Features of rudolf arnheim's theory of film

Rudolph Arnheim transferred the notion Gestalt, as developed by Gestalt psychology, to aesthetics. In the book Art and Visual Perception he uses the term “configuration” (shape). To him it represents the foremost and simplest aspect of perception, a perception that is not only something sensory which then becomes conceptual during the process of generalization, but one that appears as a general  conceptual formation from the very first moment.

 If I were to say, see a dog, it would appear to me at the very beginning from the aspect of “doglikeness“. And so Arnheim reveals elements in the sensory form which conjoin it with the more abstract, higher mental and spiritual matters.

To observe means to create “perceptive concepts“, each outside vision is in itself already an inner vision which comprehends the object as a three-dimensional whole; this three-dimensional whole has unchangeable configurations and is not limited to a concrete direction of projection.

 Configuration never reveals facts about an individual object, i.e. the category to which the object belongs; it is not the form of a single object, but a whole class of things. A related concept is SCHEME, a term it differs from because it considers the active side of experience as vital. Arnheim is not so interested in repetition and patterns as he is in exploring the world, simplification, integrity and the importance of experience