Hmmm, what could Saul Bass and Hitchcock be trying to tell us about the director and the film to come? For some reason the word "voyeur" comes to mind. Another, broader question as we continue on with this series of posts, might be how far can we/should we go in taking the title card from a director's credit as both literal signature and sign of authorship to be read for its meaning? As usual, Hitchock provides a paradigmatic example of the kind of image that I think is ripe for auteurist investigation but which has rarely been examined by auteur critics. Or does anyone know of an essay or article that has taken a director's title card into serious account?
Okay. So have at it in the comments and post your own significant example of a director's title card. (Retinal Damage back on the air -- and a big shout out to Mookie for keeping the faith better than any of us!)
15 comments:
Voyeur is certainly the word that comes to mind, but why stop there? It's an oddly passive voyeurism. Over the close up of the eye we have not only Mr. Hitchcock's name, but the words "directed by" as well. Thus, this title card can be read as an admission on Hitchcock's part that he will be directing our gaze for the next 105 minutes. He will tell us what to look at, how to feel about it, how to understand that in some sense it needs to be controlled. In short, it's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in one single frame. Not such a hot shot now, are you Ms. Mulvey?
As to Paul's concluding question -- how far can we take this kind of analysis -- I think at the very least its going to run into the same problems that auteurist study in general does. How do we know that Hitchcock directed the placement of his credit? Perhaps Saul Bass determined where these credits would go. In that case, this would be an example of someone making a comment on Hitchcock as filmmaker and not an auteurist act proper. What about the placement of other credits -- are these comments/reflections of the screenwriters'/cinematographers'/etc. authorial intentions? Or comments upon those talented people? Wouldn't we need to see all of, or at least a large number of, the director's films to see where the credit is placed to make any real auteurist argument? What if all of the credits are placed at different points in the title sequence, or over incredibly divergent images? What about filmmakers like Woody Allen or Pier Paolo Pasolini? The credits for their films tend to text on white or black backgrounds, with no other images. How do we mount an auteurist reading out of something like this?
With all respect to Paul's enthusiasm and to his keen eye for small moments such as this, I'm not sure single frames that will probably vary widely within a single director's oeuvre and that were almost certainly designed by someone else can support an auteurist analysis. Of course, I am by temper generally disinclined to auteurism (with a few exceptions, such as Allen, Pasolini, Fassbinder, Hitchcock), so maybe I'm not the best person to be doing this.
Ah ha! I like it: "I" directed by Alfred Hitchcock!
I think we only get a full sense of this shot when we realize that the frame we can see is not the "real" frame.
What we are seeing is just a fragment of a giant image of a naked woman. Over the eyes it says "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock." Over the mouth it says "Directed by David Lynch." Over the head and hair "Directed by Josef von Sternberg." Over the breasts "Directed by Frank Tashlin."
I'm afraid those are the only parts of the real image I can make out. Please fill out the list if you can see others.
Over the thighs "Directed by Stanley Donnen and Gene Kelly"
(Rob: brilliant, man, brilliant ...)
Should we construct this "exquisite corpse" of the cinema somehow? Anyone know Flash? Anyone want to venture the male version of the body? Is there one?
Feet directed by Quentin Tarantino.
LOL! Pulp fiction reference alert! Awesome!
(...says humorless feminist co-blogger with just the most minuscule grain of salt...) Nothing like a couple of white heterosexual male PhDs celebrating and perpetuating film history's fragmentation of the female body into bits of objectified pieces all serving to provide visual pleasure. I guess the next likely question is: who is the woman's vagina directed by?
Paul Verhoeven.
oh my ...
Apparently, not so humorless that I don't find that really funny. But seriously, don't even get me started on representations of female sexuality in contemporary Hollywood film...particularly those produced by the Verhoeven, Lyne, Eszterhas triumvirate.
Knees = Rohmer
In honor of his passing, can we have Antonioni direct the female back (cf. Blow Up)?
What about the male body? Who gets to direct that? More recent directors like Zack Snyder (300)?
Oh, and how come the discussion of the limits of auteurism has been avoided?
I will happily continue to avoid the auteur issue (despite the fact that I have an opinion about it) because I just finished teaching a class on the topic and, frankly, am kind of sick of it. I would much rather talk about who the male body is directed by. (Doesn't it give you pause to realize that, cinematically speaking, it is not as easily conceived of in pieces as its female counterpart?)
My vote is Martin Campbell (figure it out).
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