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

CREATIVE PROBLEMS OF THE ART OF THE CAMERA-MAN f the news-reel reporter, and combined them with the craftsmanship of the amera-man artist. In the film " Strike ", which effected a genuine revolution and lade a breach in the then far from outlived production traditions of the precautionary cinema, he representationally revealed the features of the distinctive -end which entered Soviet cinematography with that film (Fig. 106). This trend confronted story-film cinema for the first time with the demand )r a high level of representational culture. It sought new viewpoints, it sought xpressive foreshortenings, it exploited dissolves and multiple exposures for the rganic expression of the scenario task. And all these lines of discovery are lseparably associated with the work of E. Tisse. Liberation from the. self-contained bounds of the theatricalised interior, and n understanding of the shot as an inseparable element of editing, were the new eatures which this trend introduced into the camera-man's art. The second film made by Eisenstein and Tisse, " The Battleship Potemkin ", ras a brilliant example of accomplished unity in the creative attitudes of the irector and camera-man, and here the results of the first creative researches evealed in " Strike " were consolidated (Figs. 107-109). We cannot stop to analyse the compositional principles underlying the contructions of all Tisse-Eisenstein's work. But it is necessary to note certain eatures which characterised the creative role of the camera-man in making these vorks. In " The Battleship Potemkin " the chief emphasis was laid on the construction •f linear composition, but in " The General Line " 1 (Fig. no), and especially in Fig. i 10.— Shot from the film "The General Line" (Eduard Tisse, cam.). 1 Called " The Old and the New " in the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A.— Ed. 191