lgs responds to Mike Frank: "While it is perhaps a mistake to let intention controll the meaning production of a cinematic text, it is surely involved in the process. Without a notion of intention we could never now how the signifier drifts from it for example. Interviews, articles, and other non-cinematic tetxts are part of the discursive formation within which cinema takes shape as an institution. In fact they are part of thge cinematic institution itself. To ignore them is to idealize the cinema as moving image with no context. If cinema is to be understood, such an understanding must take into account star discourse, the construction of authorship in the press and other media, the philosophical assumptions that cinema-workers bring with them etc." From a purely formalist position, Mike's cautions about the use of biographical and autobiographical sources has a fairly sound underpinning. See Wimsatt and Beardsley on "The Intentional Fallacy" for the major statement on the question as it applies to literature. Their point (which I think is similar to Mike's) is that any "intention" a work has will be revealed in its own form, while outside sources are range from being irrelevant to misleading to merely "nice to know." On the other hand, lgs is quite right in implying that no work exists in a vacuum. There are two questions, then, it seems to me that a holistic critical approach should take: What is the form or structure of the work itself? Why was that form or structure--and the whole apparatus of the work--produced in that time, in that place? 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]