The Other Styles

25th November, 2011 Magdalena Tutka - Gwozdz, Ph. D. Department of Media and Communication

1. The term of style

• Style is a formal system that consists of a number of cinematic techniques which interact with each other

• Stylistic pattern depends on the use of specific choices filmmakers make in the range of each cinematic technique (David Bordwell’s approach, The Concept of Style, p. 312).

2. Susan Sontag about opposition between the style and content

• A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world. (...) the knowledge we gain through art is an experience of the form or style of knowing something, rather than a knowledge of something (like a fact or a moral judgment itself”

• This leads her to the following statement: But when the metaphor of the work of art as a statement loses its authority, the ambivalence toward “style” should dissolve; for this ambivalence mirrors the presumed tension between the statement and the manner in which it is stated.

• S. Sontag, On Style, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York 1965, pp. 15 - 36

3. The term “style” is applied to describe the significant manner of organizing a film which is characteristic for:

• different schools and trends in cinema (“group style”)

• national schools• the specific way in which one particular director utilizes techniques across his works • viewers expectations about the style • style in narrative and non-narrative films

4. Analyzing Film Style

a. Mise-en-Scène: Setting, Costume & Make Up, Lighting, Staging: Movement and Performance, The Film Actor’s Toolkit

• ex. 1. Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Groznyy) by Sergei M. Eisenstein (Part I 1944, Part II 1958)

• ex. 2. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) by Robert Wiene (1920)

• ex. 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968)• ex. 4. Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard (1960)

4. Analyzing Film Style – cont.

b. Cinematography:

- Frame Dimensions and Shape- Onscreen and Offscreen Space- Angle, Level, Height, Distance of Framing- The Mobil Frame- Duration of the Image

• ex. 6 The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) by Carl T. Dreyer (1928)

• ex. 5 Stalker by Andrey Tarkovskiy (1979)• ex. 7 Delicatessen by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1991)

4. Analyzing Film Style – cont.

c. Relation of Shot to Shot Discontinuity Editing developed and exploited by Russian filmmakers, especially Sergei Eisenstein• cutting for the maximum collision from shot to shot and sequence to

sequence• by being forced to synthesize such conflicts the viewer would participate in

actively understanding the film. • ex. 8 October (Oktyabr) by Sergei Eisenstein (1928)• opposing direction of movements from shot to shot • juxtapositions • temporal discontinuities and ambiguity of temporal relations between events• variable duration of the shots • violating of spatial continuity by intercutting of the different locales; • a false eyeline match Thus film invites us to make emotional and conceptual connections between the shots.

4. Analyzing Film Style – cont.

• Please read! D. Bordwell & K. Thompson, Film Art. An Introduction, New York and London 2009, pp. 262 - 265;

• S. Eisenstein, From Film Form, in L. Braudy & M. Cohen (ed.), Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings, New York and Oxford, 2009, pp. 13 - 44

5. Sound in the Cinema

• of three types: speech, music and noise (sound effects)

• the sound track is added freely at the postproduction stage, composed before shooting or created of preexisting pieces of music.

• is mixed into an ongoing stream of auditory information

6. Dimensions of the sound that are connected with its relation to other film elements.

• Rhythm which in most cases cooperates with the rhythm of editing and the rhythm of movement within the image or disparity

• Fidelity of the sound: an extent to which sound is faithful to the source

• Space: diegetic vs. nondiegetic, onscreen vs. offscreen, external diegetic vs. internal diegetic sound, sound perspective (a sort of “sonic point of view”)• Time: synchronous vs. asynchronous, simultaneous or

nonsilmultaneous sound

• ex. 9 The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola (1974)

5. Analyzing Film Style

• 1. Determine the Organizational Structure - understand how the film or particular scene is put together as a whole

• 2. Identify the Salient Techniques Used by noting and naming cinematic techniques chosen by director: color, lighting, framing, cutting, sound

• 3. Trace Out Patterns of Techniques by noting how particular techniques are patterned - repeated, varied, developed or paralleled - across the whole film / scene

• 4. Propose Functions for the Salient Techniques and the Patterns They Form - look for the role that style plays in the film’s overall form; read the meaning of particular stylistic patterns in the context of the whole

• ex. 10 The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova) by Sergei Parajanov (1968) Thank you for attention!