Very well--what would be a linguistically accurate characterization of a man?His raven-black hair...
The waves of his hair...
His eyes radiating azure beams...
His steely muscles...
Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.
Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects? Language is much closer to film than painting is. For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents--as an element--the greatest difficulty in manipulation. So why not rather lean towards the system of language, which is forced to use the same mechanics in inventing words and word-complexes?
--Sergei Eisenstein, "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" (1929)
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