Murray Pomerance writes: " As a writer who makes writing, I affirm that I must concoct substitutions for artifices I see in film, that strike me powerfully, and that I simply *cannot* use TEXTUALLY. I cannot use what Bazin referred to as profondeur du champ (depth of field). I can surely *say* that something is behind something else, or that it is in the background, and so on. But Stavis and his collaborators could actually construct a filmic image with retreating planes of focus--or, better, with that visual construction I can only refer to in words as "an image with retreating planes of focus." Film can make the close-up, and I can only use those same black words on white paper to talk about being "close." Film--forgive me, purists--can have color: Alfred Hitchcock can dress 'Tippi' Hedren in chartreuse (with Edith Head's great help) but I can only say, "Alfred Hitchcock can dress . . ." and so on. How on earth is anybody SERIOUSLY talking about films as texts? I share Gene's bewilderment, and have to wonder, too, whether those who find "texts" everywhere love film for what it is or just for what they think it "tells" them." I like the way Murray inverts the usual comparisons of literature and film by stressing the strength of the image and what it can do that words cannot (or at least have a much harder time doing). But, in defense of the use of the word "text," let me follow Roland Barthes by pointing out that the word shares its origins with "texture" and "textile" i.e. a weaving, a fabric. If one regards a film as an interweaving of narrative and style, of image and of sound, and of the numerous devices film- makers can use, then it certainly is a "text." To limit a film as "text", though, to only that which can be expressed in words does indeed place an artificial limit on the medium. Some films seem to demand that they be "read" in literary terms--I (corrupted as I am) see Greimasian squares popping out of REBECCA and RED RIVER. Yet, as interesting (or not) as such a semiotic analysis might be, I would never claim that that analysis does "explain" the "text" which will always to some degree remain beyond words. Such analysis says nothing, of course, about Hitchcock's camera angles and use of music or Hawks's use of setting and motion, just for starters. The problem that I think Murray and Gene are citing is not so much of the film as "text" (however one defines that) as the activity of "interpretation"-- and for that critique I'll defer to David Bordwell's MAKING MEANING, especially Chapter 11: "Why Not To Read A Film". Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]