PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema Week Three

This week was of PHI350 was much more interesting and engaging than the other weeks so far.  The title for the week was 'The Question of Realism', looking for an answer via the writings of Andrè Bazin and Rudolf Arnheim.  Two films were prescribed for the week, The Spy by Lang, and Bicycle Thieves by De Sica.  Unfortunately I couldn't source either of these films in full so had to settle on excerpts.

It was an interesting choice of Bazin and Arnheim for the readings this week.  Bazin's contribution was his The Ontology of the Photographic Image and Arnheim's was Film as Art.  Both Bazin and Arnheim view film as, as my lecture notes refer, the culmination of the arts of representation.  By this is meant that film is as far as the art of representation can go, film is as 'real' an art form as can be produced.  Bazin and Arnheim differ, however, in how film should be used, be applied.  Is what makes a good film attention to portraying realism (as in De Sica's Bicycle Thieves) or is what makes a good film attention to portraying meaning, or expressing reality (as in Lang's The Spy)?  We'll call this distinction realism vs. expressionism.

Bazin seems to identify more with the primary of the two positions identified above.  Bazin defended and promoted film's application in realist applications. Bazin was especially fond of Italian Neo-Realist film and this, no doubt, is why De Sica's Bicycle Thieves was chosen this week, a classic example of this form of film and one that Bazin directly commented upon.  The following quote (from my lecture notes) highlights Bazin's opinion quite well:

Bicycle thief is one of the first examples of pure cinema. No more actors, no more story, no more mise en scène, in other words, at last the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality: no more cinema.

Arnheim, on the other hand, differed quite drastically from Bazin.  Arnheim felt that for film to be an art form it had to exploit all of its capabilities as a medium.  Arnheim (from my lecture notes again) claimed that:

In order that the film artist may create a work of art it is important that he consciously stress the peculiarities of his medium. This, however, should be done in such a manner that the character of the objects represented should not thereby be destroyed but rather strengthened, concentrated and interpreted

Arnheim is here arguing that film be used to interpret and strengthen aspects of reality.  This position we may term impressionist.

Are the two positions here represented mutually exclusive however?  I'm not so sure that they are.  I do say not so sure because I'm not certain, I haven't read nearly enough of either Bazin or Arnheim to make a conclusive decision.  What I can say, however, is that from the readings presented this week, and the lectures for the week, I don't think that the two positions exclude each other.

Bazin and Arnheim just seem to differ in their personal tastes relating to cinematographic art.  Bazin thinks that film, through its virtue of being as close to reality as art can get, should stick with portraying reality without human intervention.  Arnheim agrees that film is as close to reality as art can get but because of this it can, no should, be used to draw attention to detail and enhance aspects of reality that are overlooked in every day experience.  Certain aspects of reality can be expressed, perhaps better, by being expressionist, according to Arnheim.

Good film can therefore be both realist and expressionist, but, and this is my personal interpretation, it depends upon the context.  We can flip back to Aristotle say we need a good plot, and certainly both realist and expressionist film can produce this, but can they both do this in all given situations?  Would both Bazin and Arnheim agree that what makes a good film is always realism or expressionism?  I don't think so.

Documentaries are, in my opinion, generally desired to be realist.  That is the audience desires to see a realistic representation of the natural world, one that has as little of the producer's/director's hand in the film as possible.  When film makers such as Michael Moore come along and make films such as Roger and Me various viewers become upset or offended as, all of a sudden, there is some expressionism present.

This is an extreme example as it is (or probably more correcly, perceived as) a cultural norm for documentaries to only represent what is true and real.  But most documentaries are cut and only shots are taken of certain subject matter, and can't more be represented with a little enhancement?  In a particular scene of Lang's The Spy there is depicted a motorcycle rider speeding along the road.  A standard realist shot could have been taken but because of the expressionist representation of the rider, the shot is taken from the 'worm's eye view' and the actor's facial expression and body language is over acted, much more is represented, much more reality is represented.

Perhaps the documentary example is a little unfair to Bazin but I feel the above is still valid.  Certain situations demand a realist approach to film while others demand a more expressionist approach.  It woud be quite absurd to argue an absolutist position that only either realist film or expressionist film is good film all of the time and in every situation.

Anyhow, that's enough for this week, and quite late too.  I've had a few setbacks this last week with my Mother-in-Law arriving from Canada for a holiday.  As usual I'll post my reply to the tutorial questions below.  I only posted responses to the Bazin questions this week due to the fact that, as I've just mentioned, my Mother-in-Law's arrival set me back a little and also this decision was a little out of a mixture of respect, curiosity, and disappointment.  These last three emotions reflect the lack of discussion in the tutorials/online discussion board.  I've been the only one presenting answers to the tutorial questions.

What differentiates film from photography in terms of the medium's relation to reality?

At the very beginning of his discourse Bazin pursues a discussion of an almost evolutionary perspective, a Teleology of you like, of painting. This quasi evolution culminates in realist painting reaching its end. Painting could go no further in its appetite for the reproduction of reality as even though it could now effectively engage with the three dimensions of sight it lacked a necessary 'psychic' fourth dimension, movement. Of course, through certain symbolic techniques, painters have been able to allude to movement within their works but movement was never an actual characteristic of their work.

Now painting is not photography, as you'll see in more detail in the following answer, but there is at least one positively relevant similarity between painting and photography that is applicable in this situation, both mediums are static. Painting and photography both render their content immovable. Of course it is then easy to see that film differs in this respect. But this doesn't really answer the question, what aspects of the medium's relation to reality sets film apart from photography, or does it?

Perhaps the following quote will illuminate this situation a little further. Bazin (p. 14) claims that:

Viewed in this perspective, the cinema is objectivity in time. The film is no longer content to preserve the object, enshrouded as it were in an instant, as the bodies of insects are preserved intact, out of the distant past, in amber. The film delivers baroque are from its convulsive catalepsy. Now, for the first time, the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were. Those categories of resemblance which determine the species photographic image likewise, then, determine the character of its aesthetic distinct from that of painting.

There is one theme in this quote that is important here and it directly reflects to what we were looking at above. This theme is stasis (in the pathological application of the term). While photography presents an image as a static phenomenon film, on the other hand, has an added element. Above we called this the 'fourth dimension', and I will continue this term here. This 'fourth dimension' of movement, as mentioned above, allows cinema to differ in its relationship to reality from photography. Both mediums, as you'll see below, are an objective process and, according to Bazin, are just as much an ontological aspect of reality as their 'objects', however, film presents an aspect of reality over time that photography just can't accomplish.

What is the basis for the superior aesthetic and creative power of photography?

Photography, Bazin argues, is objective while painting cannot loose its subjective nature: 'No matter how skillful (sic.) the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity' (p. 12). Further, there is an ontological aspect possessed by photography that enhances it's aesthetic appeal. I'll present a direct quote from Bazin illustrating this point:

Only a photographic lens can give us the kind of image of the object that is capable of satisfying the deep need man has to substitute for it something more than a mere approximation, a kind of decal or transfer. The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern it. No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking in documentary value the image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model.

Bazin is here arguing that photography has a certain aesthetic appeal that is lost in other artistic mediums. Mediums such as painting present only a rough approximation, an ersatz of the object, that removes the viewer from the object. For Bazin the photograph is the object however. Photography presents the viewer with the actual object and hence there is a superior ontology and aesthetic appeal. Photography, by virtue of it's more objective means of becoming, does not 'create eternity', as painting does for example, but renders a moment of time still, stagnating the object against the ever present and never tiring jaws of change possessed by the natural world.

But Bazin goes even further arguing that photography, because of its ontological status, mentioned above, actually contributes to the order of nature rather than, like painting for example, simply reproducing instances and creating a mere substitute (p. 15).