Joel Gunz

What is Pure Cinema?

Hitchcock often described Pure Cinema in musical terms: “complementary pieces of film put together, like notes of music make a melody.” The definition is simple, but hardly simplistic, and his films show he thought deeply about it. Still, the concept was not his own. By invoking the term, Hitchcock aligned himself with avant-garde filmmakers of the 1920s and 30s who first championed it. Filmmaker and theoretician Germaine Dulac, for instance, voluminously rhapsodized about Pure Cinema, visioning it as “a music of the eye, analogous to music made from the uniting of impalpable sounds in tune or in melodic phrases.” Sound familiar? The self-aware nature of Hitchcock’s camera puts his films in dialogue with the work of avant garde director/thinker Jean Epstein, who described the camera as a “robot-philosopher” engaged in “half-thinking.” As such, Pure Cinema is far more than a form of cinematic grammar; it is a living philosophy that can still inspire fresh creative approaches for filmmakers today.

About
Joel Gunz believes that the search for meaning is among the highest of human pursuits, and it’s this impulse that drives his work. He’s a writer, filmmaker, host of the annual HitchCon International Alfred Hitchcock Conference and publisher of The Hitchcockian Quarterly. His recent publications include “Travels in Hitchcock’s Multiverse” (Re-viewing Hitchcock: New Critical Perspectives, Robert Kapsis, ed., forthcoming 2025) and “A Comparative Look at Hitchcock’s Murder! and Mary” (Hitchcock Annual, 2025, Sidney Gottlieb, ed.). His 2021 film essay Spellbound by L’Amour Fou was selected by several festivals and won Best Short Documentary at the Medusa Film Festival. He also hosts the salon-like MacGuffin Film Club, which features online film screenings followed by meaningful group discussions.