Thinking Screens

Viewing Degree Zero. That’s something which crosses my mind sometimes.

While writing here, sometimes I am trying that, revisiting Film Studies and starting from degree zero. Keeping in mind how much you freshers know after a month of classes and maintaining the vantage-point. Not a particularly easy thing to do. But viewing degree zero is something else, though somehow related.

Thinking of the moment when mankind encountered cinema for the first time. Thinking of the moment when a human being…when I encountered cinema. Trying to recall when I understood that this is a magic for a lifetime! Regretfully, these are memories and emotions which you are bound to lose forever, it slides into your unconscious, therefore probably emerges in appropriate guises in our dreams. Have you ever dreamt of films? I have. But afterall we are inundated with images each waking hours. It damages…the virginity of our vision, as one of my teachers said. And once you spend few years immersed in images and sounds, thinking about cinema, helped by a career of course, you might reach a moment when you wish you could have started again. There are so much overkills.

Teaching Andre Bazin gives me an inkling of how it might have been: viewing, reading degree zero. There are ways to teach Bazin. Elaborating the context, giving a broad overview, reading what his discursive opponents meant, then again the reappraisals. It gives you a very good spectrum of what was happening during those key moments in the history of our discipline.

But this year I haven’t attempted it. I felt that I will miss precious hours. One might instead devote the class-hours reading him entirely and just think aloud, think laterally and perpendicularly, the way his words provoke. In the initial moments you might find his propositions naive (now that also depends on my efficiency; I might fail in convincing you), probably he also knew it. But you will understand, after you have read a tonne of others’ writings and if you revisit this man after completing your course (yes, after completing it; you need to read him not out of compulsion, but out of curiosity) that here was an extremely intelligent man who had a hunch of probably all counter-arguments his words will invite.

We have just read half of an essay (we will read a couple in the classroom this semester and a couple more when we will discuss neo-realism), we have read nothing of his ideas on cinema. So, it might be a bit premature discussing further. Still, would like to underline few things broadly…

Remember, Bazin is never prescriptive. He is open about his bias but he never claims his preferred one is the only cinema to be reckoned. He was very vocal about his disliking German Expressionist instances (considered by many of his contemporaries as instances of supreme cinematic craftsmanship), but he knew his propositions are pitted against the most revered name in (prescriptive) film theory of his times: Sergei Eisenstein. Bazin just vehemently states what he prefers. He never ever laid the yardsticks of what a better cinema will be by proposing devices, as they did during his days. Instead, he takes another route, a bit contentious one of explaining cinema’s past arriving the present, to prove his thesis.

Probably he was the first critic/theorist who was thinking from the vantage point of a viewer (than the maker, another thing they did those days). Therefore Bazin would be a transitional figure in the history of film theory. And when he was thinking as an viewer he is always underlining the ‘freedom’ of the viewer. One should always remember, as I am harping now and then in the classroom, he was writing during and after the fascist era of Europe. He knew what ‘tyranny of meaning’ can historically be like. A response would have been, as it shaped up after the WWI with the Dadaists and the Surrealists, a jubilation of ‘anti-meaning’ (forgive the clumsiness). But Bazin would have found that oppressive too. Bazin was talking about the ‘freedom’ of the viewer in the process of making meaning out of a cinematic image.

I have designed a page in this blog where you can post your thoughts which might provoke a longer response from me. This is something Dhriti wrote this evening there:

Bazin writes -”between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of the nonliving agent.” Well, Bazin certainly addresses the act of reproduction but what about the act of representation???? Act of reproduction may not incorporate the act of representation…though in the very next line there is a mention of the purpose of the photographer…but he again he negates it by suggesting the photographer’s absence…i find this contradictory…and as to the act of representation, i find Bazin a bit indifferent, i.e. in the particular essay that is being discussed in the class…

Correct exasperation there! Now this is what I wish to explicate in the following classes: Bazin would prefer an art which does away with the quota of interpretation in the act of representation. He would consider the quality of an artist in his process of lessening interpretation in the act of representation to be higher in value. You might find this naive, but you should keep in mind that Bazin was writing when cinema has already reached its pinnacle of craftsmanship. Cinema has learned to lie convincingly. Bazin was talking about unlearning cinema, something achievable only by the most cerebral cine-artist, because when you dismantle what has been erected for 50 years, you need to know exactly what to dismantle and yet leave an impressive artifice standing. Bazin was talking about filming degree zero.

I know that doesn’t properly answer Dhriti’s question. My design is to provoke more rather than close questions. Before the Bazinian era, film theory was only bothered about the moment of production. Production of what? Production of cinematic meaning (I don’t understand why a certain phase of filmmaking is termed ‘post-production’; it is the moment when ‘meaning’ is being finalised!). Bazin is precisely aware of the moment when meaning is being born: during the viewing of the film. Therefore he is talking about a filmmaking which is intelligently and progressively aware of the moment to come. Bazin’s is a film theory about the moment of reception. Any act of filmmaking which restricts the freedom of that moment is retrogressive, or, to use a term more in sync with his era, fascist to him.

Would have continued more. But let me lead you to few more writings in the net which will illuminate more:

• Andre Bazin’s Writings in Girish Shambhu’s Blog: I have the pleasure of linking to a blog which I enjoy immensely. Before you enjoy all of Girish’s posts just go through the comments in this particular post. It will be highly rewarding. I have gathered few links from those comments below so that you don’t click away during reading!
• THE RECEIVED WISDOM OF ANDRÉ BAZIN—J. Hoberman Quotes: Michael Guillen responding to Shambhu’s post; collection of Bazin’s quotes.
• THE RECEIVED WISDOM OF ANDRÉ BAZIN—Online Resources: Michael now doing an enormous favor! A very comprehensive list of Bazin’s writings available online.
• The Innovators 1950-1960: Divining the real from BFI | Sight & Sound | A good introduction by Peter Matthews.
• Andre Bazin’s Destiny: A review of Dudley Andrew’s biography. Also for a feel of post-Bazinian thoughts.

Lastly, an image from Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-98). It’s Francois Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud, who played the former’s alter ego in 400 Blows (the kid you saw running). Bazin died the day after Truffaut started shooting his first feature-length film.

Toi, toi…you…you…