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. Formalism
4. Problems of Realism and Formalism
What is Realism?
1. 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?
Subject and material (content)
-- the familiar or typical in our daily life
Superman cartoon in the 1940s (Fleisher Studio)
What is Realism?
What is Realism?
2. The way in which such a subject and material
is represented (method) - non-idealized, nonformalized, un-romantic, and unembellished
rendition of outward appearance as faithfully as
possible.
-- MIMESIS (Gk. the imitative representation of
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 sculpture
Details
• Old Greek Woman (C 400 BC)
Caravaggio, Cardsharps (c 1594-5)
Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller (c 1598-9)
• Caravaggio, The Inspiration of St. Matthew
Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water
Pitcher (c 1664-5)
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Back to the Market
(1739)
Gustav Courbet, Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet
(1854)
William Bliss Barker’s Fallen Monarchs (1859)
Albert Charpin’s Woman with Lambs (1920)
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 Lumiere Brothers’ Sortie de l’usine Lumier a Lyon
Lumière’s Films
Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat station (1985)
- filmed record of the arrival of a train
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk
Lumière’s Films
Auguste and Louis
Lumière
Representation of
the look of reality
as it is commonly
perceived
Georges Méliès’ Films
A Trip to the Moon (Le
Voyage dans la lune:
1902)
A fantasy about a
rocket journey to the
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’ Formalism
Visual cinematic tricks
Jump cut - a scene is cut in the middle of action
Double exposure - two images are superimposed on
the same piece of film
Multiple 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 vision
disregarding what it may be in reality.
Realism vs. Formalism
Film realism - the Lumière tendencies
Recording reality without changing it
Film formalism - the Méliès tendencies
Recreating reality or presenting a new,
different reality
Lumiére-Melies Chart
(Realism)
LUMIERE
(Formalism)
MELIES
The Blair Witch Project
Exorcist
Full Monty
Documentary
The Gold Rush
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.
•
The Blair Witch Project Part 1
•
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6nkns_the-blair-witch-projectthe-movie-p_shortfilms
Formalism / Méliès Tendencies
• The Exorcist (1973) by
William Friedkin
• A cult film dealing with
the demonic possession
of a girl and her mother’s
desperate attempt to win
her back through
exorcism conducted by
two priests.
•
The Exorcist
Realism / Lumière Tendencies
• Full Monty (1997) by
Peter Cattaneo: a British
comedy about six
unemployed men trying
to form a male striptease
group to support
themselves and their
families.
Formalism / Méliès Tendencies
• Gold Rush (1925) by
Charlie Chaplin: a
silent comedy about a
trump going to the
Yukon to take part in
the Klondike Gold
Rush but being
stranded in a cabin by
snow storm.
•
The Gold Rush
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 Realism
René 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 lifelike, but its image.
Problems of Film Realism
A film re-presents objects and people
Or re-traces (an event); re-calls (an event); reproduce (reality), re-enact (an event/reality); refer to (an event / reality), re-build (reality); reconstruct (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