Both Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer theorize that film captures reality and presents it in a new manner, although both these film theorists approach this hypothesis through different methods of thought. Bazin’s main argument revolves around time and how film has a tendency to help create a reality through resemblance of nature. Kracauer reveals he believes reality is extended through film and movement is the core ingredient in effective films. Through combining these two theories, we approach a happy medium where film helps us see time without chronological order as well as appreciate how reality is magnified through film by resembling nature.
Bazin writes “ the breaking up of the scenes into shots and their assemblage is the equivalent of an expressionism in time, a reconstruction of the event according to an artificial and abstract duration”(174) in order to better acquaint ourselves with his theory of time in film. By describing how film can re-organize time into a new reality from a captured version of reality, Bazin explains how film alters reality to form a new reality. By being able to re-organize time in film, we can recreate memories, set thoughts in motion that aren't necessarily chronological and eventually create a format similar to our minds process of thinking.
Bazin describes "realism of cinema follows directly from its photographic nature."(426). By using images that reflect reality in film, we are able to confirm that the film is "real". While in the cinema, the film is the universe, a kind of nature on its own. By utilizing the reality we see daily in film, Bazin creates a new reality in film, one that can we can escape to.
Not only does photography help create reality, it also gives us a sense of imagination. Bazin describes film as a form of creating new thought in viewers, and by presenting new images or ideas to veiwers, we are inspired to think. Re-organized thoughts are a lot like many photographs strung together without a chronological order. "Photography", as Bazin explains, "is clearly the most important event in history of plastic arts" (170). He describes it this way because photography was first there in order to capture history, but in film it can also create fictional stories. Our imagination creates a new reality within this form and reality is now shifted. Also, by disorienting the viewer in time, the film is now a kind of book, torn apart and then put back together in a new order. This new form of the book is art, an art that if it really were a book it wouldn't, in fact, make sense. But since it is a film, and in film format, we can jump all over the page and still have it be coherent. Our thaughts jump around daily, from what we need to get at the grocery store, to how much we hate working mornings. This thaught disorganization is represented on film, creating an even closer relationship with the viewer; a kind of intamacy. Creating this new close reality between film and viewer, makes for a even more convincing new reality within the film.
Through the use of re-assembling shots, the reality in film created through the use nature, and using photography to create the imaginary, Bazin describes film's relation to reality and perhaps; its purpose. Film is there to help us escape our reality and enter another. Kracauer, on the other hand, says that we enter another reality through creating a new reality using movement across the screen. Kracauer discusses a few key techniques that cinema must use in order to create a physical existence within cinema, and in turn; create a reality in the film. These techniques include the chase, dancing and nascient motion; which all work toward creating film that resembles reality through movement.
Kracauer defines the chase as “ motion at its extreme…suspenseful physical motion”(304). This is due to the suspense created by say, a car chase and how fast the cars pass over the screen in front of us. An example of the chase in a well-known film may be the Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne is omniscient, and so are we for that matter, and can out-smart the FBI by moving and pausing in just the right places in order not to get caught or seen. While watching a scene like this, the viewer gets anxious for Bourne and the journalist wrapped up in this plot; that anxiousness that the viewer feels is what Kracauer wants to occur with this particular mechanism of film theory. Invoking feeling and emotion in viewers is the exact point of success Kracauer wishes to find.
Another form of movement that Kracauer describes in film is “Dancing”, which "seems to occur on the spur of the moment; it is the vicissitudes of life from which…ballets issue”(305). Dancing is how movement, of any one object, passes in a kind of pattern across the screen. There is also the literal kind of dancing on screen, where Kracauer references Fred Astair. And Astair's view of things is that dancing should break out spontaneously in life the way it does on screen. By using Astair for an example Kracauer points out how dancing envigorates the audience and inspires us to get up and dance post film even.
The third form of movement that Kracauer describes is nascient motion. where “movment as contrasted with motionlessness” (305) describes the stecatto movement creating suspense, excitement and inspiration in viewers. The play/pause effect of nascient motion gives the illusion of those times in life where it just slows down, and then speeds up. But when using this mimicry of life in film, the whole experience is condensed into a smaller space, making the extended feelings of suspense etc more intense. In suspense films and thrillers, the dead silence before a scary attack is key to create that tensed-up excitement in the viewer. Feeling with the characters on screen in this way creates a relationship that deepens the reality the viewer falls into. By making this new close connection, the film becomes that much closer to real reality in the viewers eyes. By believing in the danger of nacient motion in horror films, we get sucked into an alternative reality.
Through invigorating inspiration and feelings of suspense in viewers, Kracauer instills movement in viewers, and through this movement, reality has an extension towards the viewer. This installment translates into that movement needed to create life on screen, and by doing so, create reality on screen. Also, the transference of this new movement or life in the viewer, inspires the viewer to go out and dance as well, or inact a scary scene. This inspiration brings film into a new real of addiction perhaps. Film becomes something we lust for, we need that alternate reality in order to feel those emotions, and to enjoy that particular pleasure escape.
These two authors discuss both time, nature captured creating reality in film, and movement in order to ultimately create a new realism (which can be fictional or imaginary); the realism in film. What I propose is this; film is our escape from reality, from the realism of life, and inso being film serves us as a pleasurable alternate universe. This universe is where movement, time and space are recreated to meet our fantasies. Through this new imaginary, fictional truth within this new world, we find comfort. Bazin discusses how "neorealism is more an otological position than an aesthetic one"(175); meaning neorealist films are created first just to be, and then to act, creating a more fictional film ultimately, at least a film more removed from reality then others.
Works Cited
Bazin, Andre. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image." Film Theory and Critisism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 166-170.
Bazin, Andre. "The Myth of Total Cinema." Film Theory and Critisism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 170-174.
Bazin, Andre. "De Sica: Metteur-en-scene." Film Theory and Critisism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 174-183.
Bazin, Andre. "Theatre and Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 418-429.
Kracauer, Siegfried. "The Establishment of Physical Existence." Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 303-314.
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