The Influence of the Kabuki Theater on the Films of Eisenstein

THE INFLUENCE OF THE KABUKI THEATER ON THE FILMS OF EISENSTEIN To EVEN THE MOST CASUAL OBSERVER a Kabuki performance appears extremely stylized. This is so for several reasons. The "aragoto" style of acting (literally "rough business"), is muscular, vigorous, and highly exaggerated. And of course, all women's roles are played by skilled male impersonators so that, while their interpretation of female mannerisms is studiously exact, it is firmly objective. For variety , the Kabuki actor will imitate the rigid movements of the puppets from the classical Puppet theater, in contrast to which his former acting style appears almost naturalistic. But the very heart of stylization is the pose or "mie," a tense, self-contained attitude, as attentiongetting and climactic as the aria. The onstage change of costume is again a break with any suspension of disbelief. The darkly-clothed "kurago," skillfully moving with the actor, pulls the threads of his costume so that it falls apart to reveal another underneath. This is as much a part of the performance proper as the exaggerated make-up with its red and blue lines to indicate a character's goodness or badness. With all this spectacle, including pantomime, music and dance, it is not surprising that plots are rather unimportant. The actor comes first. In the modern Kabuki, actors don already painted "second skins" stuffed with cotton to make them look larger than life size. The structure of the Kabuki stage with the hanamichi on which the actor frequently entrances, performs and exits, puts him in closer contact with the audience. The result of both these effects is similar to that of the close-up in cinema. Thus there is the intimacy of both the theater and the cinema. .The cinema in even its most representational form is more removed from reality than anything happening onstage. The screen itself is once removed from life; in addition, the medium demands variety in photography to escape from sheer monotony. It would be impossible to create an impact by using only one angle or one unbroken shot. And this variety in angles and shots is a further step towards non-realism. When Eisenstein was experimenting with cinematic techniques in the early twenties, the cinema was closer to recording events, and 18 1969 INFLUENCE OF THE KABUKI THEATER 19 thus to a realistic technique, than it has ever been since. During that time Eisenstein was working in the theater but he soon met with frustration . Basically, he wanted a more encompassing set and greater impact than the theater could offer. This desire led him directly into the cinema. In 1924 he filmed Strike in which were depicted the incidents leading to a general strike during Czarist rule. He immediately came to grips with the basic paradox of cinema: that for heightened realism and greater impact, one needs unrealistic techniques..The most impressive part of the film intercut shots of cattle being slaughtered in an abbatoir with shots of strikers being murdered. The famous editing technique of Potemkin known as montage originated here. As Eisenstein put it: "The minimum indistortable fragment of nature is the shot; ingenuity in its combinations is montage." (The Film Form, N. Y., 1949, p. 5) Eisenstein ushered in the modern cinema in Europe just as surely as did D. W. Griffith in America. Pleased with the content of Strike, the Soviet Government commissioned Eisenstein to commemorate in film the abortive revolution of 1905, and Potemkin, possibly the most revolutionary film of all time, was born. Eisenstein based his concept of montage on what he termed "shock attraction." A study of Japanese hieroglyphics revealed the separation of an image into its component parts; its combination occurred only in the reader's mind. For example, the image for sorrow is a knife and a heart; the combination of the two creates that which is greater than the word "sorrow." In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. He transported the idea point for point into the cinema. When an audience makes the connection between two separate but closely linked images, there is what Eisenstein termed an explosion. Everything depended upon juxtaposition, so much so, that at times the actor...