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THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART
CHAPTER ONE THE COMPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE SHOT
1. PICTORIAL TREATMENT IN FILM
EVERY art product, independently of the application of the means of expression specific to the given art, is a special form of imaginal, concretely sensuous perception and modification of objective reality : inevitably, we may add, an expression of social ideology.
In all the forms of its creative manifestation artistic reality is not a simple documentary reflection of the phenomena of reality. On the basis of the perceptions experienced by the artist in the process of his reaction to his environment, on the basis of his social experience, he obtains an idea of the subject of the art-product, and this is transformed to a concrete image, reproduced in this form by the artist with the means of expression proper to the given artform.
The art-image does not exist in physical form apart from the subjective treatment by the artist, and hence cannot be other than a reflection of his social perception and comprehension of the laws governing reality.
As the treatment of the art-image is determined by the artist's social tendency, that tendency in turn determines the tendency and character of the spectator's conception of reality as reflected in the given art-product.
The achieving of the subjective treatment of an art-product desiderates on the artist's part the discovery and mastery of the specific means of expression peculiar to the given art. This is followed by the technical fixing of the artimage with the aid of the expressive technique thus acquired.
Take pictorial art as an example. The achieving of the pictorial image is the incarnation of the picture-idea of the subject by means of the construction and conjunction of lines, colours, masses, perspectives, forming a unified composition. But in pictorial art we have the most individual and self-complete form of production of the artimage, inasmuch as all the means of creative construction and technical expression of the conceived image are concentrated in the hands of one artist. The theatre provides a different, contrasting and complex example. Here the creative function is differentiated among playwright,1 producer,2 actor and
1 In the cinema the corresponding dramaturgist is the scenarist. (Or sometimes * Screen play author,' the term ' scenarist ' then being restricted to the technician who, aiding, or — in Western practice — sometimes in place of, the film director, re-writes the author's treatment in shot-script form). — Ed.
2 In cinema, the director. — Ed.
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