The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
by Walter Benjamin (1935)
The way that this essay was written motivates me to think about how the film business really took off. S'everin-Mars' words about film were powerful. He said, "What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same time! Approached
in this fashion the film might represent an incomparable means of expression. Only the most high-minded persons, in the most perfect and mysterious moments of their lives, should be allowed to enter its ambience.” I found this to be monumental in film history. At this point Mars' was realizing how historical the art of film was.
In this quote he was basically saying the fantasy of film was becoming a reality and it should only be offered for certain people that deserve it. This idea also made me think about the present day and how movie stars are put on a pedestal, and are thought of as better than average. It makes sense that Mars' feels this way about film because he was a silent film actor from France. This essay is written in a way that shows how people during the time of technological advances truly understood how monumental and extravagant the invention was, which is a different perspective than any historical text that I have ever read.
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