MARK JEVAN BAUTSITA
“Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.” ― Audrey Hepburn
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FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM AND SURREALISM (1918-1930)
bunuel_luis-un_chien_andalou_1
The shocking eye-slitting scene in Un Chien Andalou, a French Surrealist film
World War I has definitely brought a lot of changes in the entire globe and there are so many things to talk about when we think of this. It may have played a big role to people’s life during those times, but for me, gunfights and dead people are just the mere things playing above my head whenever I hear about it. It’s so satirical and surprising that aside from the negative things that are linked when we say hostilities, it served as an opportunity for the birth of great and positive things in the world of filmmaking – French Impressionism and Surrealism.
The war has seriously destroyed countless things in French film industry where people were called up, film export was stopped and several film studios were shifted to wartime uses. But amidst all of these, it didn’t stop the two major firms, Pathe and Leon Gaumount to continue routes in theaters. The emergent need of filling up screens in 1915 led American films to invade French movie houses including the works of Douglas Fairbanks, Chaplin and De Mille.
When the war has finally ended, the agony of French film industry didn’t still finish for most of their audiences are seeing eight times more Hollywood films rather than patronizing their own. And to evoke its loosing audience, film firms started supporting young French directors that include Abel Gance, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L’Herbier and Jean Epstien and there started the innovative changes in French filmmaking particularly the birth of French Impressionists Cinema.
French Impressionist Cinema, also referred to as the first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde, is a term applied to a group of French films and filmmakers in 1918-1929, including the young directors mentioned above. These young directors considered filmmaking not as a commercial craft but instead regarded cinema as an art comparable to poetry, painting, and music. Cinema should, they said, be purely itself and should not borrow from the theater or literature.
French Impressionist Cinema as an avant-garde, focused on pictorialism, montage and diffusion. Though it was an experiment, Impressionist films is incomparable among others for it was so vibrant about its aspirations of focusing in framing and visual effects rather than narrative storytelling that the Hollywood films have had. It gained the name Impressionist because of its interest in giving narration considerable psychological depth. Impressionist films also manipulate plot time and subjectivity that the use of flashbacks and fantasies were very frequent. Impressionism’s emphasis on personal emotion gives the films’ narratives an intensely psychological focus. Impressionist’s films were very distinctive too when it comes to cinematography and editing where point-of-view shot of the character to a shot to where she or he was looking at, was widely used to present characters’ perceptual experience and optical impressions and distorted shots were use as camera movements when presenting a drunk or dizzy character. The Impressionists also experimented with rhythmic relations between shots as a characteristic of editing patterns.
Though Impressionist films were so ‘impressive’ when it comes to its camerawork, mise-en-scene treatment, optical devices and editing patterns, most foreign audiences had not taken to Impressionism for its experimentation was standardized to elite tastes. Considering that the era of silent film was fading for sound films have arrived, filmmakers didn’t take risk on experiments like those of Impressionist films and so by 1929, these kinds of movies have finally died down.
In the very same age where Impressionism as a movement took its place in the French film industry, Surrealism as a film movement too, coexisted in the 1920s. While French Impressionist filmmakers worked within the mainstream commercial film industry, Surrealist filmmakers relied on their own means and screened their work in small artist’s gatherings for private patronage.
Surrealist cinema was directly linked to Surrealism in literature and painting according to its spokesperson Breton, who then believed that film could help one abstract himself from “real life” whenever he felt like it. Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become seriously associated with cinema by 1924-1929.
Furthermore, surrealist cinema is somewhat revolutionary for it is related to Dada cinema, rooted from grievances against World War I. Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Features of Surrealist cinema include the search for bizarre or evocative imagery, the deliberate avoidance of rationally explicable form or style and overtly anti-narrative, attacking causality itself.
Many Surrealist films tease us to find a narrative logic that is simply absent. If in Impressionist films would motivate events as a character’s dreams or hallucinations, surrealist films, on the contrary, character psychology is all but nonexistent. In these films, sexual desire and ecstasy, violence, blasphemy and bizarre humor furnish events are employed. The style of Surrealist cinema is diverse. Mise-en-scene is often influenced by Surrealist painting that is artistically done an unreal while surrealist editing is a combination of some Impressionist devices where there are dissolves and superimpositions and some devices of the leading cinema.
Though Surrealist cinema as a movement that has greatly changed not only the world of filmmaking but so with the art, by 1930, it was also modestly fading for it was considered as an equivalent of communism and most Surrealist filmmakers moved to Hollywood and other sponsors stopped supporting the avant-garde.
World War I may have been melancholic, but never had it blown in my mind that it would source for the institutions of movements towards better filmmaking in not only in France or Germany but around the globe. Even if Impressionism and Surrealism are considered dead, I would like to believe that like what they always say in fashion, that there’s no fashion style that gets outdated and so goes with filmmaking styles, like German Expressionism, French Impressionism and Surrealism, they never get outdated in today’s filmmaking, for they are still widely used in different film genres such as horror film and film noir.
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หมาย JEVAN BAUTSITAข้อ "ทุกสิ่งที่ฉันรู้ ฉันได้เรียนรู้จากภาพยนตร์" ออเดรย์เฮปเบิร์นเมนูข้ามไปที่เนื้อหามาตรฐานโพสต์โดยMARKJEVANBโพส23 สิงหาคม 2013ลงรายการบัญชีภายใต้ไม่มีหมวดหมู่ความคิดเห็นความคิดเห็นอิมเพรสชันนิซึมที่ฝรั่งเศสและลัทธิเหนือจริง (1918-1930)bunuel_luis-un_chien_andalou_1ฉากตัดตาที่ตะลึงใน Un เจียน Andalou ฟิล์ม Surrealist ฝรั่งเศสสงครามโลกได้แนะนำจำนวนมากของการเปลี่ยนแปลงในโลกทั้งหมด และมีหลายสิ่งที่พูดเมื่อเราคิดว่า นี้ มันอาจมีบทบาทใหญ่ชีวิตของผู้คนในช่วงเวลา แต่สำหรับฉัน gunfights และคนตายเป็นเพียงแค่สิ่งเล่นข้างบนหัวของฉันเมื่อฉันได้ยินเกี่ยวกับเรื่อง ดังนั้น satirical และน่าแปลกใจว่า นอกจากการลบสิ่งที่เมื่อเราบอกว่า การสู้รบ มันทำหน้าที่เป็นโอกาสในการเกิดมาก และบวกสิ่งในโลกเกิด – ฝรั่งเศสอิมเพรสชันนิซึมและลัทธิเหนือจริงได้สงครามได้ทำลายสิ่งนับไม่ถ้วนในอุตสาหกรรมภาพยนตร์ฝรั่งเศสที่คนเรียกว่าค่า หยุดส่งออกฟิล์ม และสตูดิโอภาพยนตร์หลายผลจากการใช้ความโหดร้ายอย่างจริงจัง แต่ท่ามกลางสิ่งเหล่านี้ มันไม่ได้หยุดสองบริษัทที่สำคัญ ๆ Pathe และ Leon Gaumount ต่อกระบวนการผลิตในโรงภาพยนตร์ จำเป็นต้องโผล่ออกมาเติมข้อมูลบนหน้าจอใน 1915 นำภาพยนตร์อเมริกันจะบุกบ้านภาพยนตร์ฝรั่งเศสที่รวมทั้งงานของดักลาสแฟร์แบงค์ แชปลิน และ De Milleเมื่อสิ้นสุดสงครามสุดท้าย ทุกข์ทรมานของอุตสาหกรรมภาพยนตร์ฝรั่งเศสไม่ยังจบสำหรับส่วนใหญ่ของผู้ชมจะเห็นแปดเท่าภาพยนตร์ฮอลลีวูดเพิ่มเติม แทนที่เป็น patronizing ของตนเอง และให้เรามอบให้ผู้ชมของ loosing บริษัทฟิล์มเริ่มสนับสนุนกรรมการฝรั่งเศสหนุ่ม Abel Gance, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L'Herbier และ Epstien ของจีน และมีเริ่มการเปลี่ยนแปลงใหม่ ๆ ในฝรั่งเศสเกิดโดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งการเกิดโรงภาพยนตร์ฝรั่งเศส Impressionistsดูภาพยนตร์ หรือเรียกว่า avant-garde แรกฝรั่งเศส หรือ avant-garde บรรยาย คำที่ใช้กับกลุ่มของภาพยนตร์ฝรั่งเศส และภาพยนตร์ใน 1918-1929 รวมทั้งกรรมการหนุ่มดังกล่าวข้างต้น กรรมการหนุ่มเหล่านี้ถือว่าช่างไม่เป็นงานฝีมือเชิงพาณิชย์ แต่แทน ถือว่าภาพยนตร์เป็นศิลปะเทียบได้กับบทกวี วาดภาพ และเพลง โรงภาพยนตร์ควร พวกเขากล่าวว่า มีเพียงอย่างเดียวตัวเอง และไม่ควรยืมจากโรงละครหรือวรรณกรรมFrench Impressionist Cinema as an avant-garde, focused on pictorialism, montage and diffusion. Though it was an experiment, Impressionist films is incomparable among others for it was so vibrant about its aspirations of focusing in framing and visual effects rather than narrative storytelling that the Hollywood films have had. It gained the name Impressionist because of its interest in giving narration considerable psychological depth. Impressionist films also manipulate plot time and subjectivity that the use of flashbacks and fantasies were very frequent. Impressionism’s emphasis on personal emotion gives the films’ narratives an intensely psychological focus. Impressionist’s films were very distinctive too when it comes to cinematography and editing where point-of-view shot of the character to a shot to where she or he was looking at, was widely used to present characters’ perceptual experience and optical impressions and distorted shots were use as camera movements when presenting a drunk or dizzy character. The Impressionists also experimented with rhythmic relations between shots as a characteristic of editing patterns.Though Impressionist films were so ‘impressive’ when it comes to its camerawork, mise-en-scene treatment, optical devices and editing patterns, most foreign audiences had not taken to Impressionism for its experimentation was standardized to elite tastes. Considering that the era of silent film was fading for sound films have arrived, filmmakers didn’t take risk on experiments like those of Impressionist films and so by 1929, these kinds of movies have finally died down.In the very same age where Impressionism as a movement took its place in the French film industry, Surrealism as a film movement too, coexisted in the 1920s. While French Impressionist filmmakers worked within the mainstream commercial film industry, Surrealist filmmakers relied on their own means and screened their work in small artist’s gatherings for private patronage. Surrealist cinema was directly linked to Surrealism in literature and painting according to its spokesperson Breton, who then believed that film could help one abstract himself from “real life” whenever he felt like it. Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become seriously associated with cinema by 1924-1929. Furthermore, surrealist cinema is somewhat revolutionary for it is related to Dada cinema, rooted from grievances against World War I. Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Features of Surrealist cinema include the search for bizarre or evocative imagery, the deliberate avoidance of rationally explicable form or style and overtly anti-narrative, attacking causality itself. Many Surrealist films tease us to find a narrative logic that is simply absent. If in Impressionist films would motivate events as a character’s dreams or hallucinations, surrealist films, on the contrary, character psychology is all but nonexistent. In these films, sexual desire and ecstasy, violence, blasphemy and bizarre humor furnish events are employed. The style of Surrealist cinema is diverse. Mise-en-scene is often influenced by Surrealist painting that is artistically done an unreal while surrealist editing is a combination of some Impressionist devices where there are dissolves and superimpositions and some devices of the leading cinema. Though Surrealist cinema as a movement that has greatly changed not only the world of filmmaking but so with the art, by 1930, it was also modestly fading for it was considered as an equivalent of communism and most Surrealist filmmakers moved to Hollywood and other sponsors stopped supporting the avant-garde. World War I may have been melancholic, but never had it blown in my mind that it would source for the institutions of movements towards better filmmaking in not only in France or Germany but around the globe. Even if Impressionism and Surrealism are considered dead, I would like to believe that like what they always say in fashion, that there’s no fashion style that gets outdated and so goes with filmmaking styles, like German Expressionism, French Impressionism and Surrealism, they never get outdated in today’s filmmaking, for they are still widely used in different film genres such as horror film and film noir.Share this:TwitterFacebookGoogleRelatedUn Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel (1929)With 1 commentGerman Expressionism (1919-1926)Le Mepris by Jean-Luc Godard (1963)Post navigation← German Expressionism (1919-1926)The Conjuring by James Wan (2013) – Movie Review →Leave a ReplyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Name * Email * Website Comment Notify me of new comments via email.SearchRECENT POSTSA GLIMPSE OF THE PAST (MOWELFUND TOUR)Le Mepris by Jean-Luc Godard (1963)Simply ExquisiteThe New Hollywood and Independent FilmmakingUn Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel (1929)August 2013M T W T F S S Sep » 1 2 3 45 6 7 8 9 10 1112 13 14 15 16 17 1819 20 21 22 23 24 2526 27 28 29 30 31 BLOGROLLPostprandial Musings by Jamal Ashley AbbasWedding Films by Jason MagbanuaARCHIVES
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