THE FUTURE of CINEMA by Alexandre Astruc Translated by Adrian Martin
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THE FUTURE OF CINEMA by Alexandre Astruc translated by Adrian Martin The only chance any art has of reaching Let’s get back to cinema. Here’s the para- maturity lies in the extent to which it can dox: the art of film is currently the art of become a form of expression. The prob- saying nothing. What it does manage to lem of cinema’s future (we discuss it a say, it says despite itself, to the extent that lot at present) is completely wrapped up it shuts up. It’s no coincidence, to be sure, in this question: will the cinema manage that cinema started as the art of silence. to become the means of expressing abso- This art was born gagged, and it had to be lutely any human thought — or not? Or, taught how to speak, but it never gave a to put it another way: will it be possible blessed thought to opening its mouth. This to one day say on film what others have silence is definitely revealing: but only said, for centuries, on painted canvases from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis or or in the pages of novels? sociology, the domain of which—whatever one’s opinion of German aesthetics—does That is a far cry from the current situa- not coincide with that of art history. Amer- tion of our art. To grasp the full signifi- ican comedy belongs to the 20th century, cance of this question, we must obliter- but in just the same way that the popular ate a great deal from our minds: the fact novel is linked to the 19th: it signifies the that cinema is still, today, merely a spec- era, but does not create it. To put it anoth- tacle and that, apart from some marvel- er way: the 19th century is Stendhal and lous exceptions, its greatest successes Rimbaud, not Eugène Sue. I realise that, in only ever happen on the levels of enter- sociological terms, Sue might be more in- tainment and anecdote. The great names teresting than Balzac. But Sue is complete- of painting or literature do not belong ly defined by his era (he wrote, every day, only to writers or painters, i.e., those by taking down the dictation of what the artisans or technicians able to place a era expected from him), while Mallarmé certain mode of address in the service and his little pieces of paper defined the of a particular sensibility; they belong, era by expressing something essential. above all, to those minds who could in- scribe in their works what we can call a The true authors of films are their pro- metaphysics, belonging just as much to ducers. There are no Collected Works the history of the mind as to a history of Alfred Hitchcock or William Wyler; of forms. Michelangelo was not only a only those of David Selznick and Darryl painter adept at painting bodies in tor- Zanuck. Scripted for mediocre sensibil- ment, and Balzac not solely a builder of ities, it is fundamental that they reflect intrigues, once he had learned his craft only temperaments that are nothing out from Walter Scott. The art of the West of the ordinary. However, the domain of has never been just an art of ideas; its sensibility is clearly not the same as the painters are lyric poets just as its philos- domain of art; at best, there are moments ophers, too, are poets. Pascal is a philos- (such as the Romantic periods) when they opher and Racine a playwright, but they coincide. Of course, Beethoven is “easier say the same thing: that man is nothing to take” than Bach, because Beethoven without grace. Nietzsche proclaimed the shares a common denominator with Ro- death of God, but the cry also belonged, manticism. In cinema, the essential ques- at the close of 19th century, to Balzac the tion for an author is precisely how to dole novelist and Debussy the composer; that out this common denominator: that’s why very same cry, of a universe torn apart all subjects are exactly the same. Imagine by its essential movement, sneaks inside Mallarmé having to disguise himself as the icy rhetoric of Mallarmé, as well as Pierre-Jean de Béranger 01 in order to reas- Paul Cézanne’s apples. sure his public. 46 In cinema, it seems, such disguise is Not only show it all, but express it all. The more and more necessary. Note well the tiny patch of ground that we had allowed fact that, once upon a time, this question it, midway between boulevard theater, was never even posed. Why? Because, the popular novel, and reportage, is now for the first 50 years of its history, the do- exhausted: we cannot kickstart one hun- main of cinema precisely coincided with dred more poetic documentaries on Paris, the reigning sensibility of its time. The surveys of current events, or American themes of silent cinema, for example, are comedies. What’s left to say? Everything. post-war themes (escape, exoticism, bars, Cinema has had its chroniclers and its jazz, childishness, cops, etc). Cinema has photographers, now it awaits its Stend- benefitted, up until now, from a state of hal, its Shakespeare, its Pascal, its Paul innocence: that’s why there have been so Valéry, or its Proust. Yet that’s why we few true cineastes maudits, cursed film- must still carry a mask, because Stendhal makers — Jean Vigo maybe, or today is allowed to hang around for a hundred Erich von Stroheim — whereas in paint- years, but us… ing and poetry… And, likewise, so few strangled, totally misunderstood films. In Lately, cinema has been experiencing a order for cinema to have its “Manet Af- fundamental crisis. Something has died: fair” or its “Baudelaire Scandal,” we had the spectacle-film, a visual narration last- to wait for La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, ing 90 minutes, divided into 20 sequences 1939), whose audience smashed up the and around 600 shots. The cinema which seats, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is busy being born will resemble a book (Robert Bresson, 1945), or The Magnif- far more than a spectacle; its language icent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942). will be that of the essay—poetic, dramat- These works shocked not because they ic, and dialectical all at once. We really were in themselves shocking, but because have to convince ourselves that the cur- they had forgotten to wear their disguise rent conditions governing the exploitation costumes. of cinematic vision are not truly definitive. There is no reason to believe that cinema Renoir, in his creative excitement, as he will always be a spectacle. mowed down rabbits in the clearing of La Règle du jeu, did not realise he had let We cannot yet properly imagine what his “spectacular entrepreneur” mask slip. television will be like, but there is a good He forgot to “make cinema,” and instead chance it will contribute to the creation spoke of what was close to his heart. We of a new cinema addressed, above all, to anticipated La Grande Illusion (1937) as our intelligence. This is why the idea of something that might belong to the “wor- a “Descartes of cinema” is, in itself, not thy film” category; but it immediately so paradoxical, after all.02 If it seems so struck us as something maybe like the today, that’s only because no distributor Liaisons dangereuses of our time, offer- would be insane enough to publicly ex- ing only distant memories of what used to hibit a film which is, on the cinematic be called “cinema.” It was the same story plane, the equivalent to Pascal’s Pensées with Partie de Campagne (1936), which or Valéry’s Monsieur Teste. But Valéry sat in a box for ten years before being has an audience, and it’s large enough that projected. That’s not cinema; it’s an unin- a TV program could be devoted to him terrupted unreeling of celluloid on which several hours a week. something has been caught, impressed — blowing in the wind, like the rifled pages The future of cinema is completely bound of a book. Film is no longer a spectacle; it up in its developmental possibilities as a has become a form of expression. language. The documentary age, when the camera was set up on a street corner And that’s why it needs to disguise it- to record the minor happiness of its im- self: because we have reached the point age-cargo, is well and truly over. Now where cinema is able to say everything. we must speak, and speak in order to say 47 something. Little by little, film replaces Marcel Carné by way of Jacques Feyder, paper or canvas as the privileged material in which the art of film amounts only to where the trace of individual obsessions dramatic staging and the photographic il- are inscribed, where they unfold. The lustration of a narrative, is today giving up filmmaker will come to say “I” just like its final fruits. We cannot watch la Char- the novelist or poet, and sign, in his fe- treuse de Parme (Christian-Jaque, 1947), ver, swaying cathedrals of celluloid, just for instance, without feeling, beyond even as Van Gogh could express himself while any matter of quality, a strange sensation sitting in a chair poised on kitchen tiles. of attending a spectacle from another age, Works will be valuable only to the degree where nothing corresponds to our ideas, that they offer an inner landscape. We ask our preoccupations, our beliefs. the cinema of tomorrow to be the seismo- graph of our hearts, the wayward pendu- This art, which is hardly even a tech- lum inscribing on film the tender dialectic nique, limits itself to animated photogra- of our most cherished ideas.