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Class: Film and Media Theory
Course Description
Within two decades of the invention of film in 1895, filmmakers and theorists
engaged in debates over the nature of this new medium. What are its basic
properties? What are its possibilities as an art form? By the early twentieth
century, film theorists had converged around two basic arguments: realist
theorists argued that, because it is based on photography, film should focus on its
special relationship to the physical world; formalist theorists argued that because it
is based on the illusion of movement, film should focus on creating new worlds and
ideas. In this class, we will examine these approaches to understanding film
aesthetics and consider how and whether the emergence of digital film has
changed the very nature of the medium.
Discussions: At the beginning of the quarter, you will be assigned to a
team with whom you will discuss the weekly readings and prompts. You will
hold these discussions on a shared discussion board. If a team member does
not contribute consistently to these discussions, they will be removed
from your team.
Week 6 Module
Questions：
Please answer all the questions.
I also uploaded the reading.
Please follow the guidelines very very carefully and answer correctly.
If you have any questions please ask me.
Thank you.
2
Basic Concepts
LIKE THE EMBRYO
in the womb, photographic film developed from dis
tinctly separate components.Its birth came about from a combination of
instantaneous photography, as used by Muybridge and Marey, with the
older devices of the magic lantern and the phenakistoscope.1 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 accounted for major developments within the photo
graphic 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. 2 And in the ‘fifties, long be
fore the innovation of the hand camera, successful attempts were made to
photograph subjects in motion.a The very impulses which thus led from
time exposure to snapshot engendered dreams of a further extension of
photography in the same direction-dreams, that is, of film.About 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.” 4
Along with the familiar photographic leitmotif of the leaves, such
kindred subjects as undulating waves, moving clouds, and changing facial
expressions ranked high in early prophecies.All of them conveyed the long
ing for an instrument which would capture the slightest incidents of the
world about us-scenes that often would involve crowds, whose incalculable
27
28
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
movements resemble, somehow, those 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 trans
action in real life-a battle, a debate, a public solemnity, a pugilistic con
flict.”5 Ducos du Hamon 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.c 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.7 All in all, it was
taken for granted that film would continue along the lines of photography.*
To summarize: the preceding statements about photography also hold
true of the cinematic medium; but they do not apply to it mechanically
or go far enough to exhaust its potentialities. Elaborations and extensions
are needed. They will be provided in the first three chapters, which repre
sent an attempt to account for the general characteristics of the medium.
The present chapter concentrates on the basic concepts underlying the sub
sequent analyses. The next chapter details the recording and revealing func
tions of film. The third deals with its particular affinities. This conceptual
framework will later be filled in by inquiries into specific areas and elements
of film and problems of film composition.
PROPERTIES OF THE MEDIUM
The properties of film can be divided into basic and technical prop
erties.
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 “physi
cal existence,” or “actuality,” or loosely just “nature.” Another fitting term
might be “camera-reality.” Finally, the term “life” suggests itself as an alter* Mr. Georges Sadoul, L’Invention du cinema, p. 298, sagaciously observes that
the names given the archaic film cameras offer clues to the then prevailing aspirations.
Such names as vitascope, vitagraph, bioscope, and biograph were undoubtedly intended
to convey the camera’s affinity for “life,” while terms like kinetoscope, kinctograph,
and cinematograph testified to the concern with movement.
BASIC CONCEPTS
29
nate expression-for reasons which will appear in chapter 4.) 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 repro
ductions 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 performances 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 feature films and
film genres.*
Of all the technical properties of film the most general and indispen
sable is editing. It serves to establish a meaningful continuity of shots and
is therefore unthinkable in photography. (Photomontage is a graphic art
rather than a specifically photographic genre.) Among the more special
cinematic techniques are some which have been taken over from photog
raphy-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 tech
nical matters which have been dealt with in most previous theoretical writ
ings on film.8 Unlike these, which invariably devote a great deal of space to
editing devices, modes of lighting, 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 imple
menting-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 tech
nique will not be neglected; however, 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
* See pp. 73-4.
30
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
a rule the former take precedence over the latter in the sense that they are
responsible for the cinematic quality of a film. Imagine a film which, in
keeping with the basic properties, records interesting aspects of physical
reality but does so in a technically imperfect manner; perhaps the lighting
is awkward or the editing uninspired. Nevertheless such a film is more spe
cifically a film than one which utilizes brilliantly all the cinematic devices
and tricks to produce a statement disregarding camera-reality. Yet this
should not lead one to underestimate the influence of the technical prop
erties. 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 TVO MAIN TENDENCIES
If film grows out of photography, the realistic and formative tenden
cies must be operative in it also. Is it by sheer accident that the two tend
encies manifested themselves 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 films they made embody, so to speak, thesis
and antithesis in a Hegelian sense. 9
Lumiere and Melies
Lumiere’s films contained a true innovation, as compared with the
repertoire of the zootropes or Edison’s peep boxes: 10 they pictured every
day life after the manner of photographs.11 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 photographers’s delight in family
idyls and genre scenes.12 And there was TEASING THE GARDENER (L’Ar
roseur arrose), which enjoyed immense popularity because it elicited from
the flow of everyday life a proper story with a funny climax to boot. A gar
dener is watering flowers and, as he unsuspectingly proceeds, an impish boy
steps on the hose, releasing it at the very moment when his perplexed vic
tim examines the dried-up nozzle. Vater squirts out and hits the gardener
smack in the face. The denouement is true to style, with the gardener
chasing and spanking the boy. This film, the germ cell and archetype of
all film comedies to come, represented an imaginative attempt on the part
of Lurniere to develop photography into a means of story telling.13 Yet the
* See pp. 61-2, 87.
BASIC CONCEPTS
31
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 instinctively shrink back.” 14
On the whole, Lumiere seems to have realized that story teIIing was
none of his business; it involved problems with which he apparently did
not care to cope. Whatever story-teiling films he, or his company, made
some more comedies in the vein of his first one, tiny historical scenes, etc.
-are not characteristic of his production.15 The bulk of his films recorded
the world about us for no other purpose than to present it. This is in any
case was Mesguich, one of Lumieres “ace” cameramen, felt to be their
message. At a time when the talkies were already in fuII swing he epito
mized the work of the master as foIIows: “As I see it, the Lumiere Broth
ers had established the true domain of the cinema in the right manner.
The novel, the theater, suffice for the study of the human heart. The cin
ema is the dynamism of life, of nature and its manifestations, of the
crowd and its eddies. AII that asserts itself through movement depends
on it. Its lens opens on the world.” 16
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 Lu
miere), ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN (L’Arrivee d’un train), LA PLACE DES CoR
DELIERS A LYON: 17 their themes were public places, with throngs of people
moving in diverse directions. The crowded streets captured by the stereo
graphic photographs of the late ‘fifties thus reappeared on the primitive
screen. It was life at its least controilable 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 fortu
ity of these patterns; and their fragmentary character was exemplified by
the clouds of smoke which leisurely drifted upward. Significantly, Lumiere
used the motif of smoke on several occasions. And he seemed anxious to
avoid any personal interference with the given data. Detached records, his
shots resembled the imaginary shot of the grandmother which Proust con
trasts 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 was inevitable that, in the comments on Lumiere, “the ripple of leaves
stirred by the wind” should be referred to enthusiasticaIIy. The Paris
journalist Henri de ParviIIe, who used the image of the trembling leaves,
also identified Lumiere’s over-aII theme as “nature caught in the act.” 1 8
Others pointed to the benefits which science would derive from Lumiere’s
32
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
invention. 19 In America his camera-realism defeated Edison’s kinetoscope
with its staged subjects.20
Lumiere’s hold on the masses was ephemeral. In 1897, not more than
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.21
Georges Melies took over where Lumiere left off, renewing and inten
sifying 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; or he dramatized, in the fashion of the
22 But his main contribution to
period, realistically staged topical events.
the cinema lay in substituting staged illusion for unstaged reality, and
contrived plots for everyday incidents.23
The two pioneers were aware of the radical differences in their ap
proach. Lumiere told Melies that he considered film nothing more than
a “scientific curiosity,”24 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 theat
rical 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.”25
Melies’s tremendous success would seem to indicate that he catered
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 l’im
possible) is a toy train as unreal as the scenery through which it is moving.
[Illus. 6, 7] Instead of picturing the random movements of phenomena,
Melies freely interlinked imagined events according to the requirements of
his charming fairy-tale plots. Had not media very close to film offered simi
lar gratifications? The artist-photographers preferred what they considered
aesthetically attractive compositions 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.26
Yct 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 l’Opera,
BASIC CONCEPTS
33
he had to discontinue the shooting because the celluloid strip did not
move as it should; the surprising result was a film in which, for no reason
at all, a bus abruptly transformed itself into a hearse. 27 True, Lumiere
also was not disinclined to have a sequence of events unfold in reverse,
but Melies was the first to exploit cinematic devices systematica11y. Draw
ing 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. 28 And through his ingenuity in using these
techniques 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 accom
plish. Illusion produced in this climate depended on another kind of
craftsmanship than the magician’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 connoisseurs of the primi
tive era. 29
Notwithstanding his film sense, however, Melies still remained the
theater director he had been. He used photography in a pre-photogra
phic spirit-for the reproduction of a papier-mache universe inspired by
stage traditions. In one of his greatest films, A TRIP TO THE MooN (Le
Voyage dans la lune), 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 technical 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;30 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 instinctively withdraw
to the positions from which they set out to struggle and conquer. In his
later years Melies more and more turned from theatrical film to filmed
theater, producing feeries which recalled the Paris Chatelet pageants.31
The realistic tendency
In fo11owing 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
34
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
primitive era when the camera was fixed to the ground, it was natural for
film makers to concentrate on moving material phenomena; life on the
screen was life only if it manifested itself through external, or “objec
tive,” motion.As cinematic techniques devdoped, films increasingly drew
on camera mobility and editing devices to deliver their messages. Al
though 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 bringing motionless as well
as moving objects to his attention.32 Or an appropriate arrangement 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.” 33 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.
Second, films may seize upon physical reality with all its manifold
movements by means of an intermediary procedure which would seem to
be less indispensable in photography-staging.In order to narrate an in
trigue, 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 legit
imate if the staged world is made to appear as a faithful reproduction
of the real one.The important thing is that studio-built settings 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.34
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 of view 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
BASIC CONCEPTS
35
aims at incorporating. For this reason, the sensitive moviegoer will feel
disturbed by them. 35 (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 orig
inal event if it had been captured directly by the camera. The late Erno
Metzner who devised the settings for the studio-made mining disaster in
Pabst’s KAMERADSCHAFT-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.36
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 imagines two film scenes which are com
pletely 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 otherwise, which have worked on the film and given it a
soul.” 37 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 ex
ceeding 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. Vith respect to areas,
film makers have never confined themselves 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 non-story film. The latter can be broken down into the experi
mental film and the film of fact, which on its part comprises, partially or
totally, such subgenres as the film on art, the newsreel, and the docu
mentary 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
36
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
of settings which are anything but realistic. Thus in RED SuoES Moira
Shearer dances, in a somnambulistic trance, through fantastic worlds
avowedly intended to project her unconscious mind-agglomerates of
landscape-like forms, near-abstract shapes, and luscious color schemes
which have all the traits of stage imagery. [Illus. 8] Disengaged creativity
thus drifts away from the basic concerns of the medium. Several dimen
sions 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 signifi
cance overshadows that of the raw material of nature used for their
implementation. For the rest, the film maker’s formative endeavors may
also impinge on his realistic loyalties in dimensions which, because of
their emphasis on physical reality, do not normally invite such encroach
ments; 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 archi
tecture 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 ex
periences something like a shock. He cannot help recognizing 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 de
pends 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 Ro-r-rno AND JuLrnT. This attempt to stage
Shakespeare in natural surroundings obviously rests upon the belief that
BASIC CONCEPTS
37
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 sway the me
dium may be interrelated 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.
THE CINEMATIC APPROACH
It follows from what has been said in the preceding chapter that
films may claim aesthetic validity if they build from their basic prop
erties; like photographs, that is, they must record and reveal physical
reality. I have already dealt with the possible counterargument that
media peculiarities are in general too elusive to serve as a criterion;* for
obvious reasons it does not apply to the cinematic medium either. Yet
another objection suggests itself. 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 exist
ing films which are completely unconcerned about the representation of
nature. There is the abstract experimental film. There is an unending suc
cession 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 Herman G. Scheffauer, even eulogizes expressionism
on the screen for its remoteness from photographic life. 38
Why, then, should these genres be called less “cinematic” than
films concentrating on physical existence? The answer is of course that
it is the latter alone which afford insight and enjoyment otherwise un
attainable. 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 follow
ing two considerations.
* See pp. 12-13.
38
I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
First, favorable response to a genre need not depend upon its ade
quacy 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 responsible 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 of a 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 important, type of cinematic activities and hence is un
likely to take into account, say, the possibility of hybrid genres or the
influence of the medium’s nonphotographic components. But this does not
necessarily speak against the propriety of that definition. In a strategic
interest it is often more advisable to loosen up initial one-sidedness
provided 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 sim
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