Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

24
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

Transcript of Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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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

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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

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)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

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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

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•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

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"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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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,

Page 12: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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

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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

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< > ) )

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

Page 15: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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

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>

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

Page 17: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

/

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

%

Page 18: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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

Page 19: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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

Page 20: Bordwell, Impressionist Film Theory

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.

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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 .

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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

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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.

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Part 1: Silent Era

Week 8

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„)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-