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from the fundamental properties of the film, and not from the technical concomitants of film production, that is, silver marks on celluloid.
With the second problem of film theory, manipulation, this paper is not primarily concerned. However, since in practice our knowledge of film material is derived from our knowledge of the film as such, some reference to manipulation is advisable.
The practical importance of the camera and of the technical processes of kinematography have had an unfortunate restraining effect on the film theorist. " The camera as a means of expression " is more a problem of practice than of theory, and is certainly no more fundamental than the neglected " Chemistry as a means of expression," a chapter heading not to be found in any book on the cinema to date. The technical method by which visual impressions are given to the audience is irrelevant to the fundamental nature of the film. Visual impressions might be given by banks of light sources like sky signs or, some day, by impulses applied directly to the optic nerves, the result would still be a film. The practice of projecting an ordered series of still pictures comes from the physiological fact of the persistence of vision and the commercial fact of photography, not from any fundamental necessity in the film itself. Even if there were no cameras the film could, and did, exist. The appalling labour required to produce a film by any other process does not alter the fact that photography is primarily a convenience. The only property of the camera and microphone of importance to theory is that they can, after a fashion, reproduce what is roughly described as " natural events." The effect of this property on certain types of film material will be considered later.
The only achievements of film theory, which cannot be shaken by technical developments are also those which are independent of the origin of the material considered. Unfortunately these achievements can be summed up very shortly. First the fact, made explicit by Vertoff, that visual events are the raw material of the film, the intellectual significance of the film being governed by the spatio-temporal relations* of the ordered material. Second Eisenstein's amendment, that the spatio-temporal relations are re-modified by the content, visual and intellectual, of the material ; and that there is a superimposed hierarchy of types of relations of increasing intellectual content (in his notation, Tonal and Overtonal Montage), which are of as great importance as, if not greater than, the original chronometerfootrule relations.
It will be clear from what has been said that the film is not the same as its material. A row of soldiers is a row, not soldiers, though it cannot exist without the soldiers. A film is not a collection of shots, though they are necessary for its existence. It is the relations of an ordered arrangement of shots, the relations of these relations, and so on, that is the film. Cuts,
* I use the word relations in preference to the more popular metric, because it has the required meaning, and the word metric has a definite mathematical use and no other. The mental association of the popular word with footrules has resulted in some rather dubious technique.
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