New cinema history and the comparative mode: reflections on comparing historical cinema cultures

Within the new cinema history perspective, the call for more systematic comparative research has been high on the agenda for some time. The recent proliferation of studies on various aspects of film exhibition and cinemagoing creates an enormous potential for data to be integrated and compared, larger patterns to be discovered, and hypotheses to be tested. This article maintains that the work done so far is largely monocentric in the sense that most studies focus on very specific local practices and experiences, often concentrating on film exhibition and audience experiences in particular cities, neighbourhoods or venues. The contribution argues that, similarly to what happened in other disciplines, a comparative perspective might be helpful in trying to understand larger trends, factors or conditions explaining differences and similarities in cinema cultures. After a discussion on the (underdeveloped) comparative mode within film studies in general, this methodological and partly self-reflective essay will go into some of the challenges of doing comparative research on film exhibition and moviegoing. Concentrating on these issues, different levels and modes of comparative research are discussed and illustrated by using data and insights from various historical studies on cinema cultures

Late 1920s film theory and criticism as a test-case for Benjamin’s generalizations on the experiential effects of editing

This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization that the effects of cinema are akin to the hyper-stimulating experience of modernity. More specifically, I focus on his oft-cited 1935/36 claim that all editing elicits shock-like disruption. First, I propose a more detailed articulation of the experience of modernity understood as hyper-stimulation and call for distinguishing between at least two of its subsets: the experience of speed and dynamism, on the one hand, and the experience of shock/disruption, on the other. Then I turn to classical film theory of the late 1920s to demonstrate the existence of contemporary views on editing alternative to Benjamin’s. For instance, whereas classical Soviet and Weimar theorists relate the experience of speed and dynamism to both Soviet and classical Hollywood style editing, they reserve the experience of shock/disruption for Soviet montage. In order to resolve the conceptual disagreement between these theorists, on the one hand, and Benjamin, on the other, I turn to late 1920s Weimar film criticism. I demonstrate that, contrary to Benjamin’s generalizations about the disruptive and shock-like nature of all editing, and in line with other theorists’ accounts, different editing practices were regularly distinguished by comparison to at least two distinct hyper-stimulation subsets: speed and dynamism, and shock-like disruption. In other words, contemporaries regularly distinguished between Soviet montage and classical Hollywood editing patterns on the basis of experiential effects alone. On the basis of contemporary reviews of city symphonies, I conclude with a proposal for distinguishing a third subset – confusion. This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Early Popular Visual Culture on 02 Aug 2016 available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2016.1199322

D.T. Critchlow, When Hollywood Was Right

Review of: D.T. Critchlow, When Hollywood Was Righ

Pascal Laborderie. Le Cinéma éducateur laïque / Mélisande Leventopoulos. Les Catholiques et le cinéma : La construction d’un regard critique (France, 1895-1958)

Un développement des plus intéressants dans les études cinématographiques récentes concerne l’exploration de ce qui s’est déroulé en dehors des salles de cinéma commercial. Elle souligne le fait que le cinéma a été bien plus que ce qu’on voyait dans les salles de cinéma habituelles. Bien qu’il demeure intéressant de travailler sur des sujets comme l’idéologie, l’esthétique et la réception des longs métrages, il ne s’agit là que d’une partie de la production et de la consommation de films. S’i..