Ancient Greek philosophers were among the first thinkers to introduce art to philosophy. Plato, in his famous Socratic dialogues, talked extensively about painting, sculpture, and poetry. In Poetics, Aristotle delved into the art of tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry. Although mainly known for his contributions to mathematics, Pythagoras laid the foundations of modern music theory. Art and philosophy have always intersected, but the philosophy of film is a relatively new field in the line of this ancient tradition.
Philosophy in Film vs. Philosophy of Film
The philosophy of film is the child of modern philosophy, conceived at the dawn of the twentieth century and popularized in the 80s. It is generally considered a subfield of the philosophy of art and aesthetics. There is a distinction in the connection between philosophy and film in so far as a film can both serve as a medium of philosophy and can itself be a philosophical subject. Philosophy in film describes the way films can express profound philosophical themes. On the other hand, the philosophy of film describes the study of the nature, structures, aesthetics, representations, and ethics of films.
Unlike discussions of philosophy in film, the philosophy of film is less concerned with interpreting film content than with studying the medium of film itself as an art form.
Is A Philosophy of Film Possible?
Early discourse in film theory questioned the legitimacy of films as an art form eligible for philosophical investigation. This is because early films seemed to lack the honorific quality that characterized other art forms. Unlike theatre, visual arts, and opera, films were a mere means of entertainment, screened in venues, such as circus shows, for commercial purposes only. Moreover, the majority of early films consisted of shots of everyday life or recordings of theatrical shows to facilitate their distribution to a wider audience. This raised the question as to whether films were an art form in their own right or simply a means of accessing other art forms. What does the medium of film offer for philosophical exploration that existing art forms lack?
Hugo Münsterberg: The First Philosopher of Film
Hugo Müsterberg was among the first thinkers to address this question. In an essay published in 1916, Münsterberg attempted to distinguish films from other art forms by exploring their unique technical devices, such as montage, flashbacks, close-ups, etc. These devices effectively distinguished film as an art form in its own right. Drawing on his psychological background, Münsterberg argued that film devices mimic human mental processes in ways that other art forms cannot. For instance, a close-up shot mimics the way we pay attention to something. Likewise, flashbacks correlate with how we experience memories.
According to Münsterberg, film viewers can intuitively understand these technical devices because they are familiar with the workings of their own minds. Münsterberg is often considered a cognitive philosopher of film. The cognitive philosophy of film is a field that conjoins the philosophy of film with the natural sciences, namely, psychology.
From Henry Bergson to Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze was one of the most prominent figures in the philosophy of film. He not only argued that a philosophy of film is possible, but that the medium of film can provide us with more accurate insights into the nature of reality than any other medium of investigation. Deleuze built on the ideas of Henri Bergson to expound his philosophy of film, albeit Bergson himself was very critical of films in light of his philosophical framework.
Bergson held that reality is a constant process of becoming, where duration constitutes our subjective experience of time and movement reflects it materially. Most notably, he believed that movement is indivisible, rendering all attempts to analytically understand reality in static fragments illusory. Consequently, Bergson argued that films are a misrepresentation of reality. Consisting of a succession of mechanical and static picture frames, films betrayed his vision of continuous fluid motion.
Deleuze used Bergson’s own ideas to refute him and redeem films from what he considered an unreasonable critique. He used his concepts of movement and duration to expound his ideas of the movement-image and the time-image in his books Cinema 1 and Cinema 2, respectively. According to Deleuze, motion is the fundamental essence of a film. If we take the frames of a film and view them as still images, then we are no longer looking at a film. A film is a film precisely because it is in motion. An image is not defined in isolation, but within a continuity of movement. Unlike Bergson, Deleuze held that film is a medium that can teach us far more about the nature of reality than our habitual way of looking at the world ever could.
