Comolli and Narboni

Jean-Louis Comolli is a French writer, editor, and film director. He was editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinéma from 1966 to 1978, during which period he wrote several influential essays, including, "Machines of the Visible" (1971) and "Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field" (1971-2), both of which have been translated in English anthologies of film and media studies. This work was important in the discussion on apparatus theory, as an attempt to rethink cinema as a site for the production and maintenance of dominant state ideology in the wake of the events of of May, 1968.

Comolli (1941 - )

and

Narboni (1953 - )

Jean Narboni served as Secretary of the Editorial Office, for Cahiers du Cinema, becoming co-editor-in-chief of the magazine with Jean-Louis Comolli in 1968. Focusing on the magazine's communist directions, he founded and directed the magazine's publishing sector in 1977, and continued as its director until 1986. he also acted as the Cahiers du Cinéma / Gallimard Collection, director from 1979 to 1983.

Together, the two editors conceived a marxist critique on the ideology of film. In the writing of their masterwork, "Cinema/Ideology/Criticism," Comolli and Narboni claim that the aesthetic of realism is a reliance on the status quo and an aesthetic implicitly reliant on ideological cultural dominants.

In ""Cinema/Ideology/Criticism," Comolli and Narboni explain that film is partly a ‘product, manufactured within a given system of economic relations, and involving labour [money] to produce… a commodity, possessing exchange value… governed by the laws if the market’ as well as ‘an ideological product of the system, which in [the Western world] means capitalism.' Film is made to be sold, making it an art that is also primarily a source of income and designed for export. Film is explicitly a commercial product. However, according to Comolli and Narboni, film is also the implicit product of the ideology that dominates the field, or place, it was constructed in. A film-maker, according to Comolli and Narboni, cannot change the economic circumstance, or system they find themselves working in.

Comolli and Narboni also consider film as falling into seven primary categories of ideology:

Category A -- Here, film is considered to be thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology, as in classical Hollywood film. There is no specific form for conveyance of the film's direct ideological message.
Category B -- is also seen in classical Hollywood film, but the content is overtly political, and often offered in a disturbed view of reality.
Category C -- tends to be subtly political in the context of a narrative that is, on the surface, non-political.
Category D -- offers films that use Hollywood conventions in their effort to present a narrative that pretends to be political.
Category E -- the reflexive films in this category are reactionary, but conservative as they work to force ideology to comment on itself.
Category F -- the form of this film relies on narrative traditions to offer the "expected" messages through known and understood political content.
Category G -- uses a broken or alternative form of narrative to create a depiction of reality that is able to communicate an alternative ideological message to its audience.

MOTIVATIONS / IDEAS

In their essay, Comolli and Narboni define ideology as, “a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world.”

Comolli and Narboni assumptions on the nature of film and its place in the world include:

• each culture has a dominant ideology in place to maintain existing power structures

• France (and USA) under capitalist ideology

• all (nations and governments) are conditioned” by this

• there is no escaping the influence of ideology

• all publications, even Cahiers du Cinema, are a part of capitalist system

• because film is a material product of the capitalist system, it is also an ideological product of the system

• “every film is political” (even if unintended)

Comolli and Narboni believe that the primary task of the film critic is “to help change the ideology which conditions them”

RELATED STUDY TERMS

Structuralism -- the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.

Ideology -- a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

Marxist theory -- the political, economic, and social principles and policies advocated by Karl Marx; especially : a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society.

Marxist film theory -- employs radical editing and choice of subject matter, as well as subversive parody, to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist ideas.

Category A -- Here, film is considered to be thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology, as in classical Hollywood film. There is no specific form for conveyance of the film's direct ideological message.

Category B -- is also seen in classical Hollywood film, but the content is overtly political, and often offered in a disturbed view of reality.

Category C -- tends to be subtly political in the context of a narrative that is, on the surface, non-political.

Category D -- offers films that use Hollywood conventions in their effort to present a narrative that pretends to be political.

Category E -- the reflexive films in this category are reactionary, but conservative as they work to force ideology to comment on itself.

Category F -- the form of this film relies on narrative traditions to offer the "expected" messages through known and understood political content.

Category G -- uses a broken or alternative form of narrative to create a depiction of reality that is able to communicate an alternative ideological message to its audience.