Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory
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Transcript of Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory
92
CHAPTER III. IMPRESSIONIST FILM THEORY
Just as the period 1913-1925 saw a change in
•'rench intellectuals* and artists' attitude toward film,
so did roughly the same years see the rise of a new theo
retical perspective on the cinema. It is important that
;his perspective was generated, promulgated, and shared
:>y virtually the same people who initiated and sustained
x coherent film culture and who made a stylistically
icmogeneous set of films; that is, a distinct theory of
film is an aspect of what I am designating as the Impres
sionist movement.
Impressionist theory is pot the specialist's
ideal of theory-building. Nowhere can one find a sustain
ed, rigorously mounted theoretical argument. Most Impres
sionist theory exists in two forms; scattered unsupported
pronouncements on film aesthetics and implicit assumptions
inderlying critical, historical, or polemical writings.
Worse, the Impressionist writers betray little acquaintance
with systematic philosophizing. Like many avant-garde move
ments, Impressionism had specific polemical and artistic
goals, and these goals often tempted the writers to sub
stitute slogans for earned positions. The result is a
rough-and-ready assemblage of unacknowledged assumptions,
casual opin< 5, and fragmentary aesthetic claims.
Nevertheless, a set of broad theoretical assumptions
pervade the movement's journal essays and public lecturer a*
This chapter will systematize and analyze Impressionist
theoretical assumptions in an effort to reveal the under
lying position. Rather than treat each major writer in
an atomistic fashion, I shall outline the fundamental
tenets of the theory by drawing on various writers; this
will permit a clearer view of the shared position of
the members_of the movement. Finally, it should be noted
that Impressionist film theory frequently oscillates be
tween descriptive and normative assumptions; as we would
expect in an avant-garde movement, the theory holds not
only that film's nature is of a certain kind but also
that given films should be a certain way. Like some othe
aesthetic theories, Impressionism slides from assuming
that it is describing conditions which obtain for all '
art to assuming that it is setting, standards which apply
to good art. I shall note such shifts from a descriptive
to an evaluative attitude where the shifts are important
for understanding the theory's scope. i i
There are four principal propositions upon whi<v
Impressionist theory rests, dealing with the definition
of art, the relation of film to traditional arts, the na
of the film image, and the nature of filmic construction;
I shall discuss these in
) i >
qu
urn and shall conclude with a general evaluation of the
heory.
The Nature of Art
Although the Impressionists ' t ies to t rad i t iona l
esthetics are rarely avowed, a c-lear aesthetic underlies
heir position. Broadly speaking, Impressionist film
heory holds that art is expression. Like Romantic
heories, the Impressionists assume that ar t resides in
he transformation of nature by the imagination and that
.rt yields not discursive truth but an experiential t ruth
nchored in feelings. This concept of art as expression
s extended to apply to the cinema.
Several remarks scattered throughout Impressionist
i r i t ing suggests that a r t i s seen as the imaginative trans^
'ormation of nature. "Certainement, le cinSma part de
.a nature, comme tous les a r t s , " writes Delluc. "Et comme
,ous les ar ts i l doit in terpre ter la nature et la s t y l i s e r
?t l a recreer sous un angle visuel nouveau."1 Jean Epstein 's
writing on literary aesthetics t e s t i f i e s to a similar
Insistence on art as deviation from rea l i ty . 2 Canudo
i tates the same assumption more clear ly: "La peinture ne
•eproduit pas la nature, mais e l l e la compose avec un
' a r t i -p r i s . "3 Similarly, Marcel Defosse defines ar t as
"1"interpretation de la nature par 1'intelligence et %la
s ens ib i l i t e humaines au moyen de techniques spSciales. "•'
In such a view, the transforming power of the a r t i s t ' s it:.
gination becomes central , as Paul Ramain suggests in see:
a r t as "renforcee par un temperament: celui du fabriquant
(peint re , po6te, musicieh, cin£aste)."5 Canudo points oi
that in painting the graphic design is harmonised by a
principle unique to the pa in ter .° Expression is explici t
noted as the operative concept in a r t i s t i c creation, as
when Canudo praises the expressiveness of American oinemc Q
and Ramain calls art nl'expression, vivante idealises."0
Although art is not equipped to copy reality faithfully
and yield discursive knowledge, it does yield a feeling-
ful truty. "Au cinema," writes Canudo, "ainsi que dans ".
domaines de Vesprit, l'art consiste a suggerer des emo
tions, et -non a rSlater des faits. . . . Seuls quelques
ecranistes ont compris que la verit^ cinematographique
doit corresponds & la vSrite litteraire, - la v&rite
picturale."9 Epstein likewise praises the nondiscursive
component of cinema: "Bien mieux qu'une id§e, c'est un
sentiment que le cinS apporte au monde."10
Canudo's mention of "suggestion" hints that Imp
sionist film theory's own variant of the ar.t-as-expressi
96
)sition resembles the late Symbolist aesthetic of Mallar-
5, which stresses the art work's capacities for "evocation,
Llusion, suggestion," and holds that "to create is to
mceive an object inits fleeting moment, in its absence."11
le idea of art's truth as suggested, evoked, glimpsed
Leetihgly or obliquely is emphasized at several points in
npressionist writing. "Nous rassemblerons l'energie de
)us nos arts qui tendent a cet etat tres vaste d'Svoca-
.ons et de suggestions indefinees. . ." writes Canudo in
le essay, and in another, "L'art n'est pas le spectacle
i quelques faits rSels; il est 1'evocation des sentiments
li envelopment les faits."12 Similarly, Michel .Goreloff
;ates it as a fundamental normative premise that "L'im-
;e'doit ne pas seulement montrer quelque chose, mais
issi, suggSrer."1^ Most explicit is Jean Epstein's
sthetic of "approximation" and "the indefinite," which
institutes his grounds for claiming that both litera-
re and film are based on suggestiveness and implica-
>n.1/' In La. Poesie d'Auiourd'hui. Epstein emphasizes
e fleeting impression, the oblique metaphor, and process
consciousness: "L'auteur moderne ne voit pas un fait
is son propre Stat intellectuel a propos de ce fait, le
tentissement intellectuel de ce fait."15 By this theory,
en, film, like other arts, does not propose abstract
nceptual sys<-~-is but rather evokes or suggests fleeting
97
feelings.
This entire conception of art evidently owes a
good deal to the Symbolist movement in French poetry.
The insistence on the artist's transformation of nature,
the stress on feeling, and the role of suggestiveness
testify to Impressionism's debt to Symbolist theory;
we shall see other debts emerge later. For the moment,
we should note that, as A. G. Lehmann has shown in The
Symbolist Aesthetic in_France,..Symbol i sin _was_far__from - _
offering a coherent theory of art. Impressionist theory
is no freer of difficulties. For example, the Impression
ist's stress on art's evocation of feeling sidesteps
the question of the nature of feeling and its relation to
objects and ideas. Most basically, what is a feeling?
A physiological characterization would be at odds" with the
idealist assumptions we shall see operating in Impres
sionist theory. But then how does the Impressionist
theorist avoid an.idealism which posits the feeling as
an entity existing solely in the minds of the artist and
perceiver? In what sense is such feeling to be given the
status of "truth"? Moreover,, on the idealist model the
evocation which Impressionism prizes becomes problematic
with respect to the object which we call a work of art.
Not only is the status of the work reduced to that of the
consequence or cue for purely private feelin but a
I ) )
98 QO
raore fundamental quest ion e n t e r s : How ca n the artist-a W S * ^
^pression" be known as such by a p-rc.iv.rT That „ . - -
i7not7private account of feeling driven either to * ^ ' ' xa nun <j. j * — , _
mysticism or to solipsism? On the other hand, Impression
ist claims about "expressiveness" suggest some sense in
which the term "Feeling" is ascribable to objects them
selves.1^ What is this sense? And in what way can
this feeling be justified as "truth"? Obviously, such
questions as these are ingredient to a philosophical aes
thetic, but Impressionism ignores them. It picks up
from Symbolist doctrine what it needs to secure a general
and unexamined premise concerning the nature of art, which
may be formulated in this way:
Art.is the transformation of nature by the human
imagination, evoking or suggesting feelings and presenting
"truth" to such feelings.
The Relation of Film to Traditional Arts
Impressionist film theory assumes at the outset
that film is a distinct art possessing creative possibili
ties which no other art possesses. Like so many other
theoretical assumptions of the movement, this view emerges
from a polemical context. Before 1920, several writers
denied the cinema's artistic status on various grounds:
its popularity, its mechanical nature, its technical
crudertess. In response, Impressionist writers began to
defend the cinema as aesthetically worthy, and the previous
chapter has recounted the struggle to establish a public
disposed toward accepting film as an art. But what exactly
is the nature of film art? To this question, Impressionist
theory gives two answers, a minority response and a majorit;,
response.
For Riccioto Canudo and Elie Faure, cinema is an
art by virtue of its synthesizing powers. Film is seen
as what Canudo calls "l'art total vers lequel tous les
autres, depuis toujours, ont tendu."1? Canudo posits a
division of the six primary arts based on two categories:
plastic arts (architecture, painting, and sculpture) and
rhythmic arts (music, poetry, and dance). Film is a
synthetic art in that it can "capter et fixer Irs rythmes ;
<|e laJlumi&re. L'Art SeptiSme concilie ainsi tous les
autres. Tableaux en mouvement. Art plastique se developpani
selon les normes de l'Art Rhythmique.,i:l° Thus cinema be
comes a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk and a painter-poet-
musician becomes the ideal cinematic creator.*9 Elie
Faure, although claiming that cinema is too recently-
born an art to be definitively classified, also stresses
cinema's fusing power. Like theatre (but only in this
100
101
•espect), film is "un spectacle collectif avec l'intermed-
Latre d'un acteur."2^ Yet like the plastic arts, the fil~
nic artifact is fixed in its composition; unlike dance or
musicj it does not vary from one performance to another."-*
Like music and dance, though, cinema unrolls in a "musical
space" since "un rythme vivant et sa repetition dans la
dur€e la caractSrisent."22 According to this position,
then, film as a medium synthesizes~vario"us~aspects-of-other—
media. Its distinctness as an art lies in its peculiar
"mixture" of these aspects; other mixtures, like theatre
or opera, yield different arts. This strain in Impression
ist Thought clearly owes a good deal to Wagner's theories,
(not only in Canudo's manner of dividing the arts ..but also
in the primary emphasis which falls upon cinema as. a
synthesis.
To this synthetic conception of film a r t is
opposed a far more prevalent one which we may ca l l "puris t ."
Rather than locating filnfe distinctness in i t s unique
mixture of the media of other a r t s , the a l te rna te tenden
cy sees film as a single autonomous medium with powers
which no other medium possesses. What Marcel L'llerbier
called "cette fameuse specifici te"2^ is for most Impres
sionist fi" theory the t ac i t assumption that every ar t
has i t s unique range of materials. "Tout a r t , " writes V J
Epstein, "edifie sa ville interdite, son domaine propre,
exclusif, autonome, specifique et hostile a tout ce qui
n'est pas lui."2*1 He thus denies the synthetic conception
of film by claiming that the cinema cannot do well what
the other arts can: "II est mauvais peintre, mauvais sculp-
teur, mauvais romancier."25 This purist conception of film
is supported by an important subsidiary assumption of
Impressionist theory: that cinema as an art must be dis-
tingu^isned-clear;Iy~ "from theatre—- Rene'-Douniic_r_epresents
the traditional thinking when he writes that the cinema
is "le theatre pour illettres."26 In response, Impressionis
film theory insists that cinema is the antithesis of thea
tre. "Tant qu'on pensera theStre ou roman," writes
Delluc, "tant qu-on ne pensera pas cinema, il faudra n'Ss-
perer que ces oeuvres batardes dont nos meilleurs cine-
matographistes accouchent laborieusement."2' The same
assumption underlies Cendrars' charge that The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari is not cinematic but theatrical.28 Similarly,
Impressionists like Delluc and Epstein attack the mise-
en sc&ne of Peuillade and Perret as too close to that of
the stage. In its extreme form, the anti-theatre assump
tion spawns such suggestions as that of Jean Pascal for
stripping film jargon of any terms borrowed from the
theater: he proposes "cin§maturgie," "cinephases" (repla
cing "scenes"), and "cinSmatamorphose11 (re sing
"IMffiffilfflWrtifflmWMlTiiliiiri'niiTiMW
10>
"adaptation")-29
Just as the synthetic strain in Impressionist
theory owes something to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk aesthe
tic, so does the purist conception allude to much current
debate on "pure poetry." In 1920, Valery had written of
an "absolute poetry" and later had identified the problem
of such poetry as that "of knowing whether one can manage to
construct one of those works which may be pure of all non-
poetic elements."50 j\s We shall see in Chapter V, the
Impressionists were not to take this premise to the logical
conclusion that the members of the abstract-film movement
did. Nonetheless, the debate over "purism" in poetry
doubtless had some influence on Impressionist thinking.-'
The purist position's opposition of film and thea
tre consists essentially of a distinction between materials,
thus inserting Impressionist film theory in the "integrity
of materials" tradition so central to modern movements like
Cubism, Symbolism, and Constructivism. The Impressionist
assumes that the theatre is a predominantly verbal medium,
while the film is primarily visual. Delluc, who attacks
the presence of inter-titles in films and sees in even
Oance's titles a dangerous "Gongorism,"^2 urges that the
verbal material should play a minor role: "Le texte,
rediaons-le, ne doit pas etre quandl'image peut le
remplacer. On abus du sous-titre....Le tort est de nous
interrompre dans notre emotion uniquement visuelle."53
Canudo agrees that the cinema was born to be not a text
but "un conte visuel fait avec des images."3^
Another assumed theatrical material consists of
stylized acting and setting; the stage actor must exagge
rate expansively, and stage decor is inevitably a fabri
cation; theatre is conventionalized, coded. Cinema, on
the other hand, stands opposed to such conventions.
Cinema acting, notes Germaine Dulac, can be much more
intimate and discreet than a theatre performance.55
Delluc claims that French film actors, transplanted from
the stage, exaggerate in a theatrical style, whereas
American film actors have a "natural" spontaneity.3°
For Canudo, "l'acteur du Septieme Art exprime une image
humaine."37 Similarly, cinema's capacity for using natu
ral or naturalistic surroundings as decor should allow
film to avoid the false decor of the theatre. Again, the
American cinema typifies this: "Le premier chevauehee
d'un cowboy dans le Far-West fit eclater les portants
de carton-pate."38 There are several problems here—e.g.,
equating theatre as a medium with specific styles and his
torically variable conventions, shifting from a notion of
what cinema essentially is to a notion of what it can
101
jontingently do—but most important for present purposes
Ls the mistake that permits mainstream Impressionist theory
;o repudiate only theatrical dialogue, acting style, and
3ecor; theatrical dramaturgy is not seen as opposed to film.
Impressionist theory thus contrasts theatre and film at
a relatively local level, comparing theatrical talk, acting,
and decor with aspects of the isolated film image. What
the purist position does not grasp is any opposition
between~the~~8t"ruct"ure of a-play-and-the structure of a
film. Indeed, Canudo's reference to "un conte visuel"
suggests that no opposition between literary and cinema
tic' wholes is seen. Unlike the film theory of Sergei
Eisenstein, for example, the Impressionist position fails
to account at the primary level for cinematic structure.
This omission leaves a conceptual gap which threatens
the stability of higher-order theatrical claims.
By contrast with the theatre, the purist position
locates cinematic specificity in the moving image. In
an important passage, Faure claims: . Que le depart de cet art-IS soit d'abord plastique, il ne senible par consequent pas qu'on en puisse douter. A quelque forme d1expression a peine soupconnee qu'il puisse nous conduire, c'est par des volumes, des arabesques, des gestes, des attitudes, des rapports, des associations, des contrasts, des passages de tons, tout cela anime, insensiblement modifie d'un fragment de seconde & 1'autre, qu'il impressionnera notre sensibilite et agira aur notre intelligence par l'in-termSdiare de nos yeux. 39
10r
The result is a unique aesthetic material which Faure
calls "cineplastics." Impressionist theory as a whole
supports this insistence on the primacy of such visual
aspects in film. Pierre Porte writes that the avant-garde
seeks to reveal what can be done solely by moving photo
graphic images: "L'art du cinema, qui est base sur les
images, ne doit s'etablir que sur elles." ° Again, Canudc
underscores the importance of cineplastics in his claim
that the "conte visuel fait avec des images" will be
"peint avec des pinceaux de lumiere."111 Similarly, Dulac
claims that the cinema, being "uniquement visuel," must
address itself solely to the eye of the spectator."2
Cinema is made of images—unlike the theatre, which is made
of dialogue.
The second fundamental proposition of Impressionist
film theory may then be formulated in this way:
Since every art is distinct by virtue of a unique
range of material constituting its medium, cinema as an
art i3 distinct and should be treated ao distinct from othi'i-
art3, especially theatre, in that it3 primary material is
moving images.
The Nature of the Film Image
The specificity of the cinema is further located
in an aspect of the film image which the Impressionists
'yttKmmnWmvmmmmirm»m. -
106
ill "photogenie," Photogenie is identified as the basic
:surce of art in cinema, "Le cinema doit chercher a devenir
eu a peu et enfin uniquement cinetnatographique," writes
pstein, "c'est-a-dire a n'utiliser que des elements
hotogeniques. La photogenie est 1''expression la plus
jur du cinema."^ Photogenie operates in the r-ealm of
iineplastics, the visual; as Delluc puts it: "La photogenie,
;oyez-vous, est la loi du cinema. II faut, pour la
ionnaitre, des yeux—qui soient reelement des yeux."^
And photogenie is seen by Epstein as the central concept
in Impressionist film theory:
Delluc, en 1919, prononce et gcrit: photogenie, ce mot qui parut, un temps magique et reste, merae aujour-d'hui, encore mysterieux. Avec la notion de la photogenie nalt l'idee du cinema-art. Car comment mieux definer 1'indefinissable photogenie qu'en disant; la photogenie est au cinema ce que la couleur est a la peinture, le volume a la sculpture; 1*element specifique de cet art.^5
Clearly, photogenie is a constitutive and pervasive fac
tor: just as all paintings contain color and all works of
sculpture contain volume, all films contain photogenie.
But what is this mysterious entity?
The concept of photogenie grows out of an attempt
to account for the mysteriously alienating quality of
cinema's relation to reality. According to the Impres
sionists, on viewing a film image, even an image of a
. ...„„«. „„ inhale, we experience a.certain
) )
Uv
otherness about the content; the image's material seems
to be revealed in a fresh way. This evocative otherness
is noted by several writers of the time, both Impres
sionists and non-Impressionists. Georgette Leblanc com
pares seeing the ocean on film and in reality, finds
that it is more expressive in a.film, and concludes:
"Si me je promene dans un champ, dans une foret, dans
un jardin, je participe aux choses qui m'entourent.. . .Au
cinema, la grace personnel des choses m'est r6vele..."^b
The idea that the screen somehow presents the "soul" of
a person or object was similarly common. Epstein finds
an evening at the cinema a Baudelairean mystical exper
ience: "De'couvrir inopinement, comme pour la premiere
fois, toutes choses sous leur angle divin, avec leur prof,
de symbole et leur plus vaste sens d'analogie, avec un
air de vie personnelle, telle est la grande joie du cine
ma." ' Kirsanov discovers the same discrepancy: one ad
mires a film actor and is disappointed upon meeting him
in real life; one passes the Place Concorde daily without
a second thought yet in a film the. Place Concorde holds
one fascinated; Kirsanov concludes, that "Chaque chut 2
existant sur terre connait une autre existence sur l'e-
cran."^° According to Ren€ Clair, "There is no detail of
reality which is not immediately extended here [in cinemc
108
to the domain of the wondrous."^ This aura of wonder
ver quite leaves Impressionist film theory. O'.veh the
st sophisticated theorists (e.g., Epstein ami Camido)
11 back too easily upon the assumption that photogenic
an impenetrable, quasi-supernatural enigma. This means
iat much written about photoggnie is unsupportable theo-
^tically. The strongest theoretical line, however, pushes
ie argument into the area of the technical capacities
' the image, but without losing sight of the awesome
rstery that initially impels the inquiry.
Photoggnie is seen, most broadly, as the transform-
ig, revelatory power of cinema: transforming because photo-
Inie surpasses sheer literal reproduction of reality;
evelatory became it presents a fresh perspective upon
eality. The transforming quality must be present if
here is to be art; as we have seen, Impressionist theory
ssumes art to be an imaginative, suggestive transforma-
ion of nature. "lie septieme art," writes Canudo, "doit
voquer et suggerer les sentiments, et meme les fuits,
ilus qu'il ne doit platement les reproduire."50 Louis
.ragon likewise observes that cinema's power lies not in
;he faithful reproduction of reality but in the "magnifi-
jation" and "transformation" of reality which produces
'la vie supgr re de la poesie."^1 Epstein calls the
10*'
cinema "sur-naturel" because "Tout se transforme selon
les quatre photogenies."52
As a complement, Louis Delluc, who first applied
the term photogenie to cinema, initially emphasizes photo
graphy's revelatory power..
Aimez-vous la photo? Em marge de tous les arts, elle traduit. la vie par chance. Collaboration si hasardeuse au'on peut la prendre pour un vol. Le Geste saisi par un kodak n'est jamais tout a fait le geste qu'on voulait fixer. On—y—gagne-genera-lement-.—Voila-_ce_quJ^m' enchante: avouez que e'est extraordinaire de s'apercevoir tout d' un coup, sur une pellicule ou une plaque, que tel passant distraitement cueilli par l'objectif avait une expression rare, que Madame X. . . detient en fragments epars l'inconscient secret des attitudes clas-siques, et que les arbres, l'eau, les etoffes, les betes, ont pour realiser le rythme familier que nous leur connaissons, des mouvements decomposes dont la revelation nous emeut. . .53
At an essential level, a photograph reveals a reality which
we do not normally perceive. In the moving photographic
film image, the same revelatory power is operative: "La pho
genie e'est la verity lyrique de la photographie animee."1?''
Photogenie yields truth in an experiential sense, in reveal
ing to perception or feeling some.aspect of reality. In
these passages, Delluc only hints at photogenie's transform
ing capacities ("traduit la vie") and stresses what is uniq
to his own position: the random, accidental quality of phot
graphy.55 Elsewhere, however, Delluc explicitly uses the mc
conventional notion of transformation, or ratb^r revelation
through
)
110
isformation: this i s the process which the Impressionists
as photogenic
That Delluc and others never specify the fundn-
;al nature of pre-existent r ea l i t y is typical of the
I'ctance of Impressionist thinking to give content to
ibsely-assembled vocabulary inherited from Symbolism.
Conclusions about the philosophical position which
inds the notion of photogenie must be accordingly
sTral. Broadly speaking, the Impressionist conception Ips yuV reo\\.S V-"
reali ty may be called " idea l i s t , " since the position
'^ssitates some notion of a realm beyond material
l i t y . The Impressionists' unanimous condemnation of M
conception of cinema based upon reproduction enta i l s U^the recording of material r ea l i ty is not sufficiently \U£i^ . . .
i s t i c . The a r t i s t must transform material real i ty in
e revelatory fashion. For Delluc, the cinema " t r a n s h i p W (tej
esT" "develops," "explicates ," or "intensifies" r ea l i ty^ 6 ;
Hragon, the cinema "magnifies" rea l i ty . In ei ther
<*fsomething not immediately or materially apparent
t be brought out, evoked, or led forth. This in ' turn i ^ ends upon an aesthetic epistemology which somehow
Tains why the revealed thing has not heretofore been
sped. The only hint of such epistemological grounding
cs in Jean Epstein's suggestion that normal perception,
)
/
)
1 I 1
dulled by routine, no longer discovers beauty directly,
but the lens "centers, drains, and distills" beauty into
ohotocj:gnie.57 That such photogenie issues from some mys
terious realm seems clear from several passages in Impres
sionist writing: Epstein claims that an object has a
"soul" which film reveals, while Rene Schwab defines
cinema as "l'art d'inverser I'ordre du monde pour <?n mieux
souligner 1'invisible beaute."58 i n o ne passage, Epstein
suggests that in a film, an object becomes animated and
expressive, baring its previously concealed essence,59
At another point, Ren§ Clair speaks of the revelation of
an ideal world: "The screen gives a soul to the cabaret,
the room, a bottle, a wall. It is this soul alone that
counts in our eyes. We move from the object to its soul
as easily as our being passes from a sight to a thought.
The screen opens onto a new world, one vibrant with even
more sympathetic responses than our own ir60 It is a
logical culmination of such an idealist position that
Epstein, who sees the cinema as "mystique par essence,"
describes seeing pure truth revealed not in a church but
in a film theatre:
Devant moi, a Nancy, une salle de trois cents per-sonnes g§mit 5 voix haute en voyant 3 l'ecran un grain de bl§ germer. Soudain apparu, le vrai visage de la vie et de la mort, celui de l'affreux amour, arrache de tels oris religieux. Quelles Sglises, si nous en savions construire, devraient abriter ce spectacle ou la vie est rivelge. Dgcouvrir inopin^ment,
n;
comme pour la-premiere fois, toutes choses sous
leur angle divin, avee leur profil de symbole et
leur plus vaste sens d'analogie, avec un air de
vie persbnnelle, telle est la grande joie du
cinema."1
In its hinting that ideal correspondences arid analogies
exist between the fi'lm image and Truth, this passage
suggests the nature of the absolute realm beyond appearan
ces that cinema can reveal. Epstein takes to its logical
end the Symbolist bias of Impressionist thought in identi
fying the transforming capacity of the~Tilm—imag~e~~with
an ideal transcendance, a realm of pure ideas. He writes:
Essentialement 1'Scran generalise et determine.
II n'y s'agib jamais d'un soir, mais du soir et le
votre en fait partie. Le visage, et j^y retrouve tous
ceux que j'ai vus, fantome de souvenirs- Au lieu
d'une bouche, la bouche, larve de baisers. Chaque
image devient une abstraction, quelque chose de eom-
plet, de definitif et d'universel.62
Here is the ultimate claim for photogenic as a transfor-,
mation of material reality: we experience not a concep
tual abstraction but a nondiscursive, experiential symbol
embodying a realm beyond immediate sense experience. To
this realm, the artist has access and uses the art work
to express his or her insights into this realm.
In passing, we should note the astonishing variety
of assumptions revealed in some passages quoted above;
they* Constitute a bewildering compendium of variants of
that broa'* position known as idealism. Delluc seems to
nn*. for a reality which is -stylized and idealized through
artifice, though he remains mute on the ultimate nature
of that reality. (Does it pre-exist our response to if.' . j
Is the stylization a matter of projecting feelings into
an object?) Schwob and Clair, on the other hand, appeal
to an unabashed mysticism. .Epstein is far more protean:
at one moment, he holds the Bergsonian position that
art cuts through our cognitive constructs to reveal the
flux of life; at another moment, he is closer to a Baudel-
~ airian ~theosophy-which- assumes that L1 vast_ana!ogies"
interlace all phenomena; at yet another time, he seems a
Platonic Idealist believing that a single image can become
surrogate for a universal entity, the quintessence of the
object. Such contradictions illustrate the extent to whic
Impressionist theory is an assemblage of various assump
tions never raised to theoretical self-consciousness. To
keep on our path, however, the essential point is the shar
broadly "idealist" assumption of some realm beyond matter
which the film artist can reveal and express. j
Revelation and expression lead us to the problem
of film style. Artistic expression, according to the i
Impressionists, is also the general task of painting and
l i t e r a tu r e . If the Impressionist aesthetic is to be
true to i t s own essent ia l is t assumptions, i t must conside;
some unique properties of the film medium. Moreover,
o )
u ' l
those proper t ies must a l so d i s t ingu i sh photogftnig from
r e a l i t y in i t s raw s t a t e , f c r photogenic could hardly
transform r e a l i t y without some margin of d i f f e r ence . Th<»
Impressionis ts claim t h a t t h i s difference l i e s in film
technique, which not only records material r e a l i t y but
a l so expresses the f i lm-maker 's subject ive , persona l
a t t i t u d e .
Such a b e l i e f follows from an impl i c i t s p l i t which
ru l e s Impressionist t h ink ing : a s p l i t between the prof i lmic
event ( i . e . ; what happens i n front of the camera lens)
and the ac t of f i lming and shaping that event a p o s t e r i o r i .
This technical d u a l i t y genera l ly p a r a l l e l s the a e s t h e t i c
dua l i ty of nature and imaginat ion. Manipulating the p ro
f i lmic event i t s e l f i s not enough, since i t may be taken
for raw nature . Technique must v is ib ly in te rvene and medi
a t e ; the act of f i lming must expressively t ransform what
i s filmed. ( S i g n i f i c a n t l y , the p r i o r i t y of f i lming and
shaping procedures i s suggested in the very term photo-
ggnie , with "genie" punning on "genius" or " s p i r i t . " )
Writing of Renoir ' s r e v o l u t i o n in r e a l i s t i c s t y l e , Andre
Bazin i nd i r ec t l y a l l udes to an Impressionist conception of
f i lm: "'Cinema' no longer imposed i t s e l f between the spec
t a t o r and the ob jec t , l i k e a se t of prisms or f i l t e r s
designed to stamp t h e i r own meaning on r e a l i t y . " ° 3 Such
)
11
an imposition is essential for the Impressionists. It
is not enough to point the camera and turn it on, says
Canudo; the mind of the artist must be expressed: "L'ecran-
iste se doit de transformer la rSalite a 1'imago de son
reve interieur."°^ Similarly, for Germaine Dulac, although
cinema's technical base is photography, its aesthetic
function is to use technique for expression of the direc
tor's mind.°5 By implication, then, the film artist must
somehow grasp the ideal realm beyond appearances and then
utilize the techniques of cinema to reveal this ideal realm
This revelation of feeling (what Mallarmg might have
called "etats d'ame") is in turn grasped by the spectator
<& What are the technical capacities of the medium
that Impressionism finds important for the revelation
of mental states? Because of the initial assumptions of
cinema's transforming and revelatory powers and of cinema1.-'
distinctness from theatre, Impressionist theory emphasises
manipulation of the camera as the aesthetic basis of
photogenie. Here the theory again takes on a normative
slant; since the cinema can transform nature, it should do
it primarily through camera technique (and not, say, pri
marily through mise-en-sc&ne, which is identified as a
theatrical device). The split between profilmic
event and filming, we recall, already stresses the
l l h
transforming ro le of the camera. According to Joan Tedea-
co, for example, the a c t o r i s j u s t pa r t of the decor;
he belongs to t echnique : "Le seul premier r o l e d'un film,
c ' e s t l ' o b j e c t i f qui l e t i e n t . " 6 6 s i m i l a r l y , Rem' Jeanne
argues that the camera c r e a t e s the spec tac le which we see 67
We may define camerawork in cinema as cons i s t i ng of adjust
ment and placement of the camera. Both these aspects
become_aesthetically s i g n i f i c a n t for the Impres s ion i s t s .
Impress ionis t theory pr izes adjustments of the
camera apparatus- which transform the surface or speed of
the image for express ive ends. Gauzily b lur red images
a re defended by Delluc as l eg i t imate s t y l i z a t i o n , as
seen in the pa in t ings of Monet and Cezanne.°° Canudo
sees superimpositions as psychological ly evoca t ive :
"La represen ta t ion p l a s t i q u e de l a pensee l o r s q ' e l l e ne
se borne pas a une surimpression d rimages ou 5 de vagues
tableaux evocateurs des souvenirs d 'un personnage, peut
t rouver 5 l ' e c ran des formes d'une suggestion incompara
b l e . °9 jean Tedesco and Jean Epstein both p r a i s e slow-
motion as expressing a new perception of the world and i n d i
ca t ing subject ive experiences,TO More g e n e r a l l y , many
w r i t e r s welcome a range of such image-transformations,
which would make the cinema more express ive . Since r e a l i t y
i s only a p; jx t for a r t i s t i c deformations, wr i t e s
117
Henri Lamblin, "tout est d'abord dans le cervoau do 1'ar
tiste. "71 Thanks to technical transformations, Canudo
claims, memory and thoughts have come to replace words
and take cinema beyond theatrical artifice.I2 As will
be seen in the next chapter, such aesthetic strictures
about optical transformations of the image find expression
in salient traits of Impressionist film style.
For the Impressionists, the position or placement
—of-the camera also- aesthetically transf or_ms__the__ma_terial
reality which is filmed; accordingly, the image gains
another margin of difference over reality by means of
camera distance and angle. Although the theory undertakes
no exhaustive investigation of the aesthetic potential
of camera distance (cf. Rudolf Arnheim's Film as Art),
Impressionist theorists tacitly recognize this potential
at work through considerations of a specific case: the close
up. "Le gros plan," writes Epstein, "est 1'ame du cinema."'
In selecting and magnifying a detail of material reality,
the close-up abstracts (Epstein: "II a 1'air d'une i d ^ W )
and expresses feelings (Canudo: "Une verre, des clumsy iiivs,
une sacoche bourr§e de papiers ont a J'tn:ran la meme
intensity expressive que le 'gros plan1 d'un visage"?^).
Thus the close-up offers an extreme instance of how camera
distance can transform material reality through the artistic
< > ) )
118 119
imagination's manipulation of film technique.
Another extreme example of the Impressionista'
emphasis on the transforming powers of camera pl:ieem«vit
may be seen in the occasional recognition of the aesthetic-
importance of optically subjective camera angles, which
indicates a character's optical perspective on some
event. Like camera distance, this aesthetic resource
was never explored systematically by Impressionist the
ory. The most explicit suggestions come from Pierre
Porte. Unlike the theatre, he argues, cinema can put
us in the characters' places; the camera can be a charac
ter's eyes. Since cinema should strive for autonomy
from other.arts, the film-maker should show us the ac
tion not as a theatre spectator might view it but as
the characters see it. "Un homme tombe dans un preci
pice. Pourquoi ne tomberions nous pas nous-memes?"7u
Porte distinguishes between visual representation of
a character's experience and visual presentation of it.
Por example, in one film, a dying woman's vision is con
veyed by gauzing over a long-shot showing her and her son.
"Mais ce flou n'est qu'une expression, ce n'est pas une
sensation."77 ideally, says Porte, the film-maker should
make the gauze gradually cover a shot of the son taken
from the optical point-of-view of the mother. In effect.
Porte is asking that the artist'3 cinematic transformation
of material reality move in a different direction, so to
speak: that technique only imply the director's interpre
tation by indicating characters' visual experiences.
Although Impressionist theory never gets beyond such
general questioning, there is nonetheless the tacit recog
nition that camera placement can suggest subjective atti
tudes toward material reality. As we shall see, this
possibility is actualized in Impressionist film practice.
It is the camera, then, in its adjustments and
positionings, that makes the primary contribution to photo-
genie as revelation and transformation. Mise-en-scene
(the arrangement of material in the image) is accorded
considerably less importance, but occasional comments
suggest that Impressionist theorists are aware of its
expressive potential. The usual assumption J.s that mise-
en-scene contributed to the "animism" of objects that
the close-up•facilitates. Nature, in other words, becomes
a character. Canudo speuks of "nature-personnage" in the
American and Swedish films.78 Delluc finds that cinema
reveals an animating force in natural details: "Les choses
dont le role est immense dans la vie et dans l'art retrouv
ront leur vrai role et leur Eloquence fatidique."79
Whereas Impressionist theory values distortions ofcamera-
un^xr for- pvnrpssive ends, however, it denies that distorti
120
' mise-en-scgne (as in German Expressionism) is intrin.; -
Lcally cinematic. Epstein writes of Caligari's "hyperf -
^ophy" of decor, while Cendrars denies that Caligari
s cinematic because it ignores the transforming powers
f the camera: ."Les deformations ne sont pas optique et
2 dependent pas de 1'angle unique de l'appareil de prise
<> vues, ni de l'objectif, ni du diaphragme, ni de la
ise au point. Aucune purification du metier, tous les
ffets obtenus- a--lU-aide_de._moy_ens._app rJtenant_3_.la_p.ein-
ure, a la musique, a la litterature, etc. On ne voit
ulle part l'appareil de prise de vues."8° Thus the role
f the camera—what Epstein later called "l1 intelligence
'un machine"—remains greater than that of mise-en-scene.
According' to the Impressionists, then, the film
mage's mystery" comes from the fact that photoglnie
imultaneously reveals a hidden meaning in material reality
nd subjectively transforms that reality through film
echnique. But doesn't every film do this to at least
jome degree? impressionists would answer yes, and at this
joint the normative emphasis reappears. Given the image's
asic capacities,- it is foolish to try to bend the image
p a purely recording function. The film-maker should
wim with the current; so to speak; the film-maker should
apitalize on the cinema's natural expressive potential.
1.'
It is worth recalling a remark of Epstein's which r quolej!
earlier: "Le cinema doit chercher a devenir peu a peu et
erifin uniquement cinematographique, c'est-a-dire a n'uti-
liser que des elements photogeniques. La photogetue est
l'expression la plus pure du cinema."31 The descriptive
and normative sides of the Impressionist theory of the inii:
are apparent: all films have some measure of photog^nie,
but the film-maker's style should not work to conceal it
(through, say, theatrical techniques and acting) but shoul..
make it more apparent (especially through the powers of
the camera). As Jean Tedesco proposes, cinematic expres
sion can simultaneously reveal a new meaning in reality
and project subjective mental states 82 Cinema thus
3 •j
transcends sheer mechanical recording, and it does this
chiefly through camerawork. But Impressionist thinkers
ignore the problem of explaining precisely how the product
of such cinematic expression differs from the expressivity
produced in other art media. As in so many other areas,
Impressionist theory begins with .an initial assumption
(here, the uniqueness and autonomy of the materials of
various media) but fails to carry it through logically.
We may now formulate the third fundamental assump
tion of Impressionist film theory:
The specific nature of the film image is its
>
122
session of photogenie, which cons i s t s of fcho power of yv^f
^ techn iques (chief ly camerawoi'k) to express thi» f i l m ^ ^ - f ^ )
!£C**3 vis ion of otherwise hidden meanings in tvn l i ty .
The Nature of Filmic Construct ion
I suggested e a r l i e r that Impress ionis t film theory Cf-ct^
S3| not develop a fundamental conception of cinematic > Ti«- -
ucture; tha t i s , i t d is t inguishes film from other a r t s W
material grounds, not s t r u c t u r a l ones. This lack 3 " t £ -s
faces again when Impressionis t theory t r i e s to define oL*J~
aes the t i c of f i lmic const ruct ion . The r e s u l t i s a •$<£ —
Uchy, problematic p a i r of normative concepts : f i r s t , $Uj>
ienial tha t cinematic s t ruc ture should owe anything to <?t&M =-
matic or l i t e r a r y s t ruc tu re and, second, an a s se r t i on d^^A.
it fi lmic s t r u c t u r e should be based on " v i s u a l rhythm."
In t h e i r eagerness to e s t ab l i sh cinema's unique 4^-5 =•
• t h e t i c domain, many Impressionis ts go beyond the second h>iV-=
p o s i t i o n formulated above to claim not only tha t the i , , u W ^ ? -
;ic mater ia l or f i lm i s moving images but a l so tha t film <?<---*"•*•
•itW not borrow i t s dramaturgy from o ther a r t s . Note f^^XZ
tt t h i s i s a contingent and normative c la im. I t i s one a ^ ' 1 ^
MJ, t o say t h a t a l l films consis t of moving images and \*-0**
•aess some measure of photogenie. I t i s another thing W
say that some films copy l i t e r a r y or t h e a t r i c a l
) )
dramaturgy and that they should not do so. Although
Impressionist writers have not earned a theory of autono
mously cinematic structure comparable to the material
concept of photogenie or "cineplastics," they usually simp;
deny that cinema should owe anything at all to theatre
or literature. "L'action, l'intrigue, 1'esprit sont du
theatre...," writes Epstein. "Le cinema assimile mal l'arr
ature raisonnable du feuilleton."^3 In another passage,
Epstein claims: "GSneralement, le cinema rend mal l'anec-
dote, Et 'action dramatique' y est une erreur."°^
Germaine Dulac complains that a blind man in a film theatre
could be told the plot of most films and miss very little:
"Un vrai film ne doit pas pouvoir se raconter puisqu'il
doit puiser son principe actif et emotif dans des images
faites d'uniques vibrations visuelles. Raconte-t-on un
tableau? Raconte-t-on une sculpture? Certes pas. On
ne peut ivoquer que l'impression et 1'emotion qu'elles
degagent."°5 Paure and Clair maintain that because of
cineplastics, a story becomes but a pretext for the ima
ges. °° Consequently, Impressionists often deny that a
"pure film" should be a narrative at all.°? Again, the
borrowing from purist conceptions of literature is proba
ble.
If Impressionist theory decides that cinematic
/
124
"should ideally owe nothing to literary or dramatic -H e ^
4, what does cinematic form consist of? This is perhaps Jt^^
greatest problem in Impressionist film theory. Needf/^*-
a" model of temporal structure, refusing the model' offe-fie^y
$jA by narrative forms, and unable or unwilling to gener/ld-i1?/
a theory of uniquely cinematic structure, the Impres^ -,
nist theorist looks to music for analogues.for filmic OoW --•
Istruction. Interestingly, musical forms generated
motivic play (e.g. 7~sonata form)—are-not-seen_as-_the
me models.^ What is borrowed from music is the concept o-l
rhythm. Impressionist theory rests its idea of filmic C& ** "
fistruction almost wholly upon the rhythmic relationships »< ~
tween images.
Unanimous in praising rhythm in cinema, Impression-^\—
1? writers never consider the concept closely. Oance A*J -
nounces, unhelpfully, that rhythm makes cinema the music * J-
light.^9 Moussinac proposes that rhythm is a need &'
the mind: we live in a bodily and psychic rhythm.9°
jtcl -WTrZ-T' (st precise of any i3 RenS Clair, who notes that three
«*JUH*S* control cinematic rhythm—the duration of each c^A--^
lage-, the organization of shots in editing, and move
nt within each image—but he goes no further,91 It is
Dt at all clear, then, how rhythmic relations between
•nages can ademiately define cinematic structure. In
(.•"•>
sum, rhythm receives not even the theoretical exploration
that photogenie does. As we might formulate it, tin* final
assumption of Impressionist theory is contingent, normative,
and problematic: "
Filmic construction should be based not on narra
tive but on rhythmic relations between images.
Evaluation
As_I_suggej3ted_at^ the outset of this chapter, one
of the problems posed by Impressionist theory is that it
never received systematic large-scale explication. The
belletristic and scrappy quality of the Impressionists'
writings encouraged avoidance of detailed and systematic
analysis; hence a number of glaring conceptual gaps in
the theory. Apart from the flaws I have discussed in pas
sing, one general defect is the failure to posiV a com
prehensive theory of structure appropriate to the nature
of the medium. This would not be so problematic if Impres
sionist theory d'id not insist on the autonomous purity
not only of the materials of film but also of the structure
of film. The shift from descriptive claims about, the
medium to normative claims about structure marks, among
other things, an inability to account descriptively for
an intrinsically cinematic structure. Another gap in
%
126
npressionist theorizing is the ]ack of an explicit account
C the experience of film and of experience in general . • ^\C•
ithout an epistemology or a psychology, Impressionist Y\QjJ a*/
heory's account of photogenie cannot adequately explain ig, ru ,yri^r
ow the film image reveals and transforms reality. An vL. ,^ £ I '
€'
vv pistemology drawn from Bergson or a psychology along ° "H v
estalt lines might start to ground Impressionist film
heory, but the choice between these positions is hardly
.n indifferent one, and the concepts of revelation and trans-
ormation would then demand much more analysis than the
impressionists ever give them. In short, as Impressionist
.heory stands, it is unfinished, only a rough sketch of
i complete theory.
Besides such cracks in its theoretical anatomy,
-he Impressionist position suffers from at least two purely
logical defects. There is, first, the move from an account
of cinema's basic nature to normative recommendations
about film style. The problem of how to justify a shift
from descriptive to prescriptive propositions—how to
get from "is" to "ought"—is a classic one in logic, aes
thetics, and ethics; how to solve it remains a theoretical
difficulty. A second problem lies in the nature of the
normative argument from the alleged "purity of the medium."
In film, the problems of scope attending such purism have
\VV
) )
1:
been cogently discussed by Andre Bazin,^2 but moro to
the^deductive point are the strictures urged h/Morris
Weitz a^d Monroe Beardsley. As Weitz points out7~Ttte
doctrine of purism—i.e., that "the arts aught to do what
distinguishes them from each other"93--has not been justi
fied. If there is a good reason for this view, the Impres
sionists never reveal it. Purism remains a submerged and
unjustified assumption.
Despite its problems, however, Impressionist film
theory has a clear relationship to activities at other
levels of the Impressionist movement. From a diachronic
perspective, the theoretical positiop, may be seen as
the product of specific interactions with the activities
on the level of the film culture and with the alterations
in film style. The tracing of these interactions is the
business of the final chapter of this study. Prom the ,
synchronic perspective adopted in this chapter, the theory
of film as an autonomous art with its own expressive resour
ees provides some conceptual support for the polemical
and cultural activities in which the Impressionists
engaged. A theoretical position provides a set of general
principles to which a rhetoric can appeal. Similarly,
seeing photogenie and rhythm as the expressive resources
of cinema offers conceptual grounding for a film style ;
which emphasizes camerawork and rhythmic editing. (In
128
_s general respect, Impressionist theory again intersects
;h Symbolist poetics, for as Lehmann has pointed out, > i Symbolists often theorized not for theory's sake but
a way to support their poetic practice.9**) impressionist
aory will be seen to both reflect and affect Impressionist
lm-making. To an examination of the results of such
•J Im-making the following chapter is devoted.
1-9
Notes
1Louis Delluc, "Cinegraphie," Le Crapouillot (November 1932), p. 21.
2See La Potisie d ' Aujourd1 hui (Paris: HirCims, 1921-, passim.
5Riccioto Canudo, Usine des Images (Geneva: Office Central d'Sdition, 1927-, p. 5&-
''Marcel D§fosse, "Une Certaine Photog£nie," Cin§a-Cin§ pour Tous no. 94 (1 October 1927), 13.
5paul Ramain, "Pour une Esthgtique Intellectuelle du Pulm," Cinea-Cing pour Tous no. 58 (2 April 1926), 14.
^Riccioto Canudo, Helene, Faust et Nous (Paris: Chiberre, 1920), p. 28.
ZCfl.nud.p_n Usine, p.22.
Film," H,
8Ramain, "Pour une Esthetique Intellectuelle du
^Canudo, Usine, pp. 39-^0.
1 0 Jean Epste in , Bonjour Cinema (Par i s : S i r?ne , 1921), p . 117.
^ S t e p h a n e Mallarme, "Music and L i t e r a t u r e , " in 0. B. Haridson, J r . , ed . , Modern Cont inen ta l Li te rary Cr i t ic i sm (New York: Appleton, 19b2), pp. 17H-lol-
iScanudo, Hgl&ne, Faust e t Nous, p . S: Usine, p. 39.
^Miche l Goreloff, "Suggerer , " Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 91 (15 August 1927), 23.
l ! | E p s t e i n , Po€3ie d' Aujourd ' h u i , pp. 172-173.
1 ^ I b i d . , p . ll»8.
1^For detailed examination of such issues, see Harold Osborne, "The Quality of Feeling in Art," Aesthetics in the Modern World, ed. Harold Osborne (London: Weybright
130
Talley, 1968), pp. 105-124, and B. R. Tilghniun, The ression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (The Hague: tinus Nijhoff, 1970). ' '~~~
17canudo, "Manifeste des Sept Arts," Gazette des t Arts no. 2 tn.d. ] , 2.
l8Ibid.
'0
•^canudo, Usine, p. 17.
2°Elie Paure, Ponction du Cinema (Paris: Gonthier, p. 23.
21Ibid., p. 24.
22Ibid., p. 25.
25jean-Andre Fieschi, "Entretien avec Marcel L'Her-•r," Cahiers du Cinema no. 202 (June-July 1968), 29.
2l|Jean Epstein, Le Cinematographe vu de 1'Etna ris: Ecrivains RSunis, 192t>), p. 24. .
25Epstein, Bonjour Cingraa, p. 115.
2^Rene Doumic, "L'Age du Cinema," Nouvelle Revue • Deux Mondes (15 August 1913), p. 930.
27Louis Delluc, Cinema et Cie (Paris: Grasset, • 9), P . 85 . ~ " ~ ' ""
2 B B l a i s e C e n d r a r s , " L e c t u r e s , " Cin£a no . 5t> June 1922) , 1 1 .
29jean P a s c a l , "Le V o c a b u l a r i e du Cinema," C ine -; a z i n e I I , 5 (3 February 1 9 2 2 ) , 1M6-1H7.
5°Paul Va le ry , The Art of Poe t ry (New York: V i n t a g e , i l ) , pp . 46, 185.
^ F o r a contemporary accoun t of t he "pu re p o e t r y " i t r o v e r s y , see Henri Bremond, La Po§s ie Pure ( P a r i s : v s s e t , 1926) .
52Quoted in Marcel T a r i o l , Louis Del luc ( P a r i s : She r s , 1965) , p . 109.
(
131
^ L o u i s D e l l u c , Drames du Cinema ( P a r i s : Monde Nouveau, 1923 ) , pp . x - x i . '
34 Canudo, Usine, p. 20.
55Germaine Dulac, "Ou Sont les Interoretes?" Le Film no. 133-134 (l4 October 1918), pp. 69~70.
36Delluc, Cinema et Cie, pp. 144-46.
37canudo, Usine, p. 21.
38jean Galtier-BoissiSre, "Bilan Cinegraphique," Le Crapouillot (March, 1923), p. 3.
39Faure, Fonction du Cinema, p. 27.
^Pierre Porte, "Un Id§al," Cinea-Cine Pour Tous no. 41 (15 July 1925), 9- ~
^Canudo, Usine, p. 20.
^2Germaine Dulac, "Films Visuals," Le Rouge et le Noir, Cahier specials (July 1928), 39.
^Epstein, Le Cinematographe Vu de l'Etna, p. 24.
44 Louis Delluc, Photoggnie (Paris: Grasset, 1920), P. 9*.
^Epstein, Le Cinematographe vu de l'Etna, p. 46.
^"Georgette Leblanc, "Propos sur le cinema," Mercure de France (16 November 1919),. 279-
^Epstein, Le Cinematographe vu de l'Etna, p. 11.
^"Dmitri Kirsanoff, "Les Problemes de la Photog£-nie," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 62 (1 June 1926), 10. See also Kirsanoff, "Les Myste'res de la Photogenie," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 39 (15 June 1925), 9-
^Rene Clair, Cinema Yesterday and Today, trans.by R. C. Dale (New York: Dover, 1972), p. 73-
5°Canudo, Usine, p. 76.
(
13^
•^Louis Aragon, "Le Decor," Le Film no.. 131 6 September 1918), 9-
^ E p s t e i n , Bonjour Cingma, pp. 35-36.
^^Delluc, Photoggnie, p . 5, 54Quoted in T a r i o l , Louis Delluc, p . 48.
'^Deluc 's ear ly wr i t ings minimized the a r t i s t i c Icu la t ion implici t in photogenie ' s transforming powers, s love of-authentic landscapes and of documentary films
iggesU's tha t he saw, photogenie as an almost na tu ra l pro-; s s , somewhat akin to Siegfr ied Kracauer's view of cinema's "f in i ty for nature. In t h i s Delluc was unique among ie Impressionis ts . By 1923, however, Delluc had apparent ly . iquiesced to the emphasis on cinema's s t y l i z i n g capac i -Les, and his preface to Drames du Cinema (Paris:Monde Nouveau J23) makes most of the s tandard express ionis t assumptions.
5^See Delluc, Photogenie, pp. 11-12.
—^lEps-tein3_Bonjour_.Cinema, pp. 35-3_6.
•"Rene Schwob, Une Melodie Si lencieuse ( P a r i s : r a s s e t , 1929), p . 260.
^ 'Epste in , Le Cinematographe vu de l ' E t n a , p . 30. 5 0 Cla i r , Cinema Yesterday and Today, pp. 72-73 .
Epstein, Le Cinematographe vu de l ' E t n a , p . 11. 61
62
63
Epstein, Bonjour. Cinema, p. 115-
Andre Bazin, Jean Renoir (New York: Simon & chuster, 1973), p. 105.
64
65
66
Canudo, Usine, p. 38.
Dulac, "Pilms Visuels," 36.
Jean Tedesco., "Cinema-Expression," Cahiers du lois no. 16-17 (1925), 23.
"'Rene Jeanne, "La Controverse de la Couleur ," Unga-Cing pour Tous no. 78 (2 February 1927), 27-
133
^Louis Delluc, "Notes Pour Moi," Le Film no. 125 (5 August 1919),5.
69canudo, Uj3ine_, p. 133-
7°See Jean Tedesco, "Etudes de Ralenti," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 57 (15 March 1926), 11-12, and Jean Epstein, "Le Ralenti," Cin6a-Cine pour Tous no. 108 (J May 1928), 10.
71Henri Lamblin, "De la Deformation," Le Rouge et le Noir, Cahier SpSciale (July -1928), 169-171.
72canudo, Usine, p. 42. See also Lecn Moussinac, "Technique Commande," Gasette des Sept Arts no. 2 n.d. , 12-13, and Pierre Porte, "Cinema Intellectuel ou Affect if?" Cinea-Cine" pour Tous no. 61 (15 May 1926), 9-10.
73Epstein, Bonjour Cinema, p. 9*1.
•T^Ibid., p. 105.
75c_anudo, Usine, p. 81.
76p-i-erre-Por-te ^J'.Une-LaiLjaiLCinejna," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 9 (15 March 1924), 1 1 .
7? Ib id . , 12.
78canudo, Usine, pp. 23, 29-30.
79Quoted in Tariol, p. 96.
80£pstein, Le Cinematographe vu de l'Etna, pp. 59-60; Blaise Cendrars, "Lectures,1' 11.
8lEpstein, Le Cinematographe vu de l'Etna, p. 24.
82Tedesco, "Cinema-Expression," 27-
83Epstein, Bonjour Cinema, p. 33.
8*'lbid., p. 30.
85Dulac, "Pilms Visuels," -39-
86paurg, T'onction du Cinema, pp. 29-36; Clair, Cinema Yesterday and Today, pp. 4'4-4'5 .
131
135
8?See Germaine Dulac, "Le Cinegraphie Integrale," in Marcel Lapierre, ed. , Anthologie du Cinema (Paris: La Nouvelle Edition, 1946), pp. 165-106. '"
""Paul Ramain is one of the few Impressionist theorists to use the motivic forms of musical construction as models for cinema, especially in his analyses of La Roue, Per Mude Tod, and Metropolis as "symphonic" structures of plastic "themes.'" See "De 3a Construction Thematique des Films," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. I^ (2 September 1925), 9-11, and "Metropolis," Cinea-Cine pour Tous no. 91 (15 August 1927), 21-22, and Ciriea-Cine pour tous no. 93 (15 September 1927), 21-2H.
"^Abel Gance, La Beaute a Travers le Cinema (Paris: Institut General Psychologique, 1926), pp. 2-6.
9°Leon Houssinac, "Du Rhythme Cinegraphique," illot (March 1923), reprinted in Le Crapouillot
• ..... in.iD q0(i also Moussina'c, L'Age Le Crapou -^'November 1932), pp. 20-22 jvember 1932), pp. <ni-£c, o=c cu.*.... Ingrat du Cinema (Paris: Editeurs Francais Reunis, 1967), pp7 75-Bl- "
9lRene Clair, "Rhythme," Cahiers du Mois no.
16-17 (1925), 13-16. "
92Andre Bazin, "In Defense of Mixed Cinema," in What Is Cinema? vol. I,trans.by Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 53-75.
93|v|orris Weitz, Philosophy of the Arts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 195o),. p. 2b.
9^A. G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1950), p. 47-
m
( (
CHAPTER IV: A PARADIGM OF IMPRESSIONIST FILM STYLE
Constructing a Style Paradigm
The Impressionist movement consists of more than
an ensemble of cultural activities and an implicit theore
tical position. Perhaps the most important contribution
of the movement is the films which its members made..
In these films, historians like Leprohon, Langlois, Burch,
Sadoul, and Mitry have perceived a distinct style. More
over, as Chapter I has suggested, such a perception of
stylistic homogeneity was present among the members of
this and other groups.. But no writer has specifically
identified the features \ f the Impressionist style. Taking
previous research as an initial guide, my project in this
chapter is to identify the features of the films which pro
duce the sense that these films may be grouped signifi
cantly. Such features can then be assembled into a para
digm which will consist of a systematic outline of the
significant traits of the Impressionist style. Before
constructing the paradigm, however, it is necessary to
determine the set of films to be considered, the logical
nature of the proposed paradigm, and the concept of film
style most appropriate to this study.
c
History of International Cinenla
i
Part 1: Silent Era
Week 8
) )
)
„)8 BASIC E L E M E N T S
ond part of Kurosawa's film abandons the apartment in which the first part of the action takes place and shifts to the streets and slums of Tokyo, which change of setting brings about a radical change of style.
7. The reasons for this standardization arc intimately bound up with the establishment of the "zero point" of film-making defined earlier. This particular manifestation of that development would make a fascinating subject of study from the point of view of'film perception.
8. This is true only in part. Actually, this sequence is a large-scale development of the concept of "montage units," that is, a dialectic of "good" and "bad" matches, inaugurated in Strike and theorized by Eisenstcin in his teaching-sec Lessons with Eisenstcin by Vladimir Nizhny (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961).
The Idea of Montage in Soviet
Art and Film David Bordwett
vA
1
Some questions in film history can be answered in terms of cinema alone. Other questions demand that the historian place film-making in a larger context. For example, the historically significant European film-maker often Las artistic alliances outside film, in stage directing (e.g., Sjostrom, Visconti, and Bergman), painting (e.g., Antonioni, Bresson), or even poetry (e.g., the Prevcrts), For this reason, many problems in European film history can be solved only by an investigation of the relationslup between film and the other arts.
The history of Soviet cinema offers a problem of this kind. Between 1924 ind 1930, several Soviet films exhibited a radically original film style, gen-trally known as the montage style. Montage was used to build a narrative (by formulating an artificial time and space or guiding the viewer's attention from one narrative point to another), to control rhythm, to create metaphors, and to make rhetorical points. The most celebrated exponents of tins tfyle—Kulcshov, Pudovkin.Vertqyr and Eisenstcin^were also its most eloquent theoreticians, all of whose theories assumed that filmic meaning is built out of an assemblage of shots which creates a new synthesis, an over-til meaning that lies not within each part but in the very fact of juxtaposition. Yet despite a certain broad agreement on the foundations of montage, Kuleshov, Fudovkin, Eisenstein, and Vertov were not a unified school; significant aesthetic disagreements separated them. Why, then, did these dl-rectors formulate a theory of montage and employ the montage style in their lilms at the precise time they did? And why did montage cease to become Iho characteristic strategy of Soviet film-making around 1930? Film historians have traditionally offered three answers to the first question:
1. Kuleshov conducted certain montage experiments between 1919 and 1924 which influenced other directors.
2. There was a shortage of raw film stock. 3. Griffith's Intolerance, whose formal structure utilizes the montage princi
ple, was first screened in the Soviet Union in 1919, and directors took it as a model.
These explanations seem not so much wrong as incomplete. Undoubtedly these three factors were important in the situation, but as historical explana-