Sergei Eisenstein vs Andre Bazin Essay

The language of movie theater has been produced by trail and error within the last one hundred years by leaders venturing in to uncharted area. Today anyone with a Big t. V. established is comfortable with the language, most likely without even knowing they are involved in a “conversation”.

This dialogue has to be created by using a motion picture language. Among such innovators that constructed this language are, Sergei Eisenstein, a male who is considered to be the “father of modern cinema” and Andre Bazin, a film theorist that had a key impact on the field of cinema. Both men with completely opposite thoughts as to how a conversation should unfold.

Andre was what one may call a “Realist”. This idea walks the line of what is considered to be a documented film wherever we look through the window and observe an untouched fact with no man intervention. Eisenstein believed theatre should intellectually challenge his audience and everything within just is a built formalistic universe inside a shape, simply put, Eisenstein was a “Formalist”. This essay will probe the differences and similarities between two huge weights in motion picture history and what they were trying to achieve, a cinematic real truth. Here, a brief history of Sergei Eisenstein to set way the inquiry.

Sergei was born into a middle course family in Riga, Latvia; his daddy was an architect, which influenced his scholarly job greatly. He began studying engineering to follow taking after the actions of this father though he would end up signing up for the army with his guy students to serve the Red Armed service in 1918. After two years with the army, he moved to Moscow where he began a profession in theatre. It was right here; over the brief span of three years while using theatre employed by “Prolekult” Eisenstein was motivated to begin act as a theorist by producing “The Montage of Attractions”. His first film “Strike” (1925) started out his job in film with the politics overtone that might bleed in his after works.

After that same year, Eisenstein wrote and directed his most widely known film “The Battleship Potemkin”. It had been a critical achievement and a movie many years ahead of it’s time. That used his montage to unravel pictures to parts and slamming them back together in order to create a cubism result with the accommodement of images. Eisenstein’s notion of the montage was a specific use of film editing this individual called “dialectical montage”.

This is how Eisenstein searched for cinematic real truth. In the opening sentences of “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form” Eisenstein states, “According to Marx and Engels the dialectic system is the only conscious duplication of the dialectic course of the external situations of the world” (Eisenstein, 1). For Eisenstein truth was dialectic, which in turn led him to understand that cinemas portrayal of fact must be dialectical.

Eisenstein was formalistic and constructed cinema to challenge his target audience at a conscious and sub mindful level. He theorized that “cinema was the synthesis of art and science”, exactly where art staying the thesis and scientific research the antithesis. Eisenstein sensed that with out a synthesis issue in cinema was too linear. Theatre needed to be constructed by the edits, shots, and lighting effectively communicate the ideas, thoughts and topics, rather than concentration on the designs as a work in of alone.

It is in this article that Eisenstein finds the true meaning of the essence, for example; when ever in “October” (1928) Eisenstein creates a assemblage between photos of a automatic peacock and Alexander Kerensky (a past political innovator during the Russian Revolutions, 1917), Eisenstein is definitely showing us the “cinematic truth” of Kerensky by the juxtaposition of intercut photos. This was the place that the cinematic fact lay pertaining to Sergei Eisenstein, in the cardiovascular system of the montage. But not every person agreed.

Andre Bazin came to be in Angers, France in 1918. He began to write regarding film in 1943 till co-founding film magazine “Cahiers du Cinema” in 1951. Bazin identified that film should illustrate what he saw while an objective reality. The Eisenstein approach, he felt, places too much “faith in the image” (Bazin, 24) where the message is derived solely by the juxtaposition of images; which in Bazin’s eyes is not a cinematic, universal real truth. Instead he favored the neo-realism activity coming out of Italy in the mid 1940’s which usually he explained put “faith in reality” (ibid, 24).

Being a fan of “realism” and “neo-realism”, Andre favored a theatre without human intervention and letting the shots engage in rather than intercutting and juxtaposing images. Bazin felt that the was a cinema of simple fact. The shot itself displays the truth to the audience and does not need any kind of manipulation to convey the theme, which is exactly the opposite of what Eisenstein proposed earlier. Bazin’s realist approach enables the events speak for themselves.

A prime example of such a film for Bazin is, “Rossellini’s Paisa” where he is cited as declaring “The device of cinematic narrative in Paisa is not the ‘shot’, an abstract view of truth which is becoming analyzed, but the ‘fact'” (Bazin, vol. 2, 37). It truly is within these types of facts that Bazin feels the motion picture truth happen.

For Bazin, film must respect this philosophy when it is to be a general truth. This kind of ideology Bazin popularized may easily become misunderstood. He can not solely speaking of your typical, target fly on the wall documented, where all you do is usually observe and record almost all events. Bazin made it very clear that, the same as with any kind of art form, you have to “choose among what is well worth preserving and what should be discarded” (Bazin, 26). Having taken a look at both equally Eisenstein and Bazin’s concepts, it is apparent that they equally share a common goal.

I actually find it interesting that; eventually they are both accurate in their personal right even with the considerably different methods. Both men understood film as an art and understood that the designer had to determine what was worth keeping and what will need to hit the editing space floor. Simply because Eisenstein locates meaning through unraveling symbolic juxtaposing photos being slammed back to back and Bazin through studying the event (fact) when ever there is no need to interrupt the fact with more pictures. So whose ideology achieves true motion picture truth?

Bazin’s realism or Eisenstein’s Kino-Fist formalism? Well, the conclusion one might draw is that there is no ‘right or perhaps wrong’ way. Both ideologies have their places but , ironically, they are unfinished without each other. Bazin’s realist approach won’t always find the attention of the audience, wherever Eisenstein would. To distinction, Eisenstein’s montage isn’t always appropriate both, sometimes pertaining to an event to really connect with the audience; it should basically unfold before their sight.

Citations: Bazin, André. Precisely what is Cinema? Volume 1 . André Bazin. Oregon, California. 2006. Print Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Volume level 2 . André Bazin. Oregon, California. 2005. Print Bartenberger, Martin. Realistic look in the Film Theory of Sergei Eisenstein and André Bazin: Theorieburo. n. l. 2012. World wide web. 2 February 2013. Eisenstein, Sergei.

A Dialectic Method of Film Contact form. New York, Ny. 1949. Print out Unknown Author. Sergei Eisenstein: Wikipedia n. p. n. d. World wide web. 2 Feb 2013 Unkown Author. Sergei Eisenstein.

The Art & Science of Cinema: Russian Archives. and. p. d. d. World wide web. 2 February. 2013 Not known Author. André Bazin: Wikipedia. n. s. n. d. Web. a couple of Feb 2013 Kele Tyrell