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Classical American Film Texts

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Title: Classical American Film Texts


1
Classical American Film Texts
  • Hollywood Films
  • between 1917 and 1960

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

3
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

4
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)

5
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.

7
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.

8
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

9
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

10
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)

11
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

12
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.

13
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.

14
American Classics as Realist Films
  • F) it possesses a fundamental emotional appeal
    which transcends class and nature.
  • PROBABLE, CREDIBLE, NATURAL AND REAL

15
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.

16
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

17
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)

18
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)

19
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

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

21
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.

22
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?
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