Part Two: The Film Experience [chapter]

Julian Hanich, Daniel Fairfax
2019 The Structures of the Film Experience by Jean-Pierre Meunier  
We have tried to explain the major principles that should guide our understanding of the general phenomena of perception and identification. It has thus become easier to broach the problems relating to the particular case of the film experience. We should rapidly recognize the path we are going to take. Film presents itself above all as an object of perception and, as such, it is a structure, a perceptual 'gestalt.' It is thus as a form, or a 'gestalt' that we will initially envisage film. But
more » ... e will not linger very long on this point because we will soon perceive that film solicits a different attitude in our consciousness than the pure perceptual attitude. We will see that, in order to clarify this particular attitude, certain writers have made of the film experience something situating itself midway between the real and the unreal. These considerations, and others, will lead us to see filmic consciousness as a variation of the major category of consciousness that constitutes the imaginary consciousness. This idea will constitute the guiding thread of our whole work. We will attempt a description of the major aspects of the filmic attitude conceived of as an imaginary attitude and, pushing this analysis further, we will then try to explain the particular variations or modalities of this attitude. In the end, on the basis of what this description will have taught us, we will broach the problem of spectatorial behavior, or in other words, of filmic identification.
doi:10.1515/9789048537846-005 fatcat:cijvgic4fnhkzeup2cwjs7m6mq