Alexander Astruc's writings on La
Camera-Stylo revolved around emerging a new future for the cinema
through which the medium of the film obtained properly its particular
foundation to establish a new structure for representing the film art as
wholeness as Astruc states in his writing: " The cinema is quite simply
becoming a means of expression, just as all other arts have been before it, and
in particular painting and the novel " (Astruc, 17). From his point of
view, this age is called camera-stylo as he continues in the
same writing: " That is why I would like to call this new age of cinema
the age of camerastyolo (Camera-pen)" (Astruc 18). According to his
theoretical approach to explaining his hypothesis, the term of camera-stylo is
the metaphor which emphasizes on the functionality of the camera an artistic
tool to write an idea. This flexible use of 'camera as the pen' can
express satisfactorily the authorial demands of an artist in his creating of
the stylistic aesthetic.
The idea of expressing thought by using cinematic language is Astruc's
obsession to consider the whole historical attempt of the intellectuals,
filmmakers, and film theoreticians to liberate the cinematic images from the
domination of the concrete and the static form of the movements. This idea
gives birth to the new cinematic vehicle of thought as Astruc states in his
writing:
"From today onwards, it will be possible for the cinema to produce works
which are equivalent, in their profundity and meaning, to the novels of Falkner
and Malraux, to the essays of Sartre and Camus" (Astruc,20). This, of
course, implies the manifestation of the Auteur Theory for the intellectuals of
French Nouvelle Vague such as Truffaut defining a specific domain for cinema
which is no longer a means of filmmaking for the contemporary era as Astruc expresses
his idea in his writing: " Direction is no longer a means of illustrating
or presenting a scene but a true act of writing. The film-maker/author writes
with his camera as a writer writes with his pen" (Astruc,22).
Of course, the similarity between Truffaut's article about adaptation in cinema
with Astruc's recognized manifest of camera-stylo refers to the originality in
the concept of the authorial domination on the text. This similarity explains
the overcome of the cinematic adaptation regarding the invented mise-en-scene
on the faithfulness to the 'Tradition of Quality" respected and followed
by the most distasted French directors in the period as Truffaut explains in
his article:
"Well, for these abject
characters, who deliver these abject lines-I know a handful of men in France
who would be INCAPABLE of conceiving them, several cineastes whose world-view
is at least valuable as that Aurench and Bost, Siguard and Jeanson. I mean Jean
Renoir, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Jaques Becker, Abel Gance, Max Ophuls,
Jacques Tati, Roger Leenhardt; these are, nevertheless, French cineastes and it
happens -curious coincidence-that they are auteurs who often
write their dialogue and some of them themselves invent the stories they
direct" (Truffaut, 223).
Truffaut's essay on underestimating the artistic auteur cinema has a function
of fidelity to Andre Bazin's article on adaptation: "La Stylistique de
Robert Bresson". It seems that there is an absolute comparison between
Astruc's 'writing of the story by the camera' and Truffaut's profound
theoretical analysis on the cinematic adaptation: "Talent, to be sure, is
not a function of fidelity, but I consider an adaptation of value only when
written by a man of the cinema" (Truffaut, 229) or " The
fundamental problem of cinema is how to express thought" (Astruc, 20).
Truffaut's rejection to "Traditional of Quality" goes far away that
he denies it in his radical approach to the "Politique des auteur":
" Well-I do not believe in the peaceful coexistence of the 'Tradition of
Quality" and an "auteur's cinema""(Truffaut, 234). For both
Truffaut and Astruc the cinematic translation of a literary work is a complex
phenomenon to be achieved. The distinction between the filmmakers who make the
equivalent scenes for the literary text and the auteur directors matters only
on the logical relationship between their fidelity to the text and their
creative stylistic approach to invent a cinematic language which can be
possibly considered as a radical departure from faithfulness to the spirit of
the adapted work.
For the intellectuals of the French Nouvelle Vague, such as Astruc and
Truffaut, the politics of auteur precisely establish director's cinematic
vision through 20th century as the proper substitution for author's writing
style of the 19th century. The leitmotif of their article which remains
consistently as the richness of the texts is their persistence to celebrate the
discovery and the exploration of the existence of one individual as the auteur.
That individual dominates the whole process of filmmaking. He creates his
stylistic aesthetic to represent the text as his own raison d'etre. He
creates an analytical and dialectical dialogue between his metaphoric
succession of the images in relationship with the interior structure of the
text with the mind of the spectator.
Perhaps, the director's endeavor to achieve the required artistic revolution in
his style appears to be the only reason to reinvent a language for his own
purpose.
His intention to offer a significant and unique expression of the cinematic
events and consequences based upon the systematic use of techniques
standardizes the duty of the cinema which is not obviously the imitation of the
reality. The result for cinema is the creating of its own reality within the
dramatic time and space.
Astruc,
Alexander. Naissance d'une Nouvelle Avant-garde: La Camera-Stylo L'Ecran
Francaise. Mars, 30. 1948.
Truffaut, Francois. Une Vertaine Tendance du Cinema Francais Cahier
du Cinema:No.31. January, 1954.
By: Morad Sadeghi
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