Roland Barthes’s film theory
The photographic Message, from Barthes, Roland’s book: <Image, Musiz, Text>. Translated by Stephen Heath.1977. page 15-51.
Roland Barthes: Toward a Semiotics of Cinema’: Barthes in interview with Michel Delahaya, Jacques Rivette.
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1963, 28 min.) DVD time: 11:06-19:02
7:35-15:15 http://vimeo.com/46620661
Segment begins with the voice over On the 10th day images began to ooze like confessions.
Chris Marker’s La Jetée explore the complex relationship between image, memory, and narrative. Enact a reading the film in light of Barthes’ comments on photography and cinema in The Photographic Message and The Rhetoric of the Image by answering the following questions. Why would Barthes identify the photographic images in the film as simultaneously uncoded and coded? How and what do these filmed photographs denote? What are the connoted meanings, and by what methods are those meanings produced? How does the film’s linguistic message interact with its iconic message(s)? Does the film’s soundtrack function as an anchor or a relay when paired with the images? What meaning(s)or suspension of meaningdoes that pairing generate?