The Society for Cinema Studies: A Personal Recollection of the Early Days

My first involvement with what would become the Society for Cinema Studies (now the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, or SCMS) began in the spring of 1957 with an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Film Library (now Department). About fifteen to twenty cinema teachers attended. (Since anyone teaching only film production was excluded, there were not many to invite.) Richard Griffith, curator of the film library, and Margareta Akermark, head of its circulating collection, acted as hosts. Conferences were held again in 1958 and 1959.

I don't remember much about those early meetings, including who attended, but the luncheons were memorable. They were held in a former Rockefeller townhouse in the East Fifties that had been donated to the museum. The surroundings were elegant, the food and drink marvelous, and the service impeccable. But one unanticipated singularity was an indoor pond at the edge of the living room, with stepping-stones we needed to traverse to get to the lavatory. As the cocktails flowed, we had to step with increasing care to avoid mishap.

I recall that at one meeting film critic Dwight Macdonald spoke to us. At another, screenwriter, ex-studio head, and playwright Dore Schary was the featured speaker. What they talked about is lost to me, but the impression remains that the former was irascible and opinionated, the latter mild and urbane.

Origins. Following the 1958 meeting, a committee made up of Robert Gessner (New York University), Jack Ellis (Northwestern University), Gerald Noxon (Boston University), and John Driscoll (Pennsylvania State University) drafted a statement of purpose and a proposed constitution for a new academic organization to be called the Society of Cinematologists (SoC). Gessner essentially wrote these documents.

Gessner's motivation for establishing a learned society was to give film study some visibility and dignity and, not incidentally, to impress his dean sufficiently to get a raise. The name for the society, which he insisted on, resulted at least partly from his trip to Paris, where he had visited Gilbert Cohen-Séat and other "cinematologists." The society's constitution was modeled on that of the French Society of Anthropologists.

At MoMA's Third Annual Conference on Cinema, in 1959, the Society of Cinematologists was founded. The officers were Robert Gessner, president; Hugh Gray (University of California, Los Angeles), secretary; and Gerald Noxon, treasurer. The executive council consisted of Erik Barnouw (Columbia University), George Amberg (University of Minnesota), Richard Griffith (MoMA), and Arthur Knight (film reviewer for the Saturday Review).

The term "cinematologists" troubled some, but Gessner felt it provided just the right scholarly and scientific tone that was needed. It was much fought over subsequently and kept a few eligible people from joining because of what they perceived as its pretentiousness and exclusivity. In fact, new members had to be approved by those thirty or so who were already members.

Meetings and Members. The first so-called national meeting of the SoC was held in April 1960 at the faculty club of New York University. It was not well publicized and was attended mainly by members from the New York area. The featured speaker was the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky, then teaching at Princeton University, who had written a penetrating and influential essay on film aesthetics: "Style and Medium in the Motion Picture" (1937).

The officers and council members for 1960-1961 remained the same as for 1959-1960 except that George Pratt (of George Eastman House) replaced Hugh Gray as secretary. These early officers comprise a roster of those most active in the early years. Gessner, Noxon, and Robert Steele (Boston University) delivered the most papers.

The second meeting was held at Eastman House in Rochester, New York, in March 1961. Subsequent meetings of the society over the next dozen years, like the first two, were generally at the end of March (during academic spring break) and mostly in the East...