[Film] Realism vs Formalism

In godard's film, La Chinese(1967) there is one scene university student talk about real artist of 1900's.They jot down a lot of names on the board and start deleting the name. Discussion is been going in the frame. Now is the turn of movie artists. There are two names left.Lumiere brothers and George Melious, Lumiere was first people invent film and Melious was first man try fatasy films like a "atrip to the moon"Because the students are described as realists supporting Maoism, it seem that they are going to choose Lumiere brothers who made realism film. However, they chose Melious in different notion with other arts area and said... "Lumiere recorded the world butMelious analysed the world.

Realism vs Formalism. It has been major controversy continually in film history. It may started from a big controversy betweenAndre baisan and sergei einsenstain in 1950. Andre baisan who was the most famous critic hardly supported realism. He really disagreed with formalised beauty in film (like a cross cutting or Mcguffin effect of Hichicok's way). In contrast Einsenstain,formalised film. If I mention a very simple example, in realism view, murderer have to kill people in the frame but in formalism view,only killer's knife or some connoted images can speak proxy. Baisan really hated this kind of method such as cross cutting and montage way.

Realism - crosscutting, a lot of sound effect and montage constructingFormalism - deep focus, longtake, other objective camera expression.

Hm... Let me briefly talk taking it to journalism. Nowadays a number of popular review of film just twist and hide a fact for good expression. If I particularly substitute it to now's controversy. Tabloid can be placed in Formalism. And academic analysis only concern abouta fact and the truth. Very realism facts... Now it's clear which side we should be.

Here is Andre baisan's saying

"Editors, who are editing for us, cut and make a decision instead of us. Because editor use a way to concentrate on one point,We just receive it without any idea. As a result, we are came off our right to define our stand."

Obviously it's true but...intolerance of metaphor(cutting) only work in academic. In forms of expression arts, I more support formalism.