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) ‘… the style of art and literature in which

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

Longman American Dictionary

(b) ‘ … paintings, films, books, etc., that try to represent life as it really is are in the artistic tradition of realism.’

Cambridge International Dictionary of English

What is Realism?

(c) ‘… the close resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, rendering the precise details of the real thing or scene.’

Oxford English Dictionary

(d) ‘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

What is Realism?1. Dictionary definition(a) ‘… the style of art and literature in which

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

Longman American Dictionary

(b) ‘ … paintings, films, books, etc., that try to represent life as it really is are in the artistic tradition of realism.’

Cambridge International Dictionary of English

What is Realism?

(c) ‘… the close resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, rendering the precise details of the real thing or scene.’

Oxford English Dictionary

(d) ‘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

Eric Auerbach on modern realism: some of the characteristics of modern realism are such as ‘addressing daily life, in its historical context, as the subject of serious, problematic and even tragic presentation’

Mimesis (1946)

1st Point:

Realist work needs to deal with, as subject matters, the familiar or typical in daily life; neither the unfamiliar or atypical in daily life nor in life alien to us.

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

• (Newspaper Office

• Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing

• (Typical 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 nd point: 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

a

Details

a

• Old Greek Woman (C 400 BC)

Idealized beauty

• Discus Thrower• Venus of Milo

Caravaggio, Cardsharps (c 1594-5)

Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller (c 1598-9)

a

• 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 Formalism?• Definitions: Formalism in art(a) the practice or the doctrine of strict adherence to prescribed or external forms; or marked attention to arrangement, style, or artistic means (as in art, film or literature) usually with corresponding de-emphasis of content

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary(b) ‘a style or method in art, literature, music, etc., in which there is more emphasis on obeying formal rules than expressing meaning or emotion

McMillan English Dictionary

What is Formalism?

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

Longman’s English Dictionary

(d) ‘distinguishing feature of art – the one that determines our interest in it – is form.

Encyclopedia Britannica

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’

What is Formalism?

• In order to present forms and external appearance of reality in impressive or aesthetic manners, a formalist filmmaker deliberately or intentionally alter and distort the way reality looks.

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 Sortie de l’usine Lumier a Lyon

Lumière’s Films

Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat Station (1895) - 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

• Addressing daily life as subject matters

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; a

scene begins in the middle of action• Double exposure – two images are superimposed on the same piece of film• In editing two separate actions are shown as if they

were the same one. • 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 in impressive

or aesthetic manners, altering or re-interpreting freely those.

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 is told that they 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

No fancy shot or no remarkable image, everything is presented in the way an amateur filmmaker or photographer shoots when he or she is making a school project. Film may not be realistic only in …

Film may not be realistic only where the familiar or typical in daily life is not shown towards the end of the film.

Formalism / Méliès Tendencies

• The Exorcist (1973) by William Friedkin

• Another kind of horror 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

Obsessive adherence to forms and particularly presenting them in the way that they shock the viewer. Most of things are fantastic or supernatural with time and space are greatly changed and distorted.

Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• The 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.

Mostly showing Lumière tendencies but some parts Méliès tendencies: photography in a realist style and fancy narrative

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

Mostly formalist film with Chaplin’s fancy mime and impressive action, but realist elements are also included such as location shooting and real historical reference.

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