"Film - its present and future" - Film - its present and future

...Due to its dubious upbringing and the ``vulgar menu offered to suit the tastes of the masses'' (around 1900, Edison's films such as ``What Happened on 23rd Street,'' which simply featured a woman with her skirt blown up by a strong wind, resembling Marilyn Monroe in ``The Seven Year Itch,'' ``Water Nymphs,'' which featured nude girls bathing, ``The Nude Trapeze,'' ``Corset Models,'' ``Pyjama Girls,'' ``Gymnasts,'' and so on, were already attracting audiences), even as it grew as an industry and became established as mass entertainment, it still retained its ``shady background'' as a vulgar spectacle. Even after the production of "Dr. Caligari" (1919), which shone in film history as an "artistic" masterpiece of Expressionist cinema, the German philosopher and art historian K. Lange, in his book "Cinema--Its Present and Future" (1920), analyzed "film" into two major elements: "photography" and "reproduction of movement." He declared that film has "no artistic quality" because photography, which is merely a mechanical reproduction of nature, unlike painting, has no room for the involvement of human mental activity, and because film, which only mechanically reproduces movement, does not provide the illusion of movement. He went so far as to argue that film should not be compared to painting and other arts as a pure art, but should simply be compared to various types of spectacles.
[The Essence of Film Art]
On the other hand, however, there were also 20th-century philosophers and artists who were quick to pay attention to the principle of cinema, which records and reproduces the movement of time and space on film.

*Some of the terminology used in "Film - its present and future" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…その生まれ育ちのいかがわしさと〈大衆の好みに応じて提供された下品な献立〉(1900年前後には，すでに《七年目の浮気》のマリリン･モンローさながら強風にスカートを吹き上げられる女性を撮影しただけの《ニューヨーク23番街で起こったこと》とか，裸の少女の水浴びを撮影した《水の妖精》とか，《裸のぶらんこショー》や《コルセット･モデル》《パジャマ･ガール》《体操する娘》等々といったエジソンの映画が客を集めた)のために，産業として成長し大衆娯楽として定着しても，なお低俗な見世物という〈怪しげな素性〉をひきずったままであった。表現主義映画の〈芸術的〉名作として映画史に輝く《カリガリ博士》(1919)が作られた後でさえ，ドイツの哲学者であり美術史家であるK.ランゲはその著《映画――その現在と未来》(1920)で，〈映画〉を〈写真〉と〈運動の再現〉の二大要素に分析し，自然の機械的再現にすぎない写真には絵画と違って人間の精神作用の関与する余地がなく，運動を機械的に再現するだけの映画には動きのイリュージョンを与えることがないことをもって，〈芸術性がない〉と断じ，映画は純粋芸術として絵画などの諸芸術に比較されるべきものではなく，単にもろもろの見世物に比較されるべきものであると論じたほどであった。
【映画芸術の本質論】
　しかし，他方では，時間と空間の運動を映像に記録し再現する〈映画の原理〉に，いち早く注目していた〈20世紀〉の哲学者や芸術家たちもいた。…

※「《映画――その現在と未来》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報