Bazin's View on Realism and Battleship Potemkin - Essay Example

With his critical outlook, Bazin has succeeded in getting a positive focus on movies like Nanook of the North (1922) Robert Flaherty’s take on Canadian tribals, Bicycle Thieves (1948) (Cardullo, 2011, 53) and Umberto D. (1952), both from Vittorio De Sica’s labs, which had missed audience attention due to the prevalence of commercial cinema. However the story does not end there. Bazin has taken important steps in proving that realism although in its subtle form helps montage movie makers ultimately create the super finish in their manipulations and gives them new grounds for experimentation.

The essay will analyze the contributions of Bazin’s criticism and arguments base on his humane understanding of real life and the way it needs to be portrayed in cinema and does not necessarily have a universal appeal in the world of contemporary motion cinema. Bazin was a wonderful follower of ontological movie making processes wherein the camera, the director, and the audience have nothing much to do than sit back and watch the proceedings in action without any manipulation of what is being recorded in the frame.

While we can understand the rawness that he loves, Bazin never pulled down any scene by its elements and provided an explanation of how better it could have been presented even while basing on realism. All his criticisms are directed towards non-realistic moviemaking, while not even once has he made a suggestion towards the improvement or differential treatment of existing realistic movies which he so openly lauded. While neo-realism in cinema has derived a lot of inspiration from Bazin’s writing, the basic core of moviemaking, which involves the creative challenges for director and cinematographer gets negated out if we are to strictly follow in Bazin’s line of thinking.

Modern day cinema is all based on the combination of digital and motion