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

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 #:
000271
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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258 has called the "orthodox" theory of the silent cinema, and Impressionism's influence may be detected today in the work of Jean Mitry, although Mitry's theory is far subtler than his predecessors'. Moreover, Impressionist films have been studied by students and aspiring film-makers as exempla of cinematic technique, and some of the most aesthetically interesting films in cinema history--La have been produced by the movement. Finally, there are grounds for suggesting that French Impressionism created a model for a certain set of stylistic devices which has reappeared in films made in other countries and other times. That is, just as we may distinguish between the German Expressionist movement and a broader stylistic trend we call "expressionism," perhaps we may distinguish between the French Impressionist movement and a broad Stylistic trend of "impressionism." The "dream-sequence" of Hollywood cinema of the 1940's, as in Farewell My Lovely or Spellbound; the trance-films of the New American Cinema of the 1940's and 1950's; and contemporary films such as Widerberg's Elvira Madigan, Bergman's benenna: and Altman's images--all draw on a repertoire of stylistic devices which was first articulated in the films of the French Impres Sionists. Besides, then,an incomplete but provocative