"Films and Feelings", Raymond Durgnat

We chose not to write a text about this book, as we think that the summary in the back cover gives, indeed, the best description of it. We would like only to give the brief note that Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote about it: "This first collection by the most thoughtful, penetrating, and far-reaching of UK film critics ever remains scandalously overlooked and undervalued. Conceivably more ideas per page can be found here than in the work of any other English-language critic (...)."

Summary:

Raymond Durgnat here examines literally hundreds of films-- from Birth of a Nation to those of the 1960's, from Hollywood smashes to 'avant garde' obscurities, from all parts of the world-- in an effort to isolate universals of the language of films and to loft their poetics to an articulate level. Beyond what interest it may possess as a collection of different cinematic topics, this text is offered also as a basis for re-exploring an art-form which seems to pose certain aesthetic problems more insistently than other media have done. In addition to the cross-references among a large number of films, a few are selected for extended analysis. These full-length features include Cocteau's Orphee, Hitchcock's Psycho, Chabrol's Les Cousins, Ray's Johnny Guitar, and Newman's This Island Earth. His succinct synopsis of the running plot functions as an analysis of it; thus, much of the critical insight is in the form of entertaining narrative. The book is divided into four sections. The first is concerned with the union of film style and film content. The second treats the connection between the film as an entertainment and as a picture of reality, suggesting that even films that are unabashedly 'escapist' are really rooted in, and comment on, the inescapable facts of social life. The third section attempts to close the gap between the popular responses and those of 'high culture.' This is not a 'surrender to the mob and to the moguls. 'The author's standards are more stringent than those of the permissive 'camp' followers and 'pop' critics. The final section produces further evidence of the existence of cinematic poetry in the commercial movie.

Excerpts:

“Suppose a director has filmed four takes of the same scene which shows an argument between two equally sympathetic characters. Take (1) shows the scene as a series of ‘reverse angles’ (alternating full-face close-ups). Take (2) is a continuous two-shot of two profiles. Take (3) shows B’s full face, but the back of A’s head prominent on the screen. Take (4) is an ‘over-shoulder’ of A, with B’s head not very obtrusively present over to one side of the screen. In (1) we will feel each person’s responses intensely during his close-up, and the other’s responses will be temporarily soft-pedalled, even forgotten; until we return to him with a little ‘shock’. Our identifications alternate. In (2) we see and feel both responses simultaneously. Our reaction to A’s words is continuously modified by B’s reaction, which may be skeptical or pitying. We feel a smoother, softer, mixture of feelings. In (3) with the back of A’s head, almost in the middle of the frame, we will be very conscious of his constant ‘obstruction’; he is a real force, but an enigmatic one. In (4) we may almost be unaware of him and be aware mainly of A’s feelings – although the vague presence of B makes for a more complicated composition and ‘feel’ than a mere close-up.”

“Within the general framework of a two-shot many different ‘spatial relationships’ are possible. In The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Welles expertly puts his characters in tough, angular, separated compositions, creating an effect of loneliness-by-antagonistic-wills. In Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu (1939), more fluent and informal arrangements leave plenty of space for the characters to move around, to change their minds, to remain individuals while being members of free and easy groupings.”

“Some aestheticians still deny that the cinema can still be an art, because the camera mechanically reproduces whatever is put in front of it. Pudovkin summarizes the certainly true, but incomplete, defence with which film theoreticians have been content ever since. ‘There exists between real events and their reproduction on the screen a fundamental difference, and it is this difference which makes film an art.’ This difference is that of selectivity. The cameramen does not merely reproduce, he interprets reality, by his selection of certain details, angles, and so on. Then there are creative possibilities of choice of lens and lighting, and all sorts of manipulations on the cutting-bench.”

“This mise-en-scène has two aspects, often allied. There is the ‘theatrical’ element – the dramatic scenes are staged (for the camera), the characters arranged in space, with their exits, entrances, movements, gestures and so on. (Matters of casting and acting, equally important, are ‘theatrical’ without being mise-en-scène, which we may define as ‘staging for the camera’.) And there is the ‘pictorial’ element (pictorial composition, ‘painterly’ qualities, and so on).”

“If Renoir leaves visual space so that his actors are free, it is because, for him, human nature is flowing and free. Whereas Dreyerian space, so carefully patterned and sculpted, expresses his protestant sense of human nature as tight, tense, locked.”

Link to the complete book in PDF:

https://mega.nz/#!0bgBAAaa!-N6uyeFmyneXKS9dCZ8qzQLn291MkplB3AT5g0qDszU