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Decades old argument. Yes "realism" in cinema is a dead end. But realism is a very ideologized term and not very precise - due to the paradox of aesthetics and the technology of reproduction of filmic image reality in cinema can never be unmediated, and it would be more correct to call realism illusionism (Robin Wood's term, a nod to Renoir's imitationism) or, even more cruelly, a low degree of formalism. But Renoir couldn't not know this. He himself was a father of the French tradition of poetic realism, fully formed in 1932 Boudu Saved from Drowning and reaching its peak in 1935 Toni. His kind of lyrical realism recognised from the start its aestheticizing function and wasn't afraid of drawing attention to its illusionist effect - a contrast to ideologically motivated disguise of social realism. The shorthand for this kind of aesthetic realism that is widespread today (see for example Altman's influential integration of aesthetic realism into genre cinema) is naturalism. Natural wasn't a word I used by accident, unlike the other anon.