What is Cinema
In all honesty, I could not follow this excerpt almost at all. My reading comprehension is already fairly bad, and reading this excerpt made me really confused because I had a hard time understanding what I was reading. All I could grasp from this reading was the main idea of comparing photography and paintings. I honestly cannot think of what to respond with since I could not understand what was being said in this excerpt. However, I do know both ends of the comparison. Although I have never sincerely partaken in anything photography related, I do know about it and some of the process photographers go through, and as for paintings, I have personally made paintings of different styles. Both of these art forms can affect people in many ways and both capture the artist's views in a creative yet wise way.
What is Cinema by Andre Bazin
ReplyDeleteIn this chapter, Bazin sees cinema as an idealistic event and at the same time technical. He believes that idea precedes the invention which makes it superior to technical means used to achieved it. For him, cinema is realistic because of the mechanical mediation of the camera. He considers cinema as above painting which served as a medium for duplicating reality. The ability of cinema to record the event in time and make an imprint of duration of the object is what sets it apart from photography.
His myth of total cinema is all about the reflection of human’s psychological and ethical obsession in the arts while depicting reality. Bazin also envision cinema as a step toward a more realistic depiction of the world including sound, color and depth of field. And because he believes in the origin of an art that is reveal in nature, the quest for cinema for realism support his claim for an objective and pure cinema.
In this chapter as well, he was able to explain the relationship between filmed image and its life counterpart where he describe it according to photographic image as a kind of decal or transfer, the photographic image is the object itself freed from conditions of time and space, photography embalms time and photograph itself share a common being after the fashion of a fingerprint. The essential words that he used to describe cinema are decal, transfer, mold, fingerprint, imprint and tracing.
In one of his line, where it says that the photographic image is the object itself, only freed from time and space, he is simply implying a form of salvation or transgression to a higher moral and spiritual plateau. This shows that he is a religious person who practiced it through his words shown in his essay. His virtue resides in his being openness and suggestiveness. He manifests a great critic’s gift of speaking which enlighten readers about his work and the entire context of its art.
Looking at his masterpiece, we can conclude that Bazin went to every screening of every words he wrote so that it would be fair. He even believed that movies are important in themselves. His criticism are valuable for its own exploration of the nature and possibilities of film making and understanding the esthetic background of movie making. In simple words, if this intellectual and esthetic idea were added to old Hollywood film, then we spectators will need to look at films the way Bazin look and appreciate it.