INTERPRETATIONS

Film sign: Christian Metz’s film semiotics

French author Christian Metz develops a semiotic theory of film primarily from linguistic, and consequently from psychoanalytic perspective. He generally expanded on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, whose concept was to view linguistics as part of general science about the sign and systems of signs, but Metz was also influenced by Lévi-Strauss, Jakobson, Barthes, Genette, Lacan and other authors. Film scholars that have influenced his work were, for example, Arnheim, Balász, and French authors Gilbert Cohen-Séat, André Bazin, Edgar Morin and Jean Mitry. In the first phase of his work, Metz based his research of film directly on linguistics, nevertheless confronting the traditional view of ’the language of film’. He concluded that film is langage without langue. In the second phase, in the mid seventies, Metz embraced Freud’s ideas and was the first scientist who applied psychoanalysis on film. In the third phase of his work he built on the central notion of »expressing« (énonciation) introduced by the linguist Émile Benveniste, and researched looking at the camera, the use of voice off the screen, and the use of text in film, the mirror, etc. Christian Metz’s theoretical work presents a turning point in the development of filmology, and his writings are still widely influential.

Robert Riesinger