In Conclusion

IN CONCLUSION

Clearly, a full and real expression of the modern scene and modern experience can not be achieved unless people are observed in accurate relation to their surroundings, in their environment. To do this, there must be establishment and development of character. There must be growth of ideas not only in the theme, but in the minds of the characters. Your individuals must be of the audience. They must be familiar in type and character. They themselves must think and convey their thoughts to the audience; if possible, they must make the audience think along with them; because only in this way will the ‘Cinema’ succeed in its sociological purpose.

And it is these very requirements which will continue to distinguish ‘Cinema’ from story-films; for in the latter, a character is seldom permitted to think other than trivial, personal (selfish?) thoughts, or to have opinions in any way connected with the larger issues of existence. Just as the facts of the Theme must be important facts, so also must be the outlook possessed by the individuals for they are, and in turn their characterization is, conditioned by those same facts. In Cinema this is possible, whereas in the story-film, at any rate under the present conditions of manufacture, facts and ideas as well as characterization are suppressed in the interest of the balance sheet and ‘technique’ alone is left to the Director, who often ends up as a eulogized manager.

Whereas some prefer the attitude of romanticism, others among us may set ourselves the task of building from a materialistic basis. It is purely a question of personal character & inclination, of how strongly you feel about satisfying private artistic fancies or communal aims.

The immediate task is, I believe, to find persuasion to put the people and their problems, their labor & their service, before them. This is also a job of presenting one half of the populace to the other; of bringing a deeper and more intelligent social analysis to bear upon a whole cross section of modern society; exploring its weaknesses, reporting its events, dramatizing its experiences and suggesting a wider and more sympathetic understanding among the prevailing class in society.

For this reason, although it has made special use of actualities rather than artificialities, it is the ‘method’ which prompts this practice that is important and not the type of film produced. The sociological, political or other purposes served by the ‘method’ will continue to be of abiding importance. The ‘Method’ actually designs our attitude toward our ‘corpus’ and is visible as well as effective right from the stage of research & scripting, to location & characters hunt; it permeates among people through the shooting and when the film is complete; its screenings precipitate the resolve. And that effect of the ‘Method’ is the real purchase of our enterprise.

In short, the ‘Method’ is more complex than its traditions would have us believe. No longer is it the mere pictorial description of things & people & places of interest. Observation alone is not enough. Camera portrayal of movement, no matter how finely observed, is purely a matter of aesthetic ‘good taste’. The essential purposes lie in the ends applied to this observation. Conclusions must be indicated and results of observation must be put across in a manner that demand high creative endeavor. Below the surface of the modern world lie the actuating issues of modern civilization. In industry, commerce, civics and nature, mere superficial portrayal of actuality is in-sufficient. Such surface observation implies no intellectual ability. It is the meaning ‘behind’ the thing and significance ‘underlying’ the people that are the inspirations for our ‘approach’. Every manufacture, every organization, every function, every scheme of things represents at one point or another, the fulfillment of a human interest. No matter whether politics, culture, economics or religion, we are concerned with the impersonal forces that dictate this modern world. The puny individual must be re-focused into his normal relationship to the general mass, must take his place alongside in the community’s solid struggle for existence and forsake personal achievement.

Above all Cinema must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It can not regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy. Cinema can & does draw upon the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In other words we are allowed to grow nostalgic and refer to ‘past’ but only with the aim of ‘illuminating the present’. In no sense, then, is a historical re-construction, Cinema and attempts to make it so are destined to fail. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations.

We may assume, then, that this determines the approach to a subject but not necessarily the subject itself. Further, that, this approach is defined by the ‘aims behind production’, by the Director’s intentions and by the ‘forces making production a possibility’. And, because of the film camera’s ability for reproducing a semblance of actuality and because the function of Editing is believed to be the main-spring of film-creation, it has so far been found that the best material for this purpose is naturally, and not artificiality, contrived. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that this method differs from story-film merely in its preference for natural material. That would imply that ‘natural material’ alone gives the distinction, which is untrue. To state that it only makes use of analytical editing methods is equally mistaken.

The postulate that it is realistic as opposed to the romanticism of the story-film with its theatrical associations, is again in-correct; for although it may be realistic in its concern with actuality, realism applies not only to the material but more specifically to the method of approach to the material. Such inspirations demand a sense of social responsibility difficult to maintain in our world today. That I am fully prepared to admit. But, at the same time, you dare not be neutral or else you become merely descriptive & factual. The function that the film performs within the present social & political sphere must be kept constantly in mind. Relative freedom of expression for your views will obviously vary with the production forces you serve and the political system in power. In countries still maintaining a parliamentary system, discussion and projection of beliefs within certain limits will be permitted only so long as they do not seriously oppose powerful vested interest; which most often happens to be the force controlling production. Under an authoritarian system, freedom is permissible provided opinions are in accord with those of the State for social & political advance, until, presumably, such a time shall arrive when the foundation of the State are strong enough to withstand criticism. Ultimately, of course, you will appreciate that you can neither make films on themes of your own choice, nor apply treatments to accepted themes, unless they are in sympathy with the aims of the dominant system.

Compared with the broader aspects of ‘Artistic Vision’, which have absorbed my attention lately, film seems a limited subject. Yet what attracted the young student in the 20’s was not only the new, fantastic, inquisitive and sentimental play of moving shadows in itself, but also a critical challenge to certain principles of theory. It frequently happens that a guiding theme, whose development will occupy a man’s later life, takes shape around his 20^th year. At about that time I started to make copious notes on what I called ‘Materialtheorie’. It was a theory meant to show that artistic and scientific descriptions of reality are cast in moulds that derive not so much from the subject-matter itself as from the properties of the medium or Material employed. I was impressed by geometrically and numerically simple, elegant forms, by the regularity and symmetry found early cosmologies as well as in Bohr’s atomic model, in philosophical systems, and in the art of the primitives and children. At that time, my teachers were laying the theoretical and practical foundations of the Gestalt Theory at the Psychological Institute, University of Berlin; and I found myself fastening to what may be called, ‘Kantian turn of the new doctrine’, according to which even the most elementary processes of vision do not produce mechanical recordings of the outer world but ‘organize’ the sensory raw-material creatively, according to principles of simplicity, regularity & balance, which govern the receptor mechanism.

This discovery of the Gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium. Now, obviously, when Art was thus asserted to be an equivalent rather than a derivative, cinematography represented a test case. If a mechanical reproduction of reality, made by a machine, could be art, then the theory was wrong. In other words, it was a precarious encounter of reality and art that teased me into action. I undertook to show in detail how the very properties that make photography and film fall short of perfect reproduction, can act as the necessary moulds of an artistic medium. The simplicity of this thesis and the obstinate consistency of its demonstration explain, I believe, why a quarter of a Century after the publication of ‘Film’ the book is – still & again – consulted, asked for and stolen from libraries.

Something more hopeful & helpful might have been written, the reader may feel, if there had been less insistence on ‘art’ and more gratitude for useful & enjoyable evenings spent in the movie theatre. Indeed there would be little justification for an indictment that charged violation of this or that aesthetic code. The issue is a more real one. Shape and color, sound and words are the means by which men define the nature and intension of life. In a functioning culture, man’s ideas reverberate from his buildings, statues, songs, and plays. But the population constantly exposed to chaotic sights & sounds is gravely handicapped in finding its way. When the eyes and ears are prevented from perceiving meaningful order, they can only react to the brutal signals of immediate satisfactions.

Let me bring this conclusion nearer home to Faiz Ahmad ‘Faiz’, the beauty of whose romantic metaphor was as intense as his message for the downtrodden; in his own words, “in totality, he value of a couplet includes both romantic niceties and social consciousness; a good couplet, therefore, is one that meets the standard not only of art, but of life as well. I crafted my style as an amalgamation of romance & revolution.”

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