Classical Form
Plot/Story
∑ Linear plot, fast climbing action
∑ Emphasis on dramatic unity, plausible motivation and cohereance in constituent parts
∑ Highly melodramatic
Character
∑ Goal oriented and stereotypical
Mise-en-scene/Cinematography/Editing
∑ Adherance to continuity system
Realism
Plot/Story
∑ Loose, discursive plot without clear-cut conflict; scientific view of causality, rejection of idea of fate + destiny
∑ Enter story arbitrarily and episodic plot structure
∑ Slow moving and digressive
Character
∑ Characters represent social types
∑ Respond to specific events
∑ Non-professional actors
Mise-en-scène/Cinematography/Editing
∑ Avoidance of melodrama
∑ Avoidance of lyrical impulse
∑ Plain style that doesn’t call attention to itself
∑ Natural lighting, actual locations
Formalism
Plot/Story
∑ Thematic plot structure
∑ Design of plot determined by author
Character
∑ Character psychology predominant
Mise-en-scène/Cinematography/Editing
∑ Lyrical interludes
∑ Determined by theme
∑ Amplification of style
Counter-Cinema
Plot/Story
∑ Disrupted, non-linear narrative
∑ Often ‘essay-like’
∑ unresolved
Character
∑ Anti-heroic
∑ Estrangement from characters
Mise-en-scène/Cinematography/Editing
∑ Foregrounding (making clear the image is a fabrication
∑ Non-pleasurable
∑ Jumpcuts…
Postmodernism
Plot/Story
∑ Fragmented storyline
∑ Multiple, micro narratives
∑ Dream and reality mixed
Character
∑ Familiar
∑ Highly developed through dialogue
Mise-en-scène/Cinematography/Editing
∑ Familiar images, references
∑ Excessive or cartoon-like imagery
∑ Non-real, dreamlike settings
Thursday, May 3, 2007
exam review
Exam Review: Film Theory + Criticism 2007
The exam will include 20 questions (multiple choice and/or true-false) and will test your knowledge of the following subjects and terms:
∑ Mise-en-scène: You should know what the term mean, and what the components of cinematic mise-en- scène comprise.
∑ Stylistic Paradigms: You should be able to recognize the plot structures, character types, characteristic shot and editing techniques and types of mise-en-scène found in the following film styles:
o Classical film
o Realist film
o Formalist film
o Counter-cinema
o Postmodern film
∑ Auteur: You should know what the term means, who conceived of the idea, when, where and why. You should also know by what means and measure an auteur judged. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/auteur; and http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/Screen/Auteur%20Theory.htm
∑ The Star System: You should know what function a star serves, the difference between and actor and a star, and the meanings of method acting, persona and type-casting. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(film); http://www.fathom.com/course/21701722/index.html
∑ Genre film: You should be able to choose the visual and audio signifiers associated with a variety of genres: for example, the western, romance, gangster, comedy and melodrama. Consider the types of characters, settings, costumes, props, weaponry, methods of transportation, sounds, etc. that are typical of each genre. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/cinematic-genre)
Stylistic Paradigms—Study Notes
Film style represents the plastic means through which ideas are communicated using film. No one film adheres to a singular style. Most blend elements from each paradigm—classical, formalism and realist. Hypothetically speaking, if a perfect example of realism existed in film it would probably look a little like the imagery from a surveillance camera. With no obvious directorial influence, this perfect realist film would describe the world it pictured with little or no human intervention. This is a cinema of long shots and long takes, non-professional actors, actual locations, natural lighting, and little dramatic action. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the perfect formalist film might look like a completely abstract, avant-garde film; concerned primarily with the formal means through which film makes meaning, this type of film exploits the basic formal features of the medium to elaborate meaning. This is a cinema concerned with light, rhythm, movement and framing. Classical film blends elements of both realism and formalism.
Classical form is typical of mainstream, genre films and especially those films produced during the ‘classical period’ of the Hollywood Studio system. Largely defined by the classical plot structure that gives the script its linear form (rising action in the second act), the classical film blends elements of realism and formalism in its production. Classical films represent actions and settings that seem plausible--realistic. As such, the classical film adheres to the continuity system in editing, a system ‘that matches spatial and temporal relations from shot to shot in order to maintain continuous and clear narrative action” (see below, ‘Continuity System’). Classical films also borrow signifying mechanisms from formalism, in particular the use of elements of style to assert theme. Subsequently, music, lighting, sound, setting and other elements of mise-en-scène are employed for symbolic purposes. However, unlike formalism, the classical film uses form economically. (see: “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” http://faculty.uwb.edu/mgoldberg/courses/definitions/classicalHollywoodcinema or “Continuity System” http://cla.calpoly.edu/~SMARX/courses/continuitysys.html.html
In contrast, formalist cinema is a cinema of excess. Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their unabashedly subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, of re-forming of reality. But it's precisely this "deformed" imagery that can be so artistically striking in such films. “Formalism expresses film’s potential as an expressive medium. The available film techniques are of central importance—use of camera, lighting, editing. For the formalist film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Primary importance is attached to the filmic process, and it is suggested that film can never fully record reality anyway, if only because it is two-dimensional compared to reality’s three dimensions” (113 Studying Film)
In discussing realism as an aesthetic category in film we usually follow two routes of influence: the use of realism codes and conventions in the production of fictional narratives concerned with social issues (Neo-Realism, Nouveau Vague); and the direct cinema/documentary cinema route. For the purposes of our study, we are concerned with the former: realist style in fictional or avant-garde film.
The terms and characteristics of counter-cinema were defined by 1970s film critics, to describe the political dimensions and strategies of contemporary avant-garde films. It refers to film practices that seek to challenge conventions of traditional cinematic narrative, so to engage the viewer intellectually in filmic storytelling. Sometimes called the ‘essay’ film, this approach to filmmaking advocates such things as direct address (where the actors address the audience), the use of an antihero (so to effect an estrangement from the protagonist), and complicated, sometimes multiple and non-linear story lines (so to solicit active spectatorship). (See ‘counter-cinema’ in this blog for a digest of characteristic features.)
According to Patricia White and Timothy Corrigan:
“postmodernism is a style that incorporates many other styles through fragments or references in a practice called pastiche. That is, it is a triumph of style itself. Historically, postmodernism is the cultural period in which political, cultural and economic shifts engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the division of high and low culture and the genius and independent identity of the artist (The Film experience: An Introduction, 469).
Hence, postmodern film is principally characterized by its use of pastiche (an excessive use of references to other cultural signs or productions) and fragmentation. With its amalgamation of filmic styles, references to other films and characters and fragmented narrative, the films of Quentin Tarantino are said to exemplify postmodernism in film.
The exam will include 20 questions (multiple choice and/or true-false) and will test your knowledge of the following subjects and terms:
∑ Mise-en-scène: You should know what the term mean, and what the components of cinematic mise-en- scène comprise.
∑ Stylistic Paradigms: You should be able to recognize the plot structures, character types, characteristic shot and editing techniques and types of mise-en-scène found in the following film styles:
o Classical film
o Realist film
o Formalist film
o Counter-cinema
o Postmodern film
∑ Auteur: You should know what the term means, who conceived of the idea, when, where and why. You should also know by what means and measure an auteur judged. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/auteur; and http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/Screen/Auteur%20Theory.htm
∑ The Star System: You should know what function a star serves, the difference between and actor and a star, and the meanings of method acting, persona and type-casting. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(film); http://www.fathom.com/course/21701722/index.html
∑ Genre film: You should be able to choose the visual and audio signifiers associated with a variety of genres: for example, the western, romance, gangster, comedy and melodrama. Consider the types of characters, settings, costumes, props, weaponry, methods of transportation, sounds, etc. that are typical of each genre. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/cinematic-genre)
Stylistic Paradigms—Study Notes
Film style represents the plastic means through which ideas are communicated using film. No one film adheres to a singular style. Most blend elements from each paradigm—classical, formalism and realist. Hypothetically speaking, if a perfect example of realism existed in film it would probably look a little like the imagery from a surveillance camera. With no obvious directorial influence, this perfect realist film would describe the world it pictured with little or no human intervention. This is a cinema of long shots and long takes, non-professional actors, actual locations, natural lighting, and little dramatic action. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the perfect formalist film might look like a completely abstract, avant-garde film; concerned primarily with the formal means through which film makes meaning, this type of film exploits the basic formal features of the medium to elaborate meaning. This is a cinema concerned with light, rhythm, movement and framing. Classical film blends elements of both realism and formalism.
Classical form is typical of mainstream, genre films and especially those films produced during the ‘classical period’ of the Hollywood Studio system. Largely defined by the classical plot structure that gives the script its linear form (rising action in the second act), the classical film blends elements of realism and formalism in its production. Classical films represent actions and settings that seem plausible--realistic. As such, the classical film adheres to the continuity system in editing, a system ‘that matches spatial and temporal relations from shot to shot in order to maintain continuous and clear narrative action” (see below, ‘Continuity System’). Classical films also borrow signifying mechanisms from formalism, in particular the use of elements of style to assert theme. Subsequently, music, lighting, sound, setting and other elements of mise-en-scène are employed for symbolic purposes. However, unlike formalism, the classical film uses form economically. (see: “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” http://faculty.uwb.edu/mgoldberg/courses/definitions/classicalHollywoodcinema or “Continuity System” http://cla.calpoly.edu/~SMARX/courses/continuitysys.html.html
In contrast, formalist cinema is a cinema of excess. Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their unabashedly subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, of re-forming of reality. But it's precisely this "deformed" imagery that can be so artistically striking in such films. “Formalism expresses film’s potential as an expressive medium. The available film techniques are of central importance—use of camera, lighting, editing. For the formalist film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Primary importance is attached to the filmic process, and it is suggested that film can never fully record reality anyway, if only because it is two-dimensional compared to reality’s three dimensions” (113 Studying Film)
In discussing realism as an aesthetic category in film we usually follow two routes of influence: the use of realism codes and conventions in the production of fictional narratives concerned with social issues (Neo-Realism, Nouveau Vague); and the direct cinema/documentary cinema route. For the purposes of our study, we are concerned with the former: realist style in fictional or avant-garde film.
The terms and characteristics of counter-cinema were defined by 1970s film critics, to describe the political dimensions and strategies of contemporary avant-garde films. It refers to film practices that seek to challenge conventions of traditional cinematic narrative, so to engage the viewer intellectually in filmic storytelling. Sometimes called the ‘essay’ film, this approach to filmmaking advocates such things as direct address (where the actors address the audience), the use of an antihero (so to effect an estrangement from the protagonist), and complicated, sometimes multiple and non-linear story lines (so to solicit active spectatorship). (See ‘counter-cinema’ in this blog for a digest of characteristic features.)
According to Patricia White and Timothy Corrigan:
“postmodernism is a style that incorporates many other styles through fragments or references in a practice called pastiche. That is, it is a triumph of style itself. Historically, postmodernism is the cultural period in which political, cultural and economic shifts engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the division of high and low culture and the genius and independent identity of the artist (The Film experience: An Introduction, 469).
Hence, postmodern film is principally characterized by its use of pastiche (an excessive use of references to other cultural signs or productions) and fragmentation. With its amalgamation of filmic styles, references to other films and characters and fragmented narrative, the films of Quentin Tarantino are said to exemplify postmodernism in film.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
research project proposal: an example
Research Proposal
Film Theory & Criticism Assignment
Presented to:
Cheryl Simon
Matt Rancourt
(student number)
From its inspiration, André Bazin’s Cahiers Du Cinéma, through Truffaut and Godard to Varda, the French New Wave branch of cinema known as Nouvelle Vague has shaped the way we interact with film. La Nouvelle Vague has had as much of an impact on the way we make films as the way we watch them. For instance, the jump cut was developed, albeit serendipitous, during the 60’s new-wave period. Furthermore, the French New Wave of cinema forced viewers of the time to abandon their pre-conceived notions of how a character should develop and how a story should be told. These changes have endured the test of time and are thus still very much present in the film industry of today. Just how much of an impact has the Nouvelle Vague had on filmmaking of today? The research paper I am proposing would attempt to trace cinematographic characteristics of today back to the French New Wave period of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Through research and analysis, I would like to pinpoint many of the changes brought about by such a prolific period in cinema. I have not done very extensive research, but using Google Scholar, I have determined that the necessary readings do in fact exist and are most likely accessible through Dawson. So far, I have studied a period-relevant 1965 article by Stephen Taylor from an issue of Film Quarterly, Green Cine.com’s overview of the Nouvelle Vague, as well as a history of the New Wave from A Short History Of The Movies by Gerald Mast and Bruce F. Kawin. The following is a list of the URLs for the two electronic sources I have studied so far.
Film Quarterly: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0015-1386%28196521%2918%3A3%3C5%3AATNV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&size=SMALL
Green Cine: http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
Film Theory & Criticism Assignment
Presented to:
Cheryl Simon
Matt Rancourt
(student number)
From its inspiration, André Bazin’s Cahiers Du Cinéma, through Truffaut and Godard to Varda, the French New Wave branch of cinema known as Nouvelle Vague has shaped the way we interact with film. La Nouvelle Vague has had as much of an impact on the way we make films as the way we watch them. For instance, the jump cut was developed, albeit serendipitous, during the 60’s new-wave period. Furthermore, the French New Wave of cinema forced viewers of the time to abandon their pre-conceived notions of how a character should develop and how a story should be told. These changes have endured the test of time and are thus still very much present in the film industry of today. Just how much of an impact has the Nouvelle Vague had on filmmaking of today? The research paper I am proposing would attempt to trace cinematographic characteristics of today back to the French New Wave period of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Through research and analysis, I would like to pinpoint many of the changes brought about by such a prolific period in cinema. I have not done very extensive research, but using Google Scholar, I have determined that the necessary readings do in fact exist and are most likely accessible through Dawson. So far, I have studied a period-relevant 1965 article by Stephen Taylor from an issue of Film Quarterly, Green Cine.com’s overview of the Nouvelle Vague, as well as a history of the New Wave from A Short History Of The Movies by Gerald Mast and Bruce F. Kawin. The following is a list of the URLs for the two electronic sources I have studied so far.
Film Quarterly: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0015-1386%28196521%2918%3A3%3C5%3AATNV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&size=SMALL
Green Cine: http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
counter-cinema
Peter Wollen's Characteristics of Counter-Cinema
1 narrative transitivity vs. intransitivity: (cause and effect structure) in counter-cinema events don't necessarily follow each other, nor even appear in some historical period
2 identifiation vs. estrangement: in mainstream cinema characters may represent social groups and act naturally as part of reality effect; by contrast in counter cinema characters are often unbelievable, they can stare back at the camera or are not likeable. further, lack of continuity in structuring of film prohibits 'interpellation'
3 transparency vs. foregrounding: mainstream films conceal artifice of filmmaking process to promote illusion; in counter cinema the process is made transparent, often referring to filmmaking processes themselves (camera, lights are included in frame)
4 single diegesis versus multiple diegesis: not one person's story but many; in counter cinema many different stories can exist in the framework of filmstory and do not need to correspond
5 closure vs. aperture: mainstream film represents closed, coherent worlds; in counter cinema other worlds and texts are referred to with no apparent effort to integrate them
6 pleasure vs. unpleasure: pleasures of mainstream cinema are to seduce viewer into passive acceptance of status quo; counter cinema is difficult--pleasure is intellectual and not emotional or aesthetic
7 fiction vs. reality: aim of counter cinema is to force viewer to confont reality--of filmmakng as a means through which cultural values are reproduced
1 narrative transitivity vs. intransitivity: (cause and effect structure) in counter-cinema events don't necessarily follow each other, nor even appear in some historical period
2 identifiation vs. estrangement: in mainstream cinema characters may represent social groups and act naturally as part of reality effect; by contrast in counter cinema characters are often unbelievable, they can stare back at the camera or are not likeable. further, lack of continuity in structuring of film prohibits 'interpellation'
3 transparency vs. foregrounding: mainstream films conceal artifice of filmmaking process to promote illusion; in counter cinema the process is made transparent, often referring to filmmaking processes themselves (camera, lights are included in frame)
4 single diegesis versus multiple diegesis: not one person's story but many; in counter cinema many different stories can exist in the framework of filmstory and do not need to correspond
5 closure vs. aperture: mainstream film represents closed, coherent worlds; in counter cinema other worlds and texts are referred to with no apparent effort to integrate them
6 pleasure vs. unpleasure: pleasures of mainstream cinema are to seduce viewer into passive acceptance of status quo; counter cinema is difficult--pleasure is intellectual and not emotional or aesthetic
7 fiction vs. reality: aim of counter cinema is to force viewer to confont reality--of filmmakng as a means through which cultural values are reproduced
realism
History:
∑ Realism is an artistic movement associated with the rise of capitalism and industrial revolution—opposed to myth and folktale as primary narrative form
∑ In painting we see increased use of perspective and scale; in literature, detailed accounts in stories concerned with social reality (Charles Dickens)
∑ Some consider rise in realistic representations to follow from discovery of photography, others claim the invention and popularity of photography followed from a growing interest in evidence gathering as a mode of knowledge
∑ 19th c also saw change in social conditions; rise in journalistic writing and photography was developed alongside the beginnings of social regulation and investigation and industrial warfare
∑ In discussing realism as an aesthetic category in film we usually follow two routes of influence: the use of realism codes and conventions in the production of fictional narratives concerned with social issues (Neo-Realism, Nouveau Vague); and the direct cinema/documentary cinema route
∑ Realism as an Aesthetic Category:
∑ Filmmaker has something to say about the real world
∑ Film characterized by a concern for social issues and/or historical events
∑ No single realism, different cultures and historical contexts produce different kinds of realism (e.g. Russian avant-garde, Italian and French New-Wave, Cinema Direct)
∑ Russian Avant-garde & Soviet Realism 1920s both revolutionary cinemas
∑ Italian Neo-Realism 1940s post-war social conditions
∑ New Wave 1950s form follows content
∑ Cinema Direct 1960s fly-on-the-wall
∑ New Auteurs/ Independent 1970s stylistic experimentation
∑ Dogme 95 1990s Danish anti-blockbuster
Italian Neo-Realism (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Antonioni)
Italian neorealism seemed to have flowered spontaneously from the smoke and debris of the war, but in fact the movement had its roots in the prewar era.
In 1935, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a national film school that was run by Luigi Chiarini, a left-wing intellectual was established. Among these students were such future filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
The term neorealism (i.e., new realism) was originally coined in 1943 by Umberto Barbero, an influential film critic and a professor at the Centro Sperimentale. He attacked the Italian cinema for its mindless triviality, its refusal to deal with pressing social concerns, especially poverty and injustice.
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977) inaugurated the neorealist movement in 1945 with his stark wartime drama, Open City. The movie deals with the collaboration of Catholics and Communists in fighting the Nazi occupation of Rome shortly before the American army liberated the city.
Neorealism implied a style as well as an ideology. Rossellini emphasized the ethical dimension: "For me, Neorealism is above all a moral position from which to look at the world. It then became an aesthetic position, but at the beginning it was moral."
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~basement/reviews/romeopencity.html
Rome, Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1945)
Featuring Anna Magnani
Cinema differs from the other major art forms in that on occasions a scarcity of the required materials can, in the right hands, produce major innovations which will be taken up by others and become the standards of the future. In post-First World War Germany, Robert Wiene created the style which came to be known as Expressionist film. His use of painted backdrops and low, shadowy lighting may seem to be his free choice, but in fact he was constantly frustrated by power cuts and poor equipment which greatly restricted his artistic freedom. A few years later in the U.S.S.R. a lack of film stock led to the montage technique being developed. Eisenstein and Pudovkin, then working at the Kuleshow workshop, had no film of their own to use, so had to experiment with other peoples' film. In a similar way, Rossellini (1906-77) was attempting to make films in the harshest of environments. The Italian film industry was in ruins due to the war and the occupations by the Germans and Americans. Rossellini and some friends were working on the scenario for the film before the war finished. They were constantly under threat of being conscripted into the fascist army at this time. And later when the Americans liberated Rome, Rossellini could only get a permit to film a documentary. If this was not enough to put a stop to his hopes of making the film, the only stock he could afford was second rate, more suitable for silent films. With this in mind it is little short of amazing that Rome, Open City won the Best Film award at Cannes in 1946.
Roberto Rossellini started his filmmaking career in 1936. Some critics looking back at his early output have labelled it fascist as the films concentrate on the individual outside of any social context. Yet, starting with Rome, Open City, his films took on a more socially aware tone. No one who lives through a war can fail to see individuals as being separate from society, and this was reflected best in his war trilogy; Rome, Open City (1945), Paisa (1946) and Germania, Anno Zero (Germany, Year Zero, 1947). They all focus on the devastating effects that the Second World War had on the psyche of modern man. In Germania, Anno Zero, Rossellini makes a deliberate attack on the church, and other social institutions, for failing to counter the corrupting influence of fascism.
Whilst Rome, Open City popularised the genre of neo-realism, it was not a classic text book example of the genre in the way that films by Visconti and De Sica are. Rossellini is not interested in objectivity. He deliberately uses emotive techniques to put forward his messages. His brother Renzo composed the music which does not merely describe the action but alters the mood of the viewer. And Rossellini's use of babies and young children cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to make to the viewer sympathetic to his ideas. But the film cannot be criticised for these inconsistencies with the style of neo-realism. Indeed, the film highlights the many conflicting realities, which are inherent in the fight against fascism.
http://www.valuemonkey.com/Entertainment-andLeisure/DVD/Foreign/s_85744.html
Roberto Rossellini's OPEN CITY (ROMA CITTA APERTA) is a landmark in the history of cinema a humanist masterpiece and one of the earliest incarnations of Italian neo-realism. Based on real events it tells the harrowing story of several Italian Resistance fighters battling fascism in Nazi-occupied Rome. When Gestapo agents raid an apartment where Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) a prominent member of the underground is hiding they arrest the young man who gave him refuge. Manfredi manages to escape then enlists the help of a parish priest Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi) to make a clandestine delivery to other members of the movement. Eventually Manfredi is betrayed and he and the priest are quickly captured by the Germans, what follows is one of the most brutally disturbing war torture scenes ever recreated on screen. With OPEN CITY Rossellini has created a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of horrible adversity in a story that extols the heroism of defiant ordinary people who strive to hold onto their humanity in the cold chaotic world of WW II. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay Fellini collaborated with Rossellini in the writing of the script. OPEN CITY is all the more remarkable in that it was made immediately following the liberation of Rome had been developed while Rossellini himself was in hiding and was filmed in the locations where the true events that the story is based on occurred.
∑ Realism is an artistic movement associated with the rise of capitalism and industrial revolution—opposed to myth and folktale as primary narrative form
∑ In painting we see increased use of perspective and scale; in literature, detailed accounts in stories concerned with social reality (Charles Dickens)
∑ Some consider rise in realistic representations to follow from discovery of photography, others claim the invention and popularity of photography followed from a growing interest in evidence gathering as a mode of knowledge
∑ 19th c also saw change in social conditions; rise in journalistic writing and photography was developed alongside the beginnings of social regulation and investigation and industrial warfare
∑ In discussing realism as an aesthetic category in film we usually follow two routes of influence: the use of realism codes and conventions in the production of fictional narratives concerned with social issues (Neo-Realism, Nouveau Vague); and the direct cinema/documentary cinema route
∑ Realism as an Aesthetic Category:
∑ Filmmaker has something to say about the real world
∑ Film characterized by a concern for social issues and/or historical events
∑ No single realism, different cultures and historical contexts produce different kinds of realism (e.g. Russian avant-garde, Italian and French New-Wave, Cinema Direct)
∑ Russian Avant-garde & Soviet Realism 1920s both revolutionary cinemas
∑ Italian Neo-Realism 1940s post-war social conditions
∑ New Wave 1950s form follows content
∑ Cinema Direct 1960s fly-on-the-wall
∑ New Auteurs/ Independent 1970s stylistic experimentation
∑ Dogme 95 1990s Danish anti-blockbuster
Italian Neo-Realism (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Antonioni)
Italian neorealism seemed to have flowered spontaneously from the smoke and debris of the war, but in fact the movement had its roots in the prewar era.
In 1935, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a national film school that was run by Luigi Chiarini, a left-wing intellectual was established. Among these students were such future filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
The term neorealism (i.e., new realism) was originally coined in 1943 by Umberto Barbero, an influential film critic and a professor at the Centro Sperimentale. He attacked the Italian cinema for its mindless triviality, its refusal to deal with pressing social concerns, especially poverty and injustice.
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977) inaugurated the neorealist movement in 1945 with his stark wartime drama, Open City. The movie deals with the collaboration of Catholics and Communists in fighting the Nazi occupation of Rome shortly before the American army liberated the city.
Neorealism implied a style as well as an ideology. Rossellini emphasized the ethical dimension: "For me, Neorealism is above all a moral position from which to look at the world. It then became an aesthetic position, but at the beginning it was moral."
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~basement/reviews/romeopencity.html
Rome, Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1945)
Featuring Anna Magnani
Cinema differs from the other major art forms in that on occasions a scarcity of the required materials can, in the right hands, produce major innovations which will be taken up by others and become the standards of the future. In post-First World War Germany, Robert Wiene created the style which came to be known as Expressionist film. His use of painted backdrops and low, shadowy lighting may seem to be his free choice, but in fact he was constantly frustrated by power cuts and poor equipment which greatly restricted his artistic freedom. A few years later in the U.S.S.R. a lack of film stock led to the montage technique being developed. Eisenstein and Pudovkin, then working at the Kuleshow workshop, had no film of their own to use, so had to experiment with other peoples' film. In a similar way, Rossellini (1906-77) was attempting to make films in the harshest of environments. The Italian film industry was in ruins due to the war and the occupations by the Germans and Americans. Rossellini and some friends were working on the scenario for the film before the war finished. They were constantly under threat of being conscripted into the fascist army at this time. And later when the Americans liberated Rome, Rossellini could only get a permit to film a documentary. If this was not enough to put a stop to his hopes of making the film, the only stock he could afford was second rate, more suitable for silent films. With this in mind it is little short of amazing that Rome, Open City won the Best Film award at Cannes in 1946.
Roberto Rossellini started his filmmaking career in 1936. Some critics looking back at his early output have labelled it fascist as the films concentrate on the individual outside of any social context. Yet, starting with Rome, Open City, his films took on a more socially aware tone. No one who lives through a war can fail to see individuals as being separate from society, and this was reflected best in his war trilogy; Rome, Open City (1945), Paisa (1946) and Germania, Anno Zero (Germany, Year Zero, 1947). They all focus on the devastating effects that the Second World War had on the psyche of modern man. In Germania, Anno Zero, Rossellini makes a deliberate attack on the church, and other social institutions, for failing to counter the corrupting influence of fascism.
Whilst Rome, Open City popularised the genre of neo-realism, it was not a classic text book example of the genre in the way that films by Visconti and De Sica are. Rossellini is not interested in objectivity. He deliberately uses emotive techniques to put forward his messages. His brother Renzo composed the music which does not merely describe the action but alters the mood of the viewer. And Rossellini's use of babies and young children cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to make to the viewer sympathetic to his ideas. But the film cannot be criticised for these inconsistencies with the style of neo-realism. Indeed, the film highlights the many conflicting realities, which are inherent in the fight against fascism.
http://www.valuemonkey.com/Entertainment-andLeisure/DVD/Foreign/s_85744.html
Roberto Rossellini's OPEN CITY (ROMA CITTA APERTA) is a landmark in the history of cinema a humanist masterpiece and one of the earliest incarnations of Italian neo-realism. Based on real events it tells the harrowing story of several Italian Resistance fighters battling fascism in Nazi-occupied Rome. When Gestapo agents raid an apartment where Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) a prominent member of the underground is hiding they arrest the young man who gave him refuge. Manfredi manages to escape then enlists the help of a parish priest Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi) to make a clandestine delivery to other members of the movement. Eventually Manfredi is betrayed and he and the priest are quickly captured by the Germans, what follows is one of the most brutally disturbing war torture scenes ever recreated on screen. With OPEN CITY Rossellini has created a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of horrible adversity in a story that extols the heroism of defiant ordinary people who strive to hold onto their humanity in the cold chaotic world of WW II. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay Fellini collaborated with Rossellini in the writing of the script. OPEN CITY is all the more remarkable in that it was made immediately following the liberation of Rome had been developed while Rossellini himself was in hiding and was filmed in the locations where the true events that the story is based on occurred.
formalism
Formalism
“Formalism expresses film’s potential as an expressive medium. The available film techniques are of central importance—use of camera, lighting, editing. For the formalist film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Primary importance is attached to the filmic process, and it is suggested that film can never fully record reality anyway, if only because it is two-dimensional compared to reality’s three dimensions” (113
Studying Film)
Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their unabashedly subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, of re-forming of reality. But it's precisely this "deformed" imagery that can be so artistically striking in such films.
Mise-en-scene: setting; props; costumes; performance; lighting and colour; composition
Cinematography: framing; shot size; length of take; camera movement; angle; depth of field,
Editing—continuity editing; movement and speed of editing; shot size and editing; shot/reverse shot; eye-line match; match on action; cutaway shots; cross-cutting; 180 degree rule; 30 degree rule; alternatives to cutting; discontinuity editing; graphic match; symbolic inset edit, freeze frame
Sound: diegetic and non-diegetic sound; sound effects; ambient sound; music; voice-overs; parallel and contrapuntal sound; sound bridges
Far From Heaven, 2002
By Andrew O'Hehir
Nov. 8, 2002 | With Julianne Moore blazing at its center in red and gold, like a bouquet of autumnal foliage in a fine china vase, Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven" is an explosion of synthetic delights. Which is not to say it lacks emotional impact -- far from it. "Far From Heaven" is a movie for hardcore film geeks and regular folk alike, a stunning, and stunningly improbable, fusion of postmodern pastiche and old-school Hollywood melodrama. It's both a marvelous technical accomplishment and a tragic love story that sweeps you off your feet.
In obsessively emulating the style, tone and posh suburban settings of legendary 1950s director Douglas Sirk, Haynes has paradoxically set himself free. He has always been a meticulous visual craftsman whose talent for the medium is obvious, but he has also seemed (to me, anyway) too cerebral for his own good. Film is not primarily an intellectual art form, and in such previous works as "Poison," "Safe" and the baffling glam-rock tribute "Velvet Goldmine," Haynes' aesthetic seemed constrained by the leaden hand of pomo academic theory. You wondered who his ideal audience member was: A U.C. Berkeley grad student working on a new translation of Foucault?
Haynes hasn't left queer theory behind with "Far From Heaven"; instead, in appropriating Sirk's overripe narrative mode and glorious Technicolor aesthetic, he's found exactly the right container for it. It's no exaggeration to say that Sirk's classic melodramas, from "Magnificent Obsession" to "Written on the Wind" to "Imitation of Life," are already about gender, sexuality, race and American hypocrisy. If the allegorical fable about a noble suburban housewife and the scandalous implosion of her family that Haynes spins in "Far From Heaven" is not precisely one that Sirk could have told 45 years ago, it's nonetheless true to Sirk's spirit in every way.
More specifically, "Far From Heaven" bears a family resemblance to Sirk's 1955 "All That Heaven Allows," in which the widowed Jane Wyman sends her uptight suburban community into a tizzy by falling for her younger gardener, played by Rock Hudson. Here, however, the circumstances are different: It is indeed the late '50s, and Cathy Whitaker (Moore) is married to Frank (Dennis Quaid), a Connecticut sales executive for a television manufacturer called Magnatech. Frank and Kathy, in fact, make such a handsome couple that they appear in magazine ads together as Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech, avatars of a brave new world of American consumerism.
"Far From Heaven"
Written and directed by Todd Haynes
Starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
From the note-perfect opening credits and the first sweeping chords of Elmer Bernstein's opulent score to the tasteful modern furniture and porcelain figurine lamps in the Whitakers' updated colonial, "Far From Heaven" is so intensely stylized you can't help feeling, at least at first, that some kind of ironic commentary is intended. It's only natural to giggle at the Magnatech ads, at the perfect Technicolor streets with their spotless arrays of Oldsmobiles and Plymouths, at the outrageous high-heeled pumps worn by Cathy's catty best friend (Patricia Clarkson, doing an uncanny impersonation of one of those Agnes Moorehead supporting roles) or at Moore's voluminous skirt in aquamarine satin, which looks as if you could camp a pack of Cub Scouts under it or convert it into parachutes in wartime. (For production designer Mark Friedberg -- who concocted a different kind of suburban wonderland for Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" -- and costumer Sandy Powell, this movie can only have been a dream come true.)
But Haynes is far too sophisticated (in a good way) to make derision his main instrument here. After you get over the sheer artificial plushness of the movie, you begin to notice that its characters -- even though they're the artfully overdrawn types of '50s Hollywood -- are experiencing very real emotions. Frank and Cathy's marriage, which comes with the requisite two small children, is by no means loveless, but it's definitely beginning to fray. Frank drinks more than he lets on, and actually gets picked up by the cops after a late-night fender-bender. (It's perfectly true that drunk driving merited little more than a wink and a nudge at the time.) There are other, well, issues that keep him away from home late at night, and if you know Haynes' work at all you won't have any trouble guessing what those might be. …
Of course Sirk's melodramas epitomize the "women's picture," and "Far From Heaven" is really Cathy's story. … Julianne Moore is both the visual center of the film and also its heart and soul. Although she's seemingly as settled and averse to change as any housewife of her generation, Cathy is revealed in adversity to be a daring, generous and adventuresome spirit, as noble a romantic heroine in her way as Anna Karenina.
Indeed, as a busybody newspaperwoman puts it during an interview for the society page (a scene that does play as hilarious parody), Cathy is "a woman as devoted to her family as she is kind to Negroes." Actually, Cathy is quite startled by the strange black man she sees in her yard during the interview, and goes outside to confront him. When she learns that Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) is taking over the business of his father, their long-time gardener, who has just died, she apologizes warmly. That's the moment when we first see what a fundamentally genuine and lovely person she is, whatever we may make of her material circumstances.
Part of the game Haynes is playing in "Far From Heaven," in fact, is to point out that all too often we do judge people by their external characteristics. If the white citizens of Hartford, Conn., in 1958 are likely to look at Raymond and see nothing but a stereotype, the same goes for us when we look at Cathy and her oft-caricatured life of middle-class, "I Like Ike" privilege.
Haysbert is a calm and dignified presence, as always, but against the increasingly symbolic landscape of "Far From Heaven" it's hard not to see Raymond as something closer to a metaphorical Other than a real person. When Frank's dark secret threatens to destroy the Whitakers' marriage and Cathy finds herself weeping in the yard, Raymond appears as if magically, a consoling presence bearing a lost scarf of hers he has retrieved from a tree.
As Frank descends deeper into booze and misery -- interestingly, although Haynes presumably sympathizes with Frank's "problem," he doesn't let him off the hook for damaging Cathy and his kids -- Raymond and Cathy begin to forge an indefinable relationship. Neither of them directly raises the almost unthinkable prospect of a love affair, but for a white woman to form a close friendship with her black gardener in the Hartford of 1958 is every bit as shocking. Cathy scandalizes the town merely by discussing Joan Miró with him at a gallery opening, and when they go to a bar-and-grill in Raymond's neighborhood -- where they sweetly, hesitantly dance together in one of this film's several Kleenex-mandatory scenes -- the reaction from the black clientele is only marginally friendlier.
As is customary in Sirk's melodramas, the characters here stumble through emotional (and physical) violence toward at least a fragmentary resolution and partial self-knowledge. As Raymond tells Cathy late in the film, he imagines a world where, "for one fleeting instant," people could "see beyond the color, the surface of things." He's not just talking about racial bigotry; I understand the line as Haynes' plea to his audiences to resist the easy allure of style and superficial beauty, to seek profound connections in life as in art. Raymond and Cathy are trapped in a lovingly realized era, a kind of beautiful confection, from which they can never escape. But they've had their fleeting instant together. In our own age of so-called liberation, are we so much better off?
“Formalism expresses film’s potential as an expressive medium. The available film techniques are of central importance—use of camera, lighting, editing. For the formalist film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Primary importance is attached to the filmic process, and it is suggested that film can never fully record reality anyway, if only because it is two-dimensional compared to reality’s three dimensions” (113
Studying Film)
Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their unabashedly subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, of re-forming of reality. But it's precisely this "deformed" imagery that can be so artistically striking in such films.
Mise-en-scene: setting; props; costumes; performance; lighting and colour; composition
Cinematography: framing; shot size; length of take; camera movement; angle; depth of field,
Editing—continuity editing; movement and speed of editing; shot size and editing; shot/reverse shot; eye-line match; match on action; cutaway shots; cross-cutting; 180 degree rule; 30 degree rule; alternatives to cutting; discontinuity editing; graphic match; symbolic inset edit, freeze frame
Sound: diegetic and non-diegetic sound; sound effects; ambient sound; music; voice-overs; parallel and contrapuntal sound; sound bridges
Far From Heaven, 2002
By Andrew O'Hehir
Nov. 8, 2002 | With Julianne Moore blazing at its center in red and gold, like a bouquet of autumnal foliage in a fine china vase, Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven" is an explosion of synthetic delights. Which is not to say it lacks emotional impact -- far from it. "Far From Heaven" is a movie for hardcore film geeks and regular folk alike, a stunning, and stunningly improbable, fusion of postmodern pastiche and old-school Hollywood melodrama. It's both a marvelous technical accomplishment and a tragic love story that sweeps you off your feet.
In obsessively emulating the style, tone and posh suburban settings of legendary 1950s director Douglas Sirk, Haynes has paradoxically set himself free. He has always been a meticulous visual craftsman whose talent for the medium is obvious, but he has also seemed (to me, anyway) too cerebral for his own good. Film is not primarily an intellectual art form, and in such previous works as "Poison," "Safe" and the baffling glam-rock tribute "Velvet Goldmine," Haynes' aesthetic seemed constrained by the leaden hand of pomo academic theory. You wondered who his ideal audience member was: A U.C. Berkeley grad student working on a new translation of Foucault?
Haynes hasn't left queer theory behind with "Far From Heaven"; instead, in appropriating Sirk's overripe narrative mode and glorious Technicolor aesthetic, he's found exactly the right container for it. It's no exaggeration to say that Sirk's classic melodramas, from "Magnificent Obsession" to "Written on the Wind" to "Imitation of Life," are already about gender, sexuality, race and American hypocrisy. If the allegorical fable about a noble suburban housewife and the scandalous implosion of her family that Haynes spins in "Far From Heaven" is not precisely one that Sirk could have told 45 years ago, it's nonetheless true to Sirk's spirit in every way.
More specifically, "Far From Heaven" bears a family resemblance to Sirk's 1955 "All That Heaven Allows," in which the widowed Jane Wyman sends her uptight suburban community into a tizzy by falling for her younger gardener, played by Rock Hudson. Here, however, the circumstances are different: It is indeed the late '50s, and Cathy Whitaker (Moore) is married to Frank (Dennis Quaid), a Connecticut sales executive for a television manufacturer called Magnatech. Frank and Kathy, in fact, make such a handsome couple that they appear in magazine ads together as Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech, avatars of a brave new world of American consumerism.
"Far From Heaven"
Written and directed by Todd Haynes
Starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
From the note-perfect opening credits and the first sweeping chords of Elmer Bernstein's opulent score to the tasteful modern furniture and porcelain figurine lamps in the Whitakers' updated colonial, "Far From Heaven" is so intensely stylized you can't help feeling, at least at first, that some kind of ironic commentary is intended. It's only natural to giggle at the Magnatech ads, at the perfect Technicolor streets with their spotless arrays of Oldsmobiles and Plymouths, at the outrageous high-heeled pumps worn by Cathy's catty best friend (Patricia Clarkson, doing an uncanny impersonation of one of those Agnes Moorehead supporting roles) or at Moore's voluminous skirt in aquamarine satin, which looks as if you could camp a pack of Cub Scouts under it or convert it into parachutes in wartime. (For production designer Mark Friedberg -- who concocted a different kind of suburban wonderland for Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" -- and costumer Sandy Powell, this movie can only have been a dream come true.)
But Haynes is far too sophisticated (in a good way) to make derision his main instrument here. After you get over the sheer artificial plushness of the movie, you begin to notice that its characters -- even though they're the artfully overdrawn types of '50s Hollywood -- are experiencing very real emotions. Frank and Cathy's marriage, which comes with the requisite two small children, is by no means loveless, but it's definitely beginning to fray. Frank drinks more than he lets on, and actually gets picked up by the cops after a late-night fender-bender. (It's perfectly true that drunk driving merited little more than a wink and a nudge at the time.) There are other, well, issues that keep him away from home late at night, and if you know Haynes' work at all you won't have any trouble guessing what those might be. …
Of course Sirk's melodramas epitomize the "women's picture," and "Far From Heaven" is really Cathy's story. … Julianne Moore is both the visual center of the film and also its heart and soul. Although she's seemingly as settled and averse to change as any housewife of her generation, Cathy is revealed in adversity to be a daring, generous and adventuresome spirit, as noble a romantic heroine in her way as Anna Karenina.
Indeed, as a busybody newspaperwoman puts it during an interview for the society page (a scene that does play as hilarious parody), Cathy is "a woman as devoted to her family as she is kind to Negroes." Actually, Cathy is quite startled by the strange black man she sees in her yard during the interview, and goes outside to confront him. When she learns that Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) is taking over the business of his father, their long-time gardener, who has just died, she apologizes warmly. That's the moment when we first see what a fundamentally genuine and lovely person she is, whatever we may make of her material circumstances.
Part of the game Haynes is playing in "Far From Heaven," in fact, is to point out that all too often we do judge people by their external characteristics. If the white citizens of Hartford, Conn., in 1958 are likely to look at Raymond and see nothing but a stereotype, the same goes for us when we look at Cathy and her oft-caricatured life of middle-class, "I Like Ike" privilege.
Haysbert is a calm and dignified presence, as always, but against the increasingly symbolic landscape of "Far From Heaven" it's hard not to see Raymond as something closer to a metaphorical Other than a real person. When Frank's dark secret threatens to destroy the Whitakers' marriage and Cathy finds herself weeping in the yard, Raymond appears as if magically, a consoling presence bearing a lost scarf of hers he has retrieved from a tree.
As Frank descends deeper into booze and misery -- interestingly, although Haynes presumably sympathizes with Frank's "problem," he doesn't let him off the hook for damaging Cathy and his kids -- Raymond and Cathy begin to forge an indefinable relationship. Neither of them directly raises the almost unthinkable prospect of a love affair, but for a white woman to form a close friendship with her black gardener in the Hartford of 1958 is every bit as shocking. Cathy scandalizes the town merely by discussing Joan Miró with him at a gallery opening, and when they go to a bar-and-grill in Raymond's neighborhood -- where they sweetly, hesitantly dance together in one of this film's several Kleenex-mandatory scenes -- the reaction from the black clientele is only marginally friendlier.
As is customary in Sirk's melodramas, the characters here stumble through emotional (and physical) violence toward at least a fragmentary resolution and partial self-knowledge. As Raymond tells Cathy late in the film, he imagines a world where, "for one fleeting instant," people could "see beyond the color, the surface of things." He's not just talking about racial bigotry; I understand the line as Haynes' plea to his audiences to resist the easy allure of style and superficial beauty, to seek profound connections in life as in art. Raymond and Cathy are trapped in a lovingly realized era, a kind of beautiful confection, from which they can never escape. But they've had their fleeting instant together. In our own age of so-called liberation, are we so much better off?
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