Ontology, Film and the Case of Eric Rohmer

Abstract

In his 1945 essay, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, Andr Bazin compares photography to fingerprints and brass rubbing. In 1977, David Thomson echoes this when he writes ‘the [photographic] image is accepted as a coin-like representation of the person’ (Thomson, 1977, p. 240). Thomson argues that film actors are subjects of a film, the subjects almost of quasi-documentaries; even big-budget films with high-profile stars can appear like ‘covert documentaries of a star, discreetly phrased as “stories”’ (p. 242). For Bazin, whatever Enzo Staiola does as Bruno in Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette, Vittorio De Sica, 1948), ‘is never without meaning. On the contrary it is the phenomenology of the script’ (Bazin, 1972, pp. 54–5). Most filmmakers would recognize this emphasis on the importance of the film actor to the meaning of a film. Eric Rohmer comments:

In contrast to the theatre, the choice of an actor in cinema is a part of the film. It’s Goethe who said ‘Hamlet must be played by a flabby, indolent fat man, now that he is always played by a thin man’. In film, this discussion is not possible. One cannot replace one actor with another because the phrases are written to work for someone specific. (Villien, 1984, p. 53)