Ever since the cinema began, aestheticians have sought to define 'pure cinema', the 'essence' of cinema. In vain. The cinema's only 'purity' is the way in which it combines diverse elements into its 'impure' whole. Its 'essence' is that it makes them interact, that it integrates other art forms, that it exists 'between' and 'across' their boundaries. It is cruder and inferior to every other art form on that form's 'home ground'. But it repairs its deficiencies, and acquires its own dignity, by being a mixture.
from Films and Feelings by Raymond Durgnat
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