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

THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART Thus the conception shot editing is not to be regarded as implying a simple mechanical assembly of shots into a picture. In reality the two compositional elements, shot composition and editing composition, must interact and interpenetrate, with editing composition taking the leading part. Mechanical disintegration always involves an erroneous understanding of the entire system of the cinematic construction of a picture.1 Having reached a correct understanding of shot editing as the inseparable unity of two compositional elements in interaction, we can now determine the ; difference in principle between the method of constructing a cinematic shot and that of constructing a static art-photograph. The art-photograph presupposes the presence of a principle of compositional building up of the image in which its aggregate of representational elements expresses a whole finished picture and the whole idea to be achieved. The cinema shot is built up on an organisation of the representational elements in which the shot fulfils primarily only the single function which the director has assigned to it. Of course, the image in any single shot has its own ideological and art content. The failure to understand this characterised the ' mechanistic ' deviation in the Soviet cinema, the theorists of which deviation almost entirely rejected any significance for the single shot and placed all the emphasis on editing. The representation in a single shot was regarded as a ' primal element,' as something neutral, void of any ideological content in itself. But we reject this idea in favour of our principle of the inter-influence and inter-penetration of the single shot and the edited picture, and consider that the developed and finished form of the picture is achieved only by the compositional editing of a number of shots as planned to that end in the scenario. Obviously, the question whether the representation itself is static or dynamic is without importance in principle in regard to this issue, as in isolated instances it is possible to construct an art-photograph with the resources of ' moving ' photography, in other words, by means of cinematic technique. A consideration of the elements of compositional editing in their indivisible unity will help us to understand the processes of shot composition without resorting to the metaphysical division into ' spatial ' and ' temporal ' composition ; for the functions of space and time in the shot are equally the functions of space and time in the edited film, and every shot has a functional value in the editing system. 1 The declaration of the ' Kino-Eye ' group is a characteristic example of failure to comprehend the essence of the process of constructing a cinematic picture. Vertov writes : " I am the ' kino-eye,' From one I take hands, the strongest and most skilful, From another I take legs, the most beautifully proportioned and fleetest, From a third a head, the most beautiful and expressive, And by montage (editing) I create a new, perfect man." (Lef, No. 3, 1923, p. 140.) "... The members and organs of a living body," says Hegel, " have to be considered not merely as its parts, since they represent something which they achieve only in their unity, and are not at all indifferent to that unity. Those members and organs become simple parts only under the hands of an anatomist. But then, he has to do not with living bodies, but with corpses." (Hegel, Encyclopedia, Vol. 1.) As an illustration of the conception of organic unity which exists in the cognising process, Hegel's remarks are perfectly applicable to the problems of film editing. Only in highly exceptional cases can we take shots without regard to the general guiding conception of the picture, and still obtain such a conjunction of expressive elements as will enable us in the course of editing, to achieve a distant approximation to a creative picture instead of a mechanical imitation of one. — N. 24