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

Page scan 000117 from French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style

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 #:
000117
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

104 contingently do--but most important for present purposes is the mistake that permits mainstream Impressionist theory to repudiate only theatrical dialogue, acting style, and decor; theatrical dramaturgy is not seen as opposed to film. Impressionist theory thus contrasts theatre and film: at a relatively local level, comparing theatrical talk, acting, and decor with aspects of the isolated film image. What the purist position does not erdep ois.any opposition between the structure of a play and the structure of a film. Indeed, Canudo's reference to "un conte visuel" Suggests that no opposition between literary and cinematic wholes is seen. Unlike the film theory of Sergei Eisenstein, for example, the Impressionist position fails to account at the primary level for cinematic structure. This omission leaves a conceptual gap which threatens the stability of higher-order theatrical claims. By contrast with the theatre, the purist position locates cinematic specificity in the moving image. In an important passage, Fauré claims: Que le départ de cet art-14 soit d'tabord plastique, il ne semble par cons€quent pas qu'on en puisse douter. A quelque forme d'expression 4 peine soupconnée qu'il puisse nous conduire, c'est par des volumes, des arabesques, des gestes, des attitudes, des rapports, des associations, des contrasts, des passages de tons, tout cela animé, insensiblement modifié d'un fragment de seconde 4 l'autre, qu'il impressionnera notre Sensibilité et agira sur notre intelligence par l'intermédiare de nos yeux. 39