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Source: L.V. Kuleshov, ‘Iskusstvo svetotvorchestva’, Kinogazeta, 1918, no. 12 (March),
The bases of cinema art are still unknown, its future paths still shrouded in mist, and cinema’s innovators (of whom there are, unfortunately, few) grope their way uncertainly towards new achievements and new interpretations of cinema. We must recognise that the general artistic level of cinema is too limited and too talentless for people not to express frightened astonishment at the emerging precepts of the young art. It is true that the Russian public loves cinema very much and admires the products of our own film industry but I am far from wanting to accept cinema as an art that is generally accessible to and loved by all. Artists must move cinema, their talents will create it: accessibility is a crime for an artist. Art is only bewitching and attractive when it is not quite intelligible. Because of its artistic structure cinema as an independent art can have nothing in common with the dramatic stage. A plus in cinema is a minus in theatre, and vice versa. For this reason there must not be in cinema a single director, a single artist, a single person who is familiar with the footlights. Because there always are and always have been talented musicians who were delighted with their own painting, artists who wrote verse and creative dramatic artists who swamp the cinema that is alien to them.
Cinema, recognised at its conception as the art of silence, naturally had to become the art of greatest movement and, simply by the law of paradox, had finally to assume the forms of the art of least movement. Every art expresses its artistic character by its apparent technological weakness: the ideal theatre is the theatre of Shakespeare, which is technologically weak. The technological falsehood of artistic production is the greatest sign of true art: sets on a stage or the reality of the physical substance of paint on a painter’s canvas.
It is exactly the same in cinema. Our art is abused for its cinema specificity [kinemato-grafichnost’] ‘You are not always literary! You are not theatrical!’ The whole point of cinema lies in its great degree of cinematic specificity. Actors, directors, artists, inscribe your banner in clear letters: the idea of cinema is the cinematic idea.
In any art the sole idea is the idea of art itself. One of the specifically cinematic characteristics of cinema is its non-stereoscopic quality, its contraction of depth into a flat and colourless screen. The problem for cinema artists until now has been to try and overcome the cinema specificity of the image. This attempt is fundamentally misguided (even though I personally, possibly under the late Bauer’s influence, was very taken with perspective scenery). It seems to me that we must make use of the non-stereoscopic quality of cinema and make the flatness of the image into a method of communicating the artistic impression, in the same way that the characteristic quality of cinema’s silence has been turned into such a method. We must think of the individual frames of a film as if they were images akin to the flat and primitive painting on classical vases.
It seems that the ideas I have expressed are very dangerous but an unexpected point of view is often somewhat unintelligible and always looks risky. In order to express the idea of artistic impression art has elaborated various technical methods, i.e. sounds, colours, words – hence the division of art into music, painting, theatre etc. Each individual work of art has its own basic method to express the idea of art. Very few filmmakers (apart from the Americans) have realised that in cinema this method of expressing an artistic idea is provided by the rhythmical succession of individual still frames or short sequences conveying movement – that is what is technically known as montage. Montage is to cinema what colour composition is to painting or a harmonic sequence of sounds is to music. On the dramatic stage the method of interpreting a theatrical production lies with the actor who expresses the theatrical idea through the creative will of the director and gives it individual form. In cinema, because of its unusually high technological component – the quintessence of the machine and electricity – and because of the surprising significance of montage, the actor takes second place. In view of the fact that cinema must be based on a purely external (i.e. visual) artistic influence on the public the cinema artiste must learn to create the required impression not just by acting with the face but by acting with the whole body: by an expressiveness of lines.
The refinement of the image on the silver screen has every right to express itself unobtrusively and even to be elevated to a cult, just as the genius Botticelli glorified the rhythmical harmony of lines in his masterpieces.