Page 20 - Studio International - November December 1975

Picabia-Clair, Eggeling, Richter, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy
and others — many of them discussed in Standish
Lawder's recent book on The Cubist Cinema 2— which
were attempts to extend the scope of painting, to move
outside the confines of the canvas, to introduce the
dimension of time, to use light directly as well as colour,
and soon. On the other hand, there were the Russian
directors, whose films were clearly avant-garde but in a
different sense : Eisenstein's Strike, Dovzhenko's
Zvenigora, Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera. It was
only at the very end of the decade that there was any real
contact between the two groups — when Lissitzky (whose
ideas about the electro-mechanical spectacle and
admiration for Eggeling put him clearly in the 'painters'
group) first met Vertov to discuss the Stuttgart Film und
Foto exhibition,3 and when Eisenstein met Richter on his
first trip out of the Soviet Union and went with him to the
conference at Le Sarraz, which turned out to mark the end
Frame from Sergei Eisenstein's Strike 1925
rather than the beginning of an epoch.
As today, part of the difference lies in the backgrounds
of the people involved. One group came from painting.
The other from theatre (Eisenstein), and futurist sound-
poetry (Vertov) — Dovzhenko, in fact, had trained as a
painter but deliberately gave it up, leaving all his painting
materials behind him in Kharkov when he set off for
Odessa and the film studios, seeking a complete break
with his past. And, of course, there are premonitory links
between these different currents of the twenties and
those of recent years— Godard and Gorin carried out their
collaboration under the name of the Dziga Vertov group;
Van Doesburg, in 1929,
already anticipated many of the
ideas of 'expanded cinema', realized decades later : 'The
spectator space will become part of the film space. The
separation of "projection surface" is abolished. The
spectator will no longer observe the film, like a theatrical
presentation, but will participate in it optically and
acoustically.' 4
Painting, I think it can be argued, played the leading
role in the development of modernism in the other arts. Frame from Dziga Vertov's The Man with the
The break, the coupure —to use the Althusserian Movie Camera 1929
terminology— the shift of terrain which marked the
substitution of one paradigm or problematic for another,
the beginning of modernism, the work of the historic (stream of consciousness, etc.) or play an the paradoxes
avant-garde, was a break which took place in painting of meaning and reference (Pirandellism). It is significant,
pre-eminently, with the discoveries of Cubism. It is not for instance, that so many of the most radical experiments,
hard to show how painting affected the other arts, how such as attempts at sound poetry, were the work of artists
early Cubism had a decisive impact on Gertrude Stein and or writers working closely with painters : Arp, Schwitters,
Ezra Pound, for example, in literature, and later on Van Doesburg among them. In theatre the most radical
William Carlos Williams. Apollinaire, Marinetti, developments were invariably associated with changes in
Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov—all were influenced at a set design and costume, including the use of masks :
crucial point by their encounter with Cubism. The Meyerhold's constructivist theatre in the Soviet Union,
innovations of Picasso, and Braque, were seen as having Schlemmer's Bauhaus theatre, Artaud. In this context, it
an implication beyond the history of painting itself. They should be added, Brecht appears as little more than a
were intuitively felt, I think, very early on, to represent a moderate.
critical semiotic shift, a changed concept and practice of Cinema is, of course, a form of art which exists on more
sign and signification, which we can now see to have than one channel, more than one sensory medium, and
been the opening-up of a space, a disjunction between uses a multiplicity of different types of code. It has
signifier and signified and a change of emphasis from the affinities with almost all the other arts. Music and verbal
problem of signified and reference, the classic problem of language, as well as natural or artificial noise, can form
realism, to that of signifier and signified within the sign elements of the sound-track. Theatre and dance can be
itself.5 elements of the pro-filmic event, placed in front of the
When we look at the development of painting after the camera to be photographed. Editing can be used to
cubist breakthrough, however, we see a constant trend develop a narrative or to produce a 'visual rhythm' by
towards an apparently even more radical development : analogy with music. Film itself can be painted or paintings
the suppression of the signified altogether, an art of pure can be animated. Light can be used as a medium, and
signifiers detached from meaning as much as from through projection, a third dimension can be introduced,
reference, from sine as much as from bedeutung. This to produce a kind of mobile light sculpture. Cinema too
tendency towards abstraction could be justified in various has its own 'specifically cinematic'7 codes and materials,
ways —a transcendental signified could be postulated, in associated with the various phases of film production.
symbolist or spiritualist terms, a meaning located in the As a result of this variety and multiplicity, ideas have fed
uberwelt of pure ideas ; a theory of formalism, of art as into film-making from a variety of sources in the other arts.
pure design, could be proposed ; the work of art could be One powerful influence has come from painting, bringing
defended in terms of objecthood, pure presence ; it could with it a tendency to abstraction — pure light or colour;
be explained as a solution to a problem, often set by the and non-figurative design — or deformation of
relationship between a signifier— a form of expression, in conventional photographic imagery, involving prismatic
Hjelmslev's phrase—and its physical, material support fragmentation and splintering, the use of filters or stippled
(the matter or substance of expression).6 glass, mirror-shots, extreme and microscopic close-ups,
Literature, on the other hand, tended to fall back into bizarre angles, negative images, etc., all of which are to be
forms of writing in which the signified clearly remained found in twenties films. Editing tended to follow
dominant. Modernism could be interpreted in terms of the principles of association (related to poetry or dream) or
expansion of subject-matter, new narrative techniques analogies with music—shots of fixed length, repetition
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