Cinema as work of Art

Cinema is an art which uses an expensive and intricate technology coupled with creativity. Literature, music, painting and photography also use technology but not in the same sense. The technology involved in making a pen as a tool of writing never comes into picture in writing a poem, an epic or a tragedy. The tool is not instrumental, not even incidental in deciding the merit of a literary work. The paint and the paint brush, the easel and the canvas do have a role in achieving the texture, tone and other finer aspects of a painting. The singer or the instrumentalist must rely on the precision of the musical tools to produce quality music. The knowledge of physics to understand sound, however, is not a must for the performer to decide the quality of music. The technicalities of aural refinement are taken care of by the sound engineer when it comes to amplification and recording music. The merit of music is not the direct result of the technology involved as much as it is of the caliber and creative capability of the artist. On the other hand, Photography which is basically the art of writing with light is simply not possible without involving at least a cursory knowledge of physics related to lens and light, and chemistry in making and processing of film strips. A Photographer, creative or otherwise, has to depend on the sophistication of the technology of the camera and the ancillaries. In other words even the colossal talent of a creative genius is restricted, influenced and decided by the technology of the tool. Though the pen and the camera are equally the tools of technology in their own right, they are a world apart when it comes to using tools to create a work of art. Cinematography is both the body and soul of cinema. In the trained hands of a team of artists it is much more complex and expensive than photography. Whether poetry is contained in verbal language like the eggs in the basket or does language itself get crystallized as poetry is an old debate. Actually it is the human mind which creates language and the literary form with experience, both emotive and logical, in an intricate way that all the three remain inseparable from each other and one another. This is basic to all forms of art. Apart from this cinema has one more aspect to it which is both unique and unparalleled compared to any other form of art. It should have been impossible to create cinema if the human brain lacked a special faculty of perception namely the persistence of vision. The image of an object is retained on the retina for 1/25 of a second even after the object goes out of view. The human brain is capable of creating a continuity of motion out of these retained images. A falling drop of rain appears as a line of water to the human eye. Using persistence of vision cinema is created by flashing still images of a moving object at the rate of 1/25 of a second. This aspect differentiates cinematography from still photography. In the history of cinema Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 October 18, 1931) figures for inventing motion camera and Auguste and Louis Lumiere known as Lumires brothers are remembered for the, creation and commercial

exploitation of earliest cinema. Commerce, as in France and America, War time propaganda in Nazi Germany, and ideological dissemination in erstwhile Soviet Union necessitated many innovative uses of motion camera to create cinema for public consumption. First as recording of motion then with sound and editing cinema has come a long way in the history of technological advance and creativity. In the course of time cinema has evolved as a holistic language and branched out in every country as a powerful tool of instruction, marketable entertainment, political, ideological and cultural propaganda

and of course the medium of the most sensitive and effective creation of Art. Great masters like Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein from Russia, D. W. Griffith from America laid the firm foundation of cinematic art. In the later years many cinematic works of art that can be considered as all time film classics have been created by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosava, Felleni, Vittorio De Sica, Fassbinder, , John Renoir, Charles Chaplin, Satyajit Roy, Roman Polanski, Andrei Tarkovsky, Krzysztof Kielowski, Abbas Kiarostami and many others. The list of creators of cinematic works of art includes Indian directors like Chetan Anand, Ritwick Ghatak, , Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Adoor GopalaKrishnan, M.T. Vasudevanair, Aravindan, Girish Kasaravalli, just to name a few. Anybody can see the nonsense of a proposition that all those in possession of a pen, a brush, a sweet voice or a musical instrument or even a camera, simple or otherwise are capable of creating poetry, painting, music and photographic art. Mere knowledge of handling these tools is no guarantee to their capability of creating a work of art. But at the popular level cinema is easily taken for granted if there is a team of people who label themselves as producer, director, actor, cinematographer, choreographer and editor and, music director who form the post production crew. More often than not the whole exercise of film making by this team may end up in manufacturing a cinematic commodity for the dream market. But there are so many other workers and professionals like the light boy, carpenter, tailor, caterer, banker, auditor, lawyer and driver without whom film production is impossible. Every kind of cinema whatever is its objective needs all of these or most of these professionals. It is a laborious and collective act of creation involving huge investments and machinery unlike the creation of poetry, music, photography or painting conceding the fact that the latter also have collective labor and complex machinery only in the background, that is to say, manufacturing tools of creation rather than creation itself. The problem arises when all kinds of cinema are compelled, demanded or mistaken to be cinematic works of art. Cinema is not just what one watches in cinema halls or on the television. There are various kinds of films namely feature films, documentaries, docu-features, propaganda films, entertainers, experimental movies, musicals, abstract films, philosophical and industrial films. Graphic and animation films need specialized skills and tools to make as well as to appreciate. A work of art in any medium is a creative work in language, verbal, aural, visual or kinetic. A work of art of any kind has intent to realize a virtual experience of life spectrum that is mainly aesthetic, emotive and logical. Literature employs verbal language, music aural, painting and photography visual. Dance and drama employ kinetic language with or without verbal and aural language. Only cinema gets materialized by employing every type of language at it its command namely kinetic, visual, aural and verbal languages all at once. Though theatrical play is similar to cinema, it has many constraints of its own. For example in drama, distance and angle are always static. In cinema they are dynamic. Characters, human or nonhuman must necessarily be humanized as persona if they are to be played by actors on the stage. Cinema can fill life into even inanimate things without humanizing them. But as a recorded creation, and hence dead, It bows down to drama in its disability to be live in every show. In the other entire respects cinema is a comprehensive and universal language in itself. As a whole, cinema is the most powerful, effective, lifelike and at the same time the most difficult communicative tool to handle. It involves a highly expensive technology and multifaceted creative activity. Making film includes, scripting, set

designing, scoring music, recording sound, directing, acting, lighting, filming, processing, editing, and exhibiting. A lot of research is needed to create a semblance of historical space and time. Logistics, catering, accounting, legal backup and manual labor go into the act of creating cinema. The technical contributions are duly acknowledged at the concluding strip of the film. They may go unnoticed by the audience overwhelmed by the exuberance or boredom of the cinematic drama. Cinema has its own drama, persona, locale, time and space created within the frame. Though they are drawn from real life they do not constitute reality. Realism in cinema is only suggestive and virtual. If we overlook this fine difference we may be unduly critical of the so called unrealistic nature of cinema. Cinema is not a translation of theatre and literature. Nor it is a visual version of anything written or spoken. Films may be based on novels and short stories but they are not to be taken as the byproducts of literary works. Cinema is independent and autonomous and needs to be experienced as such. Factional appreciation of cinema by breaking it as film of good music, good photography and good acting etc. mars the total experience of cinema and therefore is misleading. If a cinematic work gives in to be appreciated for its songs or choreography or drama, or grand sets and location or even for the huge money that has gone in making that film it is seldom cinema in its full sense. Cinema is a comprehensive narrative in itself. Other forms of narratives, say literary narratives are not a must to create cinema. If a cinematic work is based on a literary work it is wrong to presume that literature or drama is the basis of cinema. Comparison is not improper. Looking for a story in cinema is all right. But one cannot overlook the fact that cinema itself is a story, in the sense of a narrative. All narratives are stories. So also cinema. Only the language of cinema is different but complex. This takes us to the question What is language? Language as a comprehensive tool of experience and communication has two aspects namely verbal and visual. Literature is verbal. Photographs and paintings are visual. Music is purely aural. Dance is both visual and aural and in addition to it, it employs pleasing postures and stylized movements. But cinema is all in one. It is a complete language in itself. It is both visual and aural and moves all the time. Here the eyes can hear and the ears can see. That is why the works of cinematic creation are called movies. In paintings and photographs there is suspended animation. Cinema is life like for it employs the complete language of human communication. All Languages are basically systems of codified symbols which form signifiers and signified to create meaning in the given context to achieve communication. Each language has its own cultural milieu. Symbols can be verbal or pictorial. And all languages as systems of codified symbols have their own well framed grammars with an opening to the dynamic variations called colloquial meaning the language of the people who speak that language. Every artist or creative thinker draws his/her experience from the people through language be it verbal, aural, visual or kinetic. As cinema has an edge over all the other kinds of language being comprehensive and universal in nature it grows beyond the regional and cultural contexts to reach all those who are acquainted with its grammar. So cinema is a language that encompasses many languages. All those who have eyes can see it. But are Eyes sufficient to see cinema? The answer is yes and no. The problem does not lie in cinema but elsewhere. In day to day transactions the eye and the ear play a major role and if any experience is to be accepted as true and realistic it

must be rendered in the language of the eye and the ear. The spoken word or the written word is realized as authentic experience ultimately through the eye and the ear. The overbearing nature of day to day experience got through the eye and the ear in real life compels most of us to expect cinema to be vocal. To put it more precisely talk seen on the screen by the audience is readily accepted as cinema. More often than not bad cinema employs too many words and good cinema loves to employ the total language, meaning cinematic language, incorporating only minimal words, at times no words at all. Is it tenable to expect that to appreciate music and dance one must learn music and dance? No, not necessarily so. Every person born into a particular culture has the innate capacity to appreciate music and dance embedded in that culture without any formal training. But to appreciate better and to understand the intricate nature and the niceties of music and dance one has to train oneself in the grammar and aesthetics of music and dance. This is true in the case of all creations of all languages namely painting, sculpture, literature, theatrical plays and cinema. Without learning even the alphabet of a language appreciation of fine arts at the popular level is more a reaction based on common sense than a proper appreciation. There is a misleading factor operating at the popular level when it comes to literature and cinema. The term literature includes all that is created in verbal language. However emotive and aesthetic use of verbal language is different from mere communicative and informative use of verbal language. Different forms of creative works like poetry, drama and fiction are possible because of emotive and aesthetic use of language. Rhyme and rhythm which are part and parcel of dance and music add beauty and strength to the emotive use of verbal language. At the same time Communicative and informative use of verbal language need not necessarily be devoid of emotive and aesthetic aspects. But the intent is primarily communication to pass on information. If it can entertain it is an added bonus. That is how the term literature encompasses, the superb and enduring creations in language called classics, biographies, popular writings, best sellers, pamphlets, reports, case studies, brochures, operating manuals and business messages. The literary classics are easily distinguished from all the other forms of literature in verbal language. But in cinema it is the no classics namely the popular, mediocre, commonplace films that masquerade as the cinema or mainstream cinema and film classics worth their names are termed as parallel cinema or new wave cinema. There are films which fit into neither of these or a conscious mixture of both. They are called bridge cinema. In other words cinema can be produced to sell as a commodity or meticulously created to appreciate as a work of art. All films that are produced as commodities are tailored to sell well in the dream market. Hence entertainment is their main motto. But it is wrong to say they always cater to the needs of the common people. Actually a market is aggressively created by manipulating the popular taste of the consumers to suit the economic compulsions of the dream factory. Cinema as a work of art is solely governed by creative intent of the artist and the aesthetic expectations of a trained audience. This is true again in case of all forms of art. Generally, among films whichever sells well and brings more profit at a lesser time span is considered the greatest hit of the times. Films created as works of art naturally sell poorly. Many a time cinema illiterates sit on judgment over cinematic works of art. Out of ignorance or to promote their narrow interests

do not take into account good cinema at all. It sounds as if cinematic works of art are created to be adjudged as the best of the bad bundle in film festivals and competitions. This is not peculiar to India alone. It is a global phenomenon. What started as a marketable technology has come a long way from the days of silent movies to 3d and digitally created graphic presentations. Technological innovations and manipulative craftsmanship have many a time snatched away the kind of attention that cinema as a work of art deserved. Individual taste and needs overlook the artistic merit of films in general consumption. In the commercial patronage it is difficult to sort out and decide the artistic quality and aesthetic texture of films only a trained mind can differentiate between craftsmanship and talent, a commodity and a work of art. Cinema as a work of art can only be appreciated by a cinema-literate audience trained in the grammar and idiom of cinema. Like every language cinema also has its own alphabet. Acquiring the alphabet of cinema is the first step to understand cinema. Appreciation and judgment come later. A film classic is like a poem, a painting, a novel, a treatise or a scientific report. It needs to be visited repeatedly and studied with proper training patience and care. As Bergman put it No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. At a superficial level, cinematic works of art can be compared to fruits. Each fruit has its own taste and flavor. Some are easy to get, peel out and digest. Other are relatively rare, expensive and not so easy to process and digest. A person of taste knows his choice. And taste cannot be dictated or imposed but can only be shared. It is time for National and International Film Festivals and competitions in Goa, Trivandrum and Bengaluru. Movie buffs and cinephiles hope to see the latest cinematic works of art created by contemporary directors drawn from all corners of the world. Cinema as commodity has little space in these festivals.

Prof.V.N.Laxminarayana M 1237,2nd main, vivekanandanagar Mysore-570023. Ph.0821 2462859

Email.virupasamudra@gmail.com