What are Bazin’s film theories?

He has many film theories. You can buy a copy of "What is Movie" to read the specific contents.

Here’s a short excerpt for you:

French film theorist Bazin’s “paragraph shot” theory of neorealist film techniques and aesthetic propositions have inspired future film theory circles, both in The film’s narrative techniques, montage editing, photography, performance, and even the structure of the play’s scenes all present new arguments and perspectives. The most obvious is the "paragraph shot" theory (that is, the long shot theory) of the French film theorist Bazin, which opposes single-shot editing, and advocates using more "paragraphs" or scenes as an edit like some neorealist films. unit. In his opinion, only this editing method is more consistent with life.

The "New Wave" film was born in 1958, and this film genre regarded Bazin as its spiritual leader. Bazin's theory is mainly reflected in two aspects:

1. "Film is the asymptote of reality"

In "The Ontology of Photographic Images", Bazin proposed "The aesthetic characteristic of photography lies in its ability to reveal reality," he said: "...the camera lens gets rid of old prejudices and removes the mental rust stains that our feelings have cast on the object. Only this kind of cold-eyed lens can restore it. The world attracts my attention with its innocent appearance, thus arousing my attachment.” From this, Bazin came to the conclusion that the original first characteristic of film art is the “documentary characteristic”. It is closely related to Bazin’s “Film is the asymptote of reality” is the slogan of “realism” compared to any other art.

In the context of the “New Wave”. Among the works, Tecchanfo's "Insanity" directly implements Bazin's theory, and it is a film that can well illustrate Bazin's theory. "Insanity" describes a 12-year-old boy Antona, who cannot get help from his parents and teachers. Truffaut breaks the traditional narrative technique and tells the story of how he escaped twice, lived on the streets, was interrogated by police and psychologists for theft, was sent to a labor camp, and then escaped and ran to the sea. The narrative language of the film always remains on the asymptotic line of life, forming a new artistic style. The film also generated huge response and welcome in the international film community, laying the foundation for the rise of the "New Wave". .

2. The theory of mise-en-scène

Bazin believes: “The authenticity of narrative is diametrically opposed to the authenticity of perceptuality, and perceptual authenticity comes first from the reality of space. ". The processing method of montage theory is to "narrate events", which inevitably requires a large number of segmentations of space and time, thus destroying the perceptual reality. On the contrary, the depth of field lens is always "recording events" and it "respects perceptuality". "real space and time" and requires "the preservation of objects in a uniform spatial identity." Bazin hopes that filmmakers will realize the original power inherent in the film image itself. He believes that interpreting and clarifying meaning certainly requires artistic skills. But showing meaning through unmodified pictures also requires artistic skills. All of these constitute Bazin's theory of "scene management", which some people call the "depth of field shot" theory or the "long shot" theory. "The theory of mise-en-scène is opposed to the theory of montage in almost all aspects. Montage divides time and space for the purpose of telling stories, while mise-en-scène pursues the relative unity of time and space without artificial explanation; the narrative nature of montage determines the director's role in Self-expression in film art, and the documentary nature of scene scheduling determines the director's self-elimination; montage theory emphasizes artificial skills outside the picture, while scene scheduling emphasizes the inherent original power of the picture; montage expresses the single meaning of things, with Distinction and compulsion, while mise-en-scene expresses the multiple meanings of things, which is instantaneous and random; montage guides the audience to make choices, while mise-en-scène prompts the audience to make choices.

Bazin’s theory influenced an entire generation. Truffaut was a loyal disciple of Bazin. He said: "There is no correct picture, only the correct picture." Godard said: "Cinema is the truth at 24 frames per second." Their concept of film is in the same vein as Bazin’s theory of mise-en-scène.

The Ontology of Photographic Images (André Bazin)

If you use psychoanalysis to analyze plastic arts, you can regard the embalming of corpses as sculptures Basic factors for the production of art. When psychoanalysis traces the origins of painting and sculpture, it is likely to find the mummy "complexe". Ancient Egyptian religion preached the fight of life against death. It believed that if the body does not decay, life will still exist. Therefore, this religion caters to the basic requirement of human psychology - to contend with time. For death is nothing but the victory of time. Artificially preserving the human body's shape means seizing a living being from the long river of time and making it immortal. Properly preserving the complete appearance of the bones and flesh of the deceased was once a matter of course. A shriveled, brown mummy that had been treated with natron was the first statue in ancient Egypt. But a maze of pyramids or passages is not enough to prevent tombs from being stolen, and additional insurance measures must be taken just in case. Therefore, in addition to scattering some wheat as food for the deceased near the sarcophagus, several small pottery statues were also placed as spare mummies. Once the body of the deceased was destroyed, these statues could serve as stand-ins.

From the religious origins of statuary art we can see its original function: to reproduce form in order to preserve life. Obviously, the discovery of a clay bear pierced by arrows in a prehistoric cave shows a more positive aspect of the same kind of wish: the clay bear is equivalent to the deified creature of the beast, in order to pray for successful hunting.

Of course, art and civilization are evolving at the same time, and plastic arts have finally gotten rid of this witchcraft function (Louis XIV did not let future generations apply spices to preserve his body, but just asked Le Blanc to painted a portrait). However, the desire to conquer time is, after all, irresistible. The progress of civilization has only sublimated this requirement into a reasonable idea. We no longer believe in an ontological identity between the model and the portrait, but we recognize that the latter helps us to recall the former and thus protects it from forgetfulness. The practice of depicting images has nothing to do with human-centered pragmatism. What it involves is not the issue of the continuation of human life, but a broader concept, that is, creating an ideal world that is consistent with the original appearance of reality and exists independently in time. If people fail to see in our blind admiration for painting the original need to overcome the passage of time with the eternity of form, "painting would be too vain." If plastic art is not only its aesthetic history, but also its psychological history, then this history is basically the history of the pursuit of resemblance, or the development history of realism.

Looking at the problem from this sociological point of view, the emergence of photography and film naturally explains the major spiritual and technical crisis of modern painting that began in the mid-19th century.

André Malraux wrote in the article published in (Passion) magazine: "Film is only the most obvious manifestation of the evolution of realism in the plastic arts, and the principles of realism It emerged with the Renaissance and was most extreme in Baroque painting."

Indeed, world painting has achieved varying degrees of formal symbolism and realism. Different balances, however, by the 15th century, Western painting began to no longer simply focus on expressing spiritual reality with unique means, but strived to combine the expression of the spirit with the most realistic depiction of the external world. Undoubtedly, a decisive event was the invention of perspective, the first scientific system that began to acquire mechanical properties. Perspective makes it possible for painters to create the illusion of three-dimensional space, so that objects appear similar to what we experience directly.

Since then, painting has been wandering between two pursuits: one belongs to the category of pure aesthetics - expressing spiritual reality, where the symbolic meaning of the form transcends the original shape being depicted; Pursuit is the psychological desire to simply replace the external world with a realistic simulation. Once this demand for illusion is satisfied, it becomes stronger and stronger, so that it gradually swallows up the plastic arts. However, since perspective painting only solves the problem of shape and cannot express movement, the realism there can naturally only be limited to exploring how to express the moment of things in a dramatic way, that is, through some kind of psychological fourth dimension. There is life in Baroque art, which suffers from stillness.

Of course, great painters always combine these two tendencies: they can not only grasp reality, but also integrate reality into artistic forms, making the two tendencies distinct. However, what we see are two phenomena that are fundamentally different. Objective comments should be good at distinguishing them in order to understand the evolution of painting art. From the 16th century onwards, the pursuit of the illusion of reality continued to influence painting from within. This is a purely psychological need, which itself does not belong to the category of aesthetics. Its roots can only be found in the psychology of pursuing magic. However, this demand is so strong that under its influence, the balance of plastic arts is completely disrupted.

The debate surrounding truth in art arises from this misunderstanding, from the confusion between aesthetics and psychology. True realism, which requires a concrete and essential representation of the objective world, is confused with a false realism that confuses vision (or confuses the mind), which satisfies an illusion that is almost real. From this point of view, medieval art does not seem to have experienced the suffering of this conflict: it is both a strong realism and an elegant spiritual expression, and it still knows nothing about the scene revealed by new technological means. . Perspective became the original sin of Western art.

The people who atone for it are Niepce and Lumiere. Photography not only fulfilled the long-cherished wish of Baroque art, but also liberated plastic arts from the trouble of pursuing similar shapes. Because painting has tried its best to create for us an illusion that is almost unreal. This illusion is enough for art, but after all it seems real but not real. The two great inventions of photography and film have essentially finally solved the entangled problem. Realism problem. No matter how skillful a painter is, his works will always be marked by inevitable subjective marks. Since a human was responsible for the painting, doubts about the portrait will not be eliminated. Therefore, the most essential phenomenon in the transition from Baroque painting to photography is not simply the perfection of equipment (photography is far inferior to painting in imitating color), but psychological factors: it completely satisfies our ability to exclude people. Outside, the desire to create illusions relies solely on mechanical reproduction. The solution to the problem lies not in the result, but in the way it is generated.

Therefore, the conflict between maintaining style and resemblance is a relatively modern phenomenon. Before the invention of photosensitive glass sheets, there was probably no sign of such a conflict.

It is obvious that the admirable objectivity in Chardin's work is completely different from the objectivity of the photographer. The crisis of realism really began in the 19th century. Today, Picasso is the mythical figure of a crisis involving the conditions and sociological foundations of plastic form. Modern painters got rid of the mentality of pursuing resemblance and left the issue of resemblance to the common people. From then on, the common people equated photography with the issue of resemblance, and on the other hand, the painting that only pursued resemblance was equated with the problem of resemblance. Let's equate the issues.

Therefore, photography is different from painting in that its uniqueness lies in its essential objectivity. Moreover, a set of lenses as the eyes of the camera replace human eyes, and their name is (French OBJECTIF). For the first time there is only one other physical object acting between the original object and its representation. For the first time, images of the external world are automatically generated according to strict determinism, without human intervention or participation in creation. The photographer's personality is only expressed in the selection of subjects, determination of shooting angles and interpretation of phenomena. No matter how obvious this personality is in the final work, it cannot be compared with the personality of the artist expressed in the painting. All art is based on human participation. Only in photography, we have the privilege of not involving others. Photographs act on my senses as a "natural" phenomenon, like orchids or snowflakes, and the beauty of flowers and ice and snow is inseparable from the origin of plants and the earth.

This method of automatic generation completely changes the psychology of images. The objectivity of photography gives images a convincing power that no painting can have. No matter how many objections we raise with a critical spirit, we have to believe that the original thing that was copied actually exists and that it is indeed reproduced, that is, it is reproduced in time and space. Photography is uniquely endowed with the ability to faithfully represent an object onto its copy. The most realistic painting can give us a better understanding of the original appearance of the object depicted, but no matter how eloquently we argue, it will never have the extraordinary power to win our complete trust like photography.

Therefore, in terms of achieving similar effects, painting can only be used as a lower-level technique and a substitute for reproduction methods. Only the image of the object under the camera lens can satisfy our subconscious need to reproduce the original object. It is more realistic than an almost fake imitation, because it is the prototype of the actual object. However, it has escaped the effects of the passage of time. The image may be blurry, distorted and faded, and lose its record value, but after all, it produces the body of the subject, and the image is the subject. This is the charm of a photo in an album. These are gray or black ghostly, almost indistinguishable shadows. These are no longer traditional family portraits, but evocative moments of life. They have escaped their original fate and appear before us. They were recorded not by the magic of art but by the indifferent efficiency of mechanical equipment. Because photography does not create eternity like art, it just spices up time and saves time from its own decay.

From this point of view, the emergence of film has further perfected the objectivity of photography in terms of time. The film is no longer content to record the moment of the subject for us (just like insects preserved intact in amber for hundreds of years), but to free Baroque art from the dilemma of motionlessness. For the first time, the image of things reflects the time continuation of things, as if they were a mutable mummy.

Photographic images have a unique category of shapes, which determines that they are different from paintings and follow their own aesthetic principles. The aesthetic quality of photography is to reveal reality. Distinguishing a reflection on a wet pavement or a child's gesture against the background of the outside world requires no guidance from me; the camera lens sheds our customary perceptions and prejudices about the object, clearing away the mental rust that my senses have cast upon the object. , only this kind of indifferent lens can return the world to its original appearance of innocence, attract my attention, and thus arouse my attachment. By using photography to create natural images of worlds we don't understand or can't see, nature ultimately not only imitates art, but emulates art.

Nature can even be more creative than artists. The painter's aesthetic world is heterogeneous to the world around him, and the frame encloses a small world that is physically and essentially different. On the contrary, the presence of an image imprinted on a photo reflects the presence of the subject like a fingerprint. Therefore, photography is actually a complement to natural creations, not a replacement.

When the Surrealist school turned to photosensitive film in order to produce sculptural abnormalities, they had already vaguely understood the above truth. Because for Surrealism, the aesthetic purpose is inseparable from the mechanical effect that images have on our minds. The logical distinction between imagination and reality tends to disappear. Every image should be felt as an object, and any object should be felt as an image. Therefore, photography was once the preferred technical means used by the Surrealist school in creation, because the images obtained by photography have natural attributes: a true illusion. Surrealist painting uses techniques to create realistic effects and pays attention to precise details, which is a counter-evidence of photography.

Obviously, the emergence of photography is the most important event in the plastic arts.

It relieves troubles and realizes long-cherished wishes, allowing Western painting to finally get rid of the entanglement of realism and restore its own unique aesthetics. The science of "realism" of Impressionism is diametrically opposed to the technique of creating realistic effects; moreover, only when the imitation of appearance is no longer focused on, can color drown out the appearance. Later, in Cezanne's work, solid form re-entered the composition, but it was freed from the geometry of perspective that created the illusion. The images produced by machinery competed with paintings, and finally surpassed the Baroque form and reached the same level as the subjects, forcing the paintings themselves to become the objects of photography.

Since photography allows us to appreciate reproductions of original objects that may not be intuitively pleasing, but does not prevent us from appreciating pure paintings that do not necessarily use nature as a reference, from then on, Pascal-like accusations It makes no sense anymore.

Moreover, film is a language.