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To understand the film medium, its power of communication, we will consider the two
unique elements of cinema: the mimetic and the kinetic elements.
MIMETIC ELEMENT
We have often heard that art is an imitation of life. But film as an art is not an exact
copy or imitation of life. It is not a reflection of reality, but rather a transformation of
it. The film may even be a distortion of reality or sublimation of it. In other words,
cinema is a new way in which to see life.
The fact that cinema presents so comparatively complete a picture of the real world
(more complete than any other art) has encouraged people to think that the way to
artistic perfection lies in approaching nearer and nearer the full physical reality.
We’ll see that the film differs enormously from physical reality and it is largely in
these differences that the film’s artistic power lies.
The advocates of perfect cinema (cinema total) claim that cinema is imperfect to the
extent that it falls short of complete reality. (Perfect cinema is total reality) But if
this dream were realized, namely cinema equals reality completely, then cinema
would be reality itself and would cease to be an art. And art is only an imperfect
imitation of life. But no matter how imperfect the imitation is, people do enjoy seeing
a movie. For them watching a movie is more enjoyable than its counterparts in
reality. Why is it so?
The classic answer is that the painful experience produces some positive, healthful
result -- a “catharsis” or purgation. The cathartic phenomenon is the figurative
cleansing of human emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an
effect of tragic drama on its audience. It is some kind of a release of emotional
tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.
This operative function of the film sometimes relieves tension and anxiety by
bringing repressed feelings and fears to the consciousness.
A. CONVICTION
In order to experience this vicarious way of life with a mimetic work of art, you must
be convinced that you are living through it (at the same time you know very well that
you are not).
In order to actually “live through” this concrete dream or nightmare in viewing the
film, you must have the conviction in the experience.
This unshakable belief in film without need for proof or evidence is needed in order to
actually “see” the film. You cannot feel the terror of being trapped in a towering
inferno unless you have convictions that you are actually undergoing that horrible
experience. Those who laughed during that film show (Towering Inferno) simply
demonstrated their lack of conviction.
This conviction parallels several more familiar and traditional narrative concepts.
Like “willing suspension of disbelief”, conviction implies an “internal” emotional
response on the part of the viewer, who gladly and willingly accepts a fiction as a
kind of truth. This internal disposition of the viewer is the condition of possibility of
the vicarious experience.
B. CINEMATIC FLAWS
1. Speech: The actor who forgets or stumbles over a speech (in a play or movie)
instantly reminds us that he is an actor doing an impersonation, shattering,
perhaps only for an instant, our conviction that he is Hamlet.
2. Modes: Although many takes of movies allow us to avoid this kind of
shattering, the film actor can destroy our conviction if the line sounds hollow,
faked, forced, or somehow out of keeping with the personality of the actor, the
character, or imprudently out of place with the scene or with the ordinary
human intelligence.
3. Mismatch: Obvious mismatching of shots that we are supposed to accept as
matching continuous sequence. Like different lighting set-ups in one scene.
4. Mockery: A familiar bit of movie fakery that “reads” instantly as fake is “day
for night” filming, i.e. shooting night scenes during the day but using filters
and laboratory processes so that the scene looks vaguely and bluely night
scene. The scene turns a bluish color such as never been seen in reality, and
the actors cast shadows that can never seen even in the fullest and brightest
moonlight. (Francois Truffaut’s points in his film Day for Night, a lovingly ironic
examination of cinema artifice, that in order to solicit conviction from the
viewer, the artifice must never seem to be artificial.) Imagine watching Darna
flying in the sky but the viewer can see the nylon strings that hang her.
5. Intervals and Lapses: lapses in the continuity are another source of
shattering our conviction. Props -- flowers are problems. More often than not
realistic, fake flowers are used, since real flowers that wilt overnight will a
cause a distracting temporal jump’ in the picture.
Another is keeping the liquid at the right level in beverages can drive the prop
people mad. Same with the cigarettes. This is called anachronism2 -- when
props or costumes accessories are used before or after their time. (Ex.
Wristwatches and tennis shoes worn by gladiators in Spartacus; sounds of jet
planes in the soundtrack during the execution of Jose Rizal in Noli Me Tangere.
1
The quality of appearing to be true or real
2
A misplacing or error in the order of time; an error in chronology by which events
and props are misplaced in regard to each other, esp. one by which an event is
placed too early; falsification of chronological relation.
• In Batman, the young Jack Nicholson, in a flashback, has blue eyes;
later Jack’s eyes turn brown.
• In Indiana Jones, the Last Crusade, young Indy gets roughed up and the
dripping blood on his chin switches from left side to right side.
• In the Wizard of Oz, the cowardly lion’s crown, supposedly made from a
broken flowerpot, bounces when it falls from his head.
• An assistant director can be seen in a jeep waving extras in the 1956
War and Peace -- wrong war!
• In Indiana Jones, Indiana asks Hitler for an autograph -- der Fuhrer
signs his name ADOLPH rather than the correct Germanic ADOLF. To
compound the crime, Hitler signs with his right hand, but Hitler is left-
handed!
We have seen from the previous notes that the intemperate rendering of reality is
one of the chief sources of conviction in movie. There is then the problem with sci-fi
films and cartoon. Why do we enjoy these films?
One of my professors in college tells me that when we read the newspaper, we shift
our level of understanding from one section to another. We read the news as factual,
yet we read the editorial as opinion, not factual. Later we read the comics. We do
not treat each section with the same criteria -- we believe the headline, yet we
believe the cat while reading Garfield, as if there is really a cat that talks back to its
owner (our laughter signals that we are convinced by Garfield).
Conviction does not deny the verisimilitude and legitimacy of films like Walt Disney’s
cartoons and science-fiction films.
If scenery, for example, is supposed to look natural, it must look like nature. If the
scenery is not supposed to look natural (as in cartoons), it must not be. We will not
have a conviction in an obvious lie --- that a flat piece of painted cardboard is a tree
--- unless the artist admits that it is a lie and is using that fib for some artistic
purpose.
In such films, like cartoons, we are not asked to have conviction in a painted
cardboard as tree but are invited to have a conviction in a world in which painted
cardboards pass for trees. Only when the artists tells us that the obvious cardboard
is a tree and he sees it as exactly as we do, otherwise we suspect that he either
blind, stupid, lying or some combination of the three and thereby lose conviction.
Things in mimetic art had better seem to be what they are supposed to be --
especially in cinema, in which we can see clearly what they seem to be. If possible,
of course, to feel a limited conviction in a mimetic experience, both to feel some
conviction of “actually” undergoing a real experience and to be aware of the trickery
and fakery at the same time. Our pleasure in classic horror films (Frankenstein,
Dracula, The Werewolf, Superman, King Kong, or E.T.) lies in the admiration of the
imaginative devices for depicting them.