Pantomime and Film: A Different Perspective

Marek Hendrykowski

Abstract

This article is born out of the author's fascination with the golden era of cinema, and his admiration for everything that resulted in fantastic achievements in pantomime and film. The author seeks to answer the question: what does cinema gain from the art of pantomime? He outlines the history of cinematographic pantomime, the relationship between the two arts and above all he notes the interest with which this relationship has been analyzed by researchers specializing in the beginnings of cinema. Hendryko- wski believes that gesture as a means of expression was bypassed by previous researchers analyzing the development of film. Traditional histories of the cinema tend to be “logocentric”, which approach was to give film the status of an art. This also meant that gestures were bypassed in the analysis and presentation. However the author also presents the work of people, who did not fully accept this logocentric approach (e.g. Irzykowski, Mukarovsky). Hendrykowski considers the following perspecti­ves in his analysis of the relationship between film and pantomime in the golden era of cinema: 1) sociological, 2) perspective of communication, 3) semiotic, 4) artistic, 5) anthropological, 6) aesthetic, 7) the perspective of history of film.