Page 184 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 184
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
of many in his work, where the montage, superimpositions, accelerations
and changing angles make clear that the narration cannot be but affect-
ed by the language of cinema. “Cinema begins with the external world; in
this case, a landscape passes through the machine and ends affecting the
body. From a moving vehicle, landscape becomes a ‘landscape dance’ that
moves the body” (Moore, 2012: 178). In the film, which was shot quite soon
after Epstein’s reflections were written, the final sequence is a string of mul-
tiple movements in a relationship of the running machine (the car), the
man driving the car (main character) and landscape blurred in the move-
ment in the subjective view from the car. All these movements are inter-
sected by strangely static images of birds on a wire. The final stoppage con-
sists of the wrecked machine and the body of the man immobilised, dead.
To put it briefly: Epstein in his theoretical work and in his quite diverse
films, which preceded later sophistication in cinematic narration in the
French or, indeed, the European cinema, struggled to create a language of
moving pictures, which would comprise of emotion and reason, science
and poetry and maybe that unachievable consensus of form and content,
which would make the language of cinema universal. However, his work on
“pure cinema” became a formidable anticipation of those trends in cinema
that always resist the eclecticism of commercial cinema of genres or even
of so-called artistic pretentiousness. On the other hand, especially from
Rancière’s point of view, he disregarded an important potential of cinema,
which brings about manifold social consequences. However, in his reflec-
tions, he conveys an idea of importance of a reduction of distance in film
viewing, which in a materialistic turn becomes the notion of immediacy in
Jacques Rancière’s pondering on film.
Writing of Forms
In the last twenty years or so of the 20th century cinema as art has be-
come increasingly an object of an expanding interest for philosophers – of
course, not only French ones. French philosophers are principal referenc-
es when a wide range of questions concerning film and thinking are dis-
cussed. French film theory from its early days on, as it is visible in the case
of Epstein, amply borrowed ideas, notions and logics from philosophy and
aesthetics. Our contemporary colleague Jacques Rancière is undoubtedly
a major thinker, who in his huge oeuvre pays an important tribute to cin-
ema and very noticeably intervenes into the field, which recently has been
globally identified as philosophy of film. In the chapter 11 (The Machine and
182
of many in his work, where the montage, superimpositions, accelerations
and changing angles make clear that the narration cannot be but affect-
ed by the language of cinema. “Cinema begins with the external world; in
this case, a landscape passes through the machine and ends affecting the
body. From a moving vehicle, landscape becomes a ‘landscape dance’ that
moves the body” (Moore, 2012: 178). In the film, which was shot quite soon
after Epstein’s reflections were written, the final sequence is a string of mul-
tiple movements in a relationship of the running machine (the car), the
man driving the car (main character) and landscape blurred in the move-
ment in the subjective view from the car. All these movements are inter-
sected by strangely static images of birds on a wire. The final stoppage con-
sists of the wrecked machine and the body of the man immobilised, dead.
To put it briefly: Epstein in his theoretical work and in his quite diverse
films, which preceded later sophistication in cinematic narration in the
French or, indeed, the European cinema, struggled to create a language of
moving pictures, which would comprise of emotion and reason, science
and poetry and maybe that unachievable consensus of form and content,
which would make the language of cinema universal. However, his work on
“pure cinema” became a formidable anticipation of those trends in cinema
that always resist the eclecticism of commercial cinema of genres or even
of so-called artistic pretentiousness. On the other hand, especially from
Rancière’s point of view, he disregarded an important potential of cinema,
which brings about manifold social consequences. However, in his reflec-
tions, he conveys an idea of importance of a reduction of distance in film
viewing, which in a materialistic turn becomes the notion of immediacy in
Jacques Rancière’s pondering on film.
Writing of Forms
In the last twenty years or so of the 20th century cinema as art has be-
come increasingly an object of an expanding interest for philosophers – of
course, not only French ones. French philosophers are principal referenc-
es when a wide range of questions concerning film and thinking are dis-
cussed. French film theory from its early days on, as it is visible in the case
of Epstein, amply borrowed ideas, notions and logics from philosophy and
aesthetics. Our contemporary colleague Jacques Rancière is undoubtedly
a major thinker, who in his huge oeuvre pays an important tribute to cin-
ema and very noticeably intervenes into the field, which recently has been
globally identified as philosophy of film. In the chapter 11 (The Machine and
182
