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Within the discussion of religious art there arises the fascinating question of how art can engender the awareness of those special (hierophanous) moments in culture where the sacred dimension breaks through into otherwise profane experience. This question requires a consideration of the peculiar relationship which a given art form has to its world (e.g., imitation vs. interpretation, recording vs. transformation).
The special potency of cinematic art in its relationship to physical and spiritual reality, and to surface and depth, is the subject of the present article. While religion-and-film discussions frequently focus upon religious themes in film, the purpose of the following analysis is that of considering a theology of film, taking account of fundamental questions of cinematic theory. Among thinkers whose systems suggest possibilities for dialogue are theologian (Paul Tillich), a phenómenologist (Mikel Dufrenne) and a “school” of film theorists, including especially the followers of André Bazin.
1 Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 11–12, 20–24.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., p. 11.
3 Ibid., p. 11.
4 Ibid., p. 12.
5 Ibid., p. 12.
6 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 85.Google Scholar
7 Tillich, Paul, The Religious Situation (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 39.Google Scholar
8 Tillich, Paul, The Protestant Era (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 60.Google Scholar
9 Tillich, , The Protestant Era, p. 68.Google Scholar In the field of artistic expression, this self-transcending realism becomes most evident when form is shattered in order that depth may become visible (cf. “Existential Aspects of Modern Art,” in Carl Michalson, Christianity and the Existentialists, pp. 128–147).
10 Ibid., p. 78.
11 Ibid., p. 79.
12 Dufrenne, Mikel, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Evanston: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 55.Google Scholar
13 Dufrenne's work is characterized by Edward Casey as the fulfillment of a trend: “In this respect, it is by no means accidental that his Phenomenology brings the decade to a close. For it represents a return to that fundamental and most concrete level of human experience which the Greeks had called aisthesis: ‘sense experience’. After Baumgarten and Kant, aesthetic experience had become increasingly divorced from sensory experience…. In opposition to such aestheticism, Dufrenne attempted to restore a measure of the meaning of aisthesis by providing a base for aesthetic experience in the open availability of feeling and perception” (Casey, Edward, Introduction to Dufrenne, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, p. xviGoogle Scholar).
14 Dufrenne, , Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, p. 336.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., p. 534.
16 Ibid., pp. 376-377.
17 Ibid., p. 377.
18 Ibid., p. 549.
19 Ibid., p. 549.
20 Arnheim, Rudolf, Film As Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 157.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., p. 8.
22 Ibid., pp. 157–158.
23 Ibid., p.35.
24 Lindgren, Ernest, The Art of the Film (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 79.Google Scholar
25 Pudovkin, V. I., Film Technique and Acting (London: Vision, 1958), p. 86.Google Scholar
26 Sadoul, Georges, L'Invention du Cinéma (quoted in Kracauer, p. 31).Google Scholar
27 Bazin, André, What is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), Vol. I, p. 13.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., p. 13.
29 Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 39.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., p. 301.
31 Bazin, , What is Cinema? p. 15.Google Scholar
32 Kracauer, , Theory of Film, p. 23.Google Scholar
33 Bazin, , What is Cinema? pp. 165–166.Google Scholar
34 Ayfre, Amédée, “Conversion aux Images?” in Agel, Henri, Le Cinéma et le Sacré (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1961), p. 12.Google Scholar
35 Bandelier, Alain, quoted in Ayfre, Amédée, Cinéma et Mystère (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969), p. 86.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., p. 108.
37 Ayfre, , Cinéma et Mystère, p. 16.Google Scholar
38 Quoted in Ayfre, , “The Universe of Robert Bresson,” in Cameron, Ian (ed.), The Films of Robert Bresson (London: Studio Vista, 1969), p. 8.Google Scholar
39 Agel, Henri, Poétique du Cinéma (Paris: Editions du Signe, 1960), p. 59.Google Scholar
40 Quoted in Agel, , Poétique du Cinéma, p. 14.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., p. 50.
42 Bandelier, , “Cinéma et Mystère,” in Ayfre, , Cinéma et Mystère, pp. 80–81.Google Scholar
43 Kracauer, , Theory of Film, p. 233.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., p. 309.
45 Ibid., p. 298.
46 Ayfre, , “The Universe of Robert Bresson,” p. 11.Google Scholar
47 Ibid., p. 12.
48 Ibid., p. 12.
49 Durgnat, Raymond, “Le Journal d'un Cure de Campagne,” in Cameron, Ian, The Films of Robert Bresson, p. 47.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., p. 48.
51 Quoted in Durgnat, p. 48. Bazin has elsewhere described this scene as the culmination of a spiritual pilgrimage: “The spectator has been led, step by step, toward that night of the senses the only expression of which is a light on a blank screen” (What is Cinema? Vol. I, p. 140Google Scholar).
52 Albeit one of the cinema's more restrained examples of the principle.
53 Durgnat, , “Le Journal,” p. 48.Google Scholar
54 Bazin, , What is Cinema? p. 133.Google Scholar
55 Bandelier, in Ayfre, pp. 115–116.
56 Agel, , Poétique du Cinéma, p. 8.Google Scholar
57 Quoted in Agel, p. 24.
58 Ayfre, , Cinéma et Mystère, p. 17.Google Scholar
59 Adams, James Luther, Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Politics, Culture and Art (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 98.Google Scholar
60 Dufrenne, , Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, p. 339.Google Scholar
61 Agel, , Poétique du Cinéma, p. 28.Google Scholar
62 Dufrenne, , Le Poétique, p. 75 (quoted in Agel, p. 8).Google Scholar
63 Agel, , Poétique du Cinéma, p. 8.Google Scholar
64 Eliade, , The Sacred and the Profane, p. 11.Google Scholar