So Many Fragments, So Many Beginnings, So Many Pleasures: The Neglected Detail(s) in Film Theory

Abstract

"WE USED TO WALK the cold, deserted streets," recalled Phillipe Soupault, "in search of an accident, an encounter, life." 1 And then they discovered American cinema through a movie poster—perhaps of Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery—showing "a man, his face covered with a red handkerchief, . . . pointing a revolver at the unconcerned passersby." 2 Like that of all Surrealists captivated by the camera's automatism, Soupault's writing reveals his fascination with the ordinary details that the camera brings to life. In fact, for Surrealists, a film's narrative was never as significant as the poetic power that lay in what René Crevel called "a single minute's lyricism, the detail of a face, the surprise of a gesture." 3 But what happened to this Surrealist faith in cinema's lyricism, in photogénie, after the paradigm shift in film studies in the direction of semiotics? Is it possible to recuperate the Surrealist respect for cinema's "rhythmic impression," 4 considering "'impressionistic' became one of the new paradigm's most frequently evoked pejoratives, designating a theoretical position that was either 'untheorized' or too interested in the wrong questions" 5?