Realism in Classical American Film

1
Realism in Classical American Film

• Hollywood Narrative

2
Film as Illusion

• The old experience of the movie-goer, who
  sees the world outside as an extension of the
  film he has just left (because the latter is
  intent upon reproducing the world of everyday
  perceptions), is now the producers guideline.
  The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques
  duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is
  today for the illusion to prevail that the
  outside world is the straightforward continuation
  of that presented on the screen. This purpose
  has been furthered by mechanical reproduction
  since the lighting was taken over by the sound
  film. Theodor V. Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
  Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 126

3
Film as Illusion

• FILM IS ILLUSION OF WHAT?
• Illusion that what you are watching is a real
  world. spectators experience the diagetic
  world as environment. Noël Burch
• (diegetic in a story)
• Film as combination of imaginary signifiers
  Christian Metz
• (imaginary the state in which you cannot
  distinguish between the real and the invented gt
  Lacanian psychoanalysis
• (signifier sign)

4
Film as Illusion

• Woody Allens Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
• Extreme exposition that film could work as
  illusion

5
Film as Illusion

• CLASSICAL AMERICAN FILM AS ILLUSIONIST FILM
• American cinema developed its techniques and
  styles in order to dupe the spectator to take a
  narrative and images for reality
• Or to increase its reality and truth effects.
• The spectator is willing to accept illusion or
  demand it in film.

6
American Classics as Realist Films

• (Classical) Hollywood products between 1917and
  1960 are considered as a type of realist films.
• Why 1917 and 1960?
• By 1917 most American fiction adopted
  fundamentally similar narrative strategies
• PROSIBILITY

7
American Classics as Realist Film

• The studio mode of production had been organized
  around the division of labour, hierarchical
  managerial system, factory-like system of
  filmmaking
• CONTINUATION of the established uniformity in
  narrative and visual styles

8
Classical American Film as Realist Film

• The 1960s - the end of Hollywoods traditions
• Studios moved to the production of television
  programmes ? The breakdown of studio system
  (stars turning free agents producers becoming
  independent the death of B-movies and decrease
  in demand for studio directors and staff)

9
American Classics as Realist Films

• Challenge from international art cinema, e.g.
  Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Italian
  neorealists and French directors of Nouvelle
  Vague
• DIVERSIFICATION in contents and styles

10
American Classics as Realist Films

• TECHNIQUES, STYLES AND STRATEGIES EMPLOYED TO
  CREATE AN ILLUSION OF REALITY IN AMERICAN CINEMA
• A) A story is the first key element.
• B) Uniformity is a basic attribute of the visual
  style.

11
Classical American Film as Realist Film

• C) The American cinema in this period purports to
  be realistic in an Aristotelian sense - true to
  the probable.
• D) It strives to conceal its artifice through
  visual uniformity and invisible storytelling.
• E) It should be comprehensible and unambiguous.

12
American Classics as Realist Films

• F) It should possess a fundamental emotional
  appeal which transcends class and nature.
• PROBABLE, CREDIBLE, NATURAL AND REAL

13
American Classics as Realist Films

• Best Years of Our Lives (1946) directed by
  William Wyler
• About three ex-servicemen who try to cope with
  their lives after returning from the WWII.

14
American Classics as Realist Film

• Story is the primary element of the film
• Uniform film style
• Probable story
• Stylistic understatement
• Unambiguous,
• Comprehensible
• Emotional appeal to
• everyone

15
Narrative

• Narrative a long tale made of the arrangement
  of shorter stories which tell fictional or
  non-fictional events.
• Narration an act of narrating, telling a
  narrative
• Narrator - the one who tells a narrative
  (generally by voice-over in the case of cinema)
• Narratology - study on narrative, narration and
  narrator.

16
Realist Narrative

• The most important component of Classical
  American Films is narrative (story).
• The bottom line - their narratives are
  constructed in such a way that they give the
  viewer an impression that he/she is watching
  something plausible and probable - that is,
  real render reality and truth effects in
  story.
• The first concern plausibility

17
Realist Narrative

• Various techniques employed to achieve
  plausibility
• However - paradox -, these techniques must be
  invisible and unobtrusive so that the viewer
  barely notices them and can concentrate on
  following narrative.
• When narrative techniques become conspicuously
  visible and obtrusive, the film becomes more
  formalist than realist

18
Realist Narrative

• Narration techniques and devices employed to
  create illusion of reality but must be kept
  invisible are
• CHRONOLOGICALITY and CAUSALITY
• CHRONOLOGICALITY - events occur in a 1-2-3 order
  (occasional flashbacks - the only permissible
  narrative manipulation)

19
Realist Narrative

• Most of the films made during the classic period
  of American film (1917-60)
• Chronological story telling with some unobtrusive
  flashbacks
• John Hustons classic film noir, The Maltese
  Falcon (1941) chronological storytelling

20
Formalist Narrative

• Formalistic Narrative
• Christopher Nolans Memento (2000)
• The entire story is told in backward ( from the
  present to the past).
• Leonard, as a result of a blow received on his
  head in an assault on him, he has no short term
  memory.

21
Formalist Narrative

• He is looking for the real killer of his wife,
  with the assistant of a Polaroid camera and
  tattooing on himself the important facts he
  finds. Each scene the viewer watches is one
  earlier than the last one. (In normal
  storytelling, the scene you have just seen is the
  one later than the last)

22
Realist Narrative

• CAUSALITY - actions are joined together as a
  series of CAUSES and EFFECTS
• Plot is a careful and logical working out of
• the laws of cause and effect. The mere
• sequence of events will not make a plot.
• Emphasis must be laid upon causality,
• and the action - reaction of the human will.
• Francis Patterson, Manual for Aspiring
  Screenwriters, 1920

23
Realistic Narrative

• e.g. A storm isolates a group of characters
• a war separate lovers
• a lack of care kills tropical fish
• a cheat leads to a divorce
• a betrayal prompts a revenge
• In The Maltese Falcon, Marlow starts an
  investigation after his client requests it.

24
Formalist Narrative

• Mulholland Drive (2001) - divided into two main
  sections the first, which could be interpreted
  as a dream (1 hour 56 minutes), and the second,
  the final 25 minutes, which might be made of real
  events. Important events in the first section
  are repeated in the second section, but with
  significant differences.

25
Formalist Narrative

• Different characters repeat the same actions, and
  these different characters are played by the same
  actors. Furthermore, the important events in the
  first part are mysterious, but those in the
  second half are more mundane repetitions of those
  in the first part.

26
Formalist Narrative

• There is not much logic of cause and effect in
  the actions in the first part. The lack of
  causality is compensated by the repetition, which
  gives the film more textual coherence.

27
Realistic Narrative

• COINCIDENCE
• According to the Hollywood narrative formula,
  coincidence should be confined to the initial
  situation.
• The later in a film a coincidence occurs, the
  weaker it is - the loss of credibility.

28
Realist Narrative

• A woman and a man separated in Paris and many
  years later she suddenly walks into the bar he
  runs in Casablanca. Of all the gin joints in all
  the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
• She did not know who owns the bar. Coincidence
  happens in the earlier part of the film.

29
Realist Narrative

• A case in which a coincidence takes place in the
  middle of a film. People in a local community
  discussing about the birds attack on school
  children.
• Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds (1963)

30
Realist Narrative

• An action must have a MOTIVATION
• One must have a good reason for what one does.
• When an action is unmotivated, it would lose its
  credulity

31
Realist Narrative

• In order that the motion picture may convey the
  illusion of reality that audiences demand, the
  scenario writer stresses motivation - that is, he
  makes clear a characters reason for doing
  whatever he does that is important. Frances
  Marion, Scenario Writing, 1938

32
Formalist Narrative

• An example completely ignoring the (realist)
  narrative formulae developed in classical
  American films
• Chronologicality, Causality, Motivation

33
Formalist Narrative

• Surrealist film by Louis Bunuel designed by
  Salvatore Dali
• Un Chien Andalou (1929)

34
Illusion of Reality in Realist Narrative

• The film drama is
• LIFE WITH THE DULL BITS CUT OUT
• (Alfred Hitchcock)

35
Illusion of Reality in Realist Narrative

• Classical realist narrative is NOT retelling of
  what happens in reality as it does because it
  extracts from the world of its characters almost
  only elements which are relevant to its progress.
• The realist narrative in classical American
  films, which is achieved through various
  techniques and devices, is the one which gives
  the viewer truth effects, but is not exactly
  real.

36
Purer Form of Realist Narrative

• Purer form of realism in narrative is found in
  non-diegetic elements.
• Diegetic - being relevant to the progress of a
  story
• Non-diegetic - being irrelevant to the progress
  of an imaginary story

37
Purer Form of Narrative

• Siegmund Kracauer finds an inverted relation
  between those images that further the story and
  those retain a degree of independence of the
  intrigue and thus succeed in summoning physical
  reality.

38
Purer Form of Narrative

• Roland Barthes characterizes literary reference
  to objects that have no discernible narrative
  function except to give a material, worldly
  weight to the description as reality effect.

39
Purer Form of Narrative

• A purer form of film realism is found in an
  incidental or contingent element in narrative.
  in the middle of the chase the little boy
  suddenly needs to piss. So he does. (André
  Bazin)
• Vittorio de Sicas Ladri di biciclette (1948)

40
Realism in Classical American Film

• Do artless arts in American films in the
  classical period still dupe you to take
  narratives and images for reality?
• Do those films that the cinema audience in the
  early half of the twentieth century took
  realistic or mistook as an extension of their
  reality continue to have the same effect on you
  now?
• If not, why do you think they do not?