Overview

Translating his seminal semiotic work on the classic American cinema to video, Raymond Bellour, in collaboration with Philippe Venault, produced l'Image du cinéma as a visual discourse on the cinematic apparatus. Through a sophisticated textual analysis of cinematic representations from Hollywood's classic era, 1948-1953, they trace the psychological and ideological effects of its symbolic production. Representing print advertisements from the Hollywood trade publication The Film Daily, they signify a lexicon of cinematic structurations — the primacy of the look, women's symbolic position — with simple video effects. Focusing on the traditional narrative of desire, with its ennunciation of the family romance and the Oedipal complex as codes, Bellour and Venault articulate an illuminating "history/story" of the American cinema.