Film Theory of Bazin and Eisenstein Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Film Theory of Bazin and Eisenstein - Essay Example All the arts are based on the presence of man. Only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty" Bazin (1967, p.3). Both appreciated the cinema and the inherent art in it; but their theories were very different from one another. At times, there is clear conflict with the other theory and the perspectives are very different. Eisenstein had the added distinction of being an extremely well-known director of many successful movies. Basin, in his short life, did not have any such practical involvement with the cinema, but his theories of the cinematic world stand apart above others even to this day. Andre Bazin, known as the best film authority the world has ever produced, was a film theorist, critic, and a humanist philosopher and has written many articles on film philosophy. His articles are translated into many languages, especially English. Basin is considered to be the sage of film philosophy and he has never been dethroned ever since he became popular, even though he was criticized for his theories by other film critics. He called cinema as 'an idealistic phenomenon'. He agrees that it is technical, but this factor is of secondary importance. Actually he agrees upon it after a pause, as an afterthought. His concentration on the technical side of the cinema is consequential and not primary. He always said that the mechanical mediation of the camera makes the cinema absolutely realistic. He placed cinema above the arts like painting, because he said, if the brush is pitted against the camera, camera makes a better job in duplicating reality than the brush, because camera is driven by technology, whereas the brush depends upon the eye and perspective of the artist, which could be entirely different from reality. No two people can have the same artistic eye sight. At the same time, cinema is capable of recording things and scenes better than a painting. While he does not deny the human intervention in the form of the person who wields the camera, he suggests that this should be kept to the minimum. "Although the potential for human intervention is always present, even granting the mechanical intervention, Bazin believes that the filmmaker owes it to the complexity of reality to refrain from false subjective manipulation and overwrought formalist mediation," http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/bazin_intro.html To him cinema is a tool that fulfils the psychological needs of the society. He considered it as one of the ultimate art forms. He was positive that cinema fulfils the artistic and ethical obsession of people, which is a compelling trait that has an urge to be fulfilled. "For Bazin the situation was clear: either a filmmaker utilizes empirical reality for his personal ends or else he explores empirical reality for its own sake. In the former case the filmmaker is making of empirical reality a series of signs which point to or create an aesthetic or rhetorical truth, perhaps lofty and noble, perhaps prosaic and debased. In the latter case, however, the filmmaker brings us closer to the events filmed by seeking the significance of a scene somewhere within the unadorned tracings it left on the celluloid" Andrew (1976, 145). Basin thought that human beings have a weakness for creative psychology and they like to visualise illusions. These illusions become ardent desires and demand to be fulfilled and under such circumstances, creative and innovative art forms materialise. "It is essential to emphasize the skeptical aspect of Bazin's affirmations about psychology, his manifest awareness of human vulnerability to illusion and ideology. For Bazin,