ABSTRACT

Since the turn of the twentieth century, the continuing attempt to elevate the status of film, artistic or otherwise, has taken various routes, through either an affiliation with or differentiation from previously established art forms. The film d'art movement in France and Autorenfilm in Germany, for instance, tried to lure the middle-class audiences through literary adaptations, the subject matter of which such middle-class audiences would find sophisticated. Classical film theorists, such as Rudolf Arnheim, André Bazin, and Sergei Eisenstein, took an opposite approach, claiming that there exists a set of characteristics distinctive of the film medium, and that film as art should explore these medium-specific qualities.