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PALGRAVE CLOSE READINGS
IN FILM AND TELEVISION
Ambiguity and
Film Criticism
Reasonable Doubt
Hoi Lun Law
Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television
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John Gibbs
Department of Film, Theatre & Television
University of Reading
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Doug Pye
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Hoi Lun Law
Ambiguity and Film

Criticism
Reasonable Doubt
Hoi Lun Law
Bristol, UK
ISSN 2634-6133 ISSN 2634-6141 (electronic)

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Acknowledgements
Looking back at the path I’ve travelled, I appreciate all the help and kind-
ness I encountered along the way. My special thanks go to Alex Clayton,
who has patiently guided me to rediscover and reflect on what I mean by
what I say during my doctoral research. I was told “Alex can teach you
things” before commencing the degree. What I learned over the years
working with him has made this book possible. My ongoing conversations
with Dominic Lash have not only informed the arguments of this volume
but also enriched my understanding of film and film aesthetics. Most
importantly, we share the acquired taste in sour beers! Catherine Grant has
been a great mentor and (later also) a dear friend ever since I came to her
office to discuss film theory in late 2010. Her generosity is legendary. And
surely, I am not the only one who thinks Katie is a magnificent human
being as well as a wonderful educator. Adrian Martin has been extremely
supportive of this project since the early stage. Pointing out a notable
omission in my arguments, his erudite comments helped refine my claims.
Andrew Klevan (who, by the way, made the aforementioned remark about
Alex) gave an unpolished draft of Chap. 2 the kind of sustained critical
engagement (and critique) that I’ve always wanted for my work. Part of
Chap. 6 was presented as a paper at Screen conference 2016 and benefited
from Chris Keathley’s keen eye (in this specific case, ear) for detail. Jacob
Leigh and Kristian Moen were attentive and discerning as the examiners
of my doctoral thesis. Pete Falconer (half-jokingly?) said his role as my
second PhD supervisor was to not get in my way. But I knew very well—
and he made sure of it—that he was available if I ever needed his aid.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Whenever I talk to James MacDowell, not least about ambiguity, I profit

from his lucidity of thought. Elliott Logan and Murray Pomerance prof-
fered heartfelt words of encouragement when they were most needed,
during that exhilarating yet trying final stretch of writing. I am glad to
have John Gibbs and Doug Pye, who are sympathetic to my critical
approach and temperament, as the series editors of this title. At Palgrave
Macmillan, Emily Wood had provided excellent editorial assistance. It is
my pleasure to be friends with Hanna Kubicka (with whom I enjoyed
many intellectual and not-so-intellectual conservations), Ali Rasooli-Nejad
(whose enthusiasm about “movie masterpieces” is galvanising), and
Jordan Schonig (whose perceptiveness never fails to bring clarity and
rigour to a discussion). Thank you to Lara Perski for being my travel com-
panion throughout this difficult but rewarding path. I will always remem-
ber the time when we had walked such a path and found ourselves “stuck”
on a hilltop. The trail down was steep and narrow, frighteningly treacher-
ous. What to do? We braved the adverse uncertainty together. My greatest
gratitude goes to my parents and my sister, who are always there for me.
This book is for those who are attuned to the teachings of doubt.
Contents
1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1
Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23
2 Difficulty of Reading 25
3 Perplexity of Style 49
4 Depth of Suggestion 87
Part II Drama of Doubt 113
5 Uncertainty of Viewpoint115
6 Threat of Insignificance149
7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175
Index183
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26

Fig. 3.1 Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) 61
Fig. 4.1 In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) 89
Fig. 5.1 Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) 120
Fig. 6.1 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) 150
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?
In spite of its wide currency in film scholarship, criticism, and everyday

conversation, ambiguity has not been systematically developed as an aes-
thetic concept for the medium of film. It has received considerable atten-
tion in discussions of “art cinema” and “modern cinema”, which often
assert the significance of ambiguity in these modes of filmmaking without
unpacking its implications (see Armes 1976; Bordwell 2008; Self 1979).
And when the concept is studied in detail, it is typically in reference to
André Bazin’s phenomenological understanding of cinematic realism (see
Andrew 1973; Carruthers 2017). As a result, there is room in critical lit-
erature for an exploration of ambiguity across diverse film styles. What
would such an account involve? A main task of this book is to offer a useful
framework to appreciate the variegated manifestations of ambiguity
in movies.
What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous?

Perhaps one reason why ambiguity is understudied, habitually taken for
granted, has to do with its ironically unambiguous standard definition.
Dictionaries define ambiguity as the characteristic of what bears multiple
meanings. This is arguably how the term is ordinarily understood too. The
straightforward definition seems sufficient in itself, not only detailed
enough as a description of what ambiguity entails but also capable of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings
in Film and Television,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_1
2 H. L. LAW
covering a variety of instances and situations. It particularly speaks to a

kind of ambiguity that prevails in everyday life—the ambiguity of lan-
guage, meaning that words can possess more than one semantic connota-
tion. The linguistic view has a great purchase on how ambiguity is perceived
in the realm of the arts. A Glossary of Literary Terms, for example, refers to
ambiguity as “the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more
distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feelings”
(Abrams and Harpham 2009, 12). And a similar assumption of ambiguity
as a matter of sign and signification prompts David Bordwell to proclaim
“[w]hat was ‘ambiguity’ in New Criticism could become ‘polysemy’”
(1989, 99). It is evident that something is missing, if not amiss, in these
views; it feels flattening and schematic to equate ambiguity to the plurality
of suggestions. Such an understanding, we want to say, fails to appreciate
what makes ambiguity ambiguous.
This issue is touched upon in William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1961 [1930]), a seminal work of New Criticism that is also the most
influential account of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept (specifically in
poetry). In his preface to the second edition of the book, Empson sug-
gests that puns would not be typically considered ambiguous, even though
they manage to say two things simultaneously, “because there is no room
for puzzling”. Instead, they result in “conciseness” (x). Throughout Seven
Types, the feeling of puzzlement is frequently cited as something like ambi-
guity’s defining effect. This crucial point, insisted by Empson, allows us to
see why the semiotic notion of polysemy, as “literally, many ‘semes’ or
meanings” (Stam et al. 1992, 30), should not be taken as synonymous to
ambiguity. In fact, polysemy cannot be more different from how New
Critics, especially Empson, understand ambiguity. Not necessarily puz-
zling, the polysemic harbours aesthetic possibilities that are dissimilar from
that of ambiguity. Most importantly, to call something polysemic does not
entail an act of evaluation like calling something ambiguous often feels to
involve. Indeed, the legacy of Seven Types lies less in the categories it pro-
poses—which are almost impossible to memorise and liable to be mecha-
nistically applied—but in its establishment of ambiguity as a value (as
opposed to an “objective” condition). It has become difficult nowadays to
talk about ambiguity without also evoking a sense of aesthetic judgement.
For Empson, what makes ambiguity ambiguous—what activates our
puzzlement—is the relationship between the different interpretations. His
typology of ambiguity is a typology of such relationships, which include,
for example, conflation (the second type), confusion (the fifth type), and
1 INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 3
contradiction (the seventh type). He likens these diverse relationships

between meanings to different “forces” that “hold together a variety of
ideas” (1961, 235).1 If the standard definition of ambiguity stresses its
condition of multiple readings (as in Abrams and Harpham), Empson
reminds us that these readings, however incompatible or clear-cut they
may seem, are by definition connected, in the sense that they stem from
the same origin; that is, however we define it, ambiguity concerns the pos-
sibilities of the many in what is one. To show the nature of an ambiguity,
Empson suggests, it is not enough to simply unpack its “ideas”, we further
have to work out the relations between these ideas, showing “the nature
of the forces which are adequate to hold it together” (ibid.).
This study explores ambiguity as an aesthetic concept for film by
rethinking its standard definition, seeing it as more than the availability of
multiple meanings. Like Empson, I do so by paying attention to the
“forces” that hold an ambiguity together, observing what is ambiguous as
an interlacing weave of suggestions. But this book will not “translate” his
understandings into the context of cinema. Nor am I interested in cate-
gorising ambiguity. On the contrary, it is my aim to engage with ambigu-
ity in its specific instances, exploring their singularities. And that should in
turn allow me to identify some key or recurring characteristics of the con-
cept. One such important feature, as Empson helpfully points out, is the
aesthetic reaction of puzzlement. Throughout this book, I will typically
refer to this reaction as uncertainty or doubt, for they better capture the
sense of interpretative suspense that my account pivots upon. We shall see
how uncertainty and doubt are integral to the aesthetics of ambiguity.
Two Senses of Ambiguity

This study is entitled Ambiguity and Film Criticism not because it charts
the development of the concept in film criticism. Rather, it probes the
relationship between the concept and criticism, exploring the possibilities
of ambiguity by examining the challenges it poses to film analysis. As a
result, readers will not find an interdisciplinary approach to the concept in
the following pages, yet discussions of ambiguity (and its attendant ideas)
in other arts will be cited when appropriate (ambiguity in art and photog-
raphy is discussed in, for example, Elkins 1999; Franklin 2020; and
Gamboni 2002). However, my distinct focus is not an assertion of medium
specificity. It is instead an effort to flesh out several productive ways of
addressing and appreciating ambiguity that are already available in film
4 H. L. LAW
criticism, worthy of highlighting or rediscovering, even though they may

not explicitly concern the concept. One purpose of this book is to re-
evaluate what film criticism has taught us about how to think and write
about ambiguity. (It is worth pointing out that the general framework I
develop here—based on the dynamic of “question-and-answer”, as we will
see later—can be in fact revised to explore ambiguity in other artistic
mediums.) Now, it is useful to survey two prominent senses in which
ambiguity is typically understood in relation to film.
Interpretative “Freedom”
Given ambiguity’s connotations of multiplicity and uncertainty, it seems
intuitive to speak of it as a feature of reality. It is therefore not surprising
that the concept has been taken as a hallmark of cinematic realism. And
this particular view of realist aesthetics is the critical legacy of André Bazin.
Situating the critic in his contemporary intellectual milieu, Dudley Andrew
takes note of the influence of phenomenology on Bazin’s thoughts:
Bazin would be obliged to say that the real exists only as perceived, that situ-
ations can be said to exist only when a consciousness is engaged with some-
thing other than itself. In this view reality is not a completed sphere the
mind encounters, but an “emerging-something” which the mind essentially
participates in. Here the notion of ambiguity is a central attribute of the real.
(1973, 64)
For Bazin, as Andrew points out, our perception interacts with and com-
pletes the world. Ambiguity, therefore, also needs to be understood in
light of this situation. Specifically, it means that ambiguity is not an “objec-
tive” feature but an attribute of our negotiation with what we perceive as
reality. Reality is ambiguous not because it is inherently plural in meaning
but because its meaning is equally like an “emerging-something”, only
made available through our ongoing exchange with the world. This is also
why each of us sees reality differently. We can say that ambiguity is the
condition that enables our distinctive understandings.
Rather than the recording of unadorned reality, Bazin’s realism involves
the reproduction of the condition of ambiguity in movies. And this condi-
tion, in the medium of film, becomes an insistence on the viewer’s “auton-
omy” of reading. This is put into sharp relief by Bazin’s provocative claim:
“[e]diting, by its very nature, is fundamentally opposed to ambiguity”
(2009, 101). Note that by “editing”, Bazin means specifically analytical

editing such as the conventions of the shot/reverse-shot and the point-of-
view shot.2 Dissecting a scene into dramatic units and reassembling them
into a chain of actions, this type of edits imposes a specific course of under-
standing. As a result, there is little leeway for the audience’s perceptual and
interpretive exploration.
In this way, analytical editing is the opposite of deep focus cinematog-
raphy, a technique that Bazin famously champions because it “re-introduces
ambiguity into the structure of the image, if not as a necessity […] at least
as a possibility” (21). Unlike analytical editing, the use of depth-of-field,
by withholding visual emphasis and dramatic priority in a scene, requires
us to work out what is significant, to perform our own reading, exercising
our prerogative of interpretation. The device is capable of reproducing an
involved experience not unlike our perceptual entanglement with reality.
And this achieves what the critic considers “a sound definition of realism
in art: to force the mind to draw its own conclusions about people and
events, instead of manipulating it into accepting someone else’s interpre-
tation” (1997, 123).3 For Bazin, the reproduction of ambiguity is what
allows film to fulfil its promises as a realist medium.4
This study does not intend to pursue a realist account of ambiguity or
explore further Bazin’s phenomenological understanding. But the interac-
tion between screen and spectator that undergirds the critic’s understand-
ing remains a productive way to think of the concept. And this conception
is echoed by other film critics. For example, André S. Labarthe suggests:
Traditional cinema had managed to do away with any possibility of ambigu-

ity by building into every scene and shot what the spectator was meant to
think of it: i.e. its meaning. Taken to its extreme, this kind of cinema did not
need the spectator since he [sic] was already included in the film. (1986, 55)
The remark complements Bazin’s claim about analytical editing, though

also pushing it too far: It is doubtful that a total control of meaning, of the
viewer’s reading, is achievable in film. Interestingly, while Labarthe’s state-
ment shares Bazin’s assumptions about ambiguity, these assumptions are
used against the kind of cinema that the critic argues to be capable of (re)
creating ambiguity—it is in the “tradition cinema” of Orson Welles and
William Wyler that Bazin discovers illuminating uses of depth-of-field.
Labarthe’s remark speaks to ambiguity’s common association with what is
“modern” or “unorthodox” (made clear by book titles such as The
6 H. L. LAW
Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema and

Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art). This
brings us to the second typical understanding of ambiguity.
Analytical Challenge
In critical literature, ambiguity often stands for what is unconventional
and challenging. And this is reflected by its long-established link to “art
cinema”, ever since the emergence of the genre. In an early conceptualisa-
tion of ambiguity in film scholarship, which is also one of the first system-
atic discussions of “art cinema”, David Bordwell (2008 [1979]) defines
the genre by its aesthetic deviations from Classical Hollywood Cinema.
The unfamiliar stylistic devices and the loose narrative causality in “art
films”, Bordwell observes, may be challenging to the viewer, but these
anomalies can be understood in reference to the twin poles of “realism”
and “authorial expressivity”:
Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality,

we first seek realistic motivation. (Is a character’s mental state causing the
uncertainty? Is life just leaving loose ends?) If we’re thwarted, we next seek
authorial motivation. (What is being “said” here? What significance justifies
the violation of the norm?) Ideally, the film hesitates, suggesting character
subjectivity, life’s untidiness, and author’s vision. Whatever is excessive in
one category must belong to another. Uncertainties persist but are under-
stood as such, as obvious uncertainties, so to speak. Put crudely, the slogan
of the art cinema might be, “When in doubt, read for maximum ambigu-
ity”. (156)
In Bordwell’s account, ambiguity seems to mean the uncertainty between

the two types of motivations. And the “ideal” scenario is where this uncer-
tainty is irresolvable, that the detail or device in question is both driven by
artistic and realistic concerns (Chap. 2 will look closely at why explaining
ambiguity in terms of motivation is unproductive). On this view, ambigu-
ity is not what calls for analysis and appreciation in “art films”. Instead, as
the advised strategy of “read[ing] for maximum ambiguity” implies, it is
the “explanation” of “art cinema”. And positing “ambiguity” as the
“goal” of analysis, Bordwell’s “reading procedure” amounts to little more
than flagging up and re-stating a film’s difficulties. This seems to me not
only an unsatisfying account of ambiguity and “art cinema”5 but also an
unhelpful way to construe an analytical approach to ambiguity. In particu-

lar, I maintain that ambiguity is in fact an invitation to our critical account,
which further calls for certain appropriate ways of accounting. We read to
neither “maximise” nor nullify ambiguity but to come to terms with it,
exploring why something is ambiguous in detail and in depth.
Other early literature on “art cinema” liken the films to “puzzles”. For
Robert Self, “[t]he texts of the art cinema exist quite explicitly as puzzles to
be solved by the viewer, but puzzles also constructed to prevent easy solu-
tion” (1979, 77). Writing on what would later become the canon of “art
cinema”, Norman N. Holland sees it as innovative that these “puzzling
movies” “bus[y] us with solving the riddle” (1963, 19). Recently, this film-
as-puzzle analogy is revived by the emerging scholarly interest in “contem-
porary puzzle film”. Mostly consisting of popular and independent movies
from the 1990s, the genre is characterised by its “complex storytelling”,
which usually serves as an expressive means to articulate its themes of con-
fusion or serious philosophical concerns such as schizophrenia and episte-
mological doubt. These films advance an entangled plot that is difficult to
understand and sort out (see Buckland 2009, 2014; Kiss and Willemsen
2017). To call films puzzles is to foreground their analytical difficulties.
If ambiguity marks what is difficult, then it is not only possible but also
productive to explore the concept beyond the genres of “art cinema” and
“puzzle film”, and in relation to narrative fiction movies in general, includ-
ing what Labarthe calls “traditional cinema”, especially due to its exclu-
sion from prevalent considerations of the concept. Attractive as a way of
picturing ambiguity, the “puzzle analogy”, however, seems to me prob-
lematic as a conceptualisation of its difficult nature. In particular, the anal-
ogy envisions the task of criticism, suggested by Self’s and Holland’s
remarks, as one that of “solving” a film’s meaning, as though to reassem-
ble and recover a definitive understanding. According to this view, what is
difficult, as it were, is not a part of the movie’s expression but a hindrance
in need of elimination. A film is ambiguous only because, and as long as,
we haven’t found the solution to it.
It is questionable that there exists an “ultimate solution” to any film.
Moreover, if we are interested in ambiguity as an aesthetic concept, we
would want to investigate its possibility as an achievement, and not con-
ceive it merely as an interpretative complication to be overcome. I take the
dubious premise of the “puzzle analogy” as symptomatic of an unproduc-
tive critical stance that is not uncommon—unfortunately, as we have
seen—in both scholarship and criticism. (Just to be clear: my reservation
8 H. L. LAW
concerns this specific premise and not the phenomenon of the puzzle film,
nor is it directed towards any particular study on the subject.) A chief con-
cern of this book is therefore meta-critical (made explicit by the chosen
title Ambiguity and Film Criticism, instead of what is expected of a project
of this kind: Ambiguity in Film). Throughout the chapters, not only will I
explore prominent features of the concept but I will also examine some
unhelpful assumptions or approaches with regard to the analysis of ambi-
guity. These include the Neoformalist category of “motivation”, the criti-
cal anxiety about “over-interpretation”, and the much-debated divide
between “surface” and “deeper” meanings. Literature on ambiguous
movies is abundant (e.g., there is a plethora of anthologies and journal
articles on “puzzle films” and those who made them). This is time we
attend to our critical practices and methodological procedures. Rising to
this challenge, this book reflects on how we could appropriately under-
stand and assess what is ambiguous. And by doing so, I argue, we further
gain general insights into the nature and operation of film criticism.
Question and Answer

The “puzzle analogy” may be misleading but it has arguably captured an
intuitive way to think about ambiguity. This explains its pervasiveness.
Specifically, ambiguity seems challenging sometimes indeed because we are
not sure how to “answer” it, that its “answer” is unobvious or complex.6
Accordingly, and equally intuitively, we can think of ambiguity as a difficult
or demanding question. There is a sense that ambiguity is what invites our
questions and answers; it sustains both the acts of questioning and answering.
It is not uncommon in everyday life to speak of a film posing questions
or providing answers. And a number of critics have further recognised the
possibility of the question-and-answer structure as a narrative model, such
as Roland Barthes’s theorisation of the “hermeneutic code” (1974) and
Noël Carroll’s account of narrative closure (2007).7 My concern here is
not to explain how the medium of film is capable of articulating questions
and answers (this is, however, a worthy theoretical pursuit).8 Instead, I am
interested in the erotetic structure as an exchange between screen and
viewer. It is worth noting that however questions and answers are expressed
in a movie, they are expressed in ways that are different from how they are
conveyed in language. Of course, there are instances where a character
appears to expressly say what a film means. But the work’s effective mean-
ing, in the final analysis, pivots upon its organisation of sights and sounds,
so accordingly, its questions and answers are suggested by these means.9
They need to be interpreted. In other words, the erotetic dynamic is a

matter of reading. The questions and answers of a movie are also our criti-
cal questions and answers. And this makes the structure useful in develop-
ing the established idea of ambiguity as a negotiation between an artwork
and its audience (besides Bazin, see also Elkins 1999; Gamboni 2002).
Why Is It as It Is?
Ambiguity in film, this book proposes, is an invitation to inquire into “why
is it as it is”. And this involves elaborating the questions in response to a
specific movie, as well as exploring satisfying ways of answering them.
“Nothing could be commoner among critics of art”, Stanley Cavell
observes, “than to ask why the thing is as it is” (2002, 182). In fact, the
“why” question is so prevalent that it arguably captures, in one fundamen-
tal sense, the reason we are interested in artworks. But ambiguity, this study
suggests, because of its “room for puzzling” and analytical challenges,
heightens the urgency of this inquiry, insistently soliciting our answers. In
other words, our experience of ambiguity intensifies our critical practice.
As Cavell points out, the investigation of “why” “directs [us] into the
work” (227). Each individual chapter of this book will delve into one
movie or dwell upon some remarkable moments in a film. These close
readings will detail, as carefully as possible, the “why” questions that these
works invite us to consider.10 By doing so, I also wish to demonstrate that
what is ambiguous requires to be understood in its own terms, under its
specific contexts, as a special manifestation of the concept. That is, each
instance of ambiguity is ambiguous in a distinctive way. This is not to say
the concept cannot or should not be systematically categorised like
Empson does. Only that this study aims for a more practical understand-
ing; it seeks to inform the practice of criticism. The “why” inquiry not
only means to offer a coherent way to conceptualise ambiguity but also to
serve as a cogent framework under which to explore its variegated
instances. Ambiguity, this study maintains, is something to be clarified and
illuminated by reading; it calls for our critical effort, requiring to be
accounted for.
This point is worth stressing because there is a sense that the word
“ambiguity” is prone to be used in advance of reading or as a substitute
for critical engagement. As we have seen earlier in the text, ambiguity is a
multifarious concept which has been taken to mean, at least, analytical dif-
ficulty and interpretative “freedom”. The multiplicity of the term can be
10 H. L. LAW
useful in criticism; it may be employed to eloquently communicate the

complex effects of a movie. But that also abets the possibilities of impre-
cise and uncritical uses. Or worse still, the term could be abused as a con-
venient way out for analysis, that is, as an empty expression of puzzlement,
ignoring the potent call for reading. All this points to an unreflective reli-
ance on the concept, which expects it to do the work for us, whereas
ambiguity, as my account suggests, should be what launches and sustains
the work of criticism. This book insists on our critical responsibility to
work out what is ambiguous. And by working out the “why” questions in
relation to a range of movies, it also delineates a set of characteristics of
ambiguity, which in turn complements the framework of “why is it as it
is”. Our understanding of the concept is then gradually accrued. Instead
of a definitive conception, this study offers the readers a framework to
engage with movies that are beyond the scope of the chapters, inviting
them to continue the investigation of this book.
But what does a specific “why” question typically look like? For instance,
it could be most straightforwardly “why is the character upset at this
moment?” to the more advanced “why does the camera zoom into her
when she is upset?” A few things are already made clear by the sample
enquiries. In a narrative movie, it is common that the “why” question
takes interest in characters and the dramatic scenario, but it may further
comprehend matters of form and style. And it is especially when it does, as
in the second example, that the intertwinement of the two aspects is fore-
grounded. In other words, we cannot productively examine issues of nar-
rative without some consideration of the film’s presentation, and vice
versa. The “why” inquiry can be deceptively simple. An account of it usu-
ally requires a holistic understanding of a whole host of narrative and sty-
listic elements.
This brings us to an even more important issue: what are we inquiring
into when we ask the “why” question? That is, what kind of answer we are
looking for? Throughout the book, I will focus on one type of desirable
answer which I call aesthetic reason. This term is inspired by Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s series of lectures on aesthetic appreciation, a subject whose
central aim, he claims, is to come to terms with the “aesthetic puzzle-
ments” that works of art have upon us (1972, 28–9). Our aesthetic
response then involves, he notes, “giv[ing] reasons, e.g. For having this
word rather than that in a particular place in a poem, or for having this
musical phrase rather than that in a particular place in a piece of music”
(Moore 1955, 19). What Wittgenstein advocates here is indeed what the
“why” question seeks to probe: the reason for a specific artistic choice.
When we ask “why” about an artwork, we want to know what is achieved
by this choice instead of otherwise. Aesthetic reason concerns
particularities.11
Chapters 2 and 3 will explore in greater detail what aesthetic reason
means in the criticism of film. But as the earlier remark on the sample
“why” enquiries suggest, the kind of reason we take interest in is the kind
that can be discerned or deduced from the work itself. And it broadly con-
cerns the meaning and significance of artistic choices. This concern is par-
ticularly instructive towards the appreciation of ambiguity because, as
V.F. Perkin observes, it is often by “project[ing] ourselves into the position
of the artist and think through the problems which he [sic] confronts in his
search for order and meaning” that we become cognisant of how a film
“absorbs its tensions” (1993, 131). Note that this critical projection is not
the same as the uncovering of the filmmaker’s premeditated aesthetic con-
ception. Instead, it is something like a re-imagination of the process of
filmmaking, of the conditions under which one can better contemplate the
reasons for, as Wittgenstein would put it, making this choice rather than
that in a particular place in a movie. The exploration of ambiguity as an
artistic expression—and not an obstacle to meaning as the “puzzle anal-
ogy” has it—can similarly benefit from this practice of critical re-imagina-
tion. (This practice is a good use of what James Grant [2013] calls
“imaginativeness” in criticism, a topic to which I will return in Chap. 3.)
What my discussion has been highlighting so far is ambiguity’s intimate
link to criticism. It is the principal argument of this study that an account
of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept is also an account of its criticism.
Indeed, seeing ambiguity as a dynamic process of reading points to a
potent way of conceiving its analysis. Particularly, it enables the recogni-
tion that our critical task is not only to probe aesthetic reasons but also to
acknowledge our uncertainty. A satisfying account of ambiguity success-
fully engages with both reason and doubt. The search for such an account
is the main concern of my close readings of film.
Reason and Doubt

These close readings are organised into two sections, which correspond to
the study’s dual concerns of reason and doubt.
Part I is named “Pursuits of Reasons”. Not only does it develop the
idea of aesthetic reason but it also addresses the procedure of our critical
12 H. L. LAW
pursuit. And by doing so, the section reflects upon a number of prevailing
assumptions in film criticism and proposes some practices that would assist
our quest for aesthetic reasons.
Inspecting several key accounts of the enigmatic shots with the vase in
Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949), Chap. 2 delineates the kinds of
“answers” that we look for if we are interested in ambiguity as an artistic
expression. I suggest that one reason why the moment is so challenging—
that it compels a range of differing, sometimes incompatible accounts—is
because of our difficulty in recognising the most illuminating questions
concerning the moment. The search for a satisfying account equally
involves the search for appropriate or penetrating critical questions.
Chapter 3 explores how the ambiguous yet apparently simple editing strat-
egy of Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) not only dramatises its central themes
of control and deviation but also deepens its political significance. My
discussion draws a link between ambiguity and complexity by showing
how entangled the film’s critical questions are. Moreover, the chapter
investigates the place of speculation in film criticism, and further takes that
as an opportunity to elaborate on the idea of aesthetic reason, by juxtapos-
ing it with what can be called non-aesthetic reason. In Chap. 4, I consider
a set of character gestures in In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950).
Suggesting both tenderness and violence, these gestures indicate the char-
acter’s self-opacity, encouraging us to inquire deeper into his thoughts and
feelings. This investigation of “deeper reasons” offers a way to rethink the
conventional opposition between “surface” and “deep” meanings in criti-
cism. While ambiguity is typically associated with the multiplicity of mean-
ing, I argue for the benefit of also seeing it as the depth of suggestion.
In Part II “Drama of Doubt”, we will look at two films whose drama
hinges upon matters of doubt or (mis)belief. But most importantly, both
films, in their own ways, activate a strong sense of interpretative uncer-
tainty. As a result, our practice of reading is also something like an enact-
ment of an internal drama of doubt.
Chapter 5 analyses the final three scenes of Force Majeure (Ruben
Östlund, 2014). On the one hand, I explore what ambiguity means in
relation to each scene. On the other hand, I draw attention to how these
scenes—taken together and seen in succession—feel puzzling as a conclu-
sion of what comes before. Specifically, there is a sense that the movie has,
against our expectations, drastically changed its moral stance towards the
main character during its final moments. This switch of perspective leaves
us uncertain about what an appropriate analytical standpoint should be.
Here, some of the film’s ambiguous choices will be illuminated by a com-

parison with its recent Hollywood remake Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim
Rash, 2020). Chapter 6 explores ambiguity as more than a query about
meaning but also as a form of scepticism towards whether something is
really meaningful. I reflect on my own experience of this kind of scepti-
cism—as something like a struggle between reason and doubt in my
mind—with regard to a performer’s seemingly inadvertent direct look at
the camera in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956). The fact that
I am able to offer a reading of the detail, to unpack its suggestion, doesn’t
stop me from worrying about its insignificance. This allows me to address
the relationship between ambiguity and “overreading”. And finally, by
fleshing out how a satisfying account of ambiguity animates the dynamics
between reason and doubt, “Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt”
ponders what the concept can teach us about criticism, particularly regard-
ing its appreciative aspect and communal nature. Reason and doubt can—
and should—work hand in hand in our practice of reading; the study of
ambiguity enriches our understanding of film analysis.
Purview and Practice

My discussion of ambiguity, as the aforementioned chapter outline makes
clear, consists of a mix of familiar and unobvious choices of film. A study
of an aesthetic concept such as this one is never expected to examine all
possible variants and every individual instance. But I could imagine, for
some, my account can only be compromised because of its notable, seem-
ingly regrettable neglect of certain films. More specifically, my choices do
not include movies that we would intuitively think of as “highly ambigu-
ous”, works which most people would ordinarily find very puzzling. Such
ambiguous films can come in different forms and styles. But there are two
prominent manifestations of them which are worth singling out for
inspection.12
To “read for maximum ambiguity”, as suggested earlier, is an unhelpful
critical practice. However, there exists films that indeed appear to seek
“maximum ambiguity”. In such a film, ambiguity ostensibly drives and
permeates its every aspect, including the plot (i.e., what is going on?),
matters of tone (e.g., ironic or not?), and the status of the audio and the
visual tracks (e.g., is it reality or is it fantasy?). A Page of Madness (Teinosuke
Kinugasa, 1926), Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961), and Bad
Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) are salient examples. And some “puzzles
14 H. L. LAW
films” (e.g., Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] and Mulholland Drive

[David Lynch, 2001]) also belong to this mode of filmmaking. This study
doesn’t examine such movies. But the critical framework that I propose—
the inquiry into “why is it as it is?” as well as the various strategies of for-
mulating questions and answering these questions—should equally afford
an effective way of approaching them. It is because—and this is vital to
point out—these works do not actually constitute a distinct kind of ambig-
uous film. Instead, they can be more usefully understood as movies that
contain an unusual amount of ambiguous features. That is, they raise more
“why” questions than most films, perhaps also more acutely so.
That doesn’t mean these films are by default “more” ambiguous
though. They are usually more critically challenging, certainly. But how
ambiguous a film is is not directly proportional to the number of “why”
questions it raises. For example, at the centre of In a Lonely Place lies the
question of Dix’s loving-but-violent gestures. And our recognition of this
aspect can already prompt us to see many moments in the narrative anew,
seeing the film as “highly ambiguous”. Moreover, there is a sense that
instances of ambiguity cannot be adequately compared in terms of degree.
Saying “this film is more ambiguous than that film” is not only hardly
revealing but in fact obscures what is really at stake: even though cases of
ambiguity can be similar or analogous, they are ambiguous in necessarily
different and specific ways. It is the singularity of an individual ambiguity
that deserves assessment and appreciation. And this is why this book fore-
grounds the fleshing out a film’s unique “why” questions as a productive
way of exploring its ambiguities. (Accordingly, the comparison between
individual instances of ambiguity is perhaps most beneficial when it juxta-
poses the different effects and meanings of similar or analogous scenarios.
Readers are invited to perform such a comparison between two respective
moments that this book will discuss at length: the shots with the vase in
Late Spring and the driver’s point-of-view shot in Ten. Both achieve ambi-
guity by exploiting an editing convention and the expectations that
creates.)
The second variant of “highly ambiguous” film is the ones that simul-
taneously welcome or accommodate incompatible readings. And these
readings often specifically exemplify opposite, irresolvable moral values or
ideological systems. Most recent examples are Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019)
and The Hunt (Craig Zobel, 2020). The latter, as Adrian Martin (2020)
observes, is “a film that cheekily preys on contemporary anxieties and
anti-social fantasies on every side of the political border; while, at the same
time, giving itself the get-out-of-jail-free card of silliness and (icky) poetic
license”. Such works, in a way, attempt to exercise polysemy in the medium
of film. And this “polysemy”, by virtue of its political or ethical nature,
may lead to audience frustration or even infuriation. Refusing to take a
side when the act of side-taking seems urgent, this kind of films appears to
happily tolerate what may be disagreeable or indefensible beliefs to viewers
across the ideological divide. As a result, the conundrum of interpretation
takes on an ethical dimension; now, not only the suggestion of the film—
what it is “about”—is of moral significance, one also becomes inclined to
question the “tactic” of the film and view its stance in moral terms: is it
being “opportunistic” (wanting to “have the cake and eat it”)? Is it being
“insincere” (not articulating what it really means)? Is it a “cop-out” (a
failure of commitment)?13
This kind of questions not only highlights how these “polysemic” films
forcefully conjoins aesthetic and moral assessments, but it also reveals the
site of their ambiguity. Simply put, the ambiguity of these films does not
exactly stem from their possibility of conflicting readings; rather, what
makes them ambiguous is their uncertainty of viewpoint, that we can’t be
sure where their approval or allegiance lies. Our key question towards
these films is then along the line of “why don’t they pick a side?” or “what
position are they inviting me to take?”. We wish to understand the mean-
ing and effect of such a strategy. Controversial “polysemic films” do not
make an appearance in this study. But the strategy of rhetorical instability,
in a less controversial yet no less morally fraught form, will be explored in
relation to Force Majeure, as outlined in the chapter summary. While the
answer to why a film avoids side-taking, why it beholds incompatible
views, is liable to be conveniently explained in terms of an intellectual chal-
lenge (“the film wants us to provoke us [sometimes for the sake of it]”) or
a “democratic” appeal to individual judgement (“it wants us to make up
our own mind”), then perhaps what warrants accounting for—what is
really interesting to examine—is how such a film achieves this avoidance or
this act of dual-beholding. In other words, a productive way of analysing
said film would be to reflect upon its construction, not in order to settle
its interpretative quandary but to appreciate the way the moral or ideo-
logical double-bind is established and secured. Chapter 5 considers how
Force Majeure’s rhetorical uncertainty succeeds to implicate us in its over-
arching moral drama, forcing us to participate in its ethical investigation.
16 H. L. LAW
In any case, my omission of the two families of “highly ambiguous”

films is strategic. These films tend to attract or have already received sus-
tained critical attention. My account therefore turns to works that do not
straightforwardly lend themselves to the analysis of ambiguity. My selec-
tion of movies, as suggested earlier, nevertheless allows me to develop a
framework to address the two variants of ambiguous films and probe some
of their pertinent issues. Most importantly, the examples that I examine in
this book open up fresh ways of exploring both the concept of ambiguity
and the practice of film criticism.
Value and Evaluation

Perhaps the greatest mystery about ambiguity is that while it is typically
considered an impediment in everyday life, especially over communica-
tion, it tends to be esteemed and celebrated in the realm of art. Why
is it so?
This vast question is way beyond the purview of this book. But my
intuition is that the answer would have as much to do with the nature of
art as to do with the possibility of ambiguity. And we would also need to
have an understanding of the purposes of communication and how com-
munication is different from art to recognise why certain things are
shunned in one arena but valued in the other. But it should be noted that
this question of why ambiguity is valuable is related to but, importantly,
distinct from the question of why some instances of ambiguity are artistic
achievements. Why ambiguity might be good in general is not the same as
why a particular ambiguity is good.
Earlier, I have identified interpretative “freedom” and analytical diffi-
culty as the two common understandings of ambiguity. It seems to me
they further stand for two conceptions of why ambiguity is valuable. While
the former speaks to the prevailing belief in the “openness” of artworks,
the latter corresponds to the concomitant view of the experience of art as
an experience of active engagement. Indeed, critics do sometimes explain
instances of ambiguity with these assumptions in mind. For examples,
remarking on the unresolved endings of “art films”, David Bordwell sug-
gests: “ambiguity […] must not halt at the film’s close” because “life lacks
the neatness of art and art knows it” (2008, 156). And it is also easy to
imagine a critic justifying his or her interpretative struggle by asserting it
as a result of artistic originality and innovativeness.
Reasonable, perhaps, such justifications of ambiguity are nevertheless

unsatisfying. Lacking specificities, they are applicable to a wide range of
instances. While each ambiguity, as I suggest, is ambiguous in a different
way, its success and achievement should be therefore gauged in light of the
work in which it appears. What is ambiguous needs to be judged on a case-
by-case basis. There is no substitute for careful close analysis.
In this sense, the “why” question facilitates the assessment of ambigu-
ity. It is by inquiring into the point of an ambiguity that we also recognise
its form and degree of achievement. (The appreciation of art is not a two-
step process in which we can establish the point of a work before we move
on to its assessment; instead, we cannot see its point without also seeing
its achievement in some sense. The difference between the “some sense”
that we see in different artworks is their difference in successfulness.) But
our recognition of achievement is complicated in the case of ambiguity.
Since it is often the point of an ambiguity that we feel strongly uncertain
about, its success is consequently also in question. And to say that uncer-
tainty is precisely the point of ambiguity—which might be what we intui-
tively want to say about it—would not be helpful either but send us back
to square one: figuring out the point of uncertainty is comparable to figur-
ing out the point of ambiguity. In other words, by clarifying the construc-
tion of an ambiguity, close reading may at the same time magnify its
puzzling features. It is possible that the harder we look at what is ambigu-
ous, the more it leaves us perplexed, confused about its meaning, signifi-
cance, and merit (as we will see in Chaps. 5 and 6).
So, how might our evaluation proceed? The assessment of ambiguity,
this book suggests, may benefit from referring to other aesthetic catego-
ries. But these other categories should not be employed as the “explana-
tions”, like how “openness” is often used as the justification of what is
ambiguous. Rather, they arise from our close reading and in turn inform
our close reading. Throughout this study, ambiguity will be considered in
conjunction with or in light of a series of other concepts, such as coher-
ence, complexity, uncertainty, and opacity. And these joint considerations
are indeed vital to the understanding of what is at stake in the instances we
inspect. Ambiguity is always recognised and prized as the plurality of
meanings. On my account, however, what is exciting about it is instead the
way it meaningfully recalls a multitude of aesthetic concepts. As we shall
see, ambiguity and these other concepts indeed illuminate each other. And
this has profound consequences for evaluation. Most notably, it would be
no longer appropriate to prioritise the identification of “good” and “bad”
18 H. L. LAW
ambiguities. Instead, artistic assessment becomes a matter of exploring

how an ambiguity works with other aesthetic categories to eloquent, inter-
esting, or rewarding ends. This more liberating view of evaluation—focus-
ing on gauging merits instead of passing judgements—is the kind of
evaluation that this book will practice. This is a form of evaluation that
emphasises appreciation, specifically the appreciation of the “why” in “why
is it as it is”.
Notes
1. The remainder of the passage highlights the difficulty of analysing ambigu-
ity: people “feel they know about the forces, if they have analysed the ideas;
many forces, indeed, are covertly included within ideas; and so of the two
elements, each of which defines the other, it is much easier to find words
for the ideas than for the forces”. It is easier to identify the multiple mean-
ings of an ambiguity than to explore and articulate their links.
2. Elsewhere, Bazin writes: “analytical découpage tends to suppress the imma-
nent ambiguity of reality” (2009, 54). But the critic also sees the possibility
of the convention to achieve the opposite. For example, speaking about
Alfred Hitchcock’s uses of the close-up, Bazin observes how they could
“suggest the ambiguity of an event” (69). There is a sense that the critic
sometimes writes dogmatically for rhetorical purposes. His analyses are not
reducible to, often more nuanced than, the inflated critical assertions that
he declares.
3. Bazin’s emphasis on the viewer’s participation—a democratic vision of the
medium—suggests that his film aesthetics is undivorceable from matters
of ethics.
4. For a discussion of Bazinian ambiguity that revolves around issues of tem-
porality, see Carruthers (2017).
5. Bordwell’s account of “art cinema” appears circular. He proposes realism
and authorial expressivity as the defining features of this particular “mode
of filmmaking” and then goes on to “explain” the films in these terms.
6. George M. Wilson notes: “Nothing in the idea of the explanatory coher-
ence of a narrative requires that the material that is responsive to the dra-
matically significant questions of the film has to be deployed in a familiar
or easily discernible way” (1986, 44).
7. See Robin Wood’s “Notes for a Reading of I Walked with a Zombie” for an
attempt to apply Barthes’ five narrative codes to film analysis (2006,
303–38).
8. This seems to me linked to the philosophical question of how a film means.
I have in mind V.F. Perkins’s suggestive remark that the meanings made
clear in a film are meanings that are “filmed” (1990, 4). Here, the very
activity of the medium (filming) also serves as an eloquent, intuitive way of
saying how meanings are achieved in its instances. It is as though how the
camera articulates meanings remains something of a mystery to us. But to
understand “how filming means”, what we need is not a general theory of
the nature of the medium but appreciations of the aesthetic possibilities of
individual acts of filming. Or, at least, the theorization cannot be done in
advance of detailed analyses of film.
9. One benefit of conceiving movies in terms of question-and-answer is that
it presents a more dynamic understanding of the fictional world than the
prevalent preoccupation with narrative causality in film studies. Notably, it
allows us to see narrative ambiguity as far more complicated than the dis-
ruption or complication of cause-of-effect. In a similar vein, Alex Clayton
(2011) has discussed how the cause-and-effect model distorts issues of
character choice and agency in film.
10. This book’s emphasis on the “why” inquiry is indicative of its larger inter-
est in the valuable lessons of Cavell’s writings on art and art criticism.
Indeed, this volume is inspired and guided by these lessons, that is, not in
the sense that I’ve applied Cavell’s “methods” of analysing movies and
approaching ambiguity—the application of methods is in fact alien to
Cavell’s critical sensibility. The philosopher’s ideas will no doubt frequently
crop up throughout this book. But what my account really takes up from
Cavell and pays homage to is his unique insights into the operation of criti-
cism. For instance, his commitment to reflecting on our experience of film,
to the teachings of film. My “Cavellian” position will be fleshed out in
“Concluding Remarks”. Recent volumes which draw attention to Cavell’s
critical lessons include Moi (2017) and Ray (2020).
11. What about when someone asks “why is this unambiguous?” Would that
be a case of ambiguity? I think there are two occasions from which this
remark may arise. In the first, it stems from genuine puzzlement. This is a
case of ambiguity, albeit expressed in an unusual form. But it remains pos-
sible to reformulate the question so that it is directed to the source of
uncertainty. In the second scenario—equally unusual—the remark is a
veiled judgement; it points to an expectation of the detail to be ambiguous
in some way. The question is therefore close to a rhetorical question. It is
likely that the speaker speaks out of critical conviction rather than puzzle-
ment. If so, he or she doesn’t really think of the creative choice as
ambiguous.
12. I am indebted to Adrian Martin for pointing out these two pervasive vari-
ants of ambiguous films to me.
13. See Chap. 5 for more about “cop-out” and “tacked-on” film endings.
20 H. L. LAW
References
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9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
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Armes, Roy. 1976. The Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European
Cinema. London: Secker and Warburg.
Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.
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———. 2009. What Is Cinema?. Translated by Timothy Barnard.
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———. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York; London: Routledge.
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———. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York and London: Routledge.
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PART I
Pursuits of Reasons
CHAPTER 2
Difficulty of Reading
One of the most intriguing moments in the history of cinema can be

found in Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring (1949). It takes place towards the end
of the movie, at the inn on the last night of the Kyoto visit, when Noriko
(Setsuko Hara) and her father Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) rest side by side on
the tatami. Noriko is getting married soon, so the visit is also the final trip
the two will take together. Things have not been going well between
them. Mistaken about her father’s intent to remarry, Noriko has been
upset. But she won’t divulge her reasons or discuss her feelings with
Shukichi.1 At the aforementioned juncture in the film, as Noriko is finally
about to open up to her father, the camera shows the following:
1. Medium close-up of Noriko: since her words (“I was feeling angry
towards you, but”) receive no response from Shukichi, she looks to her
left to check on him.
2. Medium close-up of Shukichi: his eyes are closed.
3. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1): she turns to her right briefly
before looking ahead, staring at middle distance. Shukichi starts snor-
ing and that continues for the remainder of the scene. Noriko smiles
(Fig. 2.1).
4. Medium shot of the room: at the centre of the frame is a vase in the
alcove. Shadows of bamboo are projected on the shō ji screen behind it
(Fig. 2.2). The shot lasts for about six seconds.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Switzerland AG 2021
H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings
in Film and Television,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_2
26 H. L. LAW
Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
5. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1 and 3): her smile is gone. As in
shot 3, the character briefly turns to her right before looking ahead,
into the middle distance (Fig. 2.3).
6. Medium shot of the room (as shot 4, like Fig. 2.2): this shot lasts for
about ten seconds. Elegiac non-diegetic music comes in about half-way
through and acts as a sound bridge to a “new” scene.2
The intrigue of the moment is marked by the amount of critical atten-

tion it has garnered, the diversity of accounts it stimulates. Typically, these
accounts are animated by the vase’s uncertainty of suggestion, which is all
the more prominent for its centrality in the frame and the repetitions of
the shot. This sense of persistent obscurity makes the moment both com-
pelling and challenging.
But instead of directly advancing my own interpretation, this chapter
points out fruitful directions of reading by reflecting on a range of
2 DIFFICULTY OF READING 27
pre-existing accounts. Some of them are canonical and some are chosen
for their critical finesse. Not every one of them sees the moment as ambig-
uous. But all can be considered answers to the “why” question concerning
the images with the vase and may therefore work as accounts of their
ambiguity. I shall study the claims of these accounts and tease out their
interpretive and methodological assumptions. By doing so, not only will
we get a better grasp on the intriguing moment and its critical challenges
but we will also be able to sketch a number of representative or exemplary
analytic positions towards ambiguity. And this further makes possible the
discernment of a number of key characteristics of the concept which the
subsequent chapters will address. If ambiguity poses enquiries, it would be
beneficial to identify the types of answer it can inspire, so that we may
further recognise productive ways of answering it. I am interested in what
these accounts of Late Spring can teach us about the criticism of ambiguity.
28 H. L. LAW
This chapter diverges from Abé Mark Nornes’s essay “The Riddle of
the Vase” (2007), which samples diverse readings of the moment and situ-
ates them within the development of film studies as an academic subject.
Exploring the correspondences between these accounts and critical trends
or traditions within or outside the discipline, Nornes highlights how they
have shaped the study of Japanese cinema. Though my examples are simi-
larly presented in the order of their publication, I do not make any histori-
cal arguments. Instead, my aim is to assess their validity and strengths.
And these can be made clear by juxtaposing the critical texts, inspecting
how they speak to each other. Contra Nornes’s essay, this chapter doesn’t
insist on “a multiplicity of readings for a given text” (79). Not every
account of the moment with the vase is equally satisfying or rewarding.
Explanation and Function
The Transcendental
In his renowned study on the “transcendental style” in cinema, Paul
Schrader argues:
The vase [in Late Spring] is stasis, a form which can accept deep, contradic-
tory emotion and transform it into an expression of something unified, per-
manent, transcendent […]. The transcendental style, like the vase, is a form
which expresses something deeper than itself, the inner unity of all things.
(1972, 49; 51)
The vase is here taken as an illustration of the transcendental aesthetics.

More specifically, it stands for “stasis”, which, according to Schrader, “is
the trademark of religious art in every culture. It establishes an image of a
second reality which can stand beside the ordinary reality” (49). In other
words, he appears to read the scene as a spiritual experience and the vase
as something like a sublimation of Noriko’s sorrow about leaving home.
But without a sustained discussion of the moment, it remains unclear how
the object achieves “stasis” and articulates “something unified, perma-
nent, transcendent”. The remark hardly clarifies what makes the scene
ambiguous. It preserves the mystery of the moment.
This lack of engagement with specificities is a telling sign of the
account’s lack of interest in what is on the “surface”, suggested by
Schrader’s claim of the vase as “something deeper than itself, the inner
unity of all things”. In this way, the passage above enacts a suspicion that
ambiguity sometimes arouses: that meaning and significance is buried or
hidden, beyond what is readily observable. This misleading assumption
will be addressed in Chap. 4.
The Cathartic
Donald Richie writes in his seminal study on Ozu:
The image of the vase in the darkened room to which Ozu returns at the
end of Late Spring serves […] to contain and to an extent create our own
emotions. Empathy is not the key here. To be sure we do imaginatively
project our own consciousness onto another being, but this is perhaps a
secondary effect. Primary to the experience is that in these scenes empty of
30 H. L. LAW
all but mu, we suddenly apprehend what the film has been about, i.e. we
suddenly apprehend life. […] In Late Spring the daughter has seen what will
happen to her: she will leave her father, she will marry. She comes to under-
stand this precisely during the time that both we and she have been shown
the vase. The vase itself means nothing, but its presence is also a space and
into it pours our emotion. (1974, 175)
Richie is interested in what the moment signifies. As a moment of realisa-

tion for both the character and the viewer, it nonetheless suggests different
things to them. For Noriko, it is a recognition of her future (“she will
leave her father, she will marry”); for us, it is the revelation of a fact of life,
perhaps the inevitability of change. Interestingly, Richie speaks of the dou-
ble realisation arising “precisely during the time that both we and she have
been shown the vase”. That is, not unlike us, Noriki sees the object when
it is “shown” to her. It is as though the dawning of her recognition is
prompted by the shots, instigated by the filmmaker. It is a subtle instance
of narrational metalepsis.3 As we shall see, the relationship between the
shots and the character—especially that of between their suggestions and
her subjectivity—is at the heart of the moment’s ambiguity.
Echoing Schrader’s account, Richie claims that the vase “means noth-
ing”. But the wordplay he employs with regard to the affective dimension
of the shots—how they “pour” and “contain” our feelings—seems to
assert its relevance. As manifestations of “mu”—the potent presence of
absence4—the shots represent an emptiness that calls attention to itself, as
though a blank canvas on which to project our emotions. Instead of clari-
fying the interiority of the character, they serve as vehicles for spectatorial
catharsis.
Receptive to the narrative and emotional significance of the scene,
Richie nevertheless dismisses the meaning of the vase without qualifica-
tions. And that deserves questioning. How do these images generate emo-
tions but deny meanings? Doesn’t what seems meaningless compel
interpretation even more? In Chap. 6, we shall encounter a type of puz-
zling detail that threatens meaninglessness. As a result, our persistent
interpretation of it may sound dangerously like “overreading”.
It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But…

It is worth pausing for a moment. Focusing on the scene’s style, emotional
effect, or disclosure of mu, both Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts have
nevertheless left the narrative situation unaddressed, as if it is self-evident.

What happens in the scene? What does the editing suggest? Cutting
between a character gazing offscreen and a view of her vicinity is the struc-
ture of the point-of-view editing convention. Mobilising our knowledge
of this convention, the film prompts us to read the moment as an instance
of looking. That is, Noriko is looking at the vase.
But this intuitive reading turns out to be not the case. In their article
“Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu”, David Bordwell and Kristin
Thompson usefully point out the impossibility of shots (4) and (6) as
Noriko’s views from her position on the tatami, since the vase is “seen in
several earlier shots as being in a corner of the room behind and to the left
of the two beds” (1976, 65) (Fig. 2.4). This impossibility, Bordwell and
Thompson note, suggests that the images with the vase are not “‘realisti-
cally’ and ‘compositionally’ motivated by the narrative”, and that’s why
Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts struggle. They instead speak of the vase

32 H. L. LAW
as a “hypersituated object” that “works against, brakes the narrative flow

because of its indifference to Noriko’s emotional situation”. This indiffer-
ence, Bordwell and Thompson seem to imply, is guaranteed by the fact
that the shots are not the character’s optical point-of-view shots. Their
function can only be formal (in the narrow sense of what is not narrative);
we shouldn’t interpret the meaning of the vase. (ibid.)
The nascent ideas of both Bordwell’s and Thompson’s subsequent
accounts can be found in this brief remark. We will inspect their
Neoformalist understanding of the moment more closely below. While the
impossibility of point-of-view editing, according to them, is a reason not
to interpret the vase, I would suggest that it instead complicates the
object’s uncertainty of meaning, contributing to the moment’s ambiguity.
However, this would add to our critical challenge: alongside the question
of what the vase suggests, there is an additional enquiry about the con-
struction of the scene. And the two need to be considered together.
Between Continuity and Discontinuity

In his book on Japanese cinema, Noël Burch doesn’t explore the images
with the vase, but his discussion of Ozu’s deployment of “the pillow-shot”
can serve as a pertinent framework for understanding their structural func-
tion (1979, 160–2). Pillow-shots are unpeopled images which “suspend
the diegetic flow”. And by doing so, they may be read as “an expression of
a fundamentally Japanese trait”; drawing attention to the inanimate and
the environment, they depart from the anthropocentrism of Western
thoughts and, specifically, that of the Hollywood storytelling tradition.
Reflective of a culture, this kind of shot embodies a worldview, proposing
a particular way of looking. Importantly, in Ozu’s movies, these images
introduce or reintroduce diegetic locales or objects. They are not necessar-
ily without narrative implications despite their disruption of plot progress.
Rather, their implications are subtle or uncertain. This is how Ozu’s
pillow-shots invite contemplation.
For my purposes, it doesn’t matter that the images with the vase are
not, strictly speaking, pillow shots. Their strong ties to the scene make
them dissimilar to the kind of pronounced cutaways that Burch has in
mind. But their attention to non-human presence recalls the environmen-
tal sensibility of Burch’s category. Moreover, once we become aware of
the images’ impossibility as point-of-view shots, we may come to see how
they, similar to the pillow-shots, pivot upon the tension between narrative
continuity and discontinuity. Like Bordwell and Thompson, Burch

emphasises the formal aspect of a device, but unlike them, he sees the pos-
sibility of such a device to have dramatic and thematic significance. For
Burch, there is no neat divide between form and narrative meaning.
Play and Parameters

Before inspecting Bordwell’s and Thompson’s accounts, we need to have
a sense of what undergirds their arguments. For them, Ozu’s cinema
exemplifies “parametric narration”.5 A parametric film is a film which sus-
tains a set of parameters—usually in the form of a range of stylistic
devices—independently of its narrative economy. These devices cannot be
understood in terms of what Bordwell and Thompson call “realistic”,
“compositional” or “transtextual” motivations, that is, by conventions of
realism and genre, or by the requirements of storytelling. Instead, a
parameter is “artistically motivated”, “simply for its own sake—as an
appealing or shocking or neutral element […] directly focus[ing] atten-
tion on the forms and materials of the artwork” (Bordwell 1985, 36). The
suggestion is that style can be divorced from content. Form can simply be.
This is why parameters, for Bordwell, are not susceptible to interpreta-
tion. And these films, he notes, in fact discourage reading by accentuating
its form: “parametric filmmakers have tended to employ strikingly obvious
themes […]. It is as if stylistic organization becomes prominent only if the
themes are so banal as to leave criticism little to interpret” (282).
Interpretation becomes not only untenable but is often futile. Instead,
Ozu employs parameters to “play stylistic games with the spectator[s]”,
training them to “a distinct set of perceptual skills […] appropriate to his
work” (Thompson, 1988, 341). These games are playful. And playing by
the filmmaker’s rules, acquiring those perceptual skills, would allow us to
play the games better, deepening our appreciation of Ozu’s playfulness.
One of these games, Bordwell observes in his monograph on Ozu
(1988, 117–8), is the game of the “‘false’ POV”, wherein the filmmaker
undermines our expectations of the editing convention to subtle or sur-
prising effects. Bordwell reads the sequence in Late Spring as a variant of
this game and concludes: “Ozu’s fraying of POV cues makes the scene
fairly unstable, and any interpretation of it must take such equivocations
into account”. Interestingly, interpretation is no longer chastised here.
Stopping short of a reading, Bordwell explains Ozu’s employment of the
“‘false’ “POV” as a rejection of “canonical representation of character
34 H. L. LAW
subjectivity”. His allusion to interpretive possibilities, however, invites us

to envision how his explanation might be strengthened by close analysis.
In fact, Bordwell gestures towards a careful reading of the moment by
pointing out the saliency of the shadows behind the vase, a detail over-
looked or disregarded by Schrader and Richie. Indeed, the intrigue of the
object may easily, unduly consume our critical attention, at the expense of
other significant features of the scene.
The Arbitrary
In her book chapter on Late Spring, Thompson (1988) elaborates on the
movie’s playful strategy of parametric narration and continues to speak of
the vase as a “hypersituated object”. Now she calls Ozu’s formal choices
“unreasonable” because they are “neither natural nor logical” (341).
She argues:
Given the film’s consistent use of cutaways in a non-narrative way, it seems

more reasonable to see it [the vase] as a non-narrative element wedged into
the action. Such wedges must have an effect on the story, assuredly, if only
in the negative sense of diffusing our attention. Here we might conclude
that Ozu is in fact blocking our complete concentration on Noriko in order
to prevent our taking this as the emotional climax of the film […]. But in
any case, the choice for a vase for such a purpose is arbitrary; the shots could
have shown a lantern in the garden, a tree branch, or whatever. As an
emotion-charged symbol, a cut to Soma’s toothbrush and glass would have
been more effective, since earlier we had seen Noriko handing these objects
to her father, and this would have associated them with the pair’s relation-
ship. They have never even glanced at the vase. The very arbitrariness of the
choice should warn us against simplistic readings. (339–40)
If Ozu’s “‘false’ POVs” should not be read for meaning because they are
“artistically motivated”, Thompson proposes to explain them in terms of
function. As she declares: the “analysis of function and motivation will
always remain the analyst’s central goal, and it will subsume interpretation”
(21). In her view, it doesn’t matter what Ozu cuts to in place of the vase
insofar as it “block[s] our complete concentration on Noriko”.6 Here, func-
tion is conceived as something like a solution to a problem. And as long as
the problem is solved, the choice of solution is irrelevant. A function is ful-
filled the same way by every choice.
But does the choice make no difference? A cut to “a lantern in the gar-
den” would feel obtrusive considering its impossibility as Noriko’s sight.
And a cut to a “toothbrush and glass” could be mildly confusing, espe-
cially in light of the character’s changed countenance in the sequence. We
could say that these choices “block our complete concentration on
Noriko” but that grossly neglects their specific effects and implications.
Even though they might equally serve as a solution to a problem, it doesn’t
mean they are equally as good and therefore arbitrarily replaceable. The
issue with Thompson’s account, on the one hand, lies in its pragmatic
conception of function and, on the other, in the unquestioned assumption
that a device can be reduced to such a role. As a result, it oversimplifies the
moment with the vase. Contrary to her conclusion, it is the very specificity
of the vase that makes simplistic explanations unsatisfying, unsuitable.
Similar to Bordwell, Thompson asserts that the meanings of most para-
metric films are “simple and obvious” (20). This view is fleshed out by
Bordwell when he writes: “Not much acumen is needed to identify
PlayTime [Jacques Tati, 1967] as treating the impersonality of modern
life, Tokyo Story [Yasujirō Ozu, 1953] as examining the decline of the
“inherently” Japanese family, or Vivre sa vie [Jean-Luc Godard, 1962] as
dealing with contemporary urban alienation and female desire”. (1985,
282) In other words, what Bordwell and Thompson mean by meaning is
the theme of a movie; interpretation, accordingly, is the elucidation of
themes. This impoverished understanding of both concepts is the source
of their misleading claim: the blatant “messages” of parametric films,
Bordwell and Thompson observe, give us licence to study their style for
their own sake, as though we could see what these films articulate prior to
seeing their means of articulation. But I would suggest it is Bordwell and
Thompson’s failure to interpret content in light of form, theme in con-
junction with technique, that results in their underappreciation of the
nuances and complexity of these movies. We shall see how the construc-
tion of the moment in Late Spring complicates its suggestion.
It seems fair to say that Bordwell and Thompson are neither interested
in nor concerned with what is ambiguous. For them, the scene may be
initially puzzling. But this is only because we mistake the nature of its edit-
ing and instinctively read it in accordance with the point-of-view conven-
tion. Once our confusion is cleared up, the ambiguity would be solved.
We should then be able to see that what is really at stake is not the uncer-
tainty of meaning but a systematic play with form. For them, what the
moment calls for is not interpretation or clarification but explanation and
36 H. L. LAW
disambiguation. From this perspective, it is understandable to find the

scene ambiguous at first, but to dwell upon its suggestion after our misbe-
lief is rectified would be unjustifiable.
But ambiguity may leave us in irresolvable doubt. One of its chief chal-
lenges—as this book will demonstrate throughout its course and address
at its close—is its resistance to be refuted by knowledge, silenced with
facts. But this doesn’t mean ambiguity is unreasonable or that our critical
effort would necessarily end up being irrational. Instead, we are encour-
aged to present our reasons both for and against our doubt, and weigh
them in relation to each other. This may not put the ambiguous to rest.
More often than not, the best we could aim for is a provisional relief. But
the practice would renew our understanding of the ambiguity, illuminat-
ing the reasonableness of our doubt.
Reading in Detail
Ozu’s choice to cut to the vase in the alcove is far from arbitrary. Unlike
“a lantern in the garden” or “a tree branch”, it is precisely a view we
believe Noriko would be able to see from her position at that particular
moment, and this reinforces our intuitive understanding of the moment as
a sequence of point-of-view editing. Our subsequent realisation of the
inaccessibility of that view would then invite us to reflect on this under-
standing, to ask why the film exploits our knowledge of the editing con-
vention to imply that Noriko is looking at the vase without literally
beholding it. The move from the intuitive to the reflective readings marks
a shift from dramatic absorption to a special mode of aesthetic attention,
from accepting the moment’s credibility to actively discerning its signifi-
cance. (The probing of “why is it as it is” involves this kind of aesthetic
attention.) In Film as Film, V.F. Perkins speaks of a movie’s balancing act
between credibility and significance: “[i]t may shatter illusion in straining
after expression. It may subside into meaningless reproduction presenting
a world which is credible but without significance” (1993, 120). While the
accounts we have considered so far all hone in on the significance of the
moment in Late Spring—either dismissing (Bordwell and Thompson) or
taking for granted (Schrader and Richie) its credibility—a more satisfying
reading would require us to explore its expression in light of its illusion of
seamlessness. It matters that the scene strives for verisimilitude and under-
states its design and suggestion. The moment’s deceptive credibility, its
undemonstrative significance, is central to its intrigue and achievement.
The Figurative
Andrew Klevan reads the significance of the scene in relation to Noriko’s
anxiety about her forthcoming marriage:
After settling down into bed in Kyoto, the film has two cut-aways to a vase
which alternate with shots of Noriko’s pensive face (her face shows a slight
change in register: at first it looks content; then, after the vase shot, it
appears more concerned). Placed here, these shots of an inanimate object
suggest Noriko’s worried fluctuations with regard to marriage which lie
behind her front of passivity. Although the vase seems to be somewhere in
the room behind Noriko, the effect here, because of the lack of establishing
information with regard to its position, is to abstract the vase as a visualisa-
tion of the mood of her state of mind. (2000, 137)
The passage is sensitive to the pulls between the scene’s imitation of cred-
ibility and its subtle disclosure of significance. Klevan acknowledges the
impossibility of the vase as Noriko’s view but also recognises the camera’s
reluctance to announce that impossibility. This awareness of the moment’s
reticence allows him to observe its artful articulation of the character’s
state of mind. In particular, this articulation is characterised by abstrac-
tion. Functioning like an abstract, the image with the vase, as Klevan dem-
onstrates, condenses Noriko’s complex interiority, signifying her entangled
strands of feelings. The shot is symbolic. And in this way, the sequence can
be considered abstract, in the sense that it is not a representation of look-
ing but an instance of figurative seeing, as the character confronts the
opacity of her thoughts. The moment is metaphorical.
The figurative aspect of the sequence invites a comparison to a long-
established concept in film theory known as the Kuleshov effect.7
Conceived by early Soviet film theorists and celebrated by filmmakers like
Alfred Hitchcock, the effect refers to the possibility of suggesting an
unequivocal state of mind by editing between a subject and a view. For
example, according to V.I. Pudovkin, cutting from a shot of an expres-
sionless face to a shot “showing a coffin in which lay a dead woman”
indicates “deep sorrow” ( 1960, 168).8 The precision of this indication is
supposed to be a testament of the power of editing. It is clear that the
moment in Late Spring, despite its structural affinity to the Kuleshov
effect, avoids the concept’s conclusiveness of meaning. Having said that,
my aim is not to discredit the theoretical construct. (In any case, pointing
out the uncertainty of one variant of this editing structure by no means
38 H. L. LAW
denies the possibility of this type of editing to summon definite sugges-

tions.) The comparison here instead sheds light on a key feature of the
ambiguity of the scene. The Kuleshov effect, as the Soviet theorists con-
ceived it, insisted on the expressionlessness of the facial close-up. And this
was taken as a guarantee that the suggested state of mind came from the
edit and not from the performance.9 But we can further say that the shot’s
presumed lack of emotional display, to some extent, helps curtail the cre-
ation of confusing or bewildering effects in the context of the sequence.
In Late Spring, Noriko’s changed expression—from looking content to
looking concerned—is disorienting because it appears to be motivated by
the view with the vase. There is an interpretive gap between the perfor-
mance and the situation, between the animation of feeling and the inar-
ticulacy of the object. This is an instance of ambiguity as undecidability:
we feel unable to say with conviction what the moment means, for the
moment makes no commitment to any of the possible significance.
Movement and Stasis

The scene’s suggestion of change is confounded by its sense of inarticu-
lacy. Klevan continues:
Her [Noriko’s] undramatic demeanour may be because she lies, tucked up,
in the quiet of the night, unwilling and unable to disturb her father, or may
be because her feelings are too indefinite to show themselves clearly. The
inanimate vase suitably conveys the sense of her uncrystallised thoughts cir-
cling around varying manifestations of stillness: those thoughts shuffle indis-
tinctly between, perhaps, the possible still tranquillity of marriage and vague
feelings of non-human, ornamental lifelessness, of being stilled. (ibid.)
The passage pivots upon the tension between movement and stasis, evok-
ing and exploring their many forms and expressions in the scene. The
calmness of the unpeopled views, paradoxically, reveals Noriko’s inner tur-
moil, masked by her frail maintenance of poise. Klevan unpacks her interi-
ority as strings of comparable possibilities. Yet the compactness of his
reading also enacts the moment’s density of significance. Noriko’s
thoughts are thoughts about settlement and arrest, but her mind remains
unsettled and restless, “circling” around and “shuffl[ing]” between a set
of ideas. She is overwhelmed, incapable of making up her mind or
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Oat breakfast foods keep longer than the foods made from wheat
and rice.
There are no malts, or any mixtures in the oat preparations. The
difference between the various oatmeal breakfast foods is in their
manner of preparation. They all contain the entire grain, with the
exception of the husk. They are simply the ground or crushed oat. In
preparing the oats before grinding, the outer hull is removed, the
fuzzy coating of the berry itself is scoured off, the ends of the berry,
particularly the end containing the germ, which is usually the place of
deposit for insect eggs, is scoured, and the bitter tip end of the oat
berry is likewise removed.
Rolled oats consist of the whole berry of the oat, ground into a
coarse meal, either between millstones, or, in the case of the so
called “steel cut” oatmeal, cut with sharp steel knives across the
sections of the whole oat groat.
Quaker Oats consist of the whole groat, which, after steaming in
order to soften, have been passed between hot steel rolls, somewhat
like a mangle in a laundry, and crushed into large, thin, partially
cooked flakes. The oats are then further cooked by an open pan
drying process. This roasting process insures that all germ life is
exterminated, renders the product capable of quicker preparation for
the table and the roasting causes the oil cells to release their
contents, thereby producing what is termed the “nut flavor,” which is
not present in the old fashioned type of oat product.
Both Rolled Oats and Quaker Oats are now partially cooked in
their preparation but the starch cells must be thoroughly broken and
they should be cooked at least forty-five minutes in a double boiler;
or, a good way to prepare the porridge, is to bring it to the boiling
point at night, let it stand covered over night and then cook it twenty
to thirty minutes in the morning. Another method of cooking is to
bring the porridge to the boiling point and then leave it in a fireless
cooker over night.
The great fault in the preparation of any breakfast food is in not
cooking it sufficiently to break the starch cells.
Puffed Rice is made from a good quality of finished rice. The
process is a peculiar one, the outer covering, or bran, is removed
and then the product is literally “shot from guns;” that is, a quantity of
the rice is placed in metal retorts, revolved slowly in an oven, at high
temperature, until the pressure of steam, as shown by gauge on the
gun, indicates that the steam, generated slowly by the moisture
within the grain itself, has thoroughly softened the starch cells. The
gun retort is pointed into a wire cage and the cap which closes one
end is removed, permitting an inrush of cold air. This cold, on striking
the hot steam, causes expansion, which amounts practically to an
explosion. The expansion of steam within each starch cell
completely shatters the cell, causing the grain to expand to eight
times its original size. It rushes out of the gun and into the cage with
great force, after which it is screened to remove all scorched or
imperfectly puffed grains.
This process dextrinizes a portion of the starch and also very
materially increases the amount of soluble material as against the
original proportion in the grain.
Puffed Wheat is manufactured from Durum, or macaroni wheat, of

the very highest grade. This is a very hard, glutinous grain. It is
pearled in order to thoroughly clean and take off the outer covering
of bran. It then goes through a puffing process, identical with that of
Puffed Rice. The chemical changes are very similar to those of
puffed rice.
Both Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat are more digestible than in the
original grain state. They are valuable foods for invalids.
Stale Bread. A food which tastes much like a prepared breakfast
food, but is cheaper, may be made by dipping stale bread into
molasses and water, drying it in the oven for several hours, and then
crushing it. It is then ready to serve with cream. This is a palatable
way to use up stale bread.
Crackers and Milk or Bread and Milk. As noted by above table,

crackers are similar to breakfast foods in nutrient elements, and with
milk make a good food for breakfast, or a good luncheon. Business
men, and others who eat hurriedly and return immediately to work,
will do well to substitute crackers and milk, or bread and milk, for the
piece of pie, which often constitutes a busy man’s lunch.
According to investigations made by the United

Cereal Coffees States Agriculture Experiment Station, cereal
coffees are made of parched grains. A few contain
a little true coffee, but for the most part they are made of parched
wheat, barley, etc., or of grain mixed with wheat middlings, pea hulls,
or corn cobs. There is no objection to any of these mixtures
providing they are clean. The cereal coffees, as seen by the
following table, contain no more nourishment than the true coffee,
but they are probably more easily digested; only a very little of the
soluble starch passes into the water. Coffee and tea are not taken for
their nutrition, but for their stimulating effect upon the nerves; and, if
stimulation is desired, the cereal coffees fall short.
TABLE VII.
Composition of cereal-coffee infusion and other beverages.
Fuel
Value
Kind of Beverage Water Protein Fat Carbohydrates
per
Pound
Commercial cereal coffee (0.5 ounce to 98.2 0.2 1.4 30
1 pint water)
Parched-corn coffee (1.6 ounces to 1
99.5 0.2 .5 13
pint water)
Oatmeal water (1 ounce to 1 pint water) 99.7 0.3 .3 11
Coffee (1 ounce to 1 pint water) 98.9 .2 .7 16
Tea (0.5 ounce to 1 pint water) 99.5 .2 .6 15
Chocolate (0.5 ounce to 1 pint milk) 84.5 3.8 4.7 6.0 365
Cocoa (0.5 ounce to 1 pint water) 97.1 .6 .9 1.1 65
Skimmed milk 88.8 4.0 1.8 5.4 170
By reference to table VII it will be seen that cocoa and skimmed

milk contain much more nutrition than any of the coffees. Their chief
value is that they furnish a warm drink with the meal. They should
not be too hot.
Barley or wheat, mixed with a little molasses, parched in the oven,
and then ground, makes about the same mixture as the cereal
coffee.
The old fashioned crust coffee, made from bread crusts, toasted in
the oven, is just as nutritious as any of the coffees and has the
advantage of being cheaper.
Barley water and oat water, made by boiling the grain thoroughly
and then straining, are nourishing foods for invalids and children.
They are often used as drinks by athletes and manual laborers, as
they have the advantage of both quenching thirst and supplying
energy.
Gruels are made in the same way, only strained through a sieve.
This process allows more of the starch to pass with the water.
The legumes are the seeds of peas, beans,

Legumes lentils and peanuts.
While they are seeds, just as the cereals are, they differ in that
they contain a very much larger proportion of protein and may be
substituted for meat or eggs in a diet. In all vegetarian diets the
legumes should be used freely to replace the meat.
All legumes must be thoroughly cooked and thoroughly
masticated. Because the protein in these foods is more difficult of
digestion than that in meat or eggs, particularly if not thoroughly
masticated, they are better adapted for the use of men doing manual
labor. Soldiers, day laborers, and others, whose work calls for
physical exercise, can digest legumes, when those whose
occupation is more sedentary can not do so.
TABLE VIII.—LEGUMES
Water Fat Ash
Food Protein Carbohydrates Fuel Value per
Per Per Per
Materials Per Cent Per Cent pound Calories
Cent Cent Cent
Dried
Legumes:
Navy beans 12.6 22.5 1.8 59.6 3.5 1,605
Dried Peas 9.5 24.6 1.0 62.0 2.9 1,655
Lentils 8.4 25.7 1.0 59.2 5.7 1,620
Lima beans 10.4 18.1 1.5 65.9 4.1 1,625
Peanuts 9.2 25.8 38.6 24.4 2.0 2,560
Peanut
2.1 29.3 46.5 17.1 5.0 2,825
butter
Fresh
Legumes:
Canned
85.3 3.6 0.2 9.8 1.1 255
peas
Canned
79.5 4.0 0.3 14.6 1.6 360
lima beans
Canned
93.7 1.1 0.1 3.8 1.3 95
string beans
Canned
baked 68.9 6.9 2.5 19.6 2.1 600
beans
String
89.2 2.3 0.3 7.4 0.8 195
beans
Shelled
74.6 7.0 0.5 16.9 1.0 465
peas
The protein of the legumes is of the same nature as the casein of
milk. It has been called vegetable casein.
Peanuts. While an underground vegetable, grown like potatoes,

peanuts resemble nuts, inasmuch as they contain so much oil. Like
other legumes, they require cooking. They are roasted because this
develops the flavor.
Because of the proportion of the chemical elements in peanuts,
they will sustain life for an indefinite period, without other food, as
they provide rebuilding material, energy and heat. Used alone,
however, there is no counteracting acid, and it is better to add some
fruit, such as apples, or apples and dates.
In eating peanuts it is imperative that they be masticated until they
are a pulp; otherwise they are very difficult of digestion. The pain
which many people experience, after eating peanuts, is probably due
to eating too large a quantity and not fully masticating them,
forgetting that they are a very rich, highly-concentrated food. Both
peanuts and peanut butter contain over twenty-five per cent of
protein and a much larger percentage of fat; therefore they yield
much heat and energy.
Peanut Butter. While peanut butter contains forty-six and one half
per cent fat, it contains only seventeen per cent carbohydrates.
Since sugars and starches are protections to fat, being used for
energy before the fats are consumed, if these sugars and starches
are not supplied in other food, the fats in the peanut butter are
consumed for energy. If starches are consumed in other foods, it is
clear that one who wishes to reduce in flesh should avoid peanut
butter, as well as other fats.
Peanut butter is more easily digested than the baked peanut,
unless the latter is chewed to a pulp. It can be made at home by
grinding the peanuts in a meat grinder and then further mashing with
a rolling pin or a potato masher. A little lemon juice mixed with the
peanut butter makes it not only more palatable, but more easily
digested. A peanut butter sandwich is quite as nourishing as a meat
sandwich.
Shelled Peas. Shelled peas were used in Europe as far back as in

the Middle ages, and there, to-day, the dried or “split” pea is used
quite as extensively as the dried bean. In America, peas are used
almost entirely in the green stage, fresh or canned.
As seen by Table VIII, the green, shelled pea contains seven per
cent protein and sixteen per cent sugar and starch, while the dry or
“split” pea contains over twenty-four and a half per cent protein and
sixty-two per cent sugar and starch, the difference being in the
amount of water in the shelled peas. Canned peas contain even a
larger per cent of water.
A variety of green peas is now being cultivated in which the pod of
the pea is used, just as the pod of the string bean. It is a sweet and
delicious side dish.
Dry Peas are used in this country only by boiling, putting through a
sieve, and serving as pureé.
Beans. Baked navy beans may well be substituted on a menu for

meat, containing, as they do, twenty-two and one half per cent
protein. It is needless to state that beans and lean meat or eggs
should not be served at the same meal. Beans have the advantage
of being cheaper than meat, yet, as stated above, the protein in the
legumes is less easily digested than the protein of meat or eggs.
They must be thoroughly cooked and thoroughly masticated.
There is but a small percentage of fat in dried beans and for this
reason they are usually baked with a piece of pork. They make a
very complete, perhaps the most complete food, containing nutrient
elements in about the proper proportions. Effort has been made to
make a bean cracker for the sustenance of soldiers on a march, thus
giving them a complete food in condensed form.
In baking dried beans or peas, soft or distilled water should be
used, as the lime of hard water makes the shell almost indigestible.
For the same reason salt should be added when the beans are
nearly done. If soft water is not obtainable, add a little baking soda,
in the proportion of a half a teaspoon to two quarts of water.
String Beans. The string bean contains very little nutrient
elements, as shown by Table VIII. The pod and the bean, at this
unripe stage, are nearly ninety per cent water. Their chief value as a
food consists of their appetizing quality to those who are fond of
them, thus stimulating the flow of gastric juice. Like all green
vegetables, they stimulate the action of the kidneys. For this reason
all green vegetables are particularly valuable to those who drink little
water.
Lima Beans. The dry, shelled bean, used during the winter, boiled
and baked is the lima bean.
Kidney Beans contain much water but are more nutritious than the
string bean.
Soy Bean. In China and Japan this bean is used extensively.
Being rich in protein, it makes a well balanced diet with rice.
The soy bean is made into various preparations, one of the most
important being shoyo, now being introduced into other countries. To
make it, the soy bean is cooked and mixed with roasted wheat flour
and salt; into this is put a special ferment. It is then allowed to stand
for years in casks. The result is a thick, brown liquid with a pungent,
agreeable taste. It is very nourishing.
A kind of cheese is also made from boiling the soy bean for
several hours, then wrapping the hot mass in bundles of straw, and
putting it in a tightly closed cellar for twenty-four hours.
Lentils are not commonly used in this country, but they were one
of the earliest vegetables to be cultivated in Asia and the
Mediterranean countries. They are imported and are found only in
the best markets of large cities. They are used in the menu like dried
peas and are fully as nourishing, but the flavor of the lentil is
pronounced and they are not as agreeable to the average person as
peas or beans.
Nuts are classed with the carbo-nitrogenous

Nuts foods, because of the more nearly equal proportion
of proteins and carbonaceous substances.
TABLE IX.—NUTS
Ash
Food Water Protein Fat Per Carbohydrates Fuel Value per
Per
Materials Per Cent Per Cent Cent Per Cent pound Calories
Cent
Almonds 4.8 21.0 54.90 17.3 2.0 3,030
Brazil nuts 5.3 17.0 66.80 7.0 3.9 3,329
Filberts 3.7 15.6 65.30 13.0 2.4 3,342
Hickory
3.7 15.4 67.40 11.4 2.1 3,495
nuts
Pecans 3.0 16.7 71.20 13.3 1.5 3,633
English
2.8 16.7 64.40 14.8 1.3 3,305
walnuts
Chestnuts,
45.0 6.2 5.40 42.1 1.3 1,125
fresh
Walnuts,
2.5 27.6 56.30 11.7 1.9 3,105
black
Cocoanut,
3.5 6.3 57.30 31.6 1.3 3,125
shredded
Peanuts,
1.6 30.5 49.20 16.2 2.5 3,177
roasted
It will be noted, by reference to the table, that nuts contain a much

larger proportion of fats and less starch than the legumes. Chestnuts
contain the largest amount of starch, pecans the most fat, and
roasted peanuts the most protein.
Nuts are a valuable food, but they should be made a part of a
meal and may well take the place of meat, because of the large
percentage of protein, rather than to be eaten as a dessert. They are
too hearty to eat at the end of a meal, after one has eaten as much
other food as the system requires. In planning a meal, if the dietary
is rich in starches and lacking in protein, a side dish of nuts may be
served.
Too great stress cannot be laid upon the importance of the
thorough mastication of nuts; otherwise they are difficult of digestion.
When thoroughly chewed, however, they are as easily digested as
cereals or legumes. If ground fine in a meat grinder or through a
sieve, they digest more readily, but this grinding does not take the
place of the grinding with the teeth and the mixing with saliva. They
are best ground for salads, cake or croquettes.
Milk is called a complete food. It is a perfect food

Milk for the sustenance of its own species,—the milk of
the cow for the calf, the mother’s milk for the infant;
yet the milk of the cow is not perfect for the child,—it is lacking in the
proper proportion of sugar, and when fed to the child a little sugar is
added.
There has been a tendency among certain classes, to recommend
an all-milk diet, because the proteins, carbohydrates and fats are in
proportion to sustain life indefinitely, but experiments have shown
that healthy, digestive organs do their work better when a part of the
food is solid. Moreover, if an all-milk diet were followed, the adult, in
order to get sufficient nutriment, would be compelled to take a larger
proportion of water than necessary, the proportion of water required
by the system being about sixty-seven per cent, while milk contains
eighty-seven per cent.
In order for the adult to get the proper quantity of carbohydrates
and fat, from an all-milk diet, it would be necessary to drink from four
to five quarts of milk a day (sixteen to twenty glasses). Therefore,
although an exceedingly valuable food, containing nutriment
elements for repair and to supply heat and energy for an indefinite
time, milk is not a desirable, perfect food for an adult.
If the mother’s milk contains eighty-seven per cent water it seems
not too much for the infant. Young babies, on a milk diet, are almost
always fat. This is not because the fats, sugars and starches are in
too large a proportion to the protein, but it bears out the theory,
which is fully demonstrated in actual experiments of the writer with
over twenty thousand women, that the free drinking of liquid at a
meal aids digestion and a better absorption and assimilation of food.
One advantage of drinking milk with the meal, is that it is not taken
as cold as water and it supplies a portion of actual food.
TABLE X.
Milk and Milk Products.
Food Materials Water Proteins Fats Sugar Salts Lactic Acid
Milk 86.8 4.0 3.7 4.8 0.7 ......
Skimmed milk 88.0 4.0 1.8 5.4 0.8 ......
Buttermilk 90.6 3.8 1.2 3.3 0.6 0.3
Cream 66.0 2.7 26.7 2.8 1.8 ......
Cheese 36.8 33.5 24.3 ...... 5.4 ......
Butter 6.0 0.3 91.0 ...... 2.7 ......
Reference to the above table shows that the thirteen per cent of
organic foods are about equally divided between fat, sugar and
protein. The protein is casein. There is no starch in milk. The
digestive ferment, which acts upon starch, has not developed in the
young babe and the infant cannot digest starch. The salts promote
the growth of bone.
The fat in milk is in small emulsified droplets within a thin
albuminous sheath. When allowed to stand in a cool place it rises to
the top.
Besides casein, there is a certain amount of albumen in milk,—
about one-seventh of the total amount. This is called lactalbumin.
A part of the digestion of the casein is performed by pepsin in the
stomach and a part by the trypsin of the pancreatic juice.
Digestion of Milk. The larger part of the digestion of the milk sugar
is performed by the pancreatic juice; yet it is partly acted upon by the
saliva. There is little chance for the saliva to act upon the milk sugar
in the mouth, however, as very little saliva is mixed with the milk.
This constitutes another objection to the diet of all milk, and is an
argument in favor of drinking milk slowly and holding it in the mouth
until it is mixed with saliva. It is one reason, also, why children
should be given bread broken in the milk, instead of a piece of bread
and a glass of milk. By swallowing the milk slowly, the curds formed
in the stomach are smaller and the milk is more thoroughly digested.
When the fat (cream) is removed milk digests more readily, so that
in case of delicate stomachs skimmed milk, clabbered milk or
buttermilk are often prescribed instead of sweet milk. Boiled milk is
also more easily digested by some because of the lactalbumin which
is separated and rises to the top in a crinky skum. The casein is also
more readily digested in boiled milk, forming in small flakes in the
stomach instead of in curds.
When one takes from two to three glasses of milk at a meal, less
solid food is needed, because the required nutriment is partially
supplied with the milk. One reason why milk seemingly disagrees
with many people, is because they lose sight of the fact that milk is
an actual food, as well as a beverage and they eat the same quantity
of food in addition to the milk that they eat if drinking water. This is
the reason that milk seems to make some people bilious and causes
constipation. It is due to too much food rather than to any quality in
the milk.
Constipation may be occasioned by drinking milk rapidly so that
large curds are formed by the acids in the stomach, rendering it
difficult of digestion. The constipating effect will be overcome by
lessening the quantity of food and by the addition of limewater to the
milk.
To prepare limewater put a heaping teaspoon of slaked lime into a
quart of boiled or distilled water; put into a corked bottle and shake
thoroughly two or three times during the first hour. Then allow the
lime to settle, and after twenty-four hours pour or siphon off the clear
fluid.
Barley water or oatmeal water added to milk also prevent the
formation of curds.
In young babes the milk is curdled, or the casein separated from
the water and sugar, not by hydrochloric acid, but by a ferment in the
gastric juice, known as rennin. It is the rennin, or rennet, from the
stomachs of young calves and young pigs, which is used to
coagulate the casein in cheese factories.
Milk is coagulated or curdled by many fruit and vegetable acids, as
the housewife well knows, using milk in pies containing certain acid
fruits, such as lemons, or in soup containing tomatoes. The
hydrochloric acid of the stomach at once causes a similar
coagulation, though the curds are tougher and more leathery. The
milk forms into curds immediately upon entering the stomach. This is
the natural process of milk digestion and is the chief reason why it
should be drunk slowly, otherwise the curds will form in too large
sizes, thus pressing upon the entrance to the stomach and causing
distress. The tough, large curds formed by the hydrochloric acid, are
difficult for invalids or for very delicate stomachs to digest.
If an alkali, such as limewater, is added, to neutralize the acids of
the stomach, the curds do not form, or are re-dissolved, and
digestion is aided. One sixth limewater to five-sixths milk is the
proper proportion.
Milk Tests. In testing the value of milk, or the value of a cow, butter
makers and farmers gauge it by the amount of butter fat in the milk,
while the cheese maker tests the milk for the proportion of protein
(casein). The amount of butter fat depends upon the feed and water,
and upon the breed. The milk from Jersey and Guernsey cows yields
about five per cent butter fat. If the total nutrient elements fall below
twelve per cent, it is safe to assume that the milk has been watered.
In cheese and butter there is no sugar; it remains in the buttermilk
and the whey, both of which the farmer takes home from the
factories to fatten his hogs.
Preserving Milk. Many forms of bacteria thrive in milk and it is
needless to say that the utmost cleanliness should be observed on
the part of the dairyman in the care and cleanliness of his cows, in
the cleanliness of the milk receptacles, and in the place in which the
milk is allowed to stand over night. Care and cleanliness in the home
is quite as important.
If milk could be kept free from bacteria, it would keep sweet almost
indefinitely. At the Paris Exposition, milk from several American
dairies was kept sweet for two weeks, without any preservative,
except cleanliness and a temperature of about forty degrees. The
United States Bureau of Animal Industry states that milk may be kept
sweet for seven weeks without the use of chemicals.
The best method for the housewife to follow is to keep the milk
clean, cool, and away from other foods.
Pasteurized Milk. In pasteurizing milk the aim is to destroy as
many of the bacteria as possible without causing any chemical
changes or without changing the flavor. One can pasteurize milk at
home by placing it in an air tight bottle, immersing the bottle to the
neck in hot water, heating the water to one hundred and forty-nine
degrees F for a half hour and then quickly cooling the milk to fifty
degrees, by immersing the bottle in cold water. The rapid cooling
lessens the cooked taste. Many of the best dairies pasteurize the
milk in this way before it is marketed.
Sterilized Milk. Milk is sterilized to destroy all bacteria, by boiling it.
It must sometimes be boiled one, two or three successive days.
Sterilized milk remains sweet longer than pasteurized milk, but more
chemical changes are produced and the flavor is changed.
Formerly borax, boric acid, salicylic acid, formalin and salt petre
were used to keep the milk sweet, but this adulteration is now
forbidden by the pure food laws.
Malted Milk is a dry, soluble food product in powder form, derived
from barley malt, wheat flour and cows milk, with the full amount of
cream.
The process of the extraction from the cereals is conducted at
elevated temperatures so as to allow the active agents (enzymes) of
the barley malt to affect the conversion of the vegetable protein and
starches. The filtered extract, containing the derivatives of the malt,
wheat and the full-cream cows milk, is then evaporated to dryness in
vacuo, the temperature being controlled so as to obviate any
alteration of the natural constituents of the ingredients and so as to
preserve their full physiological values. The strictest precautions are
observed to insure the purity of the product. It contains,
Fats 8.75
Proteins 16.35
Dextrine 18.80
Lactose and Maltose 49.15
(Total Soluble Carbohydrates) 67.95
Inorganic Salts 3.86
Moisture 3.06
It is free from germs, the starches and sugars being converted in

the process of manufacture in maltose, dextrine and lactose. The
fats are in an absorbable condition, and it contains a high
percentage of proteins derived from both the milk and the grains, as
well as a marked percentage of mineral salts. It is readily soluble in
water and is easily digested.
Smierkase, made in the home, is coagulated casein. It contains
thirty-three per cent protein, twenty-four per cent fat and five per cent
salts. The thickening of the milk, or the coagulation of the casein, is
like that produced by lactic acid.
Skimmed Milk, as shown by the table, contains the same amount
of protein as fresh milk, but more sugar and more ash, the difference
consisting almost entirely of less fat, which has been removed in the
cream.
Buttermilk. There is less fat, protein, sugar or ash in buttermilk
than in skimmed milk; it is therefore less nourishing but more easily
digested. The sugar has partially fermented and the free lactic acid
gives the pungent taste. Buttermilk made by lactone tablets and
fresh milk is as nourishing and as desirable as that made in the
process of butter making, and it has the advantage of being fresh.
Clabbered Milk. The casein in clabbered milk coagulates, and, if
kept in a hot place, the coagulation continues until the water, sugar
and salt are separated. This is the whey, which is fed to hogs,—the
sugar fattens them.
Milk Sugar. Sugar made from milk is now a commercial factor; it is
evaporated and compressed into a fine powder. This powder is used
by physicians and druggists in mixing powders, pills, tablets, etc.
Milk Junket. The junket tablets, used in milk junket, are milk
coagulated by rennet. Flavored milk coagulated by rennet, has not
the sour taste of milk coagulated by acid.
Condensed Milk is made by evaporating the water until the milk is
reduced to about one fourth its volume. It is then sterilized and
hermetically sealed. It is convenient for use, wherever fresh milk
cannot be obtained, but the process of evaporation changes its
flavor so that few care for it as a drink. It makes a good substitute for
cream in coffee, and diluted with three times its volume in water, it is
again of the same constituency as before the water was evaporated.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Charles D. Woods Dr. Sc. in “Cereal Breakfast Foods.”
BEVERAGES
Tea is made by steeping the leaves of a shrub,
Tea which grows in the tropical regions of Asia and
adjacent islands. The green tea comes from China
and Japan and the darker varieties from India and Ceylon.
It should never be boiled nor allowed to stand longer than a few
minutes, as standing in water causes tannin to be extracted from the
leaves, and this tannin disturbs digestion. It is the tannin extracted
from the bark of trees which toughens animal skins into leather. The
best way to make tea is to pour on boiling water and serve almost
immediately, or at least within five to ten minutes.
Because of the uncertainty as to the length of time tea may be
allowed to steep in hotel kitchens or restaurants, it is a wise custom
to have a ball of tea and a pot of hot water served that the guest may
make the tea at the table.
Tea, as well as coffee, is diuretic—stimulating the action of the
kidneys. It is not a food; it is a stimulant.
Thein, which is the ingredient for which tea is drunk, is chemically
identical with caffein in coffee.
Coffee is a beverage, prepared from the seeds

Coffee of the coffee tree. The best known brands come
from the Island of Java, Mocha, Rio de Janeiro,
and Mexico.
Coffee is not a food. The active principle is caffein. This is an
alkaloid and is a strong stimulant to the central nervous system. It
quickens the heart action, and, unless the heart be weak, one does
not need so strong a stimulant. The stimulating effect is so apparent
with many, that they cannot sleep for several hours after drinking it.
Others drink coffee to quicken mental activity and to keep them
awake.
It must be borne in mind, however, that there is a reactionary
effect from all stimulants, and while coffee is not intoxicating, as
alcohol, it has a similar effect upon the nerves and heart. It is given
to those addicted to liquor, as a milder stimulant, when they are
recovering from a spell of intoxication.
Whether because of the strong stimulant, or because of some
chemical effect of caffein, coffee retards digestion, especially when
the digestive organs are weak. It has the redeeming feature, of
having a pleasing aroma, which, because of the effect upon the
mind, may incite the flow of gastric juice; but, despite the fact that no
morning beverage has quite the same pleasing aroma, or pungency,
as coffee, one is much better without it.
One who knows that coffee disturbs his digestion and yet cannot
break himself from the habit of drinking it, should have sympathy for
the one who is addicted to liquor and finds it difficult to break the
habit of depending upon this so-called stimulant.
Cereal Coffee has been discussed under the heading “Cereals.”
Cocoa and Chocolate are prepared from the

Cocoa and chocolate bean. Cocoa is from the shell of the
Chocolate bean and chocolate from the kernel. As shown by
Table VII, they are more nutritious than the other
beverages; yet the fat in chocolate is not like the fat in other foods. It
is not used as a reserve in animal tissue as are the other fats.
The active principle in cocoa and chocolate is theobromin and is
similar to caffein in its stimulating effect upon the nervous system,
though milder.
Lemonade and other fruit drinks, particularly
those made from the citrous fruits, slake the thirst
Lemonade more quickly than most drinks.
All fruit drinks are diuretic, and, wherever the action of the kidneys
is sluggish, they are especially desirable.
are made from bottling some drink, and, before

Carbonized sealing, forcing carbon dioxid into the bottle under
Drinks pressure. As soon as the cork is removed the
escape of the gas causes effervescence. These
drinks have no advantage, other than that they slake the thirst.
There is no beverage nor concoction devised by

Water man equal to water. It is to be deplored that it is not
used as freely as Nature demands,—from eight to
ten glasses a day.
The value of water as a food and as an aid to digestion is
discussed on page 41.
CONDIMENTS
Without doubt, highly spiced foods are undesirable. They tend to
weaken digestion, by calling for an undue secretion of digestive
juices, which, if prolonged, tires out the glands. A reasonable amount
of condiments such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, sage,
thyme, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, mace, horseradish, vanilla, dill,
etc., may be used as appetizers, because the pleasing thought of
them may incite the flow of gastric juice; but if one has not cultivated
a taste for them this thought will not be pleasing and they are then
better omitted from the diet. The taste is undoubtedly a cultivated
one, and should not be encouraged in children. The child rarely
cares for condiments and it is better that he continue to relish his
food for its natural flavor.
Condiments are not foods.

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Ambiguity and Film Criticism:

Reasonable Doubt Hoi Lun Law

More information about this series at

Ambiguity and Film

ISSN 2634-6133 ISSN 2634-6141 (electronic)

Cover illustration: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Whenever I talk to James MacDowell, not least about ambiguity, I profit

1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1

Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23

Part II Drama of Doubt 113

7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26

Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?

In spite of its wide currency in film scholarship, criticism, and everyday

What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

covering a variety of instances and situations. It particularly speaks to a

contradiction (the seventh type). He likens these diverse relationships

Two Senses of Ambiguity

criticism, worthy of highlighting or rediscovering, even though they may

(2009, 101). Note that by “editing”, Bazin means specifically analytical

Traditional cinema had managed to do away with any possibility of ambigu-

The remark complements Bazin’s claim about analytical editing, though

Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema and

Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality,

In Bordwell’s account, ambiguity seems to mean the uncertainty between

unhelpful way to construe an analytical approach to ambiguity. In particu-

Question and Answer

They need to be interpreted. In other words, the erotetic dynamic is a

useful in criticism; it may be employed to eloquently communicate the

Reason and Doubt

Here, some of the film’s ambiguous choices will be illuminated by a com-

Purview and Practice

films” (e.g., Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] and Mulholland Drive

In any case, my omission of the two families of “highly ambiguous”

Value and Evaluation

Reasonable, perhaps, such justifications of ambiguity are nevertheless

ambiguities. Instead, artistic assessment becomes a matter of exploring

One of the most intriguing moments in the history of cinema can be

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

The intrigue of the moment is marked by the amount of critical atten-

Fig. 2.2 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

Fig. 2.3 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

Explanation and Function

The vase is here taken as an illustration of the transcendental aesthetics.

Richie is interested in what the moment signifies. As a moment of realisa-

It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But…

nevertheless left the narrative situation unaddressed, as if it is self-evident.

Fig. 2.4 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

as a “hypersituated object” that “works against, brakes the narrative flow

Between Continuity and Discontinuity

continuity and discontinuity. Like Bordwell and Thompson, Burch

Play and Parameters

subjectivity”. His allusion to interpretive possibilities, however, invites us

Given the film’s consistent use of cutaways in a non-narrative way, it seems

disambiguation. From this perspective, it is understandable to find the

denies the possibility of this type of editing to summon definite sugges-

Movement and Stasis

Puffed Wheat is manufactured from Durum, or macaroni wheat, of

Crackers and Milk or Bread and Milk. As noted by above table,

According to investigations made by the United

By reference to table VII it will be seen that cocoa and skimmed

1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1

Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23

Part II Drama of Doubt 113

7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26