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 #:
000157
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 Successive small-scale relations would include, for example, the juxtaposition of one shot to another or the movement of an actor from one action to another: that is, temporal relations. Consequently, the style of a single film may be characterized by statements about recurrent features (either simultaneous or successive) of texture. For example, in characterizing the style of Welles' Citizen Kane as that of "“deép-focus composition,” one is referring to the recurrences of a hierarchical pattern of simultaneous relationships among figures within the frame. Again, in characterizing the style of Eisenstein's Potemkin as that of "dynamic montage," one is referring to the recurrence of abrupt, kinetic relationships between successive shots. Thus the general categories of what are usually called film techniques--camerawork, mise-en-scéne, editing, sound, and "optical" devices--may be considered as denoting stylistic (i.e., recurrent textural) qualities of individual films. wu The main textural features of Impressionist cinema may be summarized in advance. Impressionist film style addresses the problem posed by Impressionist film theory: How can cinema transcend the mechanical recording of action? As we saw, the Impressionists see the film artist as utilizing the medium to transform nature and express feeling. In Impressionist film style, this