Film Studies

Introduction

Table of Contents

1. What is Realism and what is Formalism?2. The Lumiére Brothers’ Workers Leaving

the Factory and George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon

3. Realism vs. Formalism4. Problems of Realism and Formalism

What is Realism?1. Dictionary definition(a) ‘a style of painting and sculpture that

seeks to represent the familiar or typical in real life, rather than an idealized, formalized, or romantic interpretation of it’

Collins English Dictionary(b) ‘… the style of art and literature in which

everything is shown or described as it really is in life.’

Longman American Dictionary

What is Realism?

(c) ‘… in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances.’

Encyclopaedia Britannica

What is Realism?

1. Subjects and materials (content)-- the familiar or typical in our daily lifeSuperman cartoon in the 1940s (Fleisher Studio)

Daily Life Familiar Contents

• Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1968)

• Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World

(job hunting)

Daily Life Familiar Contents• Alan J. Pakura’s

All the President’s Men

• (Office

• Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing

• (Thpical British home)

Daily Life Familiar Contents• Juzo Itami’s

Supermarket Woman (1996)

(Japanese super- Market)• Hirokazu Kore-

eda’s Nobody Knows (2004)

(Tokyo neighbourhood)

What is Realism?

2. The way in which such a subject and material is represented (method) - non-idealized, non-formalized, un-romantic, and unembellished rendition of outward appearance as faithfully as possible.

-- MIMESIS (Gk. the imitative representation of nature and human behaviour)

The representation of the familiar or typical inmimetic manners in literature and visual arts.

Boxer of Quirinal, Bronze copy of a Hellenistic Greek sculpture

Details

• Old Greek Woman (C 400 BC)

Idealized beauty

• Discus Thrower• Venus of Milo

Caravaggio, Cardsharps (c 1594-5)

Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller (c 1598-9)

• Caravaggio, The Inspiration of St. Matthew

Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (c 1664-5)

Johannes Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Back to the Market (1739)

Gustav Courbet, Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet (1854)

William Bliss Barker’s Fallen Monarchs (1859)

Albert Charpin’s Woman with Lambs (1920)

What is Realism?

Definition in film studies

‘A style of filmmaking that attempts to represent the look of objective reality as it’s commonly perceived.’

What is Formalism?

Dictionary definition

‘… scrupulous or excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality’

Jackson Pollock, No. 5 (1948)

Joseph Albers, Homage to Square (1965)

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10 (1939-42)

What is Formalism?Definition in film studies

‘A style of filmmaking in which aesthetic forms take precedence over the subject matter as content. Time and space as ordinarily perceived are often distorted. For Formalism, film is an art because its properties are exploited to express filmmakers’ own vision’

Lumière’s Films

Workers Leaving the Factory (1895)Actualités (actualities) - Recording an everyday event with a stationary camera placed at eye level without any editing Lumiere Brothers’ Sortie de l’usine Lumier a Lyon

Lumière’s Films

Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat station (1985) - filmed record of the arrival of a trainhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

Lumière’s Films

• Auguste and Louis Lumière

• Representation of the look of reality as it is commonly perceived

Georges Méliès’ Films• A Trip to the Moon (Le

Voyage dans la lune, 1902)

• A fantasy about rocket journey to the moon.

• Adherence to film forms – special effects and surprising images

• Ordinary time and space distorted

Georges Méliès’ Films• Georges Méliès

A stage magician at Theatre Robert-Houdin turned filmmaker.

The first innovator in filmmaking.

The inventor of seminal film tricks

Georges Méliès’ Films

• Visual tricks in cinema• Jump cut – a scene is cut in the middle of action• Double exposure – two images are superimposed on the same piece of film• Multiple images – the screen divided into several separate images• Priority given to the display of (aesthetic) forms

and visual effects over the representation faithful to reality. Expression of the filmmaker’s own vision disregarding what it may be in reality.

Realism vs. Formalism

Film realism - the Lumière tendencies Recording reality without changing it

Film formalism - the Méliès tendencies Recreating and presenting forms different

from seen in reality

Lumiére-Melies Chart

(Realism) (Formalism)LUMIERE MELIES

The Blair Witch Project Exorcist Full Monty The Gold RushDocumentary Fantasy

Realism / Lumière Tendencies• The Blair Witch Project

(1999) - a low-budget horror film made as if amateur documentary footage were pieced together. Three students who is making a documentary film on a legend locally known as Blair Witch go missing.

Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• The viewer is told that they were never found but one year later their camera and films were discovered. The viewer watch the ‘discovered’ footage.

• The Blair Witch Project Part 1• http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6nkns_the-blair-witch-project-th

e-movie-p_shortfilms

Formalism / Méliès Tendencies

• The Exorcist (1973) by William Friedkin

• A cult film dealing with the demonic possession of a girl and her mother’s desperate attempt to win her back through exorcism conducted by two priests.

• The Exorcist

Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• Full Monty (1997) by Peter Cattaneo: a British comedy about six unemployed men trying to form a male striptease group to support themselves and their families.

Formalism / Méliès Tendencies

• Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin: a silent comedy about a trump going to the Yukon to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush but being stranded in a cabin by snow storm.

• The Gold Rush

Problems of Film Realism

• Film as representation of reality

• What is filmed is not reality itself but its image• A person who appears on the screen is not

herself but her image.• An object who can be seen on the screen is not

itself but its image.

Problems of Film Realism

René Magritte’s painting of Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)

The picture is not the pipe itself, though it is life-like, but its image.

McLuhan and Annie Hall• Real Marshall Mcluhan

appears in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall

• In the film, he is only the image of Mcluhan and not himself

Problems of Film RealismA film re-presents objects and peopleOr re-traces (an event); re-calls (an event); re-

produce (reality), re-enact (an event/reality); re-fer to (an event / reality), re-build (reality); re-construct (reality): re-stage (reality / an event)

Film is realization in ‘second-time’; thus actions are suffixed with -re; spatially and temporally different from what it shows.

Problems of Film FormalismEven fantasy, fantastic images, and forms are

constructed on our perception of reality.

It is impossible to create a world totally detached from reality.

Problems of Film Formalism

• Even a creature from Mars have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms, fingers, and two legs.

Coexistence and Interaction

Realism and formalism coexist and interact

Every film is constructed by a dialectic process of film realism and film formalism: of mimicking and changing reality

Blade Runner

• Ridley Scott’s SF film, Blade Runner was inspired by futuristic or postmodern city- scape of Osaka

Blade Runner