Juliane Keller
Tom
Gunning, “Film History and Film Analysis: The Individual Film in the Course
of Time”
In this essay Tom Gunning examines the conflict between film theory and film history, pointing out and criticizing film analystÂ’s disregard of historical research, since for him historical research is inevitable when it comes to film analysis.
Starting with the opposition of history and structure his argumentation leads him back to certain founding structuralist principles which deal with the dichotomy of synchronic and diachronic approaches (e.g. Saussure). The separation of synchronic and diachronic, of langue and parole, of a static system and a dynamic development, is part of a theoretical model which film theory has inherited from structuralism. It formed the basis of the enmity between theory and history.
Theory, considered as superior to history, is trying to analyze an individual text, starting out from the idea of a film as a static entity which allows, among other things, the conclusion that there is only one true interpretation, that there is a nontemporal ahistorical langue which structures the finished product. However, Gunning argues that the individual film is a product of the interplay of conflicting discourses within the text and within history. Therefore the conception of film texts is dynamic. So the result is rather more of a “tension-ridden ‘work’” than a “finished product or message”. For him the question of how struggles between discourses produce specific films and readings of films is crucial and historical research is the tool to specify these competing discourses.
Gunning’s second chapter follows the question of the individual film being a system or a historical process. He mentions the new theoretical orientation of film analysis (Metz, Heath), which also focuses on the production of the film and not alone on the product. But he stresses that its supporters “still never completely departed from the structuralist project of uncovering an overarching langue.”
Bordwell is one of the first who tries to ground film analysis historically, stating that without a close look at the history which locates a film in space and time, e.g. the film practice of the period of the film’s production, it is impossible to judge on “the relevance of particular elements of a film, the way they interrelated and their intended effects.” His modes of film practice serve as a mediator between the langue of cinema, lower levels of abstraction, e.g. styles or genres, and the individual film. Arranged in a diachronic series they “mark the transformations of cinematic practice in different periods.”
This transformation, being caused by the process of production and reception of individual films, is crucial to define the modes of film practice. Bordwell underlines this argument by pointing at the dependence of modes of film practice on actual modes of production.
Gunning comes to the conclusion that Bordwell creates with the mode of film practice a dynamic “changeable and specific level of generalization”. Due to this certain level a diachronic series can be constructed into which individual films can be placed. Through the creation of this system the problem of langue is historicized but parole is still to be addressed directly.
In the third chapter of his essay Gunning focuses on models of historical film analysis and their implications. He gives examples of specific texts of film analysis whose conflicts and contradictions are not located “simply within the text, but within history”, stating that a historical analysis of film reveals the complex transactions that take place between text and context.
Lea Jacobs, e.g., shows in her work that a conflict, here arising out of censorship, does more than to “simply produce the text”. Through a historical textual reading, which means looking not only at the film itself but e.g. also at drafts of the script and censor memos, it shows that the conflict is “still alive and wriggling throughout the film” and does not end with a final compromise or a single textual system.
Referring to different works (Hansen, Musser) Gunning provides, finally, examples for the  dynamic conception of filmic parole and the diachronic issue of change, like the shift of sources of outside reference (“from nursery tale to news item”) and/or the change of the genre, which can be traced in individual texts through historical analysis.
In his last chapter Gunning moves from langue to aesthetic norms. After stressing the complexity of an aesthetic text’s reception, he provides a summary of its nature, it affects, e.g., the rules which made his existence possible, when it destroys or initiat a genre. Due to the text’s nature it stands in a dynamic relation to langue. Therefore one could say that “the artistic text itself embodies the diachronic principle of change.” To do justice to this dynamic Gunning introduces the concept of ‘aesthetic norms’ (Mukarovsky) to replace the static term ‘code’ (Metz).
After explaining the advantages of the historical analysis throughout the whole text Gunning talks about its limits, e.g. the impossibility of reconstructing the conditions of production and reception at the moment of the origin of a work or the discovery of the one true interpretation.
He focuses on the diachronic dynamic of a work of art, as it itself and our understanding of it changes in time. Besides, the historical actualization of the production of a text never ends, because “each reading of it is also in some sense an actualization and therefore a part of its history”.
Gunning concludes that considerations of temporal transgression will always be involved in the description of an instant in a film. It is due to the dynamics of the work of language and literature that “every system necessarily exists as an evolution, whereas, on the other hand, evolution is inescapably of a systemic nature.” The exploration of this “intersection of history and system” must be based on the basis of a close and historical examination of the individual text.
Gunning provides many possible advantages of an historical analysis. But talking about its practical use; what will it do with and to a certain film?
Gunning refers to certain films as individual texts. What about literature? Is literature subject to the same rules of dynamic diachronic changes and contrary and contradictious discourses as film seems to be according to Gunning? Can an historical analysis therefore also be applied to literature? Would it be useful?