1. See André Bazin, "The Myth of Total Cinema," What Is Cinema? vol. 1. Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 17-21. Mitry's position, often lumped with Bazin's, puts the "advance" technology allows differently: new technology gives film-makers ever-greater means to manipulate images of reality. Mitry defended his position in virtually monthly columns in the French journal Cinématographe until at least 1984. Though attacks on his position often are printed in English, his defenses and counterattacks were far more interesting than the attacks. Often Mitry argued that his semiotics-trained attackers knew very little about cinema.

2. For a general put-down of technological determinism see Brian Winston, Misunderstanding Media . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. More specific attacks on the perspective in film history are undertaken by Barry Salt in Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis . London: Starword, 1983.

3. For example, Stephen Heath, in Questions of Cinema , attempts an attack on Liz-Anne Bawden's comment, in the Oxford Companion to Film , "It is technical advances which underlie stylistic innovations like handheld techniques . . ." Heath writes: "Arriflex cameras were available in Hollywood in the late 1940s but there was no particular turn to handheld sequences in response to the technical advance (nor in France at the same period in response to the Eclair Cameflex)." (230) Heath's example is silly. The old Arri and CM3 Cameflex were good handheld cameras but neither was pin-registered or self-silenced. Until recently, American professional film-makers rarely regarded a non-pin-registered camera as reliable enough for feature use. And without a blimp the Arri and Eclair could not be used for dialogue shooting; the Eclair, with its ratchet drive, was especially noisy. Blimps added between 85 and 110 lbs. to either camera's weight and made the cameras useless for hand-holding. The Arri and Cameflex caught on slowly as "wild" cameras and for European low-budget productions where dubbing-in of dialogue was the norm. But they were technically unsuited for the mainstream industry. Bawden, in fact, is correct if one adds "self-silenced" to her "handheld" comment. The 16mm Eclair NRP and ACL and the Auricon conversions of the early 1960s did allow the cinema vérité movement to exist. The interplay between tools and tool-users is far more complicated than many academics such as Heath would like to admit. Even Comolli—who as a filmmaker should know better—in his essay "Machines of the Visible," attacks Mitry's defense of orthochromatic stock by defending panchromatic film (quoted from Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath, eds. The Cinematic Apparatus . New York: St. Martin's, 1980): "A further advantage . . . the replacement of orthochromatic by panchromatic stock depends again on the greater sensitivity of the latter. Not only did the gain in sensitivity permit the realignment of the 'realism' of the cinematic image with that of the photographic image, it also compensated for the loss of light due to the change from a shutter speed of 16 or 18 frames per second to the speed of 24 frames a second necessitated by sound." (131)

The only way such compensation could occur is if the overall film speed (ASA) of panchromatic film were higher. As Barry Salt points out (p. 222), panchromatic and ortho stock were about the same speed (20-25 ASA), and Kodak introduced a superspeed ortho film (ASA 40-50) in 1926. Thus there was no speed advantage in panchromatic stock. Comolli apparently does not know the difference between red sensitivity and overall film speed. One hopes he has someone else do his light readings and shoot his films.

4. See Heath, Questions of Cinema , 226-229.

5. George Lellis, "Perception in the Cinema: A Fourfold Confusion" in Intermedia , ed. Gary Gumpert and Robert Cathcart. New York: Oxford, 1979, p. 388.

6. I am indebted to Gorham Kindem's unpublished paper, "Theories of Film Technology: The Case of Color Film," for the insight that Foucault's theories could be applied to specific issues within film's technical history.

7. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

8. I am indebted to James Langwell, Lanco Sound, Inc., Atlanta, GA, for theoretical and practical instruction in insert re-recording techniques and for contacts with ADR specialists.

9. See Peter Wollen, "Cinema and Technology: A Historical Overview," in de Lauretis and Heath, eds., The Cinematic Apparatus , 14-22. Wollen correctly asserts that the most important breakthroughs throughout film history have been in film stock—in chemistry, not mechanics. Information on film stocks in my essay are from American Cinematographer, J.S.M.P.T.E ., and manufacturers' technical representatives.

10. See David W. Leitner, "A Look at Color Negative," The Independent Vol. 4, Number 10, February 1982, 5-6, for a description of six-layer negative film-stock technology.

11. Ron Magid, " Full Metal Jacket: Cynic's Choice," American Cinematographer September 1987, 74-84.

12. See George Turner, " Out of Africa: David Watkin," American Cinematographer April 1986, 84-86. Watkin used Agfa for exteriors, Kodak for interiors. Watkin claims he liked Agfa's wide latitude and soft colors; one wonders, however, if the reason might have been that with Eastman stock, shooting outside in bright light, black and Caucasian faces are difficult to expose in the same frame; with Agfa or Fuji it's no problem. Eastman's technical representatives admit it's best to use a "Half Double Fog" filter in front of the lens when filming very dark-skinned blacks and light-skinned whites under harsh sunlight. There is a case to be made for issues of skin color being built into even film-stock specifications.

13. Jean-Pierre Grasset of Les Films du Soir first informed me of DeNiro's sub-recordable sound levels; a crewmember on Angel Heart confirmed it. In Once Upon a Time in America , however, DeNiro's location dialogue was mostly usable, despite its low volume; the soundman mixed inputs from a number of hidden microphones to get usable takes.

14. See Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima, Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman , trans. Paul Britten Austin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973, 257-258. When exactly Bergman began "matching" dialogue in post-production is vague. Vilgot Sjoman reports in L136 that Bergman was having location sound troubles on Winter Light . A truism in low-budget film-making is that one can hear a film's budget problems before you see them. Bergman's films, like most European films, traditionally had minuscule budgets. To cover the budget and location shooting problems they "matched" sound in post-production, even before ADR.