The problem of a material element in the cinematic sign : Deleuze, Metz and Peirce

The application of the concept of the sign marked a turning point in the historical development of film analysis. For some, thinking in terms of the sign and signification freed film analysis from the “impressionistic debate” about auteurism and realism that “dominated film-critical discourse through the early 1960s.” Christian Metz was one such proponent of semiotic theory in the cinema and, in the 1960s and 1970s, he developed a scientific approach to the cinematic sign. Metz wanted to reclaim film theory from what he saw as the “generalized” approach of film analysis dominating the early twentieth century. His answer in this respect was to consider cinema as a kind of language, and although this sort of approach had been taken before, essential to Metz’s semiotic method was his use of modern linguistic models.