Why did Lumiere and Meria create documentary and freehand brushwork in movies?

-the dispute between montage and long lens

The founder of Lumiere

When Lumiere made a film, one of his photographers copied a stage play to the screen for the first time, and a film-making method later called long shot was born. It is conceivable that the film was a fresh and interesting thing at that time. Whether watching a locomotive pass by the other end of the screen or watching two farmers spinning around, the audience is always in a state of excitement with a glimpse and ecstasy.

In a class society, the first audience of movies will always be capitalists who have the right to speak in society and nobles with noble blood, so it is inevitable that a considerable number of audiences who were still in the mainstream position at that time, such as operas and plays, will be lost because of the birth of this new thing, and these audiences are also the bourgeoisie and nobles mentioned above. Under the impetus and influence of these mainstream classes, which are easy to accept new things, movies gradually established the right to survive and develop in a certain geographical scope. Its form was influenced by the mainstream culture and scientific and technological level in the 1970s, and it was a film form marked by the photographer's silent "motionless shooting" on the bench, and "stage movies" were born.

This film form is like shooting a party with only one camera, completely copying what is in front of the screen, and it has no artistic value. Its shooting method is called "long shot", but it refers to a narrow long shot, which is completely confused with the long shot theory in Bazin's later theory. During this period, a series of short films such as the factory gate, the train entering the station, and the woman burning grass were filmed one after another. Louis Lumiere also called the film at that time "a machine that can reproduce life", which is different from Edison's "film mirror" as a machine that makes movement.

It is unfair to arbitrarily say that Lumiere's single-shot films with fixed viewpoints have no artistic value. Anyone who is called a master has experienced a useless time from childhood to achievement. Although there are many reasons for being called movie master, as Andrei Tarkovsky said, "The so-called master has his own unique style. A unique rhythm that any audience can appreciate from a previously unknown work. " Perhaps inadvertently, "Train Entering the Station" created a depth-of-field lens, which was gradually conceptualized by later filmmakers, and Lumiere became the first iconic name in the film art of that era.

Pudovkin and Eisenstein

For a time, montage basically became everything in the domestic films of the former Soviet Union. The drama of this event itself reminds people of the characteristics of montage itself and gives the film dramatic changes. In Carving Time, Andreetta Kokowski mentioned that the drama of montage-related movies is strictly different from the literal meaning of the word "drama".

Pudovkin once humorously analyzed a similar name "cut" for montage. He believes that with the development of the times and film art, the word "simple montage" can no longer be used as a concept to define complex and mysterious film editing and grafting methods. As for finding a more perfect vocabulary to replace it, the author has not found the answer by reading all the limited information about pudovkin. Perhaps this unknown word can be attributed to his definition of montage. "In film works of art, various techniques are used to comprehensively show and explain the relationship between various phenomena in real life. In this sense, it is the director's general cultural accomplishment that determines the montage of the film. Montage also depends on the director's ability to observe life, analyze observation results and think independently about life. Finally, montage depends on the director's talent as an artist, which makes the director good at transforming the potential internal connection between life phenomena into a clear and visible connection that can be directly felt without explanation. "

The theory of Eisenstein, the founder of montage, still plays a cornerstone role in today's film theory circle. Maybe until the next century, no one will forcibly move it without the help of technological transcendence. Compared with pudovkin, Eisenstein's point of view is more clear. In his variety montage, the role of montage is attributed to making movies dramatic. "Montage in movies is the task of coordinating and expounding the theme, plot, action and behavior, and expounding the internal movement of the whole drama and the whole film." As a pioneer and innovator, Eisenstein strongly opposes the reasonable time sequence of movies under long shots. Strict causal logic and narrative shooting push, but advocate that "no matter what two shots are lined up together, they will inevitably link from this queue into a new phenomenon as a new quality." "In excellent movie master's works, there is no need to talk about gripping narratives, even those with logical order and clear context are rare ..." In Eisenstein's distinctive theory, we don't know whether we should think of a radical realist like Picasso or an old man with a gray beard. The author who is not familiar with this history can't help but think of a passage by Tarkovsky, "All domestic (referring to the former Soviet Union) film directors who are called masters are often young people in their twenties and thirties when they become famous." Maybe Eisenstein was a radical little Bolshevik.

Return to the future

Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bazin, tarkovsky, Godard ...

If these people are grouped, they are nothing more than the top three and the bottom three, unless the readers know nothing about the history of the Renaissance. At that time, the predecessors braved the tyrant's harsh laws and the torture of the Holy See, and launched a vigorous realistic Renaissance movement under the banner of reviving ancient Roman culture, aiming at returning to reality in art and being close to the people, and exposing the bloody injustice and atrocities of the rulers of that era by metaphor. Just like later Bazin returned to the long shot, although there was not such a clear struggle significance at that time, he thought that Eisenstein's montage theory was out of date and only the long shot theory was the modern film theory, which was a great progress to replace Eisenstein's montage theory.

The prospect in Bazin's theoretical system is completely different from that in Lumiere's era. At that time, nothing rose to the concept like the long lens theory. It is completely technical and is generated naturally and randomly according to needs. In Tarkovsky's view, long shots are a completely independent art category. Even within the framework of film art, when long shots developed into Bazin's era, there were already three kinds of distinctions. At first, the four camera control methods repeatedly taught by the Film Academy were only exclusive methods for long-lens shooting. Today, with the development of science and technology, computer stunts have been applied to the shooting of long shots, and the long shots have made a qualitative leap, getting rid of the natural dark turn and hidden editing techniques forced by technical limitations.

As the author of Carving Time, which I am most addicted to, Andreetta Kovsky's long lens theory has risen to the category of philosophy. Indeed, it is the best choice to shoot philosophical things with a long lens. However, compared with the impact of montage on the public's vision and the baptism of the senses, the films under the long lens tend to be more serious and simple. The sleepy public generally will not accept things outside the Hollywood studio, perhaps just because they are looking for sensory satisfaction and rise to the spiritual level of art, and the long lens does bring people deeper things. Maybe it's an epiphany, maybe it's the epiphany of the director, maybe it's the instant * * * sound of you and the people in the station. ...

When Bazin met Eisenstein,

-"Long shot" and "montage" analysis

In the moonlight, a big green-headed dragonfly swept through the bushes, turned its wings around a leaf blown by the wind, crossed the barbed wire between the jungle and the highway, swooped over the zebra crossing, arrogantly crossed the first Mercedes-Benz, crossed the second roaring car, and then slammed into the glass of the third car, turning into a paste. A movie starts with this car. ...

This is a creative prologue of the Hollywood movie "Men in Black", with dragonflies synthesized by computer special effects and a group of dynamic long shots. One of the protagonists of this article-long shots, stage costumes.

Bazin, a French film theorist, put forward a traditional film shooting method against Eisenstein according to his own viewpoint of "photographic image ontology", that is, the film theory corresponding to montage theory. In order to cater to the prevalence of realism in the forties and fifties of last century, realistic films have also been deeply studied, and the shooting method that fits with realistic films is long lens. From Bazin's point of view, a movie is a camera, and its scene has changed from a single frame of film to a super-large film like Zhang Zeduan's The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, which needs to be paved with a long table for people to walk through step by step. It is still a single-frame movie.

Andrei Tarkovsky called the place between the shots the bridge and node of the movie rhythm-"A water plant growing in the sea, with its slow and elegant swaying, we can know the tide, undercurrent, water pressure and fluctuation of the sea". However, he believes that the blunt editing of the film not only destroys this rhythm, but also triggers the "butterfly effect" in the film time. When people can't pay attention to the authenticity of time in the film but are surprised to find that the warring parties switch back and forth, they will feel that time passes so slowly, just like a pendulum shaking back and forth, but their hands don't take a step.

When we don't carefully analyze the origin and development of long shots from historical reasons, and don't consider their originator status in film production methods, we spy from another angle and regard it as an independent art, which is derived from the sense of time recognized in the life process of long shots reproduction in Tarkovsky's philosophy. We will understand why there are a series of long shots that appear naturally dark on the screen in Citizen Kane (also known as Citizen Kane), just like aquatic plants, which fluctuate with the time in the movie and the rhythm of orson welles. ...

In the silence of Abbas commensurate with the barren soil; In Angelopoulos's long poem; In the deep thinking of tarkovsky's philosophy ... let the charm of the long lens be appreciated in the master's films.

Compared with the previous one, the second protagonist in this paper is the relationship between Hollywood genre films and Woody Allen's independent films in the forties and fifties. The former is the mainstream in the popular sense, and the latter is a slightly serious film art in the exploratory sense. This is a word that is overused by young people-montage. He shows off his knowledge at the beginning of the film.

Compared with Bazin's stage-style long lens theory, Eisenstein, as the teacher of Tarkovsky, the second person of long lens theory, has no intention of giving in. After all, his theory preceded Bazin. Whether the long lens is the earliest film shooting method used by Lumiere brothers and still used today, Bazin's theory of depth of field lens is strictly an impact on academic films after Eisenstein's montage theory, just like rebellious children inevitably make extreme moves, but pioneers emerging in the wave of realism rely on this innovative courage to make old faces look brand-new.

Montage, like the writing of this article, has no causal logic in strict chronological order. Eisenstein wrote this before Bazin, but later. The charm of montage makes the audience leave the film at a certain moment, which is in line with the director's intention. Eisenstein explained this perfectly in the filming of October. He not only showed a series of events from February to 10 (19 17) in 2007, but also revealed the significance of these events.

When we recall Eisenstein, we will certainly not ignore the juggling montage. In fact, dialectically, tarkovsky can't be completely divorced from his teacher's montage theory. As the book says, "Any such factor can make the audience feel or be psychologically infected ..." Removing "any" coincides with tarkovsky's philosophy of film and the profound spiritual theme of the film.

When we go back to the green-headed dragonfly that flew for three minutes at the beginning of the film, under the large-scale system represented by Hollywood, the debate between montage and long shot is no longer a problem of mass film production. Everything is for the eyes of the audience, montage is to bring the audience a sensory impact, and long shots can be made with computer special effects. There is a very delicate and changeable long shot at the beginning of the domestic blockbuster "Ballad of Water Clouds", and eight shots were taken by computer continuous shooting, with excellent results. But just like digital cameras and SLR mechanical cameras, film cameras and digital cameras, and domestic TV dramas and American TV dramas, modern things are always less textured than the old ones. Therefore, on the artistic level, the dispute between long lens and montage will always be an eternal fire.

However, the masters have been buried underground, but their thoughts have spread on this blue planet through various forms. When the film was born, a photographer under the Lumiere brothers naturally brought a stage play into the film with a long lens, and then created the montage theory through film editing and grafting, until the literary innovation of Renaissance artists under the banner of returning to ancient Roman culture flourished again. From Lumiere brothers to Eisenstein to Bazin, from Zeus to Prometheus to Leonardo da Vinci, from Genesis to the birth of civilization to the innovation under the banner of Renaissance, from stage-style long shots to montage theory to sports long shots.

"Stream-shower-river-waterfall-ocean" (Takovski's Carving Time) explains the historical essence of one-way development. When everything is going on, it will never go beyond the scope of time, whether in the movie or outside the movie. When the new owner stands up, a debate in the new century will officially begin. ...