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

Page scan 000268 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 #:
000268
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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in a devastating three-part essay by Henri Fescourt and J. L. Bouquet, L'Idée et L'Ecran (Paris, 1926). In this ironic series of dialogues, the authors attack the avantgarde's excessively narrow definition of pure cinema, its obliviousness to cinema's origins and the value of narrative, and its preoccupation with technique. Fescourt and Bouquet point out that from the perspective of creative practice the assumption of an autonomous art possesses no great advantage: "Quelle nécessité 6 a-t-il pour les arts d'étre séparés les uns des autres par des cloisons étanches? Quelle bénéfice retirent-ils de cette soi disant indépendence?"/4 The authors anticipate Jean Mitry's criticism of the movement in their analysis of Impressionism's fuzzy conception of pure rhythm and especially in their insistence on cinema as a "second-degree" art: "Le cinéma n'est nullement un art par essence, ce qui’ le différencie de la musique, de la poésie, et encore de la peinture."/° Despite theoretical difficulties with their own position, Fescourt and Bouquet deserve credit for analyzing the theoretical and stylistic premises of the Impressionist movement with more critical verve and precision than any other writers of the time. Such polemic was essential if the movement was to renovate itself as it hoped. Any estimate of the historical significance of the