Hey guys-film scholars! Let’s hear a response!
wow. you blew my mind apart with that opening line. plus, i don’t think i’ve ever heard the word “narratological”!
this isn’t really my subject, as i dont stay too sharp on primitive and silent cinema. the only study of space i’ve done with regards to early film was griffith’s “musketeers of pig alley”. there’s plenty there regarding the cinematic tableaux, but the complexity of your question gave me a brain freeze! sorry.
what are your thoughts, Dave? maybe you want to open the debate with some meat, not a lowly prawn on a stick.
postscript Dave I didn’t mean to suggest it was pretentious. I actually know very little about the subject really. I just have this terrible echo in my head to a situation a while back when some guy got me all fired up about another subject and I went off and read up and gave him a bunch of links and articles, and he said thanks and then never appeared again on site. and the penny dropped that he was just looking for a quick way out of doing his own study. So, apologies.
I’m not in school right now-took the year off and will be back next year-my thoughts were not meant to be pretentious -and not a lowly prawn on a stick-maybe you should go to your mother and she will give you a good spanking!
Continuity and contiguous space was a challenge to the early pioneers-Lumiere’s in their actualities did understand this and it is evident in some of their films-such as the Water Gardener-think of how theater was shown to the public-the early pioneers used this model when making their films-eg static camera-actors entering the frame from the left would exit right of the frame etc,,eyeline matches and match on action was also developed in these early years.
Griffith did not invent the close-up but used it to show the psychology of his characters -the early spectators of cinema were immigrants-uneducated and out of work narrative space had to be coherent to these early spectators as they were the ones who put the money forth to the theaters.
So 5 if you’re a real cinephile you would lock yourself into your closet, put on your collection of Russ Meyer films and give it a good whacking,,,,,,,,,,,
hehehe.
the point you make about theater and early cinema is excellent. if you look at the mummers’ plays (mediaeval England) with their step from the circle into audience focus and their polarized good vs evil plots, and then at the primitive cinema, you can see similar ideas at work. Interesting that the audience for both these forms, as you say, were by and large the poorest members of the society.
But what interests me even more are any parallels (stylistic, conceptual) with the early days of cinema and the early days of film on the internet, aka now.
I’m not a cinephile. I’m a filmmaker. I hate the word cinephile. I consider it an insult to my respect for cinema. It has connotations of absolute knowledge, and I mistrust that
: )
What’s interesting about the long shots used in much of early cinema is that the screen becomes like a theater’s proscenium. If you look at a movie like the 1910 “Frankenstein,” it’s clear that staging techniques, rather than close ups or focus, are used to direct the audience’s attention.
In my view, the greatest directors still employ long shots with theatrical blocking as one means of storytelling. Kurosawa used this to control our attention in the last battle of “Seven Samurai” also, if you look at many of the group dialogue scenes, you’ll be able to see most of the samurai in a given frame, our attention is directed by where they look or if one moves while the others are still.
thxs for the replies-you can always learn from other people that is why I posted this-would love to see Edison’s Frankenstein with Charles Ogle-It’s not on Kino’s Edison box set-I live near Toronto-(that’s in Canada info for our American neighbours!) Can I get Frankenstein anywhere?
Interesting that Kurosawa has been seen as a humanatarian director-and long shots- distances spectator from subject-close-ups would emphasize Kurosawa’s art as humanatarian and in some other films from other directors Brechtian distanciation-can you compare Kurosawa’s crowd scenes with Eisenstein’s crowd scenes (no single protagonist) and his notion of crowd being the protagonist?
Can you explain theatrical blocking please?
Parallels between old and new-hmmmm how about German Expressionism and Guy Maddin? It’s obvious and its documented that Maddin employs this technique- Brand Upon the Brain is one hell of a film! What about the temporal spatial displacement in Maddin’s films and temporal spatial displacement in the montage of the Russian formalists or Goddard of the French New Wave?
Thxs Dave
I’ll have to post back a few times! But for starters, Here is a link to the online copy of Edison’s Frankenstein.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=edison%20frankenstein&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#
I haven’t found a dvd of it, but the whole film is there.
In using the term ‘theatrical blocking,’ I was referring to movement that directs an audience’s eye within a frame. A theatre director cannot cut, rack focus, pan, zoom, etc. so blocking is used to control where an audience will look. A great example of this in the Edison Frankenstein can be seen at 7:47. Victor sits in his chair and Charles Ogle appears in the mirror. The blocking directs our focus in the way a cut would, but the frame is unchanged. Within that frame, all sorts of action takes place and there is never a cut or a moment’s doubt as to where we should be looking. In addition to this, the relationships between the characters are clearly indicated through spatial relationships.
Many thanks!
-j
another term for “theatrical blocking” is “mise en scene”.
thxs for the info
now lets talk about Goddard and his jump cuts,,,,,,,,,,
godard and his jump cuts. rather than breaking the seamless appearance of reality, as it would seem, i think they approximate reality. as others have mentioned, the jump cut is like the eye blinking. we see the world in fragments.
interesting never looked at it from that viewpoint-I always thought Bazin would disapprove of his jump cuts that were done by Goddard due to economy-low budget-also spatial and temporal displacement occurs on the screen and disorients the spectator-yes film is fragments of time and space – if the eye blinks and the head does not move than space stays the same unless something moves during the blink-car moves etc,, if the eye blinks and the head moves to gain a new viewpoint of space than I would agree the comparison between the jump cut and the eye blinking
now-Eisenstein said that film is thought can we think of eisenstein’s argument as the beginning of the Autuer theory championed by the Nouvelle Vague but only 30 or so years sooner?
would be neat to examine jump cuts with persistence of vision too
maybe. the auteur theory dictates that a film director should be an artist worthy of respect the same way a writer or painter is. that a director is the sole one responsible for the vision of the film. as godard said, “one is always alone, before the set as a writer is before a blank page.”
just bought Lubitsch Musicals-good operettas-with the Lubitsch Touch
Wilder and Wyler were reported to say at Ernst’ funeral
Wilder -“Too bad no more Lubitsch” Wyler -“What’s worse no more Lubitsh films”
Your thoughts on the Lubitsch touch,,,,,
i’ve actually never seen a lubitsch movie.
let’s talk about Altman and his use of the zoom lens-most famous shot occured in Nashville-zoom lens exploring space crowd of people until it focuses in on Lily Tomlin fixated on the country singer- proximity of shot= psychologically induced characters
now application of semiotics with the long take zoom lens-=grammatical paragraph ?
your thoughts
long take/zoom lens = bazin’s love. he’d make the argument that it approximates the way we see the world, therefore is a more virtuous method. but who said cinema MUST approximate reality?
semiotics? i dont know. is the long take paired with the zoom the signifier or the signified?
lets see if I remember this crap-signifier is the symbol and signified is the meaning of the symbol?
Also there is the visual and audotory side of Metz’ semiotics
so the zoom lens could symbolize the over fetishization of a woman-eg Lily Tomlin-and the look looks back at the spectator and the object of the look eg the country singer
the zoom lens symbolizes the voyeuristic nature of cinema in general. it feels like peeping in on something for a closer view from afar from a secret vantage point. you can always feel the human hand behind the zoom lens when it is utilized. it creates a very anthropomorphic feeling.
any thoughts on the appartus-the appartus is absent from production but present during projection-or the space between the projected image from the appartus and the screen itself-what is in this space? Is it tangible? Can we see it? Metaphors and signifiers attached to this space?
Dave Britnell
Your views on the development of temporal and spatial contiguity and continuity in realtion narratological impulses and the cinematic tableaux- during the era of Primitive Cinema 1895-1910. Any thoughts of the films and filmmakers of this early experimentation? Thoughts on the proximity of shots in relation to character psychology?