Jean-Louis Comolli's six-part essay Technique and Ideologyhad a revolutionary effect on film theory and history when it first appeared in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1971. In 2009, Comolli revisited his earlier text, arguing that the present age, marked by the total dominance of media-filtered spectacle over image production, makes the need for an 'emancipated, critical spectator' more pressing than ever. In this volume, Daniel Fairfax presents annotated translations of these two texts to provide an overview of Comolli's activity as both a theorist and a filmmaker.
Table of Contents Preface (Philip Rosen) Introduction (Daniel Fairfax) "Yes we were utopians; in a way, I still am...": Interview with Jean-Louis Comolli Cinema against Spectacle I. Opening the Window? II. Inventing the Cinema? III. Filming the Disaster? IV. Cutting the Figure? V. Changing the Spectator? Technique and Ideology Introduction I. On a Dual Origin The ideological place of the "base apparatus" Birth = deferral: the invention of the cinema II. Depth of Field: the Double Scene Bazin's "surplus realism" The work of "transparency" For a materialist history of the cinema "For the first time..." III. "Primitive" Depth of Field IV. Effacement of Depth/Advent of Speech V. Which Speech? Appendix I: Cinema/Ideology/Criticism Appendix II: Machines of the Visible Glossary of Terms Publication History Filmography Bibliography Translator's Notes Index
