Intro to Film Studies

Film based on illusion of continuous motion (because:
‘actually’ a series of still photographs), dependent on
interaction of 2 optical phenomena

▪ persistence of vision

▪ phi phenomenon minimum 12 to 16 frames per second

Persistence of vision

Phenomenon that brain retains image cast on retina for 1/20

to 1/5 of a second beyond removal of that image from field

of vision (prevents us from seeing dark spaces between

flickers of light)

Phi phenomenon

Phenomenon that causes seeing spinning blades of a fan as

a unitary circular form, or different hues of a spinning color

wheel as a single, homogeneous color

silent film standard? sound era standard?

16 frames per second, 24 frames per second

Birth of cinema?

1890s, moment usually singled out as ‘birth’: first public (paid) Lumière screening, on 28 December 1895, in Grand Café in Paris, but, birth of cinema problematic notion: didn’t arise out of nothing => importance of pre-cinema

By 1890s, insights and inventions in place for cinema to emerge => did not happen at 1 moment, in 1 place

Different countries, different cinematic inventors:

- United States: Edison & Dickson

- 1893: studio ‘the Black Maria’

- Amy Muller dancing (1896): see clip

- Germany: Skladanowksy brothers

- first projection screening on 1 Nov 1895, including Ringkämpfer 

- France: Lumière brothers

- early Lumière films

 

- England: R.W. Paul & Birt Acres

- Acres: Rough Sea at Dover (1896) 

Phenakistoscope

Plateau / Stampfer (1832), plus many similar optical toys – e.g. Zoetrope – based on optical phenomena discussed

View from the Window at Le Gras

Nièpce (1826), ‘first’ still photograph of reality: exposure time 8 hours

Boulevard du Temple

Daguerre (1838), ‘first’ photograph of human beings: exposure 10 minutes, split-second exposure time only possible in 1878

The Horse in Motion

Muybridge, 12 cameras: first recording live action continuously

Flying Pelican

Marey (1882), Chronophotographic gun, first continuous live action recording in single camera

Praxinoscope

Reynaud (1889), first public projection of moving images [magic lantern = no movement]; but hand-painted frames, not photographs

5 insights and inventions necessary for cinema

1. realization that “human eye will perceive motion if a series of slightly different images is placed before it in rapid succession” (1830s, optical toys)

2. “capacity to project a rapid series of images” (1889, Reynaud)

3. “use photography to make successive pictures”; exposure time: “sixteen or more frames in a single second” (1878: see Muybridge, later Marey)

4. to be able to photograph “on a base clear enough to be passed through a camera rapidly” (1889, Eastman: Kodak celluloid film)

5. '“intermittent mechanism for [...] cameras and projectors”: to slide into place, stop and remove film (other inventions of 19th century had needed similar mechanism: e.g. sewing machine)

Early Cinema

By 1897, invention of cinema largely completed:

▪ two means of exhibition: individual peepshows and projections for audiences

screenings: no specific film theatres yet, instead part of larger program, e.g. vaudeville; musical accompaniment, showman to announce/comment; exhibitor created program; mixed audiences (gender, age, class)

=> film as another attraction

▪ single shot films (1 position, often continuous take; after 1899 multiple shots)

Georges Méliès

A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Continuity editing

▪ 3 basic techniques of continuity editing:

- intercutting

- analytical editing

- contiguity editing

intercutting

▪ back and forth between locations, likely with narrative

framework of comparing what happens in both

sequences

=> also known as: “parallel editing” and “crosscutting”

analytical editing

▪ breaking down single space into separate framings, to

convey important narrative information

=> e.g. ‘cut-in’ (enlarging expression or object); specific

form = ‘inserts’: e.g. letter from character’s p.o.v

contiguity editing

▪ linking spaces across edits through a unified action

(movement/gaze in consistent direction shows spaces to

be contiguous – i.e. ‘next to each other’, linked)

=> eventually codified as the “180-degree system/rule”:

camera should stay in semicircle on one side of action

- point-of-view shot

- eyeline match

- shot-reverse-shot (double eyeline match)

Edwin S. Porter

worked for Edison Company, The Great Train Robbery (1903)

“A film like The Great Train Robbery (1903) does point in both directions [w.r.t. cinema of attractions]” (387). Which directions?

- “towards a direct assault on the spectator” – how?

 “the spectacularly enlarged outlaw unloading his

pistol in our faces” (387)

- “and towards a linear narrative continuity” (387)

Tom Gunning, cinema of attractions

 Gunning mentions several aspects of its ‘attraction-like’ character (382-384):

- cinema based on “its ability to show something”

 holds for both actualities and ‘magic’ of e.g. Méliès

- exhibitionist cinema (voyeuristic narrative cinema)

 ‘look at the camera’ (no self-enclosed illusion of reality)

- cinema itself an attraction: medium, not specific films, advertised as new technological wonder

French Impressionism: History

French film production declined during WWI and remained in crisis through 1920s – factors:

▪ competition from imports

▪ disunity industry: focus on distribution/exhibition

▪ outdated (pre-war) technical facilities (lighting)

Major genres: serials, historical epics (on location), fantasy films (Méliès tradition), comedies (Linder)

French Impressionism: Movement

▪ French Impressionism: 1918-1929

▪ aided by crises:

- call for distinctly ‘French’ cinema (to compete); companies willing to experiment; various ways financing

▪ first movement exploring cinema as an art (!)

French Impressionism in film: 1918-1929

▪ some aspects of Impressionist film prompted allusions to, but ultimately should be clearly distinguished from:

 eponymous movement in painting, some 50 years earlier...

▪ Impressionist paintings try to capture fleeting moment, conveying impermanence of reality

▪ Sketch-like quality expresses transitory, contingent nature of reality (incidental, passing aspects, instead of universal, timeless qualities in classical art)

 often focus on city scenes (urban, industrial)

▪ decline: filmmakers own way; techniques became more ‘mainstream’; less independence, esp. after introduction of sound (costly production)

French Impressionism: Menilmontant

Dimitri Kirsanoff (1899-1957)

• second film: Ménilmontant, shot in winter 1924-25

• After murder of parents, two sisters move from village to Paris, work at flower market; youngest (Sibirskaia) falls in love with young man (Guy Belmore) who abandons her for

  her sister (Yolande Beaulieu); with baby and starving, S’s character comes close to suicide; then, reunited with sister (who has turned to prostitution); young man killed by woman and male accomplice

Two key notions in Impressionist film theory

▪ 1. photogénie

- when object filmed attains new, expressive quality (absent in original object): transformed on screen

- Kirsanoff: “Each thing existing in the world knows another existence on the screen” (91)

- framing, black and white, optical effects

▪ 2. visual rhythm

- arises from (juxtaposition of) movement within/ between and length of shots

“spatial” (image: photogénie) and “temporal” (rhythm) “relationships” (91), accomplished through camerawork and editing => some films focused only on this (“cinéma pur”; 90); but most films use within their narrative

To what purpose? What are photogénie and rhythm supposed to convey?

▪ character subjectivity (91, 97):

- suggest mental states, characters’ perceptions

- “emotions, rather than stories,” should be basis for film (emphasize characters’ reactions to story action rather than action itself)

=> to create experience, evoking fleeting “impressions”, leading to emotions in spectator

Formal Traits of Impressionist Films

▪ camera: optical devices (masks, superimpositions, filters), POV-shots, out-of-focus, slow motion, multiple images in one frame, moving camera

▪ editing: fast cutting

▪ mise-en-scène: lighting, striking decor/real location

▪ narrative: conventional; extremely emotion-laden plots that trigger ‘subjective’ portrayal

German Expressionism: History

Aftermath of World War I (1914-1918)

▪ horror and trauma of war experience

▪ Treaty of Versailles: ‘war guilt’, reparations, humiliation

 reparations: debt and (hyper)inflation

▪ monarchy abolished => republic (often called Weimar Republic, until 1933)

gradual political shift from Left Wing governance in 1919, to Right Wing governance, to Fascism (Hitler elected in 1933)

1920s: German cinema second only to Hollywood in technical sophistication and world influence

• movie-going and escapism

Expansion German film industry:

• 1916: ban on foreign imports; lifted on 1 Jan 1921

• isolation also impacts cinematic style/technique

• eventually, decreasing anti-German sentiment leads to greater intern. interest in German films

• 1919: censorship abolished

Comparison of post-war film industries: France

• Severe production disruptions

• Flood of imported films eclipsing local film production industry

• Embrace of historically “national” aesthetic tradition (Impressionism)

• Private industries funding artistic films

Comparison of post-war film industries: Germany

• Production studios intact but left with antiquated equipment from trade embargo > renew in 20s

• Trade blockage boosted demand for locally produced films

• Embrace of current artistic trend (Expressionism)

• State funding for local film industry

German Expressionism: Movement

▪ first Expressionist movement: ‘Die Brücke’ (The Bridge; ‘bridging the old age and the new) – founded in 1905, by i.a. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

- evoking the destructive effects of industrialization: urban alienation, mechanized & impersonal society

- founded in Dresden, group of artists moved to Berlin; city aggravated this anxiety

Expressionism: harsh images, raw brushstrokes, ‘unnatural’ (distorted) contrasting colours, distorted forms

 images express chaos/disorientation of bustling urban activity, instead of showing it in more panoramic/calm way of Impressionism

“Like other modernist movements, German Expressionism was one of several trends around the turn of the century that reacted against realism. Its practitioners favored extreme distortion to express an inner emotional reality, rather than surface appearances”

“avoided the subtle shadings and colors that gave realistic paintings their sense of volume and depth”

 instead: distortion (large shapes of unrealistic colors, dark cartoon-like outlines, grotesque facial expressions, buildings/space defying traditional perspective)

Such setting and acting adopted in Expressionist cinema

cf. Caligari: “stylized sets, with strange, distorted buildings”; “no attempt at realistic performance” (103)

“[In Expressionist films] the expressivity associated with the human figure extends into every aspect of

the mise-en-scene”

- actor becomes part of set (visual element); set dictates action

▪ set as ‘living’, expressive component

▪ actor performance/body visual element therein

Note:

“In practice, this blend of set, figure behavior, costumes, and lighting fuses into a perfect composition only at intervals. [...] The plot must advance, and the composition breaks up as the actors move. In Expressionist films the action proceeds in fits and starts, and the narrative pauses or slows briefly for moments when the mise-en-scene elements align into eye-catching compositions” (91)

Major traits of Expressionist films

▪ Stress on composition (Mise-en-Scène)

• exaggeration and repetition

• distorted spaces / objects

• ‘un-natural’ acting

• symmetry/juxtaposition of similar shapes

▪ Editing and Camerawork:

• simple editing, slower pace (time to scan composition)

• notable: close-ups to exhibit exaggeration in acting

▪ Narrative:

• focus: ‘fantastic’ – past, exotic, horror; often frame tales >

German Expressionism: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

What is Caligari’s narrative structure?

▪ main story: Holstenwall, Caligari and sleepwalker Cesare, murders and abduction, exposed by Francis

▪ frame story: Francis starts telling, upon seeing ‘Jane’ in garden; after capture Caligari, returns to this frame: enter asylum => Francis turns out to be patient

▪ (story within main story: Caligari’s diary)

Expressionism: certain types of stories – fantastic, horror

 also motivation for distorted sets and acting

 in Caligari: this serves portrayal of madness

Caligari as portrayal of madness

Impressionism vs Expressionism

▪ Thompson & Bordwell: this aspect of Caligari might make it seem as if Expressionism is mainly about conveying character subjectivity (like Impressionism)

 incorrect (108-9)

What is difference?

- Impressionism: character subjectivity through camerawork

- Expressionism: setting/acting express ‘moods’

 moods not just expression of individual (cf. Impressionism) but of societal situation: interior (character) and exterior (set) are expressive of each other

▪ Lotte Eisner (The Haunted Screen, 1952/1969):

Expressionism as “an extreme form of subjectivism”

“The expressionist does not see, he has ‘visions’”

▪ Anton Kaes (Shell Shock Cinema, 2009):

“[Weimar cinema] found ways to re-stage the shock of war and defeat without ever showing military combat. They were post-traumatic films, re-enacting the trauma in their very narratives and images”

Soviet Montage: History

October 1917: Bolshevik Revolution (civil war until 1920)

Three periods for Soviet film industry after revolution:

▪ 1918-1920: War Communism

 film industry nationalized in 1919

▪ production, distribution, exhibition disorganized

- lack of equipment, film stock

- 1918: 6 films; 1919: 63 – newsreels, propaganda shorts

- many areas lacked movie theatres: agit-vehicles

▪ 1919: State Film School established

 incl. Lev Kuleshov:

• Kuleshov Experiments/Effect

▪ 1921-1924: New Economic Policy

partial return to private enterprise encourages recovery industry

▪ Two statements on cinema by Lenin:

(1) ‘Lenin proportion’ (film should balance entertainment

and education);

(2) “Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most impor-

tant” (according to Lunacharsky) => tool propaganda

▪ 1922: Treaty of Rapallo => trade with Germany: equipm-

ent and films (1923: 99% films USSR foreign > recovery

▪ 1925-1932: Increased state control

industrial growth

Montage movement: experimental films

▪ expansion of access to films throughout USSR

▪ paid through profits:

- on foreign films (but ideologically harmful);

- on domestic production (more desirable)

strong incentive to export (support to Montage movement, because films successful abroad)

▪ Montage films also successful critically, for depictions of oppression and rebellion

success also led to criticism (!) (pp. 119-125)

Constructivism

▪ art has social function (promoting right society), not contemplation or ‘higher truth’

▪ artist skilled engineer (using tools), not visionary

▪ artwork is machine, put together from parts (montage)

 calculable to elicit certain reaction in viewer!

▪ biomechanical acting: machine-like, physical quality

Eisenstein’s two successive conceptualizations of how art/film should work?

▪ 1. montage of attractions (developed w/r/t theater)

 series of exciting moments to stimulate viewer (113)

- engage audience emotions for intellectual effect

- grasp ideas that escape attention in conventional form

- defamiliarize, to see anew => ideological conclusion

‘Montage of attractions’ ideas developed further as:

▪ 2. dialectical montage/film form (“collision montage”)

(cf. “Dramaturgy of /The Dialectical Approach to Film Form” [1929])

 convey ideas via juxtaposition within/between images:

- cf. Marxist concept of dialectic – can you explain?

- dialectic is schema of argument/development in which first position (thesis) gives rise to antithesis, and clash is resolved in synthesis – ?

- synthesis, most importantly: audience grasping ideas

(cf. “projection of dialectical system of objects into brain” [161])

- article: “conflict” essential principle of art, because of:

(1) social mission (reveal contradictions);

(2) its ‘nature’ (nature vs creativity/industry; organic vs

rational form);

(3) methodology (shot/montage basic elements film)

Why should we not take this to mean that shot is like a“building block”? (also see next slide)

- “montage is not an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another” [cf. dialectic] (163)

shots not to be used to add bits of information (building meaning together), but in juxtaposition generate new understanding that’s not in either image

Note: while editing most important element of dialectical montage, not limited to it; also within shots (!)

Soviet Montage: Movement

▪ Editing [most important trait Soviet Montage]:

 cf. dialectical montage: specific editing strategies to create

tensions – temporally, spatially, graphically

Editing strategies with regard to temporal relations?

- overlapping editing: repeat part action previous shot

 example in Potemkin: Plate-smashing (14:12-14:25)

- elliptical editing: leaving out part of event (e.g. jump cut: same framing in two shots, but m-e-s changed) (e.g. 50:01-50:06)

rapid, rhythmic editing: not subjective but evoke action

Editing strategies with regard to spatial relations?

- often no clear guidance: viewer must piece together space

(cf. Kuleshov effect); even contradictory (plate)

- intercutting for unusual spatial relationships: to make metaphorical point (attack on workers = slaughter)

- in this clip: non-diegetic insert – “diegesis refers to the space and time of the film’s story: a nondiegetic element exists outside the story world “ (117)

“intellectual Montage”; cf. example in Potemkin?

Editing strategies with regard to graphic relations?

- to juxtapose images, creating graphic contrast (reversing orientation, direction composition between shots)

 Examples in Potemkin?

- see Odessa steps sequence (48:14-55:04)

End of Soviet Montage movement

▪ Increasing criticism towards end of 1920s

accused of formalism: montage more interested in style than in advancing the Soviet ideology (more for ‘sophisticated foreigners’ than for peasants at home)

▪ success Montage films made it financially possible to focus on domestic audiences (1928: first Five-Year-Plan) => this fed into above critique

▪ Montage filmmakers: more accessible films

▪ 1934: Socialist Realism became state doctrine of art

Soviet Montage: Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein

▪ 1898 (Riga, Latvia) – 1948

▪ trained as engineer

▪ participated in revolution

▪ 1920: Proletkult Theater (set design, directing)

▪ 1923: directs Glumov’s Diary, 5 min short (unreleased)

▪ 1924: move to film, after ‘failed’ play Gas Masks

▪ 1925: Strike, first film of Montage movement (made in

1924), followed same year by Battleship Potemkin

▪ Genre:

- mostly historical, revolutionary movements

▪ Narrative:

How does narrative of Soviet Montage (e.g. Potemkin) differ from other film (H’wood, Imp. or Exp.) at time?

- downplay individual characters as causal agents; instead social forces => cf. ‘typage’ (=mise-en-scène):

physical appearance as social type (profession, class) – examples in Potemkin?

- therefore: audience engagement not from acting > editing

▪ Cinematography:

- aimed at maximizing editing juxtapositions (low and

canted angles; avoid conventional framing)

▪ Mise-en-scène:

- tends toward realism (because of historical/social subject

matter); but also used for possible contrasts;

- costumes to signal class position

- contrasting lines, etc. (screen/scene space) > movement

- lighting: often no fill (dark background, stark on character)

- ‘typage’: non-actors based on ‘typical’ physical appearance; at

same time: ‘eccentric’ and ‘biomechanic’ acting

Dziga Vertov

▪ 1896-1954

▪ real name: Denis Arkadievich Kaufman

▪ assumed pseudonym Dziga Vertov; both words refer to turning, revolving (perpetual motion)

▪ 1918: editor of Soviet newsreel (Kino-Nedelia)

▪ task of Soviet films: document socialist reality

▪ brothers Mikhail and Boris Kaufman both cameramen:

Mikhail on Man with a Movie Camera (it’s him we see in film – and on most supposed pictures of Vertov...)

Essays in Reader: ‘WE: Variant of a Manifesto’ (1922) / ‘The

Council of Three’ (1923)

What does Vertov oppose?

▪ critical of fiction film: “psychological drama”, “adventure film” (thanks for the rapid shot changes and close-ups”, but:) – a “cliché. A copy of a copy” (5-7)

▪ elsewhere comp. to religion, “opium for the people”

Why? What’s wrong with the “psychological”, inherited from the old arts?

▪ “‘psychological’ prevents man from being as precise as a stopwatch; it interferes with his desire for kinship with the machine” (7)

 What is this desire for kinship, according to Vertov?

▪ perfecting “kino-eye” (camera-eye), thereby improving human eye’s normal exploration of the world (14-16)

▪ kino-eye: camera produces true reality (vs. weakness of human eye, unable to handle chaos of events)

What role does editing play here?

▪ “kino-eye” takes what camera captures and edits it into a persuasive whole

▪ Note: different concept of montage than Eisenstein’s: building ‘true’ reality out of different material (reality mechanical, shown to cohere) – Example in text?

“the coffins of national heroes are lowered into the grave (shot in Astrakhan in 1918); the grave is filled in (Kronstadt, 1921); cannon salute (Petrograd, 1920); memorial service, hats are removed (Moscow, 1922) – such things go together, even with thankless footage not specifically shot for this purpose” (17)

 elsewhere: “life caught unawares”, “passionless representation” => documentary vs. fiction ( Eisenstein)

Included Vertov to show wide range of Soviet Montage movement – that Soviet Montage does not equal

Eisenstein’s “dialectical montage”

Soviet Montage: Man with a Movie Camera

▪ released in 1929

▪ Vertov’s most famous film – what is it (‘about’)?

▪ portrait of a typical day in Moscow – or, generally a Soviet,

industrial city (lot of shots filmed elsewhere)

▪ fits with early documentary genre popular in 1920s: the

city symphony (e.g. Berlin: Sinfonie der Grossstadt [1927])

– cf. link cinema and industrial urbanization

▪ but above all: a film about cinema itself (process of making

film shown throughout)

▪ rhythmic and graphic relations emphasized

e.g. ‘rhythm’ machines; ‘graphic’ blendings of humans and machines

▪ but also interesting temporal and spatial relations:

 ‘average day’ (temporal) in the ‘city’ (space) created

▪ ‘discontinuity’: no traditional story => ‘montage seq.’?

▪ deliberate artificiality: self-conscious cinema; but what does this demonstrate?

no film can be trusted?  rather: truth (cf. manifesto)

▪ Vertov accused of ‘formalism’ (no ideological purpose)

Soviet Montage: Vertov vs. Eisenstein

Dziga Vertov (Kino-Eye)

Focus: Capturing spontaneous reality and documentary truth.

Method: The camera acts as a "kino-eye," a mechanical, objective lens that shows the world as only it can see it.

Goal: To reveal the inherent order and truth within reality through careful selection and arrangement of images, often emphasizing machinery and the worker.

Example: Man with a Movie Camera (1929), a city symphony that uses varied shots to create a sense of time and place without a traditional narrative structure (and without an actually consistent time or place).

Sergei Eisenstein (Intellectual Montage)

Focus: Creating meaning and intellectual stimulation through conflict and juxtaposition.

Method: Using "dialectical montage" to collide two different shots, which then generate a new, emergent idea ("third meaning") in the viewer's mind.

Goal: To manipulate the viewer's perception and provoke a specific intellectual or emotional response, often for ideological purposes.

Example: Strike (1924)’s bull scene, which uses two independent shots together to convey a message that neither inherently had