"Film Art: An Introduction", David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are a couple of film historians and film theorists who have written two widely used film textbooks, Film Art: An Introduction and Film History. They keep updating their blog Observations on Film Art with outstanding analysis that discuss “film techniques, formal strategies, stylistic choices, norms and transformations of them, and genre conventions” that serve as a complement to their book Film Art. 

This book, originally published in 1979, is already in the 11th edition and has become, possibly, the best starting point if you want to engage in film criticism or even filmmaking activity. It contains the correct terms to make a film analysis of mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound. With them, Bordwell and Thompson construct a series of analyzes of some classics as well as recent films, using stills of diverse scenes and discussing the effects that film directors achieve through filmic elements and how they help the viewer sharing the point-of-view of one character. Also, they discuss production methods, distribution and exhibition systems, film genres and present a resume of the history of cinema since its first years with Edison and Lumière until the Hong Kong stylization in the 1990s. We present here the 10th edition.

Excerpts:
“(…) we might hear sounds as the character would hear them, what sound recordists call sound perspective. In short, through either sight or sound, the filmmaker gives us what we might call perceptual subjectivity. 

The filmmaker can go deeper, beyond the character’s senses and into her or his mind. We can call this mental subjectivity. We might hear an internal voice reporting the character’s thoughts, or we might see the character’s inner images, representing memory, fantasy, dreams, or hallucinations.” 

“We know that faces give us access to characters’ thoughts and emotions. Another filmmaker might
have had Claudia already facing us when Sandro asked, so we’d see her response immediately. Antonioni instead makes things uncertain for a moment. He conceals Claudia’s reaction and then lets her turn toward us. To make sure that we watch her and not Sandro at this moment, Antonioni has him turn away when she gestures and speaks (“I’d like to see things clearly”). Our attention is riveted on Claudia. 

Soon enough, Sandro turns back toward the camera, so we can see his reaction, but already Claudia’s anxiety has flashed out at us. Her complex relation to Sandro—attraction (sliding under the bell rope) and uncertainty (turning away tensely)—has been presented to us concretely.”





Link to the complete book in PDF:

Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Signs and Meaning in the Cinema", Peter Wollen

Image
Peter Wollen (1938-2019) was a theorist, screenwriter (he co-wrote Antonioni’s The Passenger ), film critic (in addition to Screen magazine, where he developed his film theories, he wrote for the New Left Review under the pseudonym Lee Russell) and filmmaker. His most famous films were co-signed with his wife Laura Mulvey. His most remembered work is the seminal book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema , which discussed, in a captivating and accessible way, the semiotic and structuralist approach in the cinematographic context.  The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the theoretical and filmic work of Eisenstein. The second, about the auteur theory, investigates the recurrence of themes and images in some directors' careers, namely Hawks and Ford. And the third one develops how a film should be seen as a system of signs and codes, a bearer of a personal language to which the viewer has to adapt himself, referencing also the aesthetic innovations of Jean-Luc Godar
Read more

"Everything is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard", Richard Brody

Image
Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is, arguably, not only the most important living filmmaker, but also one of the greatest directors of all-time. A philosopher thinking with a camera, raising questions about cinema, society, politics and History, in innovative and non-conforming ways, his body of work has influenced filmmakers from Europe to America, from the mainstream to the avant-garde, more than any other director. He is best known for being part of the Nouvelle Vague with revolutionary movies as the cinephilic and exuberant noir À Bout de Souffle ( Breathless , 1960), the existentialist Vivre Sa Vie ( My Life to Live , 1962) or the disconsolately romantic Le Mépris ( Contempt , 1963). From the end of the '60s until mid-'70s he entered in a militant phase with Jean-Pierre Gorin and continued a controversial oeuvre with political films as Vladimir et Rosa (1971). In the '80s he returned to, in a way, more commercial pictures as Sauve Qui Peut ( La Vie ) (1980) or Prénom: Ca
Read more

"Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer", Paul Schrader

Image
Paul Schrader is a director, screenwriter and film critic. Raised in a Calvinist family who deprived him of the cinema in his youth, Schrader was only able to see the first film at age 17 ("Other college kids had to vandalize government buildings. go to movies. ", as he would say later). This led to the construction of his late cinephilia in a more intellectual than emotional way. Hence, in the films written by him, the spectator feels uncomfortable with the imperfection and lack of attachment to his protagonists, existentially disturbed and self-destructive, but redeemed in the last scene that justifies the long process of violence to which they had been subjected. Although he is most remembered for his collaboration with Martin Scorsese in 4 films - Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Bringing Out the Dead (1999) - the ones he directed are equally astonishing [ Hardcore (1978) and Affliction (1997)], with a strong and inn
Read more