A Grammar of Murder: Violent Scenes and Film Form

300 Pages·2009·2.672 MB·English

by  Karla Oeler

A Grammar of Murder

A Grammar of Murder
VIOLENT SCENES AND FILM FORM
karla oeler
The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO AND LONDON
Karla Oeler is associate professor of film studies at
Emory University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2009 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-61794-7 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-61794-7 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-61795-4 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-61795-5 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oeler, Karla.
A grammar of murder : violent scenes and film form / Karla Oeler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-61794-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-61795-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-61794-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-61795-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Murder in motion
pictures. 2. Murder in mass media. 3. Motion pictures—Aesthetics.
4. Thrillers (Motion pictures)—History and criticism. 5. Detective
and mystery films—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.M835O45 2009
791.43’6552—dc22
2009001193
a The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
To my mother, Elizabeth Margaret Oeler

sonnet 83
I never saw that you did painting need
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found; you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet’s debt;
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself being extant well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
William Shakespeare

Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Part One: Murder and Montage
1 framing for murder: cut-ins and close-ups 23
The Human Face, the Murder Weapon, and the Close-Up 23
How Guns Get Attention in Film Theory 25
Case Study: Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The Heir of Genghis Khan
(aka Storm over Asia, 1928) 29
Murder and Perspectival Scale: Eisenstein’s “Hidden Montage” 37
2 acting in silents: murder, montage, and
the film actor 50
The Body in Pieces 50
Man, Montage, and the Machine Aesthetic 54
Case Study: Lev Kuleshov’s By the Law (1926) 57
The End of St. Petersburg (1927): Bringing Life to a Statue 68
Aural Montage and Pudovkin’s Deserter (1933) 74
Anatomy as Alphabet and the Occlusion of Interiority 78
Putting Stanislavsky Actors through the Montage Machine:
Revolvers and Revolutionary Consciousness in The Mother (1926) 81
Coda: Eisenstein, Inner Speech, and Murder 91
3 murder outside the poetics of montage:
andré bazin and jean renoir 95
André Bazin and the Preservation of Loss 95