Film Form

by Sergei Eisenstein

  It appears that the detective novel counts among its forerunners, aiding it to reach full bloom at the beginning of the nineteenth century, James Fenimore Cooper—the novelist of the North American Indians. From the ideological point of view, this type of novel, exalting the deeds of the colonizers, follows entirely the same current as the detective novel in serving as one of the most pointed forms of expression of private-property ideology. To this testified Balzac, Hugo, Eugène Sue, who produced a good deal in this literary-composition model from which later was elaborated the regular detective novel.

  Recounting in their letters and diaries the inspirational images which guided them in their story constructions of flight and chase (Les Miserables, Vautrin, Le Juif errant), they all write that the prototype that attracted them was the dark forest background of James Fenimore Cooper, and that they had wished to transplant this dark forest and the action within it from the virgin backwoods of America to the labyrinth of the alleys and byways of Paris. The accumulation of clues derives from the methods of the “Pathfinders” whom Cooper portrayed in his works.

  Thus the image “dark forest” and the technique of the “pathfinder” from Cooper’s works serve the great novelists such as Balzac and Hugo as a sort of initial metaphor for their intrigue of detection and adventure constructions within the maze of Paris. They contribute also to formalizing as a genre those ideological tendencies which lay at the base of the detective novel. Thus is created a whole independent type of story construction. But, parallel with this use of the “heritage” of Cooper, we see yet another sort: the type of literal transplantation. Then we have indeed nonsense and nightmare. Paul Féval has written a novel in which redskins do their stuff in Paris and a scene occurs where three Indians scalp a victim in a cab!

  I cite this example in order to return once more to the intellectual cinema. The specific quality of the intellectual cinema was proclaimed to be the content of the film. The trend of thoughts and the movement of thoughts were represented as the exhaustive basis of everything that transpired in the film, i.e., a substitute for the story. Along this line—exhaustive replacement of content—it does not justify itself. And in sequel perhaps to the realization of this, the intellectual cinema has speedily grown a new conception of a theoretical kind: the intellectual cinema has acquired a little successor in the theory of the “inner monologue.”

  The theory of the inner monologue warmed to some extent the ascetic abstraction of the flow of concepts, by transposing the problem into the more story-ish line of portraying the hero’s emotions. During the discussions on the subject of the inner monologue, there was made none the less a tiny reservation, to the effect that this inner monologue could be used to construct things and not only for picturing an inner monologue.* Just a tiny hook hanging there in parentheses, but on it hung the crux of the whole affair. These parentheses must be opened immediately. And herein lies the principal matter with which I wish to deal.

  Which is—the syntax of inner speech as opposed to that of uttered speech. Inner speech, the flow and sequence of thinking unformulated into the logical constructions in which uttered, formulated thoughts are expressed, has a special structure of its own. This structure is based on a quite distinct series of laws. What is remarkable therein, and why I am discussing it, is that the laws of construction of inner speech turn out to be precisely those laws which lie at the foundation of the whole variety of laws governing the construction of the form and composition of art-works. And there is not one formal method that does not prove the spit and image of one or another law governing the construction of inner speech, as distinct from the logic of uttered speech. It could not be otherwise.

  We know that at the basis of the creation of form lie sensual and imagist thought processes.* Inner speech is precisely at the stage of image-sensual structure, not yet having attained that logical formulation with which speech clothes itself before stepping out into the open. It is noteworthy that, just as logic obeys a whole series of laws in its constructions, so, equally, this inner speech, this sensual thinking, is subject to no less clear-cut laws and structural peculiarities. These are known and, in the light of the considerations here set out, represent an inexhaustible storehouse, as it were, of laws for the construction of form, the study and analysis of which have immense importance in the task of mastering the “mysteries” of the technique of form.

  For the first time we are placed in possession of a firm storehouse of postulates, bearing on what happens to the initial thesis of the theme when it is translated into a chain of sensory images. The field for study in this direction is colossal. The point is that the forms of sensual, pre-logical thinking, which are preserved in the shape of inner speech among the peoples who have reached an adequate level of social and cultural development, at the same time also represent in mankind at the dawn of cultural development norms of conduct in general, i.e., the laws according to which flow the processes of sensual thought are equivalent for them to a “habit logic” of the future. In accordance with these laws they construct norms of behavior, ceremonials, customs, speech, expressions, etc., and, if we turn to the immeasurable treasury of folklore, of outlived and still living norms and forms of behavior preserved by societies still at the dawn of their development, we find that, what for them has been or still is a norm of behavior and custom-wisdom, turns out to be at the same time precisely what we employ as “artistic methods” and “technique of embodiment” in our art-works. I have no space to discuss in detail the question of the early forms of thought process. I have no opportunity here to picture for you its basic specific characteristics, which are a reflection of the exact form of the early social organization of the communal structures. This is no time to pursue the manner in which, from these general postulates, are worked out the separate characteristic marks and forms of the construction of representations. I will limit myself to quoting two or three instances exemplifying this principle, that one or other given moment in the practice of form-creation is at the same time a moment of custom-practice from the stage of development at which representations are still constructed in accordance with the laws of sensual thinking. I emphasize here, however, that such construction is not of course in any sense exclusive. On the contrary, from the very earliest period there obtains simultaneously a flow of practical and logical experiences, deriving from practical labor processes; a flow that gradually increases on the basis of them, discarding these earlier forms of thinking and embracing gradually all the spheres not only of labor, but also of other intellectual activities, abandoning the earlier forms to the sphere of sensual manifestations.

  Consider, for example, that most popular of artistic methods, the so-called pars pro toto. The power of its effectiveness is known to everyone. The pince-nez of the surgeon in Potemkin are firmly embedded in the memory of anyone who saw the film. The method consisted in substituting the whole (the surgeon) by a part (the pince-nez), which played his rôle, and, it so happened, played it much more sensual-intensively than it could have been played even by the re-appearance of the surgeon. It so happens that this method is the most typical example of a thinking form from the arsenal of early thought processes. At that stage we were still without the unity of the whole and the part as we now understand it. At that stage of non-differentiated thinking the part is at one and the same time also the whole. There is no unity of part and whole, but instead obtains an objective identity in representation of whole and part. It is immaterial whether it be part or whole—it plays invariably the rôle of aggregate and whole. This takes place not only in the simplest practical fields and actions, but immediately appears as soon as you emerge from the limits of the simplest “objective” practice. Thus, for example, if you receive an ornament made of a bear’s tooth, it signifies that the whole bear has been given to you, or, what in these conditions signifies the same thing,* the strength of the bear as a whole. In the conditions of modern practice such a proceeding would be absurd. No one, having received a button off a su
it, would imagine himself to be dressed in the complete suit. But as soon even as we move over into the sphere in which sensual and image constructions play the decisive rôle, into the sphere of artistic constructions, the same pars pro toto begins immediately to play a tremendous part for us as well. The pince-nez, taking the place of a whole surgeon, not only completely fills his rôle and place, but does so with a huge sensual-emotional increase in the intensity of the impression, to an extent considerably greater than could have been obtained by the reappearance of the surgeon-character himself.

  As you perceive, for the purposes of a sensual artistic impression, we have used, as a compositional method, one of those laws of early thinking which, at appropriate stages, appear as the norms and practice of everyday behavior. We made use of a construction of a sensual thinking type, and as a result, instead of a “logico-informative” effect, we receive from the construction actually an emotional sensual effect. We do not register the fact that the surgeon has drowned, we emotionally react to the fact through a definite compositional presentation of this fact.

  It is important to note here that what we have analyzed in respect to the use of the close-up, in our example of the surgeon’s pince-nez, is not a method characteristic solely of the cinema alone and specific to it. It equally has a methodological place and is employed in, for example, literature. “Pars pro toto” in the field of literary forms is what is known to us under the term synecdoche.

  Let us indeed recall the definition of the two kinds of synecdoche. The first kind: this kind consists in that one receives a presentation of the part instead of the whole. This in turn has a series of sorts:

  Singular instead of plural. (“The Son of Albion reaching for freedom” instead of “The sons of, etc.”)

  Collective instead of composition of the clan. (“Mexico enslaved by Spain” instead of “The Mexicans enslaved.”)

  Part instead of whole. (“Under the master’s eye.”)

  Definite instead of indefinite. (“A hundred times we’ve said . . .”)

  Species instead of genus.

  The second series of synecdoches consists in the whole instead of the part. But, as you perceive, both series and all their several subdivisions are subject to one and the same basic condition. Which condition is: the identity of the part and the whole and hence the “equivalence,” the equal significance in replacing one by the other.

  No less striking examples of the same occur in paintings and drawings, where two color spots and a flowing curve give a complete sensual replacement of the whole object.

  What is of interest here is not this list itself, but the fact that is confirmed by the list. Namely, that we are dealing here not with specific methods, peculiar to this or that art-medium, but first and foremost with a specific course and condition of embodied thinking—with sensual thinking, for which a given structure is a law. In this special, synecdochic, use of the “close-up,” in the color-spot and curve, we have but particular instances of the operation of this law of pars pro toto, characteristic of sensual thinking, dependent upon whatever artmedium in which it happens to be functioning for its purpose of embodiment of the basic creative scheme.

  Another example. We are well aware that every embodiment must be in strict artistic accord with the story situation being embodied. We know that this concerns costume, setting, accompanying music, light, color. We know that this accord concerns not only the demands made by naturalistic conviction, but also, and perhaps to a greater degree, the demands of sustaining the emotional expression. If a dramatist’s scene “sounds” a certain key, then all elements of its embodiment must sound the same key. There is an unsurpassed classical example of this in King Lear, whose inner tempest echoes the tempest on the moor, raging round him on the stage. We can also find examples of a reverse construction—for purposes of contrast: say that a maximum raging of passion is to be resolved by an intentional static and immobile quality. Here, too, all elements of the embodiment would be realized with just as strict a sustaining and accord with the theme, though in this case with opposite indications, as well.

  Such a demand also spreads over into the shot and the montage, whose means must likewise compositionally echo and respond to the basic compositional key for the treatment of the entire work and of each scene in it.*

  It appears that this element, sufficiently recognized and universal in art, can be found on a certain level of development in similar inevitable and obligatory modes of behavior in life. Here is an example from Polynesian practice—a practice that is preserved in customs today with little change. When any Polynesian woman is in confinement, there is a peremptory rule that all gates in the settlement must be opened, all doors thrown open, that everyone (including men, as well) is to remove any sashes, aprons, headbands, that all tied knots are to be untied, and so forth; that is, all circumstances, all concomitant details, must be arranged in a character exactly corresponding to the basic theme of what is occurring: everything must be opened, untied, to give maximum ease to the appearance in the world of the new child!

  Let us now turn to another medium. Let us take a case where the material of the form-creation turns out to be the artist himself. This also confirms the truth of our thesis. Even more: in this instance the structure of the finished composition not only reproduces, as it were, a reprint of the structure of the laws along which flow sensual thought-processes. In this instance the circumstance itself, here united with the object-subject of creation, as a whole duplicates a picture of the psychic state and representation corresponding to the early forms of thought. Let us look once more at two examples. All investigators and travelers are invariably somewhat astonished at one characteristic of early forms of thought quite incomprehensible to a human being accustomed to think in the categories of current logic. It is the characteristic involving the conception that a human being, while being himself and conscious of himself as such, yet simultaneously considers himself to be also some other person or thing, and, further, to be so, just as definitely and just as concretely, materially. In the specialized literature on this subject there is the particularly popular example of one of the Indian tribes of Northern Brazil.

  The Indians of this tribe—the Bororo—maintain that, while human beings, they are none the less at the same time also a special kind of red parakeet common in Brazil. Note that by this they do not in any way mean that they will become these birds after death, or that their ancestors were such in the remote past. Not at all. They directly maintain that they are in reality these actual birds. It is not here a matter of identity of names or relationship; they mean a complete simultaneous identity of both.

  However strange and unusual this may sound to us, it is nevertheless possible to quote from artistic practice quantities of instances which would sound almost word for word like the Bororo idea concerning simultaneous double existence of two completely different and separate and, none the less, real images. It is enough only to touch on the question of the selffeeling of the actor during his creation or performance of a rôle. Here, immediately, arises the problem of “I” and “him.” Where “I” is the individuality of the performer, and “he” the individuality of the performed image of the rôle. This problem of the simultaneity of “I” and “not I” in the creation and performance of a rôle is one of the central “mysteries” of acting creation. The solution of it wavers between complete subordination of “him” to “I”—and “he” (complete trans-substantiation). While the contemporary attitude to this problem in its formulation approaches the clear enough dialectic formula of the “unity of inter-penetrating opposites,” the “I” of the actor and the “he” of the image, the leading opposite being the image, nevertheless in concrete self-feeling the matter is by a long way not always so clear and definite for the actor. In one way or another, “I” and “he,” “their” inter-relationship, “their” connections, “their” interactions inevitably figure at every stage in the working out of the rôle. Let us quote at least one example from the
most recent and popular opinions on the subject.

  The actress Serafima Birman (an advocate of the second extreme) offers this:

  I read of a professor who celebrated neither his children’s birthdays nor their name-days. He made an anniversary of the day on which a child ceased to speak of himself in the third person: “Lyalya wants go walk,” and said: “I want go walk.” The same kind of anniversary for the actor is that day and even minute of that day on which he ceases to speak of the image as “he,” and says “I.” Where indeed this new “I” is not the personal “I” of the actor or actress but the “I” of his or her image. . . .1

  No less revealing are descriptions in the memoirs of a whole series of actors of their behavior at the moment of putting on make-up or their costume, which they accompany by a complete “magic” operation of “transformation” with whisperings, such as “I am already not me,” “I am already so-and-so,” “See, I’m beginning to be him,” and so on.

  In one way or another, more or less controlled, simultaneous actuality in the playing of the role is bound to be present in the creative process of even, albeit, the most inveterate supporter of complete “trans-substantiation.” There are, in fact, too few cases known in the history of the theater of an actor leaning on the “fourth [non-existent] wall!”

  It is characteristic that a similarly fluctuating dual apprehension of stage action as both a reality of theater and a reality of representation exists also with the spectator. Here too, correct apprehension is a united duality, on the one hand preventing the spectator from killing the villain, in that he remembers the latter is not a reality, while on the other giving him the occasion for laughter or tears, in that he forgets that he is witnessing a representation, a play-acting.