The Close-Up: Studies of Cinematic Attention, Emotion, and Intersubjectivity

Maria Falconetti as Jeanne/Joan in La passion de Jeanne d'Arc/The Passion of Joan of Arc

(Carl Theodor Dreyer, France 1928)

'The close-up has objectified in our world of perception our mental act of attention and by it has furnished art with a means which far transcends the power of any theatre stage', Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916), p. 56

'Good close-ups are lyrical; it is the heart, not the eye, that has perceived them', Béla Balázs, ‘Theory of the Film’ in Gerald Mast & Marshall Cohen (ed), Film Theory and Criticism, Oxford: Oxford Uni Press (1979), pp. 288-298. p. 289

'[T]he close-up does not tear away its object from a set of which it would form part, of which it would be a part, but on the contrary, it abstracts it from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates, that is to say it raises it to the state of Entity', Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986, pp. 95-96

'[T]he space of the narrative, the diegesis, is constructed by a multiplicity of shots that vary in terms of both size and angle- hence this space exists nowhere; there is no totality of which the close up could be a part', Mary Ann Doane, 'The Close Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema', differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, September 22, 2003 p. 108

Film Studies For Free gets inexorably drawn in to, and then engulfed by, the close-up today. In other words, it brings you lots of links to high quality and openly-accessible scholarly or critical studies of the history and theory of this particular cinematic (and televisual) shot-choice and its reception.

• Daniel Barratt, 'Tracing the Routes to Empathy: Association, Simulation, or Appraisal?', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006
  

• David Bordwell, 'Three Nights of a Dreamer', Observations on Film Art, November 5, 2007

• David Bordwell, 'What happens between shots happens between your ears', Observations of Film Art, February 4, 2007

• Jinhee Choi, 'Naturalizing Hollywood?: Against the Naturalistic Account of Filmic Communication [on Noël Carroll’s Engaging the Moving Image]', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

• The Close-up Blog-a-thon (Oct. 12-21, 2007) at the House Next Door (great index to numerous brilliant blog posts on the close-up, from Matt Zoller Seitz)

• Amy Coplan, 'Catching Characters’ Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction Film', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006 (See also Murray Smith, 'Empathy and the Extended Mind', University of Kent, Aesthetic Research Group Seminar Series 2006-7 Research Papers)

• Mark Cousins, 'Cinematic truth lies in the close-up', Prospect Magazine, Issue 99, June 2004

• Therese Davis, The face on the screen: death, recognition and spectatorship (London: Intellect, 2004) (Google Books Limited Preview)

• Gilles Deleuze, 'The Affection-image: Face and Close-up', Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986 (Google Books Limited Preview)

• Mary Ann Doane, 'Scale and the Negotiation of “Real” and “Unreal” Space in the Cinema', NTU Studies in Language and Literature, Number 20 (December 2008), 1-38 (scroll down in pdf)

• Mary Ann Doane, 'The Close Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema', differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, September 22, 2003(excerpt free online)

• Jens Eder, 'Ways of Being Close to characters', Film Studies, Vol. 8, Summer 2006
  

• Kiminori Fukaya, 'On Beckett's Film: Close-up, the Affection-Image, and Comedians ', Bulletin of the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Toyama, Vol. 3, February 2009

• Brian Gallagher, 'Some Historical Reflections on the Paradoxes of Stardom in the American Film Industry, 1910-1960', Part 4: The Close Up, Images Journal, Issue 3,

• Ora Gelley, 'Europa ’51: The Face of the Star in Neorealism’s Urban Landscape', Film Studies, Issue 5, Winter 2004
  

• Sri Kusumo Habsari, 'Fighting Bodies: The Construction of the Female Body in an Indonesian Television Serial', Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 19, February 2009

• James Hansen, 'Emphasis on the Close-up: Reygadas's Diegetics', Out1, March5, 2008

• Pepita Hesselberth, 'It's about Time (Or Is It?) Warhol anno 2007', Apertúra. Filmelméleti és filmtörténeti szakfolyóirat , 2008. nyár.

• Bruce D. Hutchinson, 'An Attention Model of Film Viewing, Journal of Moving Image Studies, Fall 2003

• Tarja Laine, 'Chapter 1: Intersubjectivity in Film Studies', in Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema (Peter Lang Publishing, 2007)
  

• Johannes von Moltke, 'Sympathy for the Devil: Cinema, History, and the Politics of Emotion', New German Critique 102, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall 2007

• Michael Z. Newman, 'Chapter 4: Emotion Expressions' in Characterization in American Independent Cinema (PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2005)

• Michael Z. Newman, 'Characterization as Social Cognition in Welcome to the Dollhouse', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

• Per Persson, 'Towards a Psychological Theory of Close-ups: Experiencing Intimacy and Threat', Kinema, Spring 1998

• Karen Renner, 'Repeat Viewings Revisited: Emotions, Memory, and Memento', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

• Judith Roof, 'Close Encounters on Screen: Gender and the Loss of the Field', Genders 29, 1999

• Maria Walsh, 'Review of The Face on the Screen: Death, Recognition & Spectatorship by Therese Davis (Bristol, UK & Portland: Intellect, 2004)', Scope, Issue 9, October 2007

• Yale University Film Studies Program Film Analysis webpages, 'Cinematography', August 27, 2002

Some Bordwellian inspiration (in blogpost and podcast)

The latest blog post by David Bordwell ('They’re looking for us', 19 September 2008) treats the important issue of the reaction shot, a film technique which provides 'one of the most enjoyable and arousing dimensions of cinematic storytelling'.

Bordwell's post is, as usual, a remarkable, and beautifully illustrated, piece of digital scholarship which takes us, very entertainingly, from a contemporary example of a reaction shot (drawn from the 2007 film Music and Lyrics, directed by Marc Lawrence), and working thus in the context of what Bordwell considers intensified continuity editing; through Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), and Carol Reed's The Third Man, ending up with Road Warrior (1981, aka Mad Max II, directed by George Miller).

Bordwell's impressive tour of this technique explores the many ways in which the reaction shot instructs us 'in how to respond to the fictional world as a whole', as well as cognitive, or neuroscientific, theories of how 'Reaction shots may gain their strength from not merely our ability to understand facial expressions but the power of facial expressions to trigger in us an echo of the emotion displayed.'

Bordwell concludes his highly informative and enlightening post with characteristic modesty: 'There’s much more to say about the reaction shot'. He's right, of course: we might 'want as well to talk about films that withhold information about characters’ reactions—by using enigmatic or ambiguous reaction shots, or by eliminating reaction shots altogether'. ' But it is really difficult to imagine saying anything more, or saying anything in a more illuminating way, in under 2,750 words. With their blog Observations on film art and Film Art, Bordwell, and Kristin Thompson, his partner and frequent co-writer, have very much perfected the art of concise and scholarly digital communication.

We must be very thankful, thus, that both of them came to be inspired by the possibilities for the creation and dissemination of new film scholarship which are offered by the internet, in general, and by weblogging, in particular. There's a great podcast in which Bordwell talks about this very topic (recorded in January 2007), which is very much worth checking out. It's accessible HERE at Zoom in Online (be warned that you have to endure a short advert, and not-the-best audio quality, though).

[Note added on September 8, 2008: Check out a fascinating, subsequent post on reaction shots - 'Non-Reaction Shots' on the great blog IScreen Studies, by Ben Goldsmith, who reacts very productively indeed to Bordwell's thoughts]