This week’s reading was a bit more difficult for me than our typical textbook reading. I had to reread sections of the articles multiple times to fully understand exactly what the author was arguing or trying to say. The writing was very academic and wordy and the concepts very abstract. Both of the articles presented very interesting opinions and arguments about film that I hadn’t heard before. 

In Sergei Eisenstein’s article called A Dialectic Approach to Film Form he talks a lot in the beginning about how art is always conflict and is limited by form. Which is something I found very interesting and a point I hadn’t really heard before. I know some filmmakers are always trying to make films that go against the traditional form and are more abstract. However, I don’t think we should dismiss films that do follow a traditional form because they have a lot to offer and often are more enjoyable to the average viewer. Eisenstein’s main point in the article revolves around montage and how “montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots” (Eisenstein 4). He talks about the different types of conflict between shots like graphic conflict, conflict of planes, spatial conflict, and so on. He believes that shots in a montage can be organized in a certain way to create emotional effect rather than just information.

Andre Bazin’s article A Myth of Total Cinema discusses the concept stated in the title. Bazin believed that film was invented to capture reality in its entirety and that it aimed to be completely realistic and immersive. I don’t really agree with this view because I think film is often a way for people to escape reality, and it isn’t necessarily supposed to be realistic. Many filmmakers make purposefully unrealistic films that aren’t anywhere close to reality but are still high quality and of great substance. Something else interesting that Bazin wrote was that film hadn’t been invented yet. This is such an interesting concept because Bazin is saying that film will be invented once total realism is reached and that everything before that is working towards the invention. Again, I disagree with the concept because I don’t think film has to mimic reality or should, but I think it’s a complex take. 

These articles are contrasting in the way that one is talking about how film is limited by form while the other one is talking about how film should aim to be as realistic as possible which would mean having some form. I don’t think one article is right or wrong, but I think people go about making films in many different ways and what gives films their uniqueness or originality is how the filmmaker goes about making it, whether that means having a form or not or aiming for total realism or not.