The Heterogeneity Of Art Cinema, By Geoffrey Bordwell

During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that,

In “A Century of Cinema”, Susan Sontag explains how cinema was cherished by those who enjoyed what cinema offered. Cinema was unlike anything else, it was entertainment that had the audience feeling apart of the film. However, as the years went by, the special feeling regarding cinema went away as those who admired cinema wanted to help expand the experience.

The star-studded romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen’s most recent films which he did both, wrote and directed. It is a film about a man named Gil (Owen Wilson) who travels to Paris with his fiancée’s parents in order to expand his imagination and he ends up embarking on a journey to the 1920s while walking the streets of Paris at night. Not only is this film engaging and witty, but it also manages to provide both, overt and covert examples of postmodernism in film. By analyzing Woody Allen’s 2011film Midnight in Paris, we can identify the presence of many underlying motifs in both the narrative and the characterization of the film when using some of Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts on postmodernism.

Diversity in films is important because representation matters. Viewers are drawn to shows with ethnically diverse lead cast members. Mostly all viewers love to watch shows that reflect and relate to their own experiences. Reddigari, a freelance writer, also expresses the question of why we lack diversity in films. “Hollywood has been producing inspiring films intended to capture the beauty, joy and sorrow in everyday life. As much as we love our favorite movies, we can’t help but notice that many of them fail to capture the life experiences of all moviegoers, leaving the voices of millions of Americans from diverse backgrounds underrepresented” (This Tumblr Shows the Startling Lack of Diversity in Film). Diversity in films is an important topic in society because it represents equality and people of color to look up to.

Article Three – Author: David Bordwell / Title of Article: The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film

In Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni’s essay “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” they put forward the central argument that film is a commercial product in the capitalist system and therefore also the unconscious instrument of the dominant ideology which produces it. In opposition to the classic film theory that applauds camera as an impartial device to reproduce reality, they argue that what the camera reproduces is merely a refraction of the prevailing ideology. Therefore, the primary and political task for filmmakers is to disrupt this replication of the world as self-evident and the function of film criticism is to identify and evaluate that politics. Comolli and Narboni then suggest seven categories of films confronting ideology in different ways, among which the second category resists the prevailing ideology on two levels. Films of this group not only overtly deal with political contents in order to “attack their ideological assimilation” (Comolli and Narboni 483), but also achieve their goal through breaking down the conventional way of depicting reality.

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the

What makes for a classic Hollywood film? Increasingly, films have evolved to the point where the standard by which one calls a “classic Hollywood film” has evolved over time. What one calls a classic film by yesterday’s standards is not the same as that of today’s standards. The film Casablanca is no exception to this. Although David Bordwell’s article, “Classical Hollywood Cinema” defines what the classical Hollywood film does, the film Casablanca does not exactly conform to the very definition that Bordwell provides the audience with in his article. It is true that the film capers closely to Bordwell’s definition, but in more ways than not, the film diverges from Bordwell’s definition of the typical Hollywood film.

This film analysis will delineate the diverse directorial decisions of The French New Wave cinema movement, and how they have been utilised and developed to challenge and subvert the typical Hollywood filmmaking conventions and techniques of the 1950s and 60s Hollywood cinema, in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). Hollywood produced films of the time used a very limited variation in film techniques such as camera, acting, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. This can be mainly attributed to the low innovative thought of creative and expressive camera movements, angles, etc… due to technological hindrances. In particular, this film analysis will de-construct the filmmaking elements of the revelatory French New Wave movement in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows ending scene (01:34:42 – 01:39:32) portraying the main character Antoine Doinel’s escape from juvie and trek to the bespoken beach.

The French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague, is among the most revolutionary film eras in the history of cinema. Spurred as a result of major shifts in economic, social and technological norms within post-WW11 France, the New Wave conceived a renewed mode of expression across various creative industries. Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) are two films, which despite major disparities, would go on to exemplify integral characteristics of the movement in the following years. Perhaps, the best way to truly appreciate the fervor of New Wave cinema is to examine the context of its inception. Both the stylistic and thematic qualities of French New Wave works directly reflect the implicit values, virtues and vices possessed by the emerging youth culture of the late 1950s, which consequently posed a fundamental challenge to the institutions, ideas and attitudes of the past.

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way that film does, and goes directly into our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls” (Ingmar Bergman). Ingmar Bergman’s fascination with the subconscious and dreams as they delve deep into one’s consciousness is evident in his work. To Bergman, cinema is quintessentially an alternate reality in which dreams can have a physical manifestation. The flexibility of cinema allows for Bergman to evoke dream-like qualities in his films. His films are dream-like in the sense that they take both the character and the viewer into a seemly different world that transcends regular notions of time and space. One of his most well-known films, Wild Strawberries, illustrates

Bergman’s film, Wild Strawberries, released in 1957, is truly one of Bergman’s most forgiving, riveting, raw, and yet, sensitive films telling the story of a professor, bound to receive an honorary award at Lund, Sweden. The professor, Isak Borg, is widowed and goes on a road trip to Lund with his brutally honest and newly pregnant daughter-in-law, Marianne. Along the way, they stop to visit his childhood summer home and that is when the gates of Borg’s memory open. Through his series of flashbacks, we see the bitter and the sweet parts of his past that eventually led him to his current state, which is this feeling of cold and utter insensitivity that truly has the rest of the characters feeling a little displeased.

Naomi Greene once said that, “Pier Paolo Pasolini was the more protean figure than anyone else in the world of film.” This means that Pasolini was a versatile film director because he simplified cinema into the simplest way possible, while still visually embodying an important message to his cinematic viewers. Because of his encounter with Italy’s social changes, it influenced the writing and films he chose to write. His aspirations regarding his written work “Cinema of Poetry” explains how a writer usage of words and a filmmaker’s choice of images are linked to how cinema can be a poetry of language. He characterizes cinema as irrational and his approach on free indirect point of view is used to achieve a particular effect in his body of work. His claims made in the Cinema of Poetry illustrate why he stylized his films in the manner he did, such as Mamma Roma through the images he portrayed on screen. By examining Pasolini’s approach to poetic communication in the Cinema of Poetry, we can see that these cinematic attributes about reality and authenticity depicted in Mamma Roma are utilized to question cinematic viewer’s effortless identification of cinema with life. This is important to illustrate because Pasolini wants to motivate viewers to have an interpretative rather than a passionate relationship with the screen.