Andre Bazin's "The Myth of Total Cinema"
TLDRAndré Bazin's 1946 essay 'The Myth of Total Cinema' argues that the concept of cinema, as complete illusionistic representation of reality, predated and inspired its invention. Unlike his ontological theory of photography, Bazin proposes an idealist theory of cinema's origins and destiny. He contends cinema is an unfinished myth, with each new development like sound or 3D bringing cinema closer to its illusory ideal. Bazin thus challenges notions of silent film as perfection, seeing later developments as cinema's destiny, and anticipates theories linking cinema's myth to digital media like CGI and VR.
Takeaways
- 💭 'The Myth of Total Cinema' contrasts with Bazin's earlier essay on the ontology of photography, focusing instead on the human desire to create a perfect illusion of the material world.
- 🎥 Bazin argues that cinema as a concept existed in the human imagination before the technology to realize it came into being, similar to how the idea of human flight preceded the airplane.
- 📈 The essay reviews film history to argue that the pursuit of 'total cinema'—a complete and convincing representation of reality—has been a consistent goal across the development of various cinematic technologies.
- 📷 Total cinema is defined as an unending pursuit of a medium that imitates the material world in every perceptual aspect, distinct from artistic interpretation or the constraints of time.
- 🖥️ Bazin suggests that cinema is still an evolving concept, with each technological advancement (e.g., synchronized sound, color, 3D) bringing us closer to the ideal of total cinema.
- 🎬 The essay challenges the notion that silent cinema represents the medium's primal perfection, advocating instead for the inclusion of sound and color as natural evolutions towards total cinema.
- 🚀 Bazin's use of the myth of Icarus illustrates the idea that human aspirations, such as the desire for cinema, predate their technological achievements and materialize over time.
- 📖 Through a critique of a Marxist interpretation of cinema's history, Bazin posits that ideas and cultural desires drive technological advancements, not just material conditions.
- 📱 New media theorists have extended Bazin's concept of total cinema to digital media, suggesting that virtual reality and CGI are contemporary pursuits of the myth of total cinema.
- 📸 The tension between the ontology of the photographic image and CGI highlights ongoing debates about realism, suggesting that CGI can still embody Bazinian principles when viewed through the lens of total cinema.
Q & A
What is the fundamental argument of Bazin's 'Ontology of the Photographic Image'?
-Bazin argues that a photograph captures the essence or being of its subject, importing a 'sliver' of the subject's reality into the image, unlike a painting which offers a subjective rendition.
How does 'The Myth of Total Cinema' contrast with 'The Ontology of the Photographic Image'?
-While 'The Ontology of the Photographic Image' focuses on the medium-specific properties of photography that connect them to the material world, 'The Myth of Total Cinema' investigates the human desire to create an illusory depiction of the material world.
What is the core difference between the two essays according to the script?
-The core difference lies in their focus: the ontology essay examines the essence of photographic images and their material connection, whereas the myth essay explores the cultural desire or myth of creating a lifelike illusion of the world.
How does Bazin define 'Total Cinema'?
-'Total Cinema' is defined as a complete and perfect illusion of reality, reconstructing the outside world in sound, color, and relief, unburdened by artistic interpretation or the constraints of time.
Why does Bazin argue that cinema has not yet been invented?
-Bazin believes cinema is an ongoing pursuit of a total representation of reality, which has not been fully achieved. Each new development brings cinema closer to its original concept, but the ideal of 'Total Cinema' remains unfulfilled.
What historical examples does Bazin use to support the idea of 'Total Cinema'?
-Bazin cites examples like 19th-century panorama paintings, Reynaud's Pantomime Lumineuse, the Lumière brothers' films, and the development of synchronized sound, color film, and 3D cinema, illustrating the long-standing desire to mimic reality.
What does Bazin's mention of 'Platonic heaven' signify in the context of cinema's development?
-Bazin uses the concept of 'Platonic heaven' to suggest that the idea of cinema existed in an ideal form before its physical invention, similar to concepts or myths that precede their realization in the material world.
How does the script interpret Bazin's view on the relationship between material conditions and the invention of cinema?
-Bazin is portrayed as challenging the materialist view that technological advancements alone drive the development of media. Instead, he suggests that the idea or myth of cinema predated and influenced its technological realizations.
What implications does the 'Myth of Total Cinema' have for understanding the evolution of film and new media?
-The myth implies a continuous pursuit of realism in media, influencing not just film but also digital technologies like CGI and VR, showing that the desire to perfectly mimic reality drives innovations across different media formats.
How does Bazin's essay challenge the valorization of silent cinema within film theory?
-Bazin argues against the notion that silent film represents the peak of cinematic art, instead suggesting that the evolution towards sound and color is part of cinema's destiny to more fully mimic the material reality, challenging theories that prioritize the aesthetic separation from reality.
Outlines
😀 Introduction to Bazin's essay on the myth of total cinema
This paragraph introduces Bazin's 1946 essay 'The Myth of Total Cinema' by contrasting it with his famous 'Ontology of the Photographic Image' essay. It explains that the ontology essay examines the essence of photography's relationship to the material world, while the myth essay investigates the human desire to create an illusory depiction of the material world. The myth pre-existed cinema as an idea, just as human flight pre-existed the airplane.
😀 Bazin's definition of total cinema
This paragraph provides Bazin's definition of 'total cinema' - a total and complete representation of reality, reconstructing a perfect illusion of the outside world in image, sound, color and relief. It is an unachievable, endless pursuit rather than an actual achievable thing. Bazin argues that cinema has not yet been invented because each new development takes it closer to but not at total cinema.
🤔 Examples of developments bringing cinema closer to the myth
This paragraph provides examples of cinematic developments that Bazin argues brought cinema closer to achieving the myth of total cinema, though never fully attaining it. These include 19th century panorama paintings, early synchronized sound experiments, early color film, and 3D. Bazin cites these as evidence that the idea preceded the technology.
😏 Implications of the myth of total cinema
This paragraph discusses three main implications of Bazin's idea of the myth of total cinema - its significance for film theory in proposing an idealist interpretation of cinema's origins, its rebuttal of theories valorizing silent film as the pinnacle, and its relevance for theorists relating cinema to new digital media in continuing the endless pursuit of totally recreating perceptual reality.
😃 Recap and conclusion
This final paragraph recaps the main themes and arguments of Bazin's essay, emphasizing his view of cinema as an endless mythic pursuit rather than a settled medium, and the implications of this perspective for theories of cinema's history and ontology.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Myth
💡Total Cinema
💡Ontology
💡Materialism
💡Idealism
💡Silent Cinema
💡CGI
💡VR
💡Neo-realism
💡Photography
Highlights
Proposed a new convolutional neural network architecture called EfficientNet that achieves state-of-the-art accuracy with fewer parameters
Showed how to use compound scaling to uniformly scale network depth, width, and resolution for improved performance
Demonstrated that EfficientNets are up to 8.4x smaller and 6.1x faster than previous models while achieving better accuracy
Introduced a new autoML method called NAS-Net which uses reinforcement learning to automate model design
NAS-Net models achieved state-of-the-art results on ImageNet and CIFAR-10 with fewer parameters and FLOPs
Proposed Squeeze-and-Excitation networks that improve channel interdependencies and boost accuracy at low computational cost
Showed the effectiveness of using lightweight neural architecture search methods to find optimal ConvNet architectures
Demonstrated how to compress neural networks without losing accuracy using techniques like pruning, quantization, and knowledge distillation
Presented Transformer networks that achieve state-of-the-art results in language understanding using attention mechanisms
Introduced BERT pre-training approach that creates deep bidirectional representations from unlabeled text
Showed how vision transformers trained on large datasets surpass convolutional networks on image classification
Proposed using self-supervised learning on pretext tasks like image colorization to learn useful visual representations
Demonstrated the effectiveness of contrastive losses for self-supervised learning on images, video, and audio
Presented CycleGAN for unpaired image-to-image translation using generative adversarial networks
Introduced reinforcement learning methods like proximal policy optimization that achieve superhuman performance in complex games
Transcripts
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)
Thanks for rating: