Cinema as an Art Form

September 22, 2021
• Film Studies

“It is not because cinema is an art that it has told us beautiful stories;

but we call cinema an art because it has told us such beautiful stories.”

28 December 1895, Grand Café in Paris: Georges greets Antoine Lumière, who has invited him to watch a private demonstration of his sons’ new invention: the Cinématographe Lumière¹. Where the Lumières see the moving images projected in front of them as a reproduction of reality at a turn of their hands, Georges sees a way to create new realities, new worlds that (for now) lived only in his imagination: a full band composed of only him², giants and tiny men³, and his most iconic vision—a rocket to the moon!⁴ 

Georges Méliès was one of the first to realize that the new medium that lay in front of him could become a foundation to build stories in a way no one has yet done before, something that would forever change the face of entertainment. In his first few years in what was to become the film industry, Méliès developed several techniques and special effects put into action through his films, such as stop-tricks/jump-cuts to make things suddenly change appearance and matte/multiple-exposures to create different scales and duplicates. His ageless classic “A Trip to the Moon” (1902)⁴ became a landmark of the film industry and symbolized its power to turn dreams into a shared reality.⁵ Around the same time, movies like Robert W. Paul & Walter R. Booth’s “Cheese Mites, or Lilliputians in a London Restaurant” (1901)⁶ and “The ‘?’ Motorist” (1906)⁷ in England and Edwin Porter’s “Jack and the Beanstalk'' (1902)⁸ in America explored similar tricks and developed the tradition of special effects and set design that gave cinema its unique abilities. 

However, what made these movies art? Was it the rapidly advancing technology for film cameras? Or was it the creative film techniques developed by these filmmakers? In response to this, I would ask a counter-question: Doth just the paint strokes the masterpiece makes? Doth just the script the masterful play make? Art, in all its various forms, has always been more than the sum of the techniques used to create it. Of course, the composition would be incomplete without the techniques, but if it was just about the techniques, what is to stop anyone from putting together a Van Gogh or a Beethoven or a Bernard Shaw! It is abundantly clear why a reductionist approach to understanding art loses out on the truest sense embedded in it, the emergent property of the artwork— its influence on us and the world we live in. And that is where we need to recognize the power of cinema. 

Before cinema, stories lived in the imagination of the reader. You can read everyone the same story, but in their minds, the world and the images each person would create would be different. What the films managed to do was to create a foundation for a common imagination—a chance to have an equal shared experience of stories as they watch caricatures of reality do funny things, daring things, stupid things, and smart things. Filmmakers went beyond the usual special effects and developed new narrative techniques in cinema to change the focus using close-ups^9,10a, create suspense and simultaneous action using cross-cutting^10b, or pace scene transitions using cuts/dissolves¹¹. However, none of it would have mattered if the stories they told were not entertaining and beautiful enough to have grabbed and kept the attention and emotions of the audience. The stories told through cinema can incite and explore every possible kind of human emotion, whether it be fear, intrigue, joy, confusion, or sorrow. And this is precisely where cinema shines as an art form.

Even without any spoken words, with only occasional intertitles between shots, the early filmmakers told brilliant stories of little words filled with numerous almost unforgettable lifelike characters and compelling narratives that had a clear effect on the world around them. D W Griffiths’s racially charged “The Birth of a Nation” (1915)¹², while a wonder of cinema with its elaborate scenes with hundreds of people, many important characters, and complex parallel storytelling, was a political disaster that romanticized the infamous KKK and presented African Americans as stupid and driven by sex. Nevertheless, the narrative was powerful enough to cause a metaphorical ‘split of a nation’ almost leading to riots in certain American states in response to its screening at the White House¹³.

Slapstick comedy took the cake when it came to memorable characters. Charlie Chaplins’ ‘The Tramp’ persona, the goofy duo ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and the stonefaced ‘Buster Keaton’ became a household topic of discussion for generations to come. Almost everyone has heard of, if not seen, Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” (1925)¹⁴ with the scene where ‘The Tramp’ cooks and eats his shoes. While making everyone laugh at its absurdity, that single comedic scene simultaneously tells the very real story of the harsh conditions that the common folk suffered in search of fortune during these times, and this scene is not the only one. Chaplin very often told powerful stories about the plight of the urban poor using films, such as “City Lights” (1931)¹⁵ and “The Kid” (1921)¹⁶, without having blatant political narrativization, making it more appealing to a vast global audience while at the same time bringing the realities of the class society to light. 

Over time, cinema became one of the most versatile storytelling mediums, right alongside literature. For example, consider the Soviet socialist realist movement that started under Lenin, used cinema to make people recognize social realities through stories of the working class and revolution. But under Stalin, films essentially became agitprop used to manipulate the mass consciousness with exaggerated realities¹⁷. Even then, within this movement, there was uniqueness in how different stories were told. Kuleshov and Eisenstein focused on using ‘creative geography’¹⁸ and ‘montages’¹⁹ as a basis for continuity editing. Eisenstein also used Typage, seen in “Battleship Potemkin” (1925)²⁰, to mask individuality and create universalized narratives, while his contemporary Pudovkin rejected this and focussed on individual narratives, as notable in “Mat” (1926)²¹, which gave them a personal emotional connection with the audience.

On the other hand, the German expressionist movement was based on rejecting realism and used cinema to bring the human subconscious to the screen through strange distorted scenes, creative use of backgrounds and lighting, and exaggerated characters to portray emotional realities. In “Metropolis” (1927)²², Fritz Lang used miniatures, mattes, differences in scales coupled with a portrayal of a machine-like kafkaesque society to represent the social and psychological reactions to the massive changes that industrialization and urbanization had brought to the world. Even in Russia, Yevgeni Bauer used lighting and cinematic techniques to delve deep into the crevices and explore the human psyche. “After Death” (1915)²³ gave the audience a look into the guilt of a man who realized his love a little too late, thus driving himself to madness and death. The psychological nature of the plot combined with ghastly montages of hallucination and the visual portrayal of this inside of dreams symbiotically created a story more powerful than simple words or images could create.

Note that all of this happened even before sounds became a part of cinema. The success of the “talkies” with the advent of sound-on-disk technology added an entirely new layer to the storytelling. Sound effects and music scores became a part of the narrative technique used to influence emotion and appearance. Music scores added to both new movies and existing silent movies completely changed how scenes would be interpreted. Take, for example, two of the different soundtracks written for the same silent film Dziga Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera” (1929)²⁴— the one by Michael Nyman²⁵ and the other by The Cinematic Orchestra²⁶, both composed in 2002. Compared to Nyman’s version, which manages to capture the varied pace of the society and retains a romantic vintage touch, the version by The Cinematic Orchestra is more contemporary/jazzy, giving a more relaxed but experimental feel to the movie, thus completely changing the tone of the scenes.

Another great example is how the genre of horror evolved with the advent of sound cinema. While “Nosferatu” (1922)²⁷ was indeed terrifying, in “The Horror of Dracula” (1958)²⁸, the score by James Bernard uses music to personify Count Dracula, the dark quality of which added a unique sense of suspense and inevitability that was missing in the silent era. None would disagree that the murder in the shower scene in Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960)²⁹ just would not be the same without the iconic high notes that became a mainstay for horror jump scares for years to come, nor would the scenes in “Jaws” (1975)³⁰ be as suspenseful without John Williams’ brilliant use of the same two notes with the changing tempo to characterize the shark. And thus, sound became an integral part of powerful storytelling that makes cinema an art.

In 2019, only 124 years from the day the Lumière made their demonstration, the global box office was valued at almost $50 billion³¹, and all the examples we discussed, while just a tiny sample of the multitude of cinematic experiences, make one thing clear: the techniques of cinema itself do not have any intrinsic ability but wielded by the right hands, they can be used to create stories that can affect individuals and society. To conclude this essay, I would like to make a small change to the quote we started with, which I believe truly captures the essence of cinema:

“It is not because cinema is an art that it has told us powerful stories;

but we call cinema an art because it has told us such powerful stories.”

References:

1.    Biographie. Georges MELIES http://www.meliesfilms.com/biographie/.

2.    Méliès, G. & Méliès, G. L’homme orchestre. (Star-Film).

3.    Méliès, G. & Méliès, G. Nain et géant. (Georges Méliès, Star-Film).

4.    Méliès, G., Méliès, G., André, V. & Bernon, B. Le voyage dans la lune. (Star-Film, 1908).

5.    Introduction — Solomon, M. Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Méliès’s Trip to the Moon. (SUNY Press, 2011).

6.    Booth, W. R. The Cheese Mites, or Lilliputians in a London Restaurant. (Robert W. Paul, 1901).

7.    Booth, W. R. The ‘?’ Motorist. (Robert W. Paul, 1906).

8.    Fleming, G. S., Porter, E. S., White, J. H. & White, T. Jack and the Beanstalk. (Edison Manufacturing Company, 1902).

9.    Ending Scene — Porter, E. S., Anderson, G. M. ’Broncho B., Abadie, A. C. & Barnes, G. The Great Train Robbery. (Edison Manufacturing Company).

10.    a. Close-up of wrench b. Break-in at the Telegraph office scene — Griffith, D. W., Sweet, B., Nichols, G. & Grandon, F. J. The Lonedale Operator. (Biograph Company, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 1911).

11.    Cutting, J. E., Brunick, K. L. & Delong, J. E. The Changing Poetics of the Dissolve in Hollywood Film. Empir. Stud. Arts 29, 149–169 (2011).

12.    Griffith, D. W., Gish, L., Marsh, M. & Walthall, H. B. The Birth of a Nation. (David W. Griffith Corp., Epoch Producing Corporation, 1915).

13.    Wilson and Birth of a Nation at the White House. The Washington Times 6 (1915).

14.    Chaplin, C., Chaplin, C., Swain, M. & Murray, T. The Gold Rush. (Charles Chaplin Productions, 1925).

15.    Chaplin, C., Chaplin, C., Cherrill, V. & Lee, F. City Lights. (Charles Chaplin Productions, 1931).

16.    Chaplin, C., Chaplin, C., Purviance, E. & Coogan, J. The Kid. (Charles Chaplin Productions, 1921).

17.    Eskar, A. The emergence of the Socialist Realist film in the Stalin era: 1928–1941 refashioning the working man in the spirit of Socialism. (California State University, 2008).

18.    “organization of the material through its cinematic treatment” p.52 — Kuleshov, L. V. & Kuleshov, L. Kuleshov on Film: Writings. (University of California Press, 1974).

19.    “montage or editing, the arrangement of the shots, frames or sequences through cutting. In Eisenstein's view, as in the view of others, it was montazh ("montage") that distinguished the specificity of cinema as opposed to related art” p.vii — Eisenstein, S. The Eisenstein Reader. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).

20.    Eisenstein, S. M., Antonov, A., Barskiy, V. & Aleksandrov, G. Bronenosets Potemkin. (Goskino, Mosfilm, 1925).

21.    Pudovkin, V., Baranovskaya, V., Batalov, N. & Chistyakov, A. Mat. (Mezhrabpom-Rus, 1926).

22.    Lang, F., Helm, B., Abel, A. & Fröhlich, G. Metropolis. (Universum Film (UFA), 1927).

23.    Bauer, Y., Polonsky, V., Rakhmanova, O. & Karalli, V. Posle smerti. (Khanzhonkov, 1915).

24.    Vertov, D., Kaufman, M. & Svilova, E. Chelovek s kino-apparatom. (Vseukrainske Foto Kino Upravlinnia (VUFKU), 1929).

25.    Vertov, D. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) [Michael Nyman Soundtrack]. (2002). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64jLxgCWukY

26.    Vertov, D. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) [The Cinematic Orchestra Soundtrack]. (2002). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYZ5847FiI

27.    Murnau, F. W., Schreck, M., Granach, A. & Wangenheim, G. von. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. (Jofa-Atelier Berlin-Johannisthal, Prana-Film GmbH, 1922).

28.    Fisher, T., Cushing, P., Lee, C. & Gough, M. The Horror of Dracula. (Hammer Films, 1958).

29.    Hitchcock, A., Perkins, A., Leigh, J. & Miles, V. Psycho. (Shamley Productions, 1960).

30.    Spielberg, S., Scheider, R., Shaw, R. & Dreyfuss, R. Jaws. (Zanuck/Brown Productions, Universal Pictures, 1975).

31.    McClintock, P. 2019 Global Box Office Revenue Hit Record $42.5B Despite 4 Percent Dip in U.S. Billboard https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8547827/2019-global-box-office-revenue-hit-record-425b-despite-4-percent-dip-in-us (2020).