seventh art

English

WOTD – 14 April 2023

Etymology

The Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, a practitioner of the seventh art, on the set of his film *Il bidone* (*The Swindle*) in 1955.

Calque of Italian settima arte, which was coined by the Italian film theoretician Ricciotto Canudo (1877–1923) in 1921,^[1]^[2] considering filmmaking to be a new art combining the six previous arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance, and poetry. Canudo had previously used the term sesta arte (literally “sixth art”) to describe filmmaking around 1911 when he did not include dance in the set of preceding arts.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌsɛvnθ ˈɑːt/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌsɛvənθ ˈɑɹt/
Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)t
Hyphenation: sev‧enth art

Noun

the seventh art

(film, chiefly preceded by the definite article) The art of making motion pictures; filmmaking; cinema. [from 1920s]
- 1948, Jacques Queval, “Three French Histories of Film [book reviews]”, in Hollywood Quarterly, volume 3, number 4, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 454, column 2:
  Georges Charensol's Panorama du cinema, originally published in 1927, […] was the bible of devotees of the seventh art.
- 2004 spring, Barry Keith Grant, “Diversity or Dilution? Thoughts on Film Studies and the SCMS [Society for Cinema and Media Studies]”, in Jon Lewis, editor, Cinema Journal: The Journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, volume 43, number 3, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, page 90:
  Because of the inherent interdisciplinarity of studying film—once called, appositely, the "seventh art"—film studies was among the first disciplines to embrace such theories and methodologies as feminism, semiotics, and structuralism.
- 2008 May 14, Richard_Corliss, Mary Corliss, “Can Cannes still Do It?”, in Time‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: Time Warner Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2008-05-16:
  With some 40,000 professionals in attendance, Cannes is the world's largest annual convention, and a yearly thermometer for the temperature of the seventh art.

Related terms

seven arts

Translations

art of making motion pictures — see also filmmaking

Finnish: seitsemäs taide, seitsemäs taiteenlaji
French: septième art (fr) m
Italian: settima arte f
Polish: filmoznawstwo n

References

^ “seventh art, n.” under “seventh, adj., adv., and n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2023; “seventh art, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
^ “Collection des titres de périodiques: La gazette des sept arts [Collection of Periodical Titles: The Gazette of the Seven Arts]”, in Ciné-Ressources‎^[1], Cinémathèque Française, 2000 October, archived from the original on 2022-09-25: “En avril 1921, Ricciotto Canudo, celui que Jean Epstein appelle ‘le missionnaire de la poésie au cinéma’, fonde Le Club des amis du septième art, […] ― In April 1921, Ricciotto Canudo, whom Jean Epstein called ‘the missionary of poetry in cinema’, founded the Club of Friends of the Seventh Art, […]”.