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

Page scan 000121 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 #:
000121
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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108 into the domain of the wondrous."49 This aura of wonder never quite leaves 2) Bel aire film theory. Even the most sophtetieatae theorists (e.g., Epstein and Canudo) fall back too easily upon the assumption that photogénie is an impenetrable, quasi-supernatural enigma. This means that much written about photogénie is unsupportable theoretically. The strongest theoretical line, however, pushes the argument into the ee the technical capacities of the image, but without losing sight of the awesome mystery that initially impels the inquiry. Photogénie is seen, most broadly, as the transforming, revelatory power of cinema: transforming because photogénie surpasses sheer literal reproduction of reality; revelatory because it presents a fresh perspective upon reality. The transforming quality must be present if there is to be art; as we have seen, Impressionist theory assumes art to be an imaginative, suggestive transformation of nature. "Le septiéme art," writes Canudo, "doit €voquer et suggérer les sentiments, et méme les faits, plus qu'il ne doit platement les reproduire."2" Louis | Aragon likewise observes that cinema's power lies not in the faithful reproduction of reality but in the "magnification" and "transformation" of reality which produces "la vie supérieure de la poésie."2! Epstein calls the