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

Page scan 000189 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 #:
000189
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.

176 optical effects for purely decorative purposes. Eleven Impressionist films contain examples of optical effects which signify nothing in narrative terms but simply add to the composition of individual shots. A white archshaped mask around a garden party (Les Aventures de Robert Coeur Fidéle), gauze-focus in certain scenes (the longShots of the Usher mansion, the lovers in L'Auberge Rouge, Clara combing her hair in La Belle Nivernaise, the party guests in L'Inhumaine), square or oval or triangular or Ziggarat masks around certain images (the train wreck in La Roue, the lovers in El Dorado, the party guests in L'Inhumaine), and slow superimpositions (the sea and bridge in L'Inondation): all these are used so inconsistently and are so difficult to justify contextually that one must conclude that their primary purpose is purely graphic. By emphasizing shape or design, such devices simply make interesting images. Such purely pictorial uses of optical devices are evident in three non-Impressionist films examined, all of them abstract films (Ballet Mécanique, Disque 927, and Thémes et Variations). This is hardly Surprising, since such abstract films would logically utilize optical devices for purely graphic ends. Other characteristic uses of optical devices,