Rudolph Arnheim's Film Theory

Flashcards based on lecture notes about Rudolph Arnheim's film theory.

Aesthetic use of cinema

Arnheim focuses on the medium itself, specifically its formal properties.

Manipulable

According to Arnheim, an art's medium should be this

is film art?

‘film isn’t art because its medium should be manipulable, and reality, the medium of film, isn’t’

Arnheim says film is art because the limitations of reality in film are manipulable

Limitations that can be manipulated

3D to 2D

reduction of depth

absence of color

framing,

editing

absence of other sensory inputs.

Technically visible

What the human eye sees before the brain processes and compensates for visual distortions.

Psychologically visible

How our brain processes visual data to compensate for distortions, allowing us to perceive objects accurately, for example, seeing a table as rectangular even when viewed from an angle.

Technically visible (unreal) or ‘technical limitations of representationalism’

Arnheim argued that film manipulates this rather than objects in the world.

Specifically cinematic manipulations

Examples include fast/slow motion, fades, dissolves, superimpositions, backward motion, stills, and distortion through focus and filter.

Medium (the way things are represented)

Art emphasizes this rather than the object represented.

Symbolic language in art

Translation of the world into the proper codes of the medium.

Purifying of the medium

Over time, an art discovers which forms and themes are most suitable to its medium, leading to this.

Silent cinema of the 1920s

Arnheim believed film found its purest form during this era.

The Jazz Singer

The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, released in 1927.

Predominance of the dialogue

The perfectly coherent (balanced) art was destroyed by this, according to Arnheim.

Equilibrium of forces (‘organic’)

According to Arnheim, art should reflect patterns of the world