ABSTRACT
Classical film theorists have considered cinema’s reproductive capacity to be the principal characteristic of the medium, even as they have disagreed on the artistic potential arising from it. Unlike André Bazin, who claims that the invention of cinema arose from the impetus toward realism, or the creation of a reality, Arnheim attributes the artistic effects of film form to the limitations of the medium, that is, to the fact that cinema’s reproductive capacity falls short of being a complete replica of reality. Film art is located somewhere between nature and a complete replica of nature (the complete cinema) and technological development within the film industry would curb the range of the medium’s artistic possibilities, as the phenomenal gap between a filmic reproduction and the reality would become decreased.
