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 #:
00038
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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CHAPTER II. IMPRESSIONISM AND THE BUILDING OF A FILM CULTURE In France between 1913 and 1925, a substantial change took place in the status of cinema in the eyes of artists and the educated public. In 1913, a theatre ecritic could write inthe prestigious journal La Revue des Deux Mondes: "La vogue du cinéma est un nouveau recul pour la lecture, déja battue en bréche de toutes parts. C'est un nouveau 6chec pour le livre,--qui n'en est plus a les compter."1 Yet ten years later the same journal was publishing a regular column concerned solely with that mortal enemy of the book. In the late 'teens, an influential writer like Anatole France was condemning the cinema as the sign of a new apocalypse. ("Il ne s'agit pas de la fin du monde, mais de la fin d'une civilisation"@), yet by 1921 no less a figure than Proust -confessed that he had only two desires: "I wish I was well enough to go once to the cinema and to the 'Boeuf sur le Toit.!" In 1912, French newspapers did not even list local film programs; by 19253: according: to: one’ historian,! there were Six periodicals devoted solely to cinema, and daily film columns were featured in over twenty-three newspapers. 4 The cinema's infectious popularity in the decade 1910-1920 was alarming to men like Henry Joly, René Bazére, and