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The conventional religious film uses a style of identification rather than of confrontation. The style amplifies the abundant artistic means inherent to motion pictures: the viewer is aided and encouraged in his desire to identify and empathize with character, plot, and setting. For an hour or two …

At the stage of disparity the conflict between abundant and sparse artistic means becomes apparent—and disturbing—to the spectator. This conflict is personified by the protagonist; here is a product of abundant means, a man in realistic human form whose physical needs are like our own, yet whose co…

The transcendentally minded film-maker finds himself in a unique position: he must properly dispose of a surfeit of abundant means (cinema’s inherent “realism”). He cannot ignore or neglect these means, but must turn them to his advantage. Cinema may have freed the other arts from their desire to i…

Cinema short-circuited the desire to duplicate external reality—no longer would a painter or novelist strive for the realism cinema inherently offered—and plunged the desire to duplicate internal reality into a deeper, more complex level. Cinema was also, as Hauser wrote, “the final step on the roa…

Each overview, whether monistic like van der Leeuw’s or dualistic like Bazin’s, holds that the spiritual quality in art suffered its decline at the expense of “realism,” the duplication of either external or internal reality. Art has always been excited by the challenge of realism: the bison came o…