A Dialectic Approach To Film Form

A Dialectic Approach to Film Form By Sergei Eisenstein Essay from “Film Form”; 1949; New York In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it. GOETHE According to Marx and Engels the dialectic system is only the conscious reproduction of the dialectic course (substance) of the external events of the world. Thus: The projection of the dialectic system of things into the brain into creating abstractly into the process of thinking yields: dialectic methods of thinking; dialectic materialism – And also: The projection of the same system of things while creating concretely while giving form yields: Sergei Eisenstein: A Dialectic Approach to Film Form PHILOSOPHY. ART. 1 The foundation for this philosophy is a dynamic concept of things: Being – as a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites. Synthesis – arising from the opposition between thesis and antithesis. A dynamic comprehension of things is also basic to the same degree, for a correct understanding of art and of all art-forms, In the realm of art this dialectic principle of dynamics is embodied in CONFLICT as the fundamental principle for the existence of every art-work and every art-form. For art is always conflict: (I) according to its social mission, (2) according to its nature, (3) according to its methodology. According to its social mission because: It is art's task to make manifest the contradictions of Being. To form equitable views by stirring up contradictions within the spectator's mind, and to forge accurate intellectual concepts from the dynamic clash of opposing passions. According to its nature because: Its nature is a conflict between natural existence and creative tendency. Between organic inertia and purposeful initiative. Hypertrophy of the purposive initiative – the principles of rational logic – ossifies, art into mathematical technicalism. (A painted landscape be comes a topographical map, a painted Saint Sebastian becomes an anatomical chart.) Hypertrophy of organic naturalness – of organic logic – dilutes art into formlessness. (A Malevich becomes a Kaulbach, an Archipenko becomes a waxworks side-show.) Because the limit of organic form (the passive principle of being) is Nature. The limit of rational form (the active principle of production) is Industry. At the intersection of Nature and Industry stands Art. The logic of organic form vs. the logic of rational form yields, in collision, the dialectic of the art-form. The interaction of the two produces and determines Dynamism. (Not only in the sense of a space-time continuum, but also in the field of absolute thinking. I also regard the inception of new concepts and viewpoints in the conflict between customary conception and particular representation as dynamic – as a dynamization of the inertia of perception – as a dynamization of the "traditional view" into a new one.) The quantity of interval determines the pressure of the tension. (See in music, for example, the concept of intervals. There can be cases where the distance of separation is so wide that it leads to a break – to a collapse of the homogeneous concept of art. For instance, the "inaudibility" of certain intervals.) The spatial form of this dynamism is expression. The phases of its tension: rhythm. This is true for every art-form, and, indeed, for every kind of expression. Sergei Eisenstein: A Dialectic Approach to Film Form 2 Similarly, human expression is a conflict between conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. (In this I cannot agree with Klages, who, a) does not consider human expression dynamically as a process, but statically as a result, and who, b) attributes everything in motion to the field of the "soul," and only the hindering element to "reason." ["Rea