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

Page scan 000260 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 #:
000260
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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Although Impressionist films of the late 1920's show little Soviet influence, some of the critical energy! that had SO strongly sustained the movement shifted allegiances. Léon Moussinac, a close friend of Delluc's and a major Supporter of the Impressionist movement, became fascinated by the Soviet style and went to Russia to study the cinema.2° The result was Le Cinéma Soviétique, a book which did for the Soviets what Naissance du Cinéma had done for the ImpresSlonists. It is possible that once the Impressionist style had coalesced by 1925, the following year's revelation of the Soviet style impelled Impressionist film-makers to explore in more diversified directions. The stylistic diffusion of the late 1920's films, however, cannot wholly account for the cessation of ImpresSlonism as a stylistically and ideologically coherent movement. Again, external commercial forces seem the most pertinent causes. In the years 1927-1929, the independence which the Impressionists prized became more and more difficult to Sustain. With the cost of a feature film averaging: onehalf million francs by the late 1920's and Herriot's government driven to instituting-a control commission to Shore up the French cinema's finances,°?? the Impressionists were hard pressed to retain baie freedom. Furthermore, the industry was becoming far less tolerant of Impressionist