Plastics and Montage – The Fundamentals of Category

In his essay on “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” Andre Bazin presents a unique and distinguished argument that there are only two categories for everything represented on the (cinematic) screen, the first being those that relate to the plastics of the image and the other being those that relate to the resources of montage. To eliminate confusion in his readers, Bazin explains that the “plastics” he refers to are “the style of the sets, of the makeup, and, up to a point, even of the performance,” making sure to note that his “resources of montage” can be thought of as a created language that is used to set film apart f...