Javier Lloret - Review Tarkovsky - Stam

I read “Sculpting in time” from Andrei Tarkovsky some years ago, during my daily bus trips to the art school where I was doing my Erasmus exchange. I think it was the first time that I had to travel one hour to go to school. I didn’t feel really excited about the idea, but it really help me finish faster the books I was reading.

During the first and second trimester of this course, I read again some chapters of it. It is written in an informal way. When I was reading it, sometimes I felt like I was reading Tarkovsky's personal diary. He shares his experiences as a filmmaker and his ideas about how cinema should be. One of the parts that I found more interesting is the one where Tarkovsky talks about film-making and art.

Tarkovsky has a strong opinion about this topic. He thinks that due to the influence of mass media, art films are not known by most of the audience. “Commercial cinema can be entertaining and fun. But in that case for the public don’t get anything else than a meaningless chitchat”

He states that an art film enforces to the audience to think and feel, on contrary than mainstream commercial films that shut down their feelings and thoughts in such a way that there is no point of return.

In the more radical part of his discourse, he exposes that cinema without artistic intention, steals people’s time in a cynical way, destroying their intellect.

He prays for the idea of the artist filmmaker who takes his responsibilities and risks as an artist.

“One artistic idea is always for the artist something tormentor, something almost dangerous for his life. His materialization is only comparable to a relevant step in the life of a person”.

His idea of the true artist filmmaker might be considered romantic and radical. Influenced by the ideas of the Frankfurt school, reflected on the chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). In this chapter Adorno and Horkheimer developed their idea of the mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more intellectually difficult high arts.

But on different chapters of the book, Tarkovsky also describes as fundamental some of the contributions of different members of this crew, on the process of creation of his films. So he didn’t deny the collaborative side of the creation of a film, but he defends the idea of the director as the responsible of result, of taking the decisions, and on other words, as the author of the film.

And was on that period of time, when I was reading his book on the bus, going towards the art school where I was an exchange student, when I had a course on theory of film where I had to read the book Film Theory from Robert Stam. In this book, Stam goes through the evolution of film theories in the 20th century, placing them in their historical context, trying not to take sides on any concrete theory, trying to be as neutral as possible. At the beginning of the book he states: "Film theories don't displace each other on a linear progression... Film theories don't become unused like an old car.... Film theories don't die, they are transformed."

One of the chapters of the book was dedicated to the auteur (the French word for author) theory. I was already familiar to it because of the previous courses I took about history of european cinema on the 50s and 60s. The Nouvelle Vague was one of the cinematic movements that had a bigger influence on me.

"Auteur theory" was the dominant film theory at the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s. It was Alexander Astruc, in 1948, with his essay about the camera-stylo, who started referring to film directors as authors, encouraging directors to wield cameras as writers use pens. Astruc in that essay said that cinema was becoming a new medium for self-expression comparable to the paintings or traditional storytelling. The French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, co-founded by André Bazin ,where film critics like Truffaut, Rivette and Godard, before becoming well known filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague, were writing with high enthusiasm about the work of directors like Hitchcock or Howard Hawks, became a key institution for spreading the "Auteur theory". Truffaut criticized cinema as an industrial process and introduced the idea that cinema, through the mise-en-scéne, will be related, not in content but in style, to his auteur, the director of the film.

And from my point of view, there is a clear connection between the ideas of Tarkovsky, defending the cinema as another form of Art and the Auteur theory.

Another chapter of the book was called "The death of the Auteur". In this chapter the critics that the "Auteur theory" got are introduced. One of them was that the film directors that didn't have a recognizable mise-en-scéne, a recognizable style to visualize their films were not considered auteurs. That left out of the Auteur picture, of course, the directors that worked on the industry of Hollywood, they didn't have enough control over the films they were directing to be considered Auteurs. But not only them, but also other film directors with a more variable mise-of-scéne. Some critics argue that the cult to the Auteur made film critics to over rate films only because their director had a visual stamp easily recognizable. They think that a more variable style should be considered more rich in certain way.

On the other hand, good films of those directors not considered auteurs were not so well considered. Another criticism to the "Auteur theory" that is related with the previous one, was in the considered Auteur films, it seemed that the style was way more important than the content.

But I wonder, could not these issues be applied to any other branch of art? Is there not the same cult to the auteur? don't also art critics enforces artists of other disciplines that have a recognizable style? or is just the fact that artists with their work are analyzing themselves, trying to understand their motivations and that need to create? that recognizable style is not connected with their personality, their experiences and interests?

Was not the Auteur theory a brave initiative, that pushed to film directors to take responsibilities of the result of their work? highlighting the difference between the ones that had artistic intentions and the ones that didn't?

Of course to differentiate them is a risk, and not always is going to be as easy as differentiate black & white. There are a lot of filmmakers that work on the edge, or that have direct considered really artistic with other ones where but I think these are the risks that Tarkovsky referred to when he explained his visions of cinema as art.

Bibliography
"Post-War Cinema and modernity. A film reader". John Orr and Olga Taxidou.
"Film Theory". Robert Stam.
"Sculpting in time". Andrei Tarkovsky.