The Cinema of Anecdote and the Cinema of Image

Marcin Giżycki

Abstract

Author makes a reflection on the phenomenon of two different tendencies in the history of cinema - realistic one, which derives from films of Lumiere brothers, and visionary or creational one, the protoplast of which some consider Georges Melies. Giżycki cites words of Stefan Themerson, which in 1937 was arguing, that the dichotomy was visible even in the prehistory of the cinema, because we can regard camera obscura as an anticipation of the realistic tendency, and the laterna magica - as an anticipation of creational one. This primal dualism - as Giżycki argues - is also very visible in the whole history of cinema, i.a. in the distinction between two types of avant-gardes: “aesthetic” one, associated in terms of style with works of Fernand Leger or Man Ray, and “political” one, typical for the realm of soviet cinema (Sergei Eisenstein or Dziga Vertov). Author claims, that the dualism - or, in other words, the differentiation between cinema with prevailing intellectual elements and emphasizing the substance, and cinema with prevailing sensual elements and emphasizing the form - can be found in many other types of film (e.g. fictional film, cartoons) and allows us to define two categories usually opposite in this discourse: the cinema of anecdote and the cinema of image.