Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher influential in existential phenomenology. He analyzed film through a phenomenological lens, seeing film as perceived rather than thought and uniquely able to show the union of mind, body, and world. For Merleau-Ponty, film moves beyond the classical view of perception as separate sensations by presenting a temporal gestalt where meaning emerges from the succession of shots. Film manifests the bond between subject and world through how we perceive represented worlds on screen in a way that challenges Cartesian mind-body dualism.

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Submitted To
Dr. A J M Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan
Professor and Founder Chairperson
Department of Television, Film and Photography
University Of Dhaka Submitted by
Abul Hasnat Ashik (28)
Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem (09)
TFS 1st Batch
TFS-501: Film Theory and Criticism
Department of Television, Film and Photography
University Of Dhaka

2. Sources
Baracco, A. (2017). Phenomenology and FIlm. In A. Baracco, Hermeneutics of the Film
World: A Ricœurian Method for Film Interpretation (pp. 37-63). Springer International
Publishing.
Fielding, H. A. (2009). Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In F. Colman, Film Theory and Philosophy
(pp. 81-90). Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The Film and New Psychology . In M. Merleau-Ponty, Senses
and Non-Senses (pp. 48-60). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Yacavone, D. (2016). Film and Phenomenology of Art: Reappraising Merleau-Ponty on
Cinema as Form, Medium, and Expression. New Literary History, 47, 159-185

3. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1908-1961)
French phenomenological philosopher.
Key thinker in existential phenomenology.
Influenced by: Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
Taught at École Normale Supérieure (College), University of
Lyons, Sorbonne University [France]
Co-editor of the journal Les Temps Modern (1945-1952) –With
Jean Paul Sartre

4. Works
The Structure of Behavior (1942/63)
Phenomenology of Perception (1945/62)
Humanism and Terror (1947/69)
Sense and Non-Sense (1948/64)
The Visible and the Invisible (1964/68)
The Prose of the World (1969/73)

5. Phenomenology
• The science of phenomena, an approach that concentrates on the
study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience
(Oxford Dictionaries).
• Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as
experienced from the first-person point of view. Study of
“phenomena” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Study of individual’s perceptions, feelings and lived experiences
(Guest, Namey, Marilyn & Mitchell, 2013)
• Conscious experience, phenomena, perception, lived experience

6. Types of Phenomenology
• Realistic
• Constitutive
• Hermeneutical
• Transcendental
• Naturalistic
• Genetic
• Existential

7. Existential Phenomenology
• Oriented to lived experience, the embodied human being in the
concrete world.
• Re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world
• Basic themes
Lived experience
Modes of being
Ontology

8. Merleau-Ponty and Film
• Phenomenology of Film-
 How the film world is perceived by the filmgoers.
 Perception and understanding of film.
 The way we perceive and experience represented
film worlds.
• Essay on Film- The Film and New Psychology (1945) in Sense and
Non-Sense (1948/64).
 Problems of perception central to film.
 Considered film as text.
 Thinking through the perceptual experience of
viewing.

9. Merleau-Ponty and Film
• Arose as a response to Italian neorealist cinema.
Location shooting, mobile camera, long take, documentary
style, non professional actors, nondramatic (real) time.
Viewers experience of neorealist films and characters
experiences of environments correspond with existential
phenomenological characterizations-space time, embodied
self, physical objects.

10. Central Themes
• A phenomenal approach reveals how film can contribute to the
cultivation of perception.
• Film is not thought, it is perceived.
• Film is peculiarly suited to make manifest the union of mind and
body, mind and world and the expression of one in the other.
• Visual Field
• Perception of Movement
• Perception of Others
• Mind-Body Dualism

11. Classical Vs. New Psychology
• Visual Field
• Perception of Movement
• Perception of Others
• Mind-Body dualism

12. Visual Field
• Classical : Sum or mosaic of sensations.
• New : System of configurations (figure/outline)
Perception is not a sum of visual, tactile and audible
givens but a total way with whole being.
Perception of the whole is more natural and more
primary than the perception of isolated elements
(Melody & Notes)

13. Perception (How We Perceive)
• Classical : Understanding the relationship among the different
parts of one’s visual field through intelligence and memory.
Certain signs are given to dig out the meaning (Cube, objects
behind).
• New : As displayed, as it exists. I do not need to make
judgements because I see the thing itself.
• Gestalt : An organized whole, that is perceived as more than the
sum of its parts.

14. Gestalt Theory
• Perceived as whole instead of sum of the parts.
• Understanding implicit patterns and orders as meaning is often
implicit in the whole (not possible to understand separately)
• Film- Temporal Gestalt- An intentionally organized whole that
changes and moves in time, through which a meaning dimension
emerges successively.

15. Perception of Movement
• Classical : Understanding through intelligence, cognitive
understanding.
• New : According to the way we settle ourselves in the world and
the position our bodies assume in it. (Cloud and Steeple)
• Our perception of movement is intentionally situated within a
world, it is not a matter of cognitive assessment of a situation.
• Gestalt: According to the whole

16. Film and New Psychology
• Perception is linked to bodily comportment rather than
unmediated sensation or cognition.
• Film is not a sum total of images but a temporal gestalt.
• Meaning of a shot depends on what precedes it in the movie.
• Kuleshov effect
• Succession of scenes creates new reality which is not merely the
sum of its parts.

17. How Film Works
• Our body has enormous capacity to move into new situations and
to take them up
Eyes adjust with the light in a darker place
(Cinema Hall)
Ears adjust with sound (The Wavelength, 1967)
• Gestalt is tied to our economic interests, ideological beliefs,
psychological demands
Hear what we want to
See what we want to

18. Sound Film
• The union of sound and image occurs not only in each character
but in the film as a whole.
• When I say that I see a sound, I mean that I echo the vibration
of the sound with my whole sensory being (Ponty, 1962)

19. Film and Music
• Music should be incorporated into film, not just juxtaposed.
• It should intervene to mark a change in a film’s style.
• In the Mood for Love
• Psycho – Shower Scene

20. Film
• Relies on vision and sound
(only two of the five senses)
• But film has unique way of
being , which speaks to all the
senses at once (Sight, hearing,
taste, smell, touch)

21. Perception of Others
• Inner observation and outer observation.
• Classical: One understands other’s psychic facts – anger/fear
through introspection- comparing the feeling with one’s own
inner feeling.
• New: Anger/shame/hate/love can be understood with outer
observation - one’s behavior, style, gesture, face.
• Anger- Magical way for satisfaction.
• Emotion- A disorganizing reaction which comes into play
whenever we are stuck (Janet), expressed through bodily
attitude.

22. Meaning of Film
• Films tell stories, give ideas.
• Has a basic realism- natural acting, realistic set.
• Let us see and hear what we would see and hear if we were
present at the event
• Film is art when it does not simply refer to established meaning,
but rather shows it as it emerges.
• In cinema the idea is presented in a nascent state and emerges
from the temporal structure of the film.

23. Ideas and Facts – raw materials of art
• Novel – Choice of perspectives, choice of what one says and does not
say.
• Poem - Creation of a machine of language-puts reader in a poetic state.
• Film’s function – Not to make facts or ideas known to us but creating
new meaning.
• Meaning of a film depends on the rhythm of the entire film (as gesture
gives meaning – perception of others)
• Cinematographic Rhythm: A certain order of shots and a certain
duration for each of these shots or views, so that taken together they
produce the desired impression with maximum effectiveness
(Leenhardt).

24. Cinema and Real Life
• Cinema – finer grained than real life
• Takes place in a world that is more exact than the real world.
• Analysis of perception permits us to understand the meaning of
the cinema.
• A film does not replicate or represent reality, it creates new
meaning.
• A movie is not thought, it is perceived.

25. Mind-Body Dualism/ Cartesian Split
• Cartesius (Latin) - Rene
Descartes.
• Immaterial mind and the material
body are two completely different
types of substances (interact).
• Mind and body are distinct and
separable.

26. Mind-Body Dualism and Film
• Film
 An attempt to make us see the bond between subject and
world, between subject and others, rather than to explain it.
 Situated to make manifest the union of mind and body, mind
and world, the expression of one in the other.
• Contemporary philosophy consists in describing the meaning of
consciousness with the world, its involvement in a body, and
coexistence with others.

27. At a Glance
• We understand film through perception.
• Perception is linked to bodily comportment, not cognition.
• Understanding film as whole (gestalt).
• Union of body and mind, expression of one in the other.

28. Questions or Comments

29. Thanks All