Marie Rebecchi

CINEMA AS ARCHITECTURAL ART

Eisenstein, Ragghianti, and Le Corbusier

Ragghianti and Eisenstein: From Critofilm to Cinema as

“Architectural Art”

Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Italian historian and art critic

influenced by Benedetto Croce’s ideas, was one of the first to
explore the relationship between visual arts and cinema. He
published Cinematografo e teatro and Cinematografo rigoroso
in 1933, and became interested in the work of Sergei M. Eisen-
stein from the point of view of the interconnections between the
theory of cinema and the arts. His interest in cinematographic
techniques in relation to architecture and the relation between
art and architecture led him to Le Corbusier, and he curated the
1963 exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence on the Swiss
architect and urban planner.1
From 1954 to 1964, through the “seleARTE” publishing ini-
tiative, financed in 1952 by Adriano Olivetti, Ragghianti shot
nineteen critofilms. A key element of the originality of these
films is that they were “documents conceived and created by
an art historian who, as such, adopted cinematography within
the sphere of a project which is both critical and instructive.”2
In applying the language of cinema to art criticism, the author
demonstrates how exemplary film is in this sense, a medium ca-
pable of supplying critical thought with a new visual alphabet.

1 C. L. Ragghianti, “Le Corbusier a Firenze,” L’opera di Le Corbusier

(Firenze: Giuntina, 1963), XIX–XXXII.
2 A. Costa, “Cinema, arte della visione,” Carlo L. Ragghianti. I crito-
film d’arte, ed A. Costa (Udine: Campanotto Editore, 1995), 9.
314 The Flying Carpet

Ragghianti used film to trigger an original critical and visual

process that saw cinema as a figurative art capable of lending
three-dimensionality to a work thanks to the dynamic recon-
figuring power of the camera. Critofilm was thus proposed as a
new model of scientific art documentary, a dynamic and exact-
ing form of art criticism that drew its instruments from cinema
while maintaining its own thematic and expressive autonomy.
Among the critofilms Ragghianti made over the course of a
decade, those focusing on architecture and urban design stand
out in terms of originality of composition and technical dar-
ing.3 Before making them, Ragghianti consulted with tech-
nicians and scholars, as in the case of Lucca città comunale
(1955), for which he benefited from the expertise of Eugenio
Luporini (professor of architecture history at the University
of Pisa) as a consultant on Lucca’s urban-design situation.4
Following a screenplay planned out down to the smallest de-
tail, and taking advantage of a series of technical virtuosities
(the use of 360° panoramic shots, bold angles, plongée and
contre-plongée, aerial shots and rising cameras), Ragghianti
let viewers survey the urban structure of the medieval city in a
completely new way. Lucca città comunale (1955) burst onto
the art documentary scene, breaking away from the canonical
model of depiction of architectural space and thus contribut-
ing to a radical change in the perception of the space framed
in shots on film.
Pushing critical intuitions on art beyond the frame of the
painting and thus entering the “Dynamic Square”5 – the mobile

3 The architecture and urban design critofilms Ragghianti made inclu-

de, in addition to Lucca città comunale (1955): Pompei urbanistica
(1958), Storia di una piazza (La piazza di Pisa) (1955), Certosa di
Pavia (1961), Terre alte di Toscana (1961), Tempio malatestiano
(1962), Canal Gande, 1963, Antelami: Battistero di Parma (1963).
Terre alte di Toscana (1961), Tempio malatestiano (1962), Canal
Gande, 1963, Antelami: Battistero di Parma (1963).
4 P. Scremin, “Teoria e pratica del critofilm,” Carlo L. Ragghianti. I
critofilm d’arte, 113.
5 Sergei M. Eisenstein, “The Dynamic Square,” Film Essays and
M. Rebecchi - Cinema as Architectural Art 315

surface that contains the cinema screen –, Ragghianti was able

to distance himself from the scrupulously-critical approach of
his films on painting and deal with problems concerning the vi-
sual organization of vast natural spaces and complex architec-
tural and urban networks.6 On the one hand, the dynamic possi-
bilities of cinema allowed Ragghianti to explore the variety and
variability of the urban fabric; on the other, the compositional
principles of architecture were perfectly suited to Ragghianti’s
desire to create a form of dynamic art criticism through cinema.
In fact, critofilm lets the filmmaker show the constructive ele-
ments that come together in the creative, mental process, and
thus to “penetrate the space, to almost become enmeshed in it,
to guide the viewer on unusual architectural tours, illustrating
the genesis, development and stratification of organisms with
an ancient human quality.”7
With his critofilms, Ragghianti sought to highlight cinema’s
capacity for “dynamic figurativeness,” the plastic potential of
which allowed one to follow the dynamic process of the birth
and development of a painting, a statue, or a work of archi-
tecture. This aspect of Ragghianti’s theoretical thought and
cinematographic practice clearly invites comparison with the
reflections and films of Sergei M. Eisenstein. We can recog-
nize the stimulating potential generated by the juxtaposition
of these two figures, and some have underscored the idea that
it is precisely the fecundity of the dialectic relationship be-
tween visual arts and cinema that sets Ragghianti and Eisen-
stein in the same thought constellation: “The critic himself,
in a lengthy review of the Italian translation of the essays
collected in Film Sense, relishes having discerned a com-
mon interpretive effort aimed at a unifying comprehension of

a Lecture, ed. Jay Leyda (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1982), 48-65; see also Antonio Somaini, Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le
arti, il montaggio (Torino: Einaudi, 2011), 411-22.
6 P. Scremin, “Teoria e pratica del critofilm”, in Carlo L. Ragghianti,
114-15.
7 M. Bertozzi, “La città “bella” e lo schermo. Visioni dai critofilm
d’urbanistica,” in Carlo L. Ragghianti, 131.
316 The Flying Carpet

the artistic phenomenon in the close connection between the

methodology of figurative arts and cinema.”8 In a 1962 essay
entitled Ejzenštejn, cinema e arte, Ragghianti re-proposes in
its entirety, without the cuts that had been made when it was
printed, the article published in the magazine “Espresso” on
April 15, 1962 on the translation from English of Film Sense
(1955) (translated with the title Tecnica del cinema). Here
Ragghianti expresses his utmost appreciation for and his in-
tellectual proximity to Eisenstein’s theoretical work:

Eisenstein, in this sense, is the only cinema writer who, albeit

with other motives and aims, stands (as we shall see, in terms of
clear correlations) on the same line as my Cinema arte figurativa.
[…]. How could I not wish to express my deep satisfaction in re-
alizing that Eisenstein - no doubt in the utmost autonomy and in-
dependence, as on my part as well, - came to the same conclusions
in 1940 that I had reached in 1932, and based on the same sort of
experience and the same method of observation?9

The “same conclusions” Ragghianti refers to in this passage

clearly allude to the dialectical relationship that links the ex-
periences of cinema and art. The power of the encounter that
binds these two modes of artistic experience into a shared ar-
tistic “action” is such that “without one, the other cannot be
understood in all its authenticity.”10 Ragghianti finds the condi-
tions that make this encounter possible in what Eisenstein calls
the “line of movement.” If, as Eisenstein stresses, every artist’s
work contains some trace of movement, then he can construct
a “line of movement” with any means of expression, whether
plastic or dramatic or thematic: “Thus it is no longer a matter
of a segue or a succession or a distribution of images or epi-
sodes upon a surface, which obviously implies a movement of

8 A. Costa, “Cinema, arte della visione,” Carlo L. Ragghianti, 22.

9 C. L. Ragghianti, Ejzenštejn, cinema e arte, in “Critica d’Arte”, nn°
53-54, 1962, reprinted in Id., Arti della visione. Cinema I (Torino:
Einaudi, 1975), 197 and 201.
10 Ibid, 198.
M. Rebecchi - Cinema as Architectural Art 317

the eye, but is something purely translatory and mechanical.

This movement factor is intrinsic to artistic expression itself.”11
The “movement factor” Ragghianti speaks of is thus present in
cinema as well as in painting, but in the latter is clearly made
material by other means. Ragghianti and Eisenstein converge
first and foremost in recognizing a form of homogeneity in the
compositional criteria that pertain to both cinema and paint-
ing,12 and also in considering an architectural and constructive
approach to the image as the potential font of that dynamic im-
pulse towards movement imparted by the principle of montage
already present within the framed shot. From this perspective,
with regard to Ragghianti’s critofilms, “through editing and the
movement of the camera, cinema becomes a method of ‘simu-
lation’ of ways of viewing a work, of the interior processes that
its organization induces, stimulates and requires.”13
In his reflections on the theory of montage, Eisenstein offers
one of the most incisive examples of the plastic presence of
movement in painting: the portrait of the theater actress Ermolo-
va by Valentin Serov (a painter also mentioned by Ragghianti
in his article dedicated to Eisenstein). The painting is presented
as a sort of potentially cinematographic example. It consists
of a montage of four different views with which the painter in
turn frames and isolates four portraits within the picture; each
portrait has a different point of view. The montage of these four
parts conveys neither their succession, nor their contemporane-
ity; the sensation produced in the viewer by the non-correlation
of the individual images generates a dynamic impulse towards
movement – from the basic perception of physical movement
to the complex one of conceptual movement – resulting from
a montage that shows the “simultaneous conjoint presence on
one canavas of elements which are, in essence, the successive
phases of a whole process.”14 The individual elements of Se-

11 Ibid, 200.
12 C. L. Ragghianti, Cinematografo rigoroso, 1932, reprinted in Id.,
Arti della visione. Cinema I (Einaudi: Torino, 1975), 5-37.
13 A. Costa, “Cinema, arte della visione”, 22
14 S. M. Eisenstein, Selected Works. Vol. 2. Towards a Theory of Mon-
318 The Flying Carpet

rov’s painting must be considered simultaneously as autono-

mous parts and parts inseparable from a whole. So this unity
of contemporaneousness and succession is the basis on which
to verify the efficacy of comparative montage, which in fact
shows the individual parts of the painting in the dynamics of
their movement. The sequential system of levels or planes of
the painting described by Eisenstein is predisposed towards a
general re-composition “as a unity of simultaneity and sequence
proves,” and also as a unity of opposites within the principle of
composition itself. If a pictorial representation has a meaning,
and if it effectively impacts the viewer, then this must be the
result of montage, and the work in question is presented not as
an imitation of reality but as its dynamic reconfiguration.
The principle of montage acts on the individual cell
or frame until it achieves the compositional totality of a cin-
ematographic work. Along these lines, Eisenstein’s ideas on
montage can be traced to other forms of artistic representation
as well, including painting, in which static images lend them-
selves to analysis using the method of “invisible montage” of
discrete moments of a single event.15 But if montage is already
present in the painting – as demonstrated by the example of Se-
rov’s portrait of Ermolova – then what is the peculiarity of cin-
ematographic montage, and more generally, what is the specific
nature of cinema as compared to painting? Eisenstein observed
that only cinema is capable of involving an extremely large

tage, ed. Michael Glenny and Richard Taylor, trans. Michael Glen-
ny (London: BFI Publishing, 1994), 86.
15 Jacques Aumont speaks of an invisible collage with regard to the use
of the principle of montage as a method for analyzing a painting. In
particular, Aumont refers to one of Eisenstein’s favorite examples,
used several times in his theory of montage: Watteau’s Embarka-
tion for Cythera. Drawing on an observation by Auguste Rodin,
Eisenstein read the painting as a cinematographic montage. In this
case, Aumont observes, montage proves to be an extremely effica-
cious method of analyzing temporality in painting. See J. Aumont,
Rileggere Ejzenštejn: Il teorico, lo scrittore, in S. M. Ejzenštejn,
Il Montaggio, ed. by Pietro Montani (Venezia: Marsilio, 1998), X-
XXXVII ; Eisenstein, Selected Works, 2 : 154.
M. Rebecchi - Cinema as Architectural Art 319

number of heterogeneous elements (sounds, images, colors)

through methods of montage that convert the representative
datum into a meaningful image. Thus the task of montage is
encapsulated in the concept of “imagicity,” a far more complete
solution than the principle of the unity of form and content.
Any deviation from this principle entails a suspension of the
dynamic character of the image (obraz) and a plunge “into the
immobilism of the symbol” in which the individual elements
participating in its composition remain inevitably unrelated,
since their unification takes place in a static way.
Eisenstein and Ragghianti thus concur on three points: cine-
ma and painting come together along a line of “anachronic con-
tinuity” within the same general history of vision16; the problem
of temporality and the dynamic impulse toward movement is
common to both painting and cinema; and one of the forms of
temporality that can be found in both painting and cinema coin-
cides with an “architectural” model of duration of the work, “a
temporality activated by the viewer, by the path and duration
of his gaze,”17 a duration that corresponds to the time the ob-
server/viewer’s gaze takes to pass through the different planes
that make up and structure the work. To confirm this third point,
Ragghianti picks up Eisenstein’s own words, bringing them
into the context of his reflection on the homogeneity between
the methods of painting and cinema: “The art of plastic compo-
sition lies in guiding the viewer’s attention along a specific path
in the exact order desired by the work’s author. This involves
the movement of the eye over the surface of a canvas, if the
composition is expressed in painting, or the surface of a screen,
if we are looking at a frame of film.”18

While the search for a structural homology between paint-

ing and cinema led both Ragghianti and Eisenstein to consider

16 See S. M. Eisenstein, Notes for a General History of Cinema, ed.

by Naum Kleiman and Antonio Somaini (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2016).
17 A. Costa, “Cinema, arte della visione,” 22.
18 C. L. Ragghianti, Arti della visione. Cinema I, 204.
320 The Flying Carpet

the principles of composition of the individual frame, once we

begin comparing the experiences of cinema and architecture,
we must explore the composition of the sequencing of multi-
ple frames. Eisenstein saw in architecture the model on which
cinema must draw in constructing – through the unfolding of
events distant from one another in time and space – a multiplic-
ity of “imaginary lines of sight,” which impose themselves on
the gaze of an immobile viewer.

Moscow 1928. Eisenstein, Le Corbusier, and l’Architecture

d’aujourd’hui

In trying to conceive of cinema and architecture as two modes

of expression and plastic production of shapes and forms that
reveal their shifting path to the viewer, Eisenstein comes very
close to Le Corbusier’s idea of promenade architecturale: an
“architectural stroll” in which the eye – in the technologized
form of the film camera – traverses a space to construct visual
paths, representations of virtual roads along which the ele-
ments that the artist wishes to place there and show to the view-
er are arranged. The fact that both Eisenstein and Le Corbusier,
in their interpretation of the “sequenced” arrangement of the
buildings of the Acropolis, made reference to the illustrations
in Choisy’s Histoire de l’architecture19 is a clear sign of their
like-mindedness in conceiving of cinema as “architectural art”
and architecture as potentially “cinematographic art.”
In 1928, during his trip to Moscow to design the Centrsoiuz
building, Le Corbusier was escorted everywhere by the archi-
tect Andrei Burov, a pupil of Alexander Vesnin. Through Burov,
who had designed the sets for the film General Line (1926-29),
Le Corbusier met with Eisenstein. The encounter had a signifi-
cant impact on Le Corbusier’s stay in Moscow, to the point that
Eisenstein’s film was renamed “La ligne droite,” an ironic and

19 A. Somaini, Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio (Torino: Ein-

audi, 2011), 336.
M. Rebecchi - Cinema as Architectural Art 321

subtle pun also found in the dedication to Eisenstein of his L’Art

décoratif d’aujourd’hui: “To M. Eisenstein this dedication after
Potemkin and The Straight Line. I seem to think as M. Eisen-
stein does when he makes films. Spirit of truth, calcimine, two
chapters of this book that express the same conviction. With my
deepest sympathy and highest regard.”20

Le Corbusier, Eisenstein and Burov, Moscow 1928

On October 16, 1928 Le Corbusier attended the screening or-

ganized by VOKS of Battleship Potemkin (1925) and four reels
of The General Line, which would be released the following
year. The weekly Sovetskii Ekran noted Le Corbusier’s reac-
tion to the initial sequences of the film: “Very satisfied with the

20 Our translation; the original French text reads: “A M. Eisenstein

cette dédicace après le Potemkine et après La ligne droite. Il me
semble bien que je pense comme M. Eisenstein lorsqu’il fait du
cinéma. Esprit de vérité, le lait de chaux, deux chapitres de ce livre
qui expriment aussi la même conviction. En très grande sympathie
et avec toute mon admiration.” The dedication is dated: Moscow,
25 October 1928. (Le Corbusier (1928), in J.-L. Cohen, Le Cor-
busier et la mystique de l’URSS: théories et projets pour Moscou,
1928-1936 (Bruxelles: Éditions Mardaga, 1988), 72.
322 The Flying Carpet

architectural form of the “sovkhoz,” Le Corbusier admitted his

great surprise at seeing us put Western architectural principles
and forms to very different use.” In an interview included in
the article – the only one published during his first trip to Mos-
cow – Le Corbusier underscored the commonalities between
his work and Eisenstein’s.

Le cinéma et l’architecture sont les deux seuls arts de l’époque

contemporaine. Il me semble que dans mon travail je pense de
la même manière que S. Eisenstein, quand il élabore son propre
cinéma. Ses travaux sont pénétrés du sens de la vérité. Témoign-
ant exclusivement de la réalité. Ils sont proches par leur pensée
de ce que je m’efforce de faire dans mes travaux. Je profite de
cette occasion pour dire toute mon admiration devant son princi-
pe de libération des événements de tout ce qu’ils ont de non car-
actéristique et d’insignifiant. L’ancrage dans l’essentiel n’élève
pas seulement son travail au-dessus de la chronique, mais il élève
sur l’écran tous les événements ordinaires qui échappent à notre
attention superficielle (qu’il s’agit du lait qui coule, des femmes
fauchant ou des porcelets) au niveau d’image monumentale. Par
exemple, la procession de La Ligne Générale, avec ses “portiques
dynamiques” des icônes qui avancent et le modelé sculptural des
figures n’est comparable qu’avec l’acuité des figures caractéris-
tiques de Donatello.21

The same esprit de vérité that Le Corbusier attributes to Ei-

senstein’s film work in the book dedication characterizes the
construction material (calcimine) used in his own architectural
works.22 Le Corbusier was inevitably drawn to Eisenstein’s ide-
as on the principle of montage, particularly the concept of film
as a construction process in which montage serves to coordinate
the composition of the various gears of the “cinematographic
machine” - a machine for “signifying” – given that he consid-

21 Le Corbusier (1928), in J.-L. Cohen, Le Corbusier et la mystique de

l’URSS: théories et projets pour Moscou, 1928-1936, 72.
22 For his part, Eisenstein declared: “I confess that I used to be a great
adherent of the architectural aesthetics of Le Corbusier and Gro-
pius.” Eisenstein, Selected Works, 2:289.
M. Rebecchi - Cinema as Architectural Art 323

ered the product of his architectural efforts as “machines for

living” (machine à habiter).23
In 1930, after his return from Moscow and having met Eisen-
stein, Le Corbusier began work on the creation of three films for
the magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui: Bâtir, Architecture
d’aujourd’hui and Trois chantiers. The soundtracks, now lost,
were composed by Le Corbusier’s brother Albert Jeanneret, and
added in 1931. Le Corbusier made the films with Pierre Chenal,
but was the sole author of the screenplays.24 The films had a dual
purpose: to publicize the magazine, founded that same year, and
to promote modern French architecture through cinema.
In Architecture d’aujourd’hui, the viewer looks into the ra-
tional “machines for living” that Le Corbusier designed and
built: Villa Stein-De Monzie, Villa Church and Villa Savoye.
The camera incessantly emphasizes “the dynamic action of
traversing space,”25 first in exterior shots, and then moving into
the residences (without the use of artificial light), and finally
showing the roof terrace with skillfully-executed rising camera
movements.
The architectural composition of the shots, as in the case of
Ragghianti’s urban and architectural critofilms, presupposes the
moving gaze of a viewer traversing the spaces designed by an
“architect of images.” Not coincidentally, Eisenstein spoke of
cinema as an “imaginary line of sight.”26 Cinema, that is, as
“architectural art.” While painting has in fact proven incapable
of fixing on a complete picture of events in all their multiform
plasticity, “only the film camera has solved the problem of do-
ing this on a flat surface. But its undoubted ancestor in this
capacity is … architecture.”27

23 T. Aglieri Rinella, “Le Corbusier,” Il cinema degli architetti, ed. by

V. Trione (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2014), 130.
24 A. Redivo, Batir, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui. Costruire l’architet-
tura moderna. Il contributo di due film di Pierre Chenal (Venezia:
IUAV, 2001).
25 T. Aglieri Rinella, “Le Corbusier,” Il cinema degli architetti, 130.
26 A. Somaini, Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio, 336.
27 Eisenstein, Selected Works, 2:60.