When I was reading Epstein and Balasz, I was struck by the beautiful language that they used to talk about something that isn’t easily explained by words alone. The close up is a purely cinematic invention that allows us to see the inner workings of a character’s mind and focus in on a particular object that the filmmaker wants us as an audience to be aware of. This is a powerful tool that if used rightly can produce the feeling of awe within the spectator like one sees when watching Joan of Arc. Balasz says that “by means of a close-up the camera revealed hidden mind springs of life we thought we knew so well.” (273) By looking upon the visage of a character, one can know so much more about that character than merely knowing what his or her actions are. What we see is the emotions that the character is going through. These emotions might be at odds with what they are saying or doing. For instance, we see Joan of Arc go through the pros and cons of confessing that her visions were not of God but of the devil not through her pacing up and down the room, wringing her hands, but by the flutter of her eyes and the tears that stream down her face. She knows that the confession would save her life, but it would also damn her when she does eventually pass on. However we are not told this through narration, dialogue or even inter titles. We see it in her face. We see it all at once, as if the actress really was about to get executed. It takes someone a split second to read the emotions of a face and in that moment you see what is conscious and a lot of times what is unconscious. If someone had been crying, you see the red streaks down their cheeks or if someone is upset by something their furrowed brow may indicate their abstraction. By adding the close-up as a cinematic tool, we get to experience this real life phenomenon in the theater. I think that Epstein and Balasz were right in expressing their love for the close-up. Without it we would loose something inherently cinematic, the face.

Kracauer argues in “History and Fantasy” that the filmmaker may go to the “limit” (81) in portraying the peculiar modes of a certain historical era. The practical implications of historical cinema are interesting to me here: what about when we add on a layer of distance; that is, what is it like for people in the present day to watch a black-and-white silent film made in the early twentieth century that depicts even more distant events? Does the time between today’s era and that of Gance’s Napoleon, for example, become another aspect in the historical portrayal? For me, historical films made closest to my own era are the most “realistic” depictions of history. Watching a film like Napoleon I forces me to consider the limitations of cinema at that time as well as the lack of color and sound. So when Kracauer stresses shifting the emphasis from history proper to camera-reality and posits that Joan of Arc’s face is located in a kind of no-man’s-land (80) through use of the close-up, it makes me wonder how we today experience that face, through the double temporal distances of 2010s → 1920s and 1920s → 1400s. Does that extra layer cause problems for our reception and interpretation? Could or do we see Joan of Arc’s face as nowhere but rather very firmly in and of the 1920s, as well as the 1400s and the 2010s? Can mere technological innovation between then and now diminish the timelessness of her face?

Welcome to the Seminar in Film Theory! I’ll be adding content, links, and updates throughout the semester, and adding all of you as site authors within the upcoming week. Looking forward to working with you…