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3 2 4 T he booklet on Max Ophüls, which was published to coincide with major retrospectives in Edinburgh and London, is an inept and embarrassing document. Even its editor is not quite convinced by its pretensions and feels compelled to construct elaborate alibis which will allow him to disclaim responsibility for the mysterious process whereby a publica‑ tion appearing under his name inexorably consolidates critical positions to which he is explic‑ itly opposed.In a series of prefatory remarks to an introduction entitled,with coy tendentious‑ ness,“Familmographic Romance,” Paul Willemen inveighs against “certain idealist ideological discourses” which might seek to posit Ophüls as a source of coherence in “the work that is generally ascribed” to him. (Ophüls, 1) Over half the booklet is taken up by interviews with or writing by Ophüls, and in his own contribution Willemen finds occasion to “substantiate” two critical hypotheses by refer‑ ring to the director’s remarks. An emergency exit is nevertheless available: Willemen is the unfortunate victim of “industrial and ideological, institutional pressures” which have “pre‑ fabricated” his task for him—so completely, it would seem, that it is impossible to discuss his own work as editor as part of the structure of prefabrication which is supposed to determine that work. (1)It is moreover impossible, according to Willemen, either to conceive of another method or to provide an account of the “pressures” and their mysterious ways, since there is “no ‘subject position’ available within the institution” from which to do so. The proclama‑ tion of this all‑purpose salve mecum,* and the accompanying gestures toward the categorical imperative, are followed at once by a surrender to the most conventional auteurism and to a banal form/content dualism which, despite the impressiveness of its credentials, is practically indistinguishable from that which dogged Ophüls criticism in the days of Roy Armes, Richard Roud, and Lindsay Anderson. It is curious—and ought, one feels, to trouble the writer rather than provide his excuse— that a serious analytical discourse should proceed from the assumption that it is objectively incapable of extricating itself from discourses which it claims are incompatible with it. The oddity, however, has at least the merit of drawing our attention to the substance of the claim. The fault, perhaps, lies not in Willemen’s stars, nor in the Kafkaesque impediments of “the Metaphor and Mimesis: Madame de . . . (1982) *Salve in Latin is a greeting that means“be well” or, essentially,“hello.” Mecum means“with me.” So salve mecum is “be well with me” or “hello along with me,” both of which are nonsensical. What Britton seems to be suggest‑ ing here in wordplay is that Willemen is offering a sense of ideological determinism as an excuse for his self‑ imposed critical limitations. Thanks to Professor Carol Merriam, Department of Classics, Brock University, for this explanation. 20 Chapter 20.indd 324 1/17/12 10:53 AM 3 2 5 m e ta p h o r a n d m i m e s i s institution,” but in his method and its presuppositions. I do not wish at this point to embark on a developed account of the complex epistemological,political,and aesthetic issues raised by the realism debate. Since the only interest which the Ophüls booklet can be said to have lies in its neat demonstration both that a concept of realism is necessary in order to discuss Ophüls and that the epigones of materialist film theory can do no more than announce the necessity of succumbing to idealism, a few preliminary remarks are therefore in order. A recent book by Rosalind Coward and John Ellis, Language and Materialism,provides a useful starting point.“The business of realist writing,” the authors argue in a eulogy to Roland Barthes’s S/Z in chapter four, is, according to its philosophy, to be the equivalent of reality, to imitate it. This“imita‑ tion”is the basis of realist literature, and its technical name is mimesis,“mimicry.”The whole basis of mimesis is that writing is a mere transcription of the real, carrying it over into a medium that exists only as a parasitic practice because the word is identi‑ cal to, the equivalent of, the real world. (47) Despite the fact that the concept of mimesis was formulated some years before the appearance of the genre, mimetic/realist writing is identified with the bourgeois novel which, for the pur‑ poses of the theory, is...

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