& Cahiers du Cinéma and the Way of Looking ‘There can be little doubt that, atleast among the younger critics, la politique des auteurs was “the undisputed system’ on which almost al critical writing at Cahiers du Cinéma was based.! Unlike Bazin, who balanced questions of authorship with a thoughtful consideration of a variety of other factors ‘gente, the star system, technology, economics, the industrial structure ofthe motion picture industry, and so on—Godard, Truffaut, and the others wee ‘concerned above all else with making a case for the auteur status of certain favored directors. But this explicit program did not always result, as one might ‘expect, in an orthodox critical writing practice of evaluation marked bya careful presentation of evidentiary support. In reviews of films by privileged directors, emphasis was usually lad less on evaluation than on an articulation of the director's recurring theme or an attempt at a description of his style ‘But Paul Willemen argues that even such apparently crucial issues as cn- Cahiers du Cinéma and the Way of Looking 83 sitency of style and theme were, in Cahiers writing, often given less emphasis than simple recounting of certain memorable scenes ot moments. He ex- pais {youre the eatly Cahiers stuff that Truffaut and Godard were writing, you sex the they were responding to films. They were not doing criticism but were Ungwsitten responses to films... ] What they were writing at that time was “hie iempessionistc account nT. Slits terms, an “evocative equivalent” ff monents which to them, were privileged moments of the film. These are Jpomests which, when encountered ina film, spark something which then pro jc the energy and the desire to write? Jean-Luc Godard was the critic perhaps most inclined to this practice of smeelydescribing—but with great verve and excitement—a film’ “privileged moments” For example, in his review of Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns, three of the four paragraphs are given over to such descriptions. Here are two: eve Bary is courting ravishing young Eve Brent, making her charming début ‘fore the camera in an eye-shade borrowed from Samuel. Eve sells guns. Jok- ingly Gene sims 2t her. The camera takes his place and we see Eve through the Ire 9f the gun. Track forward until she is framed in close-up by the mouth ofthe barrel. Next shot they ae in aks. ‘Theest scene lasts ony three seconds. Gene Barry and Eve Brent are posing {ortber wedding photograph, Barbara Stenwyck’s brother gallops up ona horse. |Ashotcings out. Gene Bacry sinks into Eve Brent arms, and she collapses and Gl backwards under his weight. One has no idea which of the two lovers has been it. In the next shot we find eut when we see Eve, alive, lying under Gene arr, dead. Three seconds, yes, but worthy of Tabu? ‘gto, the description of these scenes is not justified according to some “ob- {etre criteria of evaluation, especially as it relates to character, narrative, or theme Indeed, there is no justification oF rationale given whatever. These scenesare recounted simply because they were particulary striking, and thus memorable, in their conception and execution—at least for Godard. While Simple pleasure alone may seer fair justification, one rarely finds such gratui- tous recounting of scenes in contemporary film criticism. Even those critics who have space, knowledge, and a reasonably engaged and informed reader- ‘hip, rely recount scenes in such detail, and when they do, itis only as evi- ‘ace supporting a reading or critical evaluation. Godard’ review reminds us sf de Baecque and Frémaux’s point that cinephila begins with the individual bo has a passionate love for the cinema, and extend from him or her to other like-minded individuals, fo the recounting of privileged moments in such de- Allis key feature of the dialogue about movies carried out among cinephiles.84 Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees, Inother reviews, Godard’ focus on moments of sensuous realistic deg _ such 2s in his review of Jean Renoir’s La Nuit du Carrefour—teminds one gp Bazin’ similar appreciation for fine detail, both designed and fortuitous CGunshots shattering che darkness: the purr of « Bugatti setting of in pur the eraffickers (2 sublime subjective tracking shot through the streets ofthe sleeping vilage); the air of confusion, craziness or corruption about the villages, ‘wanderingon the main road; Winna Winfred with her English accent andthe curious erticism of her drug-addicted, philosophizing Russian; Pierre Renoir’ laay eagle ee; the smell of rain and of fields bathed in mist every detail, every second of each shot makes La Nuit du Carrefour the only reat French thrill, for rather the greatest French adventure film of all ‘These details in combination create a powerful and intoxicating atm the experience of which extends beyond the visual and into the physical lsewhere, the moment as a record of reality—even the reality ofthe filmi process—is valued for itself: “Ilove the moment in Fallen Angel when the can. era, in order not to lose sight of Linda Darnell a she walks across theresa. rant, rushes so fast through the customers that one sees the assistants’ handy seizing two or three of them by the scruff of the neck and pulling them aside to.make way for it”? ‘Truffaut, too, regularly singled out privileged segments for description in his reviews, and his selections were often justified by the claim that they <’pitomized something uniquely cinematic. Sometimes the selected segment oe scene was a sequence of shots that were particularly striking or imaginative Neatly haf of his two-paragraph review of Howard Hawks's Scarface is given cover to the following: “The most striking scene in the movie is unquestionably Boris Kaslof’s death, He squats down to throw a ballin a game of ninepins and doesnt get ups rife shot protrtes him, The camers follows the ball he's thrown as it knocks down, all the pins except one that keeps spinning until it finaly falls over, the exact, symbol of Katloft himself the lst survivor of arival gang that’s been wiped out bby Muni [Scarface]. This isnt literature. may be dance or poetry. Its certain Most often, however, Truffaut focused on details, litle bits of business specific moments. He wrote, for example, of the films of Jean Vigo, “Nothing that has been seen for the past thirty years has equalled the professor’ ft ‘paw on the tiny white hand of the child in Zéro de Conduite, or the phys cal embraces of Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté as they prepare to make love [it LAtalante|”” Elsewhere, he delighted in “the little cries of Celia Montalvan ‘when Blavette licks her back after she is stung by a bee” in Renoir’s Toni* Cahiers du Cinéma and the Way of Looking 85. these little moments, more than editing or calculated visual design, that hed for Truffaut the high points of cinematic experience. As Truffaut {in 195 letter to his friend Eric Rohmer, “Cinema is the art of the little il that does not call attention to itself” But the spark that prompted the Cahiers critic’ deste to write did not ‘at descriptions. Rather, a Willemen argues, in their descriptions was jratempt “to find formulations to convey something about the intensity of {R"; wkimately, this intensity was “translated and, o some extent, ra- secondarised, in the writing into a politique.” The politique, too, frrked on privileged moments and previously unacknowledged details, bt ferete focus was on those details that were sgnifiers ofa director's consistent theme, and worldview. In effect, then the young cinephiles’ encounters wth on set of privileged moments—subjective, fetishistic, a la Berenson— tas displaced onto another set of moments that wer, like the details Giovanni ‘Morell located in paintings, held up as objective evidence of authorship. However, Willemen is quick to point out that this “rationalisation into theory did not make the sparks [of those privileged moments] go away. On tbecontrary: the theory gave us a keener sense of the dimensions the theory ys gesturing towards but which kept escaping it?"* That is, for those who ‘yer een to it, auteurism was as much about what the theory could not con- tuinas it was about the theory itself The fact tha, like those examples offered shove, “cinephiliac discourse tends to work on scenes, on moments of ges- tur, on looks,"? was perhaps one of the ways in which the Cahiers critics at- tempted to serve both interests—the moment as evidence of authorship, and the moment as revelatory encounter for the spectator. This dual interest was inst epparent in the writings on those films and directors that led the critics through consideration of a particular auteur and around again to their pri- mary experiences, or as Jim Hiller explains it, through 2 consideration of authorship back to a consideration of the cinema itself. The Cahiers critics Ywlanced this dual interest with a single term—"mise-en-scéne”—and per- Iss no auteur allowed greater consideration of this mysterious concept than Nicholas Ray Inspite of the Cahiers critics’ moniker, “Hitcheocko-Hawksiens” Ray was Pethaps the American director mos! important to them in the 19508. As Hillier " aplins, Ray embodied “a particular conception of the filmmaker working, _ihin the system, always rebellions often doomed, and a particular response Ibthe modern world, as wel as a particularly affecting style” In the Cahiers Witings on Ray's films of the 1950s, we can cleanly see the prioritization of thei critical concerns. Fits, traditicnal critical evaluation may be present, but Aissubordinated to a reaffirmation of Ray's status as an auteur. In his review &€ any Guitar, for example, Truffaut states up front that it is “by no means86 Ginep! and History, or The Wind in the Trees its auteurs best film:” but he gives little space to elaborating on its ‘weaknesses or strengths: instead he offersa fine summary of the wayne the film is consistent with Ray's other works: inhi ‘Athi lms tl the sae story, the story of violent mab who wants sop being violet, and his lationship with a woman who kas more mea stent than himslt Foc Rays hero is imvariaby aman ashing out, weak cld an when he is ot simpy a chil. There always ocd solnte there aes hunter sometimes aches Similarly, Godard’s conclusion thet Hot Blood is only a "semi-succesg fil” witha "badly handled” plot is justified not by specific references to wa elements, but by the critic's conclusion thatthe ditector was “semi-unintereg) in it" Nevertheless, Godard notes, Ray's main theme isto be found, and hig consistency confirms the film's value: “Always, in Ray film, the leading cha acter returns to something he once abandoned or scorned: review of The Lusty Men follows suit by glossing the flm’s weaknesses ang offering another take on Ray's consistent theme: Everything always proceeds from the simple situation where two or thee people encounter some elementary and fundamental concepts of life. And the rea) struggle takes place in only one of them, against the interior demon of violence, or ofa more secret sin, which seems linked to man and his solitude. [tay hap- pen sometimes that a woman saves ims iteven seems that she alone can have the power to do so; we ae a long way from misogyny.” Beyond this elaboration of consistency of theme, much space is given «detailed consideration of Ray's style and to the specific visual qualities ofthe film in question. All three critics compare Ray to Roberto Rossellini, and bth Rivette and Truffaut single out the awkwardness of Ray's visual style, which they see as evidence (as with Rossellini) of the most direct and urgent attempt at expression, and thus evidence of sincerity and lack of pretension. “All his films are very disjointed,’ Truffaut writes, “but itis obvious that Rey is aiming less forthe traditional and all-around success ofa film than at giving each shot a certain emotional quality.” Rivette goes further, invoking the comparion of filmmaker to sketch artist discussed in the previous chapter: “in The Lisy ‘Men, you can see how the idea of a role, or @ scene, hurriedly sketched am sometimes prevail over its realization, whether good or bad." This urgeng) is further a sign for Rivete that, unlike so many others, Ray isa director wih ‘ideas, with an imagination [Nicholas Ray is lavish with ideas... and when I talk sbout ides, really mean ideas of mise-en-scne or—if I were tobe shocking about it—of framing or the Jacques Rivets ‘Cahiers du Cinéma and the Wey of Looking 87 _pots ac put together, which these days ate the ony ideas whose profundity fo recognize, and the only ones which cen reach the secret form which is esa every work of art ‘he one hand, these comments seem to confirm the conventional under- ing of mise-en-scne—that it refers to the formal means by which the fexpresses himself. This definition of mise-en-scéne was perhaps most jyartculated several years later by one ofthe second generation of Cahiers Fereydoun Hoveyda signal ofthe auteur lies not inthe subject mater be chooses, butin the Jaue he employs, ie the mise en scene, through which everything on the is expressed on the screen. issarre uid: “One in writer for having chosen wo say certain things, foc avin chosen to say them in certain way” Why should it be any di for cinema? .. the thought of a cindate appears through his mise en What ater in the film isthe dsc for onder, composition, harmony, te plcing of actors ad objets, the movements within the fame, the cptur- gota ovement ora look: in shor the intelectual operation which has put ial emotion anda general ides to work, Mie en sce nothing other than etehniqu ivented by each director to express the idea and establish the pic coaltyof his work. Rivette, these “ideas” of mise-en-scéne are, in Ray’s films, particularly staking and imaginative. But as we read on, we get a clearer and more com- plex picture of Rivette’s notion of Ray’s imagination: “The imagination of tach moment is only the concern to reveal, with each fresh blow of the chisel, Ie one and only hidden statue." With this analogy, we find a profoundly Bainian notion of mie-en-scene, one in which the director’s responsibility is fat o impose himself too strongly, but rather—again, as with Rossellini ‘at a context for things to happen on theit own, for reality to make an un- ‘pected appearance. With this definition of mise-en-scéne, we return to Hiller’s point that the Gahiers critics were particularly interested in those directors whose films led them through issues of authorship, into issues of cinematic language (fram- ing. editng), an, finally, to issues of the cinema itself—thatis, to ontological ies. Hillier stresses the influence here of Bazin, whose “earlier work on re- ddim had become Cahiers orthodoxy. Bazin’s assumptions about the nature of iim his thinking about transparency and natrative” are present throughout the writings of these younger critics.” For Rivete, the ontology issue mani- {itself in Ray’s films most powerfully inthe director's “dilation of expres- 4 detail,” in his “search for a certain breadth of modern gesture,” and even.