Film 2400 Tutorial 3 Power Point Presentation

Film and the Arts:
Hugo Münsterberg
•Film (described as “photoplay”) gives us a view of dramatic events which are shaped by the movements of the mind. Only the mind can mold these two dimensional images into reality.
•“The photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely attention, memory, imagination and emotion.”

Hugo Münsterberg: The Theater and the Cinema
–Film is further away from the physical reality seen in theater, which brings film closer to the mental world.
•Flatness vs. Presence
–Differentiates the pantomime of cinema (during the silent era) and the pantomime of theater.
•Theater is a more intense and unnatural form of pantomime
–Differentiates Theatrical Time from Film Time
•Linear (Unity of time) vs. Non-Linear
Bazin: Theater and Cinema
•Theater
–Provides every illusion except that of “presence.”
–Provides a tension absent in cinema.
–Active Consciousness
–Actor exists on an ontological level.
–Requires actors
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•Cinema
–Accommodates every reality except physical presence.
–Passive Adhesion
–Actor exists on a psychological level.
–Does not require actors
Bazin: “Presence”
•Plastic Arts (painting, sculpture) create “intermediaries between actual physical presence and absence.” They only resemble actual presence.
•Photography creates the “trace” of an object; its luminous impression in light.
•Cinema takes that trace or mold of an object as it exists in time and “makes an imprint of the duration of the object.”
•Presence can be ambiguous: “It is false to say that the screen is incapable of putting us ‘in the presence of’ the actor.”
Bazin: Lost in Translation
•Issues with theater turned into film:
–The décor in cinema can be as integral as the actor: however, he argues some films break this rule. (We might disagree with Bazin a bit here)
–“The problem with filmed theater…does not consist so much of transposing an action from the stage to the screen as in transposing a text written for one dramaturgical system into another…”
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Chatham: What Novels Can Do that Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)
•Narratology
–Narrative is a deep structure independent of its medium.
–Narrative is a kind of text organization—often featuring “double time structuring.”
–Deals with the “translatability of a given narrative from one medium to another.” What novels describe, films show rapidly. However, the pressures of the narrative in film often force the viewer to gloss over details.
Chatman: Inter-arts Comparisons
–Filming components of a painting creates narrative through sequence. The painting itself may not have sequence.
–Film critics deride use of voice-over as a device of the novel.
–Descriptions in verbal narrative can invoke visual elaboration. When a writer suggests a character is handsome, we infer just what that means. Films do not have this luxury.
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Features of “Double Time Structuring”
•Narratives combine time sequence of plot, called “story time” with the time of the presentation of those events in text, called “discourse time”
•Realistic narratives have fixed time which occur in a linear way, however, the discourse time may begin at then end and flashback to the beginning.
•Unlike paintings, which can be perceived instantaneously, narratives demand duration to be understood.
Major Ideas in Sontag’s Theater and Film
•“History of cinema is treated as the history of its emancipation from theatrical models.”
•“Movies are regarded as advancing from theatrical stasis to cinematic fluidity, from theatrical artificiality to cinematic naturalness and immediateness.” But Sontag argues this is an oversimplification.
•Film creates “a document of a transient reality.”
•“Films resemble books” in that they are “portable art objects.” Theater cannot exist this way.
•Theater is performed differently each time and reflects an interpretation of a play script. Film is taken as a complete object in itself.
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•There are major problems with an essentialist description of theater and film: Theatre may break with Panofsky’s descriptions of a fixed place. Film may not necessarily be the same each time it is screened.
•Realism is usually employed to “covertly advance a definite political-moral position.”
•Theater also attempts to create an exchange with the audience—something film can never do.
•Unlike theater, cinema is “heavily burdened with memory.” Historical peculiarities make the age of film visible both in its materiality (aging like old photos) and in the content of the images (think fashion, slang, etc).