![]() ![]() Bazin reckoned the brilliance of Nanook of the North rested in the longer take: “…it is inconceivable that the famous seal-hunt scene in Nanook should not show us hunter, hole and seal in the same shot. ![]() Pudovkin emphasised the importance of editing, Bazin focused more on mise en scene, especially on longer takes and deeper focus camerawork that allowed the viewer more freedom in choosing what to see within the frame. Bazin wouldn’t entirely disagree: he was well aware that realism was an act of creation, but was wary of manipulating the image any more than necessary. Recorded reality initself would not do that. And the filmmaker must lead him there with his eyes open, exposing to the spectator his means, his mechanism…” ( The Major Film Theories) The filmmaker thus manipulates the image all the better to find their theme and produce a work of art. Dudley Andrew notes, “all the filmmaker’s attention is focused on the means needed to lead that spectator to a confrontation with the theme. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image.” Bazin adds that if “all the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.” (‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image) For many early film theorists that absence was a problem how could cinema be an art form at all if it didn’t find manifold ways to manipulate the image and make it aesthetic? For Soviet montage theorists like Sergei Eisenstein, the point was not reality but the “theme of the spectator”. As Andre Bazin insisted, “no matter how skilful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. A painter paints what he sees with the skills he possesses, but someone photographing what the painter sees merely has to press a button. There is a good argument to be made that cinema is basically a realistic art form because of its roots in recorded reality. ![]()
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