ABSTRACT

This article explores the work of the critic V.F. Perkins in the light of the concept of description, and vice versa. It argues that a range of distinct senses of description come together in Perkins’s work, and uses that work to assist in the construction of some proposals about the function and value of description in films and film criticism. Perkins had, it is argued, a particular interest in films that explore what might be referred to as ‘failures of redescription’, including Max Ophüls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman and Elia Kazan’s America, America. His writings on these films are explored with a view to demonstrating the ways in which the descriptive practices Perkins used in his writing can bring out rich and fascinating connections between criticism as an ethical practice with affinities to moral philosophy (via a concern with appropriate act descriptions) and the descriptions that are traced by films themselves.

摘要

本文根据描述的概念探讨了批评家 VF Perkins 的作品，反之亦然。它认为帕金斯的作品中汇集了一系列不同的描述意义，并利用该作品来帮助构建一些关于描述在电影和电影批评中的功能和价值的建议。有人认为，帕金斯对探索所谓“重新描述的失败”的电影特别感兴趣，包括马克斯·奥菲尔斯的《来自未知女人的信》和埃利亚·卡赞的《美国，美国》。他对这些电影的写作进行了探讨，旨在展示帕金斯在他的写作中使用的描述性实践如何能够在批评作为一种道德实践与道德哲学的亲和力之间呈现出丰富而迷人的联系（通过关注适当的行为描述） ）以及电影本身所追踪的描述。