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BAZIN AND FLUSSER: REALITY THROUGH THE CAMERA

Yazarın fotoğrafı: Dilara ŞahinDilara Şahin

Güncelleme tarihi: 7 May 2023

AN ANALYSIS OF CITIZEN KANE & THE HOBBIT


Introduction


Born in 1918, Andre Bazin was one of the most famous and influential film critics and theorists. In the course of his life, he laid the groundwork and popularised the practice of film theory. In his book, “The Myth of Total Cinema”, he delves into the essence of cinema and proposes a certain way in which a film can become a product of what he calls “total cinema”. In his views, cinema should portray a faithful copy of nature and create a world in its own image. This claim that cinema should represent or reflect reality, can be unravelled twofold. Firstly, he argues that films should represent our known reality precisely the way it is, which means in order to have total cinema, one needs to authentically replicate the image of the world. However, he also emphasises on the impossibility of total cinema, at least for the time being. He scrutinises that the technological innovations and apparatuses are not capable and qualified enough to paint an objective representation of nature. That is how he explains “The Myth Total of Cinema”. Correspondingly, the second meaning that could be extracted from his explanation of cinema, is that films can also create a reality in its own image. There is room in Bazin’s arguments to discuss whether or not other realities than the objective representation of nature can fall in line with his definition of cinema.


For a more recent writer, Vilem Flusser, technical images -which he defines as “images produced by apparatuses” (Flusser, 14)- are tools to represent or create reality. At this stage, it is important to touch upon the concept of hyperrealities, since technical images have the function to construct virtual realities. Jean Baudrillard describes hyperreality as a condition where what is real and what is fiction are so blended that there is no clear distinction between the two. Therefore, if Flusser’s “technical images” have the power to create hyperrealities as such, then this simulation of reality that is constructed may be an application of Bazin’s total cinema. On the contrary, the technologies used to create these realities may also drag us further away from total cinema by altering the very definition of what we call “realistic”.


To substantiate any claims for this discussion, two films from very different eras and genres, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) and The Hobbit (Jackson, 2012), will be analysed. This leads to the question “Do Citizen Kane and The Hobbit reinforce or undermine the idea that Andre Bazin’s ‘total cinema’ is achievable and that Flusser’s ‘technical images’ are a way to capture reality?” This is a significant subject to investigate because all media are ways to either represent, alter, create or influence reality and to question what role cinema plays in this, is crucial for us to get a sense of how we can reshape and represent our reality. To get a better understanding of this, an academic research regarding Bazin, Flusser, Baudrillard and reality in films will be conducted, as well the analysis of the two movies aforementioned.


Andre Bazin and Vilem Flusser


Andre Bazin has stated in “The Myth of Total Cinema” that the precursors of cinema and their inventors (like Muybridge, Lumiere, Marey) have interpreted cinema as “the complete and total representation of reality” (Bazin, 15). What they foresaw for the development of cinema was the creation of a perfect illusion of the world outside, which would be constructed through sound, colour and three-dimensionality. Historically it can be said that cinema evolved from the origins of photography. When photographers realised that true reality couldn’t be represented with a two-dimensional, non-moving image, they looked for ways to use the moving image to capture a faithful copy of nature (Bazin, 16). The notion of “total cinema” dates back to the very precursors of the art of cinema. Total cinema, in their opinion, is a complete mirroring of life. Bazin argues, however, that after more than a century, total cinema and the perfect illusion of life is still not possible. The myth that has been dominant through most of 19th century, thus, is the belief that cinema will -at some point- reach a complete realism by the “recreation of the world in its own image”. The development of cinematic apparatuses and technologies have since nurtured this myth that one day we would get to create our own world in moving images.


It is important to conceptualise these technological apparatuses. This is where Flusser is the one influential writer to mention. Flusser, in “Towards a Philosophy of Photography”, argues that the two most important milestones of human history are the invention of linear-writing, followed by the invention of what he described as “technical images”. Flusser defines images as signifiers of something ‘out there’. According to him, images reduce the four dimensions of space and time into comprehensible abstractions. (Flusser, 8). Images, he suggested, were mediations between the world and humans. The images were supposed to be our mapping of the world by making reality somewhat more comprehensible.


Combining the aligning thoughts of Flusser and Bazin, it can be argued that both writers believe in the power of cinema to represent reality. The authentic representation of the real world, has since been a great concern for many filmmakers. One of these realist filmmakers would be Orson Welles.


Cinematic Realism in Citizen Kane


Bazin comments on Welles’s use of long shots and deep focus cinematography, arguing that these techniques brings “a heightened realism to the screen” (Fabe, 80). Bazin emphasises the way in which the extreme deep focus photography that Welles incorporates into Citizen Kane creates a certain ambiguity in the screen. Since both the foreground and the background is visible on screen, the viewer gets to decide where to look, what to look at. Welles, using long takes, gives the viewer room to wander around the screen, much like they would do in a theatre stage. Fabe argues that even though he designs the mise-en-scene artistically, Orson Welles synthesises realism in his film by not disturbing the viewer with lots of cuts and creating dramatic effects through deep-focus cinematography (Fabe, 84). Bazin states that meaning can be extracted from the long takes without the need for transitions or montage, much like real life, through the deep-focus technique.



In addition to his, Welles’s narrative strategy in Citizen Kane -the use of flashbacks from different point of views- makes learning the truth about Charles Foster Kane -the protagonist- harder. Many commentators, including Bazin, points out how the “film is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle” and how the viewer has to put all the pieces together to understand. (Fabe, 83). This also corroborates Welles’s realism in the sense that much like in real life, it is hard to decipher the meaning and truth behind the film. Since Welles successfully managed to reduce the need to edit by using long shots and deep-focus cinematography, it is evident that the film does not undermine the viewers’ attentiveness, instead, it absorbs the viewer into the story (Cardullo, 182). Bazin argues, in his commentary of Citizen Kane, that the film makes viewers realise simple things that classical Hollywood style has made us forget: like the fact that in real life, beautiful women are not always well-lit, and people do turn their backs sometimes even if they’re saying something important. In the context of Bazin’s comments, the film faithfully recreates reality through these techniques. This is why the cinematic style of Citizen Kane reinforces realism and thus can be put into account as a film that is a progressive step towards Andre Bazin’s “total cinema”.


Construction of Realities


Citizen Kane can be considered as one of the films that use images to map and represent the world. However, Flusser states that the duality of technical images is that “Instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings’ lives finally become a function of the images they create” (Flusser, 10). A present day application of this, he argues, would be the technical images all around us, which ‘reconstruct’ our reality altogether, rather than simply representing it. Flusser defines technical images as “images produced by apparatuses” (Flusser, 14). Through the very nature of creating technical images, which is capturing the world the way it is through chemical and optical devices, technical images procure a level of reality. Therefore, Flusser points out that technical images are not just symbols but symptoms of the world. This leads everyone who looks at a technical image, to look at it as a window to the world (Flusser, 15). So, in a way, reality isn’t only reflected in technical images, but also rewritten and reconstructed through them. Flusser also highlights that this objectivity of the technical image is an illusion. Much like Bazin’s claim about total cinema, Flusser’s “technical images” also raise questions about how reality can be represented and constructed through he camera.


Similar to Welles, the earliest masters of cinema imitated nature with the upmost authenticity. As technology improved, however, cinema artists were presented with a second option; not just to imitate reality but to create a realistic world. “Today, the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny.” (Bazin, 19). An important issue to address here would be Bazin’s stance with regard to cinema as a tool not just to represent but also construct realities. Andre Bazin lost his life in 1958. Had he been alive to see the contemporary cinematic technologies, his idea of “total cinema” could take a drastically different meaning. It is quite curious that if total cinema is the perfect illusion of nature or the world, then hyperrealities that are created for cinema may also be eligible to be called a step towards total cinema. Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher, defines hyperrealities as conditions in which it is hard to distinguish between what is real and what is not. When the lines between reality and fantasy is blurred to an extend that it is hard to tell them apart, Baudrillard argues, a simulacrum called “hyperreality” is formed. When talking about hyperrealities, Baudrillard states that in the contemporary culture industry, the picture of a product -like a film-adds to the original value of the object, which in this case is reality (Wolny, 76). To connect this with total cinema, we could look at how hyperreality may immerse the audience even more than a true representation of reality. As Bazin argues, cinema as the spectacle should absorb the viewer. He calls this immersion of the cinema audience into the film: depersonalisation. Generally depersonalisation is used to refer to a disorder that is characterised by a feeling of unreality and estrangement from body and surroundings (Aitken, 53). Bazin applied this to cinema, and asserted that the audience, too, is thrown into a feeling of unreality and is taken farther away from his immediate surroundings with each passing minute of the film.


Hyperreality in The Hobbit


It is possible to see traces of this depersonalisation (immersion of the audience) in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy. For his three films, Jackson made a directorial decision to use 3D high-frame rate to establish verisimilitude. Technologically, what distinguishes the 48 fps (frames per second) from other frame rates is that with 48 fps, there is a crystal clear picture which looks like the scenes are happening in front of you, live. Jackson wanted to go for this realistic look as a contrast to the films’ fantastical, epic story.



By combining 3D and high frame rate (HFR) as well as CGI (computer generated images), Jackson aimed for a digital aesthetic that would “…greatly enhance viewers’ sense of immersion in the fantastical world of Middle-Earth” (Michelle, Davis, Hight & Hardy, 230). As argued before, the apparatuses that create the technical images which are then edited and montaged, construct what we call reality in films. The use of 48 fps had the power to transport viewers out of the screen and into the world of the movie, through its realistic and life-like images. This transparent mode of audience reception, that is achieved by making audiences enter fully into the story and ignore the differences between the fictional and the real world, makes the notion of total cinema questionable. The contemporary technologies that are used in the filming of The Hobbit films greatly enhanced perceptions of realism (Michelle, Davis, Hight & Hardy, 232). This blending of fiction with reality, blurs the concept of reality altogether. If the long shots and deep-focus cinematography in Citizen Kane is one way to approach what Bazin looked for in films -which is the faithful portrayal of the world- the modern technologies that create a life-like hyperreality in The Hobbit, may be another one. There is no way of knowing if Bazin would be disappointed in the progress towards his ideal of “total cinema”, however, it can be discussed whether or not the immersion of the audience into fantastical (story-wise) worlds can be considered as evidence of new apparatuses’ and images’ power to construct realities. This cinematic illusion may lead to Bazin’s unattainable idea of “total cinema”, since the world is both reflected the way it is, and constructed as a hyperreality. As Baudrillard argued, in the technologically mediated world that we live in, constructed hyperrealities are the closest we can get to grasping reality and understanding the world as it is. Although favouring directors who are mostly invisible in the aesthetics of a film, Bazin also argued that a director was the true artist of a film and that the aesthetics should be personally linked to the director. Considering the way he applied his vision to the cinematic aesthetic of his Hobbit trilogy, Peter Jackson may have been one of the directors that Bazin would comment on, in his discussions for total cinema. Therefore, it can be said that The Hobbit’s hyperrealistic digital aesthetic adds to the films a certain level of authenticity and believability, just as much as -or maybe even more than Citizen Kane.


Conclusion


To this day, Andre Bazin has been the most discussed and influential film theorist. From his film magazine “Cahiers du cinema” to his book “What is cinema?”, he has highlighted cinema’s purest form and referred to “total cinema”. In his article “The Myth of Total Cinema” he explains how films should represent a faithful copy of nature. He names this perfect illusion of reality “total cinema”. While talking about this futuristic form of cinema, he claims that the reality that is represented in films should be independent of the subjectivity of creative minds. However, by doing so, he also comes to a presupposition that total cinema is impossible and therefore is really just a myth. As technologies develop, though, new possibilities for different cinematic aesthetics are formed. It has since been discussed whether the new technologies that are being used in cinema bring us closer to what Bazin put forwards as “total cinema”.


Vilem Flusser is another important theoretician that especially scrutinises the apparatuses and technical images that produce the moving images which are supposed to reflect reality. Flusser asserts the idea that technical images have the power to not only represent but construct realities. When creating a technical image, he continues, a certain chemical and optical process captures the world the way it is and in its essence. The moving images they create when they are put together, hence, becomes a peephole through which we can observe the world. Consequently, he makes the argument that technical images and the way they are developed in contemporary technologies, make possible the idea of reflecting and creating realities on the screen. A certain form of reality that can be produced by technical images would be “hyperrealities”. Jean Baudrillard explains this term by comparing the real and the fiction. He argues that when the differences between the two are not very clear, a hyperreal world is created. In relation to this, the technical images that create hyperrealities can be looked at as tools for progressing toward “total cinema”.


Analysing Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles and The Hobbit trilogy by Peter Jackson led to the possibility that both making sure that the represented world is as similar to reality as possible and creating a realistic hyperreality that immerses the audience completely can be ways in which cinema artists can pursue Andre Bazin’s controversial and forceful notion of total cinema. Citizen Kane, by using simpler apparatuses and more natural technical images, creates a reality on screen that can hardly be told apart from the real world. Realism, through Welles’s unique style of filming -including lots of long takes and deep focus cinematography- surfaces as a very dominant aesthetic in Citizen Kane. Bazin, having written a book about Welles himself, argues that Citizen Kane is a film that faithfully and authentically represents reality as we experience it. Surprisingly, at the end of the research, The Hobbit, too, has come out as a way to approach total cinema. It has been proven empirically that Jackson’s choice to use 3D high frame rate has created a digital aesthetic that gives the audience a deeper sense of immersion into the world of the movie. The hyperreality that is created in The Hobbit reinforces Bazin’s argument that cinema should immerse the viewer as much as possible and throw them into the world of the movie. While Citizen Kane succeeds at this by minimalising any filming or editing technique that would distract the viewer, The Hobbit establishes this immersion through the realistic visuals and the authentic digital aesthetic that creates a hyperreality.


Through the elaborative research about Andre Bazin’s “total cinema”, Flusser’s “technical images” and Baudrillard’s “hyperreality”, it has been concluded that there are multiple ways to use technical images to resemble reality. While the perfect representation of reality can be a powerful quality to influence the audience, another one is to create hyperrealities that blur the lines between real and fiction in order to absorb the viewer in a deeper sense. While it is still debatable whether or not total cinema is possible; it is clear that if there is an optimal form of cinema that we are consciously or unconsciously progressing towards, technical images and developing apparatuses can bring us closer to it. This claim is supported by the evident ways in which Citizen Kane and The Hobbit reinforce the possibility of total cinema by using technical images to capture reality.


Bibliography


1. Bazin, André (1946). “The Myth of Total Cinema.” In: What Is Cinema? Trans. Timothy Barnard. Montreal: Caboose, 2009: pp. 13-20.

2. Flusser, Vilém (1983). Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.

3. Aitken, Ian, ed. The Major Realist Film Theorists: A Critical Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2021.

4. Bazin, Andre. Ontology of the Photographic Image. 1945.

5. Cardullo, R.J. André Bazin, the Critic as Thinker: American Cinema from Early Chaplin to the Late 1950s. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2017.

6. Elliott, Darren. “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - A New Era of Realism?” Thesis, Research Commons at the University of Waikato, 2015.

7. Fabe, Marilyn. Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique. Tenth Anniversary ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

8. Michelle, Carolyn, Charles H Davis, Craig Hight, and Ann L Hardy. “The Hobbit Hyperreality Paradox: Polarization Among Audiences for a 3D High Frame Rate Film.” Convergence (London, England) 23, no. 3 (2017): 229–250.

9. MinistryCinema. “Who Is Andre Bazin? | ‘Who Is’ Movie Bios in Three Minutes or Less.” YouTube. YouTube, November 12, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yvcCqGMmPI.

10. Wolny, Ryszard W. “Hyperreality and Simulacrum: Jean Baudrillard and European Postmodernism.” European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 8, no. 1 (2017): 76. https:// doi.org/10.26417/ejis.v8i1.p76-80.

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