SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

FROM THEORY OF FILM

BASIC CONCEPTS

Like the embryo in the womb, photographic film developed from distinctly sep
arate components.Its birth came about from a combination of instantaneous pho
tography, as used by Muybridge and Marey, with the older devices of the magic
lantern and the phenakistoscope.Added to this later were the contributions of other
nonphotographic elements, such as editing and sound.Nevertheless photography,
especially instantaneous photography, has a legitimate claim to top priority among
these elements, for it undeniably is and remains the decisive factor in establishing
film content. The nature of photography survives in that of film.
Originally, film was expected to bring the evolution of photography to an end
satisfying at last the age-old desire to picture things moving. This desire already
ao,!;!JJ.tJor major developments within the photographic medium itself. As far

back as 1839, when the first daguerreotypes and talbotypes appeared, admiration
mingled with disappointment about their deserted streets and blurred landscapes.
And in the 'fifties, long before the innovation of the hand camera, successful

attempts were made to photograph subjects in motion.The very impulses which

thus led from time exposure to snapshot engendered dreams of a further extension
of photography in the same diection-dreams, that is, of film. Abut 1860, Cook
and Bonnelli, who had developed a device called a photobioscope, predicted a
"complete revolution of photographic art.... We will see ... landscapes," they
announced, "in which the trees bow to the whims of the wind, the leaves ripple and
glitter in the rays of the sun."
Along with the familiar photographic leitmotif of the leaves, such kindred sub
jects as undulating waves, moving clouds, and changing facial expressions ranked
high in early prophecies.All of them conveyed the longing for an instrument which
would capture the slightest incidents of the world about us-scenes that often
would involve crowds, whose incalculable movements resemble, somehow, those
9

10

FILM AND REALITY

of waves or leaves. In a memorable statement published before the emergence of

instantaneous photography, Sir John Herschel not only predicted the basic features
of the film camera but assigned to it a task which it has never since disowned: "the
vivid and lifelike reproduction and handing down to the latest posterity of any
transaction in real life-a battle, a debate, a public solemnity, a pugilistic conflict."
Ducos du Hauron and other forerunners also looked forward to what we have come
to label newsreels and documentaries-films devoted to the rendering of real-life
events. This insistence on recording went hand in hand with the expectation that
motion pictures could acquaint us with normally imperceptible or otherwise
induplicable movements-flashlike transformations of matter, the slow growth of
plants, etc. All in all, it was taken for granted that film would continue along the
lines of photography....

PROPERTIES OF THE MEDIUM

. Jhe properties of film can be divided into basic and technical properties.
The basic properties are identical with the properties of photography. Film, in
other words, is uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality and, hence,
gravitates toward it.
Now there are different visible worlds. Take a stage performance or a painting:
they too are real and can be perceived.But the only reality we are concerned with
is actually existing physical reality-the transitory world we live in.(Physical reality
will also be called "material reality," or "physical existence," or "actuality," or
loosely just "nature." Another fitting term might be "camera-reality.") ... The
other visible worlds reach into this world without, however, really forming a part
of it. A theatrical play, for instance, suggests a universe of its own which would
immediately crumble were it related to its real-life environment.
As a reproductive medium, film is of course justified in reproducing memorable
ballets, operas, and the like. Yet even assuming that such reproductions try to do
justice to the specific requirements of the screen, they basically amount to little
more than "canning," and are of no interest to us here. Preservation of perfor
mances which lie outside physical reality proper is at best a sideline of a medium so
particularly suited to explore that reality. This is not to deny that reproductions,
say, of stage production numbers may be put to good cinematic use in certain fea
ture films and film genres.
Of all the technical properties of film the most general and indispensable is edit
ing. It serves to establish a meaningful continuity of shots and is therefore unthink
able in photography.(Photomontage is a graphic art rather than a specifically pho
tographic genre.) Among the more special cinematic techniques are some which
have been taken over from photography-e.g.the close-up, soft-focus pictures, the
use of negatives, double or multiple exposure, etc. Others, such as the lap-dissolve,
slow and quick motion, the reversal of time, certain "special effects," and so forth,
are for obvious reasons exclusively peculiar to film.
These scanty hints will suffice. It is not necessary to elaborate on technical mat
ters which have been dealt with in most previous theoretical writings on film.
Unlike these, which invariably devote a great deal of space to editing devices, modes

II

BASIC CONCEPTS

oflighting, various effects of the close-up, etc., the present book concerns itself with
cinematic techniques only to the extent to which they bear on the nature of film, as
defined by its basic properties and their various implications. The interest lies not
with editing in itself, regardless of the purposes it serves, but with editing as a means
. of implementing-or defying, which amounts to the same-such potentialities of
the medium as are in accordance with its substantive characteristics. In other
words, the task is not to survey all possible methods of editing for their own sake;
rather, it is to determine the contributions which editing may make to cinematically
significant achievements. Problems of film technique will not be neglected; how
ever, they will be discussed only if issues going beyond technical considerations call
for their investigation.
This remark on procedures implies what is fairly obvious anyway: that the basic
and technical properties differ substantially from each other. As a rule the former
take precedence over the latter in the sense that they are responsible for the cine
matic quality of a fllm. Imagine a fllm which, in keeping with the basic properties,
records interesting aspects of physcal reality but does so in a technically imperfect
manner; perhaps the lighting is awkward or the editing uninspired. Nevertheless
such a fi.lm is more specifically a film than one which utilizes brilliantly all the cin
ematic devices and tricks to produce a statement disregarding camera-reality. Yet
this should not lead one to underestimate the influence of the technical properties.
It will be seen that in certain cases the knowing use of a variety of techniques may
endow otherwise nonrealistic films with a cinematic flavor.

THE TWO MAIN TENDENCIES

If film grows out of photography, the realistic and formative tendencies must be
operative in it also. Is it by sheer accident that the two tendencies manifested them
selves side by side immediately after the rise of the medium? As if to encompass the
whole range of cinematic endeavors at the outset, each went the limit in exhausting
its own possibilities. Their prototypes were Lumiere, a strict realist, and Melies,
who gave free rein to his artistic imagination. The fi.lms they made embody, so to
speak, thesis and antithesis in a Hegelian sense.

"' '-

Lumiere and Melies

Lumiere's films contained a true innovation, as compared with the repertoire of
the zootropes or Edison's peep boxes: they pictured everyday life after the manner
of photographs. Some of his early pictures, such as Baby's Breakfast (Le Dejeuner
de hebe) or The Card Players (La Partie d'ecarte), testify to the amateur photog
rapher's delight in family idyls and genre scenes. And there was Teasing the Gar
dener (L 'Arroseur arrose), which enjoyed immense popularity because it elicited
from the flow of everyday life a proper story with a funny climax to boot. A gardener
is watering flowers and, as he unsuspectingly proceeds, an impish boy steps on the

hose, releasing it at the very moment when his perplexed victim examines the ded
up nozzle. Water squirts out and hits the gardener smack in the face. The denoue
ment is true to style, with the gardener chasing and spanking the boy. This film, the

12

FILM AND REALITY

germ cell and archetype of all film comedies to come, represented an imaginative

attempt on the part of Lumiere to develop photography into a means of story tell

ing. Yet the story was just a real-life incident. And it was precisely its photographic
veracity which made Maxim Gorki undergo a shock-like experience. "You think,"

he wrote about Teasing the Gardener, "the spray is going to hit you too, and instinc
tively shrink back."

On the whole, Lumiere seems to have realized that story telling was none of his

business; it involved problems with which he apparently did not care to cope. What

ever story-telling films he, or his company, made-some more comedies in the vein

of his first one, tiny historical scenes, etc.-are not characeristic of his production.

The bulk of his films recorded the world about us for no other purpsoe than to pres
ent it. This is in any case what Mesguich, one of Lumiere's "ace" cameramen, felt

to be their message. At a time when the talkies were already in full swing he epito
mized the work of the master as follows: "As I see it, the Lumiere Brothers had

established the true domain of the cinema in the right manner. The novel, the the
ater, suffice for the study of the human heart. The cinema is the dynamism of life,

of nature and its manifestations, of the crowd and its eddies. All that asserts itself
through movement depends on it. Its lens opens on the world."

Lumiere's lens did open on the world in this sense. Take his immortal first reels

Lunch Hour at the Lumiere Factory (Sortie des usines Lumiere), A"ival ofa Train
(L 'Arrivee d'un train), La Place des Cordeliers a Lyon: their themes were public

places, with throngs of people moving in diverse directions. The crowded streets

captured by the stereographic photographs of the late 'fifties thus reappeared on the

primitive screen. It was life at its least controllable and most unconscious moments,

a jumble of transient, forever dissolving patterns accessible only to the camera. The

much-imitated shot of the railway station, with its emphasis on the confusion of

arrival and departure, effectively illustrated the fortl1itYof these patterns; and their

fragmentary character was exemplifed by. the clouds of smoke which leisurely

drifted upward. Significantly, Lumiere used the motif of smoke QQ sc;:yeral q;cca
sions. And he seemd anxious to avoid any personal interference with the

gie-ri d.ata.

Detached records, his shots resembled the imaginary shot of the grandmother

which Proust contrasts with the memory image of her.

Contemporaries praised these films for the very qualities which the prophets and

forerunners had singled out in their visions of the medium. It is.,inevitable that, in

the comments on Lumiere, "the ripple of leaves stirred by the wind" should be

reterred to enthusiastically. The Paris journalist Henri de Parville, who used the

image of the trembling leaves, also identified Lumiere's over-all theme as "nature

caught in the act." Others pointed to the benefits which science would derive from
Lumiere's invention. In America his camera-realism defeated Edison's kinetoscope

with its staged subjects.

Lumiere's hold on the masses was ephemeral. In 1897, not more tqan two years

after he had begun to make films, his popularity subsided. The sensation had worn
off; the heyday was over. Lack of interest caused Lumiere to reduce his production.

Georges Meties took over where Lumiere left off, renewing and intensifying the

medium's waning appeal. This is not to say that he did not occasionally follow the

latter's example. In his beginnings he too treated the audience to sightseeing tours;

The Two Tendencies: Lumiere's Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory ( 1895) and Melies'
The Witch ( 1900). "Lumiere;s lens did open on the world ... Melies ignored the workings of
nature out of the artist's delight in sheer fantasy" (K.RACAUER, pages 12. 14).

FILM AND REALITY

14

or he dramatized, in the fashion of the period, realistically staged topical events.But

1iq 9 Jh f ma lay i sbstituting staged illusion for unstaged
his ait pnJ

. rp1ots tor everyday mc1dents.

reahty, 'and lg>_n_til.V4

'j,Y

The two pioneers were aware of the radical differences in their approach.
Lumiere told Melies that he considered film nothing more than a "scientific curi

osity," thereby implying that his cinematograph could not possibly serve artistic

purposes. In 1897, Melies on his part published a prospectus which took issue with
Lumiere: "Messrs. Melies and Reulos specialize mainly in fantastic or artistic
scenes, reproductions of theatrical scenes, etc. ... thus creating a special genre

which differs entirely from the customary views supplied by the cinematograph
street scenes or scenes of everyday life."

Melies's tremendous success would seem to indicate that he caterd to demands

left unsatisfied by Lumiere's photographic realism. Lumiere appealed to the sense

of observation, the curiosity about "nature caught in the act"; Melies ignored the

workings of nature out of the artist's delight in sheer fantasy. The train in Arrival of
a Train is the real thing, whereas its counterpart in Melies's An Impossible Voyage
(Voyage a travers /'impossible) is a toy train as unreal as the !lery through which

it is moving. Instead of picturing the random movements of phenomena, Melies

freely inlerlinked imagined events according to the requirements of his channing

fairy-tale plots.Had not media very close to film offered similar gratifications? The
artist-photographers preferred what they considered aesthetically attractive com

positions to searching explorations of .nature. And immediately before the arrival

of the motion picture camera, magic lantern performances indulged in the projection of religious themes, Walter Scott novels, and Shakespearean dramas.
Yet even though Melies did not take advantage of the camera's ability to record

and reveal the physical world, he increasingly created his illusions with the aid of

techniques peculiar to the medium. Some he found by accident. When taking shots
of the Paris Place de !'Opera, he had to discontinue the shooting because the cel
luloid strip did not move as it should; the sUJ::prising result was a film in which, for
no reason at all, a bus abruptly transformed itself into a hearse.True, Lulniere also

was not disinclined to have a sequence of events unfold in reverse, but Melies was

the first to exploit cinematic devices systematically.Drawing on both photography

and the stage, he innovated many techniques which were to play an enormous role

in the future-among them the use of masks, multiple exposure, superimposition

as a means of summoning ghosts, the lap-dissolve, etc. And through his ingenuity
in using these technique_s he added a touch of cinema to his playful narratives and
magic tricks. Stage traps ceased to be indispensable; sleights-of-hand yielded to
incredible metamorphoses which film alone was able to accomplish.Illusion pro
duced in this climate depended on another kind of craftsmanship than the magi
cian's. It was cinematic illusion, and as such went far beyond theatrical make

believe. Melies's The Haunted Castle (Le Manoir du diable) "is conceivable only
in the cinema and due to the cinema," says Henri Langlois, one of the best con
noisseurs of the primitive era.

Notwithstanding his film sense, however, Melies still remained the theater direc
tor he had been.He used photography in a pre-photographic spirit-for the repro-

:\

BASIC CONCEPTS

15

duction of a papier-mache universe inspired by stage traditions. In one of his great

est films, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans Ia /une). the moon harbors a

grimacing man in the moon and the stars are bull's-eyes studded with the pretty

faces of music hall girls. By the same token, his actors bowed to the audience, as if

they performed on the stage. Much as his films differed from the theater on a tech

nical plane, they failed to transcend its scope by incorporating genuinely cinematic
subjects. This also explains why Melies, for all his inventiveness, never thought of

moving his camera; the stationary camera perpetuated the spectator's relation to

the stage. His ideal spectator was the traditional theatergoer, child or adult. There
seems to be some truth in the observation that, as people grow older, they instinc
tively withdraw to the positions from which they set out to struggle and conquer.

hi his

later years Melies more and more turned from theatrical film to filmed the

ater, producingjeeries which recalled the Paris Chatelet pageants.

The Realistic Tendency

In following the realistic tendency, films go beyond photography in two respects.

First, they picture movement itself, not only one or another of its phases. But what

kinds of movements do they picture? In the primitive era when the camera was

fixed to the ground, it was natural for film makers to concentrate on moving mate

rial phenomena; life on the screen was life only if it manifested itself through exter
nal, or "objective," motion. As cinematic techniques developed, films increasingly

drew on camera mobility and editing devices to deliver their messages. Although
their strength still lay in the rendering of movements inaccessible to other media,

these movements were no longer necessarily objective. In the technically mature

film "subjective" movements-movements, that is, which the spectator is invited,

to execute-constantly compete with objective ones. The spectator may have to.

identify himself with a tilting, panning, or traveling camera which insists on bring
ing motionless as well as moving objects to his attention. Or an appropriate arrange

ment of-shots may rush the audience through vast expanses of time and/or space

so as to make it witness, almost simultaneously, events in different periods and

places.

Nevertheless the emphasis is now as before on objective movement; the medium

seems to be partial to it. As Rene Clair puts it: "If there is an aesthetics of the cinema

. .. it can be summarized in one word: 'movement.' The external movement of the

objects perceived by the eye, to which we are today adding the inner movement of

the action." The fact that he assigns a dominant role to external movement reflects,

on a theoretical plane, a marked feature of his own earlier films-the ballet-like

evolutions of their characters.

Secobd, fil.ms ntay',S!i.ze qpon physical reality'with all i'is manifold movements
by means Of an intenne<!i:Iry procedure which would seem to be less jndispensable
in photography-staging. In order to narrate an intrigue, the film maker is often
obliged to stage not only the action but the surroundings as well. Now this recourse

to staging is most certainly legitimate if the staged world is made to appear as a

faithful reproduction of the real one. The important thing is that studio-built set-

RLM AND REALITY

16

tings convey the impression of actuality,

so

that the spectator feels he is watching

events which might have occurred in real life and have been photographed on the
spot.
Falling prey to an interesting misconception, Emile Vuillermoz champions, for
the sake of "realism," settings which represent reality as seen by a perceptive
painter. To his mind they are more real than real-life shots because they impart the
essence of what such shots are showing. Yet from the cinematic point o(Yi.ew these
allegedly realistic settings are no less stagy than would be, say, a cubist or abstract
composition. Instead of staging the given raw material itself, they offer.

so

to speak,

the gist of it. In other words, they suppress the very camera--reality which film aims
at incorporating. For this reason, the sensitive moviegoer will feel disturbed by
them. (The problems posed by films of fantasy which, as such, show little concern
for physical reality will be considered later on.)
Strangely enough, it is entirely possible that a staged real-life event evokes a
stronger illusion of reality on the screen than would the original event if it had been
captured directly by the camera. The late Emo Metzner who devised the settings
for the studio-made mining disaster in Pabst's Kameradschafi-an episode with the
ring of stark authenticity-insisted that candid shots of a real mining disaster would
hardly have produced the same convincing effect.
One may ask, on the other hand, whether reality can be staged so accurately that
the camera-eye will not detect any difference between the original and the copy.
Blaise Cendrars touches on this issue in a neat hypothetical experiment. He ima
gines two film scenes which are completely identical except for the fact that one has
been shot on the Mont Blanc (the highest mountain of Europe) while the other was
staged in the studio. His contention is that the former has a quality not found in the
latter. There are on the mountain, says he, certain "emanations, luminous or oth
erwise, which have worked on the film and given it a soul." Presumably large parts
of our environment, natural or man-made, resist duplication.

The Formative Tendency

The film maker's formative faculties are offered opportunities far exceeding
those offered the photographer. The reason is that film extends into dimensions
which photography does not cover. These differ from each other according to area
and composition. With respect to areas, film makers have never .c<mfined them
selves to exploring only physical reality in front of the camera but, from the outset,
persistently tried to penetrate the realms of history and fantasy. Remember Melies.
Even the realistic-minded Lumiere yielded to the popular demand for historical
scenes. As for composition, the two most general types are the story film and the
nonstory film. The latter can be broken down into the experimental film and the
film of fact, which on its part comprises, partially or totally, such subgenrs
e
as
the film on art, the newsreel, and the documentary proper.
It is easy to see that some of these dimensions are more likely than others to
prompt the film maker to express his formative aspirations at the expense of the
realistic tendency. As for areas, consider that of fantasy: movie directors have at all
times rendered dreams or visions with the aid of settings which are anything but

::

BASIC CONCEPTS

17

realistic. Thus in Red Shoes Moira Shearer dances, in a somnambulistic trance,

through fantastic worlds avowedly intended to project her conscious mind
agglomerates of landscape-like forms, near-abstract shapes, and luscious color
schemes which have all the traits of stage imagery. Disengaged creativity thus drifts
away from the basic concerns of the medium. Several dimensions of composition
favor the same preferences. Most experimental films are not even designed to focus
on physical existence; and practically all films following the lines of a theatrical
story evolve narratives whose significance ovel'Shadows$!l,il!.of the raw material of
nature used for their implel11entation. For the rest, the film maker's formative
endeavors may also impinge on his realistic loyalities in dimensions which, because
of their emphasis on physical reality, do not normally invite such encroachments;
there are enough documentaries with real-life shots which merely serve to illustrate
some self-contained oral commentary.

Clashes Between the Two Tendencies

Films which combine two or more dimensions are very frequent; for instance,
many a movie featuring

an

everyday-life incident includes a dream sequence or a

documentary passage. Some such combinations may lead to overt clashes between
the realistic and formative tendencies. This happens whenever a film maker bent
on creating an imaginary universe from freely staged material also feels under an
obligation to draw on camera-reality. In his Hamlet Laurence Olivier has the cast
move about in a studio-built, conspicuously stagy Elsinore, whose labyrinthine
architecture seems calculated to reflect Hamlet's unfathomable being. Shut off from
our real-life environment, this bizarre structure would spread over the whole of the
film were it not for a small, otherwise insignificant scene in which the real ocean,
outside that dream orbit is shown. But no sooner does the photographed ocean
appear than the spectator experiences something like a shock. He cannot help rec
ognizing that this little scene is an outright intrusion; that it abruptly introduces an
element incompatible with the rest of the imagery. How he then reacts to it depends
upon his sensibilities. Those indifferent to the peculiarities of the medium, and
therefore unquestioningly accepting the staged Elsinore, are likely to resent the
unexpected emergence of crude nature as a letdown, while those more sensitive to
the properties of film will in a flash realize the make-believe character of the castle's
mythical splendor. Another

case

in point is Renato Castellani's Romeo and Juliet.

This attempt to stage Shakespeare in natural surroundings obviously rests upon the
belief that camera-reality and the poetic reality of Shakespeare verse can be made
to fuse into each other. Yet the dialogue as well as the intrigue establish a universe
so remote from the chance world of real Verona streets and ramparts that all the
scenes in which the two disparate worlds are seen merging tend to affect one as an
unnatural alliance between conflicting forces.
Actually collisions of this kind

are

by no means the rule. Rather, there is ample

evidence to suggest that the two tendencies which SW<lY the medium may be inter
related in various other ways. Since some of these relationships between realistic
and formative efforts can be assumed to be aesthetically more gratifying than the
rest, the next step is to try to define them.

18

FILM AND REALITY

THE CINEMATIC APPROACH

It follows from what has been said ... that films may claim aesthetic validity if
they build from their basic properties; like photographs, that is, they must record
and reveal physical reality.... One might argue that too exclusive an emphasis on
the medium's primary relation to physical reality tends to put film in a strait jacket.
This objection finds support in the many existing films which are completely
unconcerned about the representation of nature. There is the abstract experimental
film. There is an unending succession of"photoplays" or theatrical films which do
not picture real-life material for its own sake but use it to build up action after the
manner of the stage. And there are the many films of fantasy which neglect the
external world in freely composed dreams or visions. The old German expressionist
films went far in this direction; one of their champions, the German art critic Her
man G. Scheffauer, even eulogizes expressionism on the screen for its remoteness
from photographic life.
Why, then, should these genres be called less "cinematic" than films concentrat
ing on physical existence? The answer is of course that it is the latter alone which
afford insight and enjoyment otherwise unattainable. True, in view of all the genres
which do not cultivate outer reality and yet are here to stay, this answer sounds
somewhat dogmatic. But perhaps it will be found more justifiable in the light of the
following two considerations.
First, favorable response to a genre need not depend upon its adequacy to the
medium from which it issues. As a matter of fact, many a genre has a hold on the
audience because it caters to widespread social and cultural demands; it is and
remains popular for reasons which do not involve questions of aesthetic legitimacy.
Thus. the photoplay has succeeded in perpetuating itself even though most respon
sible critics are agreed that it goes against the grain of film. Yet the public which
feels attracted, for instance, by the screen version of Death ofa Salesman, likes this
version for the very virtues which made the Broadway play a hit and does not in the
least care whether or not it has any specifically cinematic merits.
Second, let us for the sake of argument assume that my definition of aesthetic
validity is actually one-sided; that it results from a bias for one particular, if impor
tant, type of cinematic activities and hence is unlikely to take into account, say, the
possibility of hybrid genres or the influence of the medium's nonphotographic com
ponents.But this does not necerily speak against the propriety of that definition,
In a strategic interest it is often more advisable to loosen up initial one-sidednessprovided it is well founded-than to start from all too catholic premises and then
try to make them specific. The latter alternative runs the risk of blurring differences
between the media because it rarely leads far enough away from the generalities
postulated at the outset; its danger is that it tends to entail a confusion of the arts.
When Eisenstein, the theoretician, began to stress the similarities between the cinema and the traditional art media, identifying film as their ultimate fulfillment,
Eisenstein, the artist, increasingly trespassed the boundaries that separate film from
elaborate theatrical spectacles: think of his Alexander Nevsky and the operatic
aspects of his Ivan the Terrible.

BASIC CONCEPTS

19

In strict analogy to the term "photographic approach" the film maker's approach
is called "cinematic" if it acknowledges the basic aesthetic principle. It is evident
that the cinematic approach materializes in all films which follow the realistic ten
dency. This implies that even films almost devoid of creative aspirations, such as
newsreels, scientific or educational films, artless documentaries, etc., are tenable
propositions from an esthetic point of view-presumably more so than films
which for all their artistry pay little attention to the given outer world. But as with
photographic reportage, newsreels and the like meet only the minimum require
ment.
What is of the essence in film no less than photography is the intervention of the
film maker's formative energies in all the dimensions which the medium has come
to cover. He may feature his impressions of this or that segment of physical exis
tence in documentary fashion, transfer hallucinations and mental images to the
screen, indulge in the rendering of rhythmical patterns, narrate a human-interest
story, etc. All these creative efforts are in keeping with the cinematic approach as
long as they benefit, in some way or other, the medium's substantive concern with
our visible world. As in photography, everything depends on the "right" balance
between the realistic tendency and the formative tendency; and the two tendencies
are well balanced if the latter does not try to overwhelm the former but eventually
follows its lead.

THE ISSUE OF ART

When calling the cinema an art medium, people usually think of films which
resemble the traditional works of art in that they are free creations rather than
explorations of nature. These films organize the raw material to which they resort.
into some self-sufficient composition instead of accepting it as an element in its own
right. In other words, their underlying formative impulses are so strong that they
defeat the cinematic approach with its concern for camera-reality. Among the film
types customarily considered art are, for instance, the above-mentioned German
expressionist films of the years after World War I; conceived in a painterly spirit,
they seem to implement the formula of Hermann Warm, one of the designers of

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari settings: who claimed that "films must be drawings
brought to life." Here also belongs many an experimental film; all in all, films of
this type are not only intended as autonomous wholes but frequently ignore phys
ical reality or exploit it for purposes alien to photographic veracity. By the same
token, there is an inclination to classify as works of art feature films which combine
forceful artistic composition with devotion to significant subjects and values. This
would apply to a number of adaptations of great stage plays and other literary
works.
Yet such a usage of the term "art" in the traditional sense is misleading. It lends
support to the belief that artistic qualities must be attributed precisely to films which
neglect the medium's recording obligations in an attempt to rival achievements in
the fields of the fine arts, the theater, or literature. In consequence, this usage tends
to obscure the aesthetic value of films which are really true to the medium. If the

20

FILM AND REALITY

term "art" is reserved for productions like Hamlet or Death ofa Salesman, one will
find it difficult indeed to appreciate properly the large amount of creativity that goes
into many a documentary capturing material phenomena for their own sake. Take
Ivens's Rain or Flaherty's Nanook, documentaries saturated with formative inten
tions: like any selective photographer, their creators have all the traits of the imag
inative reader and curious explorer; and their readings and discoveries result from
full absorption in the given material and significant choices. Add to this that some
of the crafts needed in the cinematic process-especially editing-represent tasks
with which the photographer is not confronted. And they too lay claim to the film
maker's creative powers.
This leads straight to a terminological dilemma. Due to its fixed meaning, the
concept of art does not, and cannot, cover truly "cinematic" films-films, that is,
which incorporate aspects of physical reality with a view to making us experience
them. And yet it is they, not the films reminiscent of traditional art works, which
are valid aesthetically. If film is an art at all, it certainly should not be confused with
the established arts. There may be some justification in loosely applying this fragile
concept to such films as Nanook, or Paisan. or Potemkin which are deeply steeped
in camera-life. But in defining them as art, it must always be kept in mind that even
the most creative film maker is much less independent ofnature in the raw than the
painter or poet; that his creativity manifests itself in letting nature in and penetrat
ing it.
1960