Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
There is no better proof for the power of literature, Maurice Blanchot once wrote, than that there is an index, and de Sade is on it. Similarly, one could say that there is no better proof of the power of cinema than Chaplin. The first truly global icon, the Tramp transcended not only cinema but seemed unbound by space nor time. As a matter of fact, when in 1925 Pathé acquired the re-distribution rights for a batch of films Chaplin had made for Essanay ten years earlier they very publicly made it a point to pay the same sum which the films had originally cost to make, a singular decision in a time when most films disappeared without a trace after just a few months in cinemas. Louis Delluc was not the first critic to write about Chaplin but the first to devote an entire book to him. More than twenty years later, another major French film critic, André Bazin, returned to Chaplin, this time not as the global icon but as a figure and configuration of history. Chaplin, Bazin observed, had first been copied by Hitler and then taken his revenge in The Dictator. Then, another few decades later, yet another major critic, Jean Narboni returned to Chaplin in his book Pourquoi les coiffeurs?, a re-reading of The Dictator in the light of contemporary politics and the return of fascism, published in 2010.This contribution takes the measure of Delluc by looking at Chaplin and of Chaplin and the irrepressible power of cinema – and the French critical appreciation thereof, in both its continuity and changes – by looking ad Delluc, Bazin and Narboni in succession.
CV:
Vinzenz Hediger is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Goethe University, Frankfurt and the Director of the Graduiertenkolleg “Configurations of Film.” He is a co-founder of NECS – European Network for Cinema and Media Studies and the founding editor of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (Journal for Media Studies). He is a principal investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “Normative Orders” and a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. His research concerns the aesthetics of film within the larger framework of a history of risk and uncertainty in modernity. His objects of study include Hollywood cinema and industrial and ephemeral films. In addition, he has a strong interest in the main currents, deviations, and dead ends in the histories of film theories, an interest that he pursues in part as the co-editor of the book series Film Theory in Media History.