Andrew
01-06-2010, 07:49 PM
I know you guys are super busy...not. jk jk lol
I know its abit long but it would be really nice and helpfu if you could read through this and see if there is any major mistakes (grammar, shit just doesn't make sense etc.) no need to go through it with a fine comb, just let me know what you think. Cheers! Muah Muah *kisses* <3
(its not finished yet, missing an ending)
--------------
Was there something we can usefully call European Art Cinema? What are the elements that make it up, using your own examples to illustrate your analysis, or, is it a flawed concept and why? Is the European Art Cinema still with us today?
‘Art refers to a human-produced object, text, or performance which has limited immediate utility (a sculpture is not a coat rack), but several layers of extra meaning or value.’ (Lev, 1993, p.3)
Art as a subject is a difficult term to define and because of this there has been much debate and study about the subject of art cinema; the meaning of its message, the origins of it etc. Even to the point of whether or not there even was a concept of “Art Cinema”. The above quotation is a definition of what the term “Art” means. By it’s logic, there is no doubt there is a concept of Art and its properties. Therefore, Art Cinema, whatever that maybe, exists in some form. It is only up to the individuals to define what that is exactly.
When it comes down to defining art cinema, scholars and critics have debated about its true qualities and characteristics for as long as there has been the study of film. However, the easiest and most straight forward way of understanding the subject, and also prove that it very much did exist, is by breaking down bodies of work over history and grouping them together with their creators into “Movements”. Movements define certain periods and people who made films in a specific way, which fall into the same artistic category. Art Cinema can almost be seen as a genre of film.
In the subject of European Art Cinema, Europe is seen as a single country rather than the social and geographical distinctions we know conventionally. Producing films that make up the movements of Art Cinema, Europe is responsible for the likes of German Expressionism, Italian Neo-realism and The French New Wave etc. At a closer inspection, we can see that European countries are joined together by mutual funding and shared cultures; new movements form from the influence and legacy of past movements and “Auteurs” are very much influenced by the works of their peers and mentors. These many complex connections are yet more evidence to show that there was a European Art Cinema.
The concerning period of European Art Cinema begins at the end of the Second World War. Known as the start of the classical era of Art Cinema, it marked the beginning of Italian Neorealism. This, however, does not mean that the Art Film began at this time because the German Expressionist movement heavily influenced the origin of Neorealism.
‘Neorealist films can be characterized as fiction films about the present or immediate past, showing the actual living conditions of poor people, and shot with such documentary or semi-documentary conventions as on-location filming and the use of non-professional actors. Neorealist films concentrated on the character and social environment rather than the plot, and made a drastic break with the cinema of glamour and luxury.’ (Lev, 1993, p.7). Lev gives a summary that attempts to highlight the traits of Italian Neorealism. It is useful as an introduction to the movement but more background information and history is needed to fully understand its origins and ideas.
Nowell-Smith (1997) states that when the Allied forces liberated Europe in June 1944, a flood of American films from Hollywood rushed into Europe. The occupied countries have not seen Hollywood films in four years, and were desperate to catch up. The USA saw a huge market for films in Europe, both in supplying films to the big screen and also building up the European film industry once again. Most of Europe was devastated by the war and left with an economy unable to support basic industries, let alone filmmaking. While most countries at the time were content with the supply of Hollywood films, Italy emerged with a more original form of national cinema: Italian Neorealism. This post-war period also saw the first of the inter-European agreements on mutual funding and sharing of resources, such as the Franco-Italian agreement on co-production of films in 1952.
The emergence and success of Neorealism was largely due to the aftermath of the war. The European audience can relate to the poverty and “realism” of Neorealist films. The image of a war-torn Europe was one of the central themes in the films. This was something everyone was dealing with, and thus attractive to most audiences. It also stood as a symbol of cinema against the flood of classical Hollywood films. Art Cinema attracted those who were tired of the average American film, and wanted to see more of European culture. Intellectuals saw it as an alternative to Hollywood mediocrity and a form of artistic medium that address the true human experience. (Lev, 1993)
‘In the long run, the art cinema descends from the early film d‘art and such silent cinema schools as German Expressionism…’ (Bordwell, 1979, p.56). It is here that we can see almost an identical premise between Neorealism and German Expressionism. As if history was repeating itself, German Expressionism began at the close of World War One. The country was in depression and unable to sustain a film industry which could compete with the growing Hollywood system. Filmmakers found ways of creating films with deeper meaning and artistic value but with a lower budget, with a general theme of exploring the darker side of human emotion. This movement shared a similar background with Italian Neorealism but while the Neorealist film was concerned with portraying a heightened sense of reality, the Expressionist film goes towards the polar opposite. ‘The impact of Expressionism on cinema of the Weimar Republic cannot be understated. The use of artificial light and shadows, the atmosphere of unease, exaggerated acting styles, themes of psychological expression and a pervading sense of horror and the supernatural, can all be traced back to Expressionism in its literary, artistic or theatrical manifestations.’ (Roberts, 2008, p.10). With one movement concerning realism and the other concerning non-realism, their underlying ideas are, however, the same as both appeared as the result of war and poverty, and deal with issues that revolve around these themes.
The typical film, as the average person knows it, is a product of Hollywood because American films have dominated the market ever since the 1920s. The style of Hollywood has become known as Classical Narration. It is the mainstream method of communication in film we all identify with classical Hollywood cinema, such as, the cause and effect linkage of events and goal-orientated characters. However, according to David Bordwell: ‘The predominance of classical Hollywood films, and consequently classical narration, is a historical fact, but film history is not a monolith. Under various circumstances, there have appeared alternative modes of narration.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.205). What Bordwell means is that there are other forms of narration in film, in other words, the art film counters the classical narrative.
Bordwell (1979) asserts that art cinema opposes the classical norm by creating a loose chain of events that are ambiguous to what happens in the storyline. Characters have less defined goals that trigger them to follow a linear path to a resolution. For example, in the case of the Italian Neorealist film: Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica, the fate of the father and son is uncertain. Having failed at recovering their bicycle, they are only seen walking away into the distance before the film closes.
Art cinema is motivated by two ideas: realism and authorial expressiveness. It shows us, in the case of Neorealism, real locations and uses non-professional actors. In the movie Bicycle Thieves, the actor Lamberto Maggiorani, who portrayed the character Antonio Ricc, was a factory worker in real life. This means acting in Neorealist cinema is always amateur. This, however, is preferred because it is considered closer to reality. Art cinema gives characters real problems to deal with, for example, “lack of communication” and “alienation”. In the case of the French New Wave film: Le Mepris, Camille and Paul’s relationship is driven apart by failure of communicating. Seemingly, art cinema also provides “realistic” or psychologically complex characters.
‘The narration knows that life is more complex than art can ever be, and – a new twist of the realistic screw – the only way to respect this complexity is to leave causes dangling and questions unanswered.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.210). This beautifully explains the fundamental ideas on realism in art cinema. Reality is a goal in which the art film’s school of thinking strives to achieve. It believes that cinema’s objective is to get as close to portraying real life as possible. Characters lack definable desires and goals. This can be clearly seen in Antonioni’s film: The Passenger, where the protagonist drifts from location to location without a clear reason as to why he does so. Characters may be introduced in the middle of the story and never reappear again. Certain events that happen in the course of the film may not mean anything in the end.
As mentioned above, authorial expressiveness is a key idea in art cinema. The author of a film, just like a book, is responsible for creating the work that is showcased to the audience. That said, the director of a film is responsible for presenting the story and communication of the film to its audience. In art cinema, the style in which the film is presented is much more tainted by the hand of the director than its classical counterpart. One of the reasons why, Bordwell (1979) states, is because the art film director has more artistic freedom than those in America; who are governed by the codes of production of Hollywood. With this in mind, the author is the force who communicates the meaning of the film.
Those who view art films understand that there is a heavy hand that operates the artistic style in the narration. The author wants the audience to know it is his or her work they are viewing, and thus stresses on the authorial presence in a story. This is done in a number of ways, for example, the use of flash-forward. ‘The flash-forward is unthinkable in the classical narrative cinema, which seeks to retard the ending and efface the mode or narration. But in the art cinema, the flash-forward functions perfectly to stress authorial presence: we must notice how the narrator teases us with knowledge that no other character can have.’ (Bordwell, 1979, p.60).
At this point, it seems appropriate to mention the French New Wave before going on further about the ideas of art cinema. Much like Italian Neorealism, the New Wave began as the result of WWII. The French national cinema was decimated in Paris, and there was a flood of Hollywood films coming into Europe. French films then tried to emulate Hollywood standards by producing films that had ‘international’ appeal, incorporating grand production methods and well-known stars. This appeal towards the French public was possibly due to the fact that these films were highly stylized and far from reality which allowed the audience to turn away from the memories of the war. However, in the 1950s, a group of young film critics began hitting back at the mainstream trends of French cinema. Dissatisfied by the direction cinema was heading, they called for a more realistic approach than what they termed as ‘le cinema de papa’ (Dad’s cinema). These critics voiced their unified opinions through the film publication ‘Cahiers du Cinema’, founded by Andre Bazin. Notable individuals of the magazine were: Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Doniol Valcroze and Claude Chabrol. (Kline, 2002).
Andre Bazin is known as the father of French New Wave due to his work in Cahiers du Cinema. By uniting an army of like-minded followers, he attacked traditional cinema and paved the way for the future of the new wave. Although impossible to date the birth of the new wave, many consider the first issue of Cahiers du Cinema, published in November 1953, to be the landmark in which everything begun. There is no doubt Bazin’s ideas greatly influenced the literary and later cinematic works of individuals such as Truffaut and Godard. Bazin was firmly rooted in realism and believed that cinema was an art, capable of conveying an abstract meaning in its own language and narrative. The group was also responsible for its ‘politique des auteurs’ (auteur policy), a set of ideas that governed the foundation of the new wave. The auteur policy states that the film is evidence of the director’s artistic vision, his or her expression in film art. Whether the filmmaker is good or bad, he possesses a personal style that comes across in his films. Therefore politique des auteurs is a method in which films can be analyzed and judged on the basis of the author’s body of work. This sets apart the art film and Hollywood film, which seems to follow a standardized way of producing films. (Kline, 2002).
The debate on whether or not there was a European Art Cinema has been clearly justified so far. However, the theories and concepts that come with it are not completely perfect. There are flaws in certain ideas, especially as time moves on and movements die out.
Bordwell (1979) asserts ‘Realism and authorial expressivity, then, will be the means whereby the art film unifies itself. Yet these means now seem contradictory. Verisimilitude, objective or subjective, is inconsistent with am intrusive author.’ (p.60). What he means is that these two concepts, which are accountable for the core of the art film, seem to discredit each other when placed in the same context. This is true, the use of flash-forward as a narrative technique breaks up the linear form of storytelling. It immediately makes us conscious of the author’s work when it breaks the flow. This, however, seems to destroy the idea of realism as the audience are now conscious that they are watching a film. In the opening scene of the French New Wave film ‘Le Mepris’, Camille and Paul are seen lying in bed talking. Here, Godard’s heavy artistic expression is shown by color filters changing throughout the scene. This serves to reject the notion of realism and seems makes the two fundamental ideas obsolete. (Bordwell, 1979).
Bordwell (1979) then argues that the art film seeks to overcome this by the device of ambiguity. Just like the quote mentioned before, art cinema understands that life and reality can never really be perfectly simulated as the cause and effect is too complex. Therefore, the only way around this is by leaving happenings and events unanswered, simply writing it off as ‘life is ambiguous’ and there is rarely ever any true resolve in situations. This also is true, as shown in the Neorealist film ‘Bicycle Thieves’. Many shots in the film comprises of Antonio and his son walking around Rome performing the most mundane tasks without a clear plan as to how they will catch the thief. It is conscious to the viewer that they are witnessing a film which has included scenes otherwise would have been wiped during the editing process in a Hollywood film. The reasons for that not being the case in art cinema is because it exhibits a higher sense of realism to the film. By placing ambiguous events and chance happenings, for example, it is by chance Antonio discovers his bicycle and looses it again; the author’s hand in the film is hidden and realism is uncompromised.
‘Certainly the art film relies upon psychological causation no less than does the classical narrative. But the prototypical characters of art cinema tend to lack clear-cut traits, motives, and goals. Protagonists may act inconsistently… This is evidently an effect of narration, which can play down characters’ causal projects, keep silent about their motives, emphasize “insignificant” actions and intervals, and never reveal effects of actions.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.207). David Bordwell’s argument is a valid one and as a whole supports the ideas of art cinema. However, one can argue that, based on the auteur theory, the director’s personal vision in a film may not be correctly understood by its audience due to the fact that there is so much ambiguity in its narrative. It is not a scientific method of communication as it is after all an art form. By Bordwell’s logic, ambiguity hides the intrusive author. However, the audience may be conscious of this, and thus makes the point of ambiguity futile. In order words, it may be clear to the viewer that the narrative is unclear and if anything makes them more aware of the presence of the author. Bordwell (1985) continues ‘If the Hollywood protagonist speeds toward a target, the art-film protagonist is presented as sliding passively from one situation to another.’ (p.207). This is most obvious in the film ‘The Passenger’, where David moves from location to location, and the incredibly long ‘Le Mepris’ scene of the fight between Camille and Paul in their home. The flaw of art cinema can be seen through these examples as they are almost too stylized and at times overdone. People in real life don’t just slide aimlessly through life as most individuals are motivated by clear goals and react to confrontation and occurrences in life. It is true that much of reality is ambiguous but there also is a defined line operating as well. When a director decides to play with this balance, the audiences have the right to judge whether or not the film is realistic. By over stylizing the narrative, it inevitably affects the realism of the film and could result in a product that is even less in touch with reality than that produced by the classical narrative. This leads to the next and last point in the argument as Bordwell (1985) writes ‘Of course the realism of art cinema is no more “real” than that of the classical film; it is simply a different canon of realistic motivation…’ (p.206). If one was to take his argument literally, bordwell is correct. This is because no matter what the attempts of capturing “reality” are, in the case of Neorealism’s use of non-professional actors and real locations, it is still under a controlled and artificial environment. There is a director overlooking the events taking place and a script that has to be followed. Nothing in fiction film is ever completely realistic. As some purists may say, the closest one can get to reality is documentary style filmmaking without the use of editing. That said, the competition between the art film and classical narrative on the basis of realism can be argued as pointless.
I know its abit long but it would be really nice and helpfu if you could read through this and see if there is any major mistakes (grammar, shit just doesn't make sense etc.) no need to go through it with a fine comb, just let me know what you think. Cheers! Muah Muah *kisses* <3
(its not finished yet, missing an ending)
--------------
Was there something we can usefully call European Art Cinema? What are the elements that make it up, using your own examples to illustrate your analysis, or, is it a flawed concept and why? Is the European Art Cinema still with us today?
‘Art refers to a human-produced object, text, or performance which has limited immediate utility (a sculpture is not a coat rack), but several layers of extra meaning or value.’ (Lev, 1993, p.3)
Art as a subject is a difficult term to define and because of this there has been much debate and study about the subject of art cinema; the meaning of its message, the origins of it etc. Even to the point of whether or not there even was a concept of “Art Cinema”. The above quotation is a definition of what the term “Art” means. By it’s logic, there is no doubt there is a concept of Art and its properties. Therefore, Art Cinema, whatever that maybe, exists in some form. It is only up to the individuals to define what that is exactly.
When it comes down to defining art cinema, scholars and critics have debated about its true qualities and characteristics for as long as there has been the study of film. However, the easiest and most straight forward way of understanding the subject, and also prove that it very much did exist, is by breaking down bodies of work over history and grouping them together with their creators into “Movements”. Movements define certain periods and people who made films in a specific way, which fall into the same artistic category. Art Cinema can almost be seen as a genre of film.
In the subject of European Art Cinema, Europe is seen as a single country rather than the social and geographical distinctions we know conventionally. Producing films that make up the movements of Art Cinema, Europe is responsible for the likes of German Expressionism, Italian Neo-realism and The French New Wave etc. At a closer inspection, we can see that European countries are joined together by mutual funding and shared cultures; new movements form from the influence and legacy of past movements and “Auteurs” are very much influenced by the works of their peers and mentors. These many complex connections are yet more evidence to show that there was a European Art Cinema.
The concerning period of European Art Cinema begins at the end of the Second World War. Known as the start of the classical era of Art Cinema, it marked the beginning of Italian Neorealism. This, however, does not mean that the Art Film began at this time because the German Expressionist movement heavily influenced the origin of Neorealism.
‘Neorealist films can be characterized as fiction films about the present or immediate past, showing the actual living conditions of poor people, and shot with such documentary or semi-documentary conventions as on-location filming and the use of non-professional actors. Neorealist films concentrated on the character and social environment rather than the plot, and made a drastic break with the cinema of glamour and luxury.’ (Lev, 1993, p.7). Lev gives a summary that attempts to highlight the traits of Italian Neorealism. It is useful as an introduction to the movement but more background information and history is needed to fully understand its origins and ideas.
Nowell-Smith (1997) states that when the Allied forces liberated Europe in June 1944, a flood of American films from Hollywood rushed into Europe. The occupied countries have not seen Hollywood films in four years, and were desperate to catch up. The USA saw a huge market for films in Europe, both in supplying films to the big screen and also building up the European film industry once again. Most of Europe was devastated by the war and left with an economy unable to support basic industries, let alone filmmaking. While most countries at the time were content with the supply of Hollywood films, Italy emerged with a more original form of national cinema: Italian Neorealism. This post-war period also saw the first of the inter-European agreements on mutual funding and sharing of resources, such as the Franco-Italian agreement on co-production of films in 1952.
The emergence and success of Neorealism was largely due to the aftermath of the war. The European audience can relate to the poverty and “realism” of Neorealist films. The image of a war-torn Europe was one of the central themes in the films. This was something everyone was dealing with, and thus attractive to most audiences. It also stood as a symbol of cinema against the flood of classical Hollywood films. Art Cinema attracted those who were tired of the average American film, and wanted to see more of European culture. Intellectuals saw it as an alternative to Hollywood mediocrity and a form of artistic medium that address the true human experience. (Lev, 1993)
‘In the long run, the art cinema descends from the early film d‘art and such silent cinema schools as German Expressionism…’ (Bordwell, 1979, p.56). It is here that we can see almost an identical premise between Neorealism and German Expressionism. As if history was repeating itself, German Expressionism began at the close of World War One. The country was in depression and unable to sustain a film industry which could compete with the growing Hollywood system. Filmmakers found ways of creating films with deeper meaning and artistic value but with a lower budget, with a general theme of exploring the darker side of human emotion. This movement shared a similar background with Italian Neorealism but while the Neorealist film was concerned with portraying a heightened sense of reality, the Expressionist film goes towards the polar opposite. ‘The impact of Expressionism on cinema of the Weimar Republic cannot be understated. The use of artificial light and shadows, the atmosphere of unease, exaggerated acting styles, themes of psychological expression and a pervading sense of horror and the supernatural, can all be traced back to Expressionism in its literary, artistic or theatrical manifestations.’ (Roberts, 2008, p.10). With one movement concerning realism and the other concerning non-realism, their underlying ideas are, however, the same as both appeared as the result of war and poverty, and deal with issues that revolve around these themes.
The typical film, as the average person knows it, is a product of Hollywood because American films have dominated the market ever since the 1920s. The style of Hollywood has become known as Classical Narration. It is the mainstream method of communication in film we all identify with classical Hollywood cinema, such as, the cause and effect linkage of events and goal-orientated characters. However, according to David Bordwell: ‘The predominance of classical Hollywood films, and consequently classical narration, is a historical fact, but film history is not a monolith. Under various circumstances, there have appeared alternative modes of narration.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.205). What Bordwell means is that there are other forms of narration in film, in other words, the art film counters the classical narrative.
Bordwell (1979) asserts that art cinema opposes the classical norm by creating a loose chain of events that are ambiguous to what happens in the storyline. Characters have less defined goals that trigger them to follow a linear path to a resolution. For example, in the case of the Italian Neorealist film: Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica, the fate of the father and son is uncertain. Having failed at recovering their bicycle, they are only seen walking away into the distance before the film closes.
Art cinema is motivated by two ideas: realism and authorial expressiveness. It shows us, in the case of Neorealism, real locations and uses non-professional actors. In the movie Bicycle Thieves, the actor Lamberto Maggiorani, who portrayed the character Antonio Ricc, was a factory worker in real life. This means acting in Neorealist cinema is always amateur. This, however, is preferred because it is considered closer to reality. Art cinema gives characters real problems to deal with, for example, “lack of communication” and “alienation”. In the case of the French New Wave film: Le Mepris, Camille and Paul’s relationship is driven apart by failure of communicating. Seemingly, art cinema also provides “realistic” or psychologically complex characters.
‘The narration knows that life is more complex than art can ever be, and – a new twist of the realistic screw – the only way to respect this complexity is to leave causes dangling and questions unanswered.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.210). This beautifully explains the fundamental ideas on realism in art cinema. Reality is a goal in which the art film’s school of thinking strives to achieve. It believes that cinema’s objective is to get as close to portraying real life as possible. Characters lack definable desires and goals. This can be clearly seen in Antonioni’s film: The Passenger, where the protagonist drifts from location to location without a clear reason as to why he does so. Characters may be introduced in the middle of the story and never reappear again. Certain events that happen in the course of the film may not mean anything in the end.
As mentioned above, authorial expressiveness is a key idea in art cinema. The author of a film, just like a book, is responsible for creating the work that is showcased to the audience. That said, the director of a film is responsible for presenting the story and communication of the film to its audience. In art cinema, the style in which the film is presented is much more tainted by the hand of the director than its classical counterpart. One of the reasons why, Bordwell (1979) states, is because the art film director has more artistic freedom than those in America; who are governed by the codes of production of Hollywood. With this in mind, the author is the force who communicates the meaning of the film.
Those who view art films understand that there is a heavy hand that operates the artistic style in the narration. The author wants the audience to know it is his or her work they are viewing, and thus stresses on the authorial presence in a story. This is done in a number of ways, for example, the use of flash-forward. ‘The flash-forward is unthinkable in the classical narrative cinema, which seeks to retard the ending and efface the mode or narration. But in the art cinema, the flash-forward functions perfectly to stress authorial presence: we must notice how the narrator teases us with knowledge that no other character can have.’ (Bordwell, 1979, p.60).
At this point, it seems appropriate to mention the French New Wave before going on further about the ideas of art cinema. Much like Italian Neorealism, the New Wave began as the result of WWII. The French national cinema was decimated in Paris, and there was a flood of Hollywood films coming into Europe. French films then tried to emulate Hollywood standards by producing films that had ‘international’ appeal, incorporating grand production methods and well-known stars. This appeal towards the French public was possibly due to the fact that these films were highly stylized and far from reality which allowed the audience to turn away from the memories of the war. However, in the 1950s, a group of young film critics began hitting back at the mainstream trends of French cinema. Dissatisfied by the direction cinema was heading, they called for a more realistic approach than what they termed as ‘le cinema de papa’ (Dad’s cinema). These critics voiced their unified opinions through the film publication ‘Cahiers du Cinema’, founded by Andre Bazin. Notable individuals of the magazine were: Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Doniol Valcroze and Claude Chabrol. (Kline, 2002).
Andre Bazin is known as the father of French New Wave due to his work in Cahiers du Cinema. By uniting an army of like-minded followers, he attacked traditional cinema and paved the way for the future of the new wave. Although impossible to date the birth of the new wave, many consider the first issue of Cahiers du Cinema, published in November 1953, to be the landmark in which everything begun. There is no doubt Bazin’s ideas greatly influenced the literary and later cinematic works of individuals such as Truffaut and Godard. Bazin was firmly rooted in realism and believed that cinema was an art, capable of conveying an abstract meaning in its own language and narrative. The group was also responsible for its ‘politique des auteurs’ (auteur policy), a set of ideas that governed the foundation of the new wave. The auteur policy states that the film is evidence of the director’s artistic vision, his or her expression in film art. Whether the filmmaker is good or bad, he possesses a personal style that comes across in his films. Therefore politique des auteurs is a method in which films can be analyzed and judged on the basis of the author’s body of work. This sets apart the art film and Hollywood film, which seems to follow a standardized way of producing films. (Kline, 2002).
The debate on whether or not there was a European Art Cinema has been clearly justified so far. However, the theories and concepts that come with it are not completely perfect. There are flaws in certain ideas, especially as time moves on and movements die out.
Bordwell (1979) asserts ‘Realism and authorial expressivity, then, will be the means whereby the art film unifies itself. Yet these means now seem contradictory. Verisimilitude, objective or subjective, is inconsistent with am intrusive author.’ (p.60). What he means is that these two concepts, which are accountable for the core of the art film, seem to discredit each other when placed in the same context. This is true, the use of flash-forward as a narrative technique breaks up the linear form of storytelling. It immediately makes us conscious of the author’s work when it breaks the flow. This, however, seems to destroy the idea of realism as the audience are now conscious that they are watching a film. In the opening scene of the French New Wave film ‘Le Mepris’, Camille and Paul are seen lying in bed talking. Here, Godard’s heavy artistic expression is shown by color filters changing throughout the scene. This serves to reject the notion of realism and seems makes the two fundamental ideas obsolete. (Bordwell, 1979).
Bordwell (1979) then argues that the art film seeks to overcome this by the device of ambiguity. Just like the quote mentioned before, art cinema understands that life and reality can never really be perfectly simulated as the cause and effect is too complex. Therefore, the only way around this is by leaving happenings and events unanswered, simply writing it off as ‘life is ambiguous’ and there is rarely ever any true resolve in situations. This also is true, as shown in the Neorealist film ‘Bicycle Thieves’. Many shots in the film comprises of Antonio and his son walking around Rome performing the most mundane tasks without a clear plan as to how they will catch the thief. It is conscious to the viewer that they are witnessing a film which has included scenes otherwise would have been wiped during the editing process in a Hollywood film. The reasons for that not being the case in art cinema is because it exhibits a higher sense of realism to the film. By placing ambiguous events and chance happenings, for example, it is by chance Antonio discovers his bicycle and looses it again; the author’s hand in the film is hidden and realism is uncompromised.
‘Certainly the art film relies upon psychological causation no less than does the classical narrative. But the prototypical characters of art cinema tend to lack clear-cut traits, motives, and goals. Protagonists may act inconsistently… This is evidently an effect of narration, which can play down characters’ causal projects, keep silent about their motives, emphasize “insignificant” actions and intervals, and never reveal effects of actions.’ (Bordwell, 1985, p.207). David Bordwell’s argument is a valid one and as a whole supports the ideas of art cinema. However, one can argue that, based on the auteur theory, the director’s personal vision in a film may not be correctly understood by its audience due to the fact that there is so much ambiguity in its narrative. It is not a scientific method of communication as it is after all an art form. By Bordwell’s logic, ambiguity hides the intrusive author. However, the audience may be conscious of this, and thus makes the point of ambiguity futile. In order words, it may be clear to the viewer that the narrative is unclear and if anything makes them more aware of the presence of the author. Bordwell (1985) continues ‘If the Hollywood protagonist speeds toward a target, the art-film protagonist is presented as sliding passively from one situation to another.’ (p.207). This is most obvious in the film ‘The Passenger’, where David moves from location to location, and the incredibly long ‘Le Mepris’ scene of the fight between Camille and Paul in their home. The flaw of art cinema can be seen through these examples as they are almost too stylized and at times overdone. People in real life don’t just slide aimlessly through life as most individuals are motivated by clear goals and react to confrontation and occurrences in life. It is true that much of reality is ambiguous but there also is a defined line operating as well. When a director decides to play with this balance, the audiences have the right to judge whether or not the film is realistic. By over stylizing the narrative, it inevitably affects the realism of the film and could result in a product that is even less in touch with reality than that produced by the classical narrative. This leads to the next and last point in the argument as Bordwell (1985) writes ‘Of course the realism of art cinema is no more “real” than that of the classical film; it is simply a different canon of realistic motivation…’ (p.206). If one was to take his argument literally, bordwell is correct. This is because no matter what the attempts of capturing “reality” are, in the case of Neorealism’s use of non-professional actors and real locations, it is still under a controlled and artificial environment. There is a director overlooking the events taking place and a script that has to be followed. Nothing in fiction film is ever completely realistic. As some purists may say, the closest one can get to reality is documentary style filmmaking without the use of editing. That said, the competition between the art film and classical narrative on the basis of realism can be argued as pointless.