In the early 20th century there were three mayor flanks to cinema; those were the works of D.W. Griffith in United Status, the German Expressionism, and the Soviet Realism. These three sides were highly political in their content and the developments of the techniques during this period are the basis for today cinema.
D.W. Griffith gift to cinema was to break the “theatrical scene into the cinematic unit of the shot”; by this Griffith developed a new narrative. With techniques such as the cross-cut, the American director managed to bring very distant spaces together in the mind of the spectator. “Griffith discovered that the narrative content of the scene, not the location of the scene, determined the correct placement of the camera and the correct moment to cut from one perspective or setup to another. This discovery is frequently called “grammar and rhetoric” of the film” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 72). This same type of logic in the grammar and rhetoric of the film is still used by filmmakers, even tough there are variations this is the basis. In addition, it is important to note that Griffith’s works had a political touch, generally concerning the theme of racial segregation, such as “The Birth of a Nation” which was propaganda in favor of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the same way, but on the other side of the world, a movement called the Socialist Realism raised in the Soviet Union. The Socialist Realism was a really powerful propaganda that defended the Communist doctrine, as a form of art this was aloud because, “while the flickering images held their audiences captive, the events on the screen emphasized the virtues of the new government and encouraged the people to develop those traits that would best further it. Whereas the American film began as an amusing novelty, the Soviet film was created explicitly as a teacher, not as a clown” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 198). Nevertheless, this Soviet Realism developed the foundations of film editing, because they concentrated on the effects of joining the shots together; this is know as the Soviet Montage. The Soviet Montage is the contribution of this movement to the film industry. “Sergei Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks. Eisenstein was a theorist in addition to being a filmmaker. He established five "methods of montage": 1) Metric: based solely on the length of a shot, 2) Rhythmic: based on the length of a shot, plus the visual composition of the image, 3) Tonal: based on the dominant visual style of an image, 4) Overtonal: based on the interaction of dominant visual styles and 5) Intellectual: based on the symbolic content generated by two (or more) juxtaposed images; a film metaphor” (www.wikipedia.org).
On the other hand, the German Expressionism’s gift to the film industry is in terms of the image and the shot. This is so clear that the term Expressionism refers to the understanding that “the look or style of the visible, the external universe can take its shape, color, and texture from the artist’s intuition of its essential inner being of from internal human sensations.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 175). German Expressionism gave the film industry a critical eye to be smart enough to know the importance of mise-en-scéne elements, symbolism and the psychological perceptive that the camera could work as a “window to the mind; that is that the camera could itself mirror the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a character experiencing an event.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 174,175). One of the two types in which the German films of this era consisted was on the intellectual paradigms of Freud and Weber, which were very political more because of Weber than Freud. On the one hand we have Freud that was born in a Jew family and went to study in Vienna under an intense anti-Semitism, on the other hand is Max Weber which was a German, and his most important works concerned the rationalization of sociology of religion and government. Even tough the movement of cinema were very politically charged and sometimes used as propaganda, today films are not that much because of the invention of TV, but more important than the content is that during these years, the techniques concerning camera movement, subject matter, and even more editing, narrative and rhetoric developed were polished so much that they became what we know today as the basis of filmmaking.
D.W. Griffith gift to cinema was to break the “theatrical scene into the cinematic unit of the shot”; by this Griffith developed a new narrative. With techniques such as the cross-cut, the American director managed to bring very distant spaces together in the mind of the spectator. “Griffith discovered that the narrative content of the scene, not the location of the scene, determined the correct placement of the camera and the correct moment to cut from one perspective or setup to another. This discovery is frequently called “grammar and rhetoric” of the film” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 72). This same type of logic in the grammar and rhetoric of the film is still used by filmmakers, even tough there are variations this is the basis. In addition, it is important to note that Griffith’s works had a political touch, generally concerning the theme of racial segregation, such as “The Birth of a Nation” which was propaganda in favor of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the same way, but on the other side of the world, a movement called the Socialist Realism raised in the Soviet Union. The Socialist Realism was a really powerful propaganda that defended the Communist doctrine, as a form of art this was aloud because, “while the flickering images held their audiences captive, the events on the screen emphasized the virtues of the new government and encouraged the people to develop those traits that would best further it. Whereas the American film began as an amusing novelty, the Soviet film was created explicitly as a teacher, not as a clown” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 198). Nevertheless, this Soviet Realism developed the foundations of film editing, because they concentrated on the effects of joining the shots together; this is know as the Soviet Montage. The Soviet Montage is the contribution of this movement to the film industry. “Sergei Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks. Eisenstein was a theorist in addition to being a filmmaker. He established five "methods of montage": 1) Metric: based solely on the length of a shot, 2) Rhythmic: based on the length of a shot, plus the visual composition of the image, 3) Tonal: based on the dominant visual style of an image, 4) Overtonal: based on the interaction of dominant visual styles and 5) Intellectual: based on the symbolic content generated by two (or more) juxtaposed images; a film metaphor” (www.wikipedia.org).
On the other hand, the German Expressionism’s gift to the film industry is in terms of the image and the shot. This is so clear that the term Expressionism refers to the understanding that “the look or style of the visible, the external universe can take its shape, color, and texture from the artist’s intuition of its essential inner being of from internal human sensations.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 175). German Expressionism gave the film industry a critical eye to be smart enough to know the importance of mise-en-scéne elements, symbolism and the psychological perceptive that the camera could work as a “window to the mind; that is that the camera could itself mirror the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a character experiencing an event.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 174,175). One of the two types in which the German films of this era consisted was on the intellectual paradigms of Freud and Weber, which were very political more because of Weber than Freud. On the one hand we have Freud that was born in a Jew family and went to study in Vienna under an intense anti-Semitism, on the other hand is Max Weber which was a German, and his most important works concerned the rationalization of sociology of religion and government. Even tough the movement of cinema were very politically charged and sometimes used as propaganda, today films are not that much because of the invention of TV, but more important than the content is that during these years, the techniques concerning camera movement, subject matter, and even more editing, narrative and rhetoric developed were polished so much that they became what we know today as the basis of filmmaking.
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