2 - Early cinema, surrealism, and allegory

Summary

Early cinema is an art of allegory; and it is due to the profoundly rooted modern (post-Romantic) opposition to allegory that its displacement was inevitable. Its primary allegorical feature is its location of writing and image on the same plane. In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin quotes Schopenhauer's condemnation of allegory, which nevertheless shows a grasp of its complicity with writing:

When, therefore, an allegorical picture has also artistic value, this is quite separate from and independent of what it achieves as allegory. Such a work of art serves two purposes simultaneously, namely the expression of a concept and the expression of an Idea. Only the latter can be an aim of art; the other is a foreign aim, namely the trifling amusement of carving a picture to serve at the same time as an inscription, as a hieroglyphic.… It is true that an allegorical picture can in just this quality produce a vivid impression on the mind and feelings; but under the same circumstances even an inscription would have the same effect. For instance, if the desire for fame is firmly and permanently rooted in a man's mind… and if he now stands before the Genius of Fame (by Annibale Carracci) with its laurel crowns, then his whole mind is thus excited, and his powers are called into activity. But the same thing would also happen if he suddenly saw the word “fame” in large clear letters on the wall.

(Origin of German Tragic Drama, pp. 161–2; ellipses by Benjamin)