By now it should be clear why I feel that the artistic genre of film deserves its own special consideration in this personal reflection on the arts. As an art-form it is distinct from, say, a novel or even a play. Novels we enjoy usually in a sitting posture (sometimes—though not recommended—recumbent or supine), and we participate in their created world through our imaginations. A play of course is a version of human activity presented “in the round,” and its effect is dependent to some extent on the vision of its director. It recurs nightly (and at matinees) in essentially the same form--with identical blocking, dialogue--and is shown to and appreciated each night by a new audience. Now while film, a technologically advanced marvel of our era, can admittedly capture the human scene merely in a 2-d version of the actual 3-d reality we witness daily, that does not invalidate its claims to re-present our world faithfully. Our imaginations supply the missing dimension, just as they do in a novel.
Film is also a technological achievement, a product of our species’ capacity for progressively new and better inventions. To even exist, it requires a series of discrete mechanisms: first came the camera. It etches or imprints blank film with successive images which, when run in rapid sequence, render a faithful capture of the world we witness and move within. Next, film required a projector (now some digital machine or other) that flashes that rapid flow of images on a screen or wall. Every time it is shown, a different audience will see an exact duplicate of the “show” (nice and telling, the way we form nouns from verbs!) all previous audiences have seen. Films thus allow a multiple, sequential sharing of a single work of art--a corporate, if successive experience. Naturally, that cannot guarantee a common acquiescence in its message, but at least a broad swath of humanity will have had a certifiably common exposure to the single pistepiste t an entir era',...