Classic Hollywood

Realism

Gilles DeleuzeContemporary French Philosopher.

A typological study of cinema:

Movement Image or Action-Image—a form of realism.

fromGilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Imageand Cinema 2: The Time Image, published 1990.

Realism= action-image

• Realism occurs when emotions are seen as behaviours which reflect geographical, historical and social space-times” (Deleuze,

Cinema I. 141).

Dallas=Her behaviour reflects the definite limits given to the prostitute by the social space and time of the “wild-west” (narrative).

Ford’s choice of location for Westerns:

• Monument Valley

Determinate

• The space-time of realism is a “Determinate, with exact and definite limits” (141), as with

Plymouth Rock country.

• Milieu

• Milieu= geographical, historical and social space-times

• Synsign= the sign of the milieu

• Richard Maltby.

• Classical (Hollywood) Cinema is based on principles of “decorum, proportion, formal harmony, respect for tradition, mimesis, self-effacing craftsmanship, and cool control of the perceiver’s response” (richard Maltby, 7).

• the “classical paradigm emphasises dramatic unity, plausible motivations, and coherence of its constituent parts. Each shot is seamlessly elided to the next in an effort to produce a smooth flow of action, and often a sense of inevitability “ (Giannetti, 361).

• global synthesis: unity of image. For Deleuze, it is brought about by the necessary interaction (or relation) between the milieu and the behaviours of the characters

• Encompasser/Englobing, and that which englobes, (for example, the sky encompasses the rest of the scene in Stagecoach.

• Englobing: a meeting of forces, either between one actant and the milieu, or two actants(characters).

• “The Milieu and its forces incurve on themselves, that is, they act on the character, throw him a challenge and constitute a situation in which he is caught” (Deleuze: Cinema 1. 141).

• “Encompassed by the sky, the milieu in turn encompasses the collectivity (the group of travellers and the folk of the West). It is as a member of this collectivity and milieu that the hero becomes capable of an action which makes him equal to the milieu” (Deleuze: Cinema 1146).

• “the action-image always entails an encompassing milieu of forces and the relatedactions/reactions of an individual and individuals” (Ronald Bogue, 86).

• Deleuze also refers to this conflict of forces as a duel of forces.

• Deleuze cites two forms of narrative in which the duel of forces are played out, the Large Form and the Small Form action-image.

Large form Action Image

• Large form Action Image— SAS (Situation+Action+Situation).

• Binomial: The name given to the sign of a specific Action/duel of forces is binomial.

the binomial exists wherever one force, or both forces, foresee the activity of the other force, as with Ringo’s anticipation of the Plummbers

Deleuze sights five laws at work in the Large Form action-image.

• Deleuze sights five laws at work in the Large Form action-image.

• First law is the milieu which is a landscape where impinging forces meet.

• Second law involves the duel forces of the binomial sign.

• Third law involves the convergent forces eventually meeting in a single shot

• Fifth law involves a distance (Deleuze refers to a “great gap”) between the englobing milieu/initial situation and the climactic action.

Small Form Action-Image

• Small Form is A-S-A —(Action+Situation+Action).Where the large form action-image forms a unity of image, an englobing, the small form action image consists of a series of heterogeneous fragments (as with Lost In Translation). The space is constructed piece by piece; each space has its own internal geometric coordinates, its own temporal rhythms, and its own dramatic intensities,’ (Bogue, 90). (Again, consider in terms of Lost in Translation.)

cont….

In the Large Form Action Image, after the establishing situation in which the protagonist and antagonist face off “the following scenes intensify this conflict in a rising pattern of action. This escalation is treated in terms of cause-effect, with each scene implying a link to the next” (360). Obversely, in the Small-Form action-image, “’each scene, each shot … brings a character or an event to the summit of its autonomy, of its intensive presence’” (Bogue quoting Deleuze, 90).