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

CREATIVE PROBLEMS OF THE ART OF THE CAMERA-MAN ertain style system, and the direct adoption of the position of the impressionist chool. The camera-man impressionist who concentrates all his attention on pictorial ight and air effects, and throws all his creative energy into the search for new xpressive lighting methods, transforming the lighting treatment of the shot into l creative end in itself, ipso facto entirely surrenders to the school of formalistic nvestigators, and excludes from his work the ' living spirit ' of all creation, its dea. He loses organic unity with the director, he ceases to be interested in the deological viewpoint of the scenario, and is locked in the circle of formal and echnical problems of artistic photography. Not infrequently he achieves genuine >erfection in the realm of light and shade, and astonishes us with examples of exceptional formal craftsmanship, but at the same time those very examples may erve as models of an intrinsic lack of idea. However, impressionism cannot be considered only from the aspect of the epresentational methods specific to the artists of this tendency. Impressionism irose in pictorial art as a tendency distinguished primarily by its philosophic ittitude. Though we cannot accept the philosophy of impressionism, we certainly do lot think of rejecting the rich arsenal of expressive resources provided by that >chool. Thus exploited, an impressionist method ceases to be ' impressionist ', ind acquires a different functional tendency and a different character. In the film " The Battleship Potemkin " is a scene in which the morning Tiists are depicted in soft focus transmission and soft semi-tones, washed contours, and especial accentuation of the aerial perspective, i.e. in a manner entirely :haracteristic of the impressionist artists' methods. Does that mean that Tisse violated the stylistic integrity of " Potemkin " by changing his manner of filming for this scene ? Or perhaps these shots justify one in claiming Tisse as a perfect impressionist ! Tisse has not a trace of impressionism in his make-up, in the sense of philosophic outlook. Only a superficial estimate of his work, based on formalistic analysis of superficial methods, without taking their functional motivation into account, would allow such a superficial deduction. A critical exploitation and mastery, in a new ideological and philosophic context, of the representational experience of old pictorial art is perfectly legitimate to the camera-man. A representational method of itself cannot have any absolute significance established once for all, even though it arise as the expression of a definite philosophy. To conceive the old method anew in the light of a new style system involves giving it a different sense and different significance. It is this critical mastery and assimilation of pictorial experience that constitutes the task of exploiting the legacy of pictorial art in cinema. Finally, one more point concerning the individual manner of work of the camera-man artist. There is a single style of Soviet art, the style of socialist realism. But it by no means follows that a correct method of artistic representation of reality presupposes only one definite creative manner, obligatory upon all artists without exception. When A. Golovnya and E. Tisse, working in the genres of revolutionary emotion, applied the methods of news-reel filming, raising those methods to the height of artistic generalisation, that did not mean that the representational treatment of " Potemkin " or " The Deserter " had to become the sole determining manner of work for all Soviet camera-men. Working on a given genre, every camera-man must preserve his own appropriate creative features, his individual manner of shooting. And this by no 223