ABSTRACT
When Roland Barthes was asked why he scarcely wrote about the cinema, he admitted that, for him, cinema was a subject that posed serious problems, since the medium was too slick, too slippery. 1 And when Christian Metz was asked why he had not made more analyses of specific films, he replied in the same manner: that he was indeed a little apprehensive of the “amiable and slippery aspects of the film texts.” But, “not of the great amount of codes!” 2
