FROM CLOSE UP TO THE GRAND THEORY

In this chapter, I offer an overview of Brecht's reception on the part of film theory. I start by discussing the most familiar aspects of what we tend to label ‘Brechtian film theory’. I then move on to a discussion of the American film theorist Noël Burch, whose influence on film and media theory has been largely re-evaluated principally because his Brechtian counter-history of cinema has had a tremendous impact on the discipline of media archaeology. The last two sections of the chapter centre on recent critiques of Brecht by cognitive film theory and by Jacques Rancière. For reasons of space, I do not offer an extensive overview of the Grand Theory; as mentioned in the introduction, previous book-length projects have covered this ground. Instead, the chapter's central aim is to summarise the ways Brecht has been received by film theory so as to debunk some of the misconceptions that have dominated the ways he is understood in film scholarship. Moreover, by drawing specific attention to Burch, I intend to underline the ways his Brechtian counter-history of cinema offers new insights into contemporary debates in media archaeology. Finally, my discussion of Rancière aspires to demonstrate that his critique of Brecht can be understood as a pathway to a post-Brechtian aesthetic and not as a total dismissal of his theoretical legacy.

The basic theoretical framework of the Brechtian trend in the film theory of the 1960s–70s is largely dominated by a critique of conventional narrative codes associated with Hollywood cinema and realism, and a tendency towards polemical theoretical pronouncements, often at the expense of a detailed study/analysis of the films themselves. Importantly, the writing style crosses canonical generic boundaries merging late Marxism with psychoanalysis, semiotics, film criticism and polemics. In a way, film criticism was seen as a means of changing the types of films produced and as a vehicle for making interventions that would raise political awareness.

While the familiar history tends to stress the francophone influence on the British Screen theory of the 1970s, it is important to highlight that the British journal Close Up had preceded this type of polemical film criticism and there are curious resemblances that merit a mention