Answer to Question #260896 in Sociology for Sane

Question

identify and briefly summarize the two tendencies discussed by Siegfried Krakauer, b) say which film belongs to which tendency, and c) give two reasons for your answer using examples from the films.

Answer 1

(a)   Siegfried Kracauer discusses two key tendencies in film that determine a film’s cinematic aesthetic validity: realistic and formative tendencies. These two tendencies clash with one another to bring to mind an argument on which one achievement as the leading platform to determine aesthetic validity.

The realistic tendency captures the combination of both objective and subjective movement to establish a picture that tells a story in itself. Not only does realistic film focus on the natural movement of the subject, but also focuses on staging the scene in the most realistic way possible, whether that be by using the original landscaping intended to be portrayed, or accurately representing the landscape in a realistic way so as to convince the viewer that what they are seeing is real.

The ‘formative’ tendency refers to the filmmakers’ concerned with giving structure, narrative, and order to images and sounds so as to fashion a cultural product, a composition, a work of ‘art’.

(b)  Lumiere film belongs to realistic tendency while Melies film belongs to formative tendency.

(c)   The reasons as to why lumiere film uses realistic tendency is because the approach relies heavily on images the camera captures and the different techniques used to capture such images and also this approach helps to instill emotion in the viewer for the woman being rescued and, in the cross-cut version.

On the other hand, melies uses formative tendency because it is helpful in fulfilling the formative aspirations of the filmmaker and these elements often serve to work against the basic properties of the medium.