Cinema And Semiotic

by Ehrat, Johannes

• ISBN13: 9780802039125
• ISBN10: 080203912X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-30
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

'Meaning' in cinema is very complex, and the flood of theories that define it have, in certain ways, left cinematic meaning meaningless. Johannes Ehrat's analysis of meaning in cinema has convinced him that what is needed is greater philosophical reflection on the construction of meaning. In Cinema and Semiotic, he attempts to resurrect meaning by employing Charles S. Peirce's theories on semiotics to debate the major contemporary film theories that have diluted it. Based on Peirce's Semiotic and Pragmatism, Ehrat offers a novel approach to cinematic meaning in three central areas: narrative enunciation, cinematic world appropriation, and cinematic perception. Attempting a comprehensive theory of cinema ? instead of the regional 'middle-ground' theories that function only on certain 'common-sense' assumptions that borrow uncritically from psychophysiology ? Ehrat further demonstrates how a semiotic approach grasps the nature of time, not in a psychological manner, but rather cognitively, and provides a new understanding of the particular filmic sign process that relates a sign to the existence or non-existence of objects. Never before has Peirce been so fruitfully employed for the comprehension of meaning in cinema.

Author Biography

Johannes Ehrat is a lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Social Science at the Pontificia Universita Gregoriana.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	3	(5)
On Signs, Categories, and Reality and How They Relate to Cinema	8	(104)
The Use of Signs	14	(10)
The Construction of Meaning	24	(7)
Investigating Conduct as a Form	31	(19)
The Categories of Behaviour	50	(4)
The Categorial Form of Behaviour	54	(15)
Logic of Relations	69	(27)
The Metaphysics of Pragmaticistic Semiotic	96	(16)
Semiotic and Its Practical Use for Cinema	112	(53)
Cinema `Is' a Class of Sign	116	(19)
The Iconism of Cinema: A first Semiotic Approach	135	(13)
(From Film Pragmatics to) The Pragmaticism of Cinema	148	(17)
What `Is' Cinema?	165	(118)
Cinema `Is' Syntagma	171	(9)
Cinema `Is' Sign Function	180	(11)
Cinema `Is' Percept	191	(23)
Cinema `Is' Moving Matter or Time	214	(29)
What Cinema Becomes: Theory Objects Compared, Reconciled, Rejected	243	(40)
Intermezzo: Cinematic Imagination of Godard's Je vous salue, Marie	248	(35)
Narration in Film and Film Theory	283	(62)
The Narratological Question, Peirce, and Cinema	284	(3)
The Semiotic of Narrative Time	287	(27)
Cinematic Time	314	(31)
Intermezzo: Two Kinds of Narrative Time in Dreyer's Ordet	320	(25)
Narration, Time, and Narratologies	345	(53)
Ricoeur's Mimesis	346	(4)
Heidegger's Ekstasis	350	(10)
Aristotle's Poesis	360	(11)
Greimas's Semiosis	371	(8)
Bordwell's Formalism	379	(8)
Olmi's Genesi	387	(11)
Enunciation in Cinema	398	(157)
Enunciation: From Vagueness to Generality	401	(8)
Narrative Enunciation	409	(26)
Rhetorical Enunciation in Cinema: Meaning in Figures	435	(22)
Aesthetic Enunciation in Film	457	(98)
Epilogue: Two Aesthetic Processes in Cinema	528	(27)
Conclusion	555	(6)
Notes	561	(88)
Bibliography	649	(14)
Filmography, by Director	663	(4)
Index	667