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

Page scan 000191 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 #:
000191
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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178 which occurs in twelve Impressionist films and in no nonImpressionist films examined, is a highly characteristic textural feature of Impressionism. Most idiosyncratic is the use of optical devices to indicate various kinds of Subjectivity. Following Mitry's scheme, we may distinguish three sorts: purely mental images, semi-subjective images, and optically subjective images. Of these sorts, purely mental images comprise by far the greatest number of optical devices; thirty of the thirtyseven Impressionist films examined utilize optical devices to indicate such mental states as memory or Tantasy "in La Femme de Nulle Part, for example, the movements of the woman's mind from the present to the past are signaled by gauzy focus shots of the flashbacks. In Le Brasier Ardent, the wife's memory of her honeymoon is given in negative shots and freeze-frames. La Belle Nivernaise offers an even more remarkable Bequence: oF such opticallycontrolled memory-images. At school, Victor opens his geography book. A subjective point-of-view shot of the maps of rivers dissolves to a long-shot of the river he and his foster parents lived on. Superimposed smoke gives way to a shot of Victor and Clara superimposed against the barge. After several dissolves to closer views of them, a shot of smoke in the sky dissolves to the river, which