Reconstructing Bellour: Automating the semiotic analysis of film

Abstract

The article discusses the film analysis of writer and theorist Raymond Bellour. It is stated that his analysis contradicts on film theorist Christian Metz's semiotic ideas, specially the idea of syntagmas, by introducing levels of segmentation greater and lesser than Metz's enabled structural analysis of filmic signal sets of any length. Bellour's set analysis poses two problems. First was the time-consuming nature of its practice. Second was that digital technology was unavailable making the description of frame levels imprecise. It further discusses Bellour's functional analysis and the differences in accuracy between his analysis and the structural analysis of the bodega bay sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds."