Christian Metz (; December 12, 1931 – September 7, 1993) was a French

film theorist Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for unde ...

, best known for pioneering

film semiotics Film semiotics is the study of sign process (semiosis), or any form of activity, conduct, or any process that involves signs, including the production of meaning, as these signs pertain to moving pictures. Every artform has some hidden symbols in ...

, the application of theories of signification to the cinema. During the 1970s, his work had a major impact on film theory in France, Britain, Latin America, and the United States. As Constance Penley flatly stated in ''Camera Obscura'', "Modern film theory begins with Metz."

Biography

Metz was born in

Béziers Béziers (; oc, Besièrs) is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Hérault Departments of France, department in the Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie Regions of France, region of Southern France. Every August Béziers hos ...

. He lectured at the

School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (french: École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and ''grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The ...

(EHESS). In 1964, he published the article ''Cinema, langue or parole?'' ("cinema, language or speech") in the journal ''Communications'', and the following books over the next 25 years: ''Essays on the Signification of Cinema'' (1968 and 1973), ''Language and Cinema'' (1971), ''Semiotic Essays'' (1977), ''The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' (1977). In ''Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema'', Metz focuses on narrative structure — proposing the "Grand Syntagmatique", a system for categorizing scenes (known as " syntagms") in films. Metz applied both

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

and

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

's mirror theory to the cinema, proposing that the reason film is popular as an art form lies in its ability to be both an imperfect reflection of reality and a method to delve into the unconscious dream state. His work has been critiqued by

Jean Mitry Jean-René Pierre Goetgheluck Le Rouge Tillard des Acres de Presfontaines, whose pseudonym was Jean Mitry (; 7 November 1904 – 18 January 1988), was a French film theorist, critic and filmmaker, a co-founder of France's first film society, and, ...

in 1987 in ''Semiotics and the Analysis of Film'', and virulently so by Jean-François Tarnowski in ''Positif''. In his final work, ''Impersonal Enunciation'', Metz "uses the concept of enunciation to articulate how films 'speak' and explore where this communication occurs, offering critical direction for theorists who struggle with the phenomena of new media." Published in French in 1991, ''Impersonal Enunciation'' received little attention in the English-speaking world until it was translated in 2016, an indicator of a resurgence of interest in Metz as a scholar whose work on multi-screen environments was before its time. Metz died in Paris, aged 61, having taken his own life.

Select bibliography

* ''Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema'' () * ''The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' () * ''Language and Cinema'' () * ''Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film'' ()

Biography

Select bibliography

Notes

Further reading