The Glowing Face: A Redefinition of the Concept of Photogénie from the Perspective of Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

As Francesco Casetti (2005) suggests, there was an initial period in film theory, up to around the 1940s, that was defined by what has come to be known as classical theory. During this period, a series of discourses were developed that sought to provide the cinematographic image with its own language of thought. Those discourses included the first reflections on the question of the human face on screen. This paper draws on the work of certain pioneering authors—especially Jean Epstein’s concept of photogénie—to analyse the motif of the human face and how it is being revived in contemporary cinema in the context of the digital image. Taking the perspective of the dialectical method developed by Walter Benjamin, which offers a rich array of concepts such as the lightning flash and glow, the aim of this article is to identify connections between certain images of contemporary faces and those of early cinema.