Films And Feelings (MIT Press)
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0262540169
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
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owers, bottles on a shelf, minor characters or furnishings, and beyond the main action we become aware of a . background . planedancers, lookers-on, a door into another room, or perhaps a mirror reecting the main action from another angle. Contrasts of spotlight and shadow can be used to direct the eye and prevent the picture being a clutter; while the abundance of environment gives a very powerful sense of atmosphere. Pabst's Der Dreigroscltenoper and Ophuls‘ Madame De are particularly rich in
moderate competence. Since the ‘esoteric’ meanings weren't very profound either, there seemed neither a primafacie case, nor a reward, for all this complicated decoding. indeed, many of the directors celebrated had made it amply clear that they were very rarely in complete control of their lms, that they made many potboilers for ‘alimentary’ reasons, that compromises, concessions, unwanted scripts and stars, were forced upon them. One willingly grants ‘total meaning‘ to Bresson and Dreyer because
allots to basic tensions and their interaction: the relationships of mother, father and son (Freud), its complacent evasions (middle-class culture), the insidious blend of toughness and conformism in peer-group morality, which the hero gradually renounces as he comes to equate virility with tenderness (to the heroine) and moral responsibility (he adopts a paternal role to another teenager). Thus he is freed from the state of alienation and nihilism whose cultural origins are mediated through such
perspective hill, and it is as if the room were heaving under strange pressures. Wide-angle lens permit a whole web of such etfects, involving also the angles of furniture and the human body. Degas‘ Le Tub (I888) anticipates them, but in Dreyer the e‘ect is specically of a building under the torque of disturbing spiritual forces. The house in Vampyr is also a matter of at planes. A door in a near wall opens to reveal a further wall beyond; the house has a Whistlerian imsiness, even preciosity.
their help in procuring illustrations. me 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The still from The Big Sleep is by courtesy of Warner Brothers; that from The Man with the Golden Arm by courtesy of United Artists; that from This Island Earth by courtesy of UniversalInternational-Rank. i Contents 1 page 7 II Acknowledgements Illustrations I3 Introduction PART 0N£—Putng on the Style l9 3| l. The Mongrel Muse Ying Realism, Yang Fantasy 43 Sensation, Shape and Shade Auteurs and Dream Factories v 61