New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics

34 CINE-SEMIOLOGY
semiology corresponds to a possible semiology of the system of signs of
reality itself. Unlike literature, Pasolini argued, film entails no symbolic or
conventional filter between the film-maker and “reality.” The smallest
units in the cinema, the equivalent of phonemes, are unaltered by being
reproduced on film. Nevertheless, the language of the cinema has its own
version of double articulation. The MINIMAL UNITS of cinematic
language, he argues, are the various real objects that occupy the frame. He
designates these minimal units CINEMES by analogy with phonemes. The
cinemes are then joined into a larger unit, the frame, which corresponds to
the morpheme of natural language (Pasolini, in Nichols 1985, vol. I:542–
8).
Umberto Eco, in “Articulations of the Cinematic Code,” criticizes
Pasolini’s argument for failing to acknowledge the culturally coded,
ideological and systematic nature not only of film but also of human
behavior and communication generally. The real objects whose image
occupies the frame, he points out, are merely effects of a
conventionalization by which an iconically codified signifier triggers our
attribution of a signified. In any case, Eco argues, these minimal units are
not equivalent to linguistic phonemes. Pasolini’s “cinemes” retain their
own unit meaning; they do not depend on the second articulation of the
frame to differentially produce meaning. Eco, for his part, suggests a
cinematic code of TRIPLE ARTICULATIONS of the image, consisting of a
first articulation, called SEMES, i.e. initially recognizable meaningful units
—for example “gangster wearing trench coat”—which can in turn be
broken down into a second articulation of smaller iconic signs such as
“cigarette dangling from lip,” all finally analyzable into a third articulation
having to do with conditions of perception (Eco, in Nichols 1985, vol. I:
590–607).
CINEMA: LANGUE OR LANGAGE?
The key figure among the filmo-linguistic pioneers was Christian Metz,
whose purpose, as he himself defined it, was to “get to the bottom of the
linguistic metaphor” by testing it against the most advanced concepts of
contemporary linguistics. Metz took the linguistic metaphor seriously, but
also skeptically, in order to discern its quantum of truthfulness. In the
background of Metz’ discussion was Saussure’s founding methodological
question regarding the “object” of linguistic study. Thus Metz looked for
the counterpart, in film theory, to the conceptual role played by langue in
the Saussurean schema. And much as Saussure concluded that the rightful
purpose of linguistic investigation was to disengage the abstract signifying
system of a language, Metz concluded that the object of cine-semiology
was to disengage the cinema’s signifying procedures, its combinatory rules,