<論文>ウト・ピクトゥーラ・キネーシス--絵画論と映画論

Abstract

This report discusses the connection between the theory of cinema and the theory of painting. To this end, we first examine Michael Powell's film Peeping Tom (1960) and clarify that via the secret filming by the main character, Mark, the camera or film is illustrated using three metaphors--namely, film as 'window', film as 'skin', and film as 'mirror'. These metaphors have been developed as part of film theory for some time, developing particularly based on the work of André Bazin. For Bazin, an admirer of Italian Neorealism, a film is like a transparent 'window' that opens on reality, and the meaning and effect of an image is displayed rather than constructed. Therefore, montage is 'forbidden', whereas long take and deep focus are recommended. In contrast, since the latter part of 1960s, influenced by psychoanalysis, ideology criticism, and feminist theory, critics have preferred the 'mirror' metaphor. The 'divice' of film as a 'mirror' offers us a distorted, biased image rather than a clear image that is faithful to reality. In this view, realism too is no more than a constructed style that presents a 'reality effect' or 'subject effect' of fiction to the viewer. Beginning in the 1990s, the 'skin' metaphor began to become evident in the theory of cinema. Critics such as Laura U. Marks and Jennifer M. Barker were influenced by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology--'la chair (flesh)' and its chiasmic nature--and they particularly emphasized the physical and tactile nature of the image. That said, 'tactile nature' of film had already been mentioned by Benjamin and Bazin in the 1930s and 40s respectively. According to Bazin, the origin of photography and film is an automatic moulding or transcription (décalcomanie), in the manner of the Shroud of Turin. If we further trace the roots of the 'window', 'mirror', and 'skin' metaphors, honed in film theory and alluded to in Peeping Tom, we find that they werw predicted by painting and the theory of painting. It was the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti who dubbed painting the 'finestra aperta' (open window) and compared it to 'transparent glass'; he was therefore also the first theorist of perspective. In contrast, Bazin saw perspective as no more than a geometric abstraction and 'the original sin of Western art'. For him, film as a transcription of reality--as the mould of reality--could atone for that 'original sin'. The idea of painting as a 'mirror' can also be traced back to Alberti. Referring to the Myth of Narcissus, he said that to paint is to 'embrace by means of art the surface of the pool'. Here again, the reflective surface of the mirror-painting is also the subject of sensuality and tactility. For Alberti, wheres a painting sa a 'window' based on perspective is an 'orthodox legitimate construction', the 'mirror' metaphor corresponds to the 'infancy' or 'mirror stage' (Lacan) of a painting. The unexpected meeting of minds and the differences of opinion, separated by five hundred years, between the theorist on painting, Alberti, and the theorist on cinema, Bazin, represents the open questions surrounding the origin of the image that continue today.