Andre Bazin was a highly influential film critic and theorist whose perspectives are still relevant today. His most famous essay, The Evolution of the Language of Cinema discusses his perspective of editing, shot duration and realism.

He describes two types of filmmakers; those who identify with montage form of editing and in his opinion do not present reality, and those who employ depth of field to portray a reality as captured by the camera.

He describes montage as the “ordering of the images in time” which gives the audience a logic to follow the scene and accept the director’s viewpoint. In Bazin’s opinion, this means that montage does not allow for ambiguity of the meaning the images represent, and does not allow the audience to question or come to their own conclusions. “The meaning is not in the image; it is in the shadow of the image projected by montage onto the field of consciousness of the spectator.”

The use of real time to capture the ‘reality’ before the camera is far more interesting to Bazin. He refers to Nanook in the North in which the filmmaker employs a single setup in a hunting scene as something far more moving than the use of montage. He also refers to von Stroheim who experiments and breaks free from the chains of traditional montage with his frequent use close-ups and single shots; “a cinematographic art the very opposite of that which has been identified as cinema par excellence, a language the semantic and syntactical unit of which is in no sense the Shot; in which the image is evaluated not according to what it adds to reality but what it reveals of it.”

He describes the typical editing of a 1938 film scene where a table is covered with food and there is a hungry tramp; 1 – full shot of the actor and the table, 2 – camera moves forward into a close-up of a face expressing a mixture of amazement and longing, 3 – series of close-ups of food, 4 – back to full shot of person who starts slowly toward the camera, 5 – camera pulls slowly back to a three-quarter shot of the actor seizing a chicken wing. This type of set-up and editing is typical of films even today, and has been used in the exercises we have conducted thus far. Bazin explains that if this scene had been played out in the theater, without any cameras, the effect would be exactly the same. In his opinion, the different point of views offered by the camera don’t add any meaning to the scene. It is the filmmaker’s choice of what part of the scene to emphasize, with the use of framing, composition, shot choice, and shot length that would add meaning to this typical scene coverage.

Bazin also expresses his disappointment that experimental shots are becoming extinct for fear that audiences will notice ‘jarring’ cuts that may be apparent. Optical illusions offered by superimpositions and even close-ups are not used as often, and experimentation is somewhat lost.

Bazin describes Orson Welles and William Wyler’s use of depth of field as breaking from the traditional mould of montage. In Citizen Kane whole scenes are covered in one take by a motionless camera, allowing the actors’ movements within the space to create depth of field. In Bazin’s opinion, this is far more interesting and exciting than the use of montage as it demonstrates ‘reality.’ “Dramatic effects for which we had formerly relied on montage were created out of the movements of the actors within a fixed framework.” Bazin believes that depth of field allows for ambiguity, and makes the audience more active in their interpretation of the meaning of the images before them. “Depth of focus brings the spectator into a relation with the image closer to that which he enjoys with reality. Therefore it is correct to say that, independently of the contents of the image, its structure is more realistic.”

Bazin’s yearning to see more experimental and daring shots, scene coverages, and decisions by filmmakers is something I can definitely relate to. His ideas of how editing can represent a certain reality is also quite fascinating, yet I don’t necessarily agree that a single-shot is the only way on-screen ‘reality’ can be portrayed. I do agree that traditional camera set-ups of establishing shot, close-up, etc (what Bazin calls montage) should be continually challenged and experimented with, however I don’t think that all continuous shots (depth of field shots) are necessarily interesting either. Framing and composition in either of these modes as well as the sequence of shots can drastically effect the story as well as the viewer’s experience and meaning.