Theory of film : the redemption of physical reality (1960)

192 III. COMPOSITION Conclusions It appears, then, that the experimental film makers, whether favoring rhythmical abstractions or surrealistic projections of inner reality, approach the cinema with conceptions which alienate it from nature in the raw, the fountainhead of its peculiar power. Their formative aspirations gravitate toward achievements in the spirit of modern painting or literature— a preference for independent creativity which smothers their concern with camera explorations, their curiosity about reality at large. Liberating film from the tyranny of the story, they subject it to that of traditional art. In fact, they extend art into the cinema. "Help the development of film as a fine art form . . . ," reads a 1957 leaflet of the New York Creative Film Foundation. But the artist's freedom is the film maker's constraint. One does well to remember, though, that the avant-gardes experiments in cinematic language, rhythmical editing, and the representation of near-unconscious processes greatly benefited film in general. Nor should it be forgotten that, like Bunuel, many an avant-garde artist became realistic-minded and outward-bound; Joris Ivens and Cavalcanti, for instance, turned to social documentary.38