Christian Metz Essay

791 Words4 Pages
Christian Metz’s theories are key significant way of dismantling film as an art form. Metz was a film theorist that incorporated the Lacaan Mirror theory, applying it to the role that film plays on it spectators. The theories key points help dismantle the way that an audience perceives film, and the way that film is able to appeal to an audience in particular ways. One specific film that incorporated various points of Metz’s theory, is Francis Ford Coppolla’s The Conversation (1972). The film is able to incorporated several points, incorporated by Metz’s in his work on “The Imaginary Signifier”. The film incorporates ideas such as suture, identification and lack. The main protagonist of the film, Harry Caul is a character that incorporates issues of identity, and scopophilia. The character incorporates the main characteristics of Metz’s theory on the Imaginary Signifier. A key concept that are present within Harry Caul’s character, are the notions of Identification and lack. This, being a concept argued in by Christian Metz, states that two main drives which cinema depends on, are scopophilia as well as the invocatory drive. As a character, Harry Caul can be see to have characteristics of scopophilia, constantly observing people, as well as deciphering they’re conversations. Applying the theory of scopophilia, it can be seen that the audience would be able to relate to Harry Caul more, due to the characters desire to explore his notions of scopophilia, and try and piece together a conspiracy through the desire to observe. When Harry Caul, is deciphering the recorded dialogue, it bares strong similarities to Metz’s theory on the use of suture in terms of film. Harry Caul consistently pieces together the conversations, through various pieces of time, in a more obscure order. When Harry begins to decipher the conversation that was recorded, he does it in
Open Document