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

Page scan 000124 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 #:
000124
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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dulled by routine, no longer discovers beauty directly, but the lens "centers, drains, and distills" beauty into photogénie.°/ That such photogénie issues from some mysterious realm seems clear from several passages in ImpresSionist writing: Epstein claims that an object has a "soul" which film reveals, while René Schwob defines cinema as "l'art d'inverser l'ordre du monde pour en mieux souligner l'invisible beauté."58 In one passage, Epstein Suggests that ina film, an object becomes animated and expressive, baring its previously concealed esse At another point, René Clair speaks of the revelation of an ideal world: "The screen gives a soul to the cabaret, the room, a bottle, a wall. It is this soul alone that counts in our eyes. We move from the ebject to its soul as easily as our being passes from a sight to a thought. The screen opens onto a new world, one vibrant with even more Sympathetic responses than our own. "9 Tt is a logical culmination of such an idealist position that Epstein, who sees the cinema as "mystique par essence," describes seeing pure truth revealed not in a church but in a film: theatre: Devan wneis 3 Nancy, une salle de trois cents personnes eémit a voix haute en voyant 4 l'écran un grain de blé germer. Soudain apparu, le vrai visage de la vie et de la mort, celui de l'affreux amour, arrache de tels cris religieux. Quelles Gglises, si nous en savions construire, devraient abriter ce Spectacle ou la vie est révélée. Découvrir inopinément,