Corinna Contreras

Film and Media Studies 192 A

September 14, 2008

The Triumph of Reality in the Cinematic Apparatus

When analyzing cinema, a phrase many-a-time repeated comes to mind: “the magic of

the cinema” seems so integrated into the discussion of this artform. From where does this

‘magic’ emanate? What is it of the cinema that captures so actively our imaginations? Some have

argued for the objective nature of the cinema in that the camera functions without the

psychological interference of the human element; this however is true for only the fraction of a

second in which the image before the lens of the camera is processed by the optical mechanisms

of the camera. However, to stimulate the imagination requires much more than an objective

stance in reproducing the world. The ability of the cinema to reflect a sense of reality not only in

a visual sense but also in a psychological sense activates the imagination therefore one must step

past the objective platform into a realm where the subjective workings of the human mind can

play and tinker freely with the projections of realistic images. Reality in cinema is not merely the

visual reproduction of objects but to a more important degree, the manner in which the visual

stimulation awakens the psyche, creating within the mind a sense of reality. To examine first the

visual aspects of cinema and reality, Rudolph Arnheim’s brilliant essay “Film and Reality” is

employed to set a visual foundation for the academic study of reality; secondly, to bridge from

the purely visual aspects of film into a more psychological study of those visual aspects,

Christian Metz’s essay, “On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema” aids in the understanding

of the illusion of reality in cinema.

The Ontology of Reality

 Cinema, by its very nature cannot be reality; explained in logical fashion if cinema

equates with reality than life itself would be cinema. Since this statement does not hold truth then

where does cinema rest on the spectrum of reality? Perhaps this is the most valuable method to

analyze the parameters of reality, where on one side of the spectrum non-reality stands and on

the other pole rests the reality experienced by the human body. The placement of cinema within

this spectrum fits it somewhere in the middle; such a conclusion stems from this factual

statement: cinema is fiction. Fiction, although not a part of the reality directly experienced by the

human body, seeks to mimic a realistic existence. It borrows from reality various sets of rules

that provide for a coherent and logical existence where the fictive reality makes “sense” to the

audience strictly on part by the governing these rules set for the specific fictional universe.

Crucial to the understanding of cinema’s placement within this spectrum of reality, the

manner in which the human body experiences the world around it needs elaboration; from this

foundation a discussion of reality in cinema can best be expressed. In his essay “Film and

Reality,” Rudolph Arnheim argues for the rejection of film as merely a mechanical reproduction.

In doing so he outlines the various degrees of separation between film and reality only to reach a

conclusion that fastens cinema in-between art and reality. First and foremost, the analogous

pairing of the eye and the camera lens sets a starting point from which to create contrasts and

comparisons between the reality held by the human eye and the universe captured by the camera

lens. The eye, with an uncanny ability to establish dimensionality, provides a space of depth.

This perception of depth begins with a stereoscopic element not present in the camera lens.

Placed at a “perfect” distance from one another and facing in the correct direction, the

combination of the two images as captured by the cornea, the lens, and the retina enters into a

powerful machine of analysis, the human brain, that makes “sense” of these images. The camera

although similar in function, does not have an interpretive mechanism as sophisticated as the
brain; instead the data entering and passing the mechanisms of optics in the camera find

limitations on the second dimension, where depth exists by a relation of size, volumes, and

distances without the aid of a third dimension. Therefore as Arnheim states, “the sense of depth

in the film pictures is extraordinarily small” (12). The discrepancy in dimensionality between the

human eye-brain mechanism and camera optics provides ample evidence to completely reject

reality in cinema; however, with such concluded, how is it possible that cinema can fashion an

experience of reality that captivates in ways unparalleled by other mediums of art?

Although the camera does not recreate a reflection of reality packaged in the same

dimension, the loss of the third dimension in film does not condemn it to complete non-reality.

Arnheim expresses the limitations brought forth by the camera’s inability to surpass the second

dimension into the reality of third dimensionality as the “fundamental difference between visual

reality and film:” however, the inability of the photograph to reproduce the third dimension does

not destroy the illusion of reality in cinema. Cinema, although created by the rapid succession of

photographs, finds life in its extraordinary ability to reproduce movement that changes the static

boundaries of the two-dimensional photograph to create an illusion of movement through space.

From this point the illusion of reality springs from the stagnant chains of the second dimension

into something more than two dimensions but less than three (12). While the resurrection of life

from the static nature of the photograph by the visual illusion of three-dimensional movement

recaptures to an astonishing degree the same reality experienced by the eye, this movement is

nevertheless chained by the second dimension therefore it exists only as an element of “partial

illusion.”

According to Arnheim, the reproduction of three-dimensional movement onto a two-

dimensional space provides for an enhanced experience of perspective overlapping that acts

differently than the experience of perspective fashioned by the mind. Although the images of the
world around us enter into the eye in essentially the same method as they do with the camera, the

images have a “constancy of size” that is crucial to the impression of a three-dimensional world

(13). In cinema, due to the use of the photographic image, objects do not follow this constancy

therefore realistic perspective fails. In accordance with this process is also the “constancy of

shape” where the perspectival image of the photograph, chained by two-dimensions, is not

restructured into an image where shape follows a perspectival constant (14). Cinema does not

have the same mechanisms present in the biology of the human mind to reconfigure the objects

“seen” by the lens so that perspectivally they simply make sense. For Arnheim, for the reasons

observed, what is seen in film is not and cannot equate with reality; the illusion of reality is not

the same as reality itself, therefore the same elements that push cinema away from reality move

it towards a center of “partial illusion.” The essentials of realistic impression must be present in

some form yet it is the lack of genuine reality that allows film the possibility of the illusion of

reality. The balance between perceiving the events and objects on the screen as both real and

imaginative creates the impression of some degree of realism in the cinema, enough to excite the

senses into believing the story unfolding on the screen.

The Suggestion of Reality

One cannot examine cinema by simply focusing on the visual aspects of the photograph

or even by probing into the visual aspects of perspective; cinema does not exist on a visual level

untainted by the human mind. In fact, it is left to the human mind to make sense of the visual

stimulation of the cinema. The human element rests essential to the study of cinema. Christian

Metz in his study of reality in cinema explores the psychological element of cinema in the essay

“On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema.” As the title suggests, the power behind the active

engagement of the audience with the film relies on the strong impression of reality present in the

cinema regardless of genre. Although problems of perspective arise, as expressed by Arnheim,

the mitigation of these issues comes swiftly and readily from the ability of the cinematic image

to appeal to the psychological mechanisms usually employed to understand the visual landscape

before the spectator. “Films release a mechanism of affective and perceptual participation in the

spectator” and therefore in accordance with Arnheim, Metz extends this perceptual participation

into the idea of partial illusion (Metz 4).

Film retains and makes strong the evidence of reality in that it provides a sense of

presence; the projection of realistic images, of figures that move in space set a believable

presence that captivates perception almost welcoming an impression of reality (4). The evidence

of reality present in the cinematic image, the seemingly inseparable connection of the reproduced

to an earthy existence embraces and propagates the aesthetical qualities inherent in film; this

aesthetic appeal is such in that it activates the psychological functioning of the mind making the

unreal a realization that plays as a coherent story within the mind of the spectator (5). Cinema

accepts the tangible nature of the photographed. It sets the captured existence free to move on the

screen, recreating the reality of the third-dimension at minimum on the screen but most

importantly this illusion is perceived in the mind as realistic, as nothing more and nothing less

than movement equal to movement in a realistic space.

Movement allows the spectator to participate actively with the medium, to engage with

the forms and to give such forms a jolt of reality that motivates the mind into believing in the

realistic presence of the moving forms. Metz argues that movement, above all “produces the

strong impression of reality” (7). The two-dimensional forms are hence filled with life,

suggesting realistic volume, freeing the forms into a dimension that surpasses a flat two-

dimensionality; to the spectator the psychological effect of movement is that it is “always

perceived as real” bringing about unrestrained reality to the fictive nature of the cinema (8).

While Arnheim also agrees that movement generates an activation of the third-dimension, he
settles to wrestle with the many aspects that force such movement to be less real in that human

perception fails to be motivated to the same levels of realism in film than in reality; while such is

true that space can be felt by the human body, it is not so that because the human cannot sense

the space around the film as real that is does not evoke a sense of the real. Motion creates a

material presence that bridges the unreal with the real, it suggests quite strongly a reality not in

the same as a worldly stimulated reality but one that is strongly an impression of that reality.

Reality in cinema is not merely the reproduction of visual elements onto a two-

dimensional screen, reality in cinema is the psychological stimulation that the visual elements

produce in the spectator that provide a strong impression of reality one that activates the

imagination of the audience so that the story unfolding on that two-dimensional screen seems

extraordinarily believable. To examine the reality present and absent in cinema the theoretical

writings of Rudolph Arnheim and Christian Metz are employed to probe into the impression of

reality created by the cinema. The magic of film cannot exist without the psychological

stimulation granted by the lively interaction of the visual forms present on the screen; the way in

which these forms move with freedom on a screen recreating a sense of reality that captivates or

to use more commanding language, that entrances. Cinema makes real the imaginary. Cinema

takes hold of a reflection of reality and breathes life into lifeless figures. Cinema is in a sense

magic.

Works Cited

Arnheim, Rudolf. “Film and Reality,” in Film as Art. (Berkeley: U.C. Press, 1967): 8-34.

Metz, Christian. “On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema,” (1965) in Film Language: A

Semiotics of the Cinema, trans. Michael Taylor (New York: Oxford U.P., 1974): 3-15.