I am taking a film theory class this summer and so far has been blowing my mind. We do these readings that seem fairly straightforward and self explanatory but then when we get to discussion our TA is able to extrapolate so many more legitimate valid points that my sh•t is rocked. Here is a short summary of my very basic understanding and thoughts, which I am mostly putting down to backup my own mind.
The first idea is that cinema was created not for the intention of cinema. Unlike other arts in which technical developments are made in order to further the art itself. (people want to paint more accurately, different brushes are invented). In cinema's case the technology was invented because people wanted to see if they could do it, and also wanted to be able to study motion. Today's movies were not the intended purpose of motion pictures.
Most art is believed to have been derived from religious ritual or spiritual representations. The original cave drawings were there not so the cavemen could enjoy drawing, but so they had images of their believed deities to go to and worship. All sorts of cultures made these things, the Greeks and Romans made marble statues, or made elaborate religion-centered paintings (the Sistine Chapel). A key factor in these objects' significance and spiritual importance is that there is only one of them. If a person wishes to worship to that object they must travel to it. Also, oftentimes, only certain people had access to these objects. Possibly only the high priests could worship and see a particular statue, making the idea of it that much more precious to the people who could not worship at it. All that mattered to them was that this "holy" object existed, even if they couldn't see it it's sole existence made it holy.
The transition from ritual object to piece of art comes with time and ease of reproduction. As new technologies come into existence these religious objects can be extremely accurately recreated in more transportable forms. No longer would people have to go to this object, it could be brought to them, or they may not have to travel as far. The intrinsic holy nature of the reproductions gets less and less with each facsimile and the objects can then be viewed as an artwork rather than a religious monument.
Imagine if you can the idea of a movie being seen as a religious object. With it's viewing would come a religious experience and it would only be shown in one place, possibly only to the highest priests in this religion. People would travel far and wide to worship outside the temple where this movie would be shown. Sound absurd? That's why cinema is different than other artworks. No one ever commissions a filmmaker to make a film for their own personal viewing and no one else's, they are nearly always seen and distributed to thousands if not millions. If then, cinema is different than these other types of art, is it an art?
After the idea of a narrative film is out there with a bevy of silent films being made, the makers of the movies begin to argue for them being an art, and many argued against it every step of the way. Cinema is unlike any other artwork in that, really, there is no original. With painting there is the first one done and then the prints made from that, the original being much more valuable than the prints. In film this doesn't really exist, the original is a conglomeration of negatives all bonded together and is not really valuable in any other sense that more prints can be made from it, it itself is not valued for its viewing, and if it were, does not offer any advantages to the identical prints that are made from it. In this sense cinema wavers somewhere in between art and exhibition.
When one thinks of a piece of filmmaking they must think of it in the time period it was created. I cannot judge a silent film made in 1922 in comparison to Live Free or Die Hard simply because the idea of film in each of those time periods is so different. When silent films were being made, people did not think, "this would be so much better with sound" it was simply viewed as a moving picture and that was enough. The idea that a photograph could be seen in motion was astounding to the first cinema goers. All the cuts, close-ups, and unconventional shots we are used to today seemed odd to the first audiences. An image of a hammer, followed by the image of a nail, followed by the backside view of a nail coming through the wood would not seem as natural to the first movie-goers, they had to be trained on his sort of story telling and it had to be invented by the filmmakers. When sound movies finally came around people actually argued that they were not art, but silent film was. Another example of this is when animation first came around it was considered art, but as soon as there were anthropomorphic non-human characters and human characters, people argued against it as an art.
I like to think that there are two kinds of film makers in this time, and somewhat still today. There are the artisans that wish to perfect a medium, and there are inventors who wish to take the medium to another level. An artisan would be someone like Charlie Chaplin who only desired to make a really good silent film. Other people like Alan Crosland (director of the Jazz Singer) wanted to take the cinema to the next step, talkies. Later people jumped into the realm of color, then abstract, then digital, and now more often 3D. This brings me to the idea we discussed yesterday of total cinema, which I think I will designate an entire post to.
