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?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?(a) Subject and material (content)-- the familiar or typical in our daily life(b) The way in which such a subject and mate

rial is represented (method)-- mimesis (Gk. the imitative representation o

f nature and human behaviour)

The representation of the familiar or typical in

mimetic manners in literature and visual arts.

Boxer of Quirinal, Bronze copy of a Hellenistic Greek scuture

Details

• Old Greek Woman (C 400 BC)

Caravaggio, Cardsharps (c 1594-5)

Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller (c 1598-9)

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

Johannes Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter

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

Lumière’s Films

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

Lumière’s Films

Auguste and Louis Lumière

Representation ofthe look of realityas it is commonlyperceived

Georges Méliès’ Films

A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune: 1902)

A fantasy about a rocket journey to th

e moon

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

Meliés’ FormalismVisual cinematic tricks Jump cut - a scene is cut in the middle of action Double exposure - two images are superimposed

on the same piece of filmMultiple 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 visiondisregarding what it may be in reality.

Realism and Formalism

Film realism - the Lumière tendencies Recording reality without changing it

Film formalism - the Méliès tendencies Recreating reality or presenting a new, d

ifferent reality

Lumiére-Melies Chart

(Realism) (Formalism)LUMIERE MELIES

The Blair Witch Project Spiderman 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.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkKyDfEUnU&feature=PlayList&p=30083A55CA7FD332&index=0&playnext=1

• http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/horror/watch/v18951600TcMkfftj

• http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6nkns_the-blair-witch-project-the-movie-p_shortfilms

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 RealismRené Magritte’s painting

of Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)

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

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

oduce (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’ around; thus actions are suffixed with -re; spatially and temporally different from what it shows.

Problems of Film Formalism

Even fantasy is 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

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