Title: Classical American Film Texts
1Classical American Film Texts
- Hollywood Films
- between 1917 and 1960
2Table of Contents
- Film as Illusion
- Classical American Film as Realist Film
- The Paradox of Classical American Film
3Film as Illusion
- The old experience of the movie-goer, who
sees the world outside as an extension of the
film he has just left (because the latter is
intent upon reproducing the world of everyday
perceptions), is now the producers guideline.
The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques
duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is
today for the illusion to prevail that the
outside world is the straightforward continuation
of that presented on the screen. This purpose
has been furthered by mechanical reproduction
since the lighting was taken over by the sound
film. Theodor V. Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 126
4Film as Illusion
- FILM IS ILLUSION OF WHAT?
- Illusion that what you are watching is real
- spectators experience the diagetic world as
environment. Noël Burch - (diegesis telling, recounting)
- Film as combination of imaginary signifiers
Christian Metz - (imaginary the state in which you cannot
distinguish between real and fantasy gt Lacanian
psychoanalysis - (signifier sign)
5Film as Illusion
- Woody Allens Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
- Extreme exposition that film could work as
illusion
6Film as Illusion
- Play It Again, Sam
- Film about a man who has lost the sense of
difference between reality and film and try to be
Humphrey Bogart, his screen hero.
7Film as Illusion
- CLASSICAL AMERICAN FILM AS ILLUSIONIST FILM
- American cinema developed its techniques and
styles in order to dupe the spectator to take
narrative and image for reality - Or to increase its reality and truth effects.
- The spectator is willing to accept illusion or
demand it in film.
8American Classics as Realist Films
- Classical Hollywood products between 1917and 1960
are considered as a type of realist films. - Why 1917 and 1960?
- By 1917 most American fiction adopted
fundamentally similar narrative strategies - PROSIBILITY
9American Classics as Realist Film
- The studio mode of production had been organized
around the division of labour, hierarchical
managerial system, factory-like system of
filmmaking - CONTINUATION of the established uniformity of
narrative and visual Style
10Classical American Film as Realist Film
- The 1960s - the end of Hollywoods mature
existence - Studios moved to the production of television
programmes ? The breakdown of studio system
(stars turning free agents producers becoming
independent the death of B-movies and decrease
in demand for studio directors and staff)
11American Classics as Realist Films
- Challenge from international art cinema, e.g.
Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Italian
neorealists and French directors of Nouvelle
vague - DIVERSIFICATION in contents and styles
12American Classics as Realist Films
- TECHNIQUES, STYLES AND STRATEGIES EMPLOYED TO
CREATE AN ILLUSION OF REALITY IN AMERICAN CINEMA - A) telling a story is the basic formal concern.
- B) uniformity is a basic attribute of film form.
13Classical American Film as Realist Film
- C) The Hollywood film purports to be realistic in
an Aristotelian sense - true to the probable. - D) the Hollywood film strives to conceal its
artifice through techniques of uniformity and
'invisible' storytelling. - E) the film should be comprehensible and
unambiguous.
14American Classics as Realist Films
- F) it possesses a fundamental emotional appeal
which transcends class and nature. - PROBABLE, CREDIBLE, NATURAL AND REAL
15American Classics as Realist Films
- Best Years of Our Lives (1946) directed by
William Wyler - About three ex-servicemen who try to cope with
their lives after returning from the WWII.
16American Classics as Realist Film
- Story is the primary element of the film
- Uniform film style
- Probable story
- Stylistic understatement
- Unambiguous,
- Comprehensible
- Emotional appeal to
- everyone
17American Classics as Realist Film
- Long take and deep space photography
generally associated with realist film. - Long take an uninterrupted shot which last much
longer than a conventional one - a minute to
several minutes. e.g. Martin Scorseses
Goodfellas (1990)
18American Classics as Realist Film
- Deep focus a photographic and cinematographic
technique using a long depth of field, the
front-to-back area of a image. Much of the field
is in sharp and clear focus.Orson Welles Citizen
Kan (1941) and Stephen Spielberg, The Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
19American Classics as Realist Films
- Bonnie and Clyde (1967) directed by Arthur Penn
- One of the earliest New American Cinema
- Departure from the norms of Classical American
Film
20- Story-telling is still the most important
ingredient - Constant change of tone and style - from comic to
serious, and from serious to comic - Certain improbable elements
- Stylistic bravura and extravaganza
- Moral ambiguity glorification of crimes and
criminals - Emotional appeal is not
- universal
- Strong criticism from older
- generations
21Paradox of Classical American Film
- Art vs. Nature / Artificial vs. Natural
- PARADOX
- Art is needed to make a film look artless
(natural), or artificiality is necessary to make
a film seem natural. - If you can make a film look not artificial but
natural, then it is very likely that it looks
realistic.
22Reality and Truth Effects Created in Classical
American Film
- What narrative and stylistic techniques create in
Casablanca illusions of reality, and reality and
truth effects?