SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

Kurt-WilhelmMarek(whosignedhistextsasC.W.Ceram)postulatedthatitwas
proper to have cinema begin with film and projection, everything else (optical
toys,shadowshows,lanterns,etc.)beingbesidethepoint:
Knowledgeofautomatons,orofclockworktoys,playednopartinthestoryof
cinematography, nor is there any link between it and the production of
animated “scenes.” We can therefore omit plays, the baroque automatons,
and the marionette theatre. Even the “deviltries” of Porta, produced with the
camera obscura, the phantasmagorias of Robertson, the “dissolving views” of
Child, are not to the point. All these discoveries did not lead to the first
genuine moving picture sequence. 43
While Ceram’s first argument, which distinguishes the “cinématographe” (the
“technical equipment” of film) and the “cinéma” (“something more than a technique”),isquitecommon,hemakestwootherinterestingdistinctionsthatallow
himtodefinewhatisadmissibleandinadmissibleintoahistoryofcinema.First,
there is the distinction between the mechanical and the technical: the first is
static, while the second is dynamic, and thecinema is a product(an “invention”)
of “dynamic” sciences. “Here there is not an ‘evolution’ from one to the other,
but a mutation of mechanical thought into technical thought,” writes Ceram,
allowing him to exclude, as we have seen, numerous practices used in spectacles
and representations. He also distinguishes between the cinematic image, which
presents a “true movement,” on the one hand, and the “change of position” of
magic lantern images or the transformation of two separate images into one, via
the“illusoryidentification”ofthethaumatrope,ontheother.Eisensteintakesan
oppositepositiononallthesepoints,inparticularconcerningtheUrphänomendes
Films, which for him is rooted precisely in the fact that film produces the idea of
movement (inside the spectator’s head) from two immobile images that follow
eachotherandaresuperimposed.ArthistorianPierreFrancastelwillalsotakeup
thisaspectofcinemainhiscourses. 44
“New History” doubtlessly caused the historiography of cinema to shift from
theissueoforigintothatofgenesis–touseCanguilhem’sdistinction–fromthe
linear, gradual narrative to archaeology and genealogy – to speak like Foucault –
but the scope of the epistemological shift of 1978 can be qualified. While Sadoul’s
discourse generally follows an evolutionary vector founded on causal sequences
– essentially because of a preoccupation with the evolution of “cinematographic
language” – its analytical foci across historical strata show another
approach, particularly when it comes to intermedial exchanges. His thoughts on
the dialectics of invention, the state of techniques, and “social demand” are little
known. 45 AfterGeorgesFriedmann,Bazinpointedtotheirnoveltyinhisaccount
of the first volume of the Histoire générale du cinéma, before claiming this novelty
ashis own andcasting Sadoulas a“Stalinist” Marxist in the finalversion of
“the heritage we renounce”: eisenstein in historioraphy 275