Christian Metz (critic)

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Christian Metz (French: [mɛts]; December 12, 1931 – September 7, 1993) was a French film theorist, best known for pioneering the application of Ferdinand de Saussure's theories of semiology to film. Metz was born in Béziers. During the 1970s, his work had a major impact on film theory in France, Britain, Latin America and the United States.

In Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema, Metz focuses on narrative structure — proposing the "Grand Syntagmatique", a system for categorizing scenes (known as "syntagms") in films.

Metz applied both Sigmund Freud's psychology and Jacques Lacan's mirror theory to the cinema, proposing that the reason film is popular as an art form lies in its ability to be both an imperfect reflection of reality and a method to delve into the unconscious dream state.

Metz died in Paris, aged 61.

Select bibliography

Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (ISBN 0-226-52130-3)
The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (ISBN 0-253-20380-5)
Language and Cinema (ISBN 90-279-2682-4)

References

Jean Mitry, La Sémiologie en question : Langage et cinéma, Paris, Cerf, 1987.

Authority control	VIAF: 90664744 ISNI: 0000 0001 1076 0941 BNF: cb12306614r NDL: 00449864

Persondata
Name	Metz, Christian
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Date of birth	December 12, 1931
Place of birth
Date of death	September 7, 1993
Place of death

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