from “CINEMA/IDEOLOGY/CRITICISM,“ Jean-Louis Comolli &
Jean Narboni
(originally published in Cahiers du Cinema, no. 216, October 1969; trans. 1972)
A few points, which we shall
return to in greater detail later: every film is political, inasmuch
as it is determined by the ideology which produces it (or within which it is
produced, which stems from the same thing). The cinema is all the more
thoroughly and completely determined because unlike other arts or ideological
systems its very manufacture mobilizes powerful economic forces in a way that
the production of literature (which becomes the commodity 'books'), does not -
though once we reach the level of distribution, publicity and sale, the two are
in rather the same position.
Clearly, the
cinema 'reproduces ' reality: this is what a camera and film stock are for - so
says the ideology. But the tools and techniques of film-making are a part of
'reality ' themselves, and furthermore 'reality ' is nothing but an expression
of the prevailing ideology. Seen in this light, the classic theory of cinema
that the camera is an impartial instrument which grasps, or rather is
impregnated by the world in its 'concrete reality' is an eminently reactionary
one. What the camera in fact registers is the vague, unformulated, untheorized, unthought-out world
of the dominant ideology. Cinema is one of the languages through which the
world communicates itself to itself. They constitute its ideology for they
reproduce the world as it is experienced when filtered through the ideology. (As Althusser defines it, more precisely:
'Ideologies are perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects, which work
fundamentally on men by a process they do not understand. What men
express in their ideologies is not their true relation to their conditions of
existence, but how they react to their conditions of existence; which
presupposes a real relationship and an imaginary relationship.') So, when we
set out to make a film, from the very first shot, we are encumbered by the
necessity of reproducing things not as they really are but as they appear when
refracted through the ideology. This includes every stage in the process of
production: subjects, styles, forms, meanings, narrative traditions; all
underline the general ideological discourse. The film is ideology presenting
itself to itself, talking to itself, learning about itself. Once we realize
that it is the nature of the system to turn the cinema in to an instrument of
ideology, we can see that the film-maker's first task is to show up the
cinema's so-called 'depiction of reality. If he can do so there is a chance
that we will be able to disrupt or possibly even sever the connection between
the cinema and its ideological function
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(e) Five: films which seem at first
sight to belong firmly within the ideology and to be completely under its sway,
but which turn out to be so only in an ambiguous manner. For though they start
from a nonprogressive standpoint, ranging from the
frankly reactionary through the conciliatory to the mildly critical, they have
been worked upon, and work, in such a real way that there is a noticeable gap, a dislocation, between the starting point and
the finished product. We disregard here the inconsistent - and unimportant -
sector of films in which the director makes a conscious use of the
prevailing ideology, but leaves it absolutely straight. The films we are
talking about throw up obstacles in the way of the ideology, causing it to
swerve and get off course. The cinematic framework lets us see it, but also
shows it up and denounces it. Looking at the framework one can see two moments
in it: one holding it back within certain limits, one transgressing them. An
internal criticism is taking place which cracks the film apart at the seams. If
one reads the film obliquely, looking for symptoms; if one looks beyond its
apparent formal coherence, one can see that it is riddled with cracks: it is
splitting under an internal tension which is simply not there in an
ideologically innocuous film. The ideology thus becomes subordinate to the
text. It no longer has an independent existence: It is presented by the
film. This is the case in many Hollywood films for example, which while being
completely integrated in the system and the ideology end up by partially
dismantling the system from within. We must find out what makes it possible for
a film-maker to corrode the ideology by restating it in the terms of his film:
if he sees his film simply as a blow in favour of
liberalism, it will be recuperated instantly by the ideology; if on the other
hand, he conceives and realizes it on the deeper level of imagery, there is a
chance that it will turn out to be more disruptive. Not, of course, that he
will be able to break the ideology itself, but simply its reflection in his
film. (The films of Ford, Dreyer, Rossellini, for example.)
Our position with regard to this
category of films is: that we have absolutely no intention of joining the
current witch-hunt against them . They are the
mythology of their own myths. They criticize themselves, even if no such
intention is written in to the script , and it is
irrelevant and impertinent to do so for them.
All we want to do is to show the process in action.