The Ontology of Film Theory

The prosperity of Italian neo-realistic films after World War II changed the atmosphere of film theory. Since 1950s, the theory of recordism, represented by Bazin in France and Krakau in the United States, has gained a position comparable to that of montage.

Bazin is first of all a film critic, but his film criticism articles are beyond the practical nature and have important theoretical value. A large number of film papers he left behind were compiled into four volumes. What is a film? 》。

Bazin's film image ontology and long shot theory (or scene scheduling theory) are the basis and core of his theoretical system.

The film ontology tries to prove the "noumenon" essence of film, the relationship between film and existence, film and reality. Besides Bazin and kracauer, there are O 'panofsky and S. Cavell in the United States, among which Bazin and kracauer have the most complete and influential theoretical systems.

Bazin believes that movies are essentially "real art". In the preface of Selected Works, he pointed out: "We must start with photographic images as the basic elements of final synthesis, and then briefly put forward an analysis (if not a theory, at least a theory) of film language, and its argument is based on the assumption that it has internal authenticity."

Bazin believes that the invention of photography has enabled mankind to realize its long-standing desire to create an ideal world that conforms to the original appearance of reality and exists independently in time. Therefore, the most essential phenomenon in the transition from painting to photography is psychological factors, which completely satisfies the desire to exclude people and create illusions only by mechanical reproduction; People finally got an art of "having the privilege of keeping people away". Based on photography, "the concept of film is equivalent to a complete reproduction of reality." Their first consideration is to reproduce the illusion of an external world with sound, color and three-dimensional sense. "

Bazin found the best practical example of ontology from Italian neo-realistic films, and pointed out that the artist's true representation of reality does not mean giving up his creative task. Because it is not easier to convey facts about people and society than to convey subjective images: "The' realism' form in art has always been a form with profound' aesthetic significance' first. ..... In art, reality, like imagination, is an artist's unique wealth. It is no easier to embody the specific content of reality in literary or film works than to embody the most bizarre dreams in imagination. "

On the basis of film ontology, Bazin established his long-shot theory building. The two central arguments of this theory are: ① Oppose the supremacy of montage. ② Emphasize the fuzziness of reality.

Bazin strongly opposes the montage theory of Eisenstein and others. He pointed out that the film only became a famous saying of art from the beginning of montage, which had a positive effect for a while, but its effectiveness had been exhausted. Montage is literary and artistic, and it is also the most anti-film means. As far as its pure state is concerned, the characteristics of the film are just the opposite, strictly observing the unity of space in photography. But he is not absolutely opposed to the use of montage, but thinks that montage is necessary in movies only under such circumstances: creating the necessary unreality. This is because part of the function of the film is to let the audience enjoy fantastic fun. If it's too real, completely rule out hallucinations. Therefore, he believes that the following principles can be put forward as aesthetic laws: montage is not allowed under the condition that two or more factors in action must be expressed at the same time to clarify the essence of an event; Once the meaning of the action no longer depends on physical proximity, the right to use montage is restored. Bazin's montage boundary theory is based on the fuzziness of reality. He pointed out that reality is polysemy, and montage fundamentally opposes polysemy, which is determined by the nature of montage.

Bazin emphasizes the fuzziness of reality in order to ask film creators to highlight the significance of events through choice. In his view, the film narrative unit is not a lens, but an event, a fragment of the concrete reality, and the reality itself is multifaceted and vague. The exact meaning of an event can only be inferred after realizing its connection with other events. He also believes that although the film can only grasp its object from the outside, it has thousands of means to deal with the appearance of the object, which can remove all vague meanings and make the appearance of things a symbol reflecting a single internal reality; The premise of the existence of screen image is that there is an inevitable and clear causal relationship between emotion and its external performance.

Bazin believes that the audience should be the people who "comprehend" the "exact meaning" from the ambiguous real things. To do this, the audience must have the right to choose the content of the picture when watching the movie. Only an uncut depth-of-field lens can give the audience this right. Taking O Wells' film as an example, Bazin pointed out that the director used depth-of-field lens to stimulate the audience in Citizen Kane, forcing the audience to use their free attention, and at the same time making them aware of the multiple contradictions of facts, which made his depth-of-field lens have triple reality, namely ontological reality, dramatic reality and psychological reality. He praised Abbeson's House, thinking that its lens paragraphs are not just passively shooting the actions in the same scene. It refuses to divide events and break down the location of the plot according to space. This is a positive method, and its effect is much better than the classic split shot.

Kracauer is another American film scholar from Germany. Based on Bazin's theoretical premise and his 40-year experience in watching movies, he wrote The Essence of Film (1960), which brought the theory of documentary school to the extreme.

Kracauer said that his film theory is a kind of "substantive aesthetics", not formal aesthetics. What he cares about is content. The basis of his argument is: "Film is essentially an extension of photography, so, like photography, it has obvious affinity with the world around us. When the film records and reveals the material reality, it becomes a veritable film. "

Like Bazin, kracauer also put aside the traditional artistic concept to look at movies, but went further than Bazin. He asserted that the traditional artistic concept "does not and can't be applied to truly cinematic films", because traditional art is "top-down", that is, it digests the material reality from the ideological intention, while the only film is "bottom-up", that is, it starts from the true reflection of the material reality and finally moves towards a certain problem or belief. Therefore, "if the film is an art, then it is an unusual art" and "the only art that can keep its material integrity."

The purpose of kracauer's theory is to find out a route to develop movies that is most in line with the essence of movies through the investigation of various movies. To this end, he analyzed the materials and methods of movies in detail and rejected all forms and contents that were "non-cinematic". Establish his "cinematic" standard, and finally demonstrate the law and possibility of film in the context of human activities.

Kracauer summed up his concept of "filmization" with "the reduction of material truth". In order to achieve the purpose of "restoration", he only allowed movies to play two functions of "recording" and "revealing", and excluded all movies designed by artists with clear ideological intentions and a story structure. Even the purely audio-visual experimental films are excluded, because in his view, such films tend to avoid telling stories, but when doing so, they rarely consider the closeness of film means and ignore the reality in front of the camera; They abolished the principle of story, just to establish the principle of art, perhaps art benefited from this "revolution". The movie got nothing.

In kracauer's view, the most "cinematic" form and content is "the story and plot of discovery". The so-called "discovery story" has three characteristics: ① it was discovered, not conceived; ② It is an important potential element of natural substances, and it is rarely possible to develop into an independent whole; (3) It can reproduce some typical accidental events in the world around us, which are realized from the life stream through the camera's revelation, and then disappear into the life stream.

Kracauer knew that the strict value standard he set for movies would be refuted, because his rejection of all "non-cinematic" themes could not be found within the scope of film theory except by virtue of his unique belief and passion for movies. Therefore, he turned to demonstrate his film function theory in the broader context of changes in human thought and activities. Kracauer believes that the significance of watching movies lies in making it possible for modern people to experience material reality and shift their attention from the inner world to the external phenomenon of life. Modern people need this kind of "transfer" very much because they suffer from "ideological emptiness" and "cognitive abstraction". He believes that in the past three or four centuries, the relationship between people's inner world and external reality has undergone profound changes. Among them, two changes are particularly noteworthy. One is that the belief in * * * has gradually lost people's hearts, and the other is that the prestige of science has steadily increased. Because modern people no longer have the same belief, they have doubts about the role of rationality and tend to be anti-rationalism; On the other hand, the development of science leads people to "mathematize the real phenomenon" and turn the concrete material content of things into abstract understanding. Finally, these two factors make Guan Dai a "lonely group" who is indifferent to reality. Only movies can help people "experience the world through the camera" and make the world completely rejuvenated from hibernation and false non-existence.

The latest representative of J. Mitri's overall film research is J. Mitri, a French film professor. His two-volume film aesthetics and psychology was published in 1963. Among them, all the issues involved in film theory in the past 50 years have been widely discussed and many different arguments have been commented, which is obviously comprehensive. According to the summary of French film researcher C. Metz, Mitri mainly discussed 10 major issues in his works: ① modern movies; ② Subjective shot; (3) Audio language in movies; 4 movie music; ⑤ Colors in movies; 6 pure "audio-visual" movies; ⑦ Movies gradually abandon drama programs; 8 movies and plays; Pet-name ruby movies and novels; Attending metaphor, symbol, language.

An important purpose of Mitri's comprehensive theory is to critically reconcile the montage theory represented by Eisenstein and the ontology theory represented by Bazin. He classified movies into two historical categories, namely, "montage" movies and "time-space continuous shooting" movies, which are two major forms of film expression, but they are not incompatible. It is pointed out that the opposition between these two aesthetics only emphasizes the difference between the two forms in film techniques. One form is equivalent to the language of poetry in movies, and the other is equivalent to the language of novels. Obviously, the two follow different principles. No matter what a novelist wants to say, he always hides behind the hero and the surface truth. All his efforts are to create or recreate this authenticity. On the other hand, the poet expresses his thoughts directly. He speaks with facts, not just through facts. Mitri prefers montage theory. He said: "We must first oppose a tendency to capture the' real' reality and turn the film into a purely documentary means and a machine for recording behavior. To a certain extent, the film is a documentary, but fortunately, it is not entirely so, because the conditions of its existence absolutely forbid it to do so. When the film is a pure documentary, it will inevitably damage the art. When he opposed the montage theory, he criticized Bazin for "always choosing some expressions in bad films to attack and condemn". "This led him to blame the improper application of expression? I need it. But he opposes "taking montage effect as the core of film expression." "Take it as the basis of general aesthetics, not just a means of expressing personal style. In his early works, he criticized Eisenstein's theory of "juggling montage" and strongly opposed the analogy between montage and language. He believes that every abstract meaning in movies must be rooted in our true feelings. It is a misuse of film media to use montage to convey abstract concepts in language. To this end, he listed various montages in detail, pointing out which are appropriate and which are contrary to the essence of the film.

The latest development form of structuralism-semiotics film theory in film theory is structuralism-semiotics film research. Christine, the representative of this research method? Metz believes that after Mitri, film theory should enter the "second period", from comprehensive and general research to accurate and scientific local research, that is, to establish structuralism-semiotics film theory.

In film research, structuralism and semiotics are compared. First of all, some structuralists, such as Mays, P Warren, B Nichols, U Eco and Kristova, are themselves symbolists, and their main job is to make symbolic analysis of movies. Second, because the general semiotic research is often mixed with some elements of structuralist philosophy.

Structuralism-semiotics film theory mainly has two aspects: one is to make a general theoretical study of film and try to establish a scientific foundation for film; The second is to use this science to make a structuralist "reading" analysis of specific films. Metz's book on the expression of film meaning (Volume 1, 1968; Volume 2, 1972) and language film and television (197 1) are the most representative.

Metz divided film studies into two categories. One is film research in a broad sense, including the relationship between film and other activities and all possible problems, such as technology, industrial organization, film censorship, audience response, star worship and so on. Movies in a broad sense are the research objects of sociology, economics, social psychology, psychoanalysis, physics and chemistry. Second, the narrow sense of film research only refers to the film itself, and does not involve the complicated procedures of film production and various phenomena caused by the film. Structuralism-semiotics film theory is a kind of "science of seeking meaning", that is, to study how the film conveys its implied meaning to the audience, formulate a clear model for this communication, and find out the laws that constitute the film experience.

Metz believes that the core of film is "the manifestation of meaning", that is, "the artificial process of understanding the information conveyed by the film through the symbol system". The characteristics of film's "meaning expression" are determined by its unique "performance materials". It is neither reality itself nor montage, but "five material channels": ① diverse mobile photographic images; (2) All the written materials we see outside the screen; ③ Recording language; 4 recorded music; ⑤ Recorded noise and sound effects. The task of film structuralism-semiotics is to analyze the "mixed meaning" of these "material channels"

Mace objected to describing movies as a language. He denied that movies had any grammar, but he was in favor of studying movies with linguistic principles, and adopted a series of linguistic terms, such as "code", "information", "system", "symbol" and "parallel combination", among which the most critical term was "code", which was the main research method of semiotics. Therefore, "symbol code" is a logical form of "expressing matter" and sending out information. Semiotics is to restore the information in the film according to the compiled "symbols" (performance, lighting, walking and camera movement).

Metz believes that "symbol code" has three basic characteristics: first, "uniqueness", such as "parallel montage" is a unique "symbol code" of movies, which can not be achieved by other arts. The second is "different universal levels". For example, panoramic shots belong to the most common level, but jeans and western scenery in westerns belong to special levels. The third is "it will fall to the second symbol code". "Secondary symbol code" is a usage of "symbol code". In different films in different periods, "unique symbol" and "universal symbol" will have different usages. According to this explanation, film structuralism-semiotics, as a generalized theoretical study, should analyze the uniqueness, universality and interaction of each symbol; When analyzing the interpretation of specific films, it is necessary to point out the systematic arrangement and intersection of countless "symbols" in the works. Therefore, Metz said: "The film is the sum of all symbols plus the second symbol", and this sum can create "the manifestation of meaning" from the "performance materials" of the film. Film theory is a kind of censorship, which favors some symbols and opposes others. Film history is made up of "secondary symbols" used in the past.