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Since the Russians have earned for themselves the reputation of knowing more about cinema than any others of our time, it will repay us to consider their reasons, theoretical and otherwise, for neglecting a method which, it would seem, has nothing but a positive enlargement of scope to offer us ; which, indeed, to all appearances, contains something absolutely vital to the film.
Pudovkin, in his book, Film Technique, says: "When we wish to apprehend anything, we always begin with the general outlines, and then, by intensifying our examination to the highest degree, enrich the apprehension by an ever-increasing number of details." Proceeding from this, he goes on to explain how in the film we have to eliminate the effort involved in the normal advance from general to particular, and aim always directly at the emphatic point. This he refers to as an "elimination of the points of interval."
But such an account of the processes of apprehension and conscious observation is surely only partially valid. Perception, even when it apprehends detail, apprehends it against a background: the latter only penetrates to a minor degree, perhaps, but it is definitely there. It is this fact that the hammer-emphasis of the perpetual cross-cut close-up denies; and that the technique of the moving-camera, linking up point to point and giving us in the transition background as well as detail, reaffirms.
We are given to understand that the moving-camera shot is rejected because it tends too much to remind the spectator of the camera's presence. In actual fact, however, it only does so when abused (as, unhappily, it so often is) ; and in any case the argument is a weak one, for does not a procession of ingeniously strungtogether close-ups equally recall to the spectator the omnipresent hand of the editor? Either way, thorough-going naturalism is defeated. Such naturalism, constantly pursued by certain of the Russians though it be, is a Jack-A-Lantern which can never be captured.
The camera must make its own pattern, as Pudovkin has said. The only thing is, that unless we intend to deal with pure abstractions we must still retain the impression and a good deal of the form of recognizable reality. That is why I press the claims of the moving camera, and assert that the eternal unvaried stationary close-shot inevitably degrades itself, becomes bewildering and meaningless. Over-emphasis is as bad a fault as under-emphasis. The particular becomes significant only when thrown up in relief against the general, the relatively unimportant.
Practical objections to the moving camera are of a different type. They are based mainly on the great expense of the preparations frequently required ; and also no doubt partly on the marked misuse to which the method is subject in the West.
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