ITA ENG

When Russian constructivism was born, the stamp issued for the III International depicted the image of the famous Tatlin's spiral monument with an inscription quoting: "Engineers, create new shapes!" - Today we find it natural to extent such a peremptory invitation to cinema people so that they may shake off the productive apparatus induced sleep and the composition and communication rules they have servilely accepted lest they might loose consensus. If the cyber-punk literary action presents a certain number of strong transgressions (cut-up, interpolations), cinema has so far been caressing the surface of the thing by deferring perhaps to the future it describes the question on the how, the time for linguistic revolution.

III. Following Criticism (Cybercritics)

Godard himself had already contested energetically the idea of film criticism as a medium term between authors and viewers and he pointed out how the latter were substantially autonomous from an intellectual point of view. Several years before, Gramsci had tackled the problem indirectly from its roots by talking of a quantitative difference, and not qualitative, between specialists of knowledge and ordinary men. Among other things he proclaimed that "you cannot talk about non-intellectuals as non-intellectuals do not exist. [É] There is no human activity that can except every and each intellectual intervention" (15). Most of the art work from the 60's onwards aims at contrasting the hegemony of criticism by reducing its influence on cultural debate - the radical interventions of American Minimalism, or European poor arts, can be seen as doing so as they are in line with a horizontal sort of communication deprived of every possible inessential information that may be the source of ambiguous meanings. Here appear Donald Judd's cube and Joseph Kosuth's tautologies - art speeches do not need intermediaries. It is quite interesting to point out how contextually a vocationally gigantic cinema develops a polysemous project which is not at all reductionist, but that aspires to the same goal as self-significance - The authors of New Hollywood Cinema (Spielberg, Coppola, Cimino) work strictly attached to the system, they re-elaborate the codes of previous movies, they direct very arduous films (suffice to mention <Apocalypse Now>) which prove nonetheless very popular. As George Lucas, the protagonist of this season put it: "I want to produce stories I would have liked to witness as a child, when I used to run to go to the cinema and I even got there when the film had already started" (16). As far as our times are concerned, there is no need to cite the widespread literature about the concept of the post-modern in order to recall that art fruition has changed its ways, its needs, its connections; we passed from contemplation (a modern way of fruition) to distraction (a post-modern way of fruition). And what about the movies? There is no film anymore that can be considered as an object to be submitted to our hearing organs. Hearing has replaced traditional "watch-your-movie" and it is a kind of "hearing from the outside which is as such definable as excitement, so much so that hearing is thus propelled outwards, towards the outer side, expelled from a subject and placed out to be neutral and impersonal" (17). Today's movies (by James Cameron, but also by Roland Emmerich, for instance) are built as Events containing universal rutilant images submitting themselves to a chaotic and dispersive reading. There remain to be inspected the possibilities of an inward or outward Criticism of this system. It is clear that criticism stands on immaterial and elusive grounds that are void of an efficient program. The temptation of thinking about criticism has having no abode in compliance with the theory of art with no-place (in process) (18) does not impede to imagine its co-ordinates. The crisis of criticism as a way of making a living is under the average reader's eyes, you just have to open any daily national newspaper to find out how cinema is steadily consistent with the entertainment pages and not the art ones - It involves undertone chatting by the exhausted entertainers of this parlour who are obstinate and arrogant octogenarians. The critics' workshop has its offices somewhere else, and notwithstanding the fact they converse with a slender public they maintain a standard which is a necessary condition in order to face a time for choices. At present we can distinguish three fundamental areas wherein criticism has its reason for existence:

a) Descriptive criticism with a decisive role - that of keeping records, gather, organise art and supply it with data - is the competence of the critics (improperly called so). Let us take for instance Germano Celant and think about the most recent and reliable cinema historiography. Thanks to the technological protheses the exploration of cinema, present and past, is made possible with insights unknown before. A greater availability of information, the confrontation between geographically distant schools so far uncommunicative, and the unlimited fruition of direct sources are new facts that increase a learner's range of action as very well remarked by Gian Piero Brunetta who pointed out how the historiography research jobs of once were paradoxically carried out without access to the works themselves. Technological support hybridise therefore the body of criticism which undergoes the healthiest of all mutations.

b) Criticism as a form of art is a fascinating and dangerous concept exceeding the limits. It is just meant for an intellectual aristocracy who made up their mind to intervene in the creative process. The best model of this is Achille Bonito Oliva (19) who is the promoter of an attitude towards a daring autonomy of critics. Critics are central figures realising synergies with artists, achieving power through credibility attained from the public and industries, enforcing an integrated system of arts. A similar attitude seems to be shared by Enrico Ghezzi, an exceptional communicator and strategist who loves invisible spaces (such as nights on television). His way of conceiving criticism as an overt work is almost as intriguing as his complex and aimed-at impervious style. The discontinuous quality of his writings bears witness to the impossibility for critics who are at the same time artists to achieve a systematic production.

c) Meta-criticism is well rooted to the grounds of militant movie magazines (20). Meta-criticism questions itself constantly about the reasons for cinema speech. Their decentralised position in relation to the art system allows meta-critics to enjoy an absolute freedom of action resulting in ambitious and maximalist pieces of writing which are overabundant in information whose comprehension requires a good knowledge of semiotics, narrative and aesthetics. Marcello Walter Bruno's (21) works are exemplary as to this. His signature on "Segnocinema" (Cinemasign) magazine is a historic one. Once they have metabolised the image theories meta-critics elaborate rigorously self-sufficient new analysis patterns, they work out beforehand perfect reading mechanisms for film scripts, they localise any code and category change. We are dealing here with self-applied language capable of accounting for the entity of transformations acting on the outside (cinema) and the inside (critics).

NOTES

(1) (2) Speech of Andrea Romeo, Il digito nella piaga (the digit in the sore), in “Segnocinema” no. 73. III paragraph (3) A fitting example is to be found in the seminal font of all Science fiction films Metropolis (1926) by Fritz Lang): an artificial hand of the scientist Rotwang is a prothesis of a restorative type, giving back to the body the functions of an art that has been lost; the robot which Rotwang builds to control the masses is a prothesis of the second type, in as much as it is distantly evolved from (but at the same time the object of use of) human beings (4) Background for the scene which consents for the creation in post production of appropriate effects, for adding non photographic objects which interact with the actors in flesh and blood, for the filming of models which successively become complex scenes. Examples: Star Wars (1977) by George Lucas, The adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) by Terry Gilliam (5) Consent scenes of movement without vibration; device invented by the celebrated operator Garrett Brown, used a lot in cinema but also in television studios; permitting extremely fluid movement, guaranteeing stability of the image, the steadicam is able to substitute the traditional base and to resolve undesired effects on the machine by hand; originally conceived as a corset worn by the operator, it is now an exemplary piece of equipment of the trade in all types and all budgets. Examples: The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick), Strange Days (1995) by Kathryn Bigelow (6) A system composed of a camera with a rotating head with a retractable telescope and a computer; it is moved with a joy-stick, and guarantees movement of the camera in calculated and repeatable trajectories; it is of great convenience for introducing photographic effects in non-photographic contexts, and vice-versa. Examples: Titanic (1997) by James Cameron, Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott (7) The principal systems for the registration and the digital reproduction of sound tracks are : Dolby Digital, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, (SDDS), DTS. In particular this last frees the film from the influence of the sound: the sound is recorded on a CD, while the on the film there is a timecode which allows for the synchronization with the image. (It is enjoyable to also note that the Vitaphone, one of the first experimental systems made by Warner in 1926, involved a division of labour analogous to that of DTS, with the sound track recorded apart on the disc and the phonograph). Example: Jurassic Park (1993) by Steven Spielberg (8) At the extreme opposite, it would be interesting to study the use of the marginal and eccentric effects, made by directors more traditional than those cited in this site: it’s possible to cite Woody Allen (Alice,1986) and the noted Auster in Lulu on the Bridge (1998) (9) The computer on board in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (10) The computer on board in Alien (1979) (11) See the hybrids of Cronenberg in The Fly (1986) and Crash (1996) (12) Nirvana (1997) Gabriele Salvatores shows a very similar structure (more flashy maybe) (13) An expert film of the dense objective is Videodrome (1982) by David Cronenberg. The fact that it was shot twenty years ago is amazing (14) Vincenzo Buccheri, Segnocinema no. 82, Come Comunica il cinema di oggi (How cinema communicates today), page 4 (15) A. Gramsci, Quaderni dal carcere (Note books from prison), care of V. Gerratana, Turin 1975 (page 1550) (16) Interview care of D. Matelli in L’Espreso no. 34, 24 August 1980 (17) Mario Perniola, Eccitazione , in L’aria si fa tesa, Genoa 1994 (18) According to a sharp observation by Achille Bonito Oliva (19) He writes accordingly “ The critic is creative on his own territory, in the elaboration of his own writing, in his discovery of the artist.” A. Bonito Oliva, Oggetti di Turno, Venice 1997) (20) Segnocinema, Filmcritica, Cineforum (21) His definition of meta-c. The metacritic is an idea of cinema which is, in theory organized wildly without ceasing to be a film review.” (in” Segnocinema”, n. 53, page 5)

Luca Bandirali is a Film critic and journalist; he serves as editor for "Segnocinema"and writes for "Cinema.it, "Expanded Cinemah", "ReVision"

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