Surrealism in Film

Beyond the Realist Sensibility

William Earle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138533714
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351487443
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The arts were created from an appeal to freedom. There can be no general aesthetic that defines how that freedom must express itself. Movies offer a seductive example. Of all the major arts, cinema is the only one that was invented during the lifetime of some who are now living. From this perspective, Earle argues that filmmakers were far more inventive in their early days than now, when commercial film has settled into a realist routine with occasional and timid forays into the personal and imaginative.Earle suggests that unsympathetic readers should look again at the possible sources of film poetry, sources that have almost dried up in the flood of boredom experienced nightly in theaters throughout the world. Surrealism in Film is largely a manifesto against realism; it ends in a clash of sensibilities. The book encourages new exploration of absolute poetry.The intention of these essays is to destroy the absolute authority of the realist sensibility. Within that sensibility is everything thought necessary to "sense": narrative plot, recognizable and nameable passions, continuity and integration within the film, a gist or moral for the whole affair, social commentary, and psychoanalytic depth-meanings. Earle argues for a self-critique that should be performed if movies are not to remain encapsulated within its own delusions.

Chapter I

IN GENERAL. . .

Movies took two directions right at the start. The Lumière brothers took their camera to the railroad station and simply photographed the arrival of a train. The audience looked at it and was captivated. It was magical to see on the screen what they had seen so often themselves. Méliès, on the other hand, stayed clear of shooting anything which could ever be seen by anyone; for his movies, which took a trip to the moon or a voyage to the bottom of the sea, elaborate stage constructions were employed, fantastic costumes, and every sort of camera trick. The audiences looked at his films and were captivated; it was magical to see on the screen what they never had seen or could see themselves. Thus were born two fundamental directions in movies which have remained polar opposites since: on the one hand, a tendency toward the documentary or realist—on the other, a tendency toward the imaginary or surrealistic.

Under the realistic tendency we should include not merely documentaries as such but every form of realistic filmed story, which shows us what we either do see or could easily see for ourselves. Under the surrealistic we should include not merely voyages to the moon, but historical plays showing in reconstruction what we can no longer see and no doubt never happened in that manner anyway, but surely also all the early silent comedies of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin or the musical comedies of the thirties in which no shadow of realism could ever be detected; they are all pure dreams. If these remain opposite tendencies today, they are not so opposite as to exclude a point of convergence; if the realists turn their cameras to what anyone could see, it is not to see it in that way but rather to show the wonder in the everyday, in effect, to elevate it to poetry, as though the everyday were itself a wild dream of the poetic imagination. And if the surrealists use materials drawn from the imagination or the subconscious, they will present these contents with such vividness that they take on a real, hallucinatory quality And in the end, perhaps any film that anyone would ever wish to see seeks that point of convergence.

If, then, there is a point of convergence toward which realism and surrealism move or, put otherwise, a form of experience in which perception and imagination coincide, where imagination gives meaning to what can be seen, and perception prevents imagination from escaping into the merely fanciful, irrelevant, and ultimately trivial, still the functions of these two factors are not exactly on the same footing. They aim at a point of convergence which is essentially “poetic” rather than “correct depiction”; the ideal film, then, intends to be experienced immediately as a visual poem rather than judged as true or false to a subject-matter already known. If it is a poem, it is an invention of the poetic imagination and proceeds out of the freedom of that imagination; there can be no “theory” of that freedom, no preexistent “standards” which it must live up to. What could be the source of such standards? For either they represent nothing but a generalization from films already made, in which case the standards have no authority whatsoever over those not yet made, or they descend down from the conceptual heaven of abstractions such as “work of art” or “poetic film,” in which case, again, their specification toward this or that particular film represents nothing less than the re-creation of that specific film itself, and has no authority against or for it.

In a word, criticism of the film can hardly have the aim of demonstrating from supposed criteria the value of any film whatsoever. No work of art exists for the sake of any such evaluation; a work of art asks only to be seen and not judged. They were never made in the first place to be placed under some generality; no doubt at all, once made, they must necessarily fall under some generality, providing the generalities are general enough, but it is not for that reason they were made in the first place. Such criticism is condemned, like Hegels owl, to a retrospective glance, and should regard itself as a history of the film rather than its critique.

If criticism, then, is without authority when it seeks to evaluate films, it is superfluous when it wishes to “explicate” them. A movie is a show; it discloses what had been concealed from us in reality, or what had never been before as in surrealism. To whatever extent the work is successful, it does indeed show and not conceal; what need therefore for explications? Should we not rather measure the success of a work by the extent to which it dispenses us from the task of explaining it? In this sense, criticism is condemned to work upon failure, trying to redo what was ill done in the first place. None of which should prevent critical writings in certain cases from being more interesting works than their original subjects. But I have already argued this in the Introduction.

The following remarks, then, should not be understood as covertly arguing for certain standards of judgment, or attempting to define the film as such, or doing anything more insidious than suggesting a certain sensibility, that which aims at making movies move, suggesting techniques for the prevention of cinematic boredom. Man Ray once said that in the best film he had ever seen, there were but ten minutes worth seeing, and in the worst film he had seen, there were still ten minutes worth seeing. Thirty years later, he had found no reason to alter his judgment.¹ The sober truth is that while movies hold out so many promises, they usually end in frightful boredom. One is invited to sit in a darkened chamber for an hour and a half looking at a familiar plot unfold itself toward a familiar end, starring familiar faces saying their familiar things, achieving a familiar insight at the denouement. A day later no one can remember the plot, the character development, nor the precise order of incident: what was it all about? And whatever it was, the precious moments we do remember have very rarely anything whatsoever to do with story or character development. And so perhaps something else is afoot in movies; if they are to move as wholly as possible, they can hardly aim at the filmed narrative.

No doubt, one reason for the tedium of related filmed narratives is the inherent discrepancy between the place of the action shown, and that of the showing. We see a plot which meanders through a duration of days, weeks, or even years, but the show itself takes habitually an hour and a half. Furthermore, this hour and a half is composed of “shots” each of which lasts some five or ten seconds; a single shot must be very complex indeed to hold our interest much beyond limits of seconds. And so, at the start, the pace of action is radically out of kilter with the pace of show. Directors, “of course,” are sensitive to the problem and try to solve it by fancy camera-work; the angle is changed, a close-up introduced, the actors walk around their chairs, or we are shown reactions to what is said. And yet none of this does anything more than artificially stimulate an attention already flagging since it knows what is coming: an attention directed to an action stretching over its own natural time must lose interest in what it is actually seeing. The screen goes dead for it.

The filmed narrative, moreover, sets its own realistic conditions; the story must take place somewhere, hence the “establishing shot” now frequently run during the credits as something necessary and yet of no interest in itself. If the story is to be shown out of its natural order, we must be shown the narrator recalling it in memory; whatever is shown, tied down to the plot, must have its explanation down to the last detail; and we finally are to be entertained by shots which reveal nothing more than that a man has to open a door to walk through an entrance, that an Indian shot in the heart generally falls off his horse, and the rest of the realistic informational clutter that finally stands as an impediment to whatever poetry might have originally been aimed at.

The same realistic deterioration continued with the introduction of synchronized sound in the early thirties. As everybody knows, there seldom was anything like a silent film; the silents were simply films without synchronized dialogues but invariably shown to a musical accompaniment, sometimes a drunken pianist who kept only one eye on the screen to time his effects, or finally didn’t bother doing even that, often with some fascinating incongruities, as Siegfried Kracauer recalls.² The “triumph” of talkies, then, was nothing more than the possibility of seeing people say what you heard them saying; henceforth the printed titles could be dispensed with. The early “silent” directors predicted that talkies would be the death of the screen, and there are good reasons for thinking them right today. Eisenstein at the beginning saw that the “talk” of the talkies could only be interior monologue.³ The problem of keeping the screen alive when it becomes fascinated with people talking is a very serious problem indeed; we immediately become engrossed in the talk. Only a mouth-fetishist or the hard-of-hearing would ever look at a mouth while it was speaking; we listen to what is said rather than look at the organ forming those sounds, and meanwhile the eye wanders. It was discovered very early that seeing a mouth move while we listened to what it was saying was an artistic redundancy, and so, in desperation, the camera must wander around looking for something not wholly irrelevant to look at. It would be odd dialogue indeed which proceeded at the synchronized pace of five- or ten-second shots; again the difference of pace between realistic dialogue and that of the screen fatally slows up the screen. Many films constructed around an armature of conversation need not be seen at all; one can wander into the lobby, smoke a cigarette, listen to the talk, and return without any loss of experience. These films might as well be read in scenario as seen.

The advent of color was a new invitation to realistic boredom. The technical intelligence applied to the problem of reproducing flesh-tones realistically was staggering; and again, it all served the purposes of that particular sensibility which is delighted with seeing on the screen that which it already knew very well in its own experience, culminating in the feeble pleasure of recognition.

Movie stars have, of course, long been with us, and while it might seem ungrateful to wish to sweep them out too, perhaps these charming personalities must also fall under the cautery They represent certain successful simplifications of ourselves, personae acting within the limits of their established character, and gratifying again and again some obsession in our psyches. But no sooner do they appear on the screen than we are cued to a certain style of life and action which will certainly be reenacted once again before our eyes, but this time with new sauces. Most usually, the very list of stars is sufficient to determine the horizon of action and feeling; the only question remaining is how it will be accomplished this time.

And thus it all collapses: an hour-and-a-half narrative which repeats one more variation on plots we have seen a thousand times or could easily invent ourselves, with stars of established character and charm, saying things to one another at interminable length, opening and closing doors, all shown second by second in “blushing Eastman color.” Out of it all, certain moments occur which keep the whole dead mass alive; for the most past, none of the promises are kept. In this direction, the movies grind to a dead stop. How can we better define those special moments? Where have movies gone wrong? Why are those convergences of the real and the surreal, the perceptual and the imaginary so rare? Nothing can assure the emergence of poetry, of course; but perhaps some thought can forewarn us against directions which cannot possibly lead there.

It might be worth reconsidering every single presupposition of the commercial realist movie; its standard length of an hour and a half, its desire to narrate a plot, its stars, the construction of a visual show around dialogue, its aim at realistic color, etc. Do any of these features serve to keep the screen alive? Or are they not rather hangovers from a theatrical tradition wholly out of keeping with the medium, or concessions to the least ingratiating of our vices, the desire to see once again that which we already have seen, avoiding the mystery of an original disclosure? Suppose we reverse the whole direction of commercial movies, what then? Nothing guaranteed, but perhaps another sensibility opened which might be friendlier to that ideal poetry realized from moment to moment even in realist films.

A film which looks toward poetic engrossment with the screen must seek astonishment; surely, only the perpetually novel and inventive can be supremely engrossing. The precise instant we suspect where the images are leading us, attention lags. We understand already and need no longer watch. And since this is precisely what plots are designed to do, plots are the first form of order to be thrown out. Aristotle in the Poetics found plots admirable to the degree they showed the “probable or necessary”; but the probable or necessary is exactly what puts us to sleep, what shows us what we already understand. Plato valued the general flux of existence to the degree it fell into patterns which would serve to recall us to their eternal archetype. And yet once that archetype is grasped, there is no need for the flux; it has served its purpose. But if movies are to be totally engrossing, they must avoid at all costs serving us up with connections of events which are probable or necessary, or those which illustrate some eternal Idea. In a word, any form of intelligible or understandable order must be avoided; if the order is understandable, we no longer need the film. And if intelligible plots must be avoided, a fortiori, so must anything remotely resembling a film demonstrating or urging a concept, theme, or having a moral, no matter how edifying or diabolical, as its controlling principle. No such film can present us with the perpetual invention and novelty necessary for total poetic engrossment.

Now some films are astonishing and novel simply in the selection of their subject-matter. There are films of animals being slaughtered, undersea life, or the life of drug-addicts. But this is only the most elementary solution to a deeper problem; for once we are accustomed to the novel subjects, they too grow stale. In other words, once we enter the film itself, we find it unrolling along the same line as any other; it too has its moral theme: animals have rights, life appears in strange forms, or bad society makes dope fiends. So, then, the novelty must be internal to the film; the invention must be from shot to shot or sequence to sequence such that nothing follows in any intelligible order whatsoever. At the end of such an experience we would not be able to say what it was about; it wasn’t “about” anything except itself, namely, a perpetual invention of images, or an astonishment of pure Becoming. A film which is merely novel in its theme, that is, externally considered, can be hopelessly banal internally, whereas one that is internally novel, shot to shot, remains fresh no matter how often it is seen.

But how could any such thing be made, since making itself seems to be an act of the conscious will which, willy-nilly, imposes some sort of order or idea on its materials. Is it possible for rational man to make deliberately anything which doesn’t bear the very mark of that rationality? Is it possible to plan the unplanned? One path immediately suggests itself, namely, that of suppressing the reason of the artist, a path on which many artists suffering from alcoholism, syphilis, glandular disorders, schizophrenia, revolutionary mania, drug addiction, or demented mysticism find themselves. But there are less drastic ways since life itself easily offers precisely that chaotic source of novelty we are looking for. Order, after all, is an effort, attainment, or achievement, depending on what values one attaches to it. But it is discovered in or imposed upon a flux of existence which in no way is ordered itself. Chaos and order represent abstract polar opposites; neither is possible concretely in itself. And so it frequendy happens to a filmmaker making a conventionally ordered film that after the originally planned film has been made, out of affection for all that he has photographed, he gathers together the “outtakes” from the film, the scraps lying on the cutting-room floor. Stuck together without order, in whatever position they happen to be lying, they supply him with a safety bank of shots; in case he should later wish to lengthen some particular scene. And then some desperate evening, he projects the whole chaotic mess on the screen; very frequendy this chance composition exhibits a poetry here or there unthinkable and unforeseeable by any voluntary will whatsoever. And then a good deal of it is meaningless rubbish as well. But in any event, the chaos of chance composition has a suggestive power never present in any willed composition. The method resembles the famous exquisite corpse of the surrealists, where one man wrote a predicate to an unknown subject written by another, or where pictures were composed from fragments drawn independently of one another. The beauty of the “film on the cutting-room floor” is the suggestiveness of beginnings or endings of actions, never the whole action itself; characters appearing and disappearing without developments; the shifts of scene; and in addition, since these out-takes were all from the same film, they all bear a curious tacit affinity; it is not pure chaos. Some meaning is intimated but not given, some sensibility is illustrated but not exhausted. In Sartre’s language, we experience a “de-totalized totality.”

But it has been granted that only moments of such chance compositions are interesting; much remains pure rubbish. And so, then, what is to be said about selecting the “interesting” moments and omitting the rubbish? The simple truth is that nothing can be said about it; this is the secret domain of sensibility or imagination which never operates, or never should operate on “principles” but instead should faithfully trust itself. The “technique” of chance composition remains merely a technique; it is a method which does not dictate results which must always be selected in any case, but only offers possibilities not generated by rational thought. There never was any hope for a method to create poetry in the first place, only suggestions for paths along which it might conceivably be found.

Something similar goes for sound and color. A film must be a film and not a visual accompaniment to a sound track. And yet the sound is essential.

Sound and sight can only be wholly engrossing together if neither reduplicates the other; hence their interreaction upon one another can hardly be realistic. Nor “emotionally” realistic, where the emotional sense of what one is seei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter I: In General...
• Chapter II: No More Realism
• Chapter III: Phenomenology and The Surrealism of Movies
• Chapter IV: Variations on the Real World
• Chapter V Ontology of Movies, or The Movie Itself
• Chapter VI: What Makes Movies Move?
• Chapter VII: Meaning and the Meaningless
• Chapter VIII: Beyond Good and Evil
• Bibliography
• Appendix
• Scenario: Monsieur Phot by Joseph Cornell