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Literature and Cinematography
In this short, brilliant book, Viktor Shklovsky enunciates the function of the arts: what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. In the course of defining what art is, by implication he also quietly lays to waste the theories and people who view art as a means of representing "the real world" and a method of communication. His views of the other arts then lead him into his speculations about the art of cinema photography, new at the time that Shklovsky composed his polemic in 1923.
- GenresNonfictionFilmArt
74 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
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About the author
Victor Shklovsky
151 books116 followersViktor Borisovich Shklovsky (Russian: Виктор Борисович Шкловский) was a Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 28, 2009
One separate branch of the thriller that is sure to develop is the American film geared toward special effects, with acrobatic numbers anf minimal focus on acting, but with lots of animals, train wrecks, etc., used as material for the artistic structure.
Such films will be more interesting by virtue of their material. The motivation [Shklovsky is talking about plot here:] in them will deteriorate more and more. The end result will be some sort of variety show.
Was Michael Bay reading Shklovsky while working on Transformers 2?
All Wellesian prophecy aside, Shklovsky's short treatise has less to do with the cinema than with literature, not surprising in a book written in 1923, in Russia. Remember (it's important) that this was even before Battleship Potemkin (1925) a film which would reverse some of Shklovsky's reservations about the cinema, and no doubt also tend to radically change some of his claims here. But maybe not.
Most interesting are the intersections Shklovsky suggests between the two media, particularly as regards "plot". Because "montage" was a foreign concept at the time, Shklovsky tends to look down upon the possibilities and limitations of the cinematic adumbration, suspecting where he might have been celebrating. Because Shklovsky was not a crank, though, he comes across as being open to those possibilities, even while condemning them as a false path for literature.
Film is not motion (it is a series of still images), but the invention of or suspension of disbelief in motion. Motion is its material, just as ideas are the material of literature (Shklovsky suggests that art, in particular literature, is made up of--as this translator has it--"form and material," which, of course, cannot be separated). Plot is a support to motion, inventing reasons for and explanations of, motion, alternative to psychology--the chief force of movement in a (particular type of) novel, which cannot really be demonstrated in film.
The devices of cinema are also those of Zeno's paradox. Montage, and its literary equivalent (if such a thing is possible-- Shklovsky says not), collage, are at the heart of this paradox, which shows just how in tune Shklovsky was with Eisenstein. But to inhabit the same space, literature would have to abandon plot in favor of spectacle, an unnatural fit, as Shklovsky saw it.
Has our familiarity with the cinema changed that? Barthelme was not just parodying television and cinema in his collages, he was also creating a new (I don't mean original, but new in the sense that the autodidact's learning is new to him/her) mode of expressing his ideas: not a carnival or vaudeville of ideas, but an assemblage, not so far from the epistolary novel at all. So maybe Shklovsky wasn't against the idea of montage so much as against the idea of "losing the plot," the idea of the idea-less novel, something that would be divorced from its own material. Which, it seems to me, does exist, and is entirely as execrable as Shklovsky says it would be.
Such films will be more interesting by virtue of their material. The motivation [Shklovsky is talking about plot here:] in them will deteriorate more and more. The end result will be some sort of variety show.
Was Michael Bay reading Shklovsky while working on Transformers 2?
All Wellesian prophecy aside, Shklovsky's short treatise has less to do with the cinema than with literature, not surprising in a book written in 1923, in Russia. Remember (it's important) that this was even before Battleship Potemkin (1925) a film which would reverse some of Shklovsky's reservations about the cinema, and no doubt also tend to radically change some of his claims here. But maybe not.
Most interesting are the intersections Shklovsky suggests between the two media, particularly as regards "plot". Because "montage" was a foreign concept at the time, Shklovsky tends to look down upon the possibilities and limitations of the cinematic adumbration, suspecting where he might have been celebrating. Because Shklovsky was not a crank, though, he comes across as being open to those possibilities, even while condemning them as a false path for literature.
Film is not motion (it is a series of still images), but the invention of or suspension of disbelief in motion. Motion is its material, just as ideas are the material of literature (Shklovsky suggests that art, in particular literature, is made up of--as this translator has it--"form and material," which, of course, cannot be separated). Plot is a support to motion, inventing reasons for and explanations of, motion, alternative to psychology--the chief force of movement in a (particular type of) novel, which cannot really be demonstrated in film.
The devices of cinema are also those of Zeno's paradox. Montage, and its literary equivalent (if such a thing is possible-- Shklovsky says not), collage, are at the heart of this paradox, which shows just how in tune Shklovsky was with Eisenstein. But to inhabit the same space, literature would have to abandon plot in favor of spectacle, an unnatural fit, as Shklovsky saw it.
Has our familiarity with the cinema changed that? Barthelme was not just parodying television and cinema in his collages, he was also creating a new (I don't mean original, but new in the sense that the autodidact's learning is new to him/her) mode of expressing his ideas: not a carnival or vaudeville of ideas, but an assemblage, not so far from the epistolary novel at all. So maybe Shklovsky wasn't against the idea of montage so much as against the idea of "losing the plot," the idea of the idea-less novel, something that would be divorced from its own material. Which, it seems to me, does exist, and is entirely as execrable as Shklovsky says it would be.
May 7, 2011
Shklovsky has such a crystalline analytical mind. He really wants to order the messy world of art into a science: you kind of get the sense, too, that if anyone could perform this impossible task, it'd be him.
Here, he's writing about the formal constraints of film. He's doing this in 1923, so by "film" he means silent film. He points out that, at a basic level, film is composed of a series of still images strung together in a way that gives the mimetic effect of movement without actually representing movement. In fact, he says pure movement can never be represented in film.
At the same time, he's using a formal analysis of literature, in which the formal constraints of language govern what can and cannot be made into literature: "Literature is made of words and comes into being employing the laws of the word." This happens at every level in the work, and in each case the result is definitive: "the fate of the hero and the division of a work into chapters are phenomena of the same order."
For film and literature, in this analysis, there's a basic unit structure--the image, the phoneme--that governs what you can put together. Because the image in film is always basically static, Shklovsky argues, it falls to the viewer to infer movement: "cinematography can only deal with the motion-sign, the semantic motion."
He doesn't get to montage in this book, but he uses Chaplin as a similar example: film lends itself to grotesques of emotion, "the conventional mimicry" -- a big happy face, an exaggerated sad face -- because the viewer is always having to fill in a gap of some sort. This is a formal problem.
The book ends up being very basic. It's more a prologue than a study. This makes sense: in 1923, Shklovsky is just trying to establish some basic terms and concepts for talking about film as an art. It's pretty cool to watch him do this, even if he doesn't end up getting too far with it. But also he has this really annoying habit, at this point, of falling back on an old man critique of movies: he laments the fact that movies are so popular, and wants them to go away. He imagines that, because of its formal limitations, movies are doomed, and that eventually they will die out. At these times, you're reminded that he's an old, old dude. This is a formal problem.
Here, he's writing about the formal constraints of film. He's doing this in 1923, so by "film" he means silent film. He points out that, at a basic level, film is composed of a series of still images strung together in a way that gives the mimetic effect of movement without actually representing movement. In fact, he says pure movement can never be represented in film.
At the same time, he's using a formal analysis of literature, in which the formal constraints of language govern what can and cannot be made into literature: "Literature is made of words and comes into being employing the laws of the word." This happens at every level in the work, and in each case the result is definitive: "the fate of the hero and the division of a work into chapters are phenomena of the same order."
For film and literature, in this analysis, there's a basic unit structure--the image, the phoneme--that governs what you can put together. Because the image in film is always basically static, Shklovsky argues, it falls to the viewer to infer movement: "cinematography can only deal with the motion-sign, the semantic motion."
He doesn't get to montage in this book, but he uses Chaplin as a similar example: film lends itself to grotesques of emotion, "the conventional mimicry" -- a big happy face, an exaggerated sad face -- because the viewer is always having to fill in a gap of some sort. This is a formal problem.
The book ends up being very basic. It's more a prologue than a study. This makes sense: in 1923, Shklovsky is just trying to establish some basic terms and concepts for talking about film as an art. It's pretty cool to watch him do this, even if he doesn't end up getting too far with it. But also he has this really annoying habit, at this point, of falling back on an old man critique of movies: he laments the fact that movies are so popular, and wants them to go away. He imagines that, because of its formal limitations, movies are doomed, and that eventually they will die out. At these times, you're reminded that he's an old, old dude. This is a formal problem.
December 2, 2016
Written in the 20's but foretelling the rise of cinema (though begrudgingly). Key points: there is form without content (poetry), but no content without form. Form of literature cannot be reproduced in film. In transfer from lit to film you can only express content. The two types of form in lit - parallelism and the riddle. Parallelism - resonant narrative lines or figures that find their meaning in contrast. Riddle - moves the elements forward through mystery. The interruption as key figure in a narrative line. This can be reproduced in film, with a jump cut, but it's much shorter and has less of an impact. It is part of the formal nature of film (as broken instants), but not that of literature (Bergsonian duree).
This is a great antidote to the narrative-heavy nature of publishing out there. Shklovsky treats the notion that one should show and not tell as strictly a matter of film, which implies in the 21st C. that the worst has happened. Film has become the referent from the production of commercial fiction. That telling was always the strength of text. Dickens, Tolstoy, etc.
This is a great antidote to the narrative-heavy nature of publishing out there. Shklovsky treats the notion that one should show and not tell as strictly a matter of film, which implies in the 21st C. that the worst has happened. Film has become the referent from the production of commercial fiction. That telling was always the strength of text. Dickens, Tolstoy, etc.
March 24, 2012
One of the more interesting philosophical books I've read on filmmaking. It's a very short read and I'd be quite interested to read more of Shklovskii's work, as I have a feeling this book is just the tip of the iceberg.
It's a little difficult to apply this work (written in the 20's) to filmmaking now, as many limitations that he has describes as being inherent to cinematography's nature have since been overcome. But, in a historical context, it describes a certain kind of unease with the rise of filmmaking and the fear for the livelihood of literature and theater in the face of a newborn artform. Quite interesting.
It's a little difficult to apply this work (written in the 20's) to filmmaking now, as many limitations that he has describes as being inherent to cinematography's nature have since been overcome. But, in a historical context, it describes a certain kind of unease with the rise of filmmaking and the fear for the livelihood of literature and theater in the face of a newborn artform. Quite interesting.
August 2, 2008
Interesting to reach such an early theoretical consideration of the cinema, before even sound had been introduced, Shklovsky even hypothesizes (hopefully) that cinema would be dead within one hundred years... He writes with equal parts pessimism and fascination for the cinema, writing about its structural differences from the novel (particularly in terms of temporality). More than a little archaic at this point, it is nonetheless important to read not only for its historic value, but that also Shlovsky's method, if not his thoughts themselves, can still be use today.
June 2, 2008
A wisp of a book, but with great depth, fantastic insight!
January 10, 2013
Not what I expected at all, but some profound insights and interesting ideas.
"Perhaps mankind got hold of reason too soon."
"Perhaps mankind got hold of reason too soon."
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews