Cinematic Cuts

Description

Editing has been called the language of cinema, and thus a film's ending can be considered the final punctuation mark of this language, framing everything that came before and offering the key to both our interpretation and our enjoyment of a film. In Cinematic Cuts, scholars explore the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings, analyzing how film endings engage our fantasies of cheating death, finding true love, or determining the meaning of life. They examine how endings offer various forms of enjoyment for the spectator, from the momentary fulfillment of desire in the happy ending to the pleasurable torment of an indeterminate ending. The contributors also consider how film endings open onto larger questions relating to endings in our time. They suggest how a film ending's hidden counternarrative can be read as a political act, how our interpretation of a film ending parallels the end of a psychoanalytical session, how film endings reveal our anxieties and fears, and how cinema itself might end with the increasing intervention of digital technologies that reorient the spectator's sense of temporality and closure. Films by Akira Kurosawa, Lars von Trier, Joon-Hwan Jang, Claire Denis, Christopher Nolan, Jane Campion, John Huston, and Spike Jonze, among others, are discussed.
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: On the Subject of Endings
Sheila Kunkle

1. Resolution, Truncation, Glitch 19
Hugh S. Manon

2. The Banality of Trauma: Claire Denis’s Bastards and the Anti-Ending
Hilary Neroni

3. The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Played: Desire, Drive, and the Twist Ending
Ryan Engley

4. Retroactive Rupture: The Place of the Subject in Jane Campion’s In the Cut
Fabio Vighi

5. Love, Loss, Endings, and Beginnings: A Psychoanalysis of Rust and Bone
Juan Pablo Lucchelli

6. Cinematic Ends: The Ties that Unbind in Claire Denis’s White Material
Jennifer Friedlander

7. When One Becomes Two: The Ending of Catfish
Rex Butler

8. The Satisfaction of an Ending
Todd McGowan

9. The Too Realistic Cut: Gaze as Overconformity in Blue Velvet
Henry Krips

10. The End of Fantasy as We Know It: Her and the Vanishing Mediator of the Voice in Film
Sheila Kunkle

11. Melancholia, an Alternative to the End of the World: A Reading of Lars von Trier’s Film
David Denny

12. Cut or Time and American Cinema of Thought-Affect: Cuts of Failure in John Huston’s Fat City
A. Kiarina Kordela

13. The End of (Self) Analysis: The End of Kurosawa’s High and Low
Brian Wall

14. The Final Failure in The Dark Knight Rises
Slavoj Žižek

15. The [“End”]
jan jagodzinski

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Philosophy
• Visual culture
• History of film
• Cinema
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438461380
• Langue: English

Extrait

Cinematic Cuts
SUNY series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature

Charles Shepherdson, editor
Cinematic Cuts
THEORIZING FILM ENDINGS
EDITED BY
SHEILA KUNKLE
Cover art entitled Double Shadow XXVII, collage, 2014.
Photographed by John Stezaker.
Reproduced with permission from the Approach Gallery.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cinematic cuts : theorizing film endings / edited by Sheila Kunkle.
pages cm — (SUNY series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-6137-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-6138-0 (e-book)
1. Motion pictures—Philosophy. 2. Motion pictures—Editing. 3. Motion pictures—Psychological aspects. I. Kunkle, Sheila, editor. PN1995.C533 2016 791.4301—dc23 2015036552
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On the Subject of Endings
S HEILA K UNKLE
1. Resolution, Truncation, Glitch
H UGH S. M ANON
2. The Banality of Trauma: Claire Denis’s Bastards and the Anti-Ending
H ILARY N ERONI
3. The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Played: Desire, Drive, and the Twist Ending
R YAN E NGLEY
4. Retroactive Rupture: The Place of the Subject in Jane Campion’s In the Cut
F ABIO V IGHI
5. Love, Loss, Endings, and Beginnings: A Psychoanalysis of Rust and Bone
J UAN P ABLO L UCCHELLI
6. Cinematic Ends: The Ties that Unbind in Claire Denis’s White Material
J ENNIFER F RIEDLANDER
7. When One Becomes Two: The Ending of Catfish
R EX B UTLER
8. The Satisfaction of an Ending
T ODD M C G OWAN
9. The Too Realistic Cut: Gaze as Overconformity in Blue Velvet
H ENRY K RIPS
10. The End of Fantasy as We Know It: Her and the Vanishing Mediator of the Voice in Film
S HEILA K UNKLE
11. Melancholia , an Alternative to the End of the World: A Reading of Lars von Trier’s Film
D AVID D ENNY
12. Cut or Time and American Cinema of Thought-Affect: Cuts of Failure in John Huston’s Fat City
A. K IARINA K ORDELA
13. The End of (Self) Analysis: The End of Kurosawa’s High and Low
B RIAN W ALL
14. The Final Failure in The Dark Knight Rises
S LAVOJ Ž IŽEK
15. The [“End”]
J AN JAGODZINSKI
Contributors
Index
Preface
The essays in this collection all address the importance of the cinematic cut, both in terms of a film’s ending and the formal elements deployed within a film. They engage various philosophical and psychoanalytical authors and ideas, preeminently: Jacques Lacan’s cut of the Master Signifier, which allows retroactive meaning to emerge; Slavoj Žižek and Todd McGowan’s treatment of the Real (the objects a or gaze and voice) in film, which conveys the subject’s ontological ambiguity and gives expression to an excess enjoyment beyond signification; Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the irrational cut, which reconfigures montage in modern cinema, setting it free from the commensurability of time and its measurement in movement that marked the classical era; and Hegel’s dialectic, which suggests ways to imagine a film ending’s counternarrative, thereby exposing the hidden dimension of its underlying fantasy, among many other thinkers and theoretical traditions.
The essays presented here, however, go beyond the analyses of cuts found in a film’s narrative structure and ending to theorize the marking of endings in our time. They consider how a film ending is linked to our anxieties and fears about the end of the world and our existence, for instance: how new technologies signal the end of traditional orientations to temporality and closure with the use of computer-generated imagery, the glitch, and other digital interventions in filmmaking; how a film that ends with a traumatic and inexplicably violent act also reveals the impotence, and thus an ending, of patriarchy and its authority; how the end of the American Dream can be detected in the cuts of failure of masculinity depicted in American films of the 1970s; and ultimately, how the era of cinema itself might “end.” Will film be able to reinvent itself (as did the medium of television and its seriality) in our late-stage capitalist age when the repetitions of the drive offer the prevailing mode of enjoyment? Our authors address these and related themes that bear not only on film theory but also on theories of the subject and political change.
In one sense, this collection continues the exploration of a long­standing question that traces back to the beginning of both filmmaking (the continuity editing of D. W. Griffith) and film theory (the play of composition and continuity of images by the early Soviet montage theorists): how do cinematic cuts (the gaps configured through both the formal elements of editing and technique and in countless variations of endings) engage a spectator in the film narrative; how are we to experience continuity through cuts and ruptures of discontinuity? The influence of the early montage theorists can be traced outward and is found in German Expressionism, the French nouvelle vague , in the work of American filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and directors of film noir, and in contemporary films that experiment with duration, sequencing, composition, and novel endings. The question of continuity as it informs theory can be traced from the early Soviet montage school to realist theories, such as André Bazin’s and Apparatus theory’s critique of continuity editing as a form of ideological manipulation. And it becomes a primary influence in the theory of Gilles Deleuze, who detects a paradigm shift in film after World War II, when the continuity of the movement-image in the classical era was displaced by the irrational cut and discontinuity in the time-image of modern cinema. Finally, in psychoanalytical film theory after Lacan, we see how the cut of the Master Signifier and materializations of the objects a (gaze and voice) allow both the formulation of a retroactive meaning and the experience of enjoyment of non-sense through film cuts and endings.
Our authors in this collection not only add depth and another dimension to former theories of continuity in film, they further reverse the original question. That is, instead of asking how the cinematic cut provides a certain continuity for the spectator in the filmic experience, they seek to detect how the subject is already constituted as split; how reality itself is structured by way of gaps, ellipses, repetitions, and retrospection; and how both meaning and enjoyment are only accessed through the play of discontinuity and rupture. In this regard film cuts and endings often work to short-circuit the dimensions of being and meaning, knowledge and jouissance , contingency and necessity, and immanence and transcendence. The underlying political import of this approach to film theory is the proposition that cinematic cuts can work to free spectators from the Symbolic and Imaginary identifications that determine them, and it is this freedom that opens the space for any radical political change that might follow.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I wish to thank the contributors for their brilliant and innovative essays. Special thanks to Hilary Neroni, a great friend and outstanding film scholar, who along with Hugh S. Manon and Brian Wall, provided the motivation to begin this project during a lively discussion around a pub table in Boston in 2012. Thanks also to jan jagodzinski for his supportive camaraderie and inspiring creativity over the years and to A. Kiarina Kordela for her incomparable intellect and contribution to this project. I am profoundly grateful to Todd McGowan, my longtime friend and intellectual collaborator, whose brilliant and prolific work in the areas of philosophy, politics, and film studies continues to inform and inspire my own thoughts. His generosity is boundless and his astute critical commentary unparalleled. Thanks also to Elizabeth, David, and J. Kunkle for their ongoing support, to Jane Krueger for her congenial and expert help throughout this project, and to my valued colleague and accomplished screenwriter and filmmaker, James Byrne. Thank you to The Approach in London for allowing me to use the image of John Stezaker’s “Double Shadow XXVII” (Collage 2014) provided by FXP Photography on the cover. Finally, I wish to thank Metropolitan State University, which awarded me a sabbatical in the fall of 2014 to finalize work on this project.
Introduction
On the Subject of Endings
S HEILA K UNKLE
The main thing is that the ending does not mark the end.
—Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
A film never really ends, according to realist film theorist Siegfried Kracauer, because it partakes in “the flow