I buy all this completely. Part of my point was that the physical
experience has to precede the intellectual one. Can I add that while
we can't do without analysis, it's necessarily reductive in that
it `notices' some aspects of experience ahead of others? In a
way `editing' is as much an abstraction as `genre.'

In the `50s or early `60s Sight And Sound said something dumb along
the lines of `Film is about human relationships, not spatial
relationships.' We can all see the problem there, but the answer is
that human relationships ARE spatial relationships, because humans
exist in physical space. If I'm locked up and you're the jailer, what
we have is literally a human relationship and a spatial relationship
at the same time. And if someone makes a movie about us, the audience
can look at it either way, or go from one way of looking to the
other. This is close to the core of what I love about cinema.

JTW



Tag Gallagher wrote:
> 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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