Book Review: Film as Art by Rudolf Arnheim

Reality and illusions are easy to see in our day to lives, but with the advent of the film the two have merged and in today’s times films can depict many simultaneous action sequences taking place at different locations.  Playing with merely light, camera and distance three elements of time, space and reality can be manipulated to give you what is called the film. The book, Film as Art by Rudolf Arnheim talks just about this nature of film. Film has stemmed from a mere replication of reality to that combining illusion with reality. Arnheim has captured the true essence behind cinema making, and compares it to many art forms like painting, literature, music and dance. 

The initial stage of film making stems or roots from photography, and photography was nothing but a mere depiction of reality. Films were made to merely represent life as it was. Various debates about film making and its nature prevail throughout this book.  The depth perception of films shows films lying in between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and this plays a major role in films.

Film has been aptly compared to theatre life and their depiction of reality. Both film and theatre provide a partial illusion. Film has been criticized as only being able to be seen within a certain frame only and having a two dimensional effect only. Theatre had the realistic, three dimensional effect to it, but was only limited to the specific stage and nowhere else.

 Initially, film was without any sound and a lot of emphasis was played upon silent films, i.e. emphasis was strongly on the gesture movements of characters in the film.  Film has the power behind it to connect events that have taken place in different places and at different times. This has been referred to as montage, and created a sense of momentum in the film where the eye has the ability to transform you to different places, and travel in the movie as if you were in it.  The film can capture a man ringing a doorbell of a house, and suddenly shoot to a different scene where you are behind the closed door, where a maid opens it, and then back again to the man waiting outside.

  This brings us to one theory of the film referring to “partial illusion.” Film enables us to include what we want to include and discard anything we don’t want.  Sound too can be portrayed in films without having any ability to actually smell, through indirect methods.   

The making of a film initially was a replication of the movement in daily life, like the sight of a locomotive approaching, etc. This however developed more into a manipulative method by employing perceptive projection effects. This can occur because the camera will take an image of a situation from a certain angle which gives an illusory vision to the viewer.

The camera enables the film maker to take shots of various scenes from different angles. Two people in conversation can be seen from a top angle, which suddenly drops to a ceiling view.  He may also use different lenses to capture images at different focal lengths. Light too plays a dramatic effect and conveys emotions as can be seen George Wilhelm Pabst’s Kameradshaft.

Films made in early days lay on the movement of the depiction as seen in its original form.  To indicate visually the sound of a man going up the stairs a close up shot helps to depict this.  Montage can be laid down in five specific methods, by Pudovkin: contrast, parallelism, similarity, synchronism and recurrent theme. It pushes us backward and forward in the film and it keeps our mind in continuous motion.  This can be seen in Eisenstein’s Battleship of Potemkin where it shows a stone lion rearing up and roaring. It has been shown having taken the images of three different shots of the lion in different positions; one where he is crouching, another where he is rising and the third where he is standing with his jaws open to roar. Through editing, it gives us an illusion that the lion is actually roaring when it is not. Motion can be accelerate or slowed down by the director as according to his discretion. All he has to do is play with the various shots that have been taken at different location and join them.

Silence was initially seen as a drawback in the film, because it lacked completeness. With the introduction of sound it gave cinema or the film a complete effect.  However, as seen in all of Charlie Chaplin’s movies, the need for sound was irrelevant as it was replaced with pantomime. His gestures and facial remarks have remarkably contributed to the absence of language.  Portraying love through smiling, swaying shoulders, moving his hat was a fine example.

Film has been enhanced with techniques like the mobile camera, the backward motion, accelerated motion, slow motion, fading in and out and dissolving, superimposition and montage, the use of special lenses, manipulation of focus and mirror images. This has created many dramatic effects to the film and one can move along with the actor as he is in motion as the camera can be placed on trucks, etc. This is referred to as panning and is extremely important in film making. The camera may move in a backward motion to give a subjective point of view of the actor as seen by him. By exposing the negative film at a certain light, and at a certain speed can we see motion either accelerated or slowed down, i.e. exposing the negative in the camera more rapidly gives rapid movement and vice versa.  The sequence of events may be shown in transitional stages with the help of fading in, fading out and dissolving. This helps to give a subjective point of view and separating the scenes. Several scenes may be seen simultaneously through superimposition. Abstract concepts or themes may be shown such as a man thinking of his wife by fusing two images together. Through the use of different lenses can we multiply the images, as seen in Granowsky’s, Song of Life.  Manipulating the focus of the picture too can portray the significance of uncertainty of the hazy picture. This has been seen in Eisenstein’s The General Line where the hazy vision can be used to depict that of a drunken man or someone awakening from anesthesia.

The film has two technical properties, and that is by being able to reproduce objects photographically on a two dimensional plane and reproducing motion as accurately as it does the shape of things. The character of an actor can be portrayed by the melody of movement as seen. The camera angles influence the motion of the object. Oblique shots intensify movement, adding to the dynamics of velocity.

 The introduction of film dialogue has helped to save time, space and ingenuity. The audience wants to take part as much as possible in the scene and this can only be done with the mixture of visual action and dialogue.

The absence of speech has given silent films a style of its own, capable of dramatizing the whole scene with no words. In today’s time however films combine scenes full of dialogue with different styles of rich action.  

 The whole book ends to prove that film is a form of art which has evolved over the years since its initial days.