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

THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART So that in American cinematography, with the exception of a few isolatec cases, the camera-man is outside the creative process of work on the film and i< a passive executant of the director's will. A similar situation prevails in present day European cinematography, although here isolated exceptions from tht general system are more frequently to be found. In bourgeois cinematography the camera-man's work is customarily understood as the technical process of bringing a scene to the screen with the aid o: photography and cinematographic technique. Such an understanding is natura to the bourgeois cinema, built for output, for there the only creative elemeni in realising the film task is the directorial construction of the picture, which has no connection with the camera-man's activity in carrying through the representational treatment of the given work. Certainly in this case the camera-man's share consists only in photographically fixing the scene being taken. In such a situation the camera-man is placed outside creative art, for his potentialities are regarded only as a technical resource. But as soon as we attempt to consider the technical resources of cinematography from the angle of the expressive functions they fulfil, the fundamental viciousness of the bourgeois cinema system becomes fully apparent. In the production process of the bourgeois cinema the camera-man is not, as a rule, an independent worker, and is not creatively associated with the director. The entire sum of artistic elements and the creative conception in the making of the film are allotted to the director, while the camera-man remains a voiceless executant of the director's will, which holds sway even over the technical sides of film making. The camera-man's work is estimated solely according to the criterion of successful or unsuccessful photography. Even though we do occasionally meet in bourgeois cinema with a combination in which the work of the director and the camera-man are of equal value in their craftsmanship, none the less we never see them creatively associated by a joint standpoint in the making of an artistic production. In the majority of cases the camera-man of the bourgeois cinema has only a superficial idea of the ideological approach, and of the editing formulation of the film being taken. He makes no investigation into the directorial construction of the picture, is deprived of a general perspective, and is restricted to a formal treatment of the various shots, having no connection with the general scheme and the scenario task. Mechanically fixing the scene taking place before, the lens, he is guided in his work by certain ' inviolable ' laws of composition and lighting, borrowed in the best case from pictorial art, and in the worst from socalled art salon photography. Naturally, the estimate of his work primarily takes i the line of his craftsmanship in portraiture and pictorial constructions, and not) that of his expressive formulation of the scenario task in the shot. Even in the leading country of bourgeois cinematography, America, despite all his qualities the camera-man remains a technical executant, invited to participate only for the shooting period, while the full, authoritative hegemony remains with the director. What is the cause of this isolation from the creative processes of making a film ? What is the reason for his reduction to the level of a passive camera technician ? Logically the reason is primarily that in the process of its development the creative organism of the bourgeois cinema was built up by mechanically borrowing structural elements of previously existing arts, and especially those of the theatre. The methodology of bourgeois cinema production could not decide upon the role and place of the camera-man in the creative process, and, rejecting the principle of the organically welded creative group, was forced to 184