Neo-Romantic Landscapes

Neo-Romantic Landscapes: An Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Pressburger

By

Stella Hockenhull

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Neo-Romantic Landscapes: An Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Pressburger, by Stella Hockenhull This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright 2008 by Stella Hockenhull All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-744-7, ISBN (13): 9781847187444

For Keith, Tom and Emily and in memory of my Parents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Neo-Romantic Landscapes: Pictorial Compositions, Convoluted Plots, and New Methodologies Chapter One............................................................................................... 39 British Patriots or Fantastical Outsiders? Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 65 Strangeness and Splendour Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 115 Hebrides and Himalayas Chapter Four............................................................................................ 147 Neo-Romantic Decline: Gone to Earth Conclusion............................................................................................... 179 Bibliography............................................................................................ 189 Index........................................................................................................ 209

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks must go to friends and colleagues who have encouraged and supported me in my research and the subsequent publication of this book. In particular, I acknowledge Eleanor Andrews, Barbara Crowther, Ken Page, Fran Pheasant-Kelly, and Pritpal Sembi, all close friends as well as colleagues in the Film Studies team at the University of Wolverhampton. I am grateful to the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at the University of Wolverhampton for research time and conference funding. I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Professor Christine Gledhill, Dr. Martin Shingler and Dr. Colin Cruise; without their academic advice, patience and friendship this work would not exist. I am indebted to my friend John Redman who introduced me to Neo-Romanticism and Professor Robin Nelson who has provided constant advice throughout. I also acknowledge Sir Reresby and Lady Sitwell for permission to reproduce John Pipers Renishaw Hall, the Imperial War Museum for permission to reproduce Paul Nashs Battle of Britain, Alan Sorrells FIDO in Operation, and Graham Sutherlands Men in Quarry. I also thank Thelma Schoonmaker for permission to research the Michael Powell Special Collection at the British Film Institute.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. A Canterbury Tale (1944) Figure 2. Graham Sutherland Men in the Quarry (1943) Drawing Figure 3. John Piper Arch in the Ravine (1942-1945) Watercolour Figure 4. Paul Nash Battle of Britain (1941) Oil on Canvas Figure 5. I Know Where Im Going! (1945) Figure 6. Alan Sorrell Fido in Operation (1945) Drawing Figure 7. Black Narcissus (1947) Figure 8. Gone to Earth (1950) Figure 9. Gone to Earth (1950)

INTRODUCTION NEO-ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES: PICTORIAL COMPOSITIONS, CONVOLUTED PLOTS, AND NEW METHODOLOGIES

Towards the end of the film, A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger, 1944), the central female character, Alison (Sheila Sim), undergoes an extraordinary spiritual experience whilst walking through the landscape on the old Pilgrims road. The sequence begins with a panoramic view of the Kent countryside in summer. Gazing around her and at the sky, Alison appears in the frame accompanied by soft, romantic music. Through a series of dissolves, she enters a woodland area dappled in sunlight. At this point she seems unaware of the beautiful surrounding Kent countryside, content to walk aimlessly on. However, as she emerges from the trees, a strange thing happens. Alison pauses and starts almost imperceptibly, her face slightly turned as she looks into the distance. At this point, the camera cuts to a distant view of Canterbury Cathedral which is clearly the focus of Alisons attention, and the spectator becomes aware of her spiritual experience. Her face is seen from a low angle in close-up; lit from the side, her lips are slightly parted and she moves slowly around as she, and the audience, hear choral singing. This is immediately followed by the noise of Chaucers figures chattering and playing music which is the sound heard at the beginning of the film. Spinning around, Alison searches for the source but is greeted by silence and is left alone on the hilltop. From Alisons stance, her facial expressions, and the length of time the image remains on the screen, it appears that she has undergone a spiritual experience motivated by the landscape. In this short sequence, aural imaginings are accompanied by sumptuous visual images of the surrounding Kentish countryside. As Alison stares in wonderment and awe, the spectator is also implicated in the same views of the Cathedral spires set in the English landscape. Canterbury Cathedral appears mysterious; framed within the composition by a group of trees and lit from the right, the spectators gaze is directed

Introduction

through the foliage and the landscape to the Gothic apparition in the distance (Figure1).

Figure 1. A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Up until this point, a number of characters in the film, including Alison, have been engaged in solving a mystery. At the beginning of the film Alison experiences a mysterious attack resulting in glue being poured over her hair. The narrative revolves around the detective work of an American sergeant, a British army officer and Alison who is a Land Army girl. The local Squire and Justice of the Peace, Thomas Colpeper (Dennis Portman), is thought to be responsible and the three set about proving his guilt. However, in cinematic viewing, a rather convoluted plot is dominated by intensely visual landscape images. These offer the spectator a pictorial quality, a painterly aesthetic framed by Powell and Pressburger as an arrested image, a frozen moment, whereby the formal composition is arranged for spectator contemplation. This mobilises a Neo-Romantic affect, located in the Sublime of eighteenth century aesthetic theory, and

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

nineteenth-century Romanticism in painting and the other arts, with their emphasis on the spiritual aspects of landscape and nature. Neo-Romantic affect thus elicits a certain type of emotion from the viewer, who is invited to experience an intuitive response on encountering the pictorial compositions. It is the richness of images such as these which provides a pictorial Neo-Romantic affect, particularly evident in Powell and Pressburgers films of the 1940s, inviting a new way of examining their work. The analysis of four Powell and Pressburger films released between 1944 and 1950 are selected because of their extensive and painterly use of the landscape, which demonstrates the pictorial nature of their films made during and immediately following the Second World War. They are: A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where Im Going! (1945), Black Narcissus (1947) and Gone to Earth (1950). The latter example may appear out of context, its release date occurring five years after the war had ended; however, it is included here because Powell and Pressburger continued to follow the pictorial aesthetics and formal compositions employed in their earlier three films. A number of other 1940s Powell and Pressburger films have been excluded from this book because their use of landscape as a signifying feature is not prominent, and this element is required for the analysis of Neo-Romantic affect. The narrative of their 1943 film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, depicts the life of an army officer and traces his career from the Boer War to the Second World War. The film, which caused a great deal of controversy with intervention by Churchill who made an attempt to prevent it being released, is devoid of any significant landscape sequences. Powell and Pressburgers later film, A Matter of Life and Death (1946), was instigated by the Ministry of Information (MoI) who wanted to promote goodwill between Britain and America. The film charts the near death experience of its central character, Peter Carter (David Niven), and his fight for life following the shooting down of his plane. His desire to live becomes stronger when he falls in love with the voice of the ground operator, an American girl named June (Kim Hunter), and the film follows his bid for survival. The Red Shoes (1948) is a ballet based on a Hans Christian Andersen story and is modelled on the relationship between Diaghilev and Nijinsky. The film follows the central character, Vicky (Moira Shearer), and her tutor/mentor Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), and the complications which arise when she is forced to choose between romance and ballet. These three films, along with a

Introduction

number of others 1 invite further analysis, but use mainly interior sets, rather than shots of the landscape, and therefore the above are not here for that reason.2

Recent Scholarly Appraisal

One of the purposes of this book lies in the fact that recent film historians and theorists3 have singled out the films of Powell and Pressburger as other and different, suggesting that their work bears little resemblance to that of their contemporary British film-makers, relating rather more to their European counterparts. Landmark studies began with the work of Ian Christie in 1978 in a British Film Institute publication entitled Notes from Powell, Pressburger and Others. Compiled as a handbook to accompany the National Film Theatre retrospective of the same year, Christie charts the films of Powell and Pressburgers company, the Archers. This introduction was shortly followed by his second work entitled Arrows of Desire published in 1985. In the later work, he discusses the directors ensuing separate careers. Christie begins the first chapter of his 1985 study by suggesting that the Archers have yet to receive their full recognition From the outset, the Archers signalled a distinctive new approach (1985: 1). He ends by placing them as outsiders with predecessors in European cinema. Kevin Gough-Yatess entitles his chapter Exiles and British Cinema in The British Cinema Book where he acknowledges a Neo-Romantic sensibility in A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where Im Going! but constructs Pressburger as a stranger, confronted by an alien language and culture (1999: 110). Similarly, American film scholar, Scott Salwolke, claims that,
Powell was introduced to the cinema relatively late in life, and like many Englishmen, he found little to appreciate in the British cinema. His influences would be the Americans and the Germans and he would gain his experience with an American unit in France. Whereas Powell admired the German film industry, Pressburger gained his education in it (Salwolke 1997: 3).

See McFarlane (ed.) (2003: 532) for full list. Although The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp does contain a limited number of shots reminiscent of Paul Nashs First World War paintings and warrants further discussion. 3 This is dealt with in more detail in Chapter One.
2

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

Salwolke links Expressionism, in particular the work of Fritz Lang, with the films of Powell and Pressburger, suggesting a transnational influence in their work and struggles to position them within the context of British cinema. To describe the films of Powell and Pressburger as foreign and unBritish is understandable as the film-makers employed a number of European, mainly German, technicians to work on their films. The 1930s had seen a number of inter European exchanges and co-operation. This was not only the situation between Britain and Europe, but also between Hollywood and Europe resulting in, what Tim Bergfelder terms, an increasingly mobile work force and the emergence of a new type of film professional, the mobile freelancer (in Higson (ed.) 1996: 21). Andrew Moor also identifies stylistic and thematic similarities between the spy films of Powell and Pressburger and German cinema. As he points out,
The Spy in Blacks allusions to Expressionist cinema within the conventions of the spy story are not so improbable. The spy thriller derives from popular entertainment fiction and deals with disguise, misinformation and paranoia (Moor 2005: 29).4

As suggested, much scholarly activity and critical attention has centred upon the European connections of the film-makers and the technical team employed. This is based on the fact that Pressburger was a Hungarian migr and Powell spent much of his early years and career in France. Also, these Europeans brought with them their own skills, expertise and knowledge. Figures such as Hein Heckroth, Alfred Junge and Erwin Hillier were all German migrs, working as either camera operators or production design technicians. However, Powell and Pressburger also used Jack Cardiff and Christopher Challis, both of British nationality. Undoubtedly each technician developed a particular style and it would be unfair to discount their individual aesthetic contribution. Rather, it is possible to argue that the Powell and Pressburger combination was the dominant force behind the films, as articulated in the extensive and descriptive screenplay notes which both were deeply involved in, and are alluded to in the ensuing chapters of this book. This control of Powell and Pressburger suggests a responsibility for the completed look of the film and, as noted above, the film-makers did not rely on the same cinematographer, or indeed technicians, throughout their four films, yet
4

Moor discusses four Powell and Pressburger films in all including Contraband (1940), The Spy in Black (1939), 49th Parallel (1941), and one of our aircraft is missing (1942).

Introduction

the landscapes demonstrate remarkably similar aesthetic qualities. Thus, although Powell and Pressburger acknowledge the skills and expertise of their workforce (see Chapter Two for a more extensive account), it is their authorial control which determines the aesthetic compositions of their films, and the film-makers made considered judgements in their choice of craftsmen, selecting cinematographers and production designers for their appropriate qualities irrespective of their nationality.5 This is not to dismiss the notion that the Neo-Romantic affect perceived in the wartime films of Powell and Pressburger contains an Expressionist aesthetic; as Bergfelder points out,
[m]ost Continental art directors adhered in their British period to a classical organization of space and most of the rare aberrations from these principles can be explained as highlighting markers for isolated dramatic effect. But this does not amount to a German aesthetic (Bergfelder in Higson (ed.) 1996: 36).6

What Bergfelder does suggest is that many of the German technicians were responsible for the unified aesthetic experience, the reorganisation of the concept of mise-en-scne a total work of art or Gesamtkunstwerk, designed and composed by the artist (in Higson (ed.) 1996: 36). That Powell and Pressburger were un-British and outsiders are assumptions which are based primarily on narrative readings of their films. Indeed, Film Studies has been mainly preoccupied with narrative theory since the 1970s to the neglect of the aesthetic dimension of a film. The contention here is that if the films of Powell and Pressburger are analysed foregrounding an aesthetic approach in conjunction with Reception Studies, then arguably their films need not be perceived as un-British, nor the film-makers themselves as outsiders. Instead, they can be analysed within their contemporary cultural climate and located within a specific art movement of the period, British Neo-Romanticism. As a result of the centenary of Powells birth in 2005, there has been renewed scholarly interest in their films. A number of recent publications have offered a variety of differing approaches and perspectives on their work. Ian Christie and Andrew Moors publication entitled The Cinema of Michael Powell and sub-titled International Perspectives on an English Film-Maker, offers a number of contributions from a variety of film scholars. Christie and Moor admit that,
5

Moor (2005) discusses the links between German Expressionism and three Powell and Pressburger films in some depth. 6 For a more extensive discussion see Bergfelder in Higson (ed.) (1996).

Neo-Romantic Landscapes during the last decade, critical discussion and research have not kept pace. Despite a number of biographically based monographs, this collection represents the first gathering of critical and interpretive essays devoted to its subject (Christie and Moor 2005: 3).

The subject refers to Powell and Pressburger and, as Christie and Moor claim, most of the research undertaken has involved either a short chapter contribution to a British cinema text,7 or a variety of biographies and filmographies. It has been limited in scope and underdeveloped in terms of the introduction of new dimensions to their work. In this recent publication, Christies contribution analyses the ideological stance of films such as A Canterbury Tale, studying the ways in which the film attempts to promote the relationship between America and Britain. A variety of contemporary reviews of the film form part of his analysis where he notes the films poor reception, suggesting that this may have been due to its release date. The film had received a trade showing in May, but was withheld from general release until August which was after the D-Day landings. Christie highlights the importance of Reception Studies for his work, and in doing so he acknowledges the puzzlement experienced by the critics, believing that this was because [t]here was no critical framework to recognise such aesthetic aims in 1944 (in Christie and Moor (eds.) 2005: 90). I argue that, although this may be the case, the film enabled many reviewers to experience an affect through its visual presentation of the landscape. Christie also invites further work to be done in terms of the films use of landscape. Comparing it to a number of other releases of the 1970s such as Days of Heaven (Malick 1978), Tree of the Wooden Clogs (Olmi 1978) and Jarmans Jubilee of the same year, he describes it as, a film bearing witness to its time, yet seemingly remarkably modern in its handling of landscape, time and mysteries of the human heart (in Christie and Moor (eds.) 2005: 90). A number of studies of Powell and Pressburger have been undertaken, many seeking a comparison between their work and that of their contemporary film-makers. This is not the intention here. Rather, this study offers an analysis of their 1940s films as part of a broader British cultural and aesthetic climate, that of Neo-Romanticism. This adopts a new methodology of applying aesthetics to the study of film, thus developing a cross-disciplinary approach by drawing analogies between the media of painting and film. This involves a conceptual engagement with the aesthetic theories of Romanticism and the Sublime, drawing parallels between the use of landscape in the work of the Neo-Romantic
7

See Murphy (ed.) (1999).

Introduction

artists and in the films of Powell and Pressburger, ultimately contributing to a better understanding of their films in context and establishing a vocabulary for discussion.

Reception Studies
The use of an aesthetic approach as a mode of study involves a variety of methodologies. The context in which both film and painting are produced is important. This involves Reception Studies which entails an analysis of the critical reception at the time of a films release, in this case, the 1940s. The analysis of representative cultural and critical documents is considered for the spread of ideas, values and motifs arising from the Sublime and Romantic into general circulation; this informs, in particular, the context for the work of Powell and Pressburger, the debates they provoked, and the approaches that have been taken to their work since. Writing in 1992, Janet Staiger develops the idea of Reception Studies.8 Staiger debates the idea that the reader of a text and the producer are both as important in providing meanings and pleasures. As she suggests, [t]he use-value of reception studies, it seems to me, is not to overthrow the author in favour of the reader (Staiger 1992: 4). The importance for Staiger is to understand the interaction between the two and the cultural, social and political context of the period. She provides her own definition of Reception Studies arguing that,
[f]irst of all, reception studies has as its object researching the history of the interactions between real readers and texts, actual spectators and films As history reception studies is interested in what has actually occurred in the material world. Reception studies might speculate about what did happen, and why that was; in fact, part of its project is to explain the appearance, and disappearance of various forms of interaction. But, overall, reception studies does not attempt to construct a generalized, systematic explanation of how individuals might have comprehended texts, and possibly someday will, but rather how they actually have understood them Consequently, reception studies is not textual interpretation. Instead, it seeks to understand textual interpretations as they are produced historically (Staiger 1992: 8-9).

In other words, to use Staigers approach is to demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which the contemporary reader interprets the text in the context of the period. Staigers work engages with the critical
8

There have been a number of studies undertaken in Reception Theory. For further reading see Barthes, (1968), Campbell (2005).

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

reader rather than the general film-going public. For her, a product exists as an art object only because of the fact there is an audience for that work. For Staiger, to understand an object as art is to understand that art within its historical context. This is not to suggest that it is possible to understand precisely the internal workings of the minds of the spectators, nor to conduct a sociological study or sample study of the population. This would prove impossible when dealing with past events, in this case, the Second World War. Instead, it is to interpret the language used in the reviews and critical reception of both films and paintings. Staiger is interested in what an art work implies about a particular period in history. Her argument centres on the notion that the film text is not a container of meanings; rather it requires a comparative historical analysis as explanation. As Staiger asserts, it is dangerous to assume that all spectators are the same. She suggests the type of questions which might be asked using Reception Studies as an approach. These include,
[w]hat types of interpretive and emotional strategies are mobilized by various spectators? How did these strategies get in place? How might other strategies, perhaps of a progressive nature, replace them? How can radical scholars participate in encouraging what Judith Fetterley calls resisting readers (Staiger 1992: 13).

Thus, emphasis has been placed on the critical reception of Powell and Pressburgers films and the context in which they were released,9 and I have combined Staigers work in Reception Studies with a reading of the film texts to elucidate meanings. Some analysis of audience response through the work of the sociological study by J.P. Mayer of Second World War audiences, later published in British Cinema and their Audiences, also offers an interpretation of the films and allows for a historical analysis of the period. Mayer asked the readers of the magazine Picturegoer to submit a response about their favourite films, and it was noted that, by 1945, there was an adverse reaction to war films. Indeed, the majority of the respondents suggested that their preference lay, in the main, with American films. However, many were positively receptive to British cinema, and A Canterbury Tale was frequently mentioned for its spiritual qualities and landscape, along with similar attitudes articulated in other letters outlined
9

Whilst acknowledging the work of other film theorists and their work in Reception Studies, I use only Staiger in order to study the critical reception of the films. Also, only certain facets of her work are pursued in relation to British cinema. I do not take into account race or gender.

10

Introduction

later in this book. Indeed, there are a number of surveys in existence which account for the popularity of films exhibited during the period. The trade paper Kinematograph Weekly produced a summary of box office successes at the end of each year, while Julian Pooles 1987 article entitled British Cinema Attendance in Wartime: audience preference at the Majestic, Macclesfield, 1939-1946 provides a useful survey regarding film attendance in a Cheshire town during the Second World War. Whilst I acknowledge these sources, they do rely, to some extent, on box office figures and film popularity, and neither of them detail specific audience responses to the films mentioned. The popularity of Powell and Pressburgers films are not the subject of discussion here, rather, as noted above, the emphasis of this book remains with the critical reception of the films.10 The Second World War provided an appropriate cultural climate for Powell and Pressburgers films to operate, in a similar way to a number of paintings executed by a group of artists later labelled Neo-Romantics (see below for a lengthier discussion of their work). Given that both painting and film are visual media, and that it is through perception that they are evaluated (although perception is not only a visual process), an analysis of the presentation of the landscape within the frame in both the film and painting texts is included to create an analogy between the films of Powell and Pressburger and the paintings of the Neo-Romantic artists. Clearly, paintings and films belong to different media. One is a moving image, although it consists of a series of still photographic frames which, when pieced together, appears to create motion. The common ground between these two media lies in the fact that they are both framed. Both also contain elements which can be analogous, such as similarities in tone, space, colour, line, mass, scale and their use of light and shade. These elements have been outlined by artist and art historian, Roger Fry, who suggests that their various combinations possess a number of emotional potentials. In an essay written for The New Statesman entitled An Essay in Aesthetics in 1909, later published in Vision and Design in 1920, he explores the psychology of aesthetics and draws a correlation between different framed visual arts. Denying that art is mere imitation, he suggests that the framing device employed in painting, film and even the mirror, acts as a process of selection for the spectator. He argues that,
10

Of the four films examined in detail here, Pooles survey produces statistics for I Know Where Im Going! only. (Admittedly, two of the films discussed were not released during wartime). This was shown in Macclesfield with admission figures of 8,073. In the same year, admissions for The Wicked Lady almost doubled those of the Archers film with figures of 13,520.

Neo-Romantic Landscapes [a] similar effect to that of the cinematograph can be obtained by watching a mirror in which a street scene is reflected it then, at once, takes on the visionary quality, and we become true spectators, not selecting what we will see, but seeing everything equally, and thereby we come to notice a number of appearances and relations of appearances, which would have escaped our notice before, owing to that perceptual economizing by selection of what impressions we will assimilate, which in life we perform by unconscious processes. The frame of the mirror, then, does to some extent turn the reflected scene from one that belongs to our actual life into one that belongs rather to the imaginative life (Fry 1961: 25).

11

Frys essay relates more to the separation of actual reality and, what he refers to as, the imaginative life. Crucial to his argument is the presence of the frame, a feature common to film and painting. Thus, the frame defines the spectators image and also, more importantly for this work, the composition within the frame. The same principles apply to both film and painting and, as John Berger states, [t]he compositional unity of a painting contributed fundamentally to the power of its image (1985: 13). Other compositional equivalents between painting and film lie in the use of setting. The British landscape has long been used as an appropriate subject matter in painting, either as a result of nostalgic impulses or for patriotic purposes. As Frances Spalding points out, [m]uch Victorian landscape painting is either the result of intense looking or myopic nostalgia (1983: 9). By the 1940s, the Neo-Romantics were realising the potential of the landscape as a means of expressing an inner vision. As Spalding asserts, [i]n Sutherlands Welsh paintings, and often in the landscapes of those
artists he inspired, Minton, Ayrton, Craxton and Vaughan, the concern is less with the countryside itself than with the emotive landscape in the mind of the artist (Spalding 1983: 19).

Neo-Romantic settings consist of mountainous landscapes, wild seas, angry skies and lone figures dwarfed by their surroundings. These all allude to Edmund Burkes various eighteenth-century literary and philosophical discussions on notions of the Sublime, (this is discussed in more detail later in this chapter) and it is these settings, and the ways in which they appear common to both painting and film which are explored here. Similarly, analogies between the compositions of both painting and film can be found in the use of light and shade. Both media use carefully arranged light to produce an effect, and this study concentrates on the use of light and shade to create a Neo-Romantic sensibility within the

12

Introduction

compositions discussed. Lighting can create mood, emotion and atmosphere which are relevant; the juxtaposition between light and shade creates chiaroscuro and this can emphasise solidity and form, thereby guiding an audience response. Film uses lighting set-ups to manipulate the image on the screen, and, in a similar way, an artist uses colour to create light and shade which has a corresponding effect. Lighting in both film and painting provides a basis for observation, investigation and analysis which relies on the senses and emotion rather than emphasising narrative significance. This book finds ways of exploring the formal devices employed by the Neo-Romantic artists and film-makers which enable Neo-Romantic affect, and the ways in which these affects were given critical interpretation and circulation during, and immediately after, the Second World War. Albeit released five years after the war, Gone to Earth is included in this study as it offers similar pictorial devices to the three earlier films, yet a contrast and comparison through its poor reception, thus highlighting the importance of Reception Studies.

Film Studies and Aesthetic Approaches

Writing in 2000, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith discusses the notion of aesthetics in relation to the study of film. His concern is that, from the 1970s, as a result of the political situation in 1968, film analysis shifted away from aesthetics and towards narrative theory as a political mode of study. For Nowell-Smith, the political trajectory has now lost its impetus and narrative theory is no longer an appropriate method for studying film. As he suggests,
[f]inding meaning has become an academic exercise, in both good and bad senses of the phrase. It is useful to set students to carry out but is in danger of being routinised. Films mean. But they do not just mean. Because they can be described with the aid of language we can be led to think that description can substitute for the film. This is the perennial temptation of what I have called the linguistic analogy. But films also work in less describable ways. They work as painting and music do, partly through meaning but partly in other ways; partly in ways that have linguistic equivalents and partly in ways that do not. The move in the direction of semiotics in the 1970s was indeterminate and could not be brought within a rational schema. But the need for such a rational schema has become questionable. Too many of the things that films do evade attempts to subsume them under the heading of meaning (Nowell-Smith in Gledhill and Williams (eds.) 2000: 16).

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

13

What Nowell-Smith is proposing is that films operate on a visual and aural level as do painting and music, and established film theory does not provide a full means of analysis because it neglects the aesthetic dimension. Nowell-Smiths work is thought-provoking, but he leaves his chapter open-ended and does not suggest a way forward. To find an appropriate means by which to describe an emotional response to a film presents a challenge. Recent Anglo-American film study has been largely preoccupied with narrative theory, drawing on psychoanalysis, linguistics and semiotics. However, these methodologies tend to focus on meaning and ideology at the expense of aesthetic affect.11 Narrative study focuses on the construction of the films story as a set of cause and effect relationships occurring in time. This is based on the use of characters, causal agents, who in turn enable the story to progress. As Richard Neupert points out, a [s]tory is understood as a series of interrelated events, characters, and actions out of which the audience creates a diegesis, or larger fictional world (in Cook and Berninck (eds.) 1999: 322). The story and its fictional world are reconstructed in time and space. Thus, whereas narrative theory offers a mode of analysis which is temporally structured, an aesthetic approach is linked, in contrast, to visual (and aural) perception, and hence to sensibility and emotion. To address this shortcoming, this book adopts the vocabulary of an aesthetic approach, traditionally used in the analysis of painting, and implements it for the analysis of film. It is thus helpful to offer a brief definition of these methods used here, and to introduce some key terms devised to make this transition and correlative process possible. The term aesthetic has historically been used as an expression applied to the theory of taste. Derived from Greek and Latin usage, it was introduced to Britain through the work of the German philosopher, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762). Baumgarten was a follower of Christian Wolff, the rationalist philosopher, and he included the term in his title for two volumes entitled Aesthetica published between 1750 and 1758. For Baumgarten, the importance of aesthetics as a branch of the arts was its relationship with the senses, a point clarified by Raymond Williams. Williams notes that Baumgartens new use was part of an emphasis on subjective sense activity, and on the specialized human creativity of art (1988: 31).

11

For a key work offering these approaches see Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson in Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (eds.) (1985), and Bordwell (1997).

14

Introduction

Prior to the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment trajectory had witnessed a greater freedom of expression in the arts, along with an interest in the mechanics of the natural world, resulting in debates around landscapes and aesthetics. The notion of the aesthetic in landscape is usually explored under the discourse of the Sublime and such debates around landscape and aesthetics afford a context for the later analysis of the films examined in this book. In their compilation of texts on the Sublime, Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla address the question of aesthetic pleasure suggesting that, the British tradition insists that the affective is based on human experience and human nature, and that by necessity the aesthetic cannot, therefore, be understood as a separate realm (1998: 4). As noted, the question of aesthetic pleasure and human experience was partly explored around the notion of the Sublime which is a complex concept and has no single definition; it is largely based on a group of writings derived from a number of disciplines such as literary criticism, psychology, landscape design, fine art and philosophy. These discourses do not necessarily correspond with one another but contain a number of common themes and ideas. One such discourse was established by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1709. He wrote of the wild, remote aspects of nature whereby, The Wildness pleases. Shaftesburys position here is central to the concept of the Sublime arguing for the appeal of remote, inaccessible landscapes suggesting that,
[w]e seem to live alone with Nature. We view her in her inmost recesses, and contemplate her with more delight in these original wilds than in the artificial labyrinths and feigned wildernesses of the palace (Shaftesbury in Thacker 1983:12).

Shaftesburys ideas propose a number of attributes such as inaccessibility, and untamed remote places to be key instigators of Sublime experiences. The question of aesthetic pleasure was further explored in the work of British philosopher, Sir Edmund Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757 and republished in 1759. Burkes treatise provides various scenarios which are said to be causes of the Sublime, such as the experience of fear and awe at the forces of nature. Burke, a scholar at Trinity College, Dublin was to further develop these ideas, leading him to indicate that one reaction to nature which he believed made an impression on the mind was that of selfpreservation. This reaction was deemed an emotion associated with the concept of the Sublime which Burke links to the emotions of pain and

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

15

terror. This, according to Burke, may be experienced through an encounter with splendour. The Sublime object, for Burke, should possess certain qualities such as vastness, infinity, magnitude and magnificence. One theme which had originally emerged from Shaftesburys writings was the claim that nature is akin to the Creator. Nature and the divine are inextricably linked in Burkes view. For Burke, aesthetic affect is stimulated through natural phenomena, and may be experienced through the encounter of grandeur and dramatic light transitions. A result of the Sublime in nature, for Burke, is that of astonishment. As he puts forward,
astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case, the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force (Burke in Ashfield and De Bolla (eds.) 1996: 132).

This dramatic use of lighting was noted by Burke, and many of his concepts can be interpreted and used for aesthetic analysis when examining the films of Powell and Pressburger. One such concept, and its associations with light, is discussed by Burke as the notion of obscurity. This, for Burke, resulted in a depravation of the senses, culminating in a sense of fear and terror for the participant or spectator. He suggests that obscurity, darkness, solitude and silence are circumstances which contribute to a sense of fear and terror, all stimulating a Sublime experience which stirs up the imagination. With reference to obscurity he states,
[t]o make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes (Burke in Ashfield and De Bolla (eds.) 1996: 133).

Burkes concept of obscurity also relates to darkness. This, he argues, is associated with danger which is found in dark places, often associated with paganism. For Burke,
[a]lmost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship the druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest woods, and in the shade of the

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Introduction oldest and most spreading oaks (Burke in Ashfield and de Bolla (eds.) 1998: 133-134).

Burke cites Miltons description of death which, for him, is linked to darkness, uncertainty, confusion, terror which is sublime to the last degree (Burke 1759 in Ashfield and de Bolla (eds.) 1998: 134). Darkness, for Burke, is also linked with suddenness, in other words, stark contrasts in scale or contrasts between darkness and light. Burke links light with the Deity and cites Milton when he states, Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear (misquoted) (in Bolton 1987: 80). Burke associates light with expressions of divinity, although this can be traced back to the twelfth century where the Gothic Cathedrals were built to maximise the use of light through their stained glass windows. Similarly, he also links architecture to the Sublime experience and suggests that, a perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished (Burke 1759 in Boulton 1987: 72). For Burke, large buildings have the necessary characteristics for the Sublime as they are linked to emotion, the emotion caused by astonishment where the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other ... Hence arises the power of the sublime (Burke 1759 in Boulton 1987: 57). Thus far, for the Sublime to operate, certain situations and features must occur, giving rise to a particular kind of spectator involvement. For Sublime affect to be experienced, the spectator must undergo the sensations of fear and terror without being in actual danger; as Malcolm Andrews suggests, [i]t is a matter of being taken as close to disaster as is compatible with still retaining the sense that one is not actually in danger (the brink of Destruction) (1999: 134-135). To sum up, for Shaftesbury, the paradoxical pleasure the spectator takes in being overawed or terrorised by natural forces occurs through encounters with untamed nature, and, for Burke, they are invariably instigated by natural features in the landscape, large objects and darkness and light. Frequent mention is made of nature, its size, vastness and its effect on the spectator, who is positioned as both victim and participant. Nature was also perceived by some as a route to divinity, and for Burke, the ultimate source of the Sublime is divine power. Burke equates the feelings caused by the Sublime with the subjective inner feelings based on the object, usually nature. The Sublime is largely bound up with experience and sensation, and Burke attempts to explain the concept as psychological and physiological in a coherent theoretical way. His terminology adopts description which enables a transformation of the

Neo-Romantic Landscapes

17

Sublime into a visual concept rather than just an ethical or verbal consideration. He, along with other British philosophers and writers, can be seen as one of the forerunners of Romantic concepts of the subject who brought these theories and ideas to the fore and later provided a basis for the transformation of the Sublime into Romantic theory.12 As suggested, many of these ideas and concepts figured visually a century later through the work of the Romantic artists, though Romanticism at first emerged as vocabulary in the eighteenth century.13 The term is notoriously difficult to define and cannot be used to describe a specific movement with a coherent manifesto. It might be characterised more as an attitude which saw its development in the nineteenth-century work of a variety of artists of different nationalities. Romantic painting, like the namesake poetry, frequently demonstrated a preoccupation with the pastoral and landscape, and in particular the wild aspects of nature which culminated in the Sublime. The Romantics linked art to feeling and the notion of the individual sensibility of the artist. They were fascinated by the concept of the Sublime because it represented the human experience in conjunction with nature, highlighting the fact that the latter has its own rules despite human intervention. Artists did not observe the established rules of perspective, often accentuating their images for greater emotional impact, using figures to mediate the composition and to disorientate: in short, to create a Sublime effect. Seen as a revolt against the order of the classical painters, the Romantics frequently looked to the wild, less formal aspects of nature for inspiration. These they found in remote mountainous regions, avalanches, violent storms and severe weather conditions. The turbulent sea provided appropriate subject matter with its unpredictability, as did the pastoral landscape. Romanticism emphasised the individual artists imagination and response to their environment, and an appreciation of nature which they frequently saw as imbued with spiritual properties. The Romantics had a fascination with medieval culture, their work nostalgic, frequently harking back to the past. Similarly, and following on from Burke, the Romantic artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continued to use light as an expression of the numinous. For example, landscape artists such as James Ward painted Gordale Scar in 1811-13, a dramatic composition consisting of vertical cliff faces illuminated by a bright light
12 The aim here is to demonstrate the importance of the work of Burke and various philosophers to the notion of the Sublime rather than to attempt a comprehensive account of Burkes work, nor that of the philosophers and theorists since the topic is well documented. For a summary account see Ashfield and de Bolla (1998). 13 Also in literature, although this study does not pursue this aspect.

18

Introduction

in the sky which breaks through angry clouds. In his description of the painting Hugh Honour points out its emotional impact, allowing that,
[t]his vast canvas, with its mysteriously dark focal point, its overwhelming forms and lowering thunder-charged clouds is, indeed, an apocalyptic celebration of the sublimity of nature and an expression of [his] ecstatic religious beliefs (Honour 1979: 113).

A more dramatic work by the nineteenth-century painter, John Martin, is taken from Revelation VI.17 entitled The Great Day of His Wrath (1852). Consisting of a bright light which illuminates the sky, casting a red glow over an otherwise darkened image, Martin presents a city set in a landscape in the process of being struck by lightning. The biblical implications are apparent in the title, and the emphasis on light can be perceived as an expression of the numinous through its interpretation of the Sublime. Similarly, artist J.W.M. Turner (17751851) used landscape imagery in conjunction with light to convey a divine message, and frequently this was translated into the symbolic use of the sun and the moon as representative, respectively, of the givers of life and death. This was also a continuing theme in the work of British artist, John Constable (1776 1837). His painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds (1823) depicts the Cathedral spire bathed in light in an image not dissimilar to the one in A Canterbury Tale discussed earlier in this work. Early British Romantic, Samuel Palmer (18051881), continued this interpretation of the spiritual in nature expressed through the sun and moon. He incorporated the spectacle of a moon casting light on the landscape in a number of his paintings, including Coming from Evening Church (1830), where he depicts a group of worshippers in front of a Gothic church spire set in a rural landscape. The figures and the church spire are lit by the moon which is in its complete phase, and appears as an omnipresent force. Palmers use of light in conjunction with the images, relates to specific emotional experiences associated with a Theistic God. Many of the Romantic artists, poets and writers were working during a period of vast economic growth. The nineteenth century saw a move from an agrarian society to urban expansion with the Industrial Revolution, and it was this period of uncertainty and horror at the changing face of the landscape which prompted the artistic response.14

14 For a comprehensive account on Romanticism and for further reading see Blayney Brown (2001).