Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-05T12:35:45.639Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

24 - Christian Metz

from III - CINEMATIC NATURE

By
Richard Rushton
Edited by
Felicity Colman
Richard Rushton
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Felicity Colman
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
Get access

Summary

Christian Metz (1931–93) was considered France's leading film theorist in the 1970s. His work on narrative structure, applied semiotics and psychoanalysis for film analysis had a major impact on film theory in France, Britain and the United States. Metz primarily engaged Ferdinand de Saussure's theories of semiotics to film, proposing a syntagmatic analysis as a system for categorizing scenes in films (which he called the Grande Syntagmatique). Metz also brought aspects of Sigmund Freud's and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theories to film theory to explore the nature of the mass appeal of the cinema. His books include Language and Cinema (1971; English trans. 1974), Film Language (1971; English trans. 1974) and The Imaginary Signifier (1977; English trans. 1982).

Christian Metz was a pioneering film scholar. For many, his writings are the first rigorous examples of film studies in an academic sense, and the questions posed by his writings, especially those concerning the language of cinema and cinema spectatorship, are ones that are still central to film studies. Metz's writings on cinema can be separated into two strands, although these strands are closely related. On the one hand, most of his writings are directed towards issues of the semiotics of cinema derived predominantly from Saussurian linguistics (Metz 1968, 1971, 1972, 1974a, 1977a, 1991).

Type
Chapter
Information
Film, Theory and Philosophy
The Key Thinkers
 , pp. 266 - 275
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×