A debate soon began among filmmakers and theorists as to whether films should seek simply to reproduce what lies before the camera or attempt to alter reality through the filmmaker’s artistry. The formalists, who dominated during the silent era, took the latter view. Theorists such as Sergei Eisenstein and V. I. Pudovkin defended the art of film against those who defamed it by arguing that the filmmaker made decisions about how to depict reality and did not simply set up a camera in front of an event. In particular, editing (or “montage”) provides the means whereby distinct images filmed at separate times can be joined together so as to appear connected. The filmmaker can manipulate images through editing so that the viewer will link the images in her mind, creating the sense of meaning desired by the filmmaker. In this way, the latter can create the desired emotional or intellectual response in the viewer, and so the filmmaker is a genuine artist.
When sound pictures were developed, many (including the formalist Rudolf Arnheim) thought that now the medium would become too “realistic” in its depiction of action and that it would lose the artistic, visual qualities that had dominated silent films. Realists such as André Bazin, however, celebrated the new use of sound and its ability to capture a better sense of reality on film. He argued that films should use less editing and more long shots that allow the viewer the freedom to see the scene as it is rather than as cut up by the filmmakers. He did not completely eschew editing, however, as he liked the “invisible” editing technique of popular Hollywood films that gave an appearance of reality without calling excessive attention to the technique. Siegfried Kracauer took realism further than Bazin in his rejection of the unrealistic details of Hollywood films; he favored the Italian neorealist films such as The Bicycle Thief (1948) that sought to depict ordinary people in ordinary situations.38
In spite of their differences, formalists and realists shared the notion that films are artistic insofar as they prompt viewers to reflect on reality in new ways. In this sense, neither school embraced the idea that films are primarily escapist entertainment. But even escapist films, we might note, give the viewer some sense of reality, albeit a reality that differs from her own. One escapes to the world of film in order to return better equipped to this world, and so even the “idealist” aspect of film serves a “realist” function. In addition, even the most “realistic” films do not simply reproduce reality, as they involve the filmmaker in the decision of what to film and how to film it. Even documentaries or films such as those of Lumière involve choices that are designed to elicit certain responses in the viewer—as indeed Italian neorealism also intended a certain effect on the audience through its attempt at verisimilitude. There is no pure realism possible in film, due to the fact that an artist is involved who processes reality through his or her own subjectivity. Likewise, no art form (including film) can be completely devoid of a relationship with reality, not even surrealism or abstract art, as these too represent the artist’s response to the reality in which one lives. Film is both realistic and artistic at the same time and so involves the elements both formalists and realists attributed to it.39
Debates have continued, however, as to whether this combination of realism and artistry is properly understood by the viewers. Ideological critics such as Colin McCabe have argued that the ostensible “realism” of film causes viewers to overlook the fact that it is a constructed work and so to take it as a representation of reality rather than an ideologically motivated artifact.40 The appearance of reality depicted in the film is actually a cover for its ideology, as what it presents is not reality but an illusion. Only films that discomfort or alienate the viewer—or that radically challenge the normal structure of narrative—can hope to make an effective attempt to bring reality to her. Other theorists have similarly claimed that film viewers cannot distinguish the illusion of film from reality. Jean-Louis Baudry has argued that film viewing is akin to dreaming in providing an experience of regression (psychoanalytically understood) in which the viewer finds the self to be reflected rather than an outside reality, as there is no distinction between reality and self in the primitive, infantile state. In Baudry’s view, viewers believe they are experiencing an outside reality even though they are merely having an experience of self; like the poor prisoners in Plato’s cave, film viewers see only shadows but take them for the real thing.41 Jean Baudrillard has gone even further than Baudry in asserting that reality does not exist anymore in postmodern society, as we have been entirely absorbed into the “hyperreality” created out of pop culture and media images that permit no perspective on a world outside themselves.42
Not all film theorists, however, have accepted these dire pronouncements. Tom Gunning has pointed out that the often-told anecdote about viewers screaming and running for the exit during the first showing of Lumière’s Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat is itself a “myth” without historical basis. Film theorists continue to tell this myth, he suggests, as it supports their own agenda, according to which audiences cannot tell a film from the real thing—even if we have become more sophisticated in our reactions. Gunning suggests that film viewers were never that naïve and are not so now. Rather, their delight at the illusion of the train’s motion was based in a reaction of astonishment at the ability of the apparatus to produce such an illusion—which was never mistaken for reality. At this time, in the early 1900s, as the new creations of technology provoked both fear and confidence, audiences reacted with both fascination and horror at the abilities of these technologies. Amusement parks began to feature roller coasters with simulated collisions that were averted at the last possible moment. Audiences sought new thrills even as they quickly tired of them and had to seek new experiences to shock and amaze them. The excess of special effects and horror-movie “shockers” today should show that we are still in quest for such experiences in film, not to mention the new fascination with virtual reality technology. In all this, however, Gunning contends that audiences maintain their sense of the illusion of the media being exploited for emotional affect.43
Noel Carroll has also critiqued the idea that film viewers cannot separate film from reality and, more specifically, Baudry’s thesis that film viewers experience regression and a dreamlike state in the cinema. Viewing a film is not like dreaming, Carroll points out, in that we are well aware of where we are and can move or even get up and leave at will; to be more obvious still, we are not asleep when we are watching a film. Although Baudry admits this difference, Carroll believes that he has made too much of the analogy between film viewing and dreaming in order to establish a psychoanalytic model for understanding the film-viewing experience. After all, films are not private like dreams, as they can be experienced and discussed with others, even during the viewing; I can also go back to see the same film again, and I cannot control my dreams in this way. Nor is the film the product of my own mind, as dreams are, but rather it is a product of the filmmakers’ efforts, and these may produce a vision in harmony with my own—or not. The film need not affect me as powerfully as my own dreams do.44
Richard Allen concurs with Carroll’s view that film viewers are well aware of the unreality of cinema but differs from him in choosing to revise rather than discard the psychoanalytic account of the nature of film viewing. He describes the experience of seeing a film as an experience of “projective illusion” that we enter into willingly and knowingly, not unconsciously, but that still affects us powerfully in its impression of reality. Like a conscious fantasy into which we willingly place ourselves, films offer a “fully realized world” we can accept via a certain suspension of disbelief.45 We can be aware at the same time of the fictitious nature of the film and our desire to believe in it. Allen offers an analogous experience: one can look at a drawing that presents an image of a duck when viewed one way and a rabbit when viewed in another way and even cause oneself to see one and then the other—but not both at the same time.46 In the same way, we can be drawn into a film such that we “forget” its unreality, but as soon as our attention is diverted, we recall its illusionary nature. We are never really fooled, but we do not constantly reflect on the fact of its unreality while we are entertaining a fictitious piece of work—like a daydream. Allen argues that we are much more in control of our filmic experience than