Reality Into Film

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8625615

C aserta , Theodore Masuk

REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE CREATIVE STRATEGIES USED TODISSOCIATE FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

New York Un iversity Ph.D. 1986

University

MicrofilmsInternational 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106

Copyright 1986

by

Caserta, Theodore Masuk

All Rights Reserved


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Sponsoring Committee: Prof. Joy Gould Boyum, ChairpersonProf. Robert S. Berlin

Prof. Terence Moran

REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE CREATIVE

STRATEGIES USED TO DISSOCIATE FILM FROM

THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

Theodore Masuk Caserta

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor

of Philosophy in the School of Education, Health, Nursing and

Arts Professions New York University

1986


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Theodore Masuk Caserta 1986


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I hereby guarantee that no part of the dissertation which I have submitted for publication has been heretofore

published and (or) copyrighted in the United States of America, except in the case of passages quoted from other published sources; that I am the sole author and proprietor of said dissertation; that the dissertation contains no

matter which, if published, will be libelous or otherwise injurious, or infringe in any way the copyright of any other party; and that I will defend, indemnify and hold

harmless New York University against all suits and proceedings which may be brought and against all claims which may be made against New York University by reason of the publication of said dissertation.

THEODORE MASUK ̂ CASERTA

Date


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Sponsoring Committee: Prof. Joy Gould Boyum, Chairperson

Prof. Robert S. Berlin

Prof. Te rrence Morran

AN ABSTRACT OF REALITY INTO FILM: A STUDY OF THE

CREATIVE STRATEGIES USED TO DISSOCIATE

FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

Theodore Masuk Caserta

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of

Education, Health, Nursing and Arts Professions

New York University

- 1986


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This study's purpose was to describe and

analyze the creative s trate gies by which the

filmmaker/researcher dissociated a film from the

illusio n of reality. The rese arch first explo red the

theoretical rela tionship between film and reality by

a detai led analy sis of selected major film theories.

Once the unique aesth etic co nnection between

film and the illu sion of realit y was esta blishe d, the

filmm aker/re searcher wrote, directed, and edited his

own cine mat ic wo rk of art titl ed 1A, 2A & 3 A . This

work attempted to consistently dissociate itself from

the illusion of reality solely through the manipulation

of cinematic techniques and not through any unrealistic

or surrealistic content. The film's narrativ e depicted

a wom an's three suic idal attempts, the final attempt

being successful.

During the filmmaking process, the filmmaker

recor ded the steps, st rategies, and technique s used

to alter the film's relationship with the illusion of

reality. Afte r comp le tio n of the 16mra colo r sound

film (38 min utes in length), the film maker de scri bed

and analyzed the critical choices he employed to

acco mplis h his ends. Finally, he adapte d these findings

into a glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future

filmmakers, educat ors, and responders.

Conclusions and insights yielded by this

dis ser tati on fall into three maj or areas. First,


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this study confirmed that film has an inherent link

with the illusion of reality. It was perceived by

the filmmaker/researcher that he could not divorce

the chronological story into pure abstraction,

surreality, or expre ssiv e symbol. Generall y, no

matter how distorted the image or sound track became,

the semblance of narrative illusioni sm resisted

dissociation by technique along.

The second major f indi ng of the study

concern ed the natu re and use of cinemati c techniques,

especially their dissociat ing properties. The

largest finding was that techn iques act upon one

another sy ne rg is ti cal ly . Thus, the concept of

treating individu al tec hnique s and those techniques'

affecti ve respons e sep aratel y may not reveal an

accurate view of their aesthetic effect.

The third major area of conclus ions concerne d

the creative process, es peci ally regar ding this and

similar studies. Essentia lly, the beau ty of this

creative pro cess study, and of perh aps all such

studies, is the truth and clarity with which the

artist can learn from the researcher.

A print or videocassette of 1A, 2A & 3A can

be obtained through the university library.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The help and support of a number of people enabled me

to accomplish this research. Joy Gould Boyum, Ph.D.,

established the discipline and criticism that were so

necessary. Patricia Rowe, Ph.D., gave me consistent

departmental support. Jonathan Weil, Ph.D., at first gave

me tutorial help, but as time passed, became one of my

dearest friends. Terence Moran, Ph.D., generously offered

me the keen advice of logic. My parents, Eugenia Caserta

and S. J. Caserta, M.D., supported me in every way possible

to accomplish my goal. Consequently, the motion picture

1A, 2A &3A has been dedicated to them. The cast and crew

of that film offered their time and effort in the making of

a difficult movie. Finally, Professor Robert S. Berlin

offered me the advice, encouragement, and support that let

me learn and grow. It is to him that I dedicate this

dissertation.

iii


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TABLE OP CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................... iii

DESCRIPTION AND INFORMATION ON PROCURING THE FILM 1A, 2A & 3 A ........................................ vii

ChapterI INTRODUCTION ................................... 1

Context of the Problem ..................... 1Statement of the Problem ................... 3

Subproblems ........................... 3Delimitations ............................. 4Definitions ............................... 5

Need for the S t u d y......................... 7

Methodology...............................

12

II FILM AND THE ILLUSION OF REALITY: AN ANALYSISOF SELECTED MAJOR THEORISTS' VIEWS .......... 24

Introduction ............................... 24S u m m a r y ................................... 69

III A DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE CHOICESEMPLOYED IN ORDER TO DISSOCIATE A FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OF R E A L I T Y ..................... 77

Introduction ............................... 77

I m a g e ......................................

82Filmstock as Affecting the-Image . . . . 83Type of Films t o c k ................. 83Color Temperature of Filmstock . . . 84

Lens Effects as Affecting the Image . . 86Type of L e n s ....................... 86

Aperture as a Lensed Effect . . . . 89Depth-of-Field as a Lensed Effect . 91Filters as a Lensed Effect........ 93Special Effects Lenses for Lensed Effect . ....................... 98

Framing/Composition as Affecting Image . 102Off-Centered Framing/Composition . . 103

Oblique Framing/Composition . . . . 105 Mask Framing/Composition.......... 106Shooting Through a Mirror as a Method of Framing/Composition . . 108

Distance of View as Affecting the Image. 109 Angle of View as Affecting Image . . . . 109

Subject Angle of V i e w ............ 110Camera's Angle of Vi e w ............ 112

iv


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Page

Lighting as Affecting Image...............

114Type of L i g h t i n g ....................... 115Position of Lighting ................. 117Intensity of Lighting ................. 118Colored Lighting ..................... 118Special Effects Lighting ............ 119

Available Lighting ................... 120Special Effects as Affecting the Image . . 121

Change in Color Special Effects . . . . 122 Multiple Exposure Special Effects . . . 123

M o v e m e n t ........................................124Camera Movement ........................... 125

Panning Camera Movement ............... 125

Tilting Camera Movement...............

127Zooming Camera Movement ............... 128Hand-Held Camera Movement ............ 130Lens Movement of the Camera............. 131

Subject Movement ......................... 133Upward Motion of the S u b j e c t ...........134Downward Motion of the Subject . . . . 135

Movement Toward the Camera as CreatingSubject M o v e m e n t ..................... 136

Movement Away from the Camera asCreating Subject Movement .......... 137

Left-Right Motion of the Subject . . . 138Editing as Creating Movement ............. 138

Invisible Cutting.....................

140Jump C u t t i n g ........................... 142Rhythmic Cutting ..................... 143

Montage as an Editing Technique . . . . 143Long Take as an Editing Technique . . . 145Tonal Cutting............................146Insert Shot for Use in Editing . . . . 147

Movement as Created by Special Effects . . 148Fast and Slow Motion Special Effects . 148Dissolve Special Effects ............ 150

Multiple Dissolves as a Special Effect. 151 Dissolves to and from Red as a Special

E f f e c t ................................152

Freeze Framing Special Effects . . . . 154Sextet Framing Special Effects . . . . 155Flash Framing Special Effects ........ 156Reverse Motion Special Effects . . . . 157Rotating Multivision Five Lens with

Zoom as a Special E f f e c t ............. 158Superimposed Dissolve as a Special

E f f e c t ................................159

v


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Page

S o u n d ................................... 160Dialogue............................. 161

Synchronous Dialogue...............

162Sound E f f e c t s ...................... 163Parallel (Synchronous) SoundEffects 164Off-Screen (Asynchronous) Sound

E f f e c t s ........................ . 165 M u s i c ............................... 167

Commentative M u s i c .............. 168Contrapuntal Music ................. 168

IV A GLOSSARY OF CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES USED TODISSOCIATE A FILM FROM THE ILLUSION OFREALITY 170

V CONCLUSIONS ............................. 210

Film and the Illusion of Reality....... 210The Nature and Use ofCinematic Technique . 221The Creative Process ...................... 225

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 2 30

APPENDIX A TREATMENT ................................ 235

APPENDIX B SHOOTING SCRIPT .......................... 242

APPENDIX C SELECTED PAGES OF THE SHOT NOTEBOOK . . . 268

APPENDIX D LIST OF CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES..........

299 APPENDIX E LETTERS VALIDATING THE SCRIPT'SREALISM . 30 3

vi


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DESCRIPTION AND INFORMATION ON PROCURING

THE FILM 1A, 2A & 3A

The narrative of the film 1A, 2A & 3A involves the

successful suicide attempt of Isa, an attractive, married

woman in her early thirties. All scenes take place in and

around her two-story house. In the course of the narrative,

Isa will make three different kinds of attempts on her

life: suicide by overdose of pills, suicide by slashing

her wrist, and suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. The

last attempt is successful.

A print or videocassette of the film can be obtained

through Avery Fisher Center, Bobst Library, New York

University, Washington Square, New York, New York 10012.

vii


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CHAPTER I

1

INTRODUCTION

Context of the Problem

Film/ more than any other art form, depends upon a

mimetic illusion to gain its aesthetic effect. Using the

photographic image, it also employs movement and sound to

give us a startlingly realistic impression of the world-

out-there. So precise, in fact, is the moving picture's

ability to capture.this world, that the film medium creates

the illusion that we are actually perceiving reality.

Diverse film theorists emphasize film's unique

relationship to reality.1 Siegfried Kracauer, for example,

states:

Film renders visible what we did not, or perhaps even could not, see before its advent. It effectively assists us in discovering the

material world with its psychophysical corres pondences. We literally redeem this world from its dormant state, its state of virtual nonexistence, by endeavoring to experience through the camera.2

^e e Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Andrd* Bazin, What Is Cinema?,2 vols., trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. Ivor Montagu (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1970); and Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1973).

2Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 300.


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2

Andre Bazin observes that, while painters for two

thousand years have been trying to become more realistic by

creating the illusions of depth, perspective, texture, and

so on, the unique nature of film is that it starts with

reality as a given.^ Bazin and Kracauer believe that

film's basic power lies in its ability to capture reality

and that the filmmaker must firmly commit to, indeed

exploit, this power.

While no one would deny film's natural affinity with

reality, there are theorists, critics, and filmmakers who

are committed to an opposite view of film's power— finding

it in film's ability to manipulate reality so that it is

essentially altered or recreated. Susanne Langer, for one,

bases an entire theory of film on its dream qualities or

surreality. She states, "Cinema is 'like' dream in the

mode of its presentation. . . . "4 Rudolf Arnheim acknow

ledges the existence of film's partial illusion of reality,

but he theorizes that only by manipulating and altering the

facsimile, through form or technique, can film claim that

it is art.^

Whether or not one agrees with Arnheim and Langer, the

^Bazin, Vol. I, 12-13.

4Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Scribner, 1953), 412.

^Arnheim 34-44.


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3

fact is that many filmmakers have indeed attempted to

dissociate film from reality. But the problem for the

filmmaker, given film's basic representational nature, is

how to achieve these surrealistic ends. More to the point,

can such ends be achieved not through narrative story or

content, but through the manipulation of cinematic tech

nique alone? This was the challenge of this dissertation:

to create a film that attempts consistently to dissociate

itself from the illusion of reality through technique alone

and to describe and analyze the critical choices employed

in the filmmaking process to achieve such dissociation.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze

the creative strategies by which the filmmaker dissociated

film from the illusion of reality through the making of a

film and to record the filmmaking process.

Subproblems

1. To demonstrate on the basis of selected major

theoretical writings about the nature of film, film's

unique connection with reality.

2. To create a film (called 1A, 2A & 3A) that

attempts consistently to dissociate itself from the

illusion of reality through the manipulation of cinematic

technique alone.


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3. To record the steps, strategies and techniques

used to alter the film's relationship with reality.

4. To describe and analyze the critical choices

employed in the filmmaking process to dissociate the film

from the illusion of reality.

5. To adapt the findings of Subproblem 4 into a

glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future film

makers, educators, and responders.

Delimitations

1. The created film 1A, 2A & 3A is a film short,

thirty-eight minutes in length, not a feature film.

2. The created film achieves its dissociation from

reality solely through the use and manipulation of

cinematic techniques and not through the use of any

elements of subject matter, content, or plot that can be

termed unreal or surreal. In other words, in subject, the

film is a conventional narrative with a logical and

sequential plot. In this way, the filmmaker's strategies

would be isolated, examined, and finally interpreted as the

causes of the film's surreality.

3. The creative strategies and techniques recorded

and analyzed by the filmmaker are obviously restricted by

the form and content of this particular film.

4. The study of the creative process is limited to

the filmmaker's conscious creative strategies and choices


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5

employed in attempting to dissociate a film from reality

and does not encompass his unconscious thoughts and feel

ings or a search for the roots of these strategies and

choices in his personality or prior experiences.

Definitions

Cinematic technique refers to any aspect or element of the

cinema that is specific and intrinsic to the language,

grammar, or vocabulary of the film medium.6

Creative process refers to the creative artist's "process

of change, of development, of evolution, in the organiza

tion of subjective life."^ It involves both conscious and

unconscious processes, though in this study the emphasis

will be on the former.

Pre-shooting (synonymous with "pre-production") refers to

those activities of filmmaking which take place before

shooting, such as creation of the treatment and the

shooting script.8

Shooting (synonymous with "production") refers to the stage

of filmmaking which encompasses such activities as

6Adapted from Robert A. Armour, Film: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 22.

7Brewster Ghiselin, The Creative Process: A Symposium

(New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1952), 12.

8Adapted from Leo Trachtenberg, The Sponsor's Guide to Filmmaking (New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1978).


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directing and photographing the film, recording the sound

track, and developing and work-printing the raw stock.8

Post-shooting (synonymous with "post-production") refers to

activities "involved in the completion of a film after it

has been shot and work-printed.1,18 This stage of film-

making concerns such activities as editing the image and

soundtrack, producing special effects, mixing the sound,

and printing the final film.11

Surreal(ity) refers to the use of cinematic devices to

render action as unreal, fantastic, and/or drearn-1ike.^

It is not to be confused with surrealist art or surrealism

as a movement "which attempts to express unconscious

reality and which as a result seems irrational and meaning

less,"1^ though the end result of this filmmaker's

manipulation of reality may not be unrelated to the

surrealist aim. The conscious creation of surreality

presupposes meanings above and beyond the literal meaning

or sign of the object or the thing represented and

^Trachtenberg.

18John Mercer, Glossary of Film Terms (Houston:

University Film Association, 1969), 64.

^Trachtenberg.

1 2 Adapted from the term "realism" as defined in

Mercer, 68.

1^Mercer 82.


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presupposes a truth beyond the mimetic.^

Need for the Study

This research was significant in two chief respects,

one specific to film study and one general to all creative

process studies.

As to the study's contribution to film:

1. Film educators, artists, and viewers could gain

insight from the knowledge of how a filmmaker chose his

strategies and arrived at the various techniques that would

achieve his goals. Such film educators as David Stewart,15

Robert Wagner,16 John Katz,17 and Stuart Hall16 all note

the importance of understanding the techniques and

strategies of film in order to make response to film a more

critical and sophisticated process. Stuart Hall, for

•^Personal communication, Professor Robert S. Berlin, April 27, 1983.

•^David Stewart, ed., Film Study in Higher Education (Washington: American Council on Education, 19 66).

16Robert W. Wagner, introduction, The Education of the

Film-maker: An International View (Paris: The UNESCO Press, 1975).

17John Stuart Katz, ed., Perspectives on the Study of Film (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971).

16Stuart Hall, "Liberal Studies," Studies in the Teaching of Film within Formal Education: Four CoursesDescribed, ed. Paddy Whannel and Peter Harcourt TLondon:The Educational Department, British Film Institute, 1968).


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8

example, notes the value to film responders of studying

these techniques:

. . - one has to give the student some basic familiarity with the techniques available to the director. The film is an independent art with a language of its own, and the student needs to know what is [sic] vocabulary is in order to be at all articulate about his response to it. . . .19

Edward Fischer, teacher, writer, and director, echoes Hall:

[Understanding filmmaking technique] . . . makes

students aware not only of the what but also the how of a production. One can never be an effective critic without this double awareness.20

Finally, educator George Stoney, a writer, director, and

producer of documentary films, notes how the creative

efforts of non-specialists can be enhanced by understanding

the creative process of filmmakers:

. . . the use of film . . . is now so widespread

that a surprisingly large number of people in other professions already find themselves in positions where they need to know how to work with filmmakers. Doctors, social workers, journalists, psychologists, they are all trying to use film now, and most are making a bad job of it because they don't know how to begin to think in film terms.^1

2. This study attempted to aid in the understanding

of the relationship between theory and practice. Although

film's relationship to reality has been extensively

19Hall 14.

20Edward Fischer in Stewart 37.

2^George Stoney in Stewart 95.


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9

explored in the realm of theory, this researcher sought to

examine the ways in which theory might translate into the

actual filmmaking practice. For instance, the filmmaker

asked whether the photographic process itself inherently

linked film to a realist aesthetic— a question pointedly

raised by Arnheim. Or did the formal elements of film

detract from its essential representationalism— as noted by

Bazin. These theoretical issues, among others, were

explored in the actual making of the film 1A, 2A & 3A and

in the analysis of the filmmaker's creative process. The

filmmaker examined how film's theoretical link with reality

actually affected the making of a movie.

Understanding this connection between theory and

practice could aid other filmmakers. Jerry Toeplitz,

Director of the Polish Film Academy, argues, for example,

that "without theory an art cannot advance, and artists are

tied to tradition.1,22 of more importance, knowledge of

theory and its connection with film practice would increase

appreciation and understanding of the medium for film

responders. It is in this regard that film theorist Bela

Balazs makes an impassioned plea for a curriculum of theory

for the non-specialist:

Until there is a chapter on film art in every textbook on the history of art and on aesthetics

22 .Cited by C. Young m Stewart 125.


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10

. . . and a place in the curriculum of our secondary schools, we shall not have firmly established in the consciousness of our generation this most important artistic development of our century.23

3. The product of the research was not only the

creation of a film but a glossary of techniques and

strategies that any filmmaker might employ in attempting to

dissociate a film from the illusion of reality. The

imitation of reality has always been natural to film. What

is less natural but still possible is the creation of

surreality. This glossary was intended to aid filmmakers

in the achievement and researchers in the investigation of

this end.

This study also contributed to further understanding

of the creative process in general:

1. It added to the body of literature documenting how

creative strategies and decisions shape the progress of a

work. Artists, theorists, and critics alike, from a

variety of art forms, have emphasized the importance of

documenting the creative process. Brewster Ghiselin in his

pioneering work on the creative process, provides a very

practical reason for studying it: " . . . insight into the

processes or invention can increase the efficiency of

^Bela Balazs in Katz 46.


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11

almost any developed and active intelligence.1,24 Rudolf

Arnheim notes the usefulness of studying a writer's

worksheets to gain insight into how a work evolves toward

its final form.25 In effect, the filmmaker/researcher's

"shot notebook," documenting his creative strategies from

pre-shooting to post-shooting, corresponds to a writer's

worksheets. (Samples of these sheets may be found in

Appendix C.) More than thirty years after it was stated,

Ernst Kris' call for documentation of the creative process

still remains largely unanswered: " . . . the history of

intuitive insight waits to be written."2® It is hoped that

this dissertation would help to build the available

knowledge for future researchers of the creative process.

2. Other creative artists from a variety of art forms

would be able to compare their own method of work with that

of the filmmaker/researcher. It was hoped that such

comparison would lead to greater insight into their own

work.

3. This research and the actual creation of a work of

24Ghiselin 12.

2^Rudolf Arnheim, "Psychological Notes on the Poetical Process," in Rudolf Arnheim, D. A. Stauffer, Karl Shapiro, and W. H. Auden, Poets at Work (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948).

2®Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: Schocken Books, 1952), 23.


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12

art were of great benefit to the author's own development

as an artist. The analysis of and reflection on his own

creative process offered him an unusual opportunity to

enrich and expand his creative potential.

Methodology

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze

the creative strategies by which the filmmaker dissociated

film from the illusion of reality through the making of a

film and the recording of the filmmaking process.

The methodology for each subproblem follows below:

Subproblem It To demonstrate on the basis of selected major theoretical writings about the nature of film, film's unique connections with reality.

This subproblem was organized in the following fashion:

1. The major theoretical writings on film were

identified from such major film texts as Richard Dyer

MacCann's Film: A Montage of Theories;2? Gerald Mast and

Marshall Cohn's Film Theory and Criticism;28 Louis

Giannetti's Understanding Movies;2^ James Monaco's How to

27Richard Dyer MacCann, ed., Film: A Montage of

Theories (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1966).

28Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).

^^Louis Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982).


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13

Read a Film;3 >̂ Robert Eberwein's A Viewer1s Guide to Film

Theory and Criticism;31 Dudley Andrew's The Major Film

Theories; 32 an(j Andrew Tudor's Theories of Film. 33

2. The major theoretical writings that have been

published in English were examined by the researcher.

3. Of each major theoretical writing, such questions

as the following were asked:

a. How did each theorist define the essence of

cinema?

b. How did each film theorist view film's

connection with reality?

1) Did the theorist view film as essentially

an imitation or illusion of reality?

2) Did the theorist view film as recreating

or rearranging reality?

3) Did the theorist view film as an art form

that was independent of the real world?

onJUJames Monaco, How to Read a Film: The Art,

Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media {New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

3^-Robert T. Eberwein, A Viewer's Guide to Film Theory

and Criticism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1979) .

33j. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

33Andrew Tudor, Theories of Film (New York: Viking Press, 1974).


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14

c. How did each film theorist view surreality?

These questions were derived and adapted from key film

texts such as Giannetti's Understanding Movies and general

works on aesthetics such as Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics;

Problems in Philosophy of Criticism. E a c h question was

answered for each major theoretical writing and presented

in narrative form (see Chapter 2).

Subproblem 2: To create a film (called 1A, 2A & 3A)that attempted consistently to dissociate itself from the illusion of reality through the manipulation of cinematic technique alone.

The creation of a film, like that of any other work of

art, involves a series of necessary and often mechanical

steps. The framework of the basic stages of filmmaking is

as follows:

1. Pre-shooting

a. Creating the treatment

b. Creating the shooting script

2. Shooting

a. Directing and photographing the film

b. Recording the soundtrack

c. Developing and work-printing the raw stock

3^Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New-York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1959).


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3. Post-shooting

a. Editing the image and soundtrack

b. Producing special effects

c. Mixing the sound

d. Printing the final film

Subproblem 3; To record the steps, strategies, and techniques used to alter film's relationship with reality.

The filmmaker/researcher recorded his creative

decisions and procedures at three specific points during

the creation of the film, corresponding to the three

traditional, discrete stages of the filmmaking process:

pre-shooting, shooting, post-shooting (see Subproblem 2,

above). A working, ongoing "shot notebook" made such a

record possible and practical.

Pre-printed forms were made in order for the

researcher to annotate his decisions, strategies, and

intentions (see Appendix C). These forms, used for all

shots and every stage, were headed by the scene, shot(s),

stage of filmmaking, and the date in which that stage took

place. Space for notes was divided into the three

categories of cinematic techniques— image, movement, and

sound. Columns were reserved for the name of the

particular technique, comments about employment of that

technique, and the specific intentions that the filmmaker

had for employing it, i.e., the strategy.


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An easy reference system was arrived at by printing

the list of common cinematic techniques on the reverse side

of each form {see Appendix E). The techniques— divided

into the major categories of image, movement, and sound—

were derived by an analysis and synthesis of ten major film

textbooks: Ralph Stevenson and J. R. Debrix's The Cinema

as Art; R o y Huss and Norman Silverstein's The Film

Experience; Stanley J. Solomon's The Film I d e a ; 3*7 James

Monaco's How to Read a Film; Lewis Jacobs' The Movies as

og Medium; L o u i s Giannettx's Understanding Movies; Edward

Pincus' Guide to Filmmaking;39 Kenneth Roberts and Win

Sharpies' A Primer for Filmmaking; ^ and Leo Trachtenberg's

The Sponsor's Guide to Filmmaking.

The "shot notebook" was so arranged that each shot

35Ralph Stevenson and J. R. Debrix, The Cinema as Art,

2nd ed. (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1976).

Roy Huss and Norman Silverstein, The Film Experience: Elements of Motion Picture Art (New~York: Dell Publishing Company, 1968).

37stanley J- Solomon, The Film Idea (New York: Harcourt, Brace, JovanovichT Inc., I3T2T-

38Lewis Jacobs, The Movies As Medium (New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1970).

^^Edward Pincus, Guide to Filmmaking (New York: New American Library, 1972T"!

^Kenneth H. Roberts and Win Sharpies, Jr., A Primer for Film-making: A Complete Guide to 16mm and 35mm Film Production (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-MerrilT Co., Inc., 1982) .


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17

was given a cover page with the script's description of it

(see Appendix B). Three separate pre-printed forms

followed, one for each stage of filmmaking.

At the pre-shooting stage, the filmmaker noted his

plans for the techniques, strategies, and intended effect—

essentially his reasons for choosing the specific tech

niques he proposed. For example, the filmmaker reviewed

the shooting script a number of times, deciding on new or

changing existing techniques for individual shots.

At the shooting stage, the filmmaker returned to the

"shot notebook" and the pre-printed form to record what he

actually did and why he made such modifications as he did.

He recorded the problems that developed in transforming his

ideas into the photography and recording of sound for the

film. This permitted him to compare the changes from one

stage to the next when later analyzed.

At the post-shooting stage of filmmaking— for example,

in the laboratory work— the researcher again returned to

the "shot notebook" and recorded new ideas that could be

employed as well as revisions of already existing

strategies.

Subproblem 4; To describe and analyze the critical choices employed in the filmmaking

process to dissociate the film from the illusion of reality.

The analysis of the creative process involved a

comparison of the techniques, strategies, decisions,


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18

intentions and the changes in these techniques, strategies,

decisions, and intentions at the various stages of the

filmmaking process: pre-shooting, shooting, post-shooting.

The "shot notebook" was the chief source and record in

comparing the filmmaker's process at the various stages of

filmmaking. Arranged as the notebook was in terms of the

cinematic techniques and the three stages of filmmaking,

the analysis was structured in terms of these techniques

and stages.

The analysis was divided into three steps: a

"vertical” analysis, a "horizontal" analysis, and synthesis.

1. The first step was a "vertical" analysis of each

and every shot— that is, an analysis which traced each

cinematic technique through the three stages of the

filmmaking process. The researcher chose to focus on

outstanding techniques from the three stages of any given

shot. He did this in the shot order of the finished film.

This chronological scanning permitted the researcher to

relate the various techniques of one shot to the techniques

of surrounding shots.

Significant cinematic techniques were addressed with

such questions as the following:

a. What was the specific cinematic technique or

group of techniques used by the filmmaker to

dissociate the film from reality and to

achieve an intended effect?


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19

b. How was the technique used by the filmmaker to

dissociate the film from the illusion of

reality?

c. What problems, if any, did the filmmaker

encounter in the use of the technique from the

pre-shooting to the post-shooting stages?

d. What changes/strategies in the use of the

technique were required to solve these

problems from the pre-shooting to the post

shooting stages?

e. What effect did the use of the technique have

upon other techniques in the given shot or

series of shots?

f. What did the filmmaker perceive as the

relative success or failure of the technique

in the fulfillment of his intentions?

Each of these questions was answered for every

important technique or group of techniques used to achieve

a specific effect in a shot.

While the vertical analysis was carried out for every

shot in the film and for every critical cinematic technique

employed, it is not completely presented in Chapter III due

to its repetitive and highly technical nature. Instead,

the researcher combined selected portions of the vertical

analysis with the horizontal analysis (see synthesis


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20

section below). It should be noted that the vertical

analysis was a necessary preliminary step to performing the

horizontal analysis (see below).

2. The second step of analysis was a "horizontal"

analysis which viewed each cinematic technique across a

number of shots rather than within a given shot in the

film. Every cinematic technique that was employed to

dissociate the film from the illusion of reality was listed

in alphabetical order. The researcher then noted the

numerous individual shots which employed each technique.

The horizontal analysis involved the search for patterns or

generalizations among the answers to the questions posed in

the vertical analysis (see above) for each repeating

technique. For example, if all instances of the use of

key lighting were examined, such similarities or patterns

as the following might have been found:

a. Similar problems in using the technique to

dissociate the film from reality

b. Similar strategies/creative decisions to

effect the desired dissociation

c. Similar effects upon other techniques and upon

the filmmaker's intentions.

3. The third step of analysis was a "synthesis" in

which the findings of the vertical analysis were merged

with those of the horizontal analysis. Each technique


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21

employed by the filmmaker was treated in the order of the

list of cinematic techniques in Appendix E. It will be

recalled that these techniques were grouped into three

major categories and into various subcategories. The three

major categories were as follows:

a. Image: Techniques which altered the quality

of the photography without relying on any

facet of motion to accomplish their effect.

b. Movement: Techniques which altered any motion

on the screen.

c. Sound: Techniques which altered any sonic

aspect of the film.

This system made possible the comparison of similar

techniques with one another.

It should be noted that the synthesis section trans

lated into the actual description and analysis presented in

narrative form in Chapter III. From the creative process

decisions of the vertical analysis and the patterns or

generalizations arrived at in horizontal analysis, the

researcher was able to focus on the more prominent and

salientdissociative strategies and effects. Moreover, it

was throughthis synthesis that the researcher arrived at

his six general effects discussed at the outset of

Chapter III.

The synthesis also provided the necessary preliminary


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22

information to fulfill the requirements of Subproblem 5

(see below).

Subproblem 5: To adapt the findings of Subproblem 4into a glossary of cinematic techniques for use by future filmmakers, educators, and responders.

Prom the specific findings of the synthesis section of

Subproblem 4, the researcher was able to reach general

findings as to how each technique could be employed to

dissociate any film from the illusion of reality.

Originally conceived as a handbook, the specific nature of

the findings was felt to resemble a glossary of dissocia

tive cinematic techniques rather than a working or "how to"

guide for filmmaking. Essentially, this task was one in

which all references to the particular film created for

this dissertation were eliminated. The conclusions reached

in this section must be interpreted with extreme caution

because a particular cinematic technique does not have a

discrete meaning or produce an intended effect in isolation

from a battery of other techniques. (See Conclusions,

p. 210.) Moreover, a given technique does not acquire

meaning or effect in isolation from a given film. Never

theless, certain generalizations and inferences could be

conjectured on the basis of the filmmaker/researcher's

experience in this particular study.

The cinematic techniques were organized in the

glossary in alphabetical order for easy referencing by the


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23

reader. Each technique included a brief definition, a

brief discussion of how it could be employed by a filmmaker

to dissociate a film from reality, and, where applicable,

its relationship to, and specifically dissociative effects

on, other techniques.

The glossary of cinematic techniques is presented in

Chapter IV.


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CHAPTER II

FILM AND THE ILLUSION OF REALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED MAJOR

THEORISTS' VIEWS

Introduction

Film is not the only medium of communication dis

covered during the century spanning approximately 1830-

1930. The list of communicative media discovered during

this period is long, and includes the still photograph, the

record player, telephone, radio, telegraph, and the

lithograph. All these media, to use Marshall McLuhan's

term, are extensions of man's communicative nature and

attempt to replicate reality so that the respondent can

clearly understand what is being communicated. The chief

objective of these media was at least originally to render

reality in the most realistic way possible. It may, in

fact, be that the later of these media came into being

precisely because of their greater ability to reproduce

reality. For example, the telephone superseded the tele

graph's interpersonal function because it was more

realistic in its presentation of speech. Lithography was

an excellent medium for mass presentation of images, but

was superseded by other media which mass produced images

closer to our natural perception of reality.

Almost all film theorists acknowledge that film, too,


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25

attempts to reproduce reality and that film achieves this

end perhaps more precisely than any other art form.

However, to early theorists, this is less of an advantage

than a disadvantage. These theorists fight against the

insistent notion that film is a novel mechanical recording

device, and challenge the predominant view that cinema

tography is merely a scientifically based and engineered

invention that does nothing but form realistic-looking

pictures of the natural world. Such theorists, from Vachel

Lindsay to Christian Metz, stress the differences between

film as a mechanical and automatic visual recording device

and film as an art form in its own right. While film does

present a new astounding illusion of reality, it is also an

expressive medium, as creatively potent as any of the other

traditional arts but with an aesthetic all its own. Thus,

the majority of film theorists discussed in this chapter

present the differences between film and reality with the

purpose of elevating film to the status of an art form.

For practical purposes, the researcher will consider

such selected major English-language film theorists as

Lindsay and Metz chronologically. However, in the summary

to this chapter, he will treat these theorists more

generally, outlining their broad positions with respect to

various groupings and categories.

The American poet Vachel Lindsay wrote the first major


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26

work on the theory of film. He views cinema as a type of

aesthetic picture writing. Reality is only the raw

material used in the creation of these images.

Film depicts the real world; it forms a type of

"metaphoric window."^" But this viewing of the world is

artistically controlled to form an emotive effect. The

imitative "window-like" images of the medium are employed

to create a "metaphoric" impression. These abstractive or

metaphoric-like concepts are the basis of the viewer's

affective response. For example, Lindsay notes how, by

picking and choosing the particular images in the editing

process, the filmmaker raises his art from the simple

mimetic to the more complex arena of aesthetics.^

Film's ability to tell a story links it to the

narrative arts as well as to the graphic ones. This

implies that film uses a unique type of language-system.

Lindsay propounds that the " . . . invention of photography

is as great a step as was the beginning of picture writing

in the stone age."^

The analogy between film and language will become

familiar in this theoretical overview, and is later adopted

Rachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1970), 48.

^Lindsay 269.

■^Lindsay 199.


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27

by such theorists as Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Peter

Wollen, and Christian Metz. Filin's connection to reality

implies the ability to comprehend cinema that is beyond the

ordinary perception of reality. According to Lindsay, film

does not merely create an accurate illusion of nature but

transforms it into an aesthetic expression independent of

the real world.

As Lindsay sees it, an audience, aware of these

independent aspects of the medium, discovers that film has

an aesthetic nature which establishes it as a new

expressive art form:

The more fastidious photoplay audience that uses the hieroglyphic hypothesis in analyzing the film

before it, will acquire a new tolerance and understanding of the avalanche of photoplay conceptions. . . .4

Let us hope that our new picture-alphabets can take on richness and significance, as time goes on, without losing their literal values.5

Lindsay sees film as an aesthetic medium that at times

can be compared to a pre-defined coding system. The

photoplay is art with all the richness and depth that is

inherent in any art form. The chosen images of a film form

a "vocabulary" or a window of metaphors which create

meaning and affect from the original images: It transforms

4Lindsay 209.

•’Lindsay 211.


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28

those images into a new cinematographic message.

The Photoplay; A Psychological Study by Hugo

Miinsterberg— a well-known psychologist and scholar— offers

a remarkably cohesive theory of film, especially consider

ing the time it was published, namely 1916.® Like Lindsay,

Munsterberg asserts that reality is only the raw material

with which the artist starts. From here, the connection

between reality and film lessens, for the filmmaker can

create endless new imaginative images and "adjust events"^

to suit his aesthetic ends. The viewer is brought into or

faced with a totally new world with a fantasy and reality

all its own. In short, the filmmaker can recreate and

rearrange reality with the freedom only found in the mind.

In the photoplay our imagination is projected on the screen. . . . In short, it can act as our

imagination acts. It has the mobility of our ideas which are not controlled by the physical necessity of outer events but by the psychological laws for the association of ideas. In our

mind past and future become intertwined with the present. The photoplay obeys the laws of the mind rather than those of the outer world.8

Film does have a link to reality, but this connection

is only the beginning of the artistic process:

®Hugo Munsterberg, The Film: A Psychological Study (published in 1916 as The photoplay: ^Psychological Study;

New York: Dover Pub1ications, Inc., 1970).

^Munsterberg 74.

^Munsterberg 41.


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29

A work of art may and must start from something which awakens in us the interests of reality and which contains traits of reality, and to that extent it cannot avoid some imitation. But it

becomes art just in so far as it overcomes reality, stops imitating and leaves the imitated reality behind it.^

Thus, Mtlnsterberg offers his view that film is much

more than a mechanical invention which creates facsimiles

of reality. In fact, Mfinsterberg questions just how real

that illusion is, demonstrating that film inherently alters

reality— even in its mechanical reproduction. The pivotal

arguments on which Mtlnsterberg rests his case are

psychological premises that were new to their day and are

still enveloped in controversy. They encompass how we

perceive movement, space, and temporality in the cinema.

The first psychological property, concerning movement,

and today called the "phi-phenomena," involves the way in

which we see the motion in motion pictures. Most believe

that we perceive moving images because of the phenomenon

of "persistence of vision." In other words, the motion

picture "fools" our eyes because they cannot see the

momentary blackness on the screen while one frame replaces

another. It is this defect of our visual perception which

creates the illusion of motion. In opposition to the

prevalent view, Munsterberg proposed an explanation that we

9MGnsterberg 62.


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are participating in a mental act rather than an optical

i l l u s i o n . a s Dudley Andrew states: "This single, basic

mental capability was enough to let Munsterberg conceive of

the entire cinematic process as a mental process. Cinema,

for him, is the art of the mind. . . . " H

The second psychological property that Munsterberg

addresses is the perception of space and depth. Obviously,

he observes that in reality we see three-dimensional space

and depth whereas in cinema, we look at a two-dimensional

image. But Munsterberg holds that when the viewer watches

a film he does perceive space and depth, although that

perception comes from different factors than the real

world:

. . . flatness is an objective part of technical physical arrangements, but not a feature of that

which we really see in the performance of the photoplay. We are there in the midst of a three- dimensional world. . . .!2

The viewer knows he is not seeing real depth but he

willingly suspends his disbelief in a two-dimensional

imitation in order to imagine a three-dimensional world.

The theorist pointedly observed that in film we "have

reality with all its true dimensions; and yet it keeps the

^Munsterberg 29-30.

Hj. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction {New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 18.

l2MGnsterberg 22.


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31

fleeting, passing surface suggestion without true depth and fullness. . . ."13

Munsterberg identifies the third and last psychologi

cal property of cinema as involving an illusionary mental

process of filmic temporality manifested, for the most

part, in editing techniques. The ability of a viewer to

accept, understand, and be affected by a series of differ

ent moving images indicated to the theorist that indeed

some complex mental process is involved. Sometimes, shots

of seemingly discontinuous actions can be shown following

one another; yet, in a competently constructed film,

audiences will connect them and perceive meaning.

The objective world is molded by the interests of the mind. Events which are far distant from one

another so that we could not be physically

present at all of them at the same time are fusing in our field of vision, just as they are

brought together in our own consciousness.14

For Munsterberg, the imitation invites the recreation

of the illusion. He viewed the possibility of creating a

more technically realistic cinema with disapproval: "The

limitations of an art are in reality its strength and to

overstep its boundaries [i.e., create greater realism]

13Mlinsterberg 24.

•^Munsterberg 46.


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. . . we came to understand that the basic strength of cinema lies in montage, because with montage

it becomes possible both to break down and to reconstruct, and ultimately to remake the

material.18

Striving for an acceptable analogy, Kuleshov, like

Lindsay, equates the various juxtapositions of different

shots to the organization of language:

The shot is a sign, a letter for montage. Anychange from a normal point of view ought to beused by the director with an awareness of the

work of the shot as a sign.19

It must be noted, however, that Kuleshov thinks that any

type of cinematic language more closely resembles picture-

writing such as the Chinese ideogram than alphabetic

writing.

Kuleshov sees this manipulation or recreation of the

original imitative shots as the primary aesthetic of film.

He terms this process "creative geography."20 when two or

moreshots are edited together, " . . . the viewer himself

will complete the sequence and see that which is suggested

to him by montage. "2^

But this illusion of reality does reflect the real

world; film is not independent of its basis in nature.

Kuleshov 52.

I®Kuleshov 80.

2®Kuleshov 5.

2lKuleshov 54.


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Whereas Lindsay and Munsterberg look upon film as beginning

with an imitative illusion and transforming it into an

independently expressive aesthetic illusion, Kuleshov sees

film's link with reality as constant. Film, no matter how

manipulated or altered, must retain its connection to

reality, for this connection is one of its primary

attributes or elements:

The problem of art is to reflect reality, to

illuminate this reality with a particular idea, to prove something; . . . and one knows how to goabout it, that is, how to organize the materialof the art form.22

The theorist feels that film accomplishes this aesthetic

goal more completely than any other art form, especially by

way of its reorganization of reality through editing.

Vsevold Illarionovich Pudovkin reaches substantive

conclusions as to film's connection to reality. A student

of Lev Kuleshov, his theoretical stance resembles that of

his teacher. Pudovkin views editing or montage as the

essence of cinematic expression.

Pudovkin, like Kuleshov, begins by viewing film's "raw

material" as reality or, more specifically, photographed

reality. The filmmaker's task is to subjectivize that

imitation for his own artistic purpose. The author states

that "to show something as everyone sees it is to have

22Kuleshov 188.


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accomplished nothing."23 Pudovkin stresses cinema's

dissimilarity to the real world: "Between the natural

event and its appearance upon the screen, there is a marked

difference. It is exactly this difference that makes the

film an art.1,24

The illusion becomes different from its origin through

the process of editing, in order to form an expressive

impression. For example, the filmmaker selects or edits

particular views of reality:

By elimination of the points of interval the director endows the spectator with the energy preserved, he charges him, and thus the appearance assembled from a series of significant details is stronger in force of expression from the screen than is the appearance in a c t u a l i t y . 25

Creating the illusion begins before the editing stage.

The camera uses techniques which alter the imitation.

Pudovkin notes how certain techniques fundamentally change

even the shot's illusion of reality. For example, space is

altered by the lens:

[The camera] . . . view-angle is equal roughly to 45 degrees and, here already the director begins

23vsevold Illarionovich Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. Ivor Montagu (New York: Grove Press,Inc., 1970f, 91.

24pudovkin 86.

25pudovkin 94.


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36

to leave behind the normal apprehension of realspace.26

The angle in which the lens is placed before the subject

further manipulates reality in order to create meaning:

. . . set-up determines the expressiveness of the future image. . . . The selection of the camera set-up can intensify the expression of the image shot in many directions.27

Time can also be altered in the camera's recording

process. The speed of the camera forms new aesthetic

effects:

It is necessary to be able to exploit every possible speed of the camera, from the very highest, yielding on the screen exceptional slowness of movement, to the very least, resulting . . . in an incredible swiftness. Sometimes a very slight . . . walk of a human

being endows it with a weight and significance that could never be rendered by acting.28

Images, once photographed, are ready to be edited.

Here, just as with Kuleshov, Pudovkin sees that montage

allows for creative alteration that makes film an art.

. . . editing is the creative force of filmic reality, and . . . nature provides only the raw

material with which it works. That, precisely, is the relationship between reality and the film.29

The different shots of reality, already made

^Pudovkin 149.

2^Pudovkin 153-154.

2®Pudovkin 179.

29pudovkin 26.


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37

significant through camera techniques, now exist as a

"dissection into parts or e l e m e n t s . P u d o v k i n believes

that here, in the assemblage, those shots will cease all

relation to the mimetic role they once had with reality.

Like language, the parts form a new whole that can take on

entirely new meanings:

Just as in living speech, so, one may say, in editing: there is a word— the piece of exposed film, the image; a phrase— the combination of these pieces. Only by his editing methods can one judge a director's individuality. Just as each writer has his own individual style, so each film director has his own individual method of representation.31

Editing alone expressively alters both the spatial and

temporal aspects of the original imitative representation.-*2

Writing in the 1920's, Pudovkin was also aware of a

new dimension of cinema, namely sound. The addition of

sound— and more specifically, synchronous sound— would seem

to add to the realism of film. But Pudovkin argues that

sound can be recreated and altered to create aesthetic

effect unlike normal apprehension.

. . . sound is . . . much more significant than a slavish imitation of naturalism on these lines; the first function of sound is to augment the

potential expressiveness of the film's content.3*

3®Pudovkin 94.

-**-Pudovkin 100.

32Pudovkin 87-88.

3 3Pudovkin 183-184.


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39

from Kuleshov's emphasis.

Film captures the illusion of reality in the shot;

editing is a primary means of expressively altering or

recreating that imitative aspect:

Primo: photo-fragments of nature are recorded;Secundo: these fragments are combined in various

ways. Thus, the shot (or frame), and thus, montage.36

From this established theoretical stance, Eisenstein

is able to expand the notion of montage into the shot

within itself:

Conflict within the shot is potential montage, in the development of its intensity shattering the quadrilateral cage of the shot and exploding its conflict into montage impulses between the

montage pieces. As, in a zigzag of mimicry, the mise-en-sc&ne splashes out into a spatial zigzag with the same shattering.37

Eisenstein accepts the inherent imitation in photo

graphed reality. The shot certainly has a connection to

the real world, but this connection can be altered.

Whereas Kuleshov and Pudovkin see the individually

photographed shot as concretely linked to natural reality

not to be distorted or dissociated, Eisenstein sees it as a

transformable illusion.

Close-ups, moving camera shots, absolute dimensional variation of figures and objects on

36sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt,' Brace and World,Inc., 1949), 3.

37Eisenstein, Film Form, 38.


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the screen, and the other elements concerned with montage, are far more fundamentally bound up with

the expressive means of cinema and cinema perception than is involved in the task of merely facilitating the view of a face, or the "gettingover of a thought." . . .38

Although the cinematic illusion to some extent imitates

reality, it is expressive according to Eisenstein. The

creative freedom that is accepted in the editing, a given

among the Russian School, must be realized in the very

composition of the shot. Thus, Eisenstein expands the

principle of montage into the actual construction of the

photograph.

Film, to Eisenstein, has an aesthetic expression

unique among the arts: Cinema has "its own language,

its own speech, its own vocabulary, its own imagery. . . .

The new period of cinema attacks the question from within—

along the line of the methodology of purely cinematographic

expressiveness."^

Every aspect of film is expressive artistically. For

example, the role of the actor is malleable and, in its

effect, is metaphorically akin to montage.

We see this [acting] as not in the least different in principle from the montage process

in film: here is the same sharp concretizationof the theme being made perceptible through

38sergei Eisenstein, Film Essays and a Lecture, trans. Jay Leyda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 65.

39 Eisenstein, Film Essays and a Lecture, 33.


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determining details, the resulting effect of the juxtaposition of the details being the evocation

of the feeling itself.40

In photography, expressiveness develops the aesthetic

effect desired by the director. Eisenstein believed that

the camera, far from being a mechanically reproductive

machine, was a creative instrument.

This imagist treatment of representations is the most important task the cameraman has; in fulfilling it, he permeates all the minutest

details of the plastic solution of the film with the theme and his attitude to the theme.41

The introduction of color film seems to move toward greater

cinematic realism. But instead of welcoming the intro

duction of color film as increasing and almost insuring the

realistic illusion (as do his mimetic-oriented contempor

aries) , Eisenstein views color's expressive potential:

We want this new [color] screen to show us colours in organic unity with the image and theme, the content and the drama, the action and the music. Together with these, colour will be a

potent means of film impressiveness and film idiom.42

The physical editing of expressive shots creates new

aesthetic possibilities.

4®Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1975), 44.

4^Sergei Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director, trans. X. Danko, ed. R. Yurenez (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), 148.

42Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director, 118-119.


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. . . the juxtaposition of two separate shots by splicing them together resembles not so much a simple sum of one shot plus another shot— as it does a creation.43

Sound was a new technological development that seemed to

give greater realism to the cinema, but Eisenstein sees it

as a much more expressive element.

. . . co-ordination is far beyond that external synchronization that matches the boot with its creaking— we are speaking of a "hidden" inner synchronization in which the plastic and tonal elements will find complete f u s i o n . 44

Music interested Eisenstein more than any other acoustical

element, and he immersed himself in the formal properties

that could weld music to the image:

In matching music with the sequence, this general sensation is a decisive factor, for it is directly linked with the imagery perception of the music as well as of the pictures. This requires constant corrections and adjustments of the individual features to preserve the important general effect.45

It is clear that through every aspect and element of

cinema, there is enormous opportunity to alter, recreate,

and permeate the medium with expressivity. The illusion

created is aesthetically independent of the natural world.

The particular film an artist is working on dictates how

close the illusion of reality becomes:

43Eisenstein, The Film Sense, 7.




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The results fluctuate from exact naturalistic combinations of visual, interrelated experiences to complete alterations, arrangements unforeseen

by nature, and even to abstract formalism, with remnants of reality.46

To Eisenstein, then, film's link with reality is only

that it depends on the photographic origin of its images.

Cinema uses these facsimiles, but its art goes well beyond

them. Concepts, not physical reality, are the products of

film; film's mode of presentation serves only this end.

Whereas Eisenstein accepts realism's expressive

potential, Rudolf Arnheim ultimately denies realism's

import in the cinema. Arnheim, a German-born American

writing from the 19 30's, comes to the cinema from

psychology, as did Hugo Miinsterberg.

Arnheim stresses that film is the antithesis of a

gadget that records reality:

. . . the camera as an automatic recording machine must be made to realize that even in the simplest photographic reproduction of a perfectly simple object, a feeling for its nature is required _

which is quite beyond any mechanical operation.7

He sets out to establish that, far from being a "carbon

copy" of the natural world, film is intrinsically

unrealistic. While Arnheim acknowledges that film

originated as a mechanically representative instrument, he

4^Eisenstein, Film Form, 3-4.

47Rudolf Arnheim, Film As Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 11.


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seeks to expose the defects of the realistic illusion. He

asserts that these defects or unrealistic aspects of the

medium are what inevitably make film into an art. Whereas

Eisenstein accepts that film does have an expressive

relation to reality, Arnheim seeks to emphasize the ways in

which film is different from its mimetic relation to the

natural world. This stand places Arnheim as perhaps the

cinema's strongest proponent of the abstractive or surreal

film. For instance, he argues that:

The effect of film is neither absolutely two- dimensional nor absolutely three-dimensional, but something between. . . . The obliteration of the three-dimensional impression has as a second result a strong accentuation of perspective overlapping. . . . The result of all this is that sizes and shapes do not appear on the screen in their true proportions but distorted in

perspective.48

Another unreal element of film is the image, which, at that

time, was predominantly black and white:

. . . not only has a multicolored world been trans muted into a black-and-white world, but in the process all color values have changed their relations to one another: similarities presentthemselves which do not exist in the natural

world; things have the same color which in reality stand either in no direct color connection at all with each other or quite a different o n e . 4 9

For example, a person's skin can be the same shade of gray

^®Arnheim 12-14.

^^Arnheim 15.


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as the sky, or black rocks may have the same shade as a

brown tree trunk.

Arnheim's position enables him to accept every

distortion of the imitative photograph as potentially

fruitful artistic ground. Such techniques as camera speed

and motion,50 editing,51 lighting,52 and the frame itself53

have the ability to transform the mechanical representation

into a purely artistic illusion.If, Arnheim reasons, film is still considered realis

tic in spite of the multitude of facts contrary to this

notion, there must be some phenomenological explanation.

Arnheim rests his theoretical foundations on a precept

called "Partial Illusion."54

The theorist holds the belief that vision itself does

not produce a recording of reality but rather the sensory

raw material:

This discovery of the gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art, too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality

but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium.55

50Arnheim 181.

51Arnheim 132-133.

52Arnheim 15-16.

53Arnheim 16-18.

^Arnheim 15.

55Arnheim 3.


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Thus we can perceive objects and events [on film] as living and at the same time imaginary, as real

objects and as simple patterns of light on the projection screen; and it is this fact that makes film art possible.56

The image is only referentially related to the natural

world— the image being a partial illusion. Arnheim

believes that the unreal portion of the Partial Illusion is

the area of creative artistry.

Unlike the realists, Arnheim looked upon film's

mimesis as effectively weak enough to allow it to be

artistically manipulated: for example, unrealistic

perspective can easily be further altered; a subject's

movement through a quasi-real space can be manipulated

through camera speed and yet not seem absurd, etc. These

techniques or formal properties permit the partial illusion

to supersede the mimetic.

. . . the possibility of utilizing the differences between film and real life for the purpose of making formally significant images was realized. What had formerly been ignored or simply accepted was now intelligently developed, displayed, and made into a tool [i.e., through technique] to serve the desire for artistic creation. The object as such was no longer the first consideration. Its place in importance was taken by the

pictorial representation of its properties, the making apparent of an inherent idea, and so

forth.57

It was the partial nature of the cinematic image— its

56Arnheim 29.

57Arnheim 42.


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preexistent distortion— which gave free rein to the film

maker to employ technique to further dissociate the medium

from reality. The defects of the filmic illusion (two-

dimensionalism, lighting, framing, etc.) that Arnheim had

established were the very facets that made film an art form.

The creative power of the artist can only come into play where reality and the medium of representation do not c o i n c i d e . 58

The manipulation and formal alteration of film

relegates its aesthetic message to be independent of the

natural world. Arnheim, more than any other theorist,

emphasizes that independence. In later writing, Arnheim

predicted a total detachment from the photographic replica

tion. His radical stance regarding reality's role in this

type of film is apparent:

I would venture to predict that the film will be able to reach the heights of the other arts only

when it frees itself from the bonds of photographic reproduction and becomes a pure work of

man, namely, as animated cartoon or painting.59

According to Arnheim, the nature of film is clearly

surreal. The creation of meaning, by methods other than

through film's mimetic nature, holds for film its only

avenue of an independent aesthetic. Its eventual aim must

be to completely detach itself from this imitation and

58Arnheim 109-110.

59Arnheim 213.


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become autonomous in its aesthetic effect.

Bela Balazs, writing in Paris during the 1930's and

40's, lived in an intellectual milieu that, more or less,

had already accepted film as the Seventh Art; the battle

had been fought. But against all the theoretical proof

that film communicated its message through the non-mimetic

aspects of its image, there remained one paramount fact:

film creates the fullest impression of the natural world.

Rather than consistently deny this imitative aspect of the

medium, Balazs accepted it. To deny film's mimetic nature

and fight against photographic illusion was to weaken the

art form:

When a picture is no longer a copy of something and the image no longer evokes in us a reference to some object independent of it, which it represents and which might just as well have been

represented in some other way— if thus the picture appears to have an autonomous existence, a final reality, to be as it were self-contained, then it acquires that grotesquely immaterial lightness which makes even the most terrible happenings seem entirely harmless.60

The dichotomy between stylization and naturalness

presents Balazs with an ongoing problem of recognizing two

antithetical ends. Instead of concentrating on these two

polarities as divisive to the aesthetic of film, he

approaches them as being confluent to one another. But if

®®Bela Balazs, Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art, trans. Edith Bone (New York: Dover Pub1ications, Inc., 1970), 189.


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technique or stylization interferes with the reproductive

qualities of the art form, the aesthetic ramifications are

profoundly negative.

Balazs sees film's primary artistic attribute as

allowing the spectator to perceive reality cinematograph-

ically, and hence, as offering the viewer a new aesthetic

perception of reality. The theoretical emphasis is not,

like the Russians' view, to create a new and different

world— no matter how realistic or expressive; rather,

Balazs asserts that we are looking at our actual world in a

new and different manner. Even Kuleshov, the least

expressively oriented of the Russians, looked at film's

realism as a means of producing conceptual aesthetic

effects. Balazs, on the other hand, welcomes cinema as an

intrinsically reflective art form that makes possible a

unique phenomenological view of the natural world.

All other prior theorists treated photographic

replication as a more tangible and manipulable element of

film. Balazs, for the first time in film theory, begins to

touch upon a realist theoretical perspective that more

forcefully realizes film's objective, purely mechanical

reproductive tendencies as essential to the filmic

aesthetic. This new perception of reality's import in film

continues throughout the next thirty years and leads

Siegfried Kracauer to the most extreme realistic stance of


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all: the film aesthetic as almost completely linked to

mechanized representation, and this process is the artistic

heart of the medium. This aesthetic perception is affected

by two factors. First, the medium changes the way the

viewer experiences reality. A photograph of a boat differs

from actually seeing the boat; the cinema demands a new

condition of attendance. This is what Balazs calls

"physiognomies" by which he means that we are looking at

the face of man on the screen. Second, technique or

stylization contributes to this aesthetic perception.

Stylization affects the way the spectator experiences

cinematic reality.

Every technique has a particular manner of altering

cinematic reality. But unlike the surrealists, Balazs felt

that technique should enhance, not detract from that

illusion. Although stylization can alter or recreate

film's imitation of the real world, realism must permeate

every element of the work.

Balazs stresses, though, that the physiognomies of

objects and of the mise-en-scene are subordinate to the

physiognomy of the actor— of man himself; it is the face of

man that intrigues Balazs most. This cinematographic

"capturing" brings about a new and different relationship

between film and the viewer. The spectator is psychologi

cally able to "identify" with the characters on the screen:


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In the cinema the camera carries the spectator into the film picture itself. We are seeing

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Reality Into Film