David Issac Humphrey writes: > Political discussion about the cinema strikes me as *far* > more important than debating the relative merits of Todd-AO > or Super VistaVision or arguing about which aspect ratio > "Miller's Crossing" is meant to be shown in. If you think that the role of technology in political representation is unimportant, then you should be concentrating your efforts on virtually any medium other than film. Theatre requires only a performance space and performers (although admittedly, a range of other technologies are routinely used as well), music requires only the human voice (although admittedly, ditto), whilst literature and journalism can be produced using comparatively simple technology that has been widely available for several centuries. Cinema, together with radio and television, cannot exist at all without a complex and inter-related range of mechanical, electrical, electronic and chemical technologies. The bottom line is that without a camera, film, lab infrastructure and projector, it is quite simply impossible to produce and show a film. Far too many humanities scholars have chosen to ignore that fact for the simple reason that they do not grasp the basic technical concepts needed to engage with these issues. I could cite the most amazing rubbish that has been published by supposedly leading academics, which a high school leaver with science 'A' levels would laugh his or her head off at. My favourite example is a densely-theorised paper in Screen by Stephen Heath, in which he procedes to analyse a scene from 'Death by Hanging' in considerable detail. As Barry Salt lucidly observes, his conclusions are somewhat flawed, as the editing techniques used by Ozu, "had less to do with the intricacies of 'narrative space' than with the difficulties of getting a cat to behave as directed within the restrictions of low-budget film production". Determining the correct aspect ratio to project MILLER'S CROSSING in might seem to you like a worthless exercise, but learning these skills in print examination would also teach you how to (i) see where cuts have been made either in the print itself or the negative it was printed from, (ii) discover the year and country in which the print was made, and (iii) discover other evidence printed through from the negative onto areas of the print stock which are not projected or transferred to video. All of this could be pretty useful for a political historian, don't you think? Incidentally, I would find it a challenge indeed to debate the relative merits of Todd-AO and Super VistaVision, because the latter does not exist. We all know the standard jokes - WILDE (special presentation - in SodomyScope) or any slushy, romantic genre film (a new motion picture experience - in Retch-O-Rama), or even the colloquialism 'Technicolor yawn', meaning to vomit. But all of the products being satirised came about for specific economic, cultural and technical reasons, and casually writing them off in the way you seem to be doing is to undermine virtually any argument or conclusion which casually ignores them. L ------------------------------------ Leo Enticknap Technical Manager City Screen Cinemas (York) Ltd.. 13-17 Coney St., York YO1 9QL. United Kingdom Telephone: 01904 612940 (work); 01904 625823 (home); 07710 417383 (mobile) e-mail: [log in to unmask] (work); [log in to unmask] (home) ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu