Film Form

by Sergei Eisenstein

  Let us note another example. In his Völkerpsychologie Wilhelm Wundt quotes certain early speech constructions. (We are not concerned here with Wundt’s own views, but only with a properly authenticated documentary specimen cited by him.) The meaning:

  “The Bushman was at first received kindly by the white man in order that he might be brought to herd his sheep; then the white man maltreated the Bushman; the latter ran away, whereupon the white man took another Bushman, who suffered the same experience.”

  This simple concept (describing a situation simple and casual in colonial manners) is approximately expressed in the language of the Bushman in this way:

  “Bushman-there-go, here-run-to-white man, white man-give-tobacco, Bushman-go-smoke, go-fill-tobacco-pouch, white man-give-meat-Bushman, Bushman-go-eat-meat, stand-up-go-home, go happily, go-sit-down, herd-sheep-white man, white man-go-strike Bushman, Bushman-cry-loud-pain, Bushman-go-run-away-white man, white man-run-after-Bushman, Bushman-then-another, this one-herd-sheep, Bushman-all-gone.”2

  We are astonished by this long series of descriptive single images, almost an asyntactic series. But suppose we take it into our heads to portray in action on the stage or screen those two lines of the situation implicit in the initial concept, we shall see to our surprise that we have begun to construct something very close to that which has been given as an example of Bushman construction. And this something, just as asyntactic, but supplied only with . . . a sequence of numbers, turns out to be something familiar to every one of us—a shooting script, an instrument to transpose a fact, abstracted into a concept, back into a chain of concrete single actions, which also happens to be the process of translating stage directions into action. “Ran away [from him]”—in Bushman language this appears as an orthodox editing description for two shots: “Bushman-go-run-away-white man,” and “white man-run-after-Bushman”—the embryo for the montage of an American “chase sequence.”

  The abstract “received kindly” is expressed by most valuable concrete items, by means of which the representation of a kindly reception takes shape: a lighting of pipes, a filled tobacco pouch, cooked meat, etc. Again we have an example to show how, the moment we have to pass from informative to realistic expressiveness, we inevitably pass over to structural laws corresponding to sensual thinking, which plays the dominant role in representations characteristic of early development.

  In this connection there is another illuminating example. It is known that still at this stage of development there are not yet generalizations and generalized “spinal” concepts. Lévy-Bruhl shows a factual instance of this in the Klamath language.3 Their language contains no concept of “walking”; instead they employ an infinite series of terms for each particular form of walking. Rapid walking. Waddling. Tired walking. Stealthy walking, and so on. Each type of walking, no matter how delicate its nuances, is given its own term. This may seem strange to us—but only until we are called upon to open the parenthetical direction, “He approaches . . .,” in any play, and reveal it as a chain of approaching steps by one actor to another. The most splendidly conscious comprehension of the term “walking” fails one utterly. And if in the actor (and the director) this comprehension of “walking” does not at once flash “backwards” to a whole accumulation of possible and known particular cases of possible approaches, from which he can choose the most appropriate variant for his situation . . . then his performance can be expected to be a most sad and even tragic fiasco!*

  How clear this is, even in details, can be seen by comparing different versions of a writer’s manuscripts. Between the earlier drafts and the final version “the polish of style” in many works, particularly of poetry, very often takes the form of what seem insignificant transpositions of words, but this transposition is conditioned by exactly the same kind of laws. Indeed very often it is found that all that is involved in such transpositions is the mere shifting of a verb and noun. A business-like and prosaic statement, “An old woman lived there and then . . .” in its poetic variant inevitably runs, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.” Preceding the introduction of the old woman there appears a verbal form of an indefinite kind. And yet, thereby, the phrase at once assumes no longer the conversational character of everyday life, but one connected in some way with poetic-compositional representation.

  This kind of effect has been pointed out by Herbert Spencer.4 He recognizes such a transposition as more artistic. However, he gives no explanation of it. At best, he refers only to the “economy of the mental energies and sensibilities” of the second type of construction, which in itself most certainly requires a better explanation.

  Meanwhile the secret lies hidden precisely in that fact which we persist in pointing to. The cause of it resides, once again, in the fact that this transposition corresponds to a thought process of earlier times. A characterization of this process may be found in Engels:

  When we consider and reflect upon nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where, and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected.5

  It follows that a word-order in which the term describing movement or action (the verb) precedes the person or thing moving or acting (the noun) corresponds more nearly to that form of construction that is more primal. This is true moreover outside the limits of our own language—Russian—as of course it should be inasmuch as it is linked, primarily, with the specific structure of thinking. In German Die Gänse flogen (the geese flew) sounds dry and informative, whereas even merely such a turn of speech as Es flogen die Gänse already contains an element of verse or balladry.

  The indications of Engels and the characteristics of the phenomena just described, as phenomena of approach and return to forms characteristic for earlier levels, can be well illustrated with cases in which we ourselves are faced by graphic and attested pictures of psychic regression. For example, such phenomena of regression can be observed in certain brain operations. In the Moscow Neuro-Surgical Clinic, specializing in brain surgery, I have had the opportunity of witnessing the most interesting case of this sort. One of the patients, immediately after the operation, in proportion to his psychic regression, showed his verbal definition of an object going gradually and clearly through the phases outlined above: in this instance objects previously named, were then identified by the specific verbs indicating an act performed with the aid of the object.

  In the course of my exposition I have repeatedly had occasion to make use of the phrase “early forms of thought-process” and to illustrate my reflections by representational images current with peoples still at the dawn of culture. It has already become a traditional practice with us to be on our guard in all instances involving these fields of investigation. And not without reason: These fields are thoroughly contaminated by every kind of representative of “race theory,” or even less concealed apologists for the colonial politics of imperialism. It would not be bad, therefore, to emphasize sharply that the considerations here expressed follow a sharply different line.

  Usually the construction of so-called early thought-processes is treated as a form of thinking fixed in itself once and for all, characteristic of the so-called “primitive” peoples, racially inseparable from them and not susceptible to any modification whatsoever. In this guise it serves as scientific apologia for the methods of enslavement to which such peoples are subjected by white colonizers, inasmuch as, by inference, such peoples are “after all hopeless” for culture and cultural reciprocity.

  In many ways even the celebrated Lévy-Bruhl is not exempt from this conception, although he does not pursue such an aim consciously. Along this line we quit
e justly attack him, since we know that forms of thinking are a reflection in consciousness of the social formations through which, at the given historical moment, this or that community collectively is passing. But in many ways, also, the opponents of Lévy-Bruhl fall into the opposite extreme, trying carefully to avoid the specificity of this independent individuality of early thought-forms. Among these, for instance, is Olivier Leroy, who, on the basis of analyzing-out a high degree of logic in the productive and technical inventiveness of the so-called “primitive” peoples, completely denies any difference between their system of thought-process and the postulates of our generally accepted logic. This is just as incorrect, and conceals beneath it an equal measure of denial of the dependence of a given system of thought from the specifics of the production relations and social premises from which it derives.

  The basic error, in addition to this, is rooted in both camps in that they appreciate insufficiently the quality of gradation subsisting between the apparently incompatible systems of thought process, and completely disregard the qualitative nature of the transition from one to the other. Insufficient regard for this very circumstance frequently scares even us whenever discussion centers round the question of early thought-processes. This is the more strange in that in the Engels work cited there are actually three whole pages comprising an exhaustive examination of all the three stages of construction of thinking through which mankind passes in development. From the early diffuse-complex, part of the remarks about which we quoted above, through the formal-logical stage that negates it. And, at last, to the dialectical, absorbing “in photographic degree” the two preceding. Such a dynamic perception of phenomena does not of course exist for the positivistic approach of Lévy-Bruhl.

  But of principal interest in all this matter is the fact that not only does the process of development itself not proceed in a straight line (just like any development process), but that it marches by continual shifts backwards and forwards, independently of whether it be progressively (the movement of backward peoples towards the higher achievements of culture under a socialist regime), or retrogressively (the regress of spiritual super-structures under the heel of national-socialism). This continual sliding from level to level, forwards and backwards, now to the higher forms of an intellectual order, now to the earlier forms of sensual thinking, occurs also at each point once reached and temporarily stable as a phase in development. Not only the content of thinking, but even its construction itself, are deeply qualitatively different for the human being of any given, socially determined type of thinking, according to whatever state he may be in. The margin between the types is mobile and it suffices a not even extraordinarily sharp affective impulse to cause an extremely, it may be, logically deliberate person suddenly to react in obedience to the never dormant inner armory of sensual thinking and the norms of behavior deriving thence.

  When a girl to whom you have been unfaithful, tears your photo into fragments “in anger,” thus destroying the “wicked betrayer,” for a moment she re-enacts the magical operation of destroying a man by the destruction of his image (based on the early identification of image and object).* By her momentary regression the girl returns herself, in a temporary aberration, to that stage of development in which such an action appeared fully normal and productive of real consequences. Relatively not so very long ago, on the verge of an epoch that already knew minds such as Leonardo and Galileo, so brilliant a politician as Catherine de’ Medici, aided by her court magician, wished ill to her foes by sticking pins into their miniature wax images.

  In addition to this we know also not just momentary, but (temporarily!) irrevocable manifestations of precisely this same psychological retrogression, when a whole social system is in regress. Then the phenomenon is termed reaction, and the most brilliant light on the question is thrown by the flames of the national-fascist auto-da-fe of books and portraits of unwanted authors in the squares of Berlin!

  One way or another, the study of this or that thinking construction locked within itself is profoundly incorrect. The quality of sliding from one type of thinking to another, from category to category, and more—the simultaneous co-presence in varying proportions of the different types and stages and the taking into account of this circumstance, are equally as important, explanatory and revealing in this as in any other sphere:

  An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.6

  The latter in our case has direct relation to those transitions in the forms of sensual thinking which appear sporadically in states of aberrations or similar conditions, and the images constantly present in the elements of form and composition based on the laws of sensual thinking, as we have tried to demonstrate and illustrate above.

  After examining the immense material of similar phenomena, I naturally found myself confronted with a question which may excite the reader, too. This is, that art is nothing else but an artificial retrogression in the field of psychology towards the forms of earlier thought-processes, i.e., a phenomenon identical with any given form of drug, alcohol, shamanism, religion, etc.! The answer to this is simple and extremely interesting.

  The dialectic of works of art is built upon a most curious “dual-unity.” The affectiveness of a work of art is built upon the fact that there takes place in it a dual process: an impetuous progressive rise along the lines of the highest explicit steps of consciousness and a simultaneous penetration by means of the structure of the form into the layers of profoundest sensual thinking. The polar separation of these two lines of flow creates that remarkable tension of unity of form and content characteristic of true art-works. Apart from this there are no true art-works.

  In this remarkable fact and attribute concerning a work of art lies its infinite distinction in principle from all adjacent, similar, analogous, and “reminiscent” areas, where phenomena attached to “early forms of thought” also have a place. In an inseparable unity of these elements—of sensual thinking with an explicitly conscious striving and soaring—art is unique and inimitable in those fields where a comparative deciphering is depended upon for correlative analysis. That is why, with this basic thesis in mind, we need not be afraid of an analytical deciphering of the most basic laws of sensual thinking, by firmly keeping in mind the necessity for unity and harmony in both elements, which produce a fully worthy work only in this unity.

  By allowing one or the other element to predominate the art-work remains unfulfilled. A drive towards the thematiclogical side renders the work dry, logical, didactic. But overstress on the side of the sensual forms of thinking with insufficient account taken of thematic-logical tendency—this is equally fatal for the work: the work becomes condemned to sensual chaos, elementalness, raving. Only in the “dually united” interpenetration of these tendencies resides the true tension-laden unity of form and content. Herein resides the root principle difference between the highest artistic creative activity of man and, in contradistinction therefrom, all other fields wherein also occur sensual thinking or its earlier forms (infantilism, schizophrenia, religious ecstasy, hypnosis, etc.).

  And if we are now on the verge of considerable successes in the field of comprehension of the universe in the first line (to which the latest film productions bear witness), then, from the viewpoint of the technique of our craftsmanship, it stands necessary for us in every way to delve more deeply now also into the questions of the second component. These, however fleeting, notes that I have been able to set forth here serve this task. Work here is not only not finished, it has barely begun. But work here is in the extremest degree indispensable for us. The study of the corpus of material on these questions is highly important to us.

  By study and absorption of this material we shall learn a very great deal about t
he system of laws of formal constructions and the inner laws of composition. And along the line of knowledge in the field of the system of laws of formal constructions, cinematography and indeed the arts generally are still very poor. Even at the moment we are merely probing in these fields a few bases of the systems of laws, the derivative roots of which lie in the nature itself of sensual thinking.

  In comparison with music or literature, we find little, but by analyzing along this line a whole series of problems and phenomena, we shall store up in the field of form a great corpus of exact knowledge, without which we shall never attain that general ideal of simplicity which we all have in mind. To attain this ideal and to realize this line, it is very important to guard ourselves against another line which might also begin to crop up: the Une of simplificationism. This tendency is to some extent already present in the cinema, which a few already wish to expound in this way, that things should be shot “straight” and, in the last resort, it does not matter how. This is terrible, for we all know that the crux is not in shooting ornately and prettily (photography becomes ornate and pretty-pretty when the author knows neither what he wants to take nor how he must take what he wants).

  The essence is in shooting expressively. We must travel toward the ultimate-expressive and ultimate-affective form and use the limit of simple and economic form that expresses what we need. These questions, however, can successfully be approached only by means of very serious analytical work and by means of very serious knowledge of the inward nature of artistic form. Hence we must proceed not by the path of mechanical simplification of the task, but by the path of planned analytical ascertaining of the secret of the very nature of affective form.