Cinema as a modern experience

Cinema as a Modern Experience.

It is important to read and analyze these texts taking under consideration, not only the time and framework in which they were written (ex. the advent of theories ofthe masses), but also viewing the different approaches of these authors towards the medium, identifying early and significant contributions to the study of cinema.

All four authors are interestedin the relationship between the new media of cinema and the masses, and, therefore, the audience takes a significant spotlight in their texts.

For Béla Balázs, the outcome of cinema is theresurgence of the body in the spotlight, despoiled of language and exposed by portraying the deepest emotions through the pureness of expressions. He considers these facial expressions as a revelation of thesocial for “the language of gestures is much more individual than the language of words”.[1] He compares cinema in relation to the written word, as a less intellectualized form of communication that–he claims – incorporates the soul into the body describing things in a way that words could never achieve. This was for him the key element in creating a new shared universal language through images,being the close up a key concept to help the narration by emphasizing and guiding the attention of the audience into the director’s gaze. [2]

Walter Benjamin talks about “the mechanicalreproduction of art” - a quality shared both by photography and cinema - and that “changes the reaction of the masses towards art”. [3] He also perceives cinema as a social art that has the capacity of beingexhibit to a big crowd, provoking a reaction into the mass audience, a mobilization of the masses.

This new aspect of massive reproduction works as a sort of “democratization” of art, giving thechance to reach a new and wider audience. Though for him, the masses will remain observant but still needless of attention: “the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one”.[4] As most of the other...