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

THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART The work of the camera-man B. Volchek is of great importance because of his original resolution of the representational treatment of an historical film. In the picture " Boule-de-Suif " he does not confine himself to the unity of compositional treatment of the film. In regard to lighting and optical treatment, foreshortening and speeds, every image of the film has its own individual representational characteristic. From this aspect the picture " Boule-de-Suif " repays the most attentive study, as it is characteristic of the new tendencies in the Soviet camera-man's art. B. Volchek has not only been able to resolve the task of camera-man's construction of an historical film stylistically correctly, but has indicated new roads in regard to the camera-man's work on the actor's image. And this, in our view, is the most valuable quality of his work (Figs. 129-130). It is characteristic of the general growth of the ranks of camera-men that intensified attention is being paid to work on building up the theoretical bases of the camera-man's art. In 1934 a separate chair for the camera-man's craft was set up by the Supreme State Institute for Cinematography (V.G.I.K.). The most recent period in Soviet cinematography has been characteristic ! not only for the growth in camera-men's creative activity, but also for their considerable advance towards technical perfection. They are now mastering the most novel methods of filming technique. In this regard we must refer to N. Renkov's interesting work on the film " New Gulliver ". Renkov is perhaps the only camera-man who has successfully combined the qualities of a graphic artist with those of a brilliant technician with an exceptional gift for creative representation. The film " New Gulliver "is a genuine mine of technical inventions, and a true school for complex filming technique. Undoubtedly more than one generation of young camera-men will learn from the study of this film, which surpasses the finest achievements of western compositeshot puppet-film technique. Before bringing our very general and schematic survey to an end, we consider it necessary to emphasise once more the main tendencies in the development of Soviet camera-man's art. During the first period, to which belong the early works of Tisse, Golovnya, Moskvin and others, the development took chiefly the line of searching for new representational methods of linear construction of the shot. The new forms, which arose partly under the influence of the news-reel film, partly under that of Western cinematography, were in contradistinction to the frozen traditions of the pre-revolutionary school of camera-men. They were to a large extent constructivist tendencies, which not infrequently drove the camera-men to the other extreme, to formalistic absorption with self-sufficient linear-dimensional constructions. In isolated cases this formalistic absorption with constructivist constructions of the shot led to a severance between the functional task of the shot and its compositional resolution. From compositional constructivism, which was of positive importance in the sense of recognising the varied representational possibilities of linear-dimensional composition and the accumulation of technological experience, the camera-men passed to assimilation of the artistic legacy of pictorial art. And here also we had a temporary period of extreme over-estimation of the importance of pictorial art in the camera-man's art. On the basis of absorption with the formalistic problems of pictorial art, and especially of impressionist pictures, films were created in which individual shots presented finished perfect models of linear and lighting composition. But the films as a whole lost their compositional unity, and became a peculiar form of 210