The cinema as a graphic art : on a theory of representation in the cinema (1959)

THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART his representational treatment. We could give several examples illustrating how the creative principles of various camera-men's work reveal this decisive influence, not infrequently to the extent of being in sharp antagonism to the main standpoint expressed in the scenario. The camera-man's starting-point in deciding upon the representational treatment is the content of the scenario. As a literary production the scenario has its own specific form of construction, and in particular its own method of setting out the material. This literary exposition gives a temporal development of the material, which in every case is built up on specific laws. In graphic arts the material is given only spatial development. Consequently, so far as these arts are concerned we can speak only of spatial representational composition. But the cinema is a synthetic art, and in it the material is developed, in its various elements, temporally, as well as spatially in representational form. The various representational elements in cinematographic production are bound up in the development of the film scenario ; the scenario scheme predetermines the specific disposition of the various representational elements of the film, the specific principle governing the expressive construction in space and time. Editing is the method of creative unification of the film's representational elements, and consists of the organisation of the shots in such a way as to reduce the shot system to a general thematic and compositional unity. It has its own laws of compositional construction, rhythm, and methods of influencing the picture. We must point out that there is an essential difference between the simple assembly of film shots and their editing as a method of creative unification of the film. Accordingly, a film scenario provides both the scheme dictated by the theme of the material, and the scheme dictated by the editing methods which are to be adopted. In addition it can include sound and music elements. All these factors go to make up the film as an integral creative whole. The compositional scheme laid down in the scenario predetermines the task of each representational element, and thus determines the character of its compositional construction. In the course of working over the scenario content the camera-man plans how to give expression to the intention of each episode, each scene. The raw material for the film, the scenario, is analysed, and this process gives birth to those basic * pictures ' which are afterwards realised by the camera-man as concrete images, the pictures of the celluloid film. We will now briefly analyse the process of carrying out the representational treatment of the film, within the limits of the scheme dictated by the specific conditions of film production. Having to achieve the effect postulated by the scenario, the camera-man breaks up the given theme into a series of pictorial representations. Each of them deals with phenomena and objects which, when thrown on to the screen, act on our perception in a definite association and logical sequence. In the theatre this perception of the spectacle is achieved directly, but in the cinema it is achieved by the accumulation and juxtaposition of the desiderated associations in the spectator's mind, evoking in him a certain idea of the relations existing between the screened objects.1 When producing a play on the stage the producer has to work 1 In cinematic production the manifestation and juxtaposition of associations are achieved in the course of editing, which thus constitutes one of the specific peculiarities of the cinema as an art. — N. 18