Painterly Laws in the Problems of Cinema

To justify the title of this article, I should, of course, have written a detailed analysis of a number of film productions and append a great deal of illustrative material which attest to the influence of painterly representation on the structure of a motion picture. Such a work would become a brochure that exceeds the limits of this publication. Therefore, I decided to limit myself to a short article which touches upon this question somewhat, in connection with the work of Dziga Vertov.1

The laws of painting in the problems of cinema have yet to be identified by directors, by critics, or by film scholars, even though they all resort to these laws. Everyone believes that film is a self-referential art; filmmakers, in fact, are convinced that they are exempt from any influences exerted by painting and are new heliographers (svetopisateli) of special pictures that no art form but cinema could express.

Actually, movie people have noticed that theatricality does find its way into the motion pictures, and that it needs to be fought. This battle must be waged primarily against the use of the methods and principles of theater in unrolling a particular theme in cinema.

Of course, the theatrical method is a decorative [scenery-and-props oriented] method in which the action unrolls in two dimensions, on a single plane. That is its legitimate sphere. Due to this treatment, a theme in theater can develop only on a mono-frontal level. The actor’s entire performance is shaped by this two-dimensional space. Moreover, he is not only an actor but a decorative spot as well. His costume, in every detail, must also be linked—like every movement he makes—to the single direction and the rhythm of the picture.

A film also unrolls its theme in time. Or rather, film attempts to unroll it in a greater span of time than theater.
However, these attempts to make use of expanded time in all its varieties are almost unattainable given the subject matter of current productions, so that the motion picture remains fixed in a three-dimensional illusory realm of painterly representation. The latter—i.e., painterly “representation”—should encounter resistance just like theatrical art, since the painterly interferes with the cinematic and affects composition and the montage of frames to form a whole.

Kinetics by itself does not save the day and does not release cinema from the illusory status of any painting.

Having seen a great number of motion pictures, I was able to notice only the improvements in the technical possibilities of cinema. However, I did not see a single picture which dealt with the issue of cine-form as such, as something inherent in a nature or a peculiarity of the cinema.

If there have been innovations in cinema, these innovations have remained entirely within the sphere of painterly concerns. Thus, it turned out that the problems dealt with in painting are also problems of cinematic art.

All film productions thus develop on the basis of the painterly canons already in the archives of art history. The latest films depicting daily life bear the marks of peredvizhnichestvo [Wanderers’ agenda], which also represent historical and archival temporality.2

For instance, Eisenstein, with all his innovations, is an old peredvizhnik [Wanderer] who seeks not only to introduce something new into film but also to use all of cinema’s technical resources to come up with a picture of the old Wanderers’ variety. One has to admit that his pictures of the Wanderers’ variety are not vulgar, but they can be compared to the paintings of the peredvizhnik [Vladimir] Makovskii.

The modes of painterly representation are necessary to study because, in any case, the influence of painting on the composition of the cinematic frame and on the conveyance of cinematic themes continues to function as an easel painting effect.

Having studied the painterly modes of representation, we will encounter a plethora of brand-new techniques and methods of expression, and this will reveal new horizons in the realm of perception of brand-new phenomena that remained hidden prior to such study.

The study of different modes of painterly representation allows us to organize the material correctly and systematically and thus to avoid the jumble that now exists in motion pictures—both in the composition of frames and in relation to contrasts, particularly in those cinematic forms which lay claim to new discoveries.

Studying pictorial material, particularly the latest, we can uncover a very important line—a line in which the theme collapses and dissolves, allowing new, hitherto unfamiliar phenomena to emerge. We would see not the image of an object but the new content thereof.

The art of Wanderers was a Great Wall of China that stood in the way of all issues concerning painting. This wall stands to this day, and the breaches made in it by the onslaught of new painterly currents are being zealously repaired.

Modern film, too, has its own Great Wall, which guards “Monty Banks’ problems” from the intrusion of new issues.3

How else can one explain the fact that the film director Dziga Vertov faces a cine-Chinese wall of non-recognition, at a time when any search for new issues in cinematic art should be broadly encouraged?

I don’t know what Dziga Vertov wants or what he aspires toward; I have not talked to him about it, but I am familiar with two of his works: Eleventh Year and The Man with a Movie Camera.4

Eleventh Year struck me by its incorruptible sincerity and also by a number of moments that set it apart starkly from Wanderers-type contentment.

But while Eleventh Year still remains a picture whose elements (frames) are linked by a single theme, it also allows us to notice new “additional” elements which attest to the fact that somewhere in the deep recesses of Dziga Vertov’s creative core, new perceptions have emerged which demand new formal arrangements.

These new sensations have brought forth certain moments that never even occurred to film directors before.

In Eleventh Year, we already have a significant percentage of “abstract” moments that are, indeed, the product of new sensations of which the director is not yet fully conscious. But even that is sufficient.

When we look at Eleventh Year, we are present at the emergence of new elements that will, in the end, be interconnected in a single chain and will express a new form of transmitting a new sensation—will give us a new kind of film hitherto unseen.

These signs can be found and appreciated only when the viewers are aware of their cause, know from where and from what realm these phenomena originate, and to which system these elements belong… And I can say that in order to make sense of Eleventh Year, one absolutely has to be familiar with the Futurism of [Umberto] Boccioni and [Giacomo] Balla, one has to be familiar with the entire system of painterly Futurism. Any study “from a cinematic point of view” will be inadequate. It can lead to huge mistakes in evaluating Eleventh Year or other, similar pictures.

Thus, for instance, Paul Cezanne, a first-class weaver of painterly rather than literary plots, was underappreciated by the Impressionists; indeed, [Camille] Mauclair, the ideologue of Impressionism, openly classified Cezanne as a third-rate artist. This happened because Cezanne was being measured or judged by the standards of Impressionism.

Of course, when we approach Cezanne from that perspective, we cannot find a 100 percent Impressionist agenda in his work. But such assessments are erroneous, because Cezanne should have been evaluated from the innate perspective of painting as well, and then we would be able to judge him properly.

Likewise, if we approached Eleventh Year from the perspective of “Monty Banks” (and his problems), then, of course, the judgment would have been different, and Dziga Vertov would have been obliterated. But if we approached it from the perspective of Futurism, then we would find much valuable material for future film.

Viewed from this perspective, Eleventh Year helped me find a number of Futuristic elements in it. I do not have the entirety of the material to establish the facts more accurately, but the ones that are available can also give us some idea of linkage to Futurism. I am including here two images, from Dziga Vertov and from Balla, in order to show that Dziga Vertov was guided by Futurist perceptions; that the sources of dynamic tensions were in him, and that we get the same impression of force from Vertov’s and Balla’s images.

If Dziga Vertov were now well acquainted with Futurism, he would soon have drawn a sample of Futuristic units from one or another film in order to make a new dynamic film in pure form.

However, even what Dziga Vertov accomplished in Eleventh Year makes him a trailblazer of new possibilities in kinetic art.

The Man with a Movie Camera is another step forward.

This step forward needs, of course, to be understood. Or, to be exact, in order to understand it one must seek analogous phenomena in other arts, such as Futurism and Cubism. Being familiar with both of them, one can find signs of such phenomena.

I found a tremendous number of elements (frames) of a specifically Cubo-Futurist nature in The Man with a Movie Camera. I do not have these elements readily available in order to make an analogy to Cubo-Futurist ones, but anyone who has seen The Man with a Movie Camera remembers a number of episodes attesting to shifts (sdvigi) in street and streetcar traffic, all sorts of objects shifting in the various directions of their movement, where the structure of movement goes not only further toward the horizon but also develops vertically.

One has to say that the person responsible for the montage of the film magnificently understood the idea or the task of the new montage, which expresses a shift (sdvig) that did not exist previously.

As for the cinematic issues, The Man with a Movie Camera, just like Eleventh Year, is very valuable material; however, it is essential for its value to be unrolled and shown in a whole, new, dynamic work.

Compared to Eleventh Year, The Man with a Movie Camera is a step forward in the sense that it no longer represents a theme that retains its entire image over the duration of the film, but rather represents the collapse of the theme and even the dissolution of objects in time, at the expense of dynamic expression. It is true that neither film, as yet, has a clearly expressed, single line. Both of the productions are still mixed, with two polarities or two images. The image of junk, and the image of dynamic motion. Therefore, the film cannot be perceived as something whole and completed. What’s more, it will provoke outrage, which could undercut Dziga Vertov’s future work—a fiasco that would mean the breakdown of the experimental work that would bring us many innovations in the future. These innovations will depend on his ability to purge his films of the above-mentioned dualism as soon as possible. This is Dziga Vertov’s next task.

Of course, if Dziga Vertov continues to go further, the Monty Bankses will never forgive him. But let us hope that Dziga Vertov will, nevertheless, be understood and given support.

Thus, Dziga Vertov is moving inexorably toward a new form of expression for contemporary content—for we shouldn’t forget that the content of our era cannot be reduced to showing pigs being fattened on a Soviet farm (Sovkitoz), or “golden cornfields” being harvested. There is yet another content—that of pure force and dynamics. And this is probably the strongest boost for a new youth organization, one that raises the energy of our entire age. That is why it seems to me that young filmmakers, in order to grasp the dynamics of our reconstructive era, ought to be studying Balla, Boccioni, Russolo, Braque, etc., rather than the likes of Monty Banks or Pat & Patachon.5

My suggestions will, of course, spark an outcry, for they will tell me that the achievements of film directors must be studied first and foremost. I will agree with this as well, but only in the event that the masters of cinema give us an entirely self-referential art of film. As long as this does not exist, it is still best to study the masters of painting I have suggested, mostly Cubo-Futurists (who, at least, offer more possibilities than the Wanderers). There is more modernity in Russolo’s dynamism than in Monty Banks Gets Married.

The accomplishments of Monty Banks are comparable to such accomplishments in pictorial art as “The Kitty Under the Parasol.”

Once more, I want to make it clear that the gist of my suggestions is not that filmmakers should become painters. No, I am only proposing material that needs to be studied so as not to be blindly led. The second point is to select the elements that the art of film needs.

Our architecture used to be a Great Wall, but the artistic novelties made a breach in it too; architects have learned a great deal from new Constructive painting in order to create the latest form of architecture—without, however, turning into painters.

And so Dziga Vertov has been the first to raise this new dynamic problem in cinema. All those who are fighting for the honor of cinema should take the risk of making at least one production of a new dynamic film in order to find out that the dynamic is the true food of cinema, its essence.

I am not disputing the fact that a cow can be harnessed and made to haul water, but I will never accept the notion that this is a natural occupation for a cow. I do not dispute the fact that cinema can be forced to show the accomplishments of the likes of Monty Banks, but I do not accept the notion that this is the sole substance and sole food of cinema. Thus, let’s welcome the newest phenomena, so that cinema does not die from a chronic gastric catarrh and the achievements of Pat & Patachons and Bankses.

A few more words about Symphony of a Great City and The Man with a Movie Camera.6 At the premiere, I happened to overhear a whispered remark that The Man with a Movie Camera has some of the elements of Symphony of a Great City.

Yes, to some extent it does, but it would be inappropriate to draw any conclusions from it. Inappropriate, because there is a difference in what these two pictures achieve. Perhaps, Symphony of Berlin [Berlin: Symphony of a Great City] essentially dealt with the same task that Dziga Vertov faced in The Man with a Movie Camera — that is, the task of expressing dynamic force. For the former, it was the dynamism of the city; for the latter, dynamism as such.

Thus, the “cine-dynamist” of Symphony of Berlin wanted, essentially, to show the development of the dynamic from the moment of static rest (the city sleeps) to its highest point of tension.
However, it turned out that Ruttmann “went junky” (“shurum-burum”). Instead of a dynamic, he showed the junk of day-to-day life falling asleep and waking up. And he, like a “cine-junk collector,” used cinematic techniques in order to show all the junk he had collected in “the city of Berlin” to a flea market’s frequenters (audience) “in a symphonic perspective.”

The Man with a Movie Camera, essentially, has no such tendency. Rather, its tendency is to de-objectify the city center without linking any of the elements into a single idea that flows through. Everything there results from shifts, everything comes unexpectedly. Here, for the first time, the elements could not be tied together into a whole in order to express the petty gossip of daily living.

Dziga Vertov does not try to analyze or justify the machine by focusing on the fact that it churns out cigarettes or milks cows; rather, he shows motion itself, dynamic itself — the force of which was always concealed by the cigarette holder or the back of Monty Banks. In Symphony, on the other hand, the emphasis is on common sense, and with a very specific moral flavor. Thus, there is actually a major difference between these two productions. Dziga Vertov separates cinematic objects from junk [barakhlo, — mundane thinghood] and transports them to the world of dynamics, while Symphony always deals with junk, even if it’s the symphonic one.

Having trained our camera lens on the yet-to-be-experienced dynamic of metallic, industrial-socialist life, we will be able to see a new world that has not been mediated until now.

1929