We see how organic is the progressive development of the theme, and at the same time we also see how the structure of Potemkin, as a whole, flows from this movement of the theme, which operates for the whole exactly as it does for its fractional members.
We need not seek in nature for what appears to be pathos per se. We shall confine ourselves to an analysis in a work of pathos from the viewpoint of its receiver or, more exactly, in regard to the theatrical media, from the viewpoint of its affect on the spectator. Moving from these basic features of affect we shall attempt to define those basic features of construction which a composition of pathos must possess. And then we can verify these features with the particular example that concerns us. Nor will I deny myself the satisfaction of concluding with a few general considerations.
For our purpose let us first sketch in a few words the affect of pathos. We’ll deliberately do this with the most trivial and banal symptoms possible. Out of this the most prominent and characteristic features will bring themselves to our attention.
For the most primitive illustration let us take a simple description of the superficial signs of external behavior in a spectator gripped by pathos.
But these signs are so symptomatic that they at once bring us to the core of the question. Pathos shows its affect—when the spectator is compelled to jump from his seat. When he is compelled to collapse where he stands. When he is compelled to applaud, to cry out. When his eyes are compelled to shine with delight, before gushing tears of delight. . . . In brief—when the spectator is forced “to go out of himself.”
To use a prettier term, we might say that the affect of a work of pathos consists in whatever “sends” the spectator into ecstasy. Actually there is nothing to be added to such a formulation, for the symptoms above say exactly this: ex-stasis— literally, “standing out of oneself,” which is to say, “going out of himself,” or “departing from his ordinary condition.”
All our symptoms follow this formula to the letter. Seated—he stands. Standing—he collapses. Motionless—he moves. Silent—he cries out. Dull—he shines. Dry—he is moistened by tears. In each instance occurs a “departure from a condition,” a “going out of himself.”
But this is not all: “to go out of oneself” is not to go into nothing. To go out of oneself inevitably implies a transition to something else, to something different in quality, to something opposite to what was (immobility—into movement; silence—into noise; etc.).
Even in such a superficial description of ecstatic affect, produced by a structure of pathos, it is self-evident what basic indications structure must possess in a composition of pathos. By all its indications such a structure must maintain the condition of “going out of oneself” and incessant transition to differing qualities.
To leave oneself, to remove oneself from one’s customary equilibrium and condition, and to pass over into a new condition—all this of course penetrates the affective conditions of every art that is capable of gripping a perceiver. And the media of art tend to group themselves according to their capability in achieving this affect. Ranged in this way, the possession of this general quality shows its fundamental vitality to the highest degree. Apparently, structures of pathos are the culminating points along this single road.
And, apparently, all other varieties of composition in artistic works may be examined, and they will be found to be diminished derivatives of maximum instances (producing “departures from oneself” to a maximum degree), employing a pathetic type of structure.
No one should be alarmed by the fact that in speaking of pathos, I have not yet once touched the question of theme and content. We are not discussing here pathetic content in general, but rather of the meaning of pathos as realized in composition. The same fact may enter a work of art in any aspect of treatment: from the cold protocol form of a précis to a hymn of genuine pathos. And it is these particular artistic means, lifting the “recording” of an event to the heights of pathos, that interest us here.
Unquestionably this primarily depends on the author’s relation to the content. But composition in this meaning, as we comprehend it here, is also a construction which, in the first place, serves to embody the author’s relation to the content, at the same time compelling the spectator to relate himself to the content in the same way.
In this essay we are therefore less interested in the question of the “nature” of pathos in one or another phenomenon; this is always socially relative. We shall also not pause on the character of the author’s pathetic relation to this or to that phenomenon, just as obviously socially relative. We are interested (by the a priori presence of both) in the narrowly posed problem of how this “relation” to “natural phenomena” is realized by composition within the conditions of a pathetic structure.
And so, in following that thesis, already once justified in the question of organic-ness, we can affirm that, in wishing to gain a maximum “departure from oneself” in the spectator, we are obliged in the work to suggest to him a corresponding “guide.” Following this guide he will enter into the desired condition.
The simplest “prototype” of such imitative behavior will be, of course, that of a person ecstatically following, on the screen, a personage gripped by pathos, a personage who in one way or another, “goes out of himself.”
Here structure will coincide with imagery. And the object of the imagery—the behavior of such a man—will itself flow according to the conditions of “ecstatic” structure. This may even be shown in speech indications. The unorganized customary flow of speech, made pathetic, immediately invents the pattern of clearly behavioristic rhythm; prose that is also prosaic in its forms, begins to scintillate at once with forms and turns of speech that are poetic in nature (unexpected metaphors, the appearance of expressive images, etc.). There is no indication of speech or other human manifestation that would not show, at such a moment, this transfer from one quality into a new quality.
On this ladder the first rung is a line of compositional possibilities. A case will become more complicated and more affective when this basic condition does not stop with man, but goes itself “beyond the limits” of man, radiating out into the surroundings and environment of a personage, that is, when his very surroundings also are presented in, say, his condition of “frenzy.” Shakespeare has given us a classical example of this in the “frenzy” of Lear, a frenzy that goes beyond the boundaries of the personage, into the “frenzy” of nature itself—into a tempest.
For the same resolutions of material in any customary means, examples may be found in the richest abundance among the naturalists of the Zola school and, in the first place, in Zola himself. In Zola the very description of the surroundings, fusing its details with the separate phases of an event in each scene, is always selected and presented in a realistic and physical way, but always as required by the structure of the condition.* This holds true for any of his compositional structures, but is particularly graphic in those cases where Zola raises to pathos an event that is by no means obliged to be pathetic.10
Not in the rhythm of prose, nor in a system of images and similes, nor in the scenic structure—nor in any purely compositional elements of episodes does a structural canon seem absolutely necessary to Zola for his scenes; he is almost solely guided by his formula in portraying phenomena and the portrayed people act according to the author’s laws.
This is so typical for Zola’s manner that it would be possible to take this as a specific process characteristic of the methods used by the naturalists of this school. In this way primary value is given to an arrangement of phenomena, which themselves flow ecstatically, in themselves “going out of themselves,” for it is at exactly such moments of their existence that they are seized for description.
And this method is also accompanied by a second, already rudimentary compositional method: the representation of phenomena as distributed in such a way among themselves, that each of them in relation to each other seems a transition from one intensity to an
other, from one “dimension” to another.
And it is only in the third and last place that this school rarely employs conditions pointing towards such purely compositional elements as movements within the changing rhythms of prose, within the nature of the language, or general structure in the movement of episodes and links between episodes.
This part of work falls historically to the share of the school that replaced that of “naturalism,” the school which in its enthusiasm for this side of the matter often achieves this to the detriment of a good “Rubens-esque” materiality of imagery, so characteristic for Zola.
With this in mind let us return to the principal object of our inspection—to the “Odessa steps.” Look how this event there is presented and arranged.
In the first place, noticing the frenzied condition of the people and masses that are portrayed, let us go on to find what we are looking for in structural and compositional indications.
Let us concentrate on the line of movement.
There is, before all else, a chaotic close-up rush of figures. And then, as chaotic a rush of figures in long-shot.
Then the chaos of movement changes to a design: the rhythmic descending feet of the soldiers.
Tempo increases. Rhythm accelerates.
In this acceleration of downward rushing movement there is a suddenly upsetting opposite movement —upward: the break-neck movement of the mass downward leaps over into a slowly solemn movement upward of the mother’s lone figure, carrying her dead son.
Mass. Break-neck speed. Downward.
And then suddenly: A lone figure. Slow solemnity. Upward.
But—this is only for an instant. Once more we experience a returning leap to the downward movement.
Rhythm accelerates. Tempo increases.
Suddenly the tempo of the running crowd leaps over into the next category of speed—into a rolling baby-carriage. It propels the idea of rushing downward into the next dimension—from rolling, as understood “figuratively,” into the physical fact of rolling. This is not merely a change in levels of tempo. This is furthermore as well a leap in display method from the figurative to the physical, taking place within the representation of rolling.
Close-ups leap over into long-shots.
Chaotic movement (of a mass)—into rhythmic movement (of the soldiers).
One aspect of moving speed (rushing people)—into the next stage of the same theme of moving speed (rolling baby-carriage).
Movement downward—into movement upward.
Many volleys of many rifles—into one shot from one of the battleship’s guns.
Stride by stride—a leap from dimension to dimension. A leap from quality to quality. So that in the final accounting, rather than in a separate episode (the baby-carriage), the whole method of exposing the entire event likewise accomplishes its leap: a narrative type of exposition is replaced (in the montage rousing of the stone lion) and transferred to the concentrated structure of imagery. Visually rhythmic prose leaps over into visually poetic speech.
In a compositional structure identical with human behavior in the grip of pathos, as remarked above, the sequence of the Odessa steps is carried along with such transfers to opposites: chaos is replaced by rhythm, prose—by poetic treatment, etc. Down each step gallops the action, propelled downward by an ascending leap from quality to quality, to deeper intensity, to broader dimension.
And we see the theme of pathos, rushed down the steps by the pathos of the shooting, piercing as well to the depths of the basic structure, which gives a plastic and rhythmic accompaniment to the event.*
Is this episode on the steps unique? Does it fall away from, in this feature, from the general type of construction? Not in the least. In it these features, characteristic for the method, are only a pointed culmination, as pointed as the episode itself, which is a culmination in the tragic quality of the film as a whole.
I have mentioned the caesurae in the action, “leaping over” or “transferring” to a new quality that was, in each case, the maximum of all availables, and was, each time, a leap into opposition. All determining compositional elements encountered anywhere appear in such a way, showing us a fundamental ecstatic formula: the leap “out of oneself” invariably becomes a leap to a new quality, and most often of all achieves the diapason of a leap into opposition.
Here is another organic secret: a leaping imagist movement from quality to quality is not a mere formula of growth, but is more, a formula of development— a development that involves us in its canon, not only as a single “vegetative” unit, subordinate to the evolutionary laws of nature, but makes us, instead, a collective and social unit, consciously participating in its development. For we know that this very leap, in the interpretation of social phenomena, is present in those revolutions to which social development and the movement of society are directed.
For the third time the organic-ness of Potemkin appears before us, for that leap which characterizes the structure of each compositional link and the composition of the film as a whole, is an infusion into the compositional structure of the most determining element of the content’s very theme—the revolutionary explosion, as one of the leaps which function as inseparable bonds of the conducting consciousness of social development.
But:
A leap. A transition from quantity to quality. A transition to opposition.
All these are elements of a dialectical movement of development, elements which enter into the comprehension of materialist dialectics. And from this—for the structure of the work we are analyzing as well as for the structure of any construction of pathos—we can say that a pathetic structure is one that compels us, echoing its movement, to re-live the moments of culmination and substantiation that are in the canon of all dialectical processes.
We understand a moment of culmination to mean those points in a process, those instants in which water becomes a new substance—steam, or ice—water, or pig-iron—steel. Here we see the same going out of oneself, moving from one condition, and passing from quality to quality, ecstasis. And if we could register psychologically the perceptions of water, steam, ice, and steel at these critical moments— moments of culmination in the leap, this would tell us something of pathos, of ecstasy!
Born from the pathos of the theme, the compositional structure echoes that basic and unique canon, by which is achieved the organic, social, or any other process given substance by the universe and through participation in this canon (the reflection of which is our consciousness, and its area of application—all our existence) cannot but fill us to the highest point with emotional sensation—pathos.
A question remains—How is the artist to achieve practically these formulae of composition? By a druggist’s prescription? By some slide-rule? By specimens of penmanship? With a skeleton key?
These compositional formulae are to be found in any fully pathetic work. But they are not to be achieved by any single a priori compositional computation. Skill alone, craftsmanship alone, mastery alone, is not enough.
To achieve the heights of genuine organic-ness, of genuine pathos, in its highest form, all this is absolutely necessary, but this alone is too little.
Only when the work becomes organic, only when it can enter the conditions of a higher organic-ness—into the field of pathos as we understand it, when the theme and content and idea of the work become an organically continuous unity with the ideas, the feelings, with the very breath of the author.
Only when organic-ness itself takes on the strictest forms of constructing a work, only when the artistry of a master’s perceptions reach the last gleam of formal perfection.
Then and then only will occur a genuine organic-ness of a work, which enters the circle of natural and social phenomena as a fellow member with equal rights, as an independent phenomenon.
1 January 1939
Post Scriptum:
This may be the most appropriate place for an answer to a question in regard to the connection between the eccentricism that
was characteristic of my theater work, and the pathos that distinguishes my film work. This is an apparent paradox that was pointed out, many years ago, by Victor Shklovsky:
For the creation of his heroic style Eisenstein had to come to it through the montage of eccentric attractions.11
Let us go back to those tendencies in the field of expressiveness that led to eccentricism in my theater work of 1920–23.
I dreamed then of a theater “of such emotional saturation that the wrath of a man would be expressed in a backward somersault from a trapeze.”
And this dream was connected with the dramatic or, more exactly, the melodramatic—the serious— theater!
Of course, this was not without the intertwining of the most varied influences, but in this initial formula there was already the inference of two basic theses, altogether individual and characteristic for my future program of activity as well as for the methods of its execution.
The first was a maximum degree of passion as a point of departure. And, second—a breaking of the customary dimension as a method of its embodiment.
From this point of view, our program doesn’t sound so crazy.
In those first days, however, these theses were used not as principles, but were carried out directly and literally. And therefore they found their way, not into drama, but were made familiar through the buffonade, eccentricism, and the montage of attractions.
This dream was realized in its purest form in the circus treatment given Ostrovsky’s Enough Simplicity in Every Sage. In one scene Maxim Shtraukh, playing Mamayev, and growing angry with his nephew for a caricature he had made of him, threw himself at him head first, breaking through the paper of the portrait in a flying somersault beyond the frame.
Film Form Page 18
