In this week’s reading, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” by Sergei Eisenstein, and “The Myth of Total Cinema,” by Andre Bazin, both answer the question “what is cinema?”.
Eisenstein believes that the essence of the cinema is the montage.
Eisenstein defined montage as an idea that arose from the collision of independent shots. He believed that a new meaning is formed in the film when shots collide. Cinema is not just a record or a reenactment of reality, but rather an art form created through manipulation and composition via editing. In this sense, montage can extend beyond stirring emotions: Eisenstein argued that intellectual montage serves not only as an emotional stimulant but also as a vehicle for intellectual dynamization. It pushes people to reach abstract and conceptual ideas through the collision of images in film.
Bazin, on the other hand, stated that the essence of the cinema is people’s desire to reproduce reality in film.
Cinematic technology was developed to achieve the aspiration of reproducing reality.
Bazin argues “…an approximate and complicated visualization of an idea invariably precedes the industrial discovery which alone can open the way to its practical use.” (The Myth of Total Cinema). Total cinema, bringing the complete illusion of life and recreating the world in its own image, is what Bazin defined as the guiding myth that inspired the invention of cinema.
Both Eisenstein’s and Bazin’s views toward the essence of cinema are shown in the movie Parasite.
The director Bong Joon Ho recreated reality in film by designing houses and towns that appeared to be real. Each room, window, wall, and staircase was meticulously constructed to look authentic. The production team even recreated the smell of mold and garbage, making the set indistinguishable from reality. The camera could freely move around when characters walked in and out of the house, which made the viewers, as well as the actors, perceive the movie set as real. This corresponds to Bazin’s idea of people’s desire to reproduce reality in film.
At the same time, new meaning is formed when each shot collides in this film, as Eisenstein argued. The shots for the wealthy family’s house and the Kim family’s semi-basement apartment are colliding throughout the entire movie. For example, the light that the Kim family sees from the street lamp dissolves into the sunlight that the wealthy family sees (Parasite 1:18:09 and 1:18:00). A new meaning is formed through the alternating shots between the semi-basement and the mansion, as it visualizes the conflict of social classes through montage.
For a closer look at how the production team built the sets to appear almost indistinguishable from reality, see this production video. https://youtu.be/CdD2OnID6hQ?si=5UWGE5O641mZPj2q
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