Page 57 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

38 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
1. Sensation (impression) is the external or internal stimulant.
2. Perception is the orientation.
3. Comprehension is the brake.
4. Appellation is the (sound) reaction–the word. 24

The desire to divide action into such minute physiological phases (and the
enormous role that he attributed to the eye in this process of movement) led
Gardin towards the widespread use of close-ups, that is, the cutting off of the actor
by the frame of the shot, which was partly analogous to Delsarte’s ‘independence of
the limbs from one another’. The desire to set out the elements of action according
to a precise four-part formula created the necessity for properly thought-out ‘close-
up montage combinations’. Hence the requirements of the new anthropology of the
actor encouraged in Gardin’s mind the idea of montage. Gardin himself recognised
perfectly the significance of these theoretical studies: That is how my first thoughts
arose on the possibilities of montage combinations and on the conversion of acting
to the expressive movement of the parts of the actor’s body and to the condition of
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objects symbolising the actions of man’, he wrote. This formulation is interesting
because we can still detect in it an indissoluble link between the idea of montage
and the body of the actor: the ‘possibilities of montage combinations’ are directly
linked to the ‘conversion of acting to the expressive movement of the parts of the
actor’s body’. Montage was thus understood as a cinematographic form of
organisation of the actor’s behaviour.
Gardin was simultaneously taken by the idea of founding a film school where he
intended to conduct a ‘basic course’ on ‘man’s behaviour in front of the camera
lens’. He declared: ‘One day a new man, unspoiled by theatre will appear in
cinema. He is the one with whom and on whom it will be possible to experiment.’ 26
Thus by 1916 Gardin had already worked out an approach to the cinema actor as
‘model actor’ and as material for montage treatment. By 1919 Gardin’s ideas had
acquired a more and more openly expressed Delsartian character. Parallel with
this came a further elaboration of montage category. Even before Kuleshov arrived
at the film school Gardin was giving a special lecture on montage and at that time
he defined cinema as ‘a rhythmic alternation of film fragments whose composition…
was united into a film on the basis of a montage calculation, which was one of the
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most important calculations in the direction of a film’. Gardin wrote:
Starting from this definition, I tried to establish the creative tasks in directing
a work, above all to teach a sense of the rhythm of the film being made….
Rhythm is an endless theme. Movement and the endlessly varying
alternation of acceleration and slow motion in accordance with certain
calculations are the form of rhythm and the recording of them will be the
technique and the sense included in the word ‘cinematography’. 28