I have been busy lately and not able to reply sooner, but
something interests philosophically me in the assertion
that 'cinema recreates movement'.
I'm not so sure about this, coming from a Bergson/Deleuze
philosophical perspective.
In Bergson's _Creative Evolution_ from 1907, he describes
cinema as an abstract depiction of movement. Cinema does
not, and cannot, recreate the movement of the objects which
were filmed. That movement cannot be recreated under any
circumstances, such is the nature of duration. Cinema is
only false movement, as it seeks to create order from
duration, in consecutive sections. This is opposed to
duration itself, which is a natural process from order to
disorder. (I'm paraphrasing my reading of Bergson here, so
if anyone feels I'm missing something, then please
feel free to speak up)
Cinema cannot record movement, since it turns duration into
an abstract set, or slice of time - time(duration) being
the only thing we are internal to. The projection of the
cinema's individual frames can only present movement as
ordered and uniform. This has its most deceptive
consequences for Bergson in that time is therefore
presented abstractly by ordered movement. Hence Deleuze's
further re-reading of Bergson.
Magnetic recording of sound has no such intervals, or
sections, and appears continuous. Whilst still not a pure
image of duration, the recording of sound is more
continuous, and therefore presents mobile sections of
duration, rather than the immobile sections of the shot, or
the individual frame. It is from continuity of sound that
Eisenstein allows montage to unfold, as Deleuze notes.
On another point, the subject of teaching this to film
students particularly interests me. I might suggest that
the illusion of motion is a quagmire of a subject, even
though it is prevalent in histories of cinema. In histories
of film based on narrative and exhibition, I would argue
that it is largely a red-herring - A subject which appears
simple, but is largely philosophical (see above), and is
actually rather irrelevant to the study of early film.
Whilst the novelty value of cinema was important to its
initial popularity, this was soon replaced by the factors
of cinema's exhibition and representation. Cinema's
technology is a very small part of a long history of
optical entertainment stretching back at least one hundred
years before 1895. The principal focus of many
chapters on cinema's early history, often related in
simplistic and narrow terms, is the innovative technology
of cinema during and occasionally immediately before its
'invention'. Only relatively recent research has changed
the emphasis to one that studies the history of cinema
exhibition in its early years. Cinema entered an
entertainment world already complex and apt to be quick to
change. Attitudes to cinema ranged from those who saw it as
merely another gimmick of public entertainment, and hence
doomed, to those who interpolated it into already
sophisticated variety-based entertainment package. It
flourished in the latter. The boom in cinema has little to
do with its optical ingenuity, and there is reason to
believe that pioneers of cinema were not as interested in
its technical operations as they were in what they could be
used for. (The Lumieres were fairly disinterested in
cinema, a step toward one of their real objectives - colour
photography)
The historiographical precedent is set by histories of
photography - often comparable to histories of cinema.
Photography's invention was a simple stage in a very long
development of optical technology, of which cinematography
is a part. The marketable still photograph entered an
already sophisticated image culture which was already
showing the signs of consumerism that we appreciate today.
Much room is given in historical accounts to the invention
of photographic technologies, and only recently has this
started to include study of consumption practices.
On top of the relative antagonism between students and
historical study, I have found studying early film often
difficult because of an over-emphasised yet narrow-based on
the technology/history of technology; and often rewarding
when cinema is placed into a study of narrative codes,
exhibition and cultural studies which pre-date or surround
the early years.
I am content to learn about cinema's invention (although I
had to study the history of photography to fully grasp
where cinema fits into the philosophy of optical
development - John Herschel described cinema as early as
the 1840s), but find it more productive understanding the
longer historical and cultural determinants of cinema.
Film studies should emphasise film as part of a broad
visual culture which has a long and important history.
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Damian Peter Sutton
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