Food For Thought: Nature of Film

by Arturo Virzi

Cinema is already considered an established artform today, but during its inception, it had the same troubles other mediums such as video games go through in order to achieve the status. To be regarded as art was an honor and a privilege, and cinema seemed to be too much of a mass art for the high brow culture to deem it one.

Early exhibitions didn’t recount stories, but simply showcased film as a technological achievement. The result was a cheap shock effect from its audience, one that lasted momentarily, but once our eyes adapted to the seemingly impossible nature of moving images, the thrill thinned and all we were left with was a boxing match or a ballerina.

If art was form and meaning then cinema surely lacked meaning. The cinema had lowbrow associations with the circus side show and the vaudeville peep show, and due to it’s mass popularity, film also had a vulgarity rarely seen in other artistic mediums such as theater or opera. The paradox was that even though the stage simulated life, cinema contained raw and organic elements rarely seen on the stage due to its borgeausie nature.

Another very popular opinion was that film lacked an identity of its own, borrowing and stealing heavily from theater. For some time it was believed that cinema would always serve as the means to art and not as an art form itself. It was a way of spreading real art, it was said. Film first had to emancipate itself from its previews incarnations in order to be an independent medium.

The key was to exploit the differences it shared with theater, like editing, soundtrack, voice overs, close-ups, movement. Theater was a recreation of life, while film, on the other hand, had a guiding conscience of its own, serving as a mediator. The presence of an artist was a lot more noticeable in a film, than at a play.

The classic period of film had crucial investigations on the structure of film, and how it differed itself from other artforms. The distinguishing features of a film are composed of technical devices employed in narratives for the sake and purpose of an emotional reward. Flackbacks, close-ups, and edits are some of the techniques filmmaker execute, and the ones that distinguish film from theater. 

But how do we, the viewers, understand the role that these technical devices play in the articulation of cinematic narrative? Philosopher Munsterberg answered this by stating that all of these devices employed on film are objectifications of mental processes. A close-up, for example. presents in visual form a correlate to the mental act of paying attention.

The reason we naturally understand the narrative filmmaking without reading a booklet before is because these technique mirror our own memory and thought process.

Then sound took over film, and talkies became the standard quo in Hollywood, putting a lot of stars from the silent era out of a job. Many art critics despised the talkie, because the believed that silent cinema had already achieved independent status as an art form on its own, and sound brought it back down to zero once again. These critics relied on the idea that in order to something to be art it must be unique, an idea that has changed over time. 

For many critics of the sound film, the artistic aspect of cinema consisted in its ability to present abstractions. An ability that was almost lost when film gained the ability to present simultaneous soundtrack, now that films had the capacity to explain rather than be forced to show.  

Many praised the new technological advancement, though, and attained that film still represented a landmark in the art world. Many believed the silence of film was an detraction and a limit, and that the true exploitative quality of film was movement, and editing. 

With editing we can demonstrate the presence of an alternative means of achieving film art, namely an interest in allowing the camera to reveal an objective first person experience of the world.

These supporters of sound value styles they call realism, composed of extended shots and deep focus and most likely used by Jean Renoir, Orson Welles and Victorio De Sicca. It’s only after seeing these artists employ the modern techniques in their film that the critics of sound turned into believer.