Orson Welles's A Touch of Evil was recut by the studio in a way Welles hated, and so was later recut. That's what I watched. The story is about a cop who plants evidence at crime scenes in order to convict those he's certain are guilty (because his wife was strangled when he was a young cop and he couldn't avenge her death). There's another cop, who's Mexican, who finds out what Welles (the first cop) is doing and works to expose him. In the meantime, this second cop, Charlton Heston, has just gotten married and his enemies are terrorizing his wife, and Welles is trying to plant evidence on him and his wife to get rid of them. The film is set in a border town between Mexico and America.
So--Leon Kass's response to this story is that it forces us to take seriously the problem that we face when legal justice doesn't line up with natural justice. Since I was just teaching my kids Book V of Aristotle's Ethics, I just realized that this is straight out of Aristotle. There's space for this vigilante (the decent man) who rectifies situations in which the law doesn't work, since law is by nature universally applicable. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but more or less...
Kass also played up by the fact that this is a border town--a very interesting place for law, because two systems of law collide and flow into one another.
Whigwham adamantly disagreed, appealing to Aquinas and the impossibility of justice when separate from the process of law (or something like this, I'm probably misconstruing his position). And he thought the border theme didn't make much of a difference.
Wystan thinks that watching films for a theme and applying philosophical categories compromises our ability to appreciate them as art. Or, in his words: "One must first appreciate a work of art on its own terms, and, if that isn't done, any appropriation of it is suspect."
A dizzying array of opinions, I know.
And now: Emily Hale on A Touch of Evil and Philosophy and Art (I'm fairly muddled up on this point, but here are some rather disconnected thoughts):
Clearly we should attend to the work of art itself as a whole and consider what categories come from the work. But it seems to me to be legitimate also to consider what philosophical categories shed more light on the work of art, while considering both similarities and differences between the philosophic categories and the work of art itself. Obviously, you shouldn't just co-opt things and twist them into what you what to say unless you admit that that's what you're doing.
But, insofar as the work of art and the philosophy correspond to the truth (and poetry is going to correspond to truth in a different way from the way in which music does) then they should be able to say something to each other. Plus, I think it's appropriate to see works of art in terms of themes. For instance, A Touch of Evil lends itself very well to being considered in terms of the theme of crime and punishment. In fact, how else would you talk about this film?
A Touch of Evil does, I think, ask us to explore the question of why we must choose the rule of law over the rule of man. The film comes down on the side of law, but it allows that Orson Welles had a possibly good urge for vigilante justice, although the means he chose (working within the law to subvert it) had even more potential to be really dangerous than trying to undermine the law from outside of it is. It seems to me that justice is not reducible to law (there are other ways that justice would be possible), although the film, in the end, gives us arguments for the rule of law over any other sort of justice.
One more point: Etienne Gilson in The Arts of the Beautiful argues that "Of itself, a work of art is neither true nor false. Art is such that the notion of truth does not arise in connection with it." Clearly, true and false in the strict sense aren't relevant (plenty of art is fiction). But, I'm not sure that truth in a fundamental sense (truth of being) isn't relevant to art. Possibly this has something to do with Hegel's thought: according to Hegel, most art is no longer absorbed; now it is self-conscious and theatrical. It is also often philosophical and so lends itself well to philosophical readings. But I'm not actually sure that beauty commenting on being is a modern development. It seems to me that art can be an argument for a version of truth that we can either accept or reject.
Jacques Maritain in Art and Scholasticism writes that "the beautiful nevertheless is not a kind of truth but a kind of good." He also writes about the similarities between a search for truth and the beautiful: "There is a curious analogy between the Fine Arts and wisdom. Like wisdom, they are ordered to an object transcending man and of value in itself, whose fullness is without limit, for beauty is as infinite as being." So even Maritain, while saying that the beautiful is not truth but a good, allows for some similarities between wisdom and art.
3 comments:
"In fact, how else would you talk about this film?"
Off the top of my head: plot, performances by the actors, cinematography and sound editing (which often play a crucial but little-appreciated role in the film), the language and idiom used...
"Possibly this has something to do with Hegel's thought: according to Hegel, most art is no longer absorbed; now it is self-conscious and theatrical."
...has been true since Thespis first stepped out of the chorus.
Gilson is probably right, Hegel probably wrong: no one denies that there may be philosophical content to a work of art, but I think one makes a very drastic mistake by thinking the philosophy ought to be the point (or even a main one) in appreciating the work. If one does so, one ends up valuing all sorts of things that "raise good questions" without themselves being good--the world of middle- and high-school literature classes is riddled with examples of this.
Put another way: it's because a work of art is good (and frustrates easy explanations) that it becomes a worthwhile subject of philosophical discussion--but then the categories will rarely apply very well. Bad art allows the categories to have free reign, but at the expense of anything worthwhile to talk about (Auden makes this distinction in _The Dyer's Hand_).
i love how you just jump in without even an introductory sentance in these movie reviews.
on to my thoughts (man I wish I had watched this one with you!):
I think I agree more with wystan than you, ultimately. You have to understand a work of art on its own terms to even be able to make a judgement on it.
However, when we pass judgement on it we are essentially reconcilling it to our understanding of the good, true, beautiful, etc. Taste influences this, as well as education, environment, etc.
Finally, and this is why I think I'd side with Wystan ultimately: just because the philosophical message of a work of art is true doesn't mean the work is good. It has to be beautiful as well as true to be good ART.
Good messages can be preached as easily as bad ones through art. Both compromise the artistry, however. Instead of the divine comedy you get pilgrim's progress.
in defense of justice...
Whether it is lawful for a judge to pronounce judgment against the truth that he knows, on account of evidence to the contrary?
It would seem unlawful for a judge to pronounce judgment against the truth that he knows...
On the contrary, Augustine [Ambrose, Super Ps. 118, serm. 20 says in his commentary on the Psalter: "A good judge does nothing according to his private opinion but pronounces sentence according to the law and the right." Now this is to pronounce judgment according to what is alleged and proved in court. Therefore a judge ought to pronounce judgment in accordance with these things, and not according to his private opinion.
I answer that, As stated above (1; 60, 2,6) it is the duty of a judge to pronounce judgment in as much as he exercises public authority, wherefore his judgment should be based on information acquired by him, not from his knowledge as a private individual, but from what he knows as a public person. Now the latter knowledge comes to him both in general and in particular --in general through the public laws, whether Divine or human, and he should admit no evidence that conflicts therewith--in some particular matter, through documents and witnesses, and other legal means of information, which in pronouncing his sentence, he ought to follow rather than the information he has acquired as a private individual. And yet this same information may be of use to him, so that he can more rigorously sift the evidence brought forward, and discover its weak points. If, however, he is unable to reject that evidence juridically, he must, as stated above, follow it in pronouncing sentence.
Whether a judge may condemn a man who is not accused?
It would seem that a judge may pass sentence on a man who is not accused...
On the contrary, Ambrose in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:2, expounding the Apostle's sentence on the fornicator, says that "a judge should not condemn without an accuser, since our Lord did not banish Judas, who was a thief, yet was not accused."
I answer that, A judge is an interpreter of justice. Wherefore, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 4), "men have recourse to a judge as to one who is the personification of justice." Now, as stated above (Question 58, Article 2), justice is not between a man and himself but between one man and another. Hence a judge must needs judge between two parties, which is the case when one is the prosecutor, and the other the defendant. Therefore in criminal cases the judge cannot sentence a man unless the latter has an accuser, according to Acts 25:16: "It is not the custom of the Romans to condemn any man, before that he who is accused have his accusers present, and have liberty to make his answer, to clear himself of the crimes" of which he is accused.
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