Abstract

In this dissertation I examine how films express and how I, the spectator, am able to understand that expression. I show that a film, as a temporal object, exhibits certain important aspects of subjectivity. In particular, a film presents itself as the perceptual acts of another subject. When watching a film, we see precisely what the film sees. We see that the film has a horizon, what I call the enframing, beyond which the film cannot see. We see it moving through time and space, both fluidly and in erratic jumps. We see it focus attention on particular aspects of the mis en scene. That is, we see it making meaningful choices within its world. However, unlike my observing the movements and meaningful choices of other humans, I experience these filmic actions through the film itself rather than interpreting them from the gestures of the other person. The film is a transparent subject in that I see and hear its world and actions through its eyes and ears and bodily movements. ;Thus, in creating a film, the filmmaker creates the lived-experience of an enworlded subject. By marking off the seen from the unseen, a filmmaker constitutes the world of the film. That is, the filmmaker constitutes what is presented to me as the perceptual life of an embodied and enworlded subject, thereby simultaneously creating the film world. I give meaning to the world presented in the film in a manner equivalent to my giving meaning to my world. While engaged with a film, I live the film's world through the film's presentation of its intentional acts of perception. I make sense of the film because I take on these intentional acts and treat them as my own