Sergio Clemente – Is Cinema the Seventh Art?

Ricciotto Canudo (1877 – 1923) was an early Italian film theoretician who lived primarily in France. He saw cinema as “Plastic Art in Motion” and gave cinema the label “The Sixth Art” and later changed to “The Seventh Art”.
Although this is debatable, cinema can be considered The Seventh Art. Why do we speak Seventh Art? Because exists six other arts that the Greeks (Ancient Greece), helped to spread around the world.
What are they?
1) Music – sound
2) Dance – movement – (Theatre, Performing Arts, Choreography)
3) Painting – color, image
4) Sculpture – volume, space (Architecture)
5) Drawing – Image
6) Literature – word – (Poem, Oratory).
These are the most sublime ways that humanity has found to express its feelings. Jean Renoir (1894 – 1979) – renowned filmmaker – son of the famous painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), stated that cinema is not art, because art, in his view, is a particular vision of an individual for the world. Thus, if art is an individual expression, cinema cannot be considered art because it is collective… The vision of many professionals (artists). Briefly … Screenwriters, Directors, Producers, Editors, Actors, etc.
Sometimes it’s very difficult and dangerous for us, in the figure of a critical, classifying something – an expression of an individual to the world – as authentic art or not. How many artists in their times were discriminated against and excluded from the society for producing works that were not understood and therefore reduced to something less, without value. But some time later (years or centuries) they were genuinely recognized as real arts. This seems unfair and it is. True art seems to insist on transcending the border of time and tells us: “I’m still here… Live and provoking contemplative eyes”.

In a third moment, Syd Field (1935-2013), author of several books on screenplay, claimed that cinema still isn’t it art because it is moving towards that goal. According to Syd Field, cinema is on the way to becoming an art like the other six mentioned above. Cinema – in its essence – is basically a story told through the image (twenty-four photographs per second – negative – that make up the movement).
What is a film as an object? It is a roll of short, medium or feature films – containing stitched photographic films – which after use is stored in a round tin box that receives a label and becomes a file. But with the advent of digital cinema, these reels were replaced by a disk that contains the entire film, but still, comparable to reels, remain archives.
If we consider a film simply as an object and in the distant future someone were to look at this digital roll or disk (file), could it really be considered an art that crossed a time border? It is quite costly, it is hard to say. But what if in that same distant future – just how interesting – that same someone found a book (screenplay for the same film), could we guarantee that it is an art? Now it seems less difficult to assert, because we know that literature is art. So, cinema as an object (archive) is a dubious art. And cinema according to the screenplay (literature) is art. And if we join the two: archive and literature, could we have a trustworthy art? There are those who say that cinema is a meeting of all other arts.
If we think that cinema is only +126 years old… Compared to other arts, it’s still a baby trying to crawl. How old is Music and Dance, for example? Ten, twenty thousand years or more? These arts have existed since Man-Woman began to inhabit this planet. Therefore, it is perhaps premature to say with the entire words that cinema is an art as consistent as others.
So, if someone claim that cinema is “The Seventh Art” yes, we can agree. If we choose Jean Renoir’s opinion and say that “Cinema is not Art” many people will find it absurd, but we can also consider it correct. And if we adopt Syd Field’s thinking that “Cinema is on its way to being an Art” like the others, we can also accept it.
Long life to the Cinema!

sergio clemente.