Realism

While many people attribute realism in film to simply a story containing events that are believable to occur in real life, Andre Bazin has a much stricter set of standards for true realism in film. As he reveals in his article, it is not enough for films to merely have realistic events and performances, the filmmaking techniques themselves must also be realistic. This means that anything that occurs in film but not in real life must be removed in order to achieve a true sense of realism. These include techniques such as editing, music and non-diegetic sound. Also, no film can intend to create emotion in a viewer.

There are several problems with Bazin's standards. First and foremost comes the fact that films this realistic aren't interesting. By taking away editing, music and all other flourishes, one takes away much of the creativity of the film. The filmmaker can only show the events that are happening, but cannot make it unique or interesting to watch. Without any of these techniques, the movie loses that which makes it a movie. Bazin's standards are created in order to make a film so realistic that it doesn't seem like a movie. This is an impossible task, though. No matter how little editing, music or fantastic elements are used, the audience will be aware that they are watching a movie. Audiences don't need or want a movie to live up to Bazin's standards of realism. Most audiences are perfectly willing to accept an entertaining film that simply doesn't stretch the realms of believability too much in the events.