Another two concepts drawn from linguistic research are also relevant to the communicational structure of a sequence of images: denotation and connotation of the sign (structuralism and post / 6)1. Denotation refers to the direct relationship between a word and the physical object it represents. By contrast, connotation designates the secondary or suggestive meanings that a word may carry beyond its literal reference.
Cinema has long been considered one of the highest forms of artistic expression because of its multiplicity and complexity of communication. It is often described as a form of “excess,” given its capacity to combine image, movement, sound, and narrative within a single structured system. In the early years of cinema, many theoreticians and practitioners attempted to define this new medium through filmmaking itself, while others approached the task from a purely theoretical perspective.
Abel Gance (1889–1981), the French filmmaker, wrote in his 1927 book L’Art cinématographique that “the time of the image has arrived!” in reference to the role of the “composed single image” within the communicational structure of film (15/20)2. He was particularly concerned with how and why the “composed single image” communicates independently. Gance enthusiastically argued that cinema and its communicational structure would provide the spectator with a “new synesthetic awareness,” thereby emphasizing the profound communicative power that cinema holds over the viewer.
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That language speaks us; that the source of meaning is not an individual’s experience or being, but the sets of oppositions and operations, the signs and grammars that govern language. Meaning doesn’t come from individuals, but from the system that governs what any individual can do within it.
> Language > Structuralism/Poststructuralism ↩︎ - 20
Filmmaker Abel Gance proclaimed in L’Art cinemato,graphique (1927) that “the time of the image has arrived!” The cinema, for Gance, would endow human beings with a new synaesthetic awareness: spectators “will hear with their eyes.
(Language>Structure> Secuence> Images)
Film Theory: An Introduction
by Robert Stam ↩︎
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