Bela Balazs and Jean Epstein: The Close-Up
Summary
TLDRIn this video lecture, we explore the work of silent era film theorists Béla Balázs and Jean Epstein, focusing on their analysis of the close-up and the face on screen. The lecture discusses three key concepts: revelation, expression, and duration, illustrating how cinema reveals hidden aspects of reality, expresses inner emotions, and captures the flow of time. By examining these ideas, we gain insights into how silent films communicate profound human experiences through visual means, beyond the limitations of language and traditional art forms.
Takeaways
- 🎬 The lecture focuses on the close-up and the face on the screen, discussing two silent era film theorists: Béla Balázs and Jean Epstein.
- 📽️ The close-up is a significant topic in classical film theory as it exemplifies unique cinematic images distinct from theater and other arts.
- 🇭🇺 Béla Balázs and 🇫🇷 Jean Epstein are renowned for their enthusiasm and investigation of the close-up, particularly focusing on the face on screen.
- 🧠 Theorists like Munsterberg and Arnheim were interested in manipulations of space and time, but Balázs and Epstein channel their energy into the close-up.
- 🔍 Revelation: Cinema is analogous to a microscope, revealing aspects of the world hidden to natural perception. Epstein uses the phrase 'drama of the microscope.'
- 🗣️ Expression: The close-up allows access to the mind's contents through the body and face. Balázs argues that body movements express non-rational self directly.
- ⏳ Duration: Based on Henri Bergson's philosophy, duration is a non-quantifiable form of time as a flow of subjective consciousness.
- 🎶 Balázs uses Bergson's concept of melody to explain how faces in close-up are experienced as a whole, not just the sum of their parts.
- 🧩 Epstein and Balázs emphasize the limitations of language and signs, arguing that the close-up can convey emotions and thoughts more directly.
- 🎥 Silent films are seen as a medium that teaches us to read expressions and emotions without relying on language, highlighting the purity of visual communication.
Q & A
Who are the two silent era film theorists discussed in this video lecture?
-The two silent era film theorists discussed are Béla Balázs and Jean Epstein.
Why is the close-up a significant technique in classical film theory?
-The close-up is significant because it exemplifies unique kinds of images that distinguish film from theater and other arts. It allows for the detailed portrayal of emotions and expressions, which are crucial elements that classical film theorists find interesting.
What are the three terms introduced to understand the preoccupations of Balázs and Epstein?
-The three terms introduced are revelation, expression, and duration.
How does the concept of 'revelation' relate to film according to the lecture?
-Revelation in film refers to cinema's ability to reveal aspects of reality that are invisible or otherwise inaccessible to natural human perception. This is akin to using a microscope to uncover hidden details.
What is the 'revelationist answer' as described by Malcolm Turvey?
-The revelationist answer is the idea that cinema's most significant property is its ability to uncover features of reality invisible to human vision, revealing the true nature of reality to viewers using techniques that differ from human sight, such as time-lapse and slow-motion photography.
How does Balázs view the relationship between language and the body in communication?
-Balázs believes that written communication, which has dominated Western civilization, suppresses a more natural and primordial ability to express oneself through the body and face. He argues that body movements and facial expressions are direct expressions of the soul, offering a more pure form of communication than language.
What does Jean Epstein mean by 'the close-up is drama and high gear'?
-Epstein suggests that a close-up can directly convey abstract emotions and concepts, such as love, through facial expressions. The close-up intensifies the drama by making the audience feel they are witnessing the emotion itself, not just an acted representation.
What is the concept of 'duration' as influenced by Henri Bergson?
-Duration, in Bergson's philosophy, refers to the non-quantifiable, continuous flow of subjective time experienced as a whole. It contrasts with the scientific measurement of time as discrete, equally distant moments. Bergson's duration is the experience of time as an uninterrupted flow of consciousness.
How does Balázs apply Bergson's concept of duration to the experience of film?
-Balázs applies Bergson's concept by arguing that a face in a close-up is experienced as a whole, similar to how a melody is experienced as a continuous flow rather than discrete notes. This holistic perception allows the audience to feel the emotional essence directly.
What is the significance of language and signs according to Bergson's philosophy as mentioned in the lecture?
-Bergson is suspicious of language and signs because they are human-made abstractions that cannot fully capture the continuous flow and complexity of real phenomena. He argues that relying on language and signs can obscure the true nature of experiences and the world.
Outlines
🎬 Introduction to Silent Film Theorists
The video lecture introduces two silent era film theorists, Hungarian Béla Balázs and French Jean Epstein, focusing on their fascination with the close-up shot and the face on the screen. These theorists emphasized the close-up as a unique feature of film that differentiates it from theater and other arts. Their writings offer a passionate exploration of this technique, contrasting with the more logical approaches of other theorists like Munsterberg and Arnheim.
🔍 Revelation in Cinema
The concept of 'revelation' in cinema is introduced, likening it to a microscope that reveals hidden aspects of the visual world. Malcolm Turvey's concept of 'revelationism' is discussed, highlighting cinema's unique ability to uncover features of reality invisible to human vision. Techniques like time-lapse and slow motion exemplify this capacity. The term 'revelation' is used to describe cinema's power to show what is otherwise inaccessible to natural perception.
💡 Expression and the Face
Balázs and Epstein's views on 'expression' in film are examined. Balázs emphasizes the body's and face's ability to express the mind's contents, considering it a more natural form of communication compared to language. Epstein poetically describes how emotions like love are directly visible on a face in a close-up. This section underscores the silent film's power to convey emotions through visual means, bypassing the need for spoken language.
⏳ Duration and Temporal Experience
The philosophical concept of 'duration,' influenced by Henri Bergson, is explored. Bergson's idea of time as a flow of subjective consciousness, rather than quantifiable units, is discussed. Balázs applies this to the experience of watching a film, suggesting that a close-up of a face is perceived as a whole rather than a sum of parts. This section delves into how film can convey complex emotional and temporal experiences that are not easily expressed through language or conventional measurements of time.
📽️ Bergson's Influence on Film Theory
The connection between Bergson's philosophy and film theory is further explored. Bergson's skepticism towards language and quantification is highlighted, emphasizing the idea that words and numbers are inadequate for capturing the full essence of reality and experience. Epstein and Balázs adopt this viewpoint, arguing that film, particularly silent film, can convey deeper truths through visual means. This section also discusses the limitations of language in film theory and the enduring significance of silent cinema.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Close-up
💡Revelation
💡Expression
💡Duration
💡Medium specificity
💡Silent era
💡Jean Epstein
💡Béla Balázs
💡Henri Bergson
💡Microscope analogy
Highlights
Introduction to silent era film theorists: Hungarian Bela Balasz and French Jean Epstein.
Focus on the close-up technique and the face on screen as discussed by classical film theorists.
The close-up exemplifies a unique image distinguishing film from theater and other arts.
Discussion on Munsterberg's interest in manipulations of space and time, Arnheim's focus on the imageness of cinematic images.
Balasz and Epstein's enthusiasm and investigation of the close-up technique.
Introduction of three key terms: revelation, expression, and duration.
Revelation: Cinema as an instrument revealing aspects of the world hidden to natural perception.
Expression: The relationship between the contents of a mind and a body's ability to express it.
Duration: Influenced by Henri Bergson's concept of subjective experience of time.
Balasz's view on language as a tarnished version of communication compared to the body's natural expression.
Epstein's poetic view: The close-up allows seeing abstract concepts like love directly on a face.
Bergson's influence: Time experienced as a flow of subjective consciousness, not just a succession of moments.
Balasz's idea that a melody is experienced as a whole, not just the sum of its notes.
Discussion on the limitations of language and quantification in capturing the essence of film and human experience.
The excitement about silent film for its ability to express beyond language.
Transcripts
hi folks and welcome to our video lecture on uh the close-up and the face on the screen
um so in this unit we're gonna be talking about two silent era film theorists the hungarian
film theorist bella bolash and the french film theorist and filmmaker john epstein
the close-up is something that is discussed by almost every single classical film theorist
it is for obvious reasons in many ways something that a classical film theorist
would find interesting because it seems to exemplify one of the
unique kinds of images that distinguishes film from theater and the other arts but we want to
focus on these two theorists who are above all the most famous for their enthusiasm and investigation
of the close-up as a technique and in particular the face on screen so let's just go back to our
list of uh the catalog of distinctions between film and theater that we did on day one um
these were the categories that most interested munsterberg he was very much interested in uh
the manipulations of space and time especially things like close-ups as a manifestation of
attention and flashbacks as a manifestation of memory arnheim was interested in the imageness of
the cinematic image insisting that it's not just a uh reproduction of reality but a transformation of
it and balaji and epstein really in this unit are going to focus on this one thing so think about
what we can do by channeling all of our energy into just one technique or one singular aspect
the close-up that's what we're going to focus on today and um i want to give us three terms for
understanding the preoccupations of balash and epstein who are different film theorists but have
a lot in common even though the kind of enthusiasm of their writing is going to seem like a departure
from the kind of steady um kind of logical argumentation that you'll get from munsterberg
and arnheim both of whom remember are trained uh psychologists or at least they have an investment
in psychology and in the academic study of the workings of the mind these two theorists are
going to be interested and influence a lot more by contemporary french philosophy really we're
going to get into that in a bit so let's go back to this list revelation expression and duration
all of these uh words are terms that you are familiar with but we're going to be using them
in slightly distinct specialized ways so what do i mean by revelation you can think about revelation
as the argument that cinema is analogous to a microscope or another kind of instrument of
revealing the visual world revealing aspects of the world that are hidden to natural perception
and epstein will actually use this phrase possibilities are already appearing for the drama
of the microscope and the best known account of revelation as a concept that guy's classical film
theory is from a text that we're not reading as a secondary source a book called doubting vision
film in the revelation revelation is tradition by a film scholar named malcolm turvey but he
offers this concept which i think is quite useful for understanding um what balosh and
epstein have in common and in fact uh something that isn't common with a lot of classical film
theorists so he writes at the outset of his book classical film theorists adhered for the most part
to the doctrine of medium specificity the view that in order for the cinema to be accepted as
a legitimate art it must be shown to possess valuable attributes of its own ones that the
other pre-established arts do not have needless to say theorists propose different answers to these
questions one such answer is that the cinema's most significant property one which the other
arts do not possess or at least don't possess to the same degree is its ability to uncover features
of reality invisible to human vision the value of this property is that it can reveal the true
nature of reality to viewers and the techniques best suited to exploiting it are those that least
resemble human sight i call this the revelationist answer so while i don't want to wholly subscribe
to tervy's picture of revelationism i do want to use that term as a way of categorizing a concept
of thought that recurs throughout these theorists but i want to say it recurs in different
manifestations when tervy says and the techniques best suited to exploiting it are those at least
resemble human sight what he means quite literally are text techniques like these
like time lapse photography in which it is a capacity of film to show time in a way that's
impossible for my human vision to comprehend through time lapse right think about you know i
i don't have the ability to see the world unfold in this way an opposite though similar observation
or technique is slow motion right um because of the very fact of cinema that it can change
its rate of recording um i can see aspects of the world unfolding um that are too fast for my
vision to comprehend and think about not just the temporal aspect but the spatial aspect microscopic
imagery and we might even say as an offshoot of microscopic imagery the more ordinary close-up
and the degree to which this is something that i can't perceive in real life is a question that i
might pose to you to what degree is the close-up really something that ordinary perception cannot
capture certainly not in the same way that a microscopic image um is impossible for me to see
but i want you to kind of keep this rhetoric alive as a way to something for something to investigate
as you read through um so that's what i mean by revelation if i use that word in class i
don't just mean you know something i don't mean something religious and i don't just mean the
very fact of revealing something i mean this idea that cinema can reveal that which is invisible or
otherwise inaccessible to human perception number two something related to revelation is expression
i don't simply mean just the the normal or the ordinary use of that word i want to think of the
kind of etymological basis of expression the idea of squeezing something out that there's something
contained within an object or a body and there's a way that we can get that thing that's inside and
then express it outward like squeezing the water out of a sponge but in this case we're thinking
about the relationship between the contents of a mind and a body or a face's ability to express or
manifest the contents of the mind and you might guess that the close-up for both of these thinkers
but though in different ways might be a way to grant access to the contents of the mind a tool
that is of expression so balash will say this at the beginning of his book visible man he'll say
for the man of visual culture is not like a deaf mute who replaces words with sign language he does
not think in words whose syllables he inscribes on the air with the dots and dashes of the morse code
his gestures do not signify concepts at all but are the direct expression of his own non-rational
self and whatever is expressed in his face and his movements arises from a stratum of the soul
that can never be brought to the light of day by words here the body becomes unmediated
spirit spirit wrench visible wordless so and once you read the introduction you'll get a
better context of what he's saying here um but right now i just want to um kind of summarize
one of bolasha's main points um which is that the um emphasis on uh written communication
that balash thinks has kind of dominated western civilization and suffused 20th century thought
has suppressed what he thinks is a more natural or primordial ability to express or the contents
of ourselves through our through our bodies and through our faces that is through the surface
um he thinks that there is a kind of tarnished version of communication that comes through
language and an untarnished more pure or pure spirit through their body so you might imagine
for a silent era film theorist film seems a pretty good medium for teaching us once again how to read
or grant ourselves access to the expressions of souls through bodies given that film
gives us pictures of bodies in motion and doesn't grant our ability to hear speech
he'll continue modern philologists and historians of language have established that the origins of
language are to be found in expressive movements the fact that he uttered sounds at the same time
was a secondary phenomenon when subsequently exploited for practical purposes the immediately
visible spirit was then transformed into a mediated audible spirit and which was lost in the
process as an all translation but the language of gestures is the true mother tongue of mankind so
this is that kind of idea crystallized here that i was mentioning uh just a moment ago language he
thinks is a is a mediation whereas the movements of the body and of the face he thinks are a less
mediated more pure access to what's going on inside of a mind or what he'll call a soul
and you can see similar issues in in john epstein he'll write the close-up is drama and high gear
i can see love it half lowers its eyelids raises the arc of the eyebrows laterally inscribes itself
on the taut forehead so the idea that and epstein is far more poetic um with
his writing than balash is when he says i can see love i think what he's trying to do is say
that the kind of abstract concept of love gets so written into a facial expression that i don't see
a face translating or say acting the expression of love i see it immediately right there on the
face this is the kind of argument that epstein and belosch will similarly make
about the close-up and the face and the body's ability to express what we might call the contents
of minds and souls that which is inside um third is uh a concept called duration um and by duration
i do mean something similar to what we would call say like the duration of time like the duration
of the movie was was two hours it is related to that ordinary use of the term um but i'm speaking
in particular about a philosophical concept from a french philosopher named henri bergson
who was heavily influential upon both bella bollage and john epstein if you're familiar
with bergson you'll see his ideas rampant throughout both of these thinkers but bellagh
himself will actually invoke the name of bergson in one of our readings so balash will summarize
one kind of concept from bergson's notion of duration or in the french duret as follows balosh
says henry bergson's analysis of duration and time can help us to gain an understanding of this novel
dimension a melody berks and asserts consists of individual notes that follow one another in time
but despite this the melody has no extension in time for from the vantage point of the
first note the last one is still the last one is already implicit and on the last note the
first one is still interpretively present that is what makes every note part of a melody which
latter as a form has a duration a course to run and yet exists as a totality from the outset
instead of gradually coming into being in time for the melody is not just the notes but their audible
relationship this relationship is not temporal it exists in a different spiritual dimension
physiognomy or say the ability to recognize a face as a whole has a relation to space
comparable to that existing between melody and time so this seems very difficult and dense
hard to figure out and one of the reasons i want to bring up bergson is because i don't think it's
a trivial connection in bringing out birds in here so i want to talk about this passage and i want to
talk about a little more broadly about what henri bergson's all about and why he's influencing blush
and epstein so first this idea of the melody what the heck is
trying to say about a melody having no extension in time even though it consists of individual
notes that follow one another in time so the first thing i want to do is simply try to explain
what uh what balosh is saying about the melody through bergson's notion of duration it's quite
difficult but the way i can kind of break it down is basically one of bergson's major arguments
about how we experience time as distinct from how time is understood in a kind of scientific world
view as a succession of equally distant moments that we break down into these very conveniently
organized units like seconds or minutes or hours or days and weeks and years
bergson wants to say fine and good that we have a way of measuring time but that doesn't actually
tell us much about what time is as an experience he wants to say that duration is the word he's
giving for the non-quantifiable form of time as a flow of subjective consciousness so bergson
will say we experience time as a whole also even though we break it down into seconds and minutes
so in the melody happy birthday to you which i have written out here indeed i can organize
it into these mathematically uh precise bits of notation they're both kind of spatially distant
and they're kind of marked temporally but when you think of the melody happy birthday to you
it is itself a kind of whole it's not equivalent to the sum of its notes it is experienced as a
whole thing what happens when i sing happy birthday to you and then i go and i stop
your mind anticipates the next note it's almost impossible because i've broken the whole so i
might say that following bergson following bolash's invocation of him a melody is experienced
as a temporal hole despite being broken down into discreet notes memory sensation and anticipation
all blend together even though you might say they you know happen in these kind of temporally
distinct markers bergson's whole philosophy is to say is to describe the way in which time is
a subjectively experienced thing that cannot be quantified so non-quantification is the name of
the game when you're talking about bergson's philosophy he'll look at a kind of physics
chart measuring the trajectory of the baseball and he'll say that's great for doing physics but
really i want you to think about the way in which time t equals zero or time t equals one
is a poor way to understand time as the thing that we are living inside of or that is the
content of our subjective consciousness um so this is bergson's philosophy what does this have to do
with faces one of balosh's reasons for bringing up bergson on the melody when he's talking about
something as spatial as a close-up of a face is because he wants to hammer home the idea that i
can't quantify the the face into discreet parts that themselves communicate bits of information
he wants to say when i look at falcon eddie's face and and joan of arc like i'm doing here it hits
me in one hole he in fact wants to say what i'm seeing is her soul i'm seeing her interiority i'm
seeing her emotion he's saying what i'm not seeing are these uh tiny movements that i then pause
think about calculate and then deduce that those micro movements suggest that she is experiencing
a dark sadness mixed with a kind of turmoil and also a sense of self righteousness or something
like that he wants to say i'm getting it directly of course this is a kind of poetic argument and
one that you have to ask well what are the grounds for this argument um what we're trying to do is
to figure out what it is about the medium of film that would lead someone to make such a bold claim
a related concept in bergson's philosophy that you're going to see in bolash and in epstein and
which we can actually think about as related to what we've been talking about with this suspicion
of quantification is an equivalent suspicion of signs or language as something that we might
imagine is adequate translation of the contents of the world or the contents of the mind so bergson
in one of his books will say in order to think movement a constantly renewed effort of the mind
is necessary signs are made to dispense us with this effort by substituting for the moving
continuity of things in artificial reconstruction um so bergson is going to be not suspicious
of language and numbers and quantification on the face of it he's more so just suspicious
that people mistake language and numbers and quantification as equivalent to or exhaustive
of the phenomena of the world that is what's out there and the phenomena of experience itself
he always wants to say that there are some things that language words and numbers are
not going to account for and you can see how much this kind of thinking infuses the thought
of our thinkers on the close-up um epstein for example in one of his essays that i'm not asking
you to read but i think this is a useful example says we say red soprano sweet cypress when there
are only velocities movements vibrations in other words a very bergsonian sentence epstein is trying
to get us to understand that these terms are merely abstractions that we've agreed upon
as referring to certain properties or maybe things in the world but he wants to say he wants
to remind us that they are themselves merely human constructed abstractions whereas if i ask what's
actually in the world it's something like the ineffability of vibration of rhythm of movement
so epstein will sometimes slip into these kind of grand philosophical proclamations about the
limitations of language but you should also see this as very much related to the opening of bella
bolash's book the visible man which i've asked you to read in which he thinks that the dominance
of language the kind of uh the primacy of the printing press as the technology that is the most
influential thing is obscuring the fact that there are ways of accessing the world and ourselves
that are beyond language and that's why they're so excited about silent film once again this is
about a film before sound before talkies the idea that when we look at a face on the big screen for
these thinkers it can seem to express contents of of the mind that almost defy an easy translation
into words even though you'll see throughout these pieces of writing most of what they're
trying to do is in some sense find words adequate to to describing their experience of these things
because film theory is a medium conducted in in language ironically enough but this is something
that i want you to think about as you're as you're reading okay so we'll talk about these
readings in class and we'll talk about how they relate to our film the master in a bit thanks
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