Non-diegetic aesthetic fact in the space of film: Christian personalistic context

Abstract

The article discusses the cinema method, consisting in the inclusion in the narrative film structure of the elements that the French film critic Andre Bazin in the article devoted to the film of Robert Bresson “The village priest diary”, called “raw aesthetic facts”. “Raw aesthetic facts” in the film’s structure are the different cinematographic, literary or graphic works of art, others in relation to the film, embedded in the narration of the film, but at the same time existing in the film as if parallel to the narration. These “raw aesthetic facts” can be otherwise called as “non-diegetic aesthetic facts”, because, being not incorporated into the unfolding screen story, they thus exist in the film outside the diegesis which is defined as “space and time of narrative fiction”. Analyzing the above Bresson film and its interpretation by Bazen, as well as Andrei Tarkovsky film “The Mirror”, the author of the article shows that the basis for using non-diegetic aesthetic facts and the reason for the differentiating such use from including quotes and simulacra in the film’s structure in postmodern cinema is a direct connection of that cinema method with Christian personalism, an influential modernist philosophical movement of the mid-twentieth century.