aveu... (without mentioning the case of
Z, which is older.) In all these films the impression of real-
ity neutralizes the charge of subversion or deflects it from
its objective. A sentimental identification with the charac-
ters in Les Fraises, a psychological identification with the
climate of the film in M.A.S.H. (necessary adaptation to war,
inevitable evil), an absence of reference to the collective
dimension and to real responsibilities in They Shoot Horses
Don't They ("society" reduced to a few types, and the heroine
a victim of fate especially). As for L'Aveu, it will suffice
to recall with what intimate satisfaction the leftist critics
cited, in order to justify their warm approval, Gramsci's fam-
ous phrase about truth "that is always revolutionary," to
measure the degree of alienation that those who make a profes-
sion of judging films can attain... As if a reconstruction of
the truth, furthermore unfaithful to a testimony that is no
doubt impossible to really transpose to the screen, could con-
stitute an equivalent of the truth that Gramsci talks of...
One can, it seems, hold to this very simple principle: a film
that plays on identification will never be revolutionary. All
identification goes against awareness. Whence the inanity of
that "reversal" which a reading of Marx suggests to Cinethique
that "Since bourgeois cinema shows some bourgeois and their view
of the world well then, let us show workers and their view of
the world."1l Such films are as consumable as the others.
At the very most the bourgeousie assimilates them with an un-
easy conscience.
A play, a novel, a painting are recuperable by the system;
but a film, if it doesn't transgress the essential law of
136 Zimmer

impression of reality and of identification, we would qualify


instead as always assimilatabte. American cinema is certainly
past master at this art of digesting food that appears the most
insupportable to the organism. In France we are still leaning
heavily on auto-censure, on intimidation. Which is a very bad
tactic, since auto-censure has the effect of preserving in cer-
tain subjects, certain themes, a seductive halo of scandal, of
the forbidden, of the clandestine. To take up these subjects,
these themes, with a feigned frankness is to erase that halo,
to destroy that dangerous prestige. To name the forbidden is
a way to make it banal. Alan Didier, in Les Temps Modernes,
analyzed this mechanism exceedingly well.16 This undoubtedly
applies to horror; but moral comfort knows only a single cate-
gory of the forbidden.
Didactic cinema has a bad press. However, it is now well
established that there is but one way to oppose an anesthetizing
identification: inform. Two films seem to us to fill that pro-
gram exactly: Fernanco-Ezequiel Solanas' L'Heure des Brasiers,
and Le Peuple et ses FusiZs of Joris Ivens, Jean-Pierre Sergent
and Marceline Loridan. These films do not involve heros. They
bring communities to the screen. That too is a trait of revo-
lutionary cinema: it doesn't tell us about individual destin-
ies, but collective ones. And the creation of a film itself
being a collective adventure, it is already revolutionary to
evoke it on the screen. That is how we interpret, in Bergman's
last film, Une Passion, the intervention of the comedians who
interrupt the action to speak to us of their character. This
is certainly rupture, deconstruction of the facticity of the
cinematographic universe. Les Cahiers du Cinema are right:
the questioning of the language can transform a film without
real political content into a work of political significance.
But -- it must have been clear long since -- all films are
political, aren't they?
Translated by
Lee Leggett

1. L'Avant-Scene Cinema, #96, October 1969.


2. L'Esprit du Temps, Grasset edit., pp. 60-61.
3. Editions du Seuil, p. 16.
4. See Essais sur la Signification au Cinema, Klincksieck
edit.
5. Op. Cit., p. 24.
6. Op. Cit., chapter I, passim.
7. Op. Cit., p. 230.
8. Cahiers du Cinema, #222, July 1970.
9. Christian Metz, op. cit., p. 232.
10. Op. Cit., p. 244.
11. See George Cukor by Jean Domarchi, coll. "Cinema
d'Aujourd'hui," #33, Seghers, edit.
12. See Qu'est-ce que Ze Cinema?, vol. II: Le Cinema et les
autres arts (Peinture et Cinema), ed. du Cerf.
13. See Jean Mitry, Esthetique et Psychologie du Cinema,
ed. Universitaires.
14. Plon, ed., p. 37.
15. "La Parenthese et le Detour," by Jean-Paul Fargier, in
Cinethique, #5, September-October 1969.
16. "Ou est l'horreur?" in Temps Modernes, #288, July 1970.

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