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

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 #:
000154
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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144 set. Though there is no feature necessary and sufficient to define the class of all Impressionist films, there is a cluster of features which do strongly characterize Impressionist style. While we cannot say that if a film possesses A it must be Impressionist, we can Bay that. if the film lacks A, B,:'C, D,:» and E it cannot: be Impressionist. We can also say that eCobbeahalmt hae Agi Bei ji D, and Bx} it is Impressionist. If the film hae, say, ontg! By andic it may or may not qualify as Impressionist; we must secrutinize, argue, and compare until we either decide its membership one way or the other or simplyiconsign iti to that logically untidy but empirically necessary category of borderline cases. Thus the paradigm which I propose will outline typical but not necessary-and-sufficient features of tee aal aide film»style. Formal definition is not the aim; rather, the family-resemblance model permits us to see typical patterns among features of the films in the set. By itself, however, the family-resemblance model will not yield a sense of the salient traits of the Impressionist group. This is why we need films from other stylistic sets. In the course of tracing the style paradigm, I shall utilize deductive categories of film style which permit us to contrast traits of Impressionist style