Q & A with Dena Johnston
My Question:
Q1) It's a small question but why is neorealism not capitalized like Expressionism or other
movements? (my question)
I asked this because in the class notes it was always lower case except sometimes.
A1)Good question Ida. I have seen it capitalized and not capitalized. Not sure of the exact reasoning for NOT capitalizing it. In the book it is consistently capitalized from a HISTORICAL perspective. However, it seems when you are writing in a more formal, academic manner there may be other distinctions to consider. I'd say capitalize it for our purposes in this class in terms of your writing.
A quick Google search result finds MLA and Chicago style discussions that basically say things like:
Should I capitalize the names of movements such as modernism?
A modern editorial style keeps capitalization to a minimum. In MLA style, a movement or school of thought is only capitalized when it could be confused with a generic term–for example, Romanticism or New Criticism. Published 12 January 2018
Q2)Thank you for suggesting the Martin Scorsese's 2002 TCM introduction to the Bicycle Thief. It would be interesting to analyze the influence of Italian Neorealism on Scorsese films as we go forward with the class. (Bob)
A2)There is a great film that Scorsese made that looks specifically at this issue My Voyage to Italy (1999) - as you may imagine they have been a HUGE influence on him as an Italian-American growing up in New York.
This video isn't the best quality (and subtitles are auto-generated, not legit if you rely on them). I think the DVD is out of print but you may be able to find a used copy or it may be streaming somewhere?
This is the section specifically on Neorealism:
"My Voyage to Italy" (Neorealism Segment 4)
Besides documentary films, what influenced Rosellini and De Sica to take this realist approach
to fictional films? Were there neo-realism films in other countries which preceded Italian neorealism? (from Sakura)
A3) The narrative realism movements in other countries followed Italian Neorealism - Satyajit Ray (India), British Kitchen Sink Realism, French New Wave, etc. However, there are some predecessors of significant note explored on this BFI Sight & Sound entry
. Plenty of things to further explore here!
If you are interested in documentary I might suggest keeping an eye out for us running CINE 22 in the next year (History of Documentary), or check out Kevin Sherman's CINE 19 Documentary, Digital Media and Society. You can see his class website here
End
Q4) Fellini and Antonioni appear to be the most important and influential of the post neorealist directors in Italy.
They appear to have contrasting styles. Did they influence each other? If so, how?
How did Fellini and Antonioni influence other Italian Modernist directors?
A4) A great question. I recently came across this article
which looks at their long-ranging friendship and somewhat of their mutual influence. Seems like Charlotte Chandler wrote a biography of one: I, Fellini.
“Fellini and Michelangelo were two sides of the same coin,” Enrica, the widow of Antonioni, told me. “People said they were opposites, but they were twins, though they never knew it. My Mickey was seen as a director who wanted to do highbrow films for the few, but he really wanted to make films everyone would love to see, just like Fellini.”
Antonioni once told me, “I believe Federico was more concerned with the outer life of the people in his films. I am concerned with their inner lives—why they do what they do. ”Fellini told me, “I feel my inheritance as a film director is from art, and Michelangelo’s is from literature. My films, like my life, are summed up in circus, spaghetti, sex, and cinema.”
Both men were honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in New York—Fellini in 1985, Antonioni in 1992—and directors around the world, from Akira Kurosawa to Ingmar Bergman, raved about their movies. In 1963, Stanley Kubrick said La Notte was one of his 10 favorite films. The young Steven Spielberg wrote to tell Fellini he was an inspiration. Alfred Hitchcock, an enthusiastic admirer of both men, said it best. In 1978, when I was writing a biography of him, he told me, “Those Italian fellows are a hundred years ahead of us. Blow-Up and 8 1/2 are bloody masterpieces.”
Of course I'm sure there are many fiery moments between them in friendship and possibly some sort of competition.
Extra from Denah) My dinners with Federico and MichelangeloClick here for the article
I think this is the same article as the one described above.
9-23-20
I'm having a hard time learning how to do a beautiful screen shot of a film. I'm on Windows. I tried Windows button and prt screen as in the example and I did not see the image anywhere.
Someone showed me how to copy the image onto Painter but the image was Huge.
Any help is appreciated.
Ida
It is true that PCs aren't as friendly to this process as Macs. In my experience you can screenshot your whole screen and then edit to crop or frame what you want OR you can screenshot when you are viewing the image in full frame. I believe when you insert an image into your post you can then adjust the size?
The basic info is in Module 0 page 0.6. However, you're wanting to be able to frame your screenshot. Check out this post for more options. I'm thinking you might want to go with this:
- Press the Windows key + Shift + S. The screen will dim and the mouse pointer will change. You can drag to select a portion of the screen to capture. The screenshot will be copied to the clipboard, which you can paste into another program. (This shortcut only works if you have the latest version of Windows 10 installed, called the Windows 10 Creators Update.)
Sakura's question = 9-28-20
Please explain "jump cut" as a technique French New Wave film makers used.
Also, please elaborate on the statement that these film makers used "reflexive methods".
Thanks!
Great questions Sakura!
In the Mast & Kawin Glossary they give the following definition of Jump Cut (pg 719):
1. Cut between two shots that are so similar the subject appears to jump from one position to the other 2. A disjunctive, disorienting cut, a sudden transition that may be illogical, mismatched or impatient with normal continuity and that - unlike the match cut - calls attention to itself.
This is one of the New Wave's self-conscious techniques, utilized heavily by filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard. The resistance to the stale old cinema adapted from novels and other source material left post-war youth feeling disenfranchised and like they weren't seeing stories they could relate to. In order to make a cinema for themselves and their peers the New Wave and several approaches emerged (fragmentation, jump-cuts, non-linear storytelling, more "common" everyday characters, etc.).
This video essay by Richard Strong explores the evolution of the montage, pioneered primarily by Sergei Eisenstein, and explains how it set the stage for the introduction of the editing techniques found in Breathless.
"Reflexive methods" - the Glossary give some interesting info under Reflexivity (pg. 724):
2. Also self-consciousness . The implication that a work of art is aware of itself as a work of art, either as an artifice in a particular creative tradition or as an autonomous and self-directing structure.
There are elements of documentary and emergence pf cinéma vérité at play in New Wave filmmaking which make it that much more interesting! All of this to say the work draws attention to itself as a FILM, whereas narrative films are invested in seamless realism, working so hard to keep you from thinking that what you are watching is a construction.
My Question which i regret on 10-5-20
In the Cleo 5 to 7 discussion some students got the impression through different visuals that Anges Varda was racist. I didn't see that myself and thought I'd ask your opinion.
I'll jump into that discussion today. I can "see" some evidence why folks might think that - much of it based around European/French colonization (in this case of Africa specifically) as well as the way African art is used in the car sequence with Cleo. This is contextualized somewhat by the news on the car radio about the French/Algerian war, amongst other current events. It does not happen in a vacuum. Admittedly Varda does have a certain amount of privilege in the work she makes. She is invested in narrative and formal investigations in Cleo from 5 to 7 as a New Wave filmmaker, not necessarily political ideas. For Varda her activism comes later during her time in California with films like Black Panthers (1968). The New Wave films don't generally get politicized until the late 60s and into the 70s when those filmmakers morph into the next phases of their creative endeavors. Jean-Luc Godard, big surprise, is the most radically political early on (Masculin feminin, 1966) and throughout his career.
Black Panthers (26 minutes, 1968) delves into the culture of the Party by investigating into the local dynamics of its Oakland branch. View the film here.
Remember, it is important to consider the film in the context in which it is made. A nice counter-point to this film might be Ousmane Sembène's Senegalese film Black Girl (1966) which considers the experience (and perspective) of an African woman who goes to work for a white French family thinking she will be doing childcare but then ends up being a house slave. Sembène and the film will appear in Module 12. In the second clip he talks specifically about the use/opportunity for cinema to engage audiences on political and social issues.
Sakura's question: 10-21-20
Regarding Ozu's films, please explain and give examples for:
1. temporal fractures of narrative
2. 180 degree cut
3. shots linked through overlapping bits of space
Thanks!
Great questions Sakura,
1. temporal fractures of narrative
In my mind this general reference comes from Paul Schrader's work Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (1972).
Schrader’s investigation of mid-century art cinema masters as extensions of spiritual art is worthy of our careful consideration, especially given the legacy of Yasujirō Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Th. Dreyer. These three directors have been endlessly studied and filmmakers have adopted, revamped, and appropriated them.
He begins with a general overview of the theory of transcendental style and a working definition. While moving through several possible definitions, Schrader opts for “human acts or artifacts which express something of the Transcendent,” i.e., an expression of something “beyond normal sense experience” (37) achieved through style or “a general representative form.” The content of a film is therefore unimportant because transcendental style is universal and expressions of the Transcendent “knows no [specific] culture” – any artist can search for this elusive beyond. For Schrader, in terms of filmmaking, what matters are spiritual expressions in cinematography, dialogue, and editing in relation to one or more past iterations of the Holy from the gamut of artistic representation. Schrader connects unrelated filmmakers working in different contexts because they all investigate the “mystery of existence” (42), and it’s the critic’s task to determine, uncover, and reveal how this mystery is expressed.
- "Revisiting Paul Schrader's Transendental Style in Film"
2. 180 degree cut
This blog entry looks at what the 180 degree rule IS and how Ozu breaks it in his camera set up and resulting edit of a scene in Tokyo Story.
he does everything wrong; he breaks every rule of conventional cinematic grammar. He always puts the camera too low, but he doesn’t angle it up, so the subject of the shot always occupies the top of the frame. The eye-line matches are always wrong.
A fundamental rule of standard continuity requires that the camera always stay on one side of an axis created by the actors’ gazes. Thus the camera may not be moved 180 degrees from one set-up to another; it must always stay within a semi-circle on one side of the axis.
Ozu doesn’t simply violate this rule, he overturns it: every cut crosses the axis of the gaze. Every cut is a multiple of 45 degrees, most often 180 degrees (especially when he cuts on an action match) or 90 degrees. The standard continuity system was developed to make cuts invisible, to the conscious mind at least. Ozu denaturalises the cuts, making them as noticeable as possible.
After considering Ozu in relation to Zen arts, Schrader demonstrates the means at the director’s disposable to go beyond it. First, the director shoots the banal and quotidian in static shots from the same low height (as if one is kneeling on the floor). The conversations are monotone and “every cut forthright and predicable” (70). The narratives often reinvestigate everyday themes such as love, marriage, and family, and by employing the same (or similar) locations, actors, and filmmaking techniques, Ozu’s work transforms into a repeatable ritual. Second, for Ozu’s characters, disparity is internal. The protagonists cannot find nature within themselves and the decisive moment (often after the protagonist weeps alone) is a communal event involving family and neighborhood. Third, often after the decisive action at the culmination of a film, Ozu’s camera tracks backwards to reveal the setting, the landscape, and “the unity of all existence” (80). While worthy of the label of transcendental style, Ozu is runner-up to another art cinema master: the French auteur Bresson.
- "Ozu The Master of Time," BFI
3. shots linked through overlapping bits of space
I think this is more simple than you might think. Bordwell is referring to the everydayness in Ozu's compositions. Each is compact in itself, on occasion there might be a bit of "overlapping space" from one image to another (the edge of a table, a teapot, etc.), but more often than not his cuts are "hard."
end - Denah
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