Page 92 - Decoding Culture

SITUATIN G SUBJECTS 85

prominently both in translation and as a topic for discussion in the
pages of Screen (see, in particular, Screen, 14, 1/2, 1973; 14, 3,
1973; 16, 2, 1975) and partly because the movement of his thought
embodies some of the same shifts apparent in Screen theory.
Roughly speaking, his semiotics of film falls into three phases,
here referenced in relation to the English translations in collected
form rather than the original essays: a first period in the early to
mid-1960s (Metz, 1974a) when he is much exercised by the 'prob­
lem' of film's status as a language without a langue; a second period
culminating in the publication of Langage et cinema in 1971 (Metz,
1974b) in which those earlier reservations are left behind in a sys­
tematic attempt to examine the units, codes and language system
of cinema; and a third period beginning in the mid-1970s (Metz,
1982) in which the semiotic project is recast in terms of a psycho­
analytic attempt to conceptualize the cinematic apparatus. I shall
briefly examine the characteristic features of each of those phases,
my account of the first two deriving from the rather longer discus­
sion in Tudor (1980).
In his early essays Metz adopts a similar position to that
advanced by Barthes (1977c) in relation to photography. In what
senses, he asks, can we talk about film as a 'language'? For us to
develop a genuine semiology of film we must be able to think in
terms of a cinematic langue that provides the basis for intelligible
film parole. But, Metz argues, film cannot meet the criteria that
would allow us to accept it as a fully fledged language complete
with such a language system. To see it as thus systematized is, per­
haps understandably, to be misled by appearances: 'film is too
obviously a message for one not to assume that it is coded' (Metz,
1974a: 40). The problem is that film does exhibit certain 'syntacti­
cal procedures' which, as a result of frequent use, appear to be
aspects of a language system. But that is an illusion. It is not such
procedures that allow us to understand the stories that the movies

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