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

Page scan 000136 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 #:
000136
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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a2% dramaturgy and that they should not do so. Although Impressionist writers have not earned a theory of autonomously cinematic structure comparable to the material concept of photogénie or "cineplastics," they usually simply deny that cinema should owe anything at all to theatre om ld terature.,. Jii‘pcetion, inte gue, desprit: sont du théatre...," writes Epstein. "Le cinéma assimile mal l'armature raisonnable du feuilleton."83 In another passage, Epstein claims: "Généralement, le cinéma rend mal 1'anecdote. Et ‘action dramatique' y est une erreur. "94 Germaine Dulac complains that a blind man in a film theatre could be told the plot of most films and miss very little: "Un vrai film ne doit pas pouvoir se raconter puisqu'il doit puiser son principe actif et émotif dans des images faites d'uniques vibrations visuelles. Raconte-t-on un tableau? Raconte-t-on une sculpture? Certes pas. On ne peut €voquer que l'impression et 1'émotion qu'telles dégagent.185 Fauré and Clair maintain that because of cineplastics, a story becomes but a pretext for the images, 36 Consequently, Impressionists often deny that a "pure film" should be a narrative at al1.87 Again, the borrowing from purist conceptions of literature is probabite. If Impressionist theory decides that cinematic