What to make of the references to the past? Bazin starts with the notion of silent film as the Old Testament of the cinema. His next article speaks of the mummy complex and the statuaries of ancient Egyptian as a defense against death – “The preservation of life by a representation of life.” He leads us backwards in time to the purposes of the original filmmakers and inventors who strove for “the myth of total cinema.” Kracauer draws our attention to the earliest films of the Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies. He begins with film “like an embryo in a womb.”
Has the new become passé? Last week’s readings focus on film’s ability to do something new, to get beyond the constraints of other art forms through specifically filmic techniques. Bazin tells us that when film tries to be about making art, then it loses its unique relationship with representing reality. He distinguishes montage, for example, from techniques that “lay bare reality” because montage relies on creating meaning out of the ordering of elements rather than out of their content. ? Film should re-invest itself with shots of space and time that preserve the notion of reality, rather than “insidiously” substitut[ing] mental and abstract time.” He calls for the use of the long-take and composition in depth, respecting the continuity of time and space – natural unity – versus imposed fragmentation.
Bazin praises filmmakers who reveal reality as opposed to adding to it. Later, he uses term “self-effacement” referring to the ideal style of filmmaking. He argues that some mystery needs to be left for the spectator to unravel and interpret. What is reality, after all, he posits, but ambiguity for us to interpret?
So we are left with the goal of ambiguity, mystery. Are these concepts of the old? Or of the new?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bazin’s distinction between films that reveal reality as opposed to adding to it,
ReplyDeleteand his insistence that when film tries to be about making art it loses its unique
relationship with representing reality, are fundamentally at odds. His desire for
mystery and ambiguity only highlights the flaw in his distinction. De Sica’s film
highlights this conflict because it presents a narrative that uses the same
ambiguity (at the conclusion of the film and throughout, as the audience
struggles to see the end for Umberto and how his story will conclude) to imitate
and suggest reality that is employed to make the film artistic. The film is artistic
because it connects the viewer to something distinctly human and universal, to
powerful emotion; however, it also embraces the interpretable ambiguity that
for Bazin is “reality.” Mystery/ambiguity seems more in line with the idea of the
“new” cinema because it allows for cinema to be viewed more directly as art and
less as simply the “objective” preservation of the image and movements of the
corporeal body. It allows for narrative that is open-ended and moves away from
the more self-contained and entertainment oriented films of the “old-
testament.” It instead creates a medium that speaks to the deeper things which
art has long sought to represent.
>
>While Bazin’s idea that cinema is objectivity in time holds some truth (the film
is recording a certain set of people at a certain time in their lives) this simplistic
understanding is undone by both the staging of the action and the variety of
shots the give the film its overall tone—and help to establish the emotional
relationship between the viewer and Umberto. This film, for me, fit in a
particular historical context and speaks to the situation and feeling of the nation
that produced it. De Sica’s film was released in 1952 and Italy was still
recovering from decades of wars and fighting. The film, while it can be
broadened to a more universal level, deals directly with the sense of unfulfilled
expectation, loss, and devastation that resulted from Italy’s position following
the second World War, and the attitude that was prevalent during that historical
moment. This quote from the deposed Mussolini in 1945 could just as well
apply to Umberto, “I am finished. My star has fallen. I work and I try, yet know
that all is but a farce.... I await the end of the tragedy and -- strangely detached
from everything -- I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of
spectators.”
>
>While clearly the audiences to this film are the last spectators for Umberto’s
demise, and (with a nod to Bazin) the film does preserve both the character’s
struggle and the feeling that was prevalent during that time, the sense of
tragedy throughout the film is palpable. There are several other anxieties that
pervade the film—fear of aging and irrelevance, the distinction between social
classes, the aimlessness and emasculation that comes with following the status
quo—but the dominant feeling is the feeling of loss and impotent
disappointment. The mystery as to how life, and this moment of crisis, will end
for Umberto and the well-trained Flike, helps drive the action of the film, causes
empathy for Umberto from the viewer, and creates a feeling of realism due to
the confrontation with the unknown. But this universal confrontation, the
various shots within the film, and the emotional resonance with the viewer for
Umberto’s plight also defines Umberto D. as art. Perhaps the reconciliation in
Bazin’s distinction lies in the way the film tries to tell Umberto’s story, as
opposed to trying to be art, and that the resulting film narrative finally becomes
art because of its affect upon the viewer.
>
>
>
>