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 #:
000184
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Lvs and windows to frame actions within shots; since some compositional uses of windows have been mentioned above, it is worth noting here that doorways have similar funections: e.g., the elaborate concentric doorways in Feu Mathias Pascal, the arches and tall doors of L'iInondation, the lavish corridor-doors of L'Argent. On the whole, while the non-Impressionist films studied lack the extremes of decor styles, the abstract non-narrative films share a concern with strong abstract patterns--indeed, make them the films' raisons d'étre. Arrangement and Behavior of Figures in Space. Film study lacks an analytical apparatus for defining parameters of Spatial manipulation within the shot. Without such an apparatus, the researcher can only note contingent phenomena. Nonetheless, spatial manipulation of figures and objects does not appear to be a Significant textural feature of Impressionist cinema. For example, many Impressionist films (e.g., Le Brasier Ardent, L'Inhumaine, L'Argent, La Souriante Madame Beudet) make little use of foreground and background; such spatial relations are usually determined by editing, as will be shown below. Often, however, Impressionist films make extensive use of a dramatic interplay between foreground and background. In Fiévre, when the sailor and the bar hostess talk on the terrace, a