The Art Cinema As A Mode Of Film Essay

In his essay “E Unibus Pluram” David Foster Wallace critiques the fast-cutting tropes of contemporary cinema and television as meretriciously catering to our desire to transcend our average daily lives. These hysterical collages are, in his words, “unsubtle in their whispers that, somewhere, life is quicker, denser, more interesting… more lively.” We leave these films dazzled, punching the air, ready to do combat with a gang of bad guys or lose a pursuer in a car chase, but enjoy none of the edifying potential that Leo Tolstoy and other early theorizers of cinema’s potential saw in the fledgling art form. Contemporary independent cinema often works in stubborn self-conscious contrast to the transcendence aesthetic, but too

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. Thesis. N.d. N.p.: Laura Mulvey, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. NG Communications, 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. .

Bordwell uses three different ‘levels of generality’ to describe the common elements among Classical Hollywood films. The first level, devices, is primarily about the technical aspects of the film and deals with the use of common cinematic conventions such as dramatic

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

It is easy to look into the eyes of a motion picture and dissect it for its form, style, underlying meanings, and other characteristics that separate it from a film and a classic. There are concrete elements that can be found in all classics that make it such a powerful and remarkable work. One of these elements is undoubtedly the concept of the auteur theory. The Auteur theory is described as a filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style. Next to this definition should be the line “-for more help see Stanley Kubrick.” He exemplifies all the characteristics of not just a film director, but also a film auteur because of the intellect and

The sturdy hand of a magnificent film architect, who expresses herself with original sculpting techniques, shapes ordinary people with all their strengths and weaknesses. Ms. Reichardt’s cinema is more meditative than rousing, elusively beautiful in its conception, and constructed further beyond artistic superficiality.

The movies Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) are both directed by the acclaimed movie maker Terrence Malick. Both of these films have been deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress and have been inducted in 1993 and 2007 respectively. The basis of this paper is to take these two movies and shed some light behind their creator’s process. The justification for this analysis is to prove with examples that Terrence Malick is an example of an auteur. Through the use of mise en scene, sound, and editing it can be seen that the two films in question are decidedly of a certain style that is unique to Terrence.

I have always had a deep interest in films and consider them the strongest art as they incorporate more senses than any other form. I first felt the power of film when watching Stephen Spielberg’s “Jaws” .The crippling fear of the sea this film was able to create in my mind is a testimony of its power. In this new age of technology film and media are becoming more present in our day to day lives; film does not only entertain but offer new concepts and ideas. I do not only want to study film due to it being my passion but because it opens up new questions and areas to explore. Stanley Kubrick for example is able to present moral conflict and ideas which challenge on an intellectual level. “A clockwork Orange” which I have performed in as a play

A film, generally speaking is digested on a surface level as a piece of entertainment and some elements can pass the viewers by. However films are cemented in the time and place they were made and the filmmakers unique self-expression is presented in an artistic form to fully give their work depth. Typically, feature films are narrative driven and focus on a central set of characters and their trials and tribulations. However, the film can mean something deeper when fully delving into the content of the work, whether it is cultural, political or ideological in its message. These elements presented give the work depth thus allowing deeper discussions and analysis of a work that may seem simple on a surface level. Student filmmakers have always strived to implement these points in their work. With the aim of improving their practice, it is considered a necessity to include these elements in order to fully dissect the elements of specific works to understand the method in which these messages are implemented. In this assignment, I will discuss the content of the cult film They Live (They Live, 1988) so I can fully grasp the symptomatic and ideological elements behind the film and how it has inspired other artists.

When someone says the word “Hollywood”, my mind has no problem painting a detailed picture. Films with grand orchestras, multi-million-dollar lighting, costumes, and makeup, big name actors; these things all come to mind. However, in the third chapter of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art, a set of conventions considered to be part of classical Hollywood filmmaking are listed. These conventions are tagged on to what we would expect to see in a classical Hollywood film. They are included in the themes and elements of the plot and narrative that we have come to expect from the films that we watch and love, but may not often be consciously consider. One of my favorite films, Dead Poet’s Society, is not exempt from this—it too includes several key

Art and the city are intrinsically linked to each other. It have always been considered as a great educational tool. It opens up the ears and the eyes of the beholder. Whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a film, or even a masterpiece of musical works, it have the great ability to teach and develop the mind and the soul of the human being. In effect, Artists hold the almost ferric power to transcend its audience into their work. We often feel, when we walk in a cinema, that nothing exterior to this dark room exist anymore. When watching a movie, we are completely embodied in it, we let ourselves enter into this illusionary world. This argument can well relate to what Laura U. Marks talks about in her famous book: The Skin of the Film: Intercultural

We frequently consider films in terms of their genre, a French word meaning ‘kind’ or ‘sort’. It is a very complex term, not only used in film but also in other creative areas such as music, art, and literature. However, it is often considered through various conventions including iconography, similar themes and their stylistic features, as Bordwell and Thompson (2006:357) suggest, ‘ style…is the formal system of the film that organizes techniques’ such as lighting, props and setting. This repetition of common elements across a series of films allows us as the viewer to identify genre. For example, if a film was to

In service of this argument, the essay unfolds in three parts. The first section sketches an appropriate framework for understanding how cinema marshals and moves viewers by engaging them in a fully embodied experience.4 The second section offers a brief overview of the film's plot before turning to an analysis of its triptych narrative and affective development. The third and final section considers the methodological, critical, and theoretical implications suggested by the preceding analysis.

In “Le théâtre de la cruauté,” Antonin Artaud writes that “on ne peut comparer une image de cinéma qui, si poètique soit-elle, est limitée par la pellicule, à une image de théâtre qui obéit à touts les exigences de la vie” (“Premier Manifeste,” 1932, 150). In this way, cinema is supposedly incommensurable with the values of the theatre of cruelty, which places importance upon the theatre’s connection to real life and the impact it can have upon the spectator through its physical manifestation However, Artaud’s earlier writings on film seem to often put forward very similar ideals to those of the theatre of cruelty. It cannot be ignored that the writings on film and those

While modern film productions have lost the ambitious classicism of early cinema, the idea to view cinematography itself as a self-governing construction of thinking has been carved into the history of continental philosophy. Due to the variety of material and conjecture, film manipulates the four-dimensional reality in which we live our everyday lives in. From A quoi pensent les films?, Jacques Aumont, a French academic writer on film theory, states that “film has the power of thinking” in order to express that the art form has the ability to release us from the restriction of our realistic judgements and radical perceptions, producing a poetic and dreamlike reality.