The Limits of Vococentrism: Chris Marker, Hans Richter and the Essay Film

Abstract

legacies of Left Bank Cinema and essay film have become mutually intertwined. former is a small but influential filmmaking movement in postwar France, primarily thought to consist of three friends, artists and filmmakers: Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Agnes Varda, though Georges Franju is sometimes included in coterie. 1 group has significant overlap with French New Wave in that both share same historical moment and geographic space, as well as a common interest in exploring personal expression within cinematic signifying practices, and advancing aesthetic possibilities of film form. Ginette Vincendeau states that films directed by members of French New Wave lacked an interest in political or social issues, concentrating on personal angst among (male) Parisian middle class (although an- other less media-prominent band of filmmakers known as 'Left Bank' group…showed greater political awareness) (110). Moreover, New Wave filmmakers made almost exclusively fiction films, while Left Bank group was also interested in documentary. politically engaged, aesthetically bold documentary voiced with strong personal expression is how essay film has come to be theorized. 2 Hence, many studies of form consider Left Bank group as most fully inaugurating presently recognized dimensions of essay film form. 3 Alexandre Astruc's 1948 manifesto, The Birth of a New Avant- Garde: La Camera-Stylo, is frequently invoked as an influential article thought to anticipate and/or incite both Left Bank Cinema and essay film. 4 Indeed, Resnais referred to his first film, Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (1946), now lost, as the sort of thing (that was) later called 'camera-stylo' (cited in Joram ten Brink, 236). With his notion of camera as pen, As- truc expressed his desire for a cinematic mode of signifying thought and personal expression. Engagements with essay film have utilized camera-stylo as metaphor for a film form that articulates intelligence and an individual point of view, typically accomplished through voice-over. Timothy Corrigan argues that many engagements with essay film