5. A convenient summary of recent theories in cinema historiography
can be found in the essays contained in Blaine Allan, Valentin Almendarez, and William
Lafferty, eds., Film Reader 4 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Film
Division, 1979).
6. "A Thesis on Neo-Realism," in Overbey, Springtime, p.
69.
7
. See, for example, Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).8
. Noël Burch has done the important preliminary studies in the "zerodegree" style. See his Theory of Film Practice, trans. Helen R. Lane (New York and Washington, D.C.: Praeger Publishers, 1973). The original concept (applied to literature) is Roland Barthes's. "Form . . . becomes more than ever an autonomous object, meant to signify a property which is collective and protected, and this object is a trouble-saving device: it functions as an economy signal whereby the scriptor constantly imposes his conversion without ever revealing how it came about." Writing Degree Zero, trans. Annette Lavers and Cohn Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 27.9
. In Film Form, trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949), pp. 238-39. The italics are Eisenstein's.12. The Haunted Screen (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), p. 151. For the production history
of Caligari see Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971 ), pp. 61-71
13. A fact recognized by Roland Barthes in "The Third Meaning:
Research Notes on Some Eisenstein Stills," in Image, Music, Text, trans.
Stephen Heath (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), pp. 52-68. It is a phenomenon of the
perception of fiction in general: "In the direct experience of a new work of fiction
we have a sense of its unity which we derive from its persuasive continuity. As the work
becomes more familiar, this sense of continuity fades out, and we tend to think of it as a
discontinuous series of episodes, held together by something which eludes critical
analysis. . . . Hence we need a supplementary form of criticism which can examine the
total design of fiction as something which is neither mechanical nor of secondary
importance." Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1963), p. 30.
14. In The Haunted Screen, Lotte Eisner briefly points to
some relationships between late Weimar film and neo-realism; see pp. 330-35. Franco
Venturini discusses the influence of Kammerspiel in "Origins of
Neo-Realism," Overbey, Springtime, pp. 169-97. For Die Neue Sachlichkeit see
John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933 (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 111-49, et passim.
15. André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray, 2 vols.
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968, 1971), 1: 27. For a
response to Bazin's reading of Von Stroheim, see Charles Wolfe, "'Resurrecting Greed,"
Sight and Sound 44 (Summer, 1975), 170-74.
16. See Herman G. Weinberg, The Complete "Greed" (New
York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), Foreword.
17. Jean Renoir, trans. W. W. Halsey, II and William H.
Simon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 87. Bazin discusses Von Stroheim's
influence on Renoir, pp. 15-17, 19, 80-81, 152.
18. Raymond Durgnat, Jean Renoir (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1974), p. 99.
19. George Sadoul, Dictionary of Films, trans. and ed. Peter
Morris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), p. 380.
20. Quoted in ibid., pp. 379-80.
21. "A Few Words about Neo-Realism," in Overbey, Springtime,
p. 90.
22
. "A Thesis on Neo-Realism," p. 72. For a discussion of the political atmosphere in Italy at the end of the war, see Guiseppe Ferrara, "Neo-Realism: Yesterday," in Overbey, Springtime, pp. 199-205, and Overbey's introduction, pp. 10- 11.23
. "The Philosophical Basis of Neo-Realism," in Overbey, Springtime, p. 121. In his quest for stylistic simplicity Morlion is able to detect that Welles's editing is in fact complex, a fact usually forgotten in discussions of Welles's shot construction.24. What Is Cinema?, 11:60.
25
. In Overbey, Springtime, p. 121.26. What Is Cinema?, I, 13.
27. Ibid., II, 37.
28. See Film Form, p. 37.
29.What Is Cinema?, II, 66.
30
. "A Discourse on Neo-Realism," in Overbey, Springtime, p. 150.31. Ibid., p. 142.
32. What Is Cinema?, II, 81.
33. Stefano Roncoroni, ed., Roberto Rossellini: The War Trilogy, trans.
Judith Green (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973), p. 217.
34. Ibid., pp. 314-16.
35
. Ibid., p. 348. The English commentary in the film that is quoted here differs from the screenplay.36. What Is Cinema?, 11:36-37. An early attack on "psychological
realism" occurs in an essay by Bazin's young follower, Franqois Truffaut, "A
Certain Tendency of the French Cinema," in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill
Nichols (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 224-37.
37."A Thesis on Neo-Realism," p. 71.
38
. Ibid., pp. 72, 73.42
. For the political and literary influences on the film see Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Visconti (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 39-44.43. Ibid., pp. 40, 50-51.
44
. Cf. ibid., p. 40.46. Rhode, History of the Cinema, p. 459.
47. What Is Cinema?, 11:69.
48
. Vittorio De Sica, Miracle in Milan (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p.120.49
. Ibid., p. 11.50
. Quoted in Overbey, Introduction, Springtime, pp. 26-29. 51. ". . . A dangerous inclination to aestheticism,"
wrote Bazin in 1948. What is Cinema?, II. 45.
52. James Roy MacBean, Film and Revolution (Bloomington and London: Indiana
University Press, 1975), p. 211.
53
. MacBean offers a similar analysis of these sequences, ibid., P. 213. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith goes further and calls Rossellini a political opportunist although he also points out his aesthetic consistency. Visconti, p. 32.54
. What Is Cinema?, II,88.55
. Ibid.56
. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).57
. Film Language, trans. Michael Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 14.59
. See David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: William Morrow, 1976), p. 465.