Zur Theorie des filmischen Raums (Teil 2)

This article is the second part of a two-part text that aims to show how film scholars attempted to make the phenomena of cinematic space theoretically comprehensible. After concluding the first part with the ideas of French film theorist André Bazin, part 2 first presents the approach to space in film of Eric Rohmer (1920-2010), also from France, who not only wrote theoretical texts about film, but also made a name for himself with numerous feature films. In his theoretical writings, he attempted to establish a terminology of cinematic space with the help of which he could describe Murnau's Faust film (1926). The terms pictorial space (l̕ espace pictural), architectural space (l̕ espace architectural) and film space (l̕ espace filmique) play a central role in Rohmer’s work. In 1951, French philosopher and aesthetician Etienne Souriau (1892-1979) drew attention to the fact that accessibility to cinematic worlds is always linked to a moment of spatiality by introducing the concept of diegetic space. According to this concept, one can only enter the filmic space as far as it has been defined by the predetermined dramaturgy of the film. Only by using the category of space, Souriau emphasises, can a film be analysed at all. An important contribution by film theorist Noël Burch (1932-), who also dealt intensively with Japanese film, consisted of a definition of the "off-screen space", the space that is located outside the action space that becomes visible on the four-sided screen. According to Burch, this includes the tabooed zone of the forward, towards the viewer, as well as the depth extension of the image, where, for example, the lone rider disappears at the end of a western. American film scholars David Bordwell (1947-) and Kristin Thompson (1950-), who were primarily concerned with the narrative style of classic Hollywood films, developed the so-called neo-formalism, an art theory inspired by Russian formalism, which analyses all processes that contribute to the creation of a fictional work of art in terms of their aesthetic effect. According to Stephen Heath, spatial impressions can be created by various cinematic means, but above all they are generated by narrative moments of action (narrative space). In addition, the viewer's gaze must be framed and directed. The rules of perspective play a decisive role here. Finally, in the German-speaking world, Hans J. Wulff pursues a theoretical approach to film which, drawing on the ideas of the Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), places the textual functions of space at the centre of his considerations and, in addition to cinematographic representations of space, also examines other functional circles in which cinematic spaces are integrated. Among other things, Wulff shows that spaces in film can always be interpreted as social spaces of action. German media scientist Laura Frahm has also dealt intensively with cinematic space and delivered a model of cinematic spatiality that is based on topological spatial concepts developed by Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, among others, and defines the cinematic construction of space as a "third position" that can be located between cinematic topology and cinematic topography.