Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art) (1952)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

116 CHANGING SET-UP STYLE AND SET-UP This duality, resulting from the artistic re-creation of an already existing work of art, is strikingly manifested in the transition of one style into the other. If the object is the furniture of a room, for instance, all the austere simplicity of the directoire style will be of no avail if the camera work is baroque. What is decisive is not the style of the object but of the shot. The theme may be an ancient Greek temple but the angle may give it a Gothic character if the cameraman pleases. Similar things may be observed in other arts. In the Musee Guimet in Paris there is a china tea-service made in a Chinese pottery for the Versailles court of the king of France. The simon-pure rococo designs of the decorations were sent out to China where pastoral scenes between French marquis and marquises were conscientiously copied on the Chinese tea-cups. Nevertheless the whole is so Chinese in character that looking at the Versailles lords and ladies from the distance of a few yards, one might easily take them for Chinese mandarins or Chinese empresses. The Chinese brushwork and manner restyled the French rococo designs. The inverse example of Dresden china is well known. The traditional ancient Chinese designs acquired a comfortable corpulent burgher character. And the last miracle performed by Claude Monet in his old age, and which cost him his eyesight— the 'Notre-Dame in the Sunlight' — transformed the medieval Gothic of Notre-Dame into the luminous thicket of a lushly blossoming jungle. That was how the Gothic cathedral looked to the French impressionist whose aim was to depict life as he saw it. An excellent Japanese film Shadows of the Yoshiwara was refreshingly pure in style, not because the buildings and costumes were authentic, but because the style of the shots, 01 angles and set-ups had the quality of old Japanese wood-cuts. STYLE-CONSCIOUS FILMS The great historical styles which were not hatched out in some workshop or studio but which were produced slowly and