A Study Of Christian Metz's Film Semiotics

Christian Mertz is an inaugurator and a master of the Film Semiotics Theory,and also the pioneer of the modern western film theories.The academic circles usually divided Mertz's Film Semiotics into two phrases:the First Film Semiotics phrase and the Second Film Semiotics phrase.The former takes structuralism linguistics as the main reference,while the latter applied the method of psychoanalysis into film research.For the convenience of discussion,this article follows the differentiation.However,we do not claim to dissever Mertz's film theory,but regarding the theory as an interconnecting whole,whose central problem is the ideographic research of the film.This text can be divided into three parts.The first part mainly described the First Film Semiotics,which birthed at the setting that the structuralism was overwhelming in western academic circles.The main points of the theory included the view of film language features and the syntactic theory of film(the Grand Syntagmatique).After analyzing Mertz's First Film Semiotics Theory,I have found two defects.The first and foremost is that Mertz only studied the syntagmatic relation of film,but neglecting the paradigmatic relation.The second problem is that Mertz's research object was too narrow while feature films can't represent all the kinds of film.So I try to supplement Mertz's First Film Semiotics Theory,by adding the research about paradigmatic relation and discussing the documentary's ideographical expression.The second part mainly discussed Mertz's Second Film Semiotics.As research of the First Film Semiotics continues,Metz realized that the structuralist method which is Static and closed can't help us find out the essential characteristics of film.Film is in the area of social consciousness,so it can't develop without the desire of human.Therefore,Metz added the research about neglected subject,and the effective theory in subject research was psychoanalysis.So Mertz proposed the film institution theory by taking psychoanalysis as the new reference,and he discussed the psychoanalytic characteristics of film signifier from perspectives of mirror-image identification,voyeurism,exhibitionism and fetishism.Then he conducted the metapsychological study of film audiences by making an analogy between film,dreams and reveries.In the third part,we will focus on the influence and significance of Mertz's Film Semiotics Theory.On the basis of verifying Mertz's Film Semiotics' theoretical significance and influence on modern western film theory,we will lay emphasis on its significance on China's film career and its application for the film research in modern technology era.