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PURE CINEMATOGRAPH Y 157
into a separatist art-for-art's-sake toying with mere form and ceased to exercise the fructifying influence it had at one time possessed and which manifested itself, for instance, in inspiring and developing to an important art form in its own right such things as documentaries and 'films without a hero'. It was carried away by the undertow of the decadent formalism of an expressionism by now grown quite divorced from reality and it ended up in the blind alley of the 'subjectless' 'absolute film' style. The possibilities of the means now determined the ends, and the formal intentions the contents. This trend, consistently followed, leads to the final logical conclusion of a form giving itself its own content, of words devised to designate not things but merely other words; that is, to frustration and emptiness.
I intentionally devote more attention to these trends than would be justified by their prevalence; for the film industry of the world produced a very small percentage of avantgardiste, 'absolute' films and they in fact remained curiosities limited to the screens of Paris, London or Berlin, and were appreciated only by small coteries of specialists, theorists and intellectual snobs.
Nevertheless their importance should not be underrated. Firstly because they were extremely productive experimental stages in a process of artistic form-seeking. Secondly because the contemporary film directors, while not themselves inclined to make pure-style avantgardiste films, very often made use of novel forms evolved by those who did. The ultimate development of the silent film can scarcely be explained without pointing to avantgardiste influences in it. Many later very successful and popular directors passed through the avantgardiste school and carried the visual culture developed there into their commercially-produced films. It was precisely this visual training which enabled such directors to make their films so alluring and popular. An example of this is Rene Clair.
Another viewpoint must however also be emphasized here. This book is intended as an investigation of the form-giving laws governing a new art, not as a Baedeker-like classification and evaluation of works of art. What is important in the first place is not how perfect a work of art as a work of art may be, but how instructive it is from the point of view of