Andre Bazin's "The Evolution of the Language of Cinema"

I knew that movies nowadays had more differentiating them from silent films than technological advantages and more complex storylines. I just didn’t know what that other difference was until this class. Bazin’s article is about form. After reflecting on the films we’ve viewed in class, I can better understand Bazin’s description of the evolution of the language of cinema. Bazin describes the film form of the silent era as “expressionist” or “symbolistic” due to its mise-en-scene and montage by attraction while the new form is described as “analytic” and “dramatic.” The most obvious example of symbolistic montage comes from Potemkin. The three successive images of the lion statues (lying down, rising and alert) represented the people’s uprising. A ready example of dramatic montage (I’m pretty sure) would be the parallel montage during Angier’s Transported Man on the night of his “death” in The Prestige. “[I]n the silent days, montage evoked what the director wanted to say; in the editing of 1938, it described it. Today we can say that at last the director writes in film.”