Words of Wisdom

"Some people will not act without knowing where they were going, or what they can expect. They are conditioned to the result, thinking they know what it will be. They project results as already experienced into each action they are faced with, and in this way think they know where they are going. Risk, failure or confusion area apparently eliminated. Yet their results merely echo the past. They have a preconception that a particular object should be represented by a particular image. This too becomes a projection of a received or taught symbol, not necessarily a symbol acquired by experience. It is undoubtedly easier to exist in this way, since it avoid change and readjustment, confusion and effort. It also permits control, restraint; you know where you are and you know who you are - at least you think you do, probably because you are static enough to see your whole frozen frame."

"Appreciation in the broadest of sense as far as film is concerned is very important today. The viewer, having been conditioned to accept the story as the main conscious experience, has difficulty appreciating film on the intuitive and unconscious level. With the advent of sound film the verbal story has become more dominant than the visual narrative. We experience a 'minimal' sensation in that long, long shot of the empty street in the basic cowboy film - just before the gunfight - we accept this tension because it is resolved by the eventual gunfight. Our sensation is resolved for us but my view is that the tension can be and very often is a valid statement in itself and this tension is a thing we have to live with and resolve for ourselves. The sensation without the familiar narrative resolution can provide an active situation for the viewer where he is part of the whole, and is very much alive in it; no longer escaping but growing...and I begin to wonder how we have lost in the way of seeing and feeling because the need for  profit and quick political propaganda has weaned generations on the simple escapist films ('let the workers rest - they will work better tomorrow'). As a result, most cinema goers hear the patter of pipe dreams and register sensation solely by dictionary description."

- Film Is (1975) by Stephen Dwoskin, pages 62 and 126 respectively. -