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19Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2015 8) 494-506
УДК 791.4
"The Man of Screen":
Dream Architecture and Patterns of the Future
Olga A. Karlova*
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia
Received 07.09.2014, received in revised form 12.11.2014, accepted 28.12.2014
The paper concerns problematics of the language of cinema and philosophical questions related to it: what kind offuture cinema opened to the mankind, what price does it pay for video dreams, and how, from a technical toy, cinema has become a creator of the major myths of the mankind? Review of the cinema history and the main cinema genres represented in the paper are of current interest in the year of the 150th anniversary of the cinema inventor Louis Jean Lumiere, the 90th anniversary of "Mosfilm" and series of the world's great directors and actors' anniversaries.
Keywords: film industry, the language of cinema, silent cinema, kineme, film editing, shot composition, visual thinking, blip thinking, blip culture, the man of screen, creative thinking, neo-baroque.
Research area: culture studies.
Only an instant moment in life is real. And the real life itself appears only as a series of moments that can't be kept or returned. That is why there is nothing more tempting then to stop, to capture a particular moment between the past and the future.
The century of the Great Dream of humanity - the Renaissance, was the first to respond to this temptation. Leonardo da Vinci, among many of his experiments experimented with the "moving pictures". One of the countless "technical toys" - the camera obscura, created in 1685, finalized inventor's task that seemed unachievable for several centuries: to fix the image of objects' continuous movement in a tangible medium and to project the movement on the screen. To
solve this problem it was necessary to invent: firstly, a flexible light-sensitive film, secondly, a chronophotography camera and, thirdly, a fast changing images projector. By the end of the 19th century, humanity was quite ready for these inventions.
As the time of cinema historically came, it appeared almost simultaneously, but in different places. Time difference of the achieved inventions in different parts of the world was at least one year. By the way, there were a considerable number of our compatriots among the cinema pioneers. Russian photographer Ivan Boldyrev was the first who invented nonflammable film as early as in 1878-81. Americans Hannibal Goodwin (1887) and George Eastman (1889) created flammable film almost ten years later.
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: o.a.karlova@yandex.ru
The 90th of the 19th century were fruitful in inventing cameras for filming. Humanity created them literally one after the other: phenakistoscope by Michael Faraday and Max Roger; chronophotographic gun by Etienne Marais and the "Magic Lantern" by Emile Reynaud. The experiment of California Governor Leland Stanford and photographer Eadweard Muybridge to install 60 photo cameras for capturing the phases of a horse running gained worldwide fame.
Among the galaxy of the various elements of cinema discoverers there are Germanphotographer O. Anschutz (1891) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Dubuc (1892), who created different in design devices for designing with a single name "tachyscope", as well as the Frenchman Emile Reynaud, who founded his "Optical Theatre" (1892) and Russian inventors Joseph Timchenko and Michael Freudenberg (1893).
The basis of all the inventions is "moving pictures" on the screen and a plot twist that makes this movement interesting and entertaining. Here is a young lady noticed a gentleman, who showed interest in her, there was an acquaintance, there was a waltz after the flowers and explanations in the moonlight. And here are church bells chimes - but that's not the bells, but an alarm clock that dissipates half-reality, half-dream and half-vision. The "Magic Lantern"- the cinema precursor was so plain about 120 years ago, but it already claimed the mission of illusionist and dreams architect.
Despite the global inventive cinema boom, only three countries were in a pool of the recognized filmmakers: Russia, the USA and France. Moreover, in that precise order. Almost three years before the Lumière brothers in Paris at the Boulevard des Capucines had their first public film screening, deputy chief engineer of the Baltic Shipyard Joseph Timchenko not only invented the projector and the camera that shoot
on a sprocketed film, but also in the hope of financial support for his business proposal had already demonstrated family movies - first at a meeting of the scientific community, and then at the industrialists board of trustees, and finally, to the well-known benefactor Savva Morozov. Although Savva Morozov enthusiastically recognized the invention's potential, but that was all, Joseph Timchenko never found money. As well as fame. Few Russians today remember the name of this Russian inventor. But American historians and cinema fans are ready to fight for the precedence of their compatriot Thomas Edison in cinema invention, who made light bulb kinetoscope in 1894. Russia, in full compliance with the proverb, "a prophet is not recognized in his own land", wonders every time: can our compatriots do something useful? And, for sure, they certainly do not pompously recollect neither Joseph A. Timchenko nor Michael Ph. Freudenberg or Ivan Boldyrev.
Perhaps, Peter the Great was not right: we should not learn skills in the West, but self-belief, aspiration to support compatriots and be proud of them. In France, America and Poland they can honor their inventors - Messrs. Demeny, Le Roy, Latham and Prushinsky, who created their own "chronographs" - "panoptics"-"pleographs" later then Russians, but also happened to be very close to discovering the cinema technology in winter 1894-1895, that is, 120 years ago.
However, it is possible to establish the truth in this matter. Cinema has two indisputable origins - technology and aesthetics. And if it is possible to argue about the true inventor and invention date of the motion-picture camera and film, it is undeniable that the Lumiere brothers are at the origins of cinema as an art. Their clips accompanied by inimitable sounds of the old piano conquered the world.
According to the specialists' general opinion these clips already contain a conceptual origin.
The main finding is shot composition that proves a skill of camera setting and fixation at a certain height taking into account the angle of view. It was this skill that ensured the worldwide popularity of the second clip of the Lumière brothers "Arrival of a Train": viewers faced a locomotive that dashed straight at them, some of the audience screamed and fainted. Faces of the passengers appeared close-up in the shot. It was not just a photofact, it was a new video illusion that emerged as a creative version of the authors.
What attracted crowds of Parisians to the Boulevard des Capucines? Thrilling emotions of the accurately constructed composition? Entertainment from the recognition of the new? Diversified reality into the dark mystical hall? Or maybe they were lured by the mystery of incarnation of the Biblical covenant of "eternal life"? Now, with cinema discovery, people suddenly got a chance to stay in the centuries -on film. You can say: dreaming of eternal life it was not what we asked God about... Yes, but the Lord almost always gives people what they asked him for. However, it most often happens not as we expect.
Cinema developed as the world's Illusion, first of all, in the direction of "le film d'art". Feature cinema originated in France in 1908 and until 1910 70% of such films were made in this country.
However, France had already been overtaken by the United States, England and Germany. In 1912 David Wark Griffith shot the short-length film "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" - the first gangster action film and, at the same time, as if a plunge into the depth of the famous photograph by Jacob Riis "Bandit's Roost". In that period films still had their genetic connection with photography, by the way, it is 175 years since the birth of this kind of art. But connection between the feature photography and cinema will remain forever, and it is especially obvious in the eras
when balance in the cinema will be formed in favor of passion for technical innovations. Thus, in contemporary cult film "The Matrix" again and quite impressively the old feature photography technique is used.
There is an amazing regularity: the higher technological potential of cinema is, the more we are captured by the charm of the old cinema. Yet, in the early 20th century cinema rapidly moves away from the photography due to the factor of run time increase. The first cinema clips were still short, but in 1915-16 Griffith creates 3-hour films with the opposite content - "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance". D.W. Griffith's films are already art in all senses: they reveal a slice of time; they clearly illustrate current ideas of the epoch and use intellectual installation technique. Cinema stills follow one another and, at the same time, in a temporary sense they remain "photographic", they can at one time accommodate the past, the future, and the present moment. The audience easily accepts this convention: the fact that the whole human life passed on the screen and it was only 180 minutes on the clock does not bother them.
Cinema is a special language, and for 120 years it has become international. But only chosen people speak this language - filmmakers, psychologists and philosophers who study this area of semiotics. Because the language of cinema is not as much the language of communication, as means of influence and manipulation. Who in the audience can explain how in the head the whole is formed out of the "parts of cinema"? Why a particular stills connection results in something absolutely new, very different from each still taken separately? Cinema is a picture that the mind sees. Soviet film directors and cinema theorists Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov, each in their own way, in the 20s developed film stills motion typology in their connection and different principles of their montage. The changing role of
image depending on the still, assembled to a cut got the name "The Kuleshov Effect".
So which of the world's cultural analogues can be used to describe the language of cinema? As it has the ability of direct contact of an image with the objects depicted, we can address to, let us say, the ancient writing. They are both words and images simultaneously. In some period of the European peoples' history words and images in our culture were divided as two ways to recognize the truth. But the East went the other way: the Chinese and Japanese languages remained pictographic, retaining the most important quality of Eastern culture - a symbolic sense of peace. It left its mark on all the cultural processes and qualities: the consequence of this was laconic poetry, absence of aerial perspective in traditional painting, a whole lexicon of words associated with the seasons affected by the characters' moods. In hieroglyph, as a national cultural and linguistic unit, several concepts merge naturally, and it allows conceptually retain wise all kinds of the world and understand the connection of everything with everything. Man and nature, ends and beginnings, full circles of life - in fact, all this is the quintessence of the modern Japanese cinema.
It can be assumed that the language of cinema is, to a certain extent, the return of Western culture to this reunion of signs and images, to the symbolic and hieroglyphic development of the world, but return that takes place in another turn of civilization. Pier Paolo Pasolini was close to this point of view and named film hieroglyphs elementary particles of the syncretic language -"kinemes" (6, 7).
How a "kineme" is formed? Martin Scorsese is sure that it is "hieroglyphic" combinations of the main attributes of cinema, which are light, movement, time and subtext (8). Each of these attributes is multidimensional; it is expressed both in the process of movies creation and
playback, and inside the result itself - a film. And their combinations are endless. After all, the light in cinema is both fundamental possibility of shooting and one of the physical media that provides reality of a film playback in the dark cinema, as well as light and shadow dominants within a shot, and the balance of brightness and contrast of a film as a whole. Motion in cinema is all the more multidimensional and omnipresent. And cinematic time magically connects the past, the present and the future, which is fundamental difference of the cinema and the theatre. But it is also closely connected to the fable time, all the time available for the history of mankind and, of course, exact time of a film creation. The least expresses its meanings in the subtext, what was quite precisely defined by an American critic Manny Farber: "Every film has the DNA of its epoch". Let us add: each generation watches films accompanying them with their subtext, looking at it through the eyes of their era and its meanings.
Of course, film longevity depends on what kind of film it is - a creative revelation or articles of popular consumption. However, the cinema history knew the facts when a cinema masterpiece immediately became a blockbuster. Hollywood history is not only the history of directing and acting career rise. It is a powerful film marketing of international level that a long time ago divided all the films into class A and class B - for the cinema and home video on discs. The first differs from the least in mass production and box office receipts. In fact, this is the logics of the industry, not art. And, in many ways, just a financial sport. For who of the contemporaries today knows for sure which of the films created today will make it into history and then will be called a masterpiece, and which will not?
The 20s of the last century became a time of the American cinema celebration, and brought Hollywood standards to the world. It was the time of the cinema main genres formation, which, as
it is characteristic to art, according to the Greek poet Archilochus, quite reproduced "the rhythm that is hidden in the life of mankind". One of the first and the most popular genres of the cinema history is comedy, where almost the first tests became a cult film. They are associated with the name of legendary Charlie Chaplin, whose 125th birth anniversary the entire world celebrates these days.
The language of Chaplin's comedies - from clowning to pantomime - was a triumph of silent films and revealed the true cinema of motion to the world, the unique rise of pictorialism of this form of art. It was an amazing hit in the sacral area of human culture - the connection of laughter as a synonym for entertainment, social therapy and genuinely folk notions of moral and justice. An Australian Allan Pease claims that body language is almost impossible to fake; it is the language of sincerity and emotions expression that a common verbal dialogue easily hides or distorts. Charlie Chaplin revealed the perfection of body language to the world, his "bodily revelation", such naive-funny and touching, shook the world against the background of "the gold rush", that developed into "The Great Depression", and, hence, revaluation of many Western values.
Laughter "by Chaplin" is ambivalent; it is laughter, at the same time, over others and over oneself, close to the folklore sacred laughter. He, perhaps, made even greater contribution to moral improvement of the Western world than other sermons. Comedies, created and played by Chaplin, are always small parables. Parabolicity is vivid and compulsory quality of true cinema pictorialism: it was proved by the works of many great directors of the West, East and wandering between them Russia with its own way, including cinematographic. We can see that this quality literally "quilts" the history of elite cinema, becoming one of the conditions of its "longevity" and opportunities for other generations, tempted
by a cultural code of the plot or characters, to endow it with their own meanings.
Parable that existed since biblical times as figurative genre formed in the Baroque era especially for entertainment and teachings, the genre was called metaphor. Generally, in the cinema there are a lot from the Baroque style, which means "a pearl of irregular shape": symbolism, enfilade principle of a piece of art architecture, cryptography of the cinematic language, combination of incompatible and the need to amaze and surprise, while deftly manipulating the audience, as well as understanding a viewer as an object, which, like a character of the Baroque -just a speck in the hands of fate and the world cinema where everything is possible.
Laughing and crying, cinema of the 20 s of the 19th century looked for its place in the world not only in the emotional-moral and spiritual paths. French avant-garde and German expressionism of this era gave the viewer plein air mood, surprising by angles, plunging into mystics' expression, inspiring by photography and captivating by fiction. It was rise and, at the same time, decline of silent films - by the 1930s silent films production stopped in almost all the leading countries. In Russia silent films were still made, but these were student works of such well-known in the future Soviet filmmakers as Sergei Gerasimov. Return to the sound undermined most of the achievements of this form of art for 30 years of its existence. The tendency of cinema descriptive possibilities' sharp rise was interrupted: because of the necessary clarity of sound camera went into soundproof booths, shooting moved from plein-air to pavilions and freedom of an actor was often limited by the proximity to the microphone. Search in the cinema, of course, continued -Soviet directors Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov actively developed separate elements of the language of cinema and film editing ideology; Germany
was searching in photography and conveying expression and mysticism with its help; French filmmakers, Delluc, in particular, created "photogenic direction" that continued Lumiere's "impressionism" line. But art, born in the 19th century as a "moving picture" and having found itself in thousands of body and soul's "figurative moves" discoveries, in fact, filed as history. At the turn of the 30s it rapidly lost its specificity, drifting to the theater captured on film.
That is cinema "at full speed" turned "back" -to complete Illusion of Life. Did it have any consequences for the viewer and cinema itself? Undoubtedly. Let us start with a very suspicious coincidence. It's amazing how exactly the process of cinema's "assimilation to real life" coincided with another process - using cinema as the most effective mechanism for totalitarianism approval in Europe and Asia. Still being temptation for general population, "artificially" and "artfully" made, cinema suddenly ceases to be perceived as art. It was not the creative work of imagination -it was real ideological weapon, and, quite often, repression became a payment for directors and actors' creative explorations. It was not much better in Hollywood in the period of the Great Depression, where box office receipts dictate and the consumption ideal led, curiously enough, to the similar result: almost complete suppression of the author's freedom in the process of "whomping up" mass audience films. Mass audience cinema formed the "body weight" and directed it to sales extravaganzas and ritual fans gatherings on the one hand, and coups and dissidents elimination on the other.
So easy? - You may ask. Exactly. Visual thinking is specific, where information-image is imprinted immediately, bypassing conceptual logic of common sense. The result is stunning: a person does not believe his/her eyes, feelings and life experience, but fueled by animal fear for his/her own live, or greed, recklessly takes for
granted images and symbols that were canonized by the authority and recognized by the majority. It seems almost strange to us: how could propaganda films of the 30s make fools of people? Does contemporary advertising work differently? And today's information wars? Could they do without cinema and video?
Cinema of the 20th century generally became not only a mix of aesthetics, psychophysiology and ideology, it gave vector of a new type of man -"the man of the screen" with blip consciousness adapted to life in the galaxy of information.
Philosopher and culturologist Marshall McLuhan in his works gave quite convincing typology of a print man who lives in the verbal world among books and concepts. His most important characteristics are textual centricity, logic and systematic thinking. It is language control in the human mind that acts as an outpost of critical thinking - read, common sense. Visual thinking which humanity develops in the process of daily contact with the "main art of the masses" - cinema is preconceptual thinking that works directly with emotional images. It is characterized by non-analytical and holistic worldview and produces, according to Toffler, a new type of culture - "blip culture" (11). Blip is literally, clipping, cutting, excerpt, slicing, a series of short events connected only by time and place of occurrence.
Connect something that is just located nearby is, by the way, one of the most important qualities of ancient mythological consciousness. At that period of time it was the only way to describe the world because of the apparent lack of objective information. Nowadays this quality becomes currently important again as a defensive reaction to the excess of information, multidimensionality and information flows infinity, in which a person tries to survive and achieve his/her goals. There is no way out: we are practically going back to pre-text era. However, predictions, as always,
are in favour of Russia: according to Russian philosopher-arheo-avant-gardist Theodore Girenko, Russian culture will not be particularly affected by it, as, in contrast to Europe, it has always been closer not to the conceptual, but to demonstration system (3).
Thus, blip thinking formation is an objective defensive reaction to the increased pace of life and the speed of information dissemination, the growth in its volume, increase in the number of simultaneous events and actions, as well as the number of current discourses and communications. This thinking is largely inferior to the verbal one: it is fragmented and discontinuous, simplistic and superficial. According to the school teachers, modern students write essays well and write bad recitals as they poorly understand and recite the thoughts of others, as well as they badly get into the meaning of what they have read. Every year the vector of students on the planet development is more and more shifted from concentration to reactivity.
Of course there are "pluses": "the man of screen" has faster reactions, he is able to do many things at the same time, dynamism in action. Riot police soldiers around the world are trained according to the principles of "blip" perception: it is priceless when a decision must be taken in a split second. In fact, the solder learns and absorbs a mosaic of one or another situation characteristics that allows him to recognize it later at visual and subcortical levels and make instant right decisions. And to think visual stereotypes is the highest art. But stereotypes, after all, templates! And creativity and creative is activity that uses different, unconventional thinking.
Nevertheless, appearance of narrative cinema in the 30s - a kind of "filmed theater" -adapted cinema to the contact with the human psyche and its stereotypes, motives and attitudes even more. Secret wishes of the collective unconscious found an effective expression in the
language of audiovisual media. The appearance of "single cinema" in the middle of the 20th century, which balanced sound and image, gave spur to new discoveries, that immediately found their embodiment in the world cult film "Citizen Kane" by Orson Welles dated 1941 and in no less cult Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible" dated 1944. At the same time Italian cinema in its neorealist incarnation went to the streets of Rome and natural indoor scenes. Its motto in the 1940-50s: "You can shoot a film about anything". France has its own way: national artistry still dominates. The French constantly feel and express ludic hypostasis of the cinema, destroying the illusion of reality from time to time, breaking the rules of spatial, temporal and visual continuity in pronounced joints.
Paradoxical mask of a loser-winner with a big heart by Charlie Chaplin is replaced by the grotesque image of a little man with monstrous weaknesses and vices in French comedy. In the brilliant performance of Louis de Funes it is only derisible. Taking into account the fact that cinema is always emotional and ethical balance of the screen and the audience, audience reaction also changes: we no longer face folkloric laughter "over others as well as over oneself", but confident in itself and its superiority laughter over awkward figure, gestures, facial expressions and grimaces of the most famous French gendarme. Louis de Funes, whose 100th anniversary the world celebrates this year, played laughter as the most important ritual of humanity, but it had already been perceived stereotypically: funny and that's all.
New sound film gave possibility to use different combinations of sound or images. Even Sergei Eisenstein theoretically comprehended and practically demonstrated "pieces of music" and "pieces of image" commensurability in his films. Eastern and European cinema had different reaction to this possibility. Russian cinema,
following Western tradition, uses the counterpoint of sound and image with dialogues and noises more often. Asian cinematic tradition professes another principle, which is most clearly manifested in the musical-song Bollywood melodramas: it this case there is a complete coincidence of sound and frame, music and image. Indian cinema is in favor of rhythmic solidarity of music and plot as well as music and emotional state of characters. Raj Kapoor, a birthday boy of this year, the founder of Bollywood, actor and director is often called the "Charlie Chaplin of Indian cinema". Of course, there is some similarity between them; there is even similarity of genres. But melodramatic parable of Kapoor's "The Rogue" has different, vividly national character, it is laughter through tears backed by music and almost obligatory happy ending. One kind of genre that became the brand of Indian cinema is emotional dance from grief to the "electric tension of happiness".
Extreme democracy made cinema a popular analytical psychologist. Is that good or bad? - you may ask. It depends on situation, I will answer. There are difficult periods in the people's destiny, such as war, depression, deprivation, and the highest strength intensification associated to it, it appeals to the special forms of psychological support. And the era of fashionable consumer discussion is another state of society which is in a desperate need of reflection. Therefore, thousands of action films today as well as "The Pig-tender and the Shepherd" and "Tractor Drivers", shot in the difficult 40s at "Mosfilm" are, as they say in Odessa, two big differences. The songs by Orlova and Ladynina were not just sung by our fathers and grandfathers, with these songs they went into battles.
Of course, from two thousand films, created at "Mosfilm" for 90 years, by no means all got the Academy Award as the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", or got in the World Golden Fund, as such films as "Walking the Streets of
Moscow", "The Diamond Arm" and "Prisoner of the Caucasus". Only truly talented auteur cinema, as a rule, usually responds to the humanistic and philosophical content of the era. Most of the world cinema in any of its national incarnations experiences blind worship of "star-rating" and box office receipts pursuit.
Although Dante Alighieri's precept that "you can not look into ugly with impunity" is important, but the modern cinema does not hear the prophecies, and even its own! It spins the mighty flywheel exploiting collective subconscious fears, the elements of the unknown and the atmosphere of suspense. Since, according to Alfred Hitchcock, another director - the anniversary hero this year, "expectation of fear is more frightful than fear itself". He knew what he was saying; Alfred Hitchcock himself was a past master of the art of getting on nerves.
Of course, stress resistance is the quality also necessary for the modern people. "Stress inoculation" of the cinema trains us, thus strengthening and balancing. But it also lowers the threshold of our sensitivity, social and human empathy, feeling the pain of others as one's own. Modern cinema, like a drunken solo pianist on the old piano knocks the keys of our nerves playing stress cacophony. According to Hitchcock, "Drama is life with the dull parts left out". He proved it by the film "Blackmail" in 1929 - the first British sound film. When in 1938 the film "The Lady Vanishes" came out, Hitchcock found himself as an acknowledged master of the genre, in which there is nothing ordinary or common, all is bright, dynamic and striking, the genre of thriller that also includes horror films tradition.
Hitchcock, as well as many great filmmakers got emotions and motivations of the characters from himself. He felt the horror of reality inside, a sacred relationship between good and evil, mystical unity of life and death. He personally knew that fear can be an inexhaustible source of
adrenaline and dopamine. In his films, the director deliberately exploited the viewers' "split": on the one hand, fascination with feelings of the complete illusion of life, on the other hand, understanding that it is just an illusion and nothing else. You can say: after the outburst of fear catharsis is always logical. But Hitchcock was a master of his craft: his audience experiences double catharsis - first after anticipation of fear, and then another, after the fear was incarnated.
Thriller and "action", according to their proportion in the general world of film production, taking into account their various modifications today largely exceed all the other genres. Just about as the total biomass of insects on the planet outweighs biomass of the rest of fauna including humans. This is understandable - films of this genre have always had the best box office receipts. Among the success stories - the famous Bondiana, which, since the release of the first film "Dr. No" in 1962 has become a blockbuster, watched by tens of millions of viewers, and had such stars as Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. It currently includes 22 films, each of which brought fantastic profits to the creators.
Due to its narrative all possibility and different kinds of pictorialism cinema is much closer to novel than to drama and theater. For this reason two vectors constantly intersect in the cinema. One of them is technologically- and associatively-ludic, with the vivid symbolism of meanings. From the first shots of "The Matrix" there is a sense of a chess game with the cinema culture itself: green and blue colors as chess cells. Passed from one cell to another - got from real life in virtual reality. Here you've got both: Oedipus with his complexes and the plot and a modern version of Biblical "doubting Thomas", who, in the end, became Neo Anderson - a new son of the mankind. Juggling with cultural mythologemas of the past in some new combinations is the main
course of the modern fantasies that, as a film genre, is today attributively closer to the technological tradition of the cinema development.
It is paradoxical, but the game of technical capabilities of the modern cinema leads it to the same place as the game of spirit, ideas and passions. A fantastic parable demonstrates the peak of this quality in the intellectual cinema. Sergei Parajanov, a film director, whose 90th anniversary is celebrated this year by Russian and the world community, rightly states: it is possible to convey "fantastic" in films only through different nature textures' conflict. His film "The Color of Pomegranates" is made as a chain of collages. Another eternal attempt to tell people a spiritual parable film. The director confessed: to praise death through life he had to fit a square peg into a round hole, gaining, as a result, style features of the specific neo-baroque. Parajanov's parable is a path from the idea paradox to the paradoxicality of form and ways of its expression.
The modern aesthetic cinema vector is the power of macro-detail. But here is a strange thing: compelling attention by itself, this detail is no longer a detail at all, but something more important, a receptacle of the hero's inner world. The director's idea overcomes indifference of subjects to an individual, as an individual himself is not indifferent to them. Before Parajanov, Michelangelo Antonioni in the early 60s used the same method creating his "trilogy of alienation": an episode with a splinter in the water tank from his film "L'eclisse" became canonical in teaching world directing. Parabolicity is the method that Andrei Tarkovsky used in his direction. Perhaps, for 120 years cinema has formed its own Bible, original quotations from which, time-honored, became independent cinema plots in the era of modernity and postmodernity, as evidenced by the so-called "quotational cinema".
Cinema has a huge palette of direct embodiment of heroes' mental being. An
escapee and rebel Marlon Brando and a master of intellectual interior of soul Donatas Banionis, actors, whose 90th anniversary is celebrated nowadays by the world cinema, were brilliant masters of the mental process demonstration and accommodation of events to the forms of man's inner world. Even in "action" films with their participation we as if feel constant internal monologues of the heroes. And in parable films their opportunities were almost infinite, as both of them with incredible professional flexibility held several layers: reality - memories - desirable -dreams.
Detective films genre are messages for spirit, soul and intellect. Detective is a technology of mystery, and it lasts exactly as long as this mystery lasts. Among the hundreds of detective films - from the first adaptations of the books by Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie's cinema classics - not many managed to create true historical detective, reinforced by documentary basis and disclosed intelligence services' mysteries. "Seventeen Moments of Spring" by Tatiana Lioznova, another anniversary hero of this year, filmed in 1973 at "Mosfilm" is one of them. The director skillfully, in the spirit of true Russian cinematic tradition used special method of documentary detective collage, as well as a method of world history solitaire in people and facts. As a result we got a powerful thrilling mix of high artistic and patriotic degree. Soviet statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported: when the country was watching the film, memorizing the dialogues of Muller and Stierlitz, experiencing professor's death and runaway of radio operator Kat from the Gestapo, crime rate in the Soviet Union declined. Even today, maybe without such global consequences, the whole country enjoys watching the series. In this series, black-and-white not only because of shooting time, but also due to its newsreel-factual basis, documentary
cinema became a full companion of the artistic whole, once again proving its unique intrigue as a historical document, and its emotional power as the evidence of everyday heroic acts of the generation, and its proximity to our cultural tradition. Frankly speaking, color version of the series produces a strange impression of not an acquisition but a loss: the color eliminated documentary meanings important for the film, associated with symbolic form of military newsreels and, to some extent, deprived the "Moments" of the era features, once again clearly demonstrated that kinemes to the same extend as expressive as material.
By the way, originally, nonfiction, documentary cinema in Russia started to develop somehow simultaneously with fiction films. "Intelligent cinema" exhibitions, preceded by lectures, were popular even before the October Revolution and, certainly, after it. Russian cinema has always gravitated toward historical documentation and historical reflection. The first Russian film in 1911 was the famous "Defense of Sevastopol".
Reflection is generally one of the most useful for the mankind processes that develop conscience. It is a pity that such films account for less than one percent of the world film production. As for the rest, we deal with patterns and stereotypes, the samples, which one way or another, somehow penetrate into viewers' consciousness, encroaching, I venture to suggest, not only at the level of analytics and scientific-conceptual framework of the mankind, but simply on the holy of holies: on our creative imagination!
Indeed, what is imagination, if not a "moving and evolving image", not a transformation of what was seen before into creative synthesis of the new? Of course, imagination also has the passive side: we can just remember and reproduce what we saw. But I mean creative imagination -
the ability to create new ideas and images of possible and impossible objects on the basis of real knowledge mentally. According to Einstein, for humanity such an ability to imagine is more important than the scope of the knowledge itself and ability to reproduce information. In fact, the mankind will build such a future with people's power of imagination.
By the way, the nature of imagination as a mental process is not yet fully understood by science. Scientists can not determine where it is located and with the work of what neural structures it is connected. Just like this, by chance, at a point in the brain various facts, events and features converge and, out of nowhere, the ability to navigate the situation and solve the problem without any practical action appears. Imagination fruitfully works in a situation with the high degree of uncertainty: either archive of knowledge is not available, or there is no such knowledge at all. Accurate understanding of a situation and its clear typology do not leave space to imagination.
So, what is happening today with the imagination of "the man of screen"? As the visual type of thinking and perception of the world dominates in our mind, we gradually become addicted to the cinema and video that prevail in this sphere of life. They occupy person's imagination and as if separate this imagination from the viewer. As the philosophers say, human imagination now confronts the man himself as something objective.
Virtually everycinemaperformance becomes a struggle of imaginations. "In what way?" you may ask. It is very simple. Let us suppose you are reading Chekhov's story "The Steppe". In your imagination words become visual images. What steppe do you reproduce in your imagination at that moment? The one that Chekhov imagined? Not at all. Words-signals of verbal text from paper can evoke the images of only your visual
experience. This is "your" steppe - a collage of steppe as you saw it in your life, in photos or film frames previously. But here is a film adaptation of "The Snowstorm" by Pushkin: we can see steppe in winter blizzard night. One single steppe, such as the director saw it - and all of us after him. And that's it. And your imagination, dear viewers, is not needed. Any of your imagination, gentlemen audience is not required. The place of "your" is aggressively taken by "someone else's".
Do you want to check how the law of another imagination's conservation works? There is a wonderful test. Remember how you perceived film version of the book that you previously read and loved. In 90% of the cases you won't like the main characters and the actors who played them, or at least, you will be tormented by uncertainty. It is easy: you have already got YOUR D'Artagnan, Don Quixote or Hamlet. And only 10% in favour of the fact what the creative director's film version will be much better and more compelling. Well, that happened when you first watched a film and then read a book? In 95 per cent of cases, according to the polls, we are ready to applaud Boyarsky-musketeer, Smoktunovsky-Hamlet, Radcliffe-Potter, David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Orlando Bloom in the role of Tolkien's elf Legolas.
As modern young people read much less than our generation and, hence, less often train their creative imagination, it is more difficult for them to survive in a fight with The Great Dictator of Someone Else's Imagination. And the more convincing these film illusions are, the more technical and more aesthetic the mass movie becomes - the elite cinema, the less chances are there is for each of us individually, and the mass of cinemagoers in general to win this war.
Why in the "war" rather than a "game"? Because sometimes the loss is not a toy - means of cinema imperceptibly shape our ideals, subvert hitherto existing norms, create idols, destroy
reputations and confidently lead the masses of people to the objectives dictated by different ideologies and social mythologies. Among the latter, there are very important and necessary for the mankind ones, for example, religions that embodied humanist ideals. Generally, ideas and myths have always existed, exist and will exist, as long as humanity exists. Do you want to become advocates or preachers of some views and opinions? You are welcome. The most important thing is that you fully understand that and act consciously.
Emotionally loaded picture, spiced by mythological sense dominants is the basis of the blind trust formation. It is quite simple to achieve this trust, as films don't refer us to the reality, but to the ideas of it. Hence, even in the West that has already got used to the consumer "chewing gums", the voices of common sense about the need of "visual literacy" for young people, because not all the images can be consumed as "fast food", sound constantly.
Cinema itself is not an idea and not a myth. It is a technical and aesthetic phenomenon, the film industry capable to manipulate public consciousness effectively. Manipulation in psychology is an action with hidden intentions. The most effective is the action that is made least noticeable to us. And here we translate the
images and stereotypes from films, and, hence, it rightly claims to be the "heart of human culture of the 20th - 21st centuries". Due to its generality and massive scale of expansion it is perceived as "a threat to civilization". Because cinema is the only phantom in its kind that does not have "its constant" audience, like other arts. Its audience is all the humanity. So what is cinema? A mirror of culture or a hammer of civilization?
One thing is evident: cinema was and remains the illusion of time, history and human destiny. But an active and formative illusion. People came to a cinema show - strict, indifferent, with their thoughts and concerns. A film "erased" this emotional background, bringing them to the world of the heroes' feelings and attitudes. And these viewers leave the cinema hall absolutely different. Martin Scorsese writes in this regard: "This is an exciting time we live in, as we don't know what will happen tomorrow, and let alone in a week. And we don't have another choice but to learn to accept a stream of these moving pictures as a language. We need to understand what we see in front of us, and find a way to comprehend all this (8)". We have to comprehend not only in a film itself, but the consequences of its dominance in the human culture in the last century and a half.
References
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«Человек экрана»:
архитектура грез и шаблоны будущего
О.А. Карлова
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия, 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Статья посвящена проблематике языка кинематографа и связанным с ним философским вопросам: какое будущее открыло кино человечеству, какую цену оно платит за видеогрезы и как из технической игрушки кино превратилось в творца главных мифов человечества? Приведенный в статье обзор истории кинематографа и основных киножанров актуален в год 150-летия изобретателя кино Луи Жана Люмьера, 90-летия «Мосфильма» и целой плеяды юбилеев великих мировых режиссеров и артистов.
Ключевые слова: киноиндустрия, язык кино, немое кино, кинема, киномонтаж, композиция кадра, визуальное мышление, клиповое мышление, клиповая культура, человек экрана, творческое воображение, необарокко.
Научная специальность: 24.00.00 - культурология.
