Genealogies of Legal Vision

In an engaging and provocative account of movies and spectators after cinema, the light-lipped Gabriele Pedullà asserts intriguingly that 'in the twentieth century, the auditorium was the true blind spot of film theory'.1 Even though art historians had developed complex theories of the gallery device, the 'white cube' as constitutive of the aesthetic experience, filmtheory remained recalcitrantly blind to the omnipresent yet paradoxically invisible role of the cinematic auditorium, the dark cube, as an intrinsic dimension of what was unique about the affective impact of films.Darkness, separation, immobility, serial intensity and duration were all linked to the distinctive architecture and scenography of themovie theatre. In sum, the critical focus on the film, diegesis, the narrative on screen, distracted from the role played by the movie theatre, the setting, the mise en scène, in producing the high cathartic impact of classical cinema.