7 Impressionists believed that instances of photogenie revealed themselves more readily
in unplanned or "automatic" moments-what Andre Bazin later referred to as "an image
of the world .. formed automatically, without the creative invention of man"
("Ontology" 13). However, even the most meticulously crafted scenes could provoke an
excessive response, a bodily reaction that is the essence of photogenie.

8 Interestingly, while Epstein delights in the way Hayakawa moves, the focus is not on
movement. Like Charlie Chaplin, who fascinated the Impressionists not for his active
antics but for the appeal of his photogenic face, Hayakawa, Epstein's trancedd tragedian"
(243), becomes an ideal aesthetic object for them.

9 Interestingly, the scene was not meant to be part of the narrative. It was reportedly used
to either begin or end the picture.

10 This shot is also what early Surrealists found mesmerizing, when they encountered the
image on a movie poster. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Phillipe Soupault writes
of his accidental encounter with the American cinema through the publicitW poster for, I
assume, The Great Train Robbery. Soupault was captivated by cinema's ability to capture
objects on film, regarding it "the poetry of our age" (56).

11 Jane Gaines's essay on the Queen Christina tie-ups offers an interesting analysis of the
"numerous 'opportunities' for tie-ups with a range of consumer products" (38). These tie-
ups were not limited to the marketing of fashion, but also extended to things like a half-
price flatware sale, which, Gaines argues, "secured the meanings of the film and resolved
its fluctuations for heterosexuality" by reinforcing traditional roles for its female
spectators/consumers (50). As Mary Ann Doane accurately points out, "Although there
were ... a very large number of commodity tie-ups which were not gender specific-
from watches to toothpaste, to desks, typewriters, and cars-the glamour, sheen, and
fascination attached to the movie screen seemed most appropriate for the marketing of a
certain feminine self-image" ("Economy" 26).

12 Working from a traditionally Marxist perspective, academic film critics by and large
deride cinema's ability to turn objects into fetishized commodities, whose attractive
sheen conceals the exploitative means of their production within the industrial capitalist
system. They associate Hollywood cinema with what Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer named as the failings of "the culture industry." What Adorno and
Horkheimer disparaged was the way in which the mechanical reproduction of images
made the spectator into a passive consumer, leavingn] no room for imagination or
reflection on the part of the audience" (9). The cinema, they argued, reinforces the
mechanisms (and narratives) of industrial capitalism. The spectators "are so absorbed by
the world of the movie-by its images, gestures, and words-that they are unable to
supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular points of its
mechanics during a screening" (9-10). Following Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis,
film historians tend to view its glittering objects with suspicion, discrediting visual
pleasure for the masses as an instance of "false consciousness," focusing instead on the
systemic exploitation that results from consumerism. On the other hand, drawing on the