I agree. But add:

(1) cuts need to be experienced physically, not just intellectually.

(2) "I may or may not be thinking about his editing strategies": In most
moviemakers whom I find interesting, such "strategies" cannot be
separated from the physical impact of the cut: e.g., how one camera
angle relates to another; how space is thus constructed. These matters
are amazingly neglected in most film analyses.

(3) No, there are no absolute "meanings" for things. But interesting
moviemakers create "rules" within the context of a single movie (or
oeuvre). Thus while "cinema" can never be defined as a whole (or an
abstraction), cinema necessarily gets defined in any great movie -- but
only for that movie. Ditto techniques.

jaketwilson wrote:

> > Now, were we discussing an oil painting, I think you would agree
> that,
> > over time, we shall notice many gestures and emotions in the
> characters
> > (and elsewhere, of course) AND we shall eventually realise and
> think
> > about what creates these effects.
> >
> > Yes?
>
> Yes?
>
> Yes, absolutely.
>
> I do think intuitive perception comes first (we notice something, and
> then notice that we've noticed) but equally that the more self-aware
> we are, the more scope we leave for intuition. Though it seems to me
> that many people  inside and outside the arts, and including
> artists themselves  have complex experiences which they are of
> course `aware' of but don't try to analyse verbally, and that this is
> a different type of awareness from the kind we aim for in criticism.
>
> I wasn't defending lazy viewing habits, but was angling towards
> another point, which I propose here as a hypothesis:
>
> A cut never means `this is a cut.' In fact strictly speaking a cut
> doesn't `mean' anything, because `it' is not an object. `Noticing a
> cut' means registering a perceptual shift between two images, or two
> positions in imaginary space, that has occurred in a particular way.
> And this shift is potentially significant precisely because of the
> effect it has on us, an effect which is not predictable according to
> any general rule, since it occurs as one of the unique series of
> events making up any given work of art.
>
> So no element of form either exists `in its own right,' or functions
> as a code to be deciphered in the sense of `X means Y.' Techniques
> matter because they give rise to experiences, and it's because we're
> already having the experience that we grow interested in the
> technique. If a director is cutting between Cary Grant and Katherine
> Hepburn, I may or may not be thinking about his editing strategies,
> but I certainly know which performer I'm looking at in any given
> moment.
>
> JTW
>
>
>
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