Transcript Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print A Film Watcher’s Vocabulary .
Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print
A Film Watcher’s Vocabulary
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Film Watcher’s Vocabulary
Film making/directing
Shot Close-up American (2-shot) Long shot Bird’s eye Pan Zoom Dolly/tracking shot Hand-held (steady cam) Framing Blocking Mise en scene Montage editing Key / back / fill lighting Non-diegetic Film styles & movements .
Montage Mise en scene Cinematic realism (cinema verite) Documentary Social realism Soviet Socialist Realism Neorealism Expressionism Film Noir Psychological surrealism Impressionism Surrealism Hyperrealism Postmodern
Shot Reverse Shot (SRS)
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Shot Reverse Shot (SRS)
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Film Theory
The aesthetics (style) of a film is a reflection of the director’s philosophy and the Zeitgeist.
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What is reality?
ZEITGEIST PHILOSOPHY FILM .
What is reality?
ZEITGEIST PHILOSOPHY FILM .
What is reality?
ZEITGEIST PHILOSOPHY FILM .
Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print
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What is the purpose of film?
How should film depict reality?
The American movie machine Soviet montage editing Soviet Socialist Realism Cinematic realism Bazin & Tarkovsky .
What is the purpose of film?
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Social conformity: Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda .
What is the purpose of film?
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Social conformity: Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda Social criticism: Italian Neorealism British Social Realism .
What is the purpose of film?
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Social conformity: Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda Social criticism: Italian Neorealism British Social Realism Art cinema: French New Wave, Bergman .
What is the purpose of film?
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Social conformity: Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda Social criticism: Italian Neorealism British Social Realism Art cinema: French New Wave, Bergman “Spiritual” enhancement: Tarkovsky, Kieslowski .
What is the purpose of film?
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Social conformity: Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda Social criticism: Italian Neorealism British Social Realism Art cinema: French New Wave, Bergman “Spiritual” enhancement: Tarkovsky, Kieslowski Entertain (Movies as products) Hollywood .
How can/should film depict reality?
Reality “as it is” Cinema verite Naturalism Social documentary Social realism .
How can/should film depict reality?
Reality “as it is” Cinema verite Naturalism Social documentary Social realism Reality as the objective correlative of emotional, psychological or spiritual phenomena Romanticism Mysticism Expressionism Surrealism Idealism .
Who controls cinema controls reality!
Reality “as it ought to be” Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda films Hollywood MTV Media .
Who controls cinema controls reality!
Reality “as it ought to be” Soviet Socialist Realism Nazi propaganda films German Heimat cinema .
Hollywood MTV Media
Your identity & aesthetics are shaped largely by Hollywood and the media !
All films and literature are propaganda! Deconstruct any work of literature, and you will find a logocentric idealogy: Nazi propaganda Anti-capitalism Feminism New Testament Christianity Secular humanism American hedonism & materialism .
The role of the auteur The great film auteurs of the 20th Century fought against two dominant forces which they believed threatened man’s humanity.
They viewed both forces as dehumanizing byproducts of modernity: 1. Government-regulated views of life 2. Hollywood (commercial materialism) .
Great traditions are reactions to status quo Nazi & Heimat: “Cinema du papa” Fascism Myth of the British Empire Soviet Socialist Realism New German Cinema French New Wave Italian Neorealism British Social Realism Czech New Wave
Kadar Forman
Lodz School
Kieslowski Polanski
Soviet Thaw
Tarkovsky Paradjanov
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Battle of World Views
HOLLYWOOD AL QAIDA
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The Power of Cinema
Construction of identity Social conformance of tastes & values “Engineering of the human soul” Distraction from”reality” Creation of simulated/hyperreality
(Baudrillard: Simulucra)
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The Power of Cinema
“The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.”
--Wim Wenders
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The Power of Cinema
“Americans have turned every cinema in the world into the equivalent of an American consulate.”
--UK government report
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The Hollywood Machine
Production Distribution Megaplexes Video sales Video rentals Cable and pay-per view Merchandise .
The Hollywood Machine
Titanic Harry Potter Star Wars Forest Gump Matrix Oceans 11 Meet the Parents $1.8 billion $1.0 billion 900 million 700 million 500 million 400 million 300 million .
The Hollywood Machine: World Box Office
Titanic Harry Potter Star Wars Spider Man Matrix Oceans 11 Meet the Fockers Wedding Crashers Secrets & Lies Run Lola Run Red No Man’s Land .
$1.8 billion $1.0 billion 900 million 800 million 500 million 400 million 400 million 205 million 20 million 7 million 4 million 4 million
The Hollywood Machine
AT Austria GR Greece BE Belgium IE Ireland DK Denmark IT Italy FR France LU Luxembourg FI Finland NL Netherlands DE Germany NO Norway SE Sweden PT Portugal CH Switzerland ES Spain CEE Central Europe & Turkey .
UK United Kingdom
The Hollywood Machine
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The Hollywood Machine
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US = 36,000
The Hollywood Aesthetic
The aesthetic of pretense Studio system (manufactured films) Star-centric Formula approach to narrative
Hero - Problem - Overcome Happy Ending Shot-reverse-shot
Camera followed the order of the text
Alternate characters speaking .
Impact of Hollywood
Worldwide dominance of the Hollywood machine: Production-distribution-TV
65-80% of films shown in Europe are US.
US: 37,000 screens UK: “Secrets & Lies” -- 20 screens
Transnational productions
Emigration of directors and actors
Commercial producers copy Hollywood
Few auteurs took aesthetic stance against Hollywood mis en scene
Death of national cinemas/identity?
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Reactions to Hollywood
“The average Western film requires nothing from the viewer. Its narrative sets up a series of questions in order to preserve an air of suspense...“Will Lassie bring the insulin to the diabetic hunter with the broken leg before he dies?” Then it logically answers each question ...Thus the typical Western film gives us what we want by telling us what we already know.”
--Stuart Hancock
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Reactions to Hollywood
“Many worthless films are created which imitate American models.”
--Krystrof Zanussi
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Reactions to Hollywood
“But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, ‘I don’t like it!’ ‘It’s boring!’ It is not a point that one can argue; but it is like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.”
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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The Soviet Filmmaking Machine
1896: First theatres in Russia 1919: First nationalized cinema in world 1922: Goskino established 1925: Sovkino (competed with Hollywood) 1924-30: Golden Age (Eisenstein/Kuleshov) 1934: First Congress of Soviet Writers Stalin: Soviet Socialist Realism Soviet studio system: Mosfilm Lenfilm 1963: Goskino (State Cinema Committee) 1991: Privatization .
The Soviet Filmmaking Machine
“Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important.” --Lenin .
Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
SOCIAL-HISTORIC MILEU:
Post-revolutionary Russia (Bolshevik)
1919: Lenin nationalized film industry
Politically controlled films:
Uprising For the Red Banner
War to the Palace On the Red Front Sickle and Hammer
Raise the morale of the Red Army .
Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-1980s)
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Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-1980s)
1922: Goskino (Mosfilm)
Celebrate the worker and soldier
Style dictated by Communist party
One-dimensional view of social reality
“Engineering of the human soul”
Film / art as a social manipulator of personal identity .
Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-1980s)
Prohibited experimentation with “modernist” arts (formalism, cubism, constructivism)
Protect people from decadence of Modernism , which was described as “absorbed in pessimism, doubt in the morrow, eulogy of darkness” .
Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-1980s)
Social doctrine governing all of art
1934: First Congress of Soviet Writers
Art had to be “intelligible to the millions”
“Revolutionary romanticism”
Reality as it “ought” to be
Glorified social ideals of communism
Looked forward to a future communist utopia .
Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-1980s)
THE LITERARY GAZETTE, 1932
"The masses demand of an artist honesty, truthfulness, and a revolutionary, socialist realism in the representation of the proletarian revolution."
In 1933, Gorki published an important article, "On Socialist Realism," talking of "a new direction essential to us - socialist realism, which can be created only from the data of socialist experience." .
Soviet Socialist Realism
(1934-to today!)
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Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
LEV KULESHOV
(1899-1970)
1924: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West
in the Land of the Bolsheviks
From “filmed plays” to an “assemblage of images”
Kuleshov effect: montage editing
Meaning of a particular shot determined by its relation to adjacent shots
Viewer sees A then B, thinks C .
Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
LEV KULESHOV
(1899-1970)
Experiment: shots of woman in coffin, bowl of soup, and a child —inserted between same shot of a man
Audience will bring their experiences to a film to try to make sense out of apparently unrelated images
Audience does not visualize “C” in his/ her mind —assumes that the actor is actually conveying that emotion .
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Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
SERGEI EISENSTEIN
(1899-1970)
Viewed montage as the basis of cinema
Juxtaposition of contrasting elements
Constructivist emphasis upon mechanistic assemblage
Montage of attractions
“Objects in collision, producing an explosion that would arouse the viewer”
Pavlovian theory: Controlled orchestration to mold and manipulate the audience .
Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
EISENSTEIN FILM THEORY
Rooted in Marxist concept of dialectic materialism--point and counterpoint
Cognitive model of artistic creation
Dominant organizing principle
Four major types of montage
Metric Rhythmic Different shot lengths Different pace
Tonal Intellectual Atmosphere Symbolic meaning .
Soviet Montage Cinema
(1910s-20s)
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Two Approaches to Editing
MONTAGE Eisenstein Hollywood CINEMATIC REALISM Bazin Mise en scene, long takes Tarkovsky .
Two Approaches to Editing
MONTAGE
One interpretation (no ambiguity)
Editor (director) manipulates meaning
Not “realistic”
Focus on image (soft background) .
Two Approaches to Editing
MONTAGE
One interpretation (no ambiguity)
Editor (director) manipulates meaning
Not “realistic”
Focus on image (soft background) .
Two Approaches to Editing
MONTAGE
One interpretation (no ambiguity)
Editor (director) manipulates meaning
Not “realistic”
Focus on image (soft background) .
Film Theory
Montage manipulates:
1. Ideological (e.g., Marxist) 2. Emotional/visceral reaction (e.g., Hollywood) .
Two Approaches to Editing
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CINEMATIC REALISM (Mise en scene)
Long takes
Capture “reality” as it is
Deep focus, depth of field
Less directorial control of what the viewer should focus upon
Ambiguity
More “real”
Two Approaches to Editing
CINEMATIC REALISM
Emphasis on the power of the pure image
Mise en scene, not montage
Viewer must think about what he /she is seeing
Required to look deep into the image
Experiential .
Two Approaches to Editing
CINEMATIC REALISM
More metaphorical
Often more romantic, spiritual, and philosophical subjects
“Experience the rain, be one with the mud” .
Power of Metaphor
T. S. Eliot
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OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (1919) “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked."
Power of Metaphor
Robert Frost
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EDUCATION BY POETRY “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking."
Power of Metaphor
Freiderich Nietzche
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WHAT IS TRUTH?
“ What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors..." All philosophies rest on the shifting texture of figurative language.
Power of Metaphor
Milan Kundera
“Metaphor is a means of grasping, through instantaneous revelation, the ungraspable essence of things.”
Film Theory
Cinematic realism:
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Emphasis on “metaphorical” image 2. Audience must think and participate 3. Spiritual/philosophical experience rather than ideological manipulation .
Film Theory
Style reflects philosophy and worldview (Weltanschauung ).
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Marxist
Social realists .
Idealist/ Romanticist
Idealist Romanticist Mystic Transcendentalist .
Phenomenologist Noumenalist Magical realist Realist (Bazin)
Psychoanalytical (Expressionism)
Freud Lacan .
Postmodern
Poststructural Postcolonial Feminist / queer .
Siefried Kracauer
(1889-1966)
CINEMATIC REALISM Critic of “modernity” (Frankfurt School) Human condition characterized by alienation Mass culture/society manipulates individuals Materialistic values have replaced religion, metaphysical, romantic convictions, resulting in disenchantment People live distracted lives Film as a “redemptive” experience that can show man damaged condition of modernity and help him transcend materialism .
Siefried Kracauer
(1889-1966)
CINEMATIC REALISM Foreshadowed and predicted dehumanizing power of mass media “Mass ornaments”--film, military parades and sporting events “Real” world of the individual desubstantiated by spectacle and empty rituals Film must “reengage” individual with nature and the Kantian real world .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
CINEMATIC REALISM Shared Kracauer’s view of modernity Also saw film as redemptive Kracauer: German classical philosophy Bazin: Catholicism, Bergson, Sartre, French Phenomenological influence Bergson: Flux and flow of existence Modern life and ideologies obscure the “base of life” .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
Bergson’s concept of “creative evolution” Evolution of the “vital spirit” in man Close experiential scrutiny reveals deep structures/meanings behind phenomena Under scrutiny of inquiry [artistic analysis] these deep structures are brought into the light Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
“Divining the real” Mystical Metaphysical Creative evolution Spiritual renewal Social reform Metaphysical .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
Christian view of man as fallen Seeking redemption and atonement The role of cinema is to help man in his search for truth and understanding in an ambiguous and uncertain world Man can transcend alienation and modernity Film can be a religious experience “Love” and “state of grace” .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
Film image “embalms” time & wrenches phenomena from the flux of life Symbolic power of cinematic imagery combined with empirical density of cinematic realism The spirit behind the “real” object The “long hard gaze” Disliked over-expressive, over-ornamental, or overuse of montage
(More like Tarkovsky than Eisenstein) .
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see.
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Michelangelo Antonioni
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Andre Bazin
(1918-1958)
Liked films that focused on everyday psychological experience
Italian Neorealism (The Bicycle
Thief)
Disliked modernist, expressionistic Disliked films that imposed a political ideology on the viewer Long takes, of surrounding environment Impact of environment on people (French determinism) .
Film Theory
Andre Bazin
(1918-1958) CINEMATIC REALISM
Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence
Close observation of natural phenomena reveal planetary consciousness
The spirit behind the “real” object
Long takes (long hard gaze)
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“ In Blue Kieslowski is attempting to render complex and difficult emotional states and situations from within the confines of the cinematic language he has at his disposal. Indeed, I would certainly contend that he stretches that language as far as possible so as to open the ground of new cinematic vistas (the sugar cube receding in the coffee, the mysterious flautist). “ .
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“There are details in Blue that seem to convey a proximity to hell, despair, dread and damnation. What Kieslowski is trying to do is to find a cinematic language that can express Julie’s dilemmas (in much the same way that Shakespeare, for example, stretched the written and spoken word to express the dilemmas and passions of his characters).”
Richard Rushton,
Reading Three Colours: Blue
, Senses of Cinema
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“Sculpting in time.” “The image incarnate.” “Cinema as a religious experience.” .
Andrei Tarkovsky
“ I find…the logic of poetry in cinema extraordinarily pleasing. “ “ Poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Pages 18, 20).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ Thought is brief. The image is absolute.” “Art acts above all on the soul, shaping its spiritual structure.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 41).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ You can play a scene with documentary precision, dress the characters correctly to the point of naturalism, have all the details exactly like real life, and the picture that emerges…will seem utterly artificial.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 21).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ The artist expresses these things by creating the image…Through the image is sustained and awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 37).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ It is crucial that mise en scene …follow life —the personalities of the characters and their psychological state.” “ The texture of the scenery and landscapes must fill me with definite memories and poetic associations.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Pages 25, 28).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake.
But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 38).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ Modern mass culture, aimed at the ‘consumer’…is crippling people’s souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 42).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ …’artists’ cynically avail themselves of the spare time of honest people, of toilers, taking advantage of their gullibility and ignorance, of their lack of aesthetic education, in order to destroy their spiritual defenses and make money out of doing so.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 42).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plow and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 43).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 50).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ Time cannot vanish without trace, for it is a subjective, spiritual category; and the time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 58).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ [In Japanese art] time helps to make known the essence of things.” “ What attracts me in haiku is its observation of life.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 66).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ I reject…montage cinema because [it does]…not allow the audience to bring personal experience to bear on what is in front of them on film. Montage cinema presents the audience with puzzles and riddles, makes them decipher symbols …appealing all the time to the intellectual experience. [Montage cinema] proceeds to make a total onslaught on the audience, imposing upon them his own attitude to what is happening.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 118).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ But the conditions of these [European] democracies underline the problem of man’s spiritual vacuum and loneliness.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 181).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ [Andrei Rublev] was to show how the national yearning for brotherhood at a time of vicious fighting between brothers, gave birth to Rublev’s inspired ‘Trinity’—epitomizing the ideal of brotherhood, love and quiet sanctity.” “ The separate episodes …develop through the inner conflict inherent in the poetic logic.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Pages 34-35).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ Rublev looked at the world with unprotected, childlike eyes, and preached love, goodness and non-resistance to evil. And though he found himself witnessing the most brutal and devastating forms of violence, which…led him to bitter disillusionment, he came back in the end to that same truth, rediscovered for himself, about the value of human goodness, of openhearted love which does not count the costs, the one real gift which people can give each other.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Pages 208).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ I am interested above all in the character who is capable of sacrificing himself…[who is able to rise above] all of those selfish interests that make up a normal rationale for action.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 217).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ And the more clearly I discerned the stamp of materialism on the face of our planet…[I] came up against unhappy people, saw the victims of psychoses symptomatic of an inability or unwillingness to see why life has lost all delight and all value…”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 218).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ …the individual today stands at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 218).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ I posit that modern man… is not prepared to deny himself and his interests for the sake of other people…But the results of our way of life…are plain enough: the erosion of individuality by overt egotism; the degeneration of human bonds into meaningless relationships between groups…When we feel…anxiety…we promptly turn to…the psychiatrist…or sexologist.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 219).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ [Governments] sought to possess the consciousness of the masses…bidding them [to] reform the organisational structure of life for the sake and happiness of the majority…this process comes to be mistaken for the basic, subjective reality of people’s lives.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 231, 232).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“ The West is forever shouting, “This is me! Look at me! Listen to me suffering, loving! How unhappy I am! How happy. Mine! Me!
In the Eastern tradition they never utter a word about themselves. The person is totally absorbed into God, Nature, Time: finding himself in everything; discovering everything in himself.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 200).
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Andrei Tarkovsky
“My own future is a cup that will not pass by me —consequently it must be drunk.”
Sculpting in Time.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987
( Page 192).
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The Sacred Image
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The Sacred Image
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The Sacred Image
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The Sacred Image
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The Sacred Image
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