CIN201Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Soviet Montage Theory, Analog Recording, Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences
Tutorial Week 16
1. Andre Bazin
2. Rules of the Game: Narrative and Structure
3. Rules of the Game: Style and the Bazinian Aesthetic
1. Bazin
– can the follow the logic of the argument: how does his belief of what film is inform his
understanding of style
– i.e. what is the Ontology/Epistemology and Aesthetic of his theory?
– aesthetic only makes sense if we understand the ontology
– Why did Bazin believe that cinema was the medium best equipped to provide access to
reality? Cinema’s basis in photography led Bazin to argue that film’s primary goal was the
reproduction of reality.
– Because photography doesn’t require human intervention, it promotes a relationship between
the viewer and the real world that has been lost to other forms.
– gives us an added contact with reality
– cinema has objective advantage
– “For the first time, the only thing to come between an object and its representation is
another object. For the first time, an image of the outside world takes place
automatically, without creative human intervention, following a strict determinism.” !
(p. 7)
– “All art is founded upon human agency, but in photography alone can we celebrate its
absence. Photography has an effect upon us of a natural phenomenon, like a flower or
snowflake whose beauty is inseparable from its earthly origin.” – Andre Bazin,
“Ontology of the Photographic Image” (p. 7)
– Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic conception of the sign (symbol, icon, index) has relevance for
Bazin’s understanding of the relationship entailed in photographic reproduction.
– The index enjoys a physical link to its referent, which proves its connection to what it
represents even when it doesn’t look like the referent.
– Language functions like a symbol; painting is akin to an icon; but photography, though
it may possess an iconic dimension, is more accurately described as an index.
– The photographic image is an index of the real, just as a footprint is an indexical
representation of a human’s (past) presence; it confirms the referent’s existence by
retaining an imprint.
– The photographic (or cinematographic) image entails an indelible registration of the
previous presence of the recorded subject. It is a record of the subject’s existence at a
moment in time, captured by the camera but also imprinted onto the emulsion of the
negative via light rays.
– We believe in the veracity of the photographic image precisely because of this indexical
relationship to reality; this encapsulates the epistemological dimension of Bazin’s theory.
– photography eliminates any “doubt” about the image’s origins in reality, and as such
enjoys a “psychological” advantage over painting as a realist medium
Tutorial Week 16
– “photography completely satisfies our appetite for illusion by means of a process of
mechanical reproduction in which there is no human agency at work. The solution lay
not in the resulting work but rather in its genesis.” (p. 6)
– Bazin’s conviction that film was a realist medium propelled him to privilege certain stylistic
attributes in his delineation of a preferred aesthetic for cinema; this preferred aesthetic
informs the “Evolution” essay.
– questions:
– how does Bazin’s devotion to the concept of cinema as a realist medium affect his
model of film history?
– why is Bazin opposed to montage?
– meaning is not in the image
– they suggest ideas (exactly what soviet montage was about)
– And, how does the digital’s revised definition of cinema (now no a medium based in
analog recording dependent on an indexical relationship to the real) affect Bazin’s
argument, if at all?
– Bazin flying in face of historical orthodoxy in suggesting that there is a great break between
silent and sound, or that there is a great loss with the addition of sound
–
2. Rules of the Game
– are they laughing with the film or against it? (the film is doing this on purpsoe)
– there is a productive tension between the classical structure of the work (reinforced by the
reliance on the most orderly of classical music via Mozart) and the anarchic goings on –even
more to the point, Renoir’s technique—his loose and open approach to filming (which
includes everything from casting/performance to the moving camera) also operates in
contradistinction to the tight strictures of the source material’s structures—in other words,
Renoir has adopted a style that highlights the limitations of a rule-bound existence
– --the 5-part classical structure functions as follows: set-up of basic situation/complication/
climax/reversal/denouement—each of these movements connects to a central event: Andre’s
declaration/the trip to la Colinere as a workaround/the hunt/the Fete/the misbegotten attempt
at escape
– --the movement is toward unity (though socially-devised solutions) but disorder keeps
erupting – the most brutal imposition of order is the hunt, an explicit exercise of social
prerogatives on the wildness of nature, but the ending is scarcely less merciless
– --the various parallels and different kinds of associations one can make with characters and
situations lends the film density and complexity while also supplying another way that
seemingly diffuse action is knitted together
– --for example, two moments of misrecognition (via vision) produce significant and
unalterable results (Christine mistakenly seeing Robert and Genevieve in a clinch;
Schumacher believing Octave is set to run away with Lisette)
– --different sets of characters can be understood in similar ways: both Octave and Marceau are
outsiders defined by a lack of capital; both Christine and Schumacher are outsiders defined
by their non-Frenchness
Document Summary
Tutorial week 16: andre bazin, rules of the game: narrative and structure, rules of the game: style and the bazinian aesthetic, bazin. Cinema"s basis in photography led bazin to argue that film"s primary goal was the reproduction of reality. Because photography doesn"t require human intervention, it promotes a relationship between the viewer and the real world that has been lost to other forms. gives us an added contact with reality cinema has objective advantage. For the first time, the only thing to come between an object and its representation is another object. For the first time, an image of the outside world takes place automatically, without creative human intervention, following a strict determinism. (p. 7) All art is founded upon human agency, but in photography alone can we celebrate its absence. Photography has an effect upon us of a natural phenomenon, like a flower or snowflake whose beauty is inseparable from its earthly origin. andre bazin,
