In his study of the Holy in art, Gerardus van der Leeuw traces the history of the major arts from their origins in religious practice to the present secularized state. At its beginnings each art form was one with religion but throughout the centuries progressively suffered a “breakup of unity.” The ceremonial religious dance evolved into the sacer ludus, the sacer ludus subsequently subdivided into bourgeois drama and liturgy, the liturgy in its progressional turn became popularized; throughout history the constant trend of art is from the sacred to the profane. The Renaissance, with its emphasis on naturalness and individual effort, usually takes the rap for the “breakup of unity,” but van der Leeuw points out that this trend goes as far back as “the great heretic Akhenaten” who gave Egypt’s gods the sculptural faces of his family.4 Only rarely in the history of art, van der Leeuw contends, have talented artists been able to resist the trend toward secularization and return to the religious origins of art.

Van der Leeuw does not discuss cinema in his study. It is quite crucially the only major art form which does not fit into his schema. Motion pictures were not born in religious practice, but instead are the totally profane offspring of capitalism and technology. If a religious artist in cinema attempts to go back to his origins, he will find only entrepreneurs and technocrats.** When the Holy tries to enter into the cinema, the intrinsically profane art, there are bound to be some unusual consequences—consequences which van der Leeuw did not anticipate.

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 off the walls and became sculptures, the sculptures became photographs, the photographs moved. Eventually the artist, in his desire to imitate life, attempted to reproduce physical existence itself, not like the Greeks just to portray the highest sensual form. Victor Frankenstein’s mad dream was a Gothic extension of a dream shared by many artists of his age: to artificially recreate human life and its external surroundings. The urge to duplicate the external world was accompanied by an urge to duplicate the internal world. The romantic artist scrutinized and dutifully recorded his own feelings; he was accountable to no other reality than his own. The myth of the “artist personality” came into full bloom, resulting in both the psychological picturesque and impression, romantic verse and the psychological novel. Sypher has noted the similarities in nineteenth-century realism and romanticism; the romantic work of art, though verging on total fantasy, was only realism turned outside in.6

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 road to profanation.”9 It canonized the human, sensual and profane: it celebrated the realistic properties of the nineteenth century while the other arts went on to explore the twentieth. From its outset cinema exemplified the abundant means. Imitative, representational, experiential, it could produce instant empathy.

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 imitate life, as Bazin and Sypher contend, but it did not free itself. In fact, Bazin writes, cinema thereby acquired new chains to the “obsession with reality.” This unique alliance of media and abundant means has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. On one hand spiritual cinema was freed from the need to prostitute itself in order to achieve a sense of “realism.” Before the advent of cinema, certain religious artists attempted to first create the illusion of the immanent, then break that illusion, thereby revealing the Transcendent. But, for the most part, these artists spent most of their energy unsuccessfully creating the illusion which they never could successfully “break.” Because the transcendentally minded film-maker already has the illusion at his disposal, he can go immediately to the next stage, attempting to break the illusion. However, the religious film-maker cannot ignore the abundant in the way other artists can. A transcendentally minded painter like Kandinsky, for example, could functionally ignore the abundant means. For him, the abundant means were given; they were the physical gallery where the spectator stood. The canvas itself could be totally sparse, the interplay of abstract forces. Because the cinema is an imitative art in time it not only creates the abstract painting but the gallery as well; a transcendentally minded film-maker simply cannot dismiss the abundant means out of hand.

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 conduct is a model of sparseness. There is a disparity of artistic means: there are abundant imitative techniques—the protagonist and his surroundings; and there is the cold, sparse stylization which supersedes these techniques. Again, transcendental style uses a minimum of abundant means to sustain a film in which the means are becoming increasingly sparse.

Transcendental style theoretically substitutes sparse means for abundant; just how successful it is in this effort can be determined by the decisive action. It is clearly an abundant means, a dramatic or emotional action which cries out for audience empathy. Yet, if transcendental style is successful, the film will at this late point be so bare, so sparse that an abundant technique will have no context to relate to. In the transformed order of artistic means the empathetic, dramatic device now seems out of place.

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 the viewer can become that suffering, saintly person on screen; his personal problems, guilt, and sin are absorbed by humane, noble, and purifying motives. The spiritual drama, like the romantic drama, becomes an escapist metaphor for the human drama. A confrontation between the human and spiritual is avoided. The decisive action is not an unsettling stylistic shock, but the culmination of the abundant means used throughout the film. It fulfills the viewer’s fantasy that spirituality can be achieved vicariously; it is the direct result of his identification. The abundant means are indeed tempting to a film-maker, especially if he is bent on proselytizing. With comparative ease he can make an ardent atheist sympathize with the trials and agonies of Christ. But he has not lifted the viewer to Christ’s level; he has brought Christ down to the viewer’s.

Spiritual art must always be in flux because it represents a greater mystery, also in flux: man’s relationship to the Holy. In each age the spectator grasps for that special form, that spot on the spectrum, whether in art, religion, or philosophy, which can take him to the greater mystery. At present, no film style can perform this crucial task as well as the transcendental style, no films as well as the films of Ozu and Bresson. To expect or settle for any less from film in general, or the films of Ozu and Bresson in particular, underestimates and demeans them. Transcendental style can take a viewer through the trials of experience to the expression of the Transcendent; it can return him to experience from a calm region untouched by the vagaries of emotion or personality. Transcendental style can bring us nearer to that silence, that invisible image, in which the parallel lines of religion and art meet and interpenetrate.