for
Ph.D (Reading Course-II)
Semester-II
Topic:
Film theory and Practice: A Study on the practice of filmmaking in relation to its theoretical assumptions
Authored & Submitted by:
G.NARSING RAO
Ph.D Participant
Admission Enrollment no : 10/P/185
Department of Film Studies & Visual Communication
The English and Foreign Languages University
Hyderabad.
2010-11
‘But the only, reality we are concerned with is actually existing physical reality—the transitory world we live in’
-- Siegfried Kracauer (1960:28)
Film as Theory and Practice: Introduction
This study tries to enunciate the integral aspects of filmmaking where as the notion of theorizing the practice, of any medium,was and is, always a complex issue. When scholars started theorizing the practice had its own reason as what were the needs and conditions which led them to attempt for theorizing the film which was being only as a practice with its own style and assumptions. Any theory needs an assumption based on its logical as well as philosophical base which in turn stands for an accepted definition for what a theory is? What is its purpose? What is it referring to? A theory is an arguement which is based on logicality and that convinces the reasons for which the arguement was being initiated beside also acquirung the nature of universality by which the arguement is always for an open debate and subjected to the develoment or correction or even rejection. Theory having the nature of inviting different segmented arguements either concerned or not, but mergeable to give rise a new form of conceptualization which may develop the existing arguement or may undergo consequent changes. A theory always has universality to address its discursive participants who want to engage to develop further from anybody and should be in a position to address concerned all over. This could be in case of Film, which had started as a practice and the subsequent developments which were varied in nature, and from different quarters, had actually contributed for its strong platform, which later, started enticing other disciplines to comment upon or have a look on its perform and ability to achieve its significant effects, again, which were diversified and illogical in nature and only to comment upon and serve the purpose of the arguement for arguement's sake while leaving gradual space for development of its engagement with the subject it concerned and also seeking attention from different disciplines across whole spectrum. It took so much time to evolve into a theory as the practice had reached to considerable stage.
The Film as a practice made considerable development with the practical contribution of its engager such as creative people--directors, technicians, artists , financial supporters and others without whom the production could not have had completed—not towards theorizing but as an activity or as a commercial entity. In 1896 the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere became the first to project moving film to an audience. Like other pioneers in film,such as Thomas Edison in the USA, the Lumieres imagined that their work with moving pictures would be directed towards scientific research rather than the establishment of an entertainment industry(Turner1988:1). But during this course the significant changes and developments in both: at the magnitude of the societal aspects which are related to surfacial mode of production processes and the inherent transition within the film text and its style and practices which were being the reasons in this regard, had actually had vital role in establishing the film later as a subject to be discussed and debated extensively.
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The social aspect of the film which went contrary to the early notions of film making, as envisaged by Lumiere brothers above, desperately paved a way in which the making process itself took position as practice that later established as an industry.The creative people involved during early days of film were the harbingers of the film not just as being in a practice of filmmaking itself but participating in the discourses regarding the film and its impacts on other fields of knowledge.Early days of film making were an attempt to test their, creative people, skills in a new area of interests which was very much fascinating by offering another alternative reflexive world, film as a mirror, to see their images and to reacting to them.By the 19th century starting, the film making took a shape where the demand for moving images were high as--if it is being new and a social status to have a newly invented product that other couldn't have,( being the notion of elitist to be at top of the strata), which led to create a demand for the moving images. This tendency driven and directed by the profit motive nature of market that saw film very far from its actual objective. As termed to Thomas Edison by Turner as saying:
"Edison claimed that he decided to leave the movie industry as soon as its potential as
a 'big amusement proposition' became clear, although his career makes this difficult to
accept since he employed some cut-throat business practices.”(Turner 1988:1)
By early 19th century, the demand for moving image had its own demand for possesion--may be for gratifying needs or social status—that turned to a practice for commercial purpose. This implies that a practice was emerged that making movies for some other social purpose: making film on domestic and information based usage keeping in view the market demand. It is certainly true that when Edison ran his first 50 feet of film in 1888, the future he envisaged for moving pictures was more akin to what we now know as television; the emphasis was to be on domestic, information-based usage.(Turner 1988:1) The complex and inherent nature of film as a practice of making for other social cause has eventually laid a way on which other aspects of film making formed as additional layers.
The film having its potential for multiple purposes in future,as envisaged by Edison, had been extracted for commercial gains by early makers who actually and unconsciously entrenched scope of film making into a massive productive industry. Here the profit motifs worked in tandem at both levels that one side is promoting the film making and on other side furthering away from the initial objective of film which had been debated on its philosophical grounds—objectivity of the film; specificity of film as medium; discourses regarding the photographic realism. When film making itself was in the process of finding a unique space of its own in which it found its life and scope for further development subject to the support and contribution of the industry being the only aim was to provide content what audience watch that has good returns. Here, the impact of market viabilities and the huge scope for profits has provided considerable support for those who being engaged in creative or performing arts for content creation. However, despite the inappropriateness of the pioneers' initial objectives, it took barely fifteen years into the twentieth century for the narrative feature to establish itself—both as a viable commercial product and as a contender for the status of the 'seventh art', the new century's first original art form.(Turner1988:1)
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The basic thrust of money-making instigated the practice of film making as a lucrative option for livelihood which later saw as perceivable career for content generation for the sake of 'others'—audience.When we are thinking of a context which had induced the practice of film making into a debate that got attention and had a comment upon it, we have to consider the way the commerciality had diminished the crucial objectives of pioneers of early days of film. When market nature dominated the industry the main objective had been actually superceded through its competitive urge to produce or make more film for others and reap profits as more as can. Here, we can say that the effects of the film was so successful so that its being debated because it received tremendous applause from the audience as a new art form and even went to a stage where audience for both the already established theatre and the response to the new phenomenon called cinema were indistinguishable. Then literary persons engaged in support of theatre started criticising and even questioning its reality and eligibility as an art form on par with established theatre. We have to look the precedence of the film as a practice which born out of a commercial viable notion of generating content for the audience. The stiff competition posed by the cinema actually made early literary theoreticians to think upon the new art form and to have a say on it as conceiving that may pose a challenge to the literature based art forms such as drama and theatre plays. Because, A theatrical play, for instance, suggests a universe of its own which would immediately crumble were it related to its real-life environment( Kracauer 1960:29).Their severity in showing attention to comment on the film as an art form compared to literary based performing arts and the tendency towards questioning its vitality, viability and representation of the reality regarding the ways its being projected , the medium it used and techniques to be adopted to make audience convinced and that has been shown was seen as threat to literature and its allied fields because 'as a reproductive medium, film is of course justified in reproducing ballets, operas, and the like(Kracauer 1960:29).
The philosophical cross arguementation had created gradual space for film theorization, during post-World War-II, while being a thrust area for comparative discourse between theoreticians of fields from Literature, Culture, Theatre. We can see the theorizing process of film is an answering to the challenges posed by literary theoreticians regarding its vitality, of photographic reality and the specificity of medium used, during the early developing stage of film as an art form. As Miriam Bratu Hansen, says in his introduction to 'Theory of Film':
The work by Siegfried Kracauer is an attempt to theorizing the Film by emphasizing the aspects of film making such as medium's specificity and its role in relation to its significance in creating alternative world for audience. Theory of Film is a somewhat belated offspring. But the book is also a contemporary of post-World War-II theories of cinematic realism,notably the work of André Bazin.Kracauer's Theory of Film can offer us today is not a theory of film in general, but a theory of a particular type of film experience, and of cinema as the aesthetic matrix of a particular historical experience.( Hansen, 1997:X)
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Film making as Practice: A Search for Reality :
Its hard to envisage about any film without proper historical background. Particularly the conditions in which film took its birth and the way it was grown. As Kracauer's says in his Theory of Film:“Historical movements cannot be grasped with the aid of concepts formed, so to speak, in a vaccuum.Rather, analysis must build from the views in the course of its evolution—views which in someway or other must reflects actually existing trends and practices.” ( 1960:03)
When we talk about film it would be futile not to mentioning about photography. Because , any film, as a visual medium, requires to be “seen” or “perceived through our sensory stimuli” for understanding the existing phenomena. With storing the the kinetic movement on to a device in a static form which visually stagnates the nature into an Image which in turn becomes a visual data to be perceived or conceived for the purpose of interpretation and also for textual analysis. This technique used in this regard was successfully furnished by the invention of Camera, by Daguerre, which then, paved the way for Photography-- for the first time in the history a device had captured the nature into a perceivable static form and has made possible to store the moving phenomena. The process in which camera functions and produces its results into an image is termed Photography. And the method followed by inventor Daguerre is called daguerreotypy. 'In supporting the bill for purchasing of daguerre's invention by the French govt, Arago and Gay- Lussac reveled in the “ mathematical exactness” and “unimaginable precision” of every detail rendered by the Camera; and they predicted that the medium would benefit both science and art.'(Kracauer 1960:04) When addressing the questions regarding the “validity” and “truth” of the image produced through Photography and the “credibility” of the camera as a technical medium in capturing the nature, though, 'there was general agreement that photography reproduces nature with a fidelity “equal to nature itself”',(Ibid 1960:04) we have to depend upon the philosophical interpretations concerned with “Reality” and “Objectivity”. The term, Reality,was and is always been an unanswered question challenging our intellect to speculate regarding what is truth? What is reality? How it can ce judged? Where it can be found in what manner? and philosophers had always been trying to answer but in vain being its transcendental nature. The same philosophical implication can be attributed to the Camera; and its photographic product—an Image. 'With the arrival of daguerreotypy discerning people were lightly aware of what they felt to be the new medium's specific properties, which they unanimously identified as the camera's unique ability to record as well as reveal visible, or potentially visible, physical reality.'(Ibid: 04) Being the term daguerreotypy literally means a method of capturing the reality on to a photographic plate 'no less a voice than Ruskin's was added to the chorus of enthusiasm over the “sensational realism” of small plates with views of Venice, it is, said he “as if a magician had reduced the reality to be carried away into an enchanted land'(Ibid:04).
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For the first in the history the “mirroring” of the nature on a static device made people so exciting while some had been contemplating to know the reasons behind this new phenomenon while searching for new possibilities,potentialities and properties to be achieved through these novel medium—Camera/Photography. 'Recognition of the camera's recording faculty went together with an acute awareness of its revealing power'(Ibid:04) while comparing with its potential artistic stimuli 'Gay-Lussac insisted that no datail, “even if inperceptible”, can escape “the eye and the brush of this new painter”.(Ibid:04) being this pretext of photography, Film had emerged as an advancement and even continuance from the practices of photography and consistent experimentations between its medium; camera, and the nature; subject of photography. The difference would be that film has the movement. But, it is a culmination of various static images seen at once as cinematic representation.
As each photographic image being possesed with a unique visible potential for 'the insight into the recording and revealing functions of this “mirror with a memory”--its inherent realistic tendency,that is—owed much to the vigor with which the forces of realism bore down on the romantic movement of the period'( Kracauer:1960:05) while suggesting about the relation between film and reality, Dziga Vertov, says, that 'cinematic representation had a unique relation to visible reality; the camera's ability to record movement yeilded a mechanical vision, the world seen through a “Kino-eye.”(Bordwell 2005:112). Except the difference in the way image is being recorded—static photographic images on the moving plate/medium with a certain speed through a film camera, the process of transfering, controlling the light into the camera and yeilding the images remains same. In doing so, certain properties of camera playing crucial role in making film's visible world manifest and the intent of the photographer or maker.
This is evident that the nature of film is an advancement–in terms of technical property; that concerns with moving images--and continuance to the earlier photography—in terms of basic property, because, both are concerned with the essential and inseperable nature of photography; to record, reveal and to confirm to the reality. 'If film grows out of photography, the realistic and formative tendencies must be operative in it also'(Kracauer 1960:30) where as the realistic tendencies, in film, denotes its basic functional ablility as to record the reality and project the same unaltered with a precision details where both the basic and technical properties to converge for a common cause for the manifestation of objective reality which the camera intended to record and reveal the true phenomenal world. In film, basic properties are identical with the properties of photography film, in other words, uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality and, hence, gravitates towards it.(Kracauer 1960:28) This implies to say that there should be something to capture outside the medium,called, camera; unless there is no meaning to discuss or debate about the reality and about the technical medium alone.Because the world as a phenomenon was there and would be there even though the medium wouldn't have had been invented.The present dicsussion was about the “captured” representational reality through a medium consisting basic and technical properites. Any technical property of a camera presupposes the external reality as subject or space to be captured. 'But the only, reality we are concerned with is actually existing physical reality—the transitory world we live in.(physical reality will also be called “mental reality” or “physical existence” or “actuality”, or loosely just “nature.”'(Kracauer 1960:28) if these reality has been projected through in a cinematic way for that 'another fitting term might be “Camera reality.” Here we can defend that, without something to record or to reveal, the reality, the meaning for camera's ability and technical property doesn't have the credence even for itself.
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This remained decisive, that the basic properties has more credence over technical properties, for cinematic representation not only in early days, yet nowadays, we can sense the same nature in film. In short we can say that 'as a rule the former(basic) takes precedence over the latter(technical) in the sense that they are responsible for cinematic quality.(Kracauer 1960:30) When we talk about film as a medium which started recording and revealing the reality, as photography did, in its early days, it is quite enthusiastic to know who were those early filmmakers actually converged earlier dissociated practices of recording the reality independently into an attempt to represent the same in cinematic representation through which carries the continuance and convergence of photographic practices of recording and revealing the reality unaltered with a precision details. If we sum up the entire searches carried out of passion for revealing, searching and re-searching for reality, truth and to establish the true phenomenon through early cinematic medium 'as if to encompass the whole range of cinematic endeavors at the outset, each went to limit in exhausting its own possibilities. 'Their prototypes were Lumière, a strict realist, and Méliès, who gave free reign to his artistic imagination.'(Kracauer 1960:30) We have to consider why early filmmakers as well as photographers were more inclined to establish the reality intertwoven with philosophical inquiry and interpretation. There are certain conditions out of which the film making practices were converged into a complete manifestation of an intellectual and philosophical inquiry of a film maker representing through cinematic medium. Then film as medium became as a powerful tool to inquire and interprete the phenomenal world. Here it implies that there is impact of realism as a philosophy on society as well as on people those who were interested to implicate the realism through interdisciplinary approach in order to further and reinterprete the phenomenal world. 'One of the chief proponent of realism is British philosopher Roy Bhaskar. His summary of realist position, taken from, A Realist theory of Science, deserves quoting in full:
“The world consists of mechanisms not events. Such mechanisms conbine to generate the flux of phenomena that constitutes the actual states and happenings of the world. They may be said to be real, though it is rarely that they are actually manifest and rarer that still that they are empirically identified by men. They are intransitive objects of scientific theory. They are quite independent of men—as thinkers, causal agents and perceivers. They are not unknowable, although knowledge of them depends upon a rare blending of intellectual, practico-technical, and perceptual skills. They are not artificial constructs. But neither are they Platonic forms. For they can become manifest to men in experience. Thus we are not imprisoned in caves, either of our own or nature's making. We are not doomed to ignorance. But neither are we spontaneously free. This is ordous task of science: the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of our world.”' (Allen and Gomery 1985:15)
It would be better to remember André Bazin, while formulating an arguement towards theorizing the Film,who was a staunch realist and emphasized that film is primarily a medium to explore the reality existing outside in phenomenal world. He strongly believed in realistic tendency than formative, where the scope for imagination is prevalent, as said by Méliès.
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This is evident as 'in traditional film theory, for example, realism is name given to the aesthetic theory of André Bazin, who suggested ways in which the cinema could be made closer to our experience of the phenomenal world',(Allen and Gomery 1985) if compare with Roy Bhaskar arguement above --The world consists of mechanisms not events -- clearly indicates the innate roots of burning fire among early filmmaker--is ordous task of science: the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of our world -- which eventually led intuitively to concentrate on the issues regarding realism while their early practice with novel invention of film camera for recording and revealing the physical reality passionately. In other words, this referes that early filmmakers were actually being explorators of the nature to find reality and truth while treating the camera as an effective tool in their search. There was no any peculiar intention regarding how to approach the nature and about devices to be drawn in their endeavors in capturing reality. Their work shown pure intuitive and passion driven adventure to capture reality except the functional possibilities allowed by the camera. As Kracauer says that 'in her philosophy in a new key, Susan Langer, hesitantly admits that “the medium in which we naturally conceive our ideas may restrict them not only to certain forms but to certain fields.”'(Kracauer 1960:03) The limitations in capturing reality often leads to try in a creative and different way out of function and purpose because 'a phenomenological description based on intuitive insight will hardly get at the core of the matter' which sometimes may lead to a new dimension to the same objective reality while in the course paving a new way for navel practices and being preparing a strong professional ground for future explorations and development. This way of exploring to record and reveal the social reality can be found in Lumière's early attempts of filmmaking. Lumière being a staunch realist was always trying for things to be recorded that comes naturally in to the fold of reality to “explain” the natural phenomenon and was reluctant to “stage” things in front of the camera because' realism departs from empiricism over the nature of that reality and what constitutes explanation of it.'( Allen and Gomery 1985:14)
Empiricist believes that 'expalining a phenomenon ends with the observation of regularity: when it is subsumed under a covering law'. but 'to the realist, reality is complex and only partially observable, even with most sophisticated scientific tools.'(Ibid:14) This not only emphasises the philosophical stance taken by early filmmakers to record and revea the nature through camera practicalities but provides a transitional conditions in which the aesthetic practices of photography tranferred and copied to suit filmmaking , also exposes the desperate conditions to create new cinematic techniques in recording with film camera. 'Among the more special cinematic techniques are some which have been taken over from photography— e.g. The Close-Up, Soft focus practices, the use of negatives, double or multiple exposure etc. Other such as the lap-dissolve, Slow and quick motion, the reversal of time, certain “Special effects”, and so forth, are for obvious reasons exclusively peculiar to film.'(Kracauer 1960:29)
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Among early filmmakers who were considered to be the father of filmmaking, Louis Lumièr, who was being a staunch realist, through which he 'appealed to the sense of observation, the curiosity about “nature caught in the act”'(Ibid:32) and George Méliès 'his main contribution to the cinema lay in substituting staged illusion for unstaged reality, and contrived plots for everyday incidents'(Ibid:32) through cinematic presentation. While Méliès was on the path of giving creative space through imagination which had at times substituted the reality beside distorting the realistic appeal as compared to Lumièr, who was always aversed to the distortion and substitution of the reality while recording and revealing in pursuit of phenomenal interpretation. ' Lumièr, told Méliès that he considered film nothing more than a “scientific curiosity”, there by implying that his cinematograpgh could not possibly sense artistic purposes.'(Ibid:32) Now, we can see that how Lumièr actually attempted to capture precision detailed of reality unaltered through his cinematic presentation dealing with nature simultaneously. We can not only conceive rather attribute these motives behind clinching on positivist attitude or realistic tendency to inculcate intellectual rigour into the practices of filmmaking to spread of positivism where as 'in nineteenth century France the rise of photography coincided with the spread of positivism-- an intellectual attitude rather than a philosophical school which, shared by many thinkers, discouraged meta-physical speculation in favor of a scientific approach, and thus was in perfect keeping with the ongoing processes of industrialization.' (Ibid:05) Lumièr's films contained a true innovation, as compared with the repertoire of the zootropes or Edisons peep boxes1 :they pictured everyday life after the manner of photographs.2 Realistic approach always was an attitude to search for reality through the phenomena and try to capture as Lumièr did while 'the bulk of his films recorded the world about us for no other purpose than to present it,'(Kracauer 1960:31) and was his realistic attitude that to explore which 'seems to have realized that story-telling was none of his business, it involved problems with which he apparently did not cope up.'(Ibid:31) which again points to the his unresolved resolution as a realist 'at a time when the talkies were already in full swing he epitomized the work of the master'(Ibid:31), that resembles his attitude toward the cinema at early stage without resorting to distort or deviate, in other sense -- substituting staged illusion for unstaged reality; as Méliès did- from his realist position just for the sake of profit making, instead, stresses his belief about film that 'cinema is the dynamism of life, of nature and its manifestations, of the crowd and eddies.'(Ibid:31) All that asserts itself through movement depends on it. Its lens open on the world.3 Despite Lumièr's attempts to project nature and its undiluted reality, sometimes his actions may have unconsciously lead to manifestations of new practices in film making in years to come. Some
of his early pictures, such as:-
· BABY'S BREAKFAST (Le Déjeuner de bébé)
· THE CARD PLAYERS (La Partu d' écarté)
these films testify to the amteur photographer's delight in family idyls and genres scenes.4
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1.
Sadoul, L' Invention du Cinéma, P.P.21—2, 241, 246.
2. Langlois, “Notes Sur l' histoir du Cinéma,” La Revue du Cinéma, July 1948, Vol.III, no.15:3.
3. Sadoul, op. Cit.P.P.249,252,300; and sadoul, Histoir d' un art. p.21.; also see, Sadoul,op.cit.p.246.
4. Sadoul, op.cit.p.247
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It seems that Lumièr being quint essential knowledge seeker and also a staunch realist, he used to record and reveal the true nature of life and society where human beings show their true to nature actions without any external implications in which Lumièr intended to find the truth of his enduring search. He wanted to capture the actions which are true to life,even being awkard,or disturbing, yet he had seen them as truth and believed as if nature revealing in a realistic representation. There are certain films he made which were not only made an indelible marks as discovery in the film history but had paved a new way for film development to present novel cinematic representation. Here is such a film by Lumièr's which can witness the above said
significance as Kracauer noted in his Theory of Film(1960:30):
And there was “TEASING THE GARDENER”(L'Arrosenr arrosé), which enjoyed immense popularity because it elicited from the flow of everyday life a proper story with a funny climax to boot. A gardener is watering flowers and, as he unsuspectingly, proceeds, and impish boy steps on the hose, releasing it at the very moment when his perplexed victim examines the dried-up nozzle. Water squirts out and hits the gardener smack in the face. The denoument is true to style, with the gardener chasing and spanking the boy. This film, the germ cell and archetype of all film comedies to come, represented an imaginative attempt on the part of Lumièr to develop photography into a means of story-telling.5
And also he referred to the reaction of Maxin Gorki when he saw the film first time and the way he reacted to the film is so interesting to know:
Yet the story was just a real-life incident. And it was precisely its photographic veracity which made Maxim Gorki undergo a shochkplike experience. “you think”, he wrote about TEASING THE GARDENER, “the spray is going to hit you soon, and instinctively shrink back.”6
There are certain of examples, which can position Lumièr as realist as well as an explorer who consistently made efforts to search for reality through his cinematic medium, 'take his immortal reels LUNCH HOUR AT THE LUMIER FACTORY, (Sortie des usines Lumièr), ARRIVAL OF TRAIN. ( L' Arrivée d' un train), LA PLACE DES CORDELIERS A LION: there themes were public places, with through of people moving in diverse directions.'(Kracauer 1960:31) in a sense that early days were repeated through cinematic medium such as 'the crowded streets captured by the stereographic photographs of the late fifties thus reappeared on the primitive screen.'(Ibid: 31) He had always searched, and believed, that daily lives of people, their actions, their societal customs, and their living conditions are the better marks to get the truth and to explore further through cinematic medium and 'It was life at its least controllable and most unconscious moments, a jumble of transcient, forever dissolving patterns accessible only to the camera.'(Ibid:31) and he (Lumièr) 'seemed anxious to avoid any personal interference with given data.'(ibid:31) Lumièr was acknowledged in the history of film not just as a realist,who actually,at least, confined the new film camera invention's developmental track to realistic tendency, and by which, he aversed the power of cinematic techniques from solely controlled by the imaginative and creative fields and thus become a toy to promote commercial interest which was against the realistic attitude for which purpose the endeavors put in during the course of its invention by his predecessors. 'His contemporaries praised these films for the very qualities which the prophets and forerunners had single out in their vision of the medium.'(Ibid:31)
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5. Sadoul, o.p.cit. p.p. 249,252,300; and Sadoul, Histoire d' un art , p.21.
6. Gorki, “You Don't Belive Your Eyes”, World Film News, March 1938, P.16.
Practices within Film making: From Reality to Art
'Through the history of photography there is on the one side, a tendency toward realism culminating in recording of nature, and on the other a formative tendency aiming at artistic creations.'(Kracauer 1960:11-12) This implies that realistic tendency and a formative or artistic tendency of filmmaking's birth place was nothing but in early photography. 'Photography developed into a lucrative industry, especially in the field of portraiture in which Disdéri set a widely adopted pattern.'(Kracauer 1960:06) To know how art has become a specific genre out of realist tradition is notable transformation in this regard. Here we have to consider the pretext which later induced its earlier artistic or aesthetic practices into photography through its evolutional process which later destined itself to settle as formative implication to the realistic tendency in photography. Here we need to look back into the contexts in which the artistic tradition implied upon the early practices of realistic tendency in photography.
The realistic tendency in early photography was seen as ardent answer to then artistic practices prevailed among the artists/painters.'The insight into the recording and revealing function of this “mirror with a memory”--its inherent realistic tendency, that is—owed much to the vigor with which the forces of realism bore down on the romantic movement of the period'(Ibid:05) and 'in nineteenth century France the rise of photography coincided with the spread of positivism'(Ibid:05) and 'within this context, only aesthetic implications of this attitude are of interest “met with strong opposition, not only in the camps of the artists but among the photographers themselves.”(Ibid:05) 'Art, the opponents held, did not exhaust itself in painterly or photographic records of reality; it was more than that; it actually involved the artists creativity in shaping the given material.'(Ibid:05) reflecting this 'in 1853, Sir William Newton suggested that the photographic image could, and should, be altered so as to make the result confirm to the “acknowledged principle of fine art.”(Ibid) this sense was seen in those days practiced by artist-photographers 'who followed a tendency which may be called “formative”, since it sprang from their urge freely to compose beautiful pictures rather than to capture nature in the law “but their creativity invariably manifested itself in photographs that reflected valued painterly styles and preferences; consciously or not, they imitated traditional art, not fresh reality.”(Ibid:06) While explaining the artistic influence on photography, Kracauer, points to the evolutional process which manifested:
Thus, the sculptor Adam-Soloman, a top-ranking artist-photographer, excelled in portraits which, because of their “Rembrandt lighting” and velvet drapery caused the poet Lamartine to recount his initial opinion that photographs were nothing but a “plagiarism of nature.”Upon seeing these pictures, Lamartine felt sure that photography was equally capable of attaining the peaks of art. What happened on a relatively high level became firmly established in the lower depths of commercial photography: a host of would be artist-photographers catered to the tastes of the juste-milieu which, hostile to realism, still went for romantic painting and the academic idealism of Ingres and his school. (1960:06)
This implies that artist-photographers gradually transgressing into the domain of established paint-artist's traditional arts, which was eagerly utilised by aristocratic families as their royal expressions or by the affluent. This enunciated 'from 1852, his -- Disdéri--portrait-carte de visite— ingratiated itself with the petite bourgeous, who felt elated at the possibility of acquiring, at low cost his likeness—a privilege hitherto reserved for the aristocracy and well-to-do upper middle class.'(Ibid:06)and also 'it met the need of market.'(Ibid:06)
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While the interest among common people were growing to acquire low cost photography to replace paintings 'the second empire professional photographers, no less than popular painters, sacrificed truth to conventional pictorialness by embellishing the features of their less attractive clients.'(Ibid:06) on par with painter artists because, 'photography, they reasoned, is a medium which offers the creative artist as many opportunities as does painting or literature – provided he does not let himself be inhibited by the camera's peculiar affinities but uses every “dodge, trick, and conjuration” to elicit beauty from the photographic raw material.'(Ibid:07)
Andreas Feininger suggests that “super fluous and disturbing details” should be supressed for the sake of “artistic simplification”; the goal of photography as an art medium, he stipulates, is “not the achievement of highest possible 'likeness' of the depicted subject, but the creation of an abstract work of art, featuring compassions “to desire to highlight the artistic potentialities”(Ibid:11) instead of documentation.”(Ibid:10) here we have to remember that “compassion” connote a state of mind which, is subjective in nature, “draws attention the photographer's selectivity”(Ibid:11)that always has an intent to express through a medium “suggestive of his personal vision and rich in aesthetic gratifications,”(Ibid:11) which reflected ' in a publication on the German experimental photographer, Otto Steinert's so called “subjective” photography is characterized as a deliberate departure from the realistic point of view.'(Ibid:10- 11) While continuing this, and, 'in intentionally ignoring the camera's recording tasks, Feiningers and others try to transform photography into the art medium which they claim it to be.'(Ibid:11) the gradual departure of photography from recording, revealing the “reality” of nature to express as an “art” form through a flexible photographic medium. 'The properties of a medium elude concise definition'(Ibid:12) because 'what is adequate to a medium cannot be determined dogmatically in advance.'(Ibid) which gradually under goes transformation, to replace itself to emerging new art forms through allowance of the operational functions peculiar to mediums itself, that 'any revolutionary artist may upset all previous speculations about the “nature” of the medium to which his works belongs,'(Ibid) because of which 'one may arrange the different media along a continuum according to the degree of the elusiveness of their properties,'(Ibid) implicating through their 'varying modes of approach seem to be least dependent upon the fixed material and technical factors.'(Ibid) This can be seen as how the conditions determines the outcome through Eisenstein's experience , which made him rather to concentrate on formative tendency which has later established him as a film theorist and an ardent lover of filmmaking to conceive it as an art form:
The theatre is more restrictive than painting is strikingly demonstrated by an experience of Eisenstein. At a time when he still directed theatrical plays he found out by trial and error that stage conditions could not be streched infinitely-- that in effect their inexorable nature prevented him from implementing his artistic intentions, when then called for film as the only fitting means of expression. So he left the theatre for the cinema. (Ibid:13)
This same can be applied to the photographic medium which being influenced by the formative tendency that gave rise to a new genre as a culmination because 'the pull of the properties of photography is, perhaps, responsible for the inconsistent attitudes and performances of some photographers with strong painterly inclinations'(Ibid:12) that they tempted to behold their artistic impulse in their experimental photography at the cost of reality.
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In photography, artistic or 'formative aspirations clash with the desire to render reality, overwhelmng it in the process'(Ibid) conversely, 'this state of things raises the aesthetic problem,'(Ibid) that may be 'satisfying aesthetically if they build from specific properties of that medium.'(Ibid) The basic aesthetic principle anticipates some “indifference” in its output that is not being the same to another medium—'say, by imitating effects more “natural” to another medium-- will hardly prove acceptable; ((Ibid) this could the basis to assume that bringing aestheticity out of natural or realistic tendency requires the indifferent outlook in seeing and the approach applied to photography which, as defined by Gay—Lussac and Arago at the outset 'are fairly specific; and they have lost nothing of their impact in the course of history'(Ibid:13) Now, we can see how these principles has been applied to the film camera as a medium for cinematic representation while singling out film as an art form. 'In the period 1920—1960 the most significant European and American film theorists concentrated on defining cinema as a specific art or medium.'(Bordwell 2005:112) that prescribes some features should be consisting to be isolated into another generic categorization. As we are discussing above, the specific aethetic quality brought out from early photographic practices emanating from medium's peculiar operation were actually been carried out by early filmakers which 'seems all the more justifiable to apply the basic aesthetic principle'— different approach with specific property -- 'to this particular medium'(kracauer 1960:13) in bringing out a formative change. Even while theorists attempting to theorize film, they tend to observe different features such as formative significance to understand completely how film makers were couraged enough to realise cinematic representation. Reflecting this notion 'classical theory also had a prescriptive bent: once one had isolated the differentiating features of cinema, one could judge films according to how fully they realized the unique possibilities of the medium.'(Bordwell 2005:112)Here, the notion of artistic rendition of a film making , inimical to earlier artist-photographer's practice, was seen through its formative aspects, such as how the film material has been modified both either in treating the subject matter and the approach applied to the medium. Arnheim, for instance, argued that 'a good film imposed a significant form on its material, there by making the subject matter more vivid or bringing out its qualities.'(Ibid) a good cinema, in other sense, has form to present the subject matter while maintaining its “indifference” with other filmmakers in terms of expressive quality.
To recognize the filmmaking as an expressive art with a significant formative assumptions, the search for specificity-- as early filmmakers-cum-theorists tried restlessly-- 'fell into line with constructivist and formalist's concern with defining the basic material of the artisan's craft.'(Ibid) How art can be seen in the context of filmmaking? seems interesting here. 'Art is an expression of human meaning; it is unified and brought to a satisfying close; it succeeds by imaginatively transcending its material,'(Andrew 1976:113)while noting other formative or artistic aspects devoid of mediums specific ability to record 'Baláz, Arnheim, and Munsterburg searched for ways: to prove that cinema could be an art,(Ibid) by insisting that ' filmmakers must be artful, to be sure, must have all the sensibility of an artist, but he must in the end turn both his imagination and his techniques back to the flowing and endless world rather than exploit his medium for its own sake or in pursuit of a subjective content.'(Ibid)In this sense, we can observe that there are two notions in defining film as an art form among early filmmakers and theorists. First, filmmaking being the craft of an artist who trying to express through a peculiar craftmanship. Second, filmmaking being a subjective manifestation of an artist who is expressing through his recording and revealing.
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The Film as a practice made considerable development with the practical contribution of its engager such as creative people--directors, technicians, artists , financial supporters and others without whom the production could not have had completed—not towards theorizing but as an activity or as a commercial entity. In 1896 the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere became the first to project moving film to an audience. Like other pioneers in film,such as Thomas Edison in the USA, the Lumieres imagined that their work with moving pictures would be directed towards scientific research rather than the establishment of an entertainment industry(Turner1988:1). But during this course the significant changes and developments in both: at the magnitude of the societal aspects which are related to surfacial mode of production processes and the inherent transition within the film text and its style and practices which were being the reasons in this regard, had actually had vital role in establishing the film later as a subject to be discussed and debated extensively.
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The social aspect of the film which went contrary to the early notions of film making, as envisaged by Lumiere brothers above, desperately paved a way in which the making process itself took position as practice that later established as an industry.The creative people involved during early days of film were the harbingers of the film not just as being in a practice of filmmaking itself but participating in the discourses regarding the film and its impacts on other fields of knowledge.Early days of film making were an attempt to test their, creative people, skills in a new area of interests which was very much fascinating by offering another alternative reflexive world, film as a mirror, to see their images and to reacting to them.By the 19th century starting, the film making took a shape where the demand for moving images were high as--if it is being new and a social status to have a newly invented product that other couldn't have,( being the notion of elitist to be at top of the strata), which led to create a demand for the moving images. This tendency driven and directed by the profit motive nature of market that saw film very far from its actual objective. As termed to Thomas Edison by Turner as saying:
"Edison claimed that he decided to leave the movie industry as soon as its potential as
a 'big amusement proposition' became clear, although his career makes this difficult to
accept since he employed some cut-throat business practices.”(Turner 1988:1)
By early 19th century, the demand for moving image had its own demand for possesion--may be for gratifying needs or social status—that turned to a practice for commercial purpose. This implies that a practice was emerged that making movies for some other social purpose: making film on domestic and information based usage keeping in view the market demand. It is certainly true that when Edison ran his first 50 feet of film in 1888, the future he envisaged for moving pictures was more akin to what we now know as television; the emphasis was to be on domestic, information-based usage.(Turner 1988:1) The complex and inherent nature of film as a practice of making for other social cause has eventually laid a way on which other aspects of film making formed as additional layers.
The film having its potential for multiple purposes in future,as envisaged by Edison, had been extracted for commercial gains by early makers who actually and unconsciously entrenched scope of film making into a massive productive industry. Here the profit motifs worked in tandem at both levels that one side is promoting the film making and on other side furthering away from the initial objective of film which had been debated on its philosophical grounds—objectivity of the film; specificity of film as medium; discourses regarding the photographic realism. When film making itself was in the process of finding a unique space of its own in which it found its life and scope for further development subject to the support and contribution of the industry being the only aim was to provide content what audience watch that has good returns. Here, the impact of market viabilities and the huge scope for profits has provided considerable support for those who being engaged in creative or performing arts for content creation. However, despite the inappropriateness of the pioneers' initial objectives, it took barely fifteen years into the twentieth century for the narrative feature to establish itself—both as a viable commercial product and as a contender for the status of the 'seventh art', the new century's first original art form.(Turner1988:1)
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The basic thrust of money-making instigated the practice of film making as a lucrative option for livelihood which later saw as perceivable career for content generation for the sake of 'others'—audience.When we are thinking of a context which had induced the practice of film making into a debate that got attention and had a comment upon it, we have to consider the way the commerciality had diminished the crucial objectives of pioneers of early days of film. When market nature dominated the industry the main objective had been actually superceded through its competitive urge to produce or make more film for others and reap profits as more as can. Here, we can say that the effects of the film was so successful so that its being debated because it received tremendous applause from the audience as a new art form and even went to a stage where audience for both the already established theatre and the response to the new phenomenon called cinema were indistinguishable. Then literary persons engaged in support of theatre started criticising and even questioning its reality and eligibility as an art form on par with established theatre. We have to look the precedence of the film as a practice which born out of a commercial viable notion of generating content for the audience. The stiff competition posed by the cinema actually made early literary theoreticians to think upon the new art form and to have a say on it as conceiving that may pose a challenge to the literature based art forms such as drama and theatre plays. Because, A theatrical play, for instance, suggests a universe of its own which would immediately crumble were it related to its real-life environment( Kracauer 1960:29).Their severity in showing attention to comment on the film as an art form compared to literary based performing arts and the tendency towards questioning its vitality, viability and representation of the reality regarding the ways its being projected , the medium it used and techniques to be adopted to make audience convinced and that has been shown was seen as threat to literature and its allied fields because 'as a reproductive medium, film is of course justified in reproducing ballets, operas, and the like(Kracauer 1960:29).
The philosophical cross arguementation had created gradual space for film theorization, during post-World War-II, while being a thrust area for comparative discourse between theoreticians of fields from Literature, Culture, Theatre. We can see the theorizing process of film is an answering to the challenges posed by literary theoreticians regarding its vitality, of photographic reality and the specificity of medium used, during the early developing stage of film as an art form. As Miriam Bratu Hansen, says in his introduction to 'Theory of Film':
“The tradition of theoretical writing on film that begins in the 1920's ( with Béla Balézs,
Jean Epstein, Rudolf Arnheim, and Hans Richter, to name just a few) and is concerned
preeminently with questions of the medium's “specificity” --what film can do that the
traditional arts cannot, and what kind of film practice succeeds best in utilizing the
aesthetic possibilities of the cinematic medium.”(Theory of Film, 1960:viii)
Jean Epstein, Rudolf Arnheim, and Hans Richter, to name just a few) and is concerned
preeminently with questions of the medium's “specificity” --what film can do that the
traditional arts cannot, and what kind of film practice succeeds best in utilizing the
aesthetic possibilities of the cinematic medium.”(Theory of Film, 1960:viii)
The work by Siegfried Kracauer is an attempt to theorizing the Film by emphasizing the aspects of film making such as medium's specificity and its role in relation to its significance in creating alternative world for audience. Theory of Film is a somewhat belated offspring. But the book is also a contemporary of post-World War-II theories of cinematic realism,notably the work of André Bazin.Kracauer's Theory of Film can offer us today is not a theory of film in general, but a theory of a particular type of film experience, and of cinema as the aesthetic matrix of a particular historical experience.( Hansen, 1997:X)
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Film making as Practice: A Search for Reality :
Its hard to envisage about any film without proper historical background. Particularly the conditions in which film took its birth and the way it was grown. As Kracauer's says in his Theory of Film:“Historical movements cannot be grasped with the aid of concepts formed, so to speak, in a vaccuum.Rather, analysis must build from the views in the course of its evolution—views which in someway or other must reflects actually existing trends and practices.” ( 1960:03)
When we talk about film it would be futile not to mentioning about photography. Because , any film, as a visual medium, requires to be “seen” or “perceived through our sensory stimuli” for understanding the existing phenomena. With storing the the kinetic movement on to a device in a static form which visually stagnates the nature into an Image which in turn becomes a visual data to be perceived or conceived for the purpose of interpretation and also for textual analysis. This technique used in this regard was successfully furnished by the invention of Camera, by Daguerre, which then, paved the way for Photography-- for the first time in the history a device had captured the nature into a perceivable static form and has made possible to store the moving phenomena. The process in which camera functions and produces its results into an image is termed Photography. And the method followed by inventor Daguerre is called daguerreotypy. 'In supporting the bill for purchasing of daguerre's invention by the French govt, Arago and Gay- Lussac reveled in the “ mathematical exactness” and “unimaginable precision” of every detail rendered by the Camera; and they predicted that the medium would benefit both science and art.'(Kracauer 1960:04) When addressing the questions regarding the “validity” and “truth” of the image produced through Photography and the “credibility” of the camera as a technical medium in capturing the nature, though, 'there was general agreement that photography reproduces nature with a fidelity “equal to nature itself”',(Ibid 1960:04) we have to depend upon the philosophical interpretations concerned with “Reality” and “Objectivity”. The term, Reality,was and is always been an unanswered question challenging our intellect to speculate regarding what is truth? What is reality? How it can ce judged? Where it can be found in what manner? and philosophers had always been trying to answer but in vain being its transcendental nature. The same philosophical implication can be attributed to the Camera; and its photographic product—an Image. 'With the arrival of daguerreotypy discerning people were lightly aware of what they felt to be the new medium's specific properties, which they unanimously identified as the camera's unique ability to record as well as reveal visible, or potentially visible, physical reality.'(Ibid: 04) Being the term daguerreotypy literally means a method of capturing the reality on to a photographic plate 'no less a voice than Ruskin's was added to the chorus of enthusiasm over the “sensational realism” of small plates with views of Venice, it is, said he “as if a magician had reduced the reality to be carried away into an enchanted land'(Ibid:04).
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For the first in the history the “mirroring” of the nature on a static device made people so exciting while some had been contemplating to know the reasons behind this new phenomenon while searching for new possibilities,potentialities and properties to be achieved through these novel medium—Camera/Photography. 'Recognition of the camera's recording faculty went together with an acute awareness of its revealing power'(Ibid:04) while comparing with its potential artistic stimuli 'Gay-Lussac insisted that no datail, “even if inperceptible”, can escape “the eye and the brush of this new painter”.(Ibid:04) being this pretext of photography, Film had emerged as an advancement and even continuance from the practices of photography and consistent experimentations between its medium; camera, and the nature; subject of photography. The difference would be that film has the movement. But, it is a culmination of various static images seen at once as cinematic representation.
As each photographic image being possesed with a unique visible potential for 'the insight into the recording and revealing functions of this “mirror with a memory”--its inherent realistic tendency,that is—owed much to the vigor with which the forces of realism bore down on the romantic movement of the period'( Kracauer:1960:05) while suggesting about the relation between film and reality, Dziga Vertov, says, that 'cinematic representation had a unique relation to visible reality; the camera's ability to record movement yeilded a mechanical vision, the world seen through a “Kino-eye.”(Bordwell 2005:112). Except the difference in the way image is being recorded—static photographic images on the moving plate/medium with a certain speed through a film camera, the process of transfering, controlling the light into the camera and yeilding the images remains same. In doing so, certain properties of camera playing crucial role in making film's visible world manifest and the intent of the photographer or maker.
This is evident that the nature of film is an advancement–in terms of technical property; that concerns with moving images--and continuance to the earlier photography—in terms of basic property, because, both are concerned with the essential and inseperable nature of photography; to record, reveal and to confirm to the reality. 'If film grows out of photography, the realistic and formative tendencies must be operative in it also'(Kracauer 1960:30) where as the realistic tendencies, in film, denotes its basic functional ablility as to record the reality and project the same unaltered with a precision details where both the basic and technical properties to converge for a common cause for the manifestation of objective reality which the camera intended to record and reveal the true phenomenal world. In film, basic properties are identical with the properties of photography film, in other words, uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality and, hence, gravitates towards it.(Kracauer 1960:28) This implies to say that there should be something to capture outside the medium,called, camera; unless there is no meaning to discuss or debate about the reality and about the technical medium alone.Because the world as a phenomenon was there and would be there even though the medium wouldn't have had been invented.The present dicsussion was about the “captured” representational reality through a medium consisting basic and technical properites. Any technical property of a camera presupposes the external reality as subject or space to be captured. 'But the only, reality we are concerned with is actually existing physical reality—the transitory world we live in.(physical reality will also be called “mental reality” or “physical existence” or “actuality”, or loosely just “nature.”'(Kracauer 1960:28) if these reality has been projected through in a cinematic way for that 'another fitting term might be “Camera reality.” Here we can defend that, without something to record or to reveal, the reality, the meaning for camera's ability and technical property doesn't have the credence even for itself.
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This remained decisive, that the basic properties has more credence over technical properties, for cinematic representation not only in early days, yet nowadays, we can sense the same nature in film. In short we can say that 'as a rule the former(basic) takes precedence over the latter(technical) in the sense that they are responsible for cinematic quality.(Kracauer 1960:30) When we talk about film as a medium which started recording and revealing the reality, as photography did, in its early days, it is quite enthusiastic to know who were those early filmmakers actually converged earlier dissociated practices of recording the reality independently into an attempt to represent the same in cinematic representation through which carries the continuance and convergence of photographic practices of recording and revealing the reality unaltered with a precision details. If we sum up the entire searches carried out of passion for revealing, searching and re-searching for reality, truth and to establish the true phenomenon through early cinematic medium 'as if to encompass the whole range of cinematic endeavors at the outset, each went to limit in exhausting its own possibilities. 'Their prototypes were Lumière, a strict realist, and Méliès, who gave free reign to his artistic imagination.'(Kracauer 1960:30) We have to consider why early filmmakers as well as photographers were more inclined to establish the reality intertwoven with philosophical inquiry and interpretation. There are certain conditions out of which the film making practices were converged into a complete manifestation of an intellectual and philosophical inquiry of a film maker representing through cinematic medium. Then film as medium became as a powerful tool to inquire and interprete the phenomenal world. Here it implies that there is impact of realism as a philosophy on society as well as on people those who were interested to implicate the realism through interdisciplinary approach in order to further and reinterprete the phenomenal world. 'One of the chief proponent of realism is British philosopher Roy Bhaskar. His summary of realist position, taken from, A Realist theory of Science, deserves quoting in full:
“The world consists of mechanisms not events. Such mechanisms conbine to generate the flux of phenomena that constitutes the actual states and happenings of the world. They may be said to be real, though it is rarely that they are actually manifest and rarer that still that they are empirically identified by men. They are intransitive objects of scientific theory. They are quite independent of men—as thinkers, causal agents and perceivers. They are not unknowable, although knowledge of them depends upon a rare blending of intellectual, practico-technical, and perceptual skills. They are not artificial constructs. But neither are they Platonic forms. For they can become manifest to men in experience. Thus we are not imprisoned in caves, either of our own or nature's making. We are not doomed to ignorance. But neither are we spontaneously free. This is ordous task of science: the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of our world.”' (Allen and Gomery 1985:15)
It would be better to remember André Bazin, while formulating an arguement towards theorizing the Film,who was a staunch realist and emphasized that film is primarily a medium to explore the reality existing outside in phenomenal world. He strongly believed in realistic tendency than formative, where the scope for imagination is prevalent, as said by Méliès.
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This is evident as 'in traditional film theory, for example, realism is name given to the aesthetic theory of André Bazin, who suggested ways in which the cinema could be made closer to our experience of the phenomenal world',(Allen and Gomery 1985) if compare with Roy Bhaskar arguement above --The world consists of mechanisms not events -- clearly indicates the innate roots of burning fire among early filmmaker--is ordous task of science: the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of our world -- which eventually led intuitively to concentrate on the issues regarding realism while their early practice with novel invention of film camera for recording and revealing the physical reality passionately. In other words, this referes that early filmmakers were actually being explorators of the nature to find reality and truth while treating the camera as an effective tool in their search. There was no any peculiar intention regarding how to approach the nature and about devices to be drawn in their endeavors in capturing reality. Their work shown pure intuitive and passion driven adventure to capture reality except the functional possibilities allowed by the camera. As Kracauer says that 'in her philosophy in a new key, Susan Langer, hesitantly admits that “the medium in which we naturally conceive our ideas may restrict them not only to certain forms but to certain fields.”'(Kracauer 1960:03) The limitations in capturing reality often leads to try in a creative and different way out of function and purpose because 'a phenomenological description based on intuitive insight will hardly get at the core of the matter' which sometimes may lead to a new dimension to the same objective reality while in the course paving a new way for navel practices and being preparing a strong professional ground for future explorations and development. This way of exploring to record and reveal the social reality can be found in Lumière's early attempts of filmmaking. Lumière being a staunch realist was always trying for things to be recorded that comes naturally in to the fold of reality to “explain” the natural phenomenon and was reluctant to “stage” things in front of the camera because' realism departs from empiricism over the nature of that reality and what constitutes explanation of it.'( Allen and Gomery 1985:14)
Empiricist believes that 'expalining a phenomenon ends with the observation of regularity: when it is subsumed under a covering law'. but 'to the realist, reality is complex and only partially observable, even with most sophisticated scientific tools.'(Ibid:14) This not only emphasises the philosophical stance taken by early filmmakers to record and revea the nature through camera practicalities but provides a transitional conditions in which the aesthetic practices of photography tranferred and copied to suit filmmaking , also exposes the desperate conditions to create new cinematic techniques in recording with film camera. 'Among the more special cinematic techniques are some which have been taken over from photography— e.g. The Close-Up, Soft focus practices, the use of negatives, double or multiple exposure etc. Other such as the lap-dissolve, Slow and quick motion, the reversal of time, certain “Special effects”, and so forth, are for obvious reasons exclusively peculiar to film.'(Kracauer 1960:29)
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Among early filmmakers who were considered to be the father of filmmaking, Louis Lumièr, who was being a staunch realist, through which he 'appealed to the sense of observation, the curiosity about “nature caught in the act”'(Ibid:32) and George Méliès 'his main contribution to the cinema lay in substituting staged illusion for unstaged reality, and contrived plots for everyday incidents'(Ibid:32) through cinematic presentation. While Méliès was on the path of giving creative space through imagination which had at times substituted the reality beside distorting the realistic appeal as compared to Lumièr, who was always aversed to the distortion and substitution of the reality while recording and revealing in pursuit of phenomenal interpretation. ' Lumièr, told Méliès that he considered film nothing more than a “scientific curiosity”, there by implying that his cinematograpgh could not possibly sense artistic purposes.'(Ibid:32) Now, we can see that how Lumièr actually attempted to capture precision detailed of reality unaltered through his cinematic presentation dealing with nature simultaneously. We can not only conceive rather attribute these motives behind clinching on positivist attitude or realistic tendency to inculcate intellectual rigour into the practices of filmmaking to spread of positivism where as 'in nineteenth century France the rise of photography coincided with the spread of positivism-- an intellectual attitude rather than a philosophical school which, shared by many thinkers, discouraged meta-physical speculation in favor of a scientific approach, and thus was in perfect keeping with the ongoing processes of industrialization.' (Ibid:05) Lumièr's films contained a true innovation, as compared with the repertoire of the zootropes or Edisons peep boxes1 :they pictured everyday life after the manner of photographs.2 Realistic approach always was an attitude to search for reality through the phenomena and try to capture as Lumièr did while 'the bulk of his films recorded the world about us for no other purpose than to present it,'(Kracauer 1960:31) and was his realistic attitude that to explore which 'seems to have realized that story-telling was none of his business, it involved problems with which he apparently did not cope up.'(Ibid:31) which again points to the his unresolved resolution as a realist 'at a time when the talkies were already in full swing he epitomized the work of the master'(Ibid:31), that resembles his attitude toward the cinema at early stage without resorting to distort or deviate, in other sense -- substituting staged illusion for unstaged reality; as Méliès did- from his realist position just for the sake of profit making, instead, stresses his belief about film that 'cinema is the dynamism of life, of nature and its manifestations, of the crowd and eddies.'(Ibid:31) All that asserts itself through movement depends on it. Its lens open on the world.3 Despite Lumièr's attempts to project nature and its undiluted reality, sometimes his actions may have unconsciously lead to manifestations of new practices in film making in years to come. Some
of his early pictures, such as:-
· BABY'S BREAKFAST (Le Déjeuner de bébé)
· THE CARD PLAYERS (La Partu d' écarté)
these films testify to the amteur photographer's delight in family idyls and genres scenes.4
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1.
Sadoul, L' Invention du Cinéma, P.P.21—2, 241, 246.
2. Langlois, “Notes Sur l' histoir du Cinéma,” La Revue du Cinéma, July 1948, Vol.III, no.15:3.
3. Sadoul, op. Cit.P.P.249,252,300; and sadoul, Histoir d' un art. p.21.; also see, Sadoul,op.cit.p.246.
4. Sadoul, op.cit.p.247
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It seems that Lumièr being quint essential knowledge seeker and also a staunch realist, he used to record and reveal the true nature of life and society where human beings show their true to nature actions without any external implications in which Lumièr intended to find the truth of his enduring search. He wanted to capture the actions which are true to life,even being awkard,or disturbing, yet he had seen them as truth and believed as if nature revealing in a realistic representation. There are certain films he made which were not only made an indelible marks as discovery in the film history but had paved a new way for film development to present novel cinematic representation. Here is such a film by Lumièr's which can witness the above said
significance as Kracauer noted in his Theory of Film(1960:30):
And there was “TEASING THE GARDENER”(L'Arrosenr arrosé), which enjoyed immense popularity because it elicited from the flow of everyday life a proper story with a funny climax to boot. A gardener is watering flowers and, as he unsuspectingly, proceeds, and impish boy steps on the hose, releasing it at the very moment when his perplexed victim examines the dried-up nozzle. Water squirts out and hits the gardener smack in the face. The denoument is true to style, with the gardener chasing and spanking the boy. This film, the germ cell and archetype of all film comedies to come, represented an imaginative attempt on the part of Lumièr to develop photography into a means of story-telling.5
And also he referred to the reaction of Maxin Gorki when he saw the film first time and the way he reacted to the film is so interesting to know:
Yet the story was just a real-life incident. And it was precisely its photographic veracity which made Maxim Gorki undergo a shochkplike experience. “you think”, he wrote about TEASING THE GARDENER, “the spray is going to hit you soon, and instinctively shrink back.”6
There are certain of examples, which can position Lumièr as realist as well as an explorer who consistently made efforts to search for reality through his cinematic medium, 'take his immortal reels LUNCH HOUR AT THE LUMIER FACTORY, (Sortie des usines Lumièr), ARRIVAL OF TRAIN. ( L' Arrivée d' un train), LA PLACE DES CORDELIERS A LION: there themes were public places, with through of people moving in diverse directions.'(Kracauer 1960:31) in a sense that early days were repeated through cinematic medium such as 'the crowded streets captured by the stereographic photographs of the late fifties thus reappeared on the primitive screen.'(Ibid: 31) He had always searched, and believed, that daily lives of people, their actions, their societal customs, and their living conditions are the better marks to get the truth and to explore further through cinematic medium and 'It was life at its least controllable and most unconscious moments, a jumble of transcient, forever dissolving patterns accessible only to the camera.'(Ibid:31) and he (Lumièr) 'seemed anxious to avoid any personal interference with given data.'(ibid:31) Lumièr was acknowledged in the history of film not just as a realist,who actually,at least, confined the new film camera invention's developmental track to realistic tendency, and by which, he aversed the power of cinematic techniques from solely controlled by the imaginative and creative fields and thus become a toy to promote commercial interest which was against the realistic attitude for which purpose the endeavors put in during the course of its invention by his predecessors. 'His contemporaries praised these films for the very qualities which the prophets and forerunners had single out in their vision of the medium.'(Ibid:31)
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5. Sadoul, o.p.cit. p.p. 249,252,300; and Sadoul, Histoire d' un art , p.21.
6. Gorki, “You Don't Belive Your Eyes”, World Film News, March 1938, P.16.
Practices within Film making: From Reality to Art
'Through the history of photography there is on the one side, a tendency toward realism culminating in recording of nature, and on the other a formative tendency aiming at artistic creations.'(Kracauer 1960:11-12) This implies that realistic tendency and a formative or artistic tendency of filmmaking's birth place was nothing but in early photography. 'Photography developed into a lucrative industry, especially in the field of portraiture in which Disdéri set a widely adopted pattern.'(Kracauer 1960:06) To know how art has become a specific genre out of realist tradition is notable transformation in this regard. Here we have to consider the pretext which later induced its earlier artistic or aesthetic practices into photography through its evolutional process which later destined itself to settle as formative implication to the realistic tendency in photography. Here we need to look back into the contexts in which the artistic tradition implied upon the early practices of realistic tendency in photography.
The realistic tendency in early photography was seen as ardent answer to then artistic practices prevailed among the artists/painters.'The insight into the recording and revealing function of this “mirror with a memory”--its inherent realistic tendency, that is—owed much to the vigor with which the forces of realism bore down on the romantic movement of the period'(Ibid:05) and 'in nineteenth century France the rise of photography coincided with the spread of positivism'(Ibid:05) and 'within this context, only aesthetic implications of this attitude are of interest “met with strong opposition, not only in the camps of the artists but among the photographers themselves.”(Ibid:05) 'Art, the opponents held, did not exhaust itself in painterly or photographic records of reality; it was more than that; it actually involved the artists creativity in shaping the given material.'(Ibid:05) reflecting this 'in 1853, Sir William Newton suggested that the photographic image could, and should, be altered so as to make the result confirm to the “acknowledged principle of fine art.”(Ibid) this sense was seen in those days practiced by artist-photographers 'who followed a tendency which may be called “formative”, since it sprang from their urge freely to compose beautiful pictures rather than to capture nature in the law “but their creativity invariably manifested itself in photographs that reflected valued painterly styles and preferences; consciously or not, they imitated traditional art, not fresh reality.”(Ibid:06) While explaining the artistic influence on photography, Kracauer, points to the evolutional process which manifested:
Thus, the sculptor Adam-Soloman, a top-ranking artist-photographer, excelled in portraits which, because of their “Rembrandt lighting” and velvet drapery caused the poet Lamartine to recount his initial opinion that photographs were nothing but a “plagiarism of nature.”Upon seeing these pictures, Lamartine felt sure that photography was equally capable of attaining the peaks of art. What happened on a relatively high level became firmly established in the lower depths of commercial photography: a host of would be artist-photographers catered to the tastes of the juste-milieu which, hostile to realism, still went for romantic painting and the academic idealism of Ingres and his school. (1960:06)
This implies that artist-photographers gradually transgressing into the domain of established paint-artist's traditional arts, which was eagerly utilised by aristocratic families as their royal expressions or by the affluent. This enunciated 'from 1852, his -- Disdéri--portrait-carte de visite— ingratiated itself with the petite bourgeous, who felt elated at the possibility of acquiring, at low cost his likeness—a privilege hitherto reserved for the aristocracy and well-to-do upper middle class.'(Ibid:06)and also 'it met the need of market.'(Ibid:06)
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While the interest among common people were growing to acquire low cost photography to replace paintings 'the second empire professional photographers, no less than popular painters, sacrificed truth to conventional pictorialness by embellishing the features of their less attractive clients.'(Ibid:06) on par with painter artists because, 'photography, they reasoned, is a medium which offers the creative artist as many opportunities as does painting or literature – provided he does not let himself be inhibited by the camera's peculiar affinities but uses every “dodge, trick, and conjuration” to elicit beauty from the photographic raw material.'(Ibid:07)
Andreas Feininger suggests that “super fluous and disturbing details” should be supressed for the sake of “artistic simplification”; the goal of photography as an art medium, he stipulates, is “not the achievement of highest possible 'likeness' of the depicted subject, but the creation of an abstract work of art, featuring compassions “to desire to highlight the artistic potentialities”(Ibid:11) instead of documentation.”(Ibid:10) here we have to remember that “compassion” connote a state of mind which, is subjective in nature, “draws attention the photographer's selectivity”(Ibid:11)that always has an intent to express through a medium “suggestive of his personal vision and rich in aesthetic gratifications,”(Ibid:11) which reflected ' in a publication on the German experimental photographer, Otto Steinert's so called “subjective” photography is characterized as a deliberate departure from the realistic point of view.'(Ibid:10- 11) While continuing this, and, 'in intentionally ignoring the camera's recording tasks, Feiningers and others try to transform photography into the art medium which they claim it to be.'(Ibid:11) the gradual departure of photography from recording, revealing the “reality” of nature to express as an “art” form through a flexible photographic medium. 'The properties of a medium elude concise definition'(Ibid:12) because 'what is adequate to a medium cannot be determined dogmatically in advance.'(Ibid) which gradually under goes transformation, to replace itself to emerging new art forms through allowance of the operational functions peculiar to mediums itself, that 'any revolutionary artist may upset all previous speculations about the “nature” of the medium to which his works belongs,'(Ibid) because of which 'one may arrange the different media along a continuum according to the degree of the elusiveness of their properties,'(Ibid) implicating through their 'varying modes of approach seem to be least dependent upon the fixed material and technical factors.'(Ibid) This can be seen as how the conditions determines the outcome through Eisenstein's experience , which made him rather to concentrate on formative tendency which has later established him as a film theorist and an ardent lover of filmmaking to conceive it as an art form:
The theatre is more restrictive than painting is strikingly demonstrated by an experience of Eisenstein. At a time when he still directed theatrical plays he found out by trial and error that stage conditions could not be streched infinitely-- that in effect their inexorable nature prevented him from implementing his artistic intentions, when then called for film as the only fitting means of expression. So he left the theatre for the cinema. (Ibid:13)
This same can be applied to the photographic medium which being influenced by the formative tendency that gave rise to a new genre as a culmination because 'the pull of the properties of photography is, perhaps, responsible for the inconsistent attitudes and performances of some photographers with strong painterly inclinations'(Ibid:12) that they tempted to behold their artistic impulse in their experimental photography at the cost of reality.
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In photography, artistic or 'formative aspirations clash with the desire to render reality, overwhelmng it in the process'(Ibid) conversely, 'this state of things raises the aesthetic problem,'(Ibid) that may be 'satisfying aesthetically if they build from specific properties of that medium.'(Ibid) The basic aesthetic principle anticipates some “indifference” in its output that is not being the same to another medium—'say, by imitating effects more “natural” to another medium-- will hardly prove acceptable; ((Ibid) this could the basis to assume that bringing aestheticity out of natural or realistic tendency requires the indifferent outlook in seeing and the approach applied to photography which, as defined by Gay—Lussac and Arago at the outset 'are fairly specific; and they have lost nothing of their impact in the course of history'(Ibid:13) Now, we can see how these principles has been applied to the film camera as a medium for cinematic representation while singling out film as an art form. 'In the period 1920—1960 the most significant European and American film theorists concentrated on defining cinema as a specific art or medium.'(Bordwell 2005:112) that prescribes some features should be consisting to be isolated into another generic categorization. As we are discussing above, the specific aethetic quality brought out from early photographic practices emanating from medium's peculiar operation were actually been carried out by early filmakers which 'seems all the more justifiable to apply the basic aesthetic principle'— different approach with specific property -- 'to this particular medium'(kracauer 1960:13) in bringing out a formative change. Even while theorists attempting to theorize film, they tend to observe different features such as formative significance to understand completely how film makers were couraged enough to realise cinematic representation. Reflecting this notion 'classical theory also had a prescriptive bent: once one had isolated the differentiating features of cinema, one could judge films according to how fully they realized the unique possibilities of the medium.'(Bordwell 2005:112)Here, the notion of artistic rendition of a film making , inimical to earlier artist-photographer's practice, was seen through its formative aspects, such as how the film material has been modified both either in treating the subject matter and the approach applied to the medium. Arnheim, for instance, argued that 'a good film imposed a significant form on its material, there by making the subject matter more vivid or bringing out its qualities.'(Ibid) a good cinema, in other sense, has form to present the subject matter while maintaining its “indifference” with other filmmakers in terms of expressive quality.
To recognize the filmmaking as an expressive art with a significant formative assumptions, the search for specificity-- as early filmmakers-cum-theorists tried restlessly-- 'fell into line with constructivist and formalist's concern with defining the basic material of the artisan's craft.'(Ibid) How art can be seen in the context of filmmaking? seems interesting here. 'Art is an expression of human meaning; it is unified and brought to a satisfying close; it succeeds by imaginatively transcending its material,'(Andrew 1976:113)while noting other formative or artistic aspects devoid of mediums specific ability to record 'Baláz, Arnheim, and Munsterburg searched for ways: to prove that cinema could be an art,(Ibid) by insisting that ' filmmakers must be artful, to be sure, must have all the sensibility of an artist, but he must in the end turn both his imagination and his techniques back to the flowing and endless world rather than exploit his medium for its own sake or in pursuit of a subjective content.'(Ibid)In this sense, we can observe that there are two notions in defining film as an art form among early filmmakers and theorists. First, filmmaking being the craft of an artist who trying to express through a peculiar craftmanship. Second, filmmaking being a subjective manifestation of an artist who is expressing through his recording and revealing.
Here, the former is an objective outlook of a filmmaker which deals with the basic material needed for cinematic presentation through skilled craftmanship where as the latter being the subjective outlook of a filmmaker as an artist/painter which corresponds to the idea that filmmaker as an artist dealing with “objects in front of the camera lens” irrespective of how it has been recorded. In short, craftmanship is shown through, editing etc:- while subjectivity represents through “staged event” in front of the camera which is recorded. 'The filmmaker has two primary ways to engage his material formatively,'(Andrew 1976:114) and further, he says, 'the first is at the level of the image where he can either be true to the object or overwhelm it with his “artistic” photography and the second is at the level of construction where he places his image in a context and makes clear his intentions for them.'(Ibid)and 'Kracauer calls this process “Composition.” This implies that filmmakers attempts in both ways to render their artistic milieu or their expressions, one through being external to the film content, which is to construct through craftmanship and another being internal to the content, which manifest through -- mise-en-scene – the way objects being arranged in front of the cameras that corresponds to the ideas of filmmakers or directors in order to construct the intended meaning until attains the filmmakers expression. The both aspects-internal and external- are being seen as a result of artistic contributions of the filmmakers in their own right. Because crafting the film's basic material also posses the artistic inclination of the filmmaker in terms of placing ,even better to call, construction of images in a context which emanates the intended meaning out of its movement.
This artistry remains as objective to the film's content and different editing technique would be applied to the craftmanship till that spill out the meaning to express filmmakers artistic inclination. While 'in a series of essays the young Lev Kuleshov asked what distinguished film from theater and painting, and he settled upon “Montage”, or editing, as the differentiating factor.'(Bordwell 2005:112) Within the formative tendency, this approach of filmmaking, like concentrating on craftmanshipor as said above composition, has been mostly innovated and adopted by Sergei Eisenstein, who was initially an ardent filmmaker who believed film as art and stressed the formative tendency by claiming that film should work on grounds of artistic expression as was in theater; earlier, he was in theatre came to filmmaking to try out to his artistic-intellectual inclination to meet his inner half-left out artist and to confirm that whether he can be able to address the questions of intent in terms of editing, composition and required framing for his fullest satisfaction through cinematic representation which he couldn't had as a theater art/director. Later he wrote about filmmaking out of his experience which became a stepstone to evolve into a 'Montage' theory as a film theorist and developed later.
Eisenstein had started making film in an artist outlook, being his theatre background,but 'was more intelletually restless, never satisfied that he had followed an innovation or an idea to its end'(Ibid:113) while concerned primarily with the questions 'to show how the craftman's propositions about individual technical matters contributed to a larger whole.'(Ibid) which Bordwell meticulously points out:'in his essays there is a pressure to build an architectonic frame work within which each aspect of filmmaking will take its place.'(Ibid) While stressing the notion of film as an “art in itself”, -- a notion beyond traditional subjective assumption -- which would manifest through its form as a formative whole.
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As Boris Eikhenbaum noted 'about the formalist method as a whole, it avoided abstract speculation (“problems of beauty, the aims of art”) in favour of inquiry into concrete problems of artistic form and its development.'7 (1926:104) we can actually find this assumption in Eisenstein's art of formative filmmaking. His way of work has always been a meticulously planned out to showcase an intellectual inquiry into his craftmanship through which he tried to bring out the intended meaning that caters to have an impact on audience. In this process of preparing or accumulating material or preparing a background before making film, he actually never aware that he is about to carving out an artistically expressive formative method which would later become a ground for alternative film theory to evolve in contrast with realistic tendency in filmmaking.
If we look at the subjective assumption of filmmaking as an art, we have to consider as a culmination of reality with art. Though both are concomitant in nature, produces artistic expression inseparably. Kracauer is known for his realistic outlook, but , simultaneously not beyond to accept film as art but in realistically. He was against the formative method of filmmaking which, he believes, as “Magic,” which is beyond reality and as natural, as a realist, he doesn't accept. As Kracauer believes that formative method is being practiced by fictional filmmakers that, he asserts, usually 'convey the bitter belief that the dominant fictional cinema exists like a drug, created by sorcery (the magic of formative method of editing, lab processes, and, above all, fabulous script), destined to lull a paying public to sleep.'(Andrew 1976:104) This implies his artistic milieu as a peculiar and within the frame work of the realistic tendency. He tried out to see the art not in crafting but in social life where the real events would express art realistically, distinguishing with other previous theories, and 'claiming that his was a material aesthtetic founded on the priority of content, where as all other theorist had been primarily interested in artistic form.'(Ibid:107)
'Realist film theory is closely linked to a sense of the social function of art.'(Ibid:104) where 'the medium of film, in Kracauer theory, is a milange of subject matter and subject treatment, of cinematic raw material and cinematic technique.'(Ibid:107) Here, he sees the film as an art in terms of perfect blend between filmmakers's ability to see things in a creative and artistic manner yet confined to the basic material. This indicates at both the subject and its approach should be in tandem with each other, which Kracauer calls, as milange, which, 'is unique in the aesthetic universe because instead of creating a new “world of art” the medium tends to turn back to its material.'(Ibid) and also 'instead of projecting an abstract or imaginative world it descends to the material world.'(Ibid) In realistic sense, 'the traditional art exists to transform life with their special means, but cinema exists most profoundly and most essentially when it presents life as it is.' where as 'the other arts exhaust their subject matter in the creative process; cinema tends on the contrary to expose its matter.'(Ibid)
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7. Eikhen baum, Boris.1926. “The theory of the 'Formal Method.'” In Lemon and Reis 1965: 99-139.
In the context of theorizing Film: Neo-realism and Montage
Any theory has its own pretext in which the theorization took place. There should be precedents which have long been existed, nurtured and even reformed for the sake of theorization. If Film has to be studied as an academic subject, doesn't escape from this theorization. 'Most generally,“film theory” refers to any reflection on the nature and function of cinema' (Bordwell 2005:112) as a subject to be discussed scholarly and explored further through careful observation and intellectual inquiry where films can expound more than just as a mechanical reproduction from a bunch of filmmakers, and should not just ignore the fact that makers are not just passive to their film or making, instead, they have more to that which they want to express through cinematic medium. We can here take that film being the visual medium, has its semantic significance which is trying to speak through visuals and audio as “Signs” rather than as grammatically perennial literary language.
The theorization of film has actually started when early filmmakers conceived of judging “Good” cinema and explored to formulate such principles for inquiring into judge based on films's quality in terms of subject matter and formative expression. Theorists such as Lev Kuleshov and Dziga Vertov 'also assumed that theorizing would be prescriptive: inquiry into principles would yield criteria for judging good cinema.'(Bordwell 2005:112) Thus, we can say that the process of theorization was started when started judging good cinema through speculative searching for principles that could be prescriptive in nature. There are two ways of theorization: one is from western theorists and others from Soviet background. While we are here dealing with theorizaton of the concepts called “Montage” and “Neo-Realism” in film history. We can see Neo-realism, as a western film theoretical perspective, and Montage as eastern or as Formative perspective, as a counter vailing dias to realists in the west. Neo-realism is a generic categorization of filmmaking carried out by the directors/filmmakers from Italy; mostly after World War II, scenario in which condition the neo-realist filmmaking style was born and had been developed subsequently.
The both styles of filmmaking—neo-realistic and montage -- were actually born and developed opposing each other in terms of quality,content, and formation behind distinguished backgrounds reflecting then socio-political scenario. Here, we can imagine the impact of social conditions out which these both styles of filmmaking was born.We can see both Roberto Rossellini as father of Neo-realistic filmmaking from Italy and Sergei Eisenstein for formative or artistic filmmaking from Soviet Union. These both are the pretext to the context of film theorization after 1960's when Bazin started writing commentary on the films seriously which was seen as the basis for film becoming a subject for academic discourse. Even, Eisenstein started theorizing through essays about his filmmaking out of his empirical knowledge as filmmakers which, later he himself with small corrections, moulded into a conceptual frame work as Montage theory.'His main effort was to unite his practice with a theory that would provide a wide-range, detailed reflection on film form, material, and effect.'(Ibid)The impact of socio-political movements prevailed during the times when Eisenstein started off his career as theater director and later as filmmaker was so high which forced to search for an alternative method of filmmaking.
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Theorizing Montage as a Form
'Movements with which Eisenstein had affinities, such as Proletkult and Lef, sought to link concrete problems of artistic practice to broader principles, often derived from scientific research.'(Ibid) Before knowing about the Montage theory and its applications on filmmaking, we should aware that there was a pretext in which the practice of montage style filmmaking was born through Eisenstein, and others such as Kuleshov, Vertov, Pudovkin who were being practicing filmmakers and later helped to evolve this practice based knowledge into Montage theory. While Hugo Münster burg, Rudolf Arnheim, André Bazin and others have also emphasized and sustained the notion of Montage style of filmmaking as an art form.
It should be interesting to know the pretext of montage theory and practice. 'In course of the 1920's Eisenstein drew increasingly upon current debates around “materialistic” Psychology and philosophical dialectics.'(Ibid) also the context which experienced by Eisenstein seems had impact on him to select practical path to make such films which could suit for his inner satisfaction and to place himself within the ideological schemata and sail in then regimes's control and social rhetoric because 'his concern with practice had parallels in the works of his peers.'(Ibid) On the other side 'unlike most western theorists of cinema, Kuleshov and Vertov treated problems of film theory within the technē- centered context of 1920's Soviet Art. For this perspective, cinematic specificity was not taken as an aesthetic essence.(Vertov infact denounced aesthetics as a bourgeois discipline)'(Ibid) This assumption sways with the ideology of marxist rhetoric which was dominated in Soviet Union after revolution.The art, art forms, artists were influenced by this rhetoric and had started inculcating in their daily professions such as fine arts and theater production.Most of creative brains who have started off their career in film production were earlier trained from theatre who had been trying to show their ideological concerns through creative or artistic forms and later they have contributed through writings which led towards theorization of film. 'Furthermore, both Kuleshov and Vertov were practicing filmmakers. They sought to unite theoretical principles with practical decisions about how a film should be shot and cut'(Ibid:113) as they have contributed to their empirical knowledge in the formulation of film theory and 'from the start, both thinkers approached film theory not as a purely speculative endeavor but as a practical 'Cinepoetics”: a systematization of the principles of making effective works.(Ibid)
While theorizing the practice 'the most ambitious Soviet writing that followed Kuleshov and Vertov's pioneering forays tended to treat theoretical problems along craft-centred lines'(Ibid) and this tendency has been reflected in 'Pudovkin's 1926 pamphlets on film direction and script writing were largely practical based, as were books such as Semyon Timoshenko's books, The Art of the Cinema and the Montage of films (1926) and What a film director must know (1929) and Sergei Vasiliev's Film Montage. (1929)(Ibid) While referring to Eisenstein,David Bordwell rightly points out that 'all his thinking presupposes that art in the new Soviet state had to inform, educate, and above all persuade citizens.'(2005:115) The process of theorizing Montage,for Eisenstein, as reflecting practice, “derives from the audience: the moulding of the audience in a desired direction(or mood) is the task of every Utilitarian theatre.”(1923b:34)--is a FEX theatre group, where worked as an artist/director before sailing into film prodution.This experience in then socio-political scenario in Soviet regime, which has offered no alternative to Soviet writers/artists, that even forced Eisenstein as filmmaker, but to adopt a practice purely emanating and dependent on socio-political context, which should confirm to then Soviet regime's controlling mechanism yet reflect the artistic mileu, because as it was seen, that, art as means 'to celebrate the victory of the working class and attack enemies of socialism.'(Ibid:115) 16
If we observe closely the work of Eisenstein reflects an art of crafting through which he tries to express while propagating or even to say as if cultivating in the minds of audience the message he intended for. Being the social context of tight controlling mechanism, he ought to look at alternative model which could serve for both to represent the carefully crafted artistic form and expressing or cultivating the message among audience together not falling under the scanner of Soviet regime. His alternative model denoted that 'an art can represent space and time that will lead eventually to a discussion of realistic filmstyle'(Currie 1995:91) because owes to selecting carefully the images to cater to the message through editing(crafting) and this quality of artistic film realism should depend upon the way dealt with the subject matter and the approach adopted for, where both deals with the realistic representation of subject matter through 'image' which is a 'milange' in nature and can only be “depicted” and the art of the formation of the basic material or its 'Space' and 'time.' This again points to the process and nature of depiction of images and its subjects where the 'depiction are, to various degrees, realistic.'(Ibid:79) while the art of formation or crafting or montage of filmmaking itself is an art which connot be depicted yet expressive of the director through “non-depictive” manner because 'films often represent things which could not be depicted, because what is represented is not a matter of the spatial properties of things or of properties accessible through other senses.'(Ibid:91)
What ever represented through spatial properties are the images depicted along with its subjects which cater to represent realism in films. Eisenstein's theory of Montage and practice of filmmaking as a concept tries to combine both the depictive image—as a subject matter-- and his non-depictive sense—the art of crafting(editing)--through cinematic representation which carries together the milange and message to cultivate in the minds of audience to achieve the intended effect.As Eisenstein's film ignite intellectual cues among audience through his crafting of film which is drawn towards broad and basic speculations and in his words:
“ I'm interested in everything besides...the cinema. Cinema is absorbing only in so far as it is 'a miniatureexperimental universe' by which one can study the laws of phenomenon much more interesting than fleeting little picture.” (Bordwell 2005:113)
This clearly indicates his theory of Montage towards cinema which he saw as film “Image” or “Frame” as platform for his visual imagination in which 'he wants to know how to stage an action or move the body, how to account for every bit of data within the frame, how to catalogue the possible ways in which sounds can interact with the image.'(Ibid:113-114) He felt framaing elements can be arranged 'systematically' and 'artistically' that could spill out the message in rapid succession of images.(subjet matter) Eisenstein's film not only varies in form and subject matter but also distinguishable on the grounds that 'he links cinema to widely varied intellectual disciplines and doctrines, he finds insights in the history of the Arts (Western and Eastern), Psychology, Historical materialism, Anthropology and Linguistics.'(Ibid:113)
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Theorizing Neo-realism in a context
Before to know the historical context which provided ample conditions out of which the cinema peculiar to be called Italian has been identfied. Italian-neo realism has become a genre of film which has certain feautres born in a specific historical conditions. If we have to define the neorealism, it points to the result of certain conditions having impact on filmmaking 'perhaps the most original characteristic of the new italian realism was the brilliant use made of nonprofessional actors, especially by Rossellini,De Sica and Visconti,'(Bondanella 2006:32) and 'depend upon excellent performances by seasonal professionals.'(Ibid) while 'represents a hybrid of traditional and more experimental techniques.'(Ibid) Most film historians have thought that neo-realism actually born during post-war conditions. It seems quite acceptable due to then conditions which naturally had negative impact on film industry's financial conditons that led to look at low cost production that finally took an identity what we are calling as Italian neo-realist cinema. There is also another view that 'all too many ideological,political, and personal interest were served in Italy by sharp break with the fascist past' (Ibid:29) which is contrary to the later view that neo-realism born after post-war era which was ' acknowledging the many elements of continuity that connect pre-war and post-war italian cinema.'(Ibid) Many of the films identified as Italian neo-realists cinema after post-war films were actually had shared continuity with earlier similar practices employed during the fascist regime with 'the use of non-professional actors, a preference for authentic locations as opposed to studio sets, an interest in current events and documentary-style photogrphy-were actually pioneered in the last fascist period by a number of talented directors.'(Ibid:30)
This can be seen as a foundation for neo-realistic cinema that made during pre-war conditons in Italy. As Bondenella refers to an example of such film:
The Siege of the Alcazar (L' assedio dell' Alcazar, 1940), directed by Augusto Geuina (1892-1957), celebratesthe defence of the fortress in Toledo during the Spanish Civil War by Franco's fascist. It is an excellentexample of what was defined in the late fascist period as a documenterio romanzato or 'fictional documenatry', acombination of historical facts and events with elements of romanticised fiction. (Ibid)
By this example, its clear that the roots of neo-realism can be traced in pre-war cinema. The documentary style of filmmaking has its close relationship with the later neo-realist filmmaking. Even , romanticisation of documantaries were initially had provided a platform for feature length film by'adding a love story to adventure stories or tales of military heroism, and this kind of hybrid plot would be typical not only of pre-war cinema, but also post-war neo-realism.'(Ibid :30-31) The theorization of Italian neo-realism implies a convergence of the process of filmmaking right from fascist regime in Italy to post-war neo-realist cinema with due socio-political impact which was started before Mussolini and continued till post-war era with gradual change.The well known early Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini had infact trained in filmmaking by producing government documentaries during facist regime in pre-war conditions in Italy. He made a triology for the regime shortly before Mussolini's down fall such as: the White Ship(La nave bianca, 1941), A Pilot returns (Up pilota ritorna, 1942), and The man with a Cross (L' noma dalla Croce, 1943).
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These films actually had given Rossellini good hands on contextual experience and knowledge that later developed and continued producing films even during post-war conditions which later labelled as Classics to constitute the genre called neo-realist films such as : Open City (Roma, Città aperta, 1945), Paisan (Paisà, 1946) and Germany year Zero (Germania, anno zero, 1947). All these films were during war and post-war period, Rossellini, as the director 'employed a realistic style that he had first learned while making government documantaries,'(Ibid:31) If we have to campare the filmmaking and its conditons both pre-war and post-war italian cinema, Rossellini’s 'film signature reflects not only the lessions learned from russian theories of editing,but also the use of authentic locations rather than studios, non-professional actors,graining photography typical of news reels and the fictionalized storyline of the 'fictional documentary variety'.' (Ibid) which indicates the impact of artistic or formative impulse on Italian neo-ralism which later paved way to produce film by clubbing both the realistic and formative tendencies,Kracauer says, 'is a milange; subject matter and subject treatment.'(Andrew 1976:107)Now, we an see as a pretext to theorizaton, Italian neo-realism is gradually adopting different practices in filmmaking and manifesting the influence of both Kracauer's cinematic representation and Eisenstein's montage theory or formative tendency in filmmaking. And another major figure in italian neo-realism is Cesare Zavattini, who later was to become regular cinematographer for De Sica, has started doing revolutionary neo-realist cinema shot in the streets of war-torn italy with minimal scripts, non-professional actors, and authentic location.'(Ibid:31) The leftist facist intellectuals who supported with Vittorio Mussolini, and who later became leftist Marxists after the fall of the regime, called for an authentically Italian realism, as an opposition to the filmmaking made during facist regime which celebrates the fascist heroismwhich shown in The Siege of Alcazar as celebrating the defence of the fortress in Toledo during the Spanish Civil War by “Franco's fascists” and “in practice adding a love story to adventure stories or tales of military heroism”, and even suggested as a model the literary production of realist writer Giovanni Verga,'(1840-1922)(Ibid) followed by future neo-realist directors to come such as Luchino Visconti (1906-76), Michelangelo Antonioni(1912-), and Giuseppe De Santis(1917-97). The economic factors did influnced war-torned italian society which led neo-realist filmakers to adopt money saving techniques such as 'recording sounds on supposedly 'authentic' locations'(Ibid:32) in film production that could have its representation and gradually brought a style to italian cinema which later became an identity. Another significant feature of neo-realism was to represent 'a common aspiration to view italy without preconceptions and to employ a more honest, ethical but no less poetic cinematic language in the process'(Ibid:33) and in the words of André Bazin and Roy Arms that 'neo-realist cinema rests upon artifice as much as realism and established, in effect, its own particular realist conventions.'(Ibid) In a new dimension giving to the birth of Italian neo-realism and even claiming as a convergence of an unseen face of italy earlier through his novel, The path to the nest of Spiders,(Il Sentiero dei nidi di ragno,1947) Calvino, reminds his readers that 'neo-realism was never a school with widely shared theoretical principles, rather it arose from a number of closely associated discoveries of an Italy characterized by a popular culture that had traditionally been ignored by 'high' italian culture.'(Ibid)
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By asserting this notion one can notice such transformation in Italian neo-realism the quality and cinematic presentation as a convergence between realism and artistic form that some times sailed through creativity and novel narrative techniques because 'with the end of fascist censorship, Italian directors were now free to merge the desire for cinematic realism with social,economic and political themes that would never have been tolerated by the regime,'(Ibid:31) which can be seen as freedom available to filmmakers who 'focused upon glaring soial problems, such as the effects of the resistance and the war, poverty and chronic unemployment.'(Ibid:31-32) Neo-realism as a school has began to take a shape by allowing experimentation in the process of filmmaking. New directors in this course , in some instances, rejected 'traditional dramatic and cinematic conventions associated with the commercial cinema in both Rome and Hollywood'(Ibid) which was manifested in practice that 'the happy ending associated with many Hollywood films was to avoided at all costs.'(Ibid:32)
Rossellini's Paisan, can be seen as another replica of neo-realists experimentation as this film offers novel approah to film realism in terms of ' its grainy film, the awkard acting of its nonprofessional protogonists, its authoritative voice-over narration and the immediacy of its subject matter—all features we associate with news reel—do not completely explain the aesthetic quality of the work'(Ibid:34) while compared to this the work of another noted neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica's neo-realist work 'seems more traditional and closer to Hollywood narratives.'(Ibid) He uses non-professionals-partucularly children—in both Shoeline and Bicycle theif even more brilliantly than Rossellini and contrast to his 'dramatic editing techniques, De Sica's camera style favoured the kind of deep-focus photography normally associated with Jean Renoir and Orsen Welles.'(Ibid:35) For the first time in a neo-realist film that has made its own impact to create a cultural form in italian cinema, Giuseppe De Santis introduced sex appeal in the form of Silvana Mangano, whose light sweaters and ample cleavage begin the tradition of the maggioratta or 'sweater girl').
By adopting itself to emerging novel cinematic approach, Italian cinema has started witnessing an evolution of its own italian film language which concerned Psychological problems and started 'a search for a new style no longer defined solely by the use of non-professional, on-location shooting and a documentary style.'(Ibid:37-38) Fedirico Fellini, another neo-realist director, in his The Vilelloni(1953) , provides a 'portrait of six provincial characters which another director might have employed as an indictment of small-town italian society' this way of portrayal quite sufficiently endoreses the changing scenario,contrary to earlier filmmakings on socio-political problems, that Fellini is more interested in creating a private poetic universe of his own than in social criticism.'(Ibid:38) In short, Neo-realist cinema as a theory reflects as in the words ofBondenella:
In its quest to for narrative simplicity, true-to-life stories, real locations, everyday language in dialogue, important social and political issues in its content as well as its frequent use of non-professinoal actors, Italian neo-realism established a benchmark for authenticity in the cinema that continues to offer an alternative model to lavishly financed productions, studio work, the star system and cinema conceived of as merely entertainment rather than a 'Slice of life.' (Ibid:38)
The classics of Italian neo-realism were actually inspired somany non-western filmmakers(notably in India and Brasil) to shoot simple stories about ordinary people. A good example in India was celebrated filmmaker such as Satyajit Ray and his Apu triology on these lines.
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References:
-- Kracauer,Siegfried (1960). Theory of Film: The redemption of physical reality, with an Introductionby Mariam Bratu Hansen,UK: Princeton University Press.
-- Currie, Gregory (1995). Image and Mind : Film, Philosophy and Cognitive science, Cambridge
University Press.
-- Allen, Robet.C and Gomery, Douglas (1985). Film History : Theory and Practice,
New York: Mc Graw Hill.
-- Bordwell, David (2005). The Cinema of Eisenstein, New York: Routledge.
-- Eisenstein, Sergei (1923b). “The Montage of Attractions”. In Writings:33-38.
-- Bondanella,Peter (2006).“Italian neo-realism:The postwar renaissance of Italian Cinema,” In
Traditions in World Cinema, edited by Linda Badley, R.Barton Palmer and Steven Jay Schneider,
Edinburgh University Press.
-- Andrew, Dudley (1976). The Major Film Theories: An Introduction,New York: Oxford University Press.
Bibliography:
--Eisenstein,Sergei (1957). “Film form and Film Sense: Essays in Film theory”, edited by Jay Leyda Cleveland and New York:Meridian Books.
--Ray,Sathyajit (1981). “Sathyajit Ray: An anthology of Ray by Ray”, edited by Chandana das gupta,Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,Govt. Of India.
--Kracauer,Segfried(1997). “Theory of Film: The redemption of Physical Reality”, Princeton University
Press.
--Carroll,Noel(1996). “Theorizing the Moving Image”, Cambridge University Press.
--Bandy,Leo and Cohen,Marshall (2004). “Film theory and criticism: Introductory reading”, Oxfordand New York:OUP.
--Taylor, Richard(2006). “Vsevolod Pudovkin: Selected Essays”, London and Calcutta, Newyork:Seagull Books.
--Bondanella,Peter(2005). “The Film of Fediric Fellini”, UK:Cambridge University Press.
--Bordwell,David(2005). “The Cinema of Eisenstein”, New York:Routledge.
_________(1991). “Making Meaning: Interference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema”,USA:Harward University Press.
--Elsaessar,Thomas (1990). “Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative”, (ed); British Film Institute,London.
--Nicholas,Bills(1993). “Movies and Methods: An anthology”, Vol-I&II,(ed); Calcutta:Seagull Books.
--Aitkan,Ian (1998). “The Documentary Film Movement: An anthology”, (ed); Edinburg University
Press.
--(1985). “The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-agent of cultural change”, edited by Beatrix Pfleiderer and
Lother Lutze, New Delhi: Manohar Publication.
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Filmography:
Vittorio De Sica:
-- Shoeline
-- Bicycle Thief
Fedirico Fellini:
-- Velliloni, (1953)
Roberto Rossellini:
-- Open City (Roma, Città aperta, 1945),
-- Paisan (Paisà, 1946)
Sergei Eisenstein:
-- Battleship Putemkin
Lumièr brothers:
-- LUNCH HOUR AT THE LUMIER FACTORY, (Sortie des usines Lumièr),
-- ARRIVAL OF TRAIN. ( L' Arrivée d' un train),
-- LA PLACE DES CORDELIERS A LION
END
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