Revealing the Soul: Balázs and the Close-Up [9.29.03]
By Britta Blodgett
On Monday 9.20.03 and Wednesday 10.1.03 we discussed Balázs and his theories based on our reading of: Gertrude Kock, "Béla Balázs: The Physiognomy of Things" (1997), Béla Balázs, "The Close-Up" and "The Face of Man" (1945), and Béla Balázs, "Changing Set-Up" (1945). Balázs had an enormous influence on German-language film theory, from Arnheim to Kracauer to Benjamin. His book Visible Man (1924) was the first film theory published, and was greatly influenced by Pudovkin. Balázs wrote Spirit of Film in 1930 analyzing the problem of the introduction of sound to film, and his Theory of the Film, 1945–1949, has been translated into many different languages.
The first thing to consider when discussing Balázs is his largest influence, Georg Simmel. Simmel emphasized the way Rodin's seemingly naturalistic sculptures are in fact subjective. As a student of Simmel, Balázs translated Simmel's ideas about sculpture into his own ideas about film. Just as Simmel was concerned with the subjective, so was Balázs. According to Balázs, film at its best is subjective and through this expresses the human soul. He sees this subjectivity and the ability to express the soul in German expressionism, which is known for its use of unrealistic sets and over acting. For Balázs the reality on the screen is not a realistic reality, but an emotional reality of a newly created subjective world.
One of the main concepts in Balázs' theory is the idea of the camera revealing microphysiognomy. What this means is that the gestures on the outside of a person manifest what is occurring on the inside the person. Balázs thought that the soul could be revealed by photographing the face. The land works in a parallel manner as well. According to Balázs, in examining landscapes what you should see is actually yourself reflected back at you, "nature returning the gaze." In this situation the boundaries of the self exceed the physical boundaries of the body. The example of the Chrysler PT Cruiser was discussed to illustrate this point. The front of the PT Cruiser, the lights and the hood, looks like a face. When a person looks at that car she sees a reflection of a person, not a car. She is reflected in the landscape at which she looks. It is at this point that the discussion ended on Monday.
On Wednesday 10.1.03 we resumed our discussion of Balázs, beginning with the general and then narrowing in on various specific aspects of the theory. Carol told us that German-language film theorists are obsessed with the camera. Benjamin writes about "optical unconsciousness," Kracauer writes about "redeeming physical reality," and Balázs has his microphysiognomy. All three are examples of a camera-centered philosophy. We also clarified the differences between the Realists and the Formalists again. Realists want to record reality as it is, like the Italian Neo-Realists. Formalists are concerned with expressionism, subjectivity, and imposing the imagination.
Monday we discussed Balázs' concept of microphysiognomy, where the outside manifests what is inside, and Balázs' belief that the face can reveal the soul. When we consider this it makes perfect sense that the kind of shot that Balázs should concern himself with most often is the close-up. He believed that the power of the cinema was that it could reveal the soul through the close-up. We discussed the two different categories of close-ups that were critical to Balázs: close-ups of human beings and close-ups of things. For the close-ups of human beings Balázs was very much concerned with "photographing the flesh to reveal the soul." This is an "anthropocentric" aesthetic. An example is Carl Dreyer's film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). This film has many more close-ups than other films from the time, and these close-ups are meant to convey much about what Joan is going through and what is going on inside of her. It should also be noted that soon after this film came the beginning of sound films. Balázs thought that filmmakers had the burden of expressing people's souls, and that sound would "forsake the true meaningfulness of the camera for capturing people's souls."
As Balázs' view of how to deal with close-ups of humans was anthropocentric, his view of things was anthropomorphic. He compared the countryside and the landscape. A countryside is the outdoors. A countryside becomes a landscape when human beings look upon it, and invest it with their own subjectivity. A landscape expresses a mood, and is "nature returning the gaze." The unconscious self is reflected in the landscape. Just as a countryside is not a landscape without subjectivity, for Balázs cinema was only significant when it was taken up subjectively. These concepts from the work of Balázs led to many questions, most of which were brought up but not answered, due to a lack of time among other things. Is it the viewer's subjectivity or the director's that matters? How do spectators make meaning of film? Is it the soul of the actor of the soul of the character that is being revealed? The end of the discussion was centered on masks, especially in relation to close-ups. Just as Balázs thought the face could reveal the soul, in some theater masks are used to represent emotion. Sabrina gave an example from a play she saw in London, The Bacchi; the director felt that the emotions were too large to be captured by the human face and therefore had all the cast members wear masks for the production.
In the end we were unable to decide what Balázs' take on masks would be, especially considering the different modes of presentation, film vs. theater. What we do know about Balázs' theory summarized is that the ideas of subjectivity and microphysiognomy are central. The shot which best illustrates these concepts is the close-up; the close-up can either focus on the human face, or a landscape, both of which subjectively reflect the human.
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