Page 182 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 182
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
Rachel Moore was strongly impressed by Epstein‘s observations and
conclusions in his effort to define cinematic art, claiming that he “aligns
his pure cinema with primitive language” (Moore, 2000: 30). In order to
gain a new concept that suits her own theoretical pursuit, she quotes Ep-
stein from his early writings on cinema (Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna -
1926): “Moreover cinema is a language, and like all languages it is animis-
tic; in other words, it attributes a semblance of life to the objects it defines.
The more primitive a language, the more marked this animistic tendency.
There is no need to stress the extent to which the language of cinema re-
mains primitive in its terms and ideas” (Epstein, 1974: 1401). Drawing on
this, she compares the naming of a thing with a word to “the representa-
tion of a thing on film”. What film does is, as she says, the activity of “visual
naming”, which has an even stronger “animistic” impact than just nam-
ing with words. This line of reasoning is further exposed in her, already
mentioned in previous chapter, dealing with Eisenstein, who wrote about
“inner speech” as a form of “pre-logical speech”. In Eisenstein’s cinemat-
ic practice one can observe the effect of such hypotheses as his illustrious
and largely celebrated montage transfers thinking in and through images
into his films. I will not follow Rachel Moore much further from here in her
highly interesting deliberation on the topic of language, image, magic, log-
ic and so forth through commenting on a number of writers, which brings
her finally to the semi-logical notion of “cinematic discourse”. Let me just
make a somewhat crude point on what beckons the notion of “primitive
language?” It obviously marks the effect of cinema as a crucial agency with-
in mass culture in a most basic Benjaminian sense. In the field of art or aes-
thetics it causes a confusion concerning that kind of distinction, which, as
Bourdieu would have it, is inscribed in the constitution of bourgeois art.
Even the illiterate members of a society are able to “read” a film.
Film as Art in Epstein’s Vision
In any case, Epstein‘s work, which comprises of his (theoretical) texts and
his films, took place between the coordinates of cinema and massively
transformed the ways of sensing, which had already entered the aesthet-
ic regime, increasingly penetrated by movements of modernism. Epstein’s
reflections on film as art follow the lead of Louis Delluc and his notion of
photogénie. It is not surprising that Epstein in his own historical and aes-
thetic context finds it necessary to formulate a difference that distinguishes
1 Translation from Moore (2000: 30).
180
Rachel Moore was strongly impressed by Epstein‘s observations and
conclusions in his effort to define cinematic art, claiming that he “aligns
his pure cinema with primitive language” (Moore, 2000: 30). In order to
gain a new concept that suits her own theoretical pursuit, she quotes Ep-
stein from his early writings on cinema (Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna -
1926): “Moreover cinema is a language, and like all languages it is animis-
tic; in other words, it attributes a semblance of life to the objects it defines.
The more primitive a language, the more marked this animistic tendency.
There is no need to stress the extent to which the language of cinema re-
mains primitive in its terms and ideas” (Epstein, 1974: 1401). Drawing on
this, she compares the naming of a thing with a word to “the representa-
tion of a thing on film”. What film does is, as she says, the activity of “visual
naming”, which has an even stronger “animistic” impact than just nam-
ing with words. This line of reasoning is further exposed in her, already
mentioned in previous chapter, dealing with Eisenstein, who wrote about
“inner speech” as a form of “pre-logical speech”. In Eisenstein’s cinemat-
ic practice one can observe the effect of such hypotheses as his illustrious
and largely celebrated montage transfers thinking in and through images
into his films. I will not follow Rachel Moore much further from here in her
highly interesting deliberation on the topic of language, image, magic, log-
ic and so forth through commenting on a number of writers, which brings
her finally to the semi-logical notion of “cinematic discourse”. Let me just
make a somewhat crude point on what beckons the notion of “primitive
language?” It obviously marks the effect of cinema as a crucial agency with-
in mass culture in a most basic Benjaminian sense. In the field of art or aes-
thetics it causes a confusion concerning that kind of distinction, which, as
Bourdieu would have it, is inscribed in the constitution of bourgeois art.
Even the illiterate members of a society are able to “read” a film.
Film as Art in Epstein’s Vision
In any case, Epstein‘s work, which comprises of his (theoretical) texts and
his films, took place between the coordinates of cinema and massively
transformed the ways of sensing, which had already entered the aesthet-
ic regime, increasingly penetrated by movements of modernism. Epstein’s
reflections on film as art follow the lead of Louis Delluc and his notion of
photogénie. It is not surprising that Epstein in his own historical and aes-
thetic context finds it necessary to formulate a difference that distinguishes
1 Translation from Moore (2000: 30).
180
