Classical American Film Texts

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Classical American Film Texts

• Hollywood Films
• between 1917 and 1960

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Table of Contents

1. Film as Illusion
2. Classical American Film as Realist Film
3. The Paradox of Classical American Film

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Film 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

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Film 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)

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Film as Illusion

• Woody Allens Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
• Extreme exposition that film could work as
  illusion

6
Film 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.

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Film 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.

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American 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

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American 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

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Classical 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)

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American 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

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American 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.

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Classical 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.

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American Classics as Realist Films

• F) it possesses a fundamental emotional appeal
  which transcends class and nature.
• PROBABLE, CREDIBLE, NATURAL AND REAL

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American 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.

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American 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

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American 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)

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American 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)

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American 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

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• 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

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Paradox 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.

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Reality and Truth Effects Created in Classical
American Film

• What narrative and stylistic techniques create in
  Casablanca illusions of reality, and reality and
  truth effects?