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

Page scan 000245 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 #:
000245
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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ane argument, encouraged by the industry and technical feasibility, a "selective tradition" emerged which influenced the trend toward Impressionist pictorialism in film style. In 1923, the Impressionist style underwent a change. While continuing to utilize the techniques of pictorialism, many films from 1923 to 1928 included a new stylistic device: rhythmic montage. As mentioned above, such editing usually functions to indicate the pace of a character's experience, often by means of accelerated cutting-rates. Before 1923, such editing occurs in only one film I have seen, and there it is very brief: in Gance's J'Accuse (1919), an artillery barrage is indicated by a short shot of a cannon inserted between two lengthy shots of men under fire. After 1922, however, rhythmic editing becomes pervaSive. Some typical examples appear in Mosjoukine's Le Brasier dpdart and Epstein's L'Auberge Rouge and Coeur Fidele (all 1923); Epstein's La Belle Nivernaise, Volkov's Kean, Clair's Paris Qui Dort and Entr'acte, and L'Herbier's LiInhumaine (all 1924); Feyder's Visages d'Enfants, Dulac's Le Diable dans la Ville, L'Herbier's Feu Mathias Pascal, and Epstein's Aventures de Robert Macaire (all 1925); Epstein's Six et Demi-Onze and Kirsanoff's Menilmontant (both 1926); and Gance's Napoleon and Epstein's barg@lace a Trois Faces (both 1927). Thus 1923 marks the emergence of a new trait of Impressionist film style. What caused this?