MAT103 - Walter Benjamin – About Film

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“The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle

unimaginable anywhere at any time before this.”

Painting

Film

“The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations.”

“Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested.”

Picasso

Chaplin

“Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie.”

Magician / Painter

Surgeon / Cameraman

“The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands;”

“...the surgeon cuts into the patient’s body.”

“The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality,”

“...the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.”

“Although paintings began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons, there was no way for the masses to organize and control themselves in their reception”

“The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention.”

MAT103 - Walter Benjamin – About Film

○Bio     ○About Aura