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Orientation of the film studios which anticipated the semiology of cinema of the sixties and seventies in various aspects and originated with the foundation in 1946 of the Association pour la recherche filmologique and the following year, at the Parisian university of the Sorbonne, of the Institut de filmologie, both by the work of Professor Gilbert Cohen-Séat, who intended in this way to involve specialists from other fields of the so-called human sciences in the study of films and cinema, primarily psychology, sociology, psychophysiology, psychoanalysis, aesthetics. In the context of the activities of the new institute, Cohen-Séat made use of the collaboration of both historians and film critics (occasionally, however) such as Georges Sadoul, Jean-Marie Lo Duca, Siegfried Kracauer, Léon Moussinac, Amédée Ayfre, André Bazin, both of art historians such as Pierre Francastel (also occasionally), both of aestheticians such as Étienne Souriau, and (above all) of child psychologists such as Henri Wallon (founder in 1946 of the Comité français du cinéma pour la jeunesse) and spouses Bianka and René Zazzo, from perception psychologists such as Albert Michotte van der Berck, by sociologists such as Edgar Morin, by psychoanalysts or psychoanalysis scholars such as Cesare Musatti, Didier Anzieu, Jean Deprun, Serge Lebovici, by semiologists like Roland Barthes (two interventions in the early 1960s). The results of the filmological research were mostly published in the "Revue internationale de filmologie" (39 issues, published between 1947 and 1961), directed by Cohen-Séat himself, whose first issue was released in July-August 1947.

Interdisciplinarity and experimentalism in the humanistic program of Gilbert Cohen-Séat

The institute and the magazine proposed an interdisciplinary approach that took into account, as a fundamental working hypothesis, the social functioning of cinema and the presence of the deciphering spectator as a constitutive element of the cinematographic phenomenon. Hypothesis that over the years will specialize in the psychophysiological direction, reducing the interdisciplinarity of the early days, but which at the beginning constituted the first real systematic attempt to study cinema by the work of scholars who did not belong to film criticism and were not involved at any level in film production. All this in accordance with the principle, affirmed by Cohen-Séat (against the aesthetics of the historical avant-garde), of a clear distinction between filmological thought and realization practice. Distinction, as well as intellectually precise, also strategically advantageous, because it is capable of allowing involvement in the cinematographic discourse of that part of the academic world that remained far from it. The prejudice of 'insiders' was in fact the greatest obstacle to a cultural operation which, in the intentions and declarations of its proponent, had the value of a real humanistic social mission, addressed to a world morally devastated by war. The foundations of the new method were laid by Cohen-Séat in his Essai sur les principes d'une philosophie du cinéma, 1. Introduction générale. Notions fondamentales et vocabulaire de filmologie (1946, 1958²), in which "filmology" was defined as "

On the basis of these premises - which involved important issues which were also taken up again by the semiology of cinema, such as the distinction between phenomenon and interpretative code, the formal nature of the code, its specificity sought in what L. Hjelmslev called "matter of expression ", the relationships between logical-verbal formalization and filmic phenomenon - the Institut de filmologie traced at the beginning of its history an epistemological research program based on a series of points and moments: experimental research, aimed at discovering the tools , the processes, the laboratories that were able to allow a valid specifically filmological study; evolution of cinematographic empiricism, to constitute a documentation that would allow to trace in an "intelligible" way the history of cinema techniques, productively revealing the implicit intentions and interpreting the different conceptions and practices that had followed or joined over the course of the history of cinema, creating the conditions for subsequently updating both this documentation and its interpretation; aesthetics, psychology and general philosophy, sociology, to face the problems of cinema and their relationships with a general study on human psychism; comparative studies, which operated a productive comparison between the cinematographic language and other languages, investigating the great collective phenomena highlighted by cinema, such as, for example, mythology and iconography, in comparison with the analogous phenomena present in history of letters and the arts; regulatory research of application,

Among the first activities of the f. the first international congress of filmology, which was held in Paris in September 1947, and the foundation, alongside the university of the Sorbonne (and the related Center français des recherches filmologiques), of a Bureau international de filmologie. Later, in February 1955, always in Paris, a second edition of the Congress was held, attended by numerous scholars of various nationalities. The international vocation of these studies and their declared pedagogical function, to which the Catholic world of those years, very sensitive to the problems of mass communication, could not remain indifferent, will determine a turning point in the early sixties, when, on the occasion of the Conference International in Milan on the subject of visual information,

Aesthetic and sociological contributions

Among the aesthetic contributions made from the beginning to f. the most important were those of É. Souriau, professor at the Sorbonne, who in the first issue of the "Revue" intervened with an essay entitled Nature et limit des contributions positives de l'esthétique à la filmologie. Others are due to the philosopher and beautician of spiritualistic training and personalistic orientation, who in 1947 published La correspondance des arts, and who, together with Raymond Bayer and Charles Lalo, gave birth to the "Revue d'esthétique" the following year foundational interventions in the filmological debate, such as the essay La structure de univers univers filmique et vocabulaire de filmologie (published on issue 7-8, 1951, of the "Revue internationale de filmologie"), the essay Filmologie et esthétique comparée (published in issue 10, 1952) and the care of a multi-handed volume, L'univers filmique (1953), which collects the results of a series of study meetings held at the Institut de filmologies - among the researchers involved, the same Souriau, Henri Agel, Jean Germain, Henri Lemaître, Jean-Jacques Rinieri - on specific topics, such as for example. the impression of reality in the cinema, the spectator's activity and passivity, the time of the film, the functions of the costumes and the sets, the music and the sound, the problems of the film on art. The methodology used is indicated by Souriau himself in the introduction to the book: meetings and discussions on the topics dealt with from time to time, with presentation of each topic by a speaker and projection of pieces of film as examples and as study materials. In closing the book, the result of a small but significant field investigation: the screening of the film by Jean Grémillon Le ciel est à vous (1944) to an audience of fourteen students of f., And the collection of their opinions in relation to a single theme, that of the rhythm of the film and its parts. The interventions of scholars such as Agel, who collaborated with "Revue" in the first two years with essays on the relationship between cinema and literature, or as the historian of the art P. Francastel, to whom Space and illusion (nr. 5, 1949), Études comparées (nr. 20-24, 1955), and an intervention at the Techniques nouvelles du cinéma symposium, which was also attended by Sadoul, Abel Gance, Moussinac, Bazin (all speeches were published in n. 20-24). Of more general philosophical and historical-sociological character were the contributions of two Italian scholars: Enrico Castelli-Gattinara, director of the Institute of Philosophical Studies of the University of Studies of Rome, author of the essay Philosophie et cinéma (nr. 3-4, 1948), and Luigi Volpicelli, author of La filmologie en tant que recherche socio-historique (nr. 25, 1955). it is clear, also from the smallness of this type of intervention, that the line of f. he tended towards applied studies, also as regards the human sciences (on the latter in general, see the intervention of R. Bayer, professor at the Sorbonne, entitled Le cinéma et les études humaines and published in issue 1 of the "Revue "). And in fact the sociological contributions, and even more the psychological and psychophysiological ones, which would have gained the upper hand after the first years, were much more important in the magazine. Among the sociological contributions, we must remember above all those of Georges Friedmann and E. Morin, who published on nr. 10, April-June 1952 of the "Revue" the essay Sociologie du cinéma, in which some basic hypotheses of the sociological approach to cinema were explained, in particular the interest in cinema as a cultural institution, the dialectic of art and industry, the role of ideology and the ability, proper to cinema, to reflect the values ​​spread in a given society: "Every film, even the most surreal, is in a certain sense a documentary, a social document. [... 20-24 (issue of the magazine which also hosts two significant sections due to the strong pedagogical component of the f., Dedicated to the international conference Problème de l'utilisation du film pour la formation et l'Information and to the Débats en 1955 on the influence of cinéma et sur les problèmes du film et de la jeunesse). Writings, those of Morin in the magazine, which precede a few years the three books that would have given him fame among film scholars and which will be affected by the filmological approach (the first two having also had an anticipation in two interventions by the author on the "Revue", respectively in numbers 20-24 and 25 of 1955): Le cinéma, ou l'homme imaginaire (1956), Les stars (1957) and Esprit du temps (1962, released in Italy with the significant title L cultural industry).Cinéma vérité .

Next to Friedmann and Morin's interventions, Filmologie et sociologie (nr. 2, 1947), signed by D. Anzieu, future psychoanalyst, and a consistent series of studies, especially dedicated to the public, to the educational value of cinema and to the methods relationship between children and adolescents with the plurality of meaning offered by the images, such as: Réflexions sur la valeur éducative du cinéma (nr. 2), signed by Dr. Juliette Favez Boutonnier, director of the Psycho-pedagogical Center; Cinéma, science et enseignement (nr. 5, 1949), signed by Jean Painlevé, director of the Institute of scientific cinematography; Le film, procédé d'analyse projective (nr. 6, 1950), signed by Agostino Gemelli, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to which the Research Institute on Communication in Milan in which the aforementioned magazine "Ikon" will be published from the beginning of the 1960s; Le cinéma et les images collectives (nr. 6), by M. Ponzo; Les adolescents et le cinéma (nr. 6), by the British W.-D. Wall and E.-M. Smith; Film d'enseignement et filmologie (nr. 7-8, 1951), by M.-C. Lebrun, director of the Pedagogical Museum of Paris.

Psychology and psychophysiology

Even more than the sociological approach, however, it is the psychological one that attracted the most interest from the f. between cinema and theater, painting, anthropology) tended increasingly to specialize their research in the direction of experimental psychology, with particular reference to the themes related to the spectator, located within the younger audience, in childhood and prepubertal. Medicine and almost always psychophysiology also contributed to these researches.

Among the exponents of this particular approach are names of prominent scholars in the field of French psychology and child psychiatry. First of all those of H. Wallon, of his pupil R. Zazzo and of his wife, B. Zazzo. Wallon's interventions on the "Revue" follow the process of an experimental deepening of the perception of the film by the child. The most interesting element consisted in the fact that the main aspects of cinematographic language were taken into consideration and that a connection was established between those elements and the evolution of child psychology, with the consequence that those experiments were useful not only for the cinematographic field but also to studies on infantile psychic functioning. So, for example, the " consisting of the movement and succession of images. This interest in the pure succession of images by the child, which Wallon's experiments highlight, shows on the one hand how movement is what arouses spectator curiosity in that age group, allowing the child to overcome the difficulties of organization and recognition of the screen space, too narrow, and the time of the story, too constructed (which was a datum that could be useful, in the pedagogical perspective of the f., to those who produced and made films for children); but on the other it also has consequences for the perception of films by adult viewers, because it illuminates the functioning of the spectator memory (another central theme in these studies: see, for example, Sur la mémoire des films, signed by P. Fraisse and G. de Montmollin on nr. 9, 1952; and Remémoriation du matériel filmique - Étude expérimentale, signed by DJ Bruce in no. 12, 1953), which allows the adult to find again in the cinema a form of sensitivity that belonged to him as a child and that he lost growing up. To these and other investigations of similar tenor work the essays that H. Wallon wrote on the "Revue", largely as a result of experiments in which a considerable space is reserved for physiology, and which therefore motivate the use of the electroencephalogram practiced by other psychologists-filmologists, as is highlighted in particular in no. 16 of the magazine (1954), dedicated to the Études experimentales de l'activité nerveuse pendant la projection du film, which collects texts such as Modification de l'EEG pendant la projection cinématographique, signed-by Cohen-Séat, H. Gastaut and J. Bert, Retentissement du "fait filmique" sur les rythmes bioélectriques du cerveau, by Cohen-Séat and J. Faure, Note sur l'électroencéphalographie pendant la projection cinématographique chez des adolescents inadaptés, by G. Heuyer, Cohen-Séat, S. Lebovici, M.me Rebeillard, M.lle Daveau. Wallon's publications on the "Revue" include: De quelques problèmes psycho-physiologiques que pose le cinéma (nr. 1), L'enfant et le film (nr. 5, 1949), Introduction au symposium de filmologie (XIII Congrès international de Psychologie, Stockholm, juillet 1951) (nr. 9, 1952), L'acte percetif et le cinéma (nr. 13, 1953; article in which Wallon distinguishes, in the complex of spectatorial impressions, two specific series: the " Also in these studies the discussion returns on the exit from the infantile phase of subjective syncretism and on the achievement of the ability to decentralize one's point of view, relating it to the outside, in relation to the understanding of the continuous change of point of view that cinema offers through the articulation of one's complex language, the use of the field / counterfield and the dynamics of movement that are proper to it. In their research R. and B. Zazzo examined a high number of children, some of them with psychological disorders, arriving at important conclusions and reaffirming the centrality of the movement as a facilitating factor in understanding the film: "the dynamism of the film induces dynamism of the story [by children of four and a half years of age] in a age in which the child is still at the stage of enumeration or static description when it comes to images or even lived scenes; while the understanding of the condensation of time ellipses was probably very late "(Une expérience sur la compréhension du film, nr. 6, 1950). The interventions of B. Zazzo went as far as schools (Le cinéma à l'école maternelle, nr. 9, 1952), with the involvement of the teachers, as further proof of the diffusion among the filmologists of the pedagogical attitude advocated by Cohen-Séat. Among the interventions on psychological issues that appeared in the magazine, a small group is dedicated to the theme of cinema and psychoanalysis: by J. Deprun are Le cinéma et l'identification (nr. 1) and Cinéma et transfert (nr. 2, 1947); three writings are due to S. Lebovici, hospital doctor: Psychanalyse et cinéma (nr. 5, 1949), Sur quelques réactions d'enfants inadaptés (nr. 9, 1952, written together with G. Heuyer and L. Bertagna, trio which also owes the subsequent Une expérience d'étude de groupe The processus de l'identification et l'importance de la suggestibilité dans la situation cinématographique, published in nr. 13, 1953), and Cinéma et criminalité (nr. 14-15, 1953); by G.-C. Zapparoli, F.-G. Finally, Ferradini and M. Arrigoni are the Observations sur un phénomène d'enrichissement testimonial chez des sujets psychotiques (nr. 38, 1961), while the future psychoanalyst D. Anzieu, in addition to the already mentioned Filmologie et biologie (nr. 1), signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. written together with G. Heuyer and L. Bertagna, trio to whom the subsequent Une expérience d'étude de groupe is also due. The processus de l'identification et l'Importance de la suggestibilité dans la situation cinématographique, published in nr. 13, 1953), and Cinéma et criminalité (nr. 14-15, 1953); by G.-C. Zapparoli, F.-G. Finally, Ferradini and M. Arrigoni are the Observations sur un phénomène d'enrichissement testimonial chez des sujets psychotiques (nr. 38, 1961), while the future psychoanalyst D. Anzieu, in addition to the already mentioned Filmologie et biologie (nr. 1), signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. written together with G. Heuyer and L. Bertagna, trio to whom the subsequent Une expérience d'étude de groupe is also due. The processus de l'identification et l'importance de la suggestibilité dans la situation cinématographique, published in nr. 13, 1953), and Cinéma et criminalité (nr. 14-15, 1953); by G.-C. Zapparoli, F.-G. Finally, Ferradini and M. Arrigoni are the Observations sur un phénomène d'enrichissement testimonial chez des sujets psychotiques (nr. 38, 1961), while the future psychoanalyst D. Anzieu, in addition to the already mentioned Filmologie et biologie (nr. 1), signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. importance of the suggestibility in the film situation, published in nr. 13, 1953), and Cinéma et criminalité (nr. 14-15, 1953); by G.-C. Zapparoli, F.-G. Finally, Ferradini and M. Arrigoni are the Observations sur un phénomène d'enrichissement testimonial chez des sujets psychotiques (nr. 38, 1961), while the future psychoanalyst D. Anzieu, in addition to the already mentioned Filmologie et biologie (nr. 1), signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. importance of the suggestibility in the film situation, published in nr. 13, 1953), and Cinéma et criminalité (nr. 14-15, 1953); by G.-C. Zapparoli, F.-G. Finally, Ferradini and M. Arrigoni are the Observations sur un phénomène d'enrichissement testimonial chez des sujets psychotiques (nr. 38, 1961), while the future psychoanalyst D. Anzieu, in addition to the already mentioned Filmologie et biologie (nr. 1), signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie. signature in no. 2 a second speech entitled Filmologie et sociologie.

The impression of reality

Among the psychological problems applied to cinema, it should be remembered with a separate discourse that relating to the so-called impression of reality. It was touched by the psychologists of which we spoke, was among the themes of the volume L'univers filmique, as we have seen, and found space in the "Revue" from the second issue, thanks to the essay Le temps, l'espace et le sentiment de réalité signed by Roman Ingarden, professor at the University of Krakow, and thanks to the studies of the Belgian A. Michotte van der Berck, remembered later by Ch. Metz in his first essay À propos de la impression de réalité au cinéma ( in "Cahiers du cinéma", nr. 166-167, 1965; later republished in the 1st volume of the Essais sur la signification au cinéma, 1968; trad. it. Semiology of cinema, 1972). Michotte's main intervention on The topic bears the title Le caractère de "réalité" des projections cinématographiques and is published on nr. 3-4, 1948, of the "Revue". The scholar connects the impression of reality, so strong in cinema, to the movement factor, which gives body to objects allowing them to detach themselves from the background, to acquire relief and through relief life (analogous considerations will be carried out by C. Musatti speaking of "stereokinetic effect" in his essay Les phénomènes stéréocinétiques et les effets stéréoscopiques du cinéma normal, published in issue 29, 1957, of the "Revue"). But, says Michotte, the movement contributes to the impression of reality also in a more direct way, that is, giving itself as a real movement. " it is in fact the general law of psychology - Metz observes in the quoted essay - that movement, starting from the moment in which it is perceived, is perceived most of the time as real, contrary to many other visual writings such as, for example, the volume, the which, for its part, can very well be perceived as unreal at the very moment in which it is perceived (as happens for perspective drawings). A. Michotte studied causalist interpretations - impression that something was "pushed, pulled, thrown, etc." - who sketch subjects who have simply been shown movement, thanks to a tiny device combined in such a way as to make only movement appear, and not its production mechanism; this spontaneous causalism, believes A. Michotte,

Interest in mass communications

In recent years, the magazine tended, as has been said, to specialize its interventions, on the one hand inclining towards psychophysiological experimentation and on the other introducing the theme of mass communication. The latter will be the main theme of the "Revue" since 1957, in an evolution that will lead to a sort of natural rotation with the Italian "Ikon". The nr. 29, January-March 1957, finds its center in a discourse on "visual communication techniques", to which the essay by Cohen-Séat Nature et portée de l'information par les techniques visuelles and the report of a debate on visual communication techniques and the notion of information, attended by Cohen-Séat, Morin and R. Pagès, among others,

After this issue, the pace of the magazine became less frequent: at the next issue no. 30-31, dated 1958 and dedicated to the study of a "thematic film material", followed only in the summer of 1960 nr. 32-33 (January-June), which hosts an essay by Frederic Bartlett entitled Le cinéma et la transmission de la culture, an essay by P. Fougeyrollas entitled L'information visuelle à contenu politique et les relations entre le pouvoir et le public, and one by H. Dieuzeide entitled Principes généraux d'une réflexion filmologique appliquée à la télévision, as well as a long psychophysiological multi-hand writing (which also included Cohen-Séat), the first part of a dossier (the second will be in the next issue) dedicated to Le cinéma pour enfants and the first of two writings by R. Barthes on "Revue":

The numbers 35, 36-37, 38 and 39 of the "Revue", published between the end of 1960 and the end of the following year, find their fulcrum in the cinematographic experiments of a psychological and psychophysiological character on children and subjects suffering from disorders psychics (still with the direct participation of the founder of the magazine), and in a speech on visual information centered in all four issues on the first international visual information conference organized in Milan, an event which, with the foundation of a central registry of the Scientific research on visual information and with the growth of the Filmology Institute of Milan, it appears decisive for the passage of filmological deliveries to the 'Agostino Gemelli' Institute and for the birth of the new magazine "Ikon",whose Steering Committee will be composed of Leonardo Ancona, Cohen-Séat, F. Bartlett and C. Musatti.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Z. Gawrak , La filmologie: bilan de la naissance jusqu 'au 1958 , in "Ikon", 1968, 65-66.

G. De Vincenti , At the origins of cinematographic semiotics: Cohen-Séat , in "Theater Library", 1974, 10-11, pp. 189-204.

E. Lowry , The filmology movement and film study in France , Ann Arbor (MI) 1985.

F. Casetti , Theories of cinema (1945-1990) , Milan 1993, pp. 99-101.

J. Aumont, A. Bergala, M. Marie, M. Vernet , Esthétique du film , Paris 1994, éd. revue et augmentée (trad. it. Turin 1995).