French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style (December 1974)

Record Details:

Title:
French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style
Date:
December 1974
Publisher:
University of Iowa
Volume:
French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style (Dissertation, 1974)
Leaf #:
00017
Language:
English
Collection:
Global Cinema
Format:
dissertations
Contributor:
Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Doctoral dissertation entitled, "French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style," by film scholar David Bordwell. Submitted to the University of Iowa in 1974. Document is scanned from the David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson papers, archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
Date Added:
May 23, 2024
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Dulac, identified it as "impressionism" in 1927 and reiterated the label in a 1930 essay. Subsequent historians have adopted the term to distinguish the movement from Surrealism and the abstract-film movement; Georges Sadoul has had perhaps the most influence in establishing the term as conventional historical usage °l. shad continue to use the term because it seems to me useful not only in distinguishing the movement from others but also in describing a major trait of the movement's film style--its tendency toward subjective technique. Analogies with other arts, however, should not be pushed too far; Impressionism in cinema, as I shall point out, has only a few affinities with Impressionism in painting. Once we have named the movement, why should we Study it? First, Impressionism is important as a norm against which later, better-known movements (e.g., Surrealism) reacted; to comprehend the programs of such later movements, we need to understand Impressionism. More positively, Impressionism is historically and aesthetically ‘significant in its own right )o°AscEr shall “show; the Manes ath apts constitute a central factor in the creation of a cinematic culture in France. Their films offer striking examples of experimental uses of camerawork, optical devices, and editing; their works thus deserve attention as part of an avant-garde film