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

Page scan 000132 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 #:
000132
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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119 Porte is asking that the artist's cinematic transformation of material reality move inadifferent direction, so to speak: that technique only imply the director's interpretation by indicating characters' visual experiences. Although Impressionist theory never gets beyond such general questioning, there is nonetheless the tacit recognition that camera placement can suggest subjective attitudes toward material reality. As we shall see, this possibility is actualized in Impressionist film practice. It is the camera, then, in its adjustments and positionings, that makes the primary contribution to photogénie as revelation and transformation. Mise-en-scéne (the arrangement of material in the image) is accorded considerably less importance, but occasional comments Suggest that Impressionist theorists are aware of its expressive potential. The usual assumption is that miseen-scéne contributed to the oe of absects, that, : the close-up facilitates. Nature, in other words, becomes a character. Canudo speaks of "nature-personnage" in the American and Swedish films.78 Delluc finds that cinema reveals an animating force in natural details: "Les choses dont le rdle est immense dans la vie et dans Ltart retrouveront leur vrai réle et leur éloquence fatidique."/9 Whereas Impressionist theory values distortions of camera work for expressive ends, however, it denies that distortion e