It's synonymous with "primitive cinema".Quoting Amnesiac (view post)
I always thought Tom Gunning coined and articulated that term. I wasn't aware that Eisenstein also used the term, although I'm assuming he was probably discussed something different than Gunning.
The concept of a 'cinema of attractions' comes from recent scholarship on early film, most notably that of Tom Gunning. The term is generally used as a replacement for what was considered the derogatory term, 'primitive cinema'. Both of these terms are meant to provide a category opposite narrative cinema, but current scholarship, particularly that of Lea Jacobs and Ben Brewster, has tended to see early cinema in terms of an evolutionary continuum as opposed to a system of narrative and opposition to narrative. Regardless of the use of the term 'cinema of attractions', it has given film scholars a way to discuss a category of film that, to quote Gunning, “directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle” (13). The term 'pleasure' in Gunning's definition, however, is somewhat problematic in that the desired response of the cinema of attractions is not always pleasure. He goes on to explain that some of the attractions contained in early cinema include “recreations of shocking or curious incidents”, including executions (14). Now, it may be argued whether or not witnessing an execution actually elicits pleasure, but perhaps a better way of defining a cinema of attractions is filmmaking that is intended to elicit a primal response from the spectator in some way apart from the narrative. In point of fact, this definition is actually much closer to the original intent of the originator of the term 'attractions' in relation to the performing arts, Sergei Eisenstein.
In his 1923 essay on theatre, “The Montage of Attractions”, Eisenstein proposed a system of 'attractions' – aggressive actions in the presentation of a theatrical work – that subjected the audience “to emotional or psychological influence… calculated to produce specific emotional shocks in the spectator” (15). These shocks were intended to undermine the absorption of the spectator into the narrative and to keep the spectator thinking objectively about what they were watching being performed on the stage. The idea came from the presentational performances of the Grand Guignol and the traditional circus – low forms of entertainment in opposition to the high art of realist representational theatre (16). The concept of attractions in theatre was not motivated merely by a desire to, as Gunning puts it, épater le bourgeois (17). It was motivated out of a desire to make the political message of the theatrical piece clearer, more direct, and without the trappings of narrative including melodrama, allegory, and audience identification with the characters or their situation. But how do the attractions of the stage translate into the attractions of the screen?
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