Religion and Cinema: Early Years of Film, Religion, and Modernity
Cinema isn’t just a term for a conventional storyline communicated in general visual and audial format, nor does it allude exclusively to the watching of a film. The production of film acquires centuries-old methods and aesthetics from religions. In today’s world of cinema, the contemporary religious practices are modified by the prevalent influence film has had on the modern-day world. Film and religions each make alternating universes using the materials, time, and objects, twisting them in new ways and constraining them to fit certain norms, themes, and desires. The film does this through camera movements and angles, lighting, costumes, acting, dialogue, framing, and multiple other aspects of producing a cinematic masterpiece.
The presence of religious themes can be found in various kinds, from the early days of film to modern-day cinema. Revolving around pain, suffering, transgression, transcendence, surrealism, and death. This paper explores the portrayal of religion and religious themes in the light of Dreyer, Bunuel, Welles, Pasolini, and Dovzhenko’s work.
The transgression does not deny the taboo but transcends it and completes it.
– Georges Bataille (63)
Luis Bunuel’s films utilize the lens of surrealism to portray the provocative, transgressive, and grotesque. His 1930 film, L’Age d’Or, takes imagery from Marquis de Sade’s “The 120 Days of Sodom.” We see just the result as the survivors of a despicable roué orgy immediately executed. Despite the fact that Buñuel gives simply a brief look at this obscenity, Pier Paolo Pasolini later adapted de Sade’s book into Salò, which is praised as one of the most stunning films ever produced. ‘Our sexual desire has to be seen as the product of centuries of repressive and emasculating Catholicism… it is always colored by the sweet secret sense of sin,’ mused Buñuel in his autobiography ‘My Last Breath’. L’Age d’Or is a romantic tale that is assembled according to a transgressive mode of eroticism. Desire and the interrupted moments can remove obscure limits between the real and surreal. The film ends with a scene of a cross in the snow and a figure resembling Christ. The adaptation of “The 120 Days of Sodom” clarifies Bunuel’s advancing the acts of transgression currently present in the film. In the film, Christ (figure) arises as the leader of the sadist, a glaring image of surrealist subversion that pervades many forms of modernity. The idea of rebellion is known as avant-garde, and a film like L’Age d’Or creates moments of rebellion without a doubt undermining the religious standards and customs that have been considered normal.
Nonetheless, it is a significant work in Buñuel’s oeuvre. Simón of the Desert denoted a re-visitation of the digressive narrative of his initial surrealist incitements. Simón of the Desert highlights a hapless “Jesus” figure at odds with the religious foundation and world overall. In the film, the priest views Simón as a valuable instrument for keeping control over the masses but found his theories unorthodox. This is portrayed most expressly in the scene in which a rouge priest becomes possessed by dogma-conscious spirits. It’s a well-known fact, that Buñuel barely cared about organized religion. His demeanor towards his solitary “holy man” characters, then again, appears to have been somewhat more mind-boggling. Simón, with his forked facial hair and sincere devotion, is a parodic figure, yet additionally a thoughtful one. In Buñuel’s view, what’s outrageous is the religion that has taken this man’s life from him, the assistance of that God who never dies. Simon is neither the first nor the last to leave the multifaceted human world for an outrageous thought; and his insane, splendid uprightness is a contributor to the issue since it is outstanding as well as insane.
The flames sheltered Joan’s soul as it rose to heaven — Joan whose heart has become the heart of France… Joan, whose memory will always be cherished by the French people.
With the themes of death, pain, suffering, and persecution, the blend of history, religion, and mysticism The Passion of Joan of Arc is a film like no other. It appears to drift liberated from its time span, not really having a place in any particular era. After a nerve-racking scene of death and revolting, it closes with a title card giving us glimpses of resurrection and eternity. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Based on the first trial records, the film starts with the opening scene of the trials and ends up with Joan burned at the stake. It isn’t the trial that is the focal distraction of the film, rather, as the title of the film unequivocally states, it is Joan’s sufferings. Joan’s pain is unmistakable and it is said that Dreyer had Falconetti stoop on stone floors until her distress was excruciating and that he more than once reshot the film (in a demonstration much the same as the mental torment showed by the ministry in the film) to refine the nuances of an expression. Joan’s suffering is the indication of her triumph, of the invincible moral demands of her belief, and her assimilation surrounded by the heavenly presence. Her suffering marks her rebelliousness with the world for all intents and purposes, her demand that it be in any case. As the film comes to an end, she wins over her most fervent clerics. What Falconetti manages to accomplish is something remarkably transcendent. It has the feel of a performance promptly important, capturing the agony, pain, and suffering.
A critic from as far back as 1929 was moved to declare,
“It makes worthy pictures of the past look like tinsel shams.”
Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth is a homage to life in Ukraine. The film’s star is basically the Ukrainian town in which the story is set. The film is, even more, a visual sonnet about life and the quiet acknowledgment of death. The film’s plot mainly revolves around this one theme; the victory of modern ranch hardware over primitive techniques. The farmers’ mutual relationship to this world and its order is quickly settled through the juxtaposition of an elderly person dying (the end of a life cycle) and children (the beginning of the life cycle). They’re eating the apples that spread out on the grass further define the feeling of a consistent, natural pattern of birth, development, and death. They’re eating the apples that spread out on the grass further define the feeling of a consistent, natural pattern of birth, development, and death. Actors are not seen screaming and shouting to one another as much as they do to the wind, and the infamous tractor arrival whose appearance is diabolically celebrated by everyone turns into an ecstatic image of an infringing, modern future. In significantly more than one scene, Dovzhenko unites the two extremes yet differentiating real factors: life and death. Death is anything but a melancholy, discouraging absolution, yet an essential and legitimate event. Assuming children are to be conceived and the world refills with the expectations, and energy of youth, some should vacate the earth and permit them a space. Also, the earth should yield its harvests so it might again start the cycle pertinent to nourishing and feeding the hungry.
Religious films face and will continuously confront a monumental challenge. Visual in essence and by commitment, they are doomed if they are not making apparent what gets away from every single visual classification. Compelled to utilize a language of exposure and visual proof, the religious film faces a correspondingly solid set of religious themes, those dealing with transcendence, death, life transgression, pain, and suffering. The plot starts to get interesting when obviously normal peculiarities, like the birth of a child, or the death of a character; must be translated into cinematographic language. A religious film dealing with a timeless message needs to bring together both its historical foundation and universal significance.
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