The Story of a Myth : The “Tracking Shot in Kapò” or the Making of French Film Ideology

Abstract

“Kapo’s tracking shot” is a formula by Jacques Rivette that became a myth of orthodox cinephilia at the hands of Serge Daney and a number of other intellectuals. But it is first and foremost a commonplace used to mobilize a particular way of looking at films. This article traces the sources of this myth, of its success and examines what it reveals of a certain doxa in matters of film consumption. We then move to question the problem it raises — that of the “correctness” of an artistic gesture — from a different perspective, one more open to the idea of “frames of experience” (Goffman).

Keywords

• visual studies
• cinephilia
• interpretation
• film criticism
• Serge Daney
• Jacques Rivette