While the above may partly be Bazin's thoughts on cinema I believe that there is more to it. Upon reading more Bazin over the last few days I have discovered new thoughts that I had glanced over previously. Sadly these should have been much more apparent at first glance.
In his "Ontology of the Photographic Image" Bazin explains the ideas of mummification and art as a representation of life after death. Excuse me for poorly explaining this. He goes on to explain that the most pure and objective artform is photgraphy and cinema because of the mechanical process involved in recreating the image. He found this to be the most objective representation of real life. Of course he admits that the angle of the camera and the subject of the photo are obviously of a subjective nature. But it is within the process of capturing that image that he finds this objectivity.
Digging deeper into Bazin's essays I found that he does not strive towards one ideal aesthetic or style to create this realism he longs for. He admits that there are multiple ways of acheiving this enlightened state of cinema. He illuminates this point with the contrasting aesthetics of Orson Welle's deep focus and stage settings, the realism through artifice, with the gritty realism portrayed by Neorealist film makers like Rosselini and his to the streets style of film making.
This is where I believe it all gets intersting. Bazin's ideas become a little less defined, at least in the thought that in order to fall into the category of realism one must follow steps 1, 2 and 3. My understanding of Bazin is this. Bazin is looking for the objective realism of the camera. He seems to believe that realism is created through your aestheics rather than your story. He does highly praise those sorts of stories that fall within the realm of realistic day to day life but he emphasises more the stylistic choices of a director to portray a world that exists outside of what is on the screen.
In order to not confuse anyone I would like to elaborate on what I mean with existins outside of the screen. I do not mean that whatever is depicted must exist in our world. I mean that the world created by the filmmakers must exist outside of the frame that is being shown. If I were to dive into the screen there must be a world there that I could run around in. I should be able to grab the camera and pan across and see more of the world and not just the edge of the set.
Now if I were to literally do this that would of course cause a problem for many films and would automatically disqualify many of my favorite films. While Bazin did find those films shot on location to fall within the realm of realism he did not say that this was the only possibility.
Let us move back to Citizen Kane and Orson Welles. This film was shot on stages rather than on location. However, this film feels bigger than sound stages. He has created a world that feels lived in. This is what I have been talking about.
Hopefully I have made my point clear, but I understand that I have been only hitting the tip of the iceberg here when it comes to the details of Bazin's theories. My apologies if you are not following, this is surely my fault.
What I am getting at here is this. I believe that the films of Michel Gondry are perfect examples of films that are not of a realistic nature but can fall under Bazin's idea of realism in cinema.
I will be back with the second half of this talk shortly.
