3.19.2006
Classical Hollywood Cinema (Film and Media Studies)
Title
Bordwell, David. "The Classical Hollywood Style" in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Bordweel, David and Staiger, Janet.in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
The first section of this book offers a summary of the norms, paradigms and standards of what we think of as the Classical period of Hollywood Cinema, here defined as spanning from 1917 - 1960. There are three levels at which the classical period can be analyzed - the level of the device, the system, and the relation of the system. "Any fictional narrative film possesses three systems: a system of narrative logic...a system of cinematic time...a system of cinematic space." (6) These systems are composed of devices and they themselves compose the relations between systems.These norms are like a language that the viewer must learn and understand in order to watch and integrate a film. So taking up the first system - narrative logic, we have plot - "the totality of formal and stylistic materials in the film." (12) This is part of story causality - in which we can find the motivations of characters through genre, psychology,etc. Motivation can be compositional, realistic, compositional, or generic. The next part of narrative discussed is narration. In the classical film, narration is more obvious at the beginning (think title sequences, etc.). Many things make up narration, like non-diegetic music, the way shots are framed,repetition of information etc. This belies our common understanding that classical hollywood cinema is homogenous, keeping us inside the text - but this insideness is constructed. Narration reappears at the end of a text, too, with ending credits, the words The End appearing, etc. The author introduces the idea of the winding corridor as being the film experience. "The spectator passes through the classical film as if moving through a architectural volume, remembering what she or he has already encountered, hazarding guesses about the upcoming events, assembling images and sounds into a total shape." (37) "All the foregoing instances illustrate another feature of the gaps that classical narration creates: they are filled." (39)
Next we move to time in the classical film. Temporal order of the film is important, while we can see flashbacks (through a character remembering or retelling a story) we rarely see flashforwards. Duration and deadlines (Cinderella must leave the ball by midnight) also direct the viewers understanding of time. "Classical narration's insistence upon closure rewards the search for meaning and makes the time span we experience seem a complete unit." (47) Crosscutting of simultaneous or parrallel events also structure our understanding of time in classical cinema.
Space in film also serves the narrative of classical film. Shots are framed spatially to give or retain information and editing also contributes to the ways we understand space, or it is dictated, even if it wouldn't make sense realistically (the way figures are grouped around a dining table for the camera's benefit), the viewer is always addressed. "What makes the continuity devies so powerful is exactly their apparent neutrality; compositional motivation has codified them to a degree of rigidity that is still hard to realize." (57)
A type of editing particular and important to the classical style is decoupage - "the parceling out of images in accordance with the script, the mapping of the narrative action onto the cinematic material."(60) From this we get sequences of shots. "The classical sequence possessed the Aristotelian unities of duration, locale, and 'action,' and that it is marked at each end by some standardized punctuation." (61) Each scene has its own climax, but it doesn't end - that climax leads to another scene. Finally, the author discusses ways some films differ from these norms.
The second excerpt from this book deals with film practice since 1960. While The New Hollywood has changed some conventions from the classic period, classical film production can always integrate other modes (say, the art film) under its norms. Further, "The New Hollywood has absorbed narrational strategies of art cinema while controlling them within a coherent genre framework...The New Hollywood can explore ambiguous narrational possibilities but those explorations remain within classical boundaries." (377)
Next the author suggests alternatives to the classical mode reconfigured as New Hollywood. "One cannot simply oppose narrative or pleasure; one must at the same time show how films can construct systematic alternatives." (380) "Yet just as we must define the classical mode partly by its standardization of production and division of labor, so a historically specific description of alernative modes must construct the ideological, technological, and economic bases that support them."(383) Referring to third cinema - "One cannot reduce alternative styles to their productive contexts, but radical cinema, especially of the modernist sort, has insistently demanded a revolutionizing of the means and relations of production in ways that have affected film style." (384) "The historical and aesthetic importance of the classical Hollywood cinema lies in the fact that to go beyond it we must go through it." (385).
Keywords
Style, Paradigm, Norm, Narrative, Time, Space, Cause, Production.
Other Thoughts
This was a good introduction to lots of "oh of course!" moments of how narrative is constructed spectrally in film.
"Our examination of classical narration has shown that it accustoms spectators to a limited and highly probable range of expectations. Classical narration's reliability habituates the viewer to accepting regulated impersonality and sourceless authority." (82)
"The classical style can be linked to its conditions of production much more precisely than is generally acknowledged. Every cut testifies to narration, but every cut also implies some sort of work." (84)
Other QE Works Cited
Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? (Film and Media Studies)
Bordwell, David. "The Classical Hollywood Style" in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Bordweel, David and Staiger, Janet.in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
The first section of this book offers a summary of the norms, paradigms and standards of what we think of as the Classical period of Hollywood Cinema, here defined as spanning from 1917 - 1960. There are three levels at which the classical period can be analyzed - the level of the device, the system, and the relation of the system. "Any fictional narrative film possesses three systems: a system of narrative logic...a system of cinematic time...a system of cinematic space." (6) These systems are composed of devices and they themselves compose the relations between systems.These norms are like a language that the viewer must learn and understand in order to watch and integrate a film. So taking up the first system - narrative logic, we have plot - "the totality of formal and stylistic materials in the film." (12) This is part of story causality - in which we can find the motivations of characters through genre, psychology,etc. Motivation can be compositional, realistic, compositional, or generic. The next part of narrative discussed is narration. In the classical film, narration is more obvious at the beginning (think title sequences, etc.). Many things make up narration, like non-diegetic music, the way shots are framed,repetition of information etc. This belies our common understanding that classical hollywood cinema is homogenous, keeping us inside the text - but this insideness is constructed. Narration reappears at the end of a text, too, with ending credits, the words The End appearing, etc. The author introduces the idea of the winding corridor as being the film experience. "The spectator passes through the classical film as if moving through a architectural volume, remembering what she or he has already encountered, hazarding guesses about the upcoming events, assembling images and sounds into a total shape." (37) "All the foregoing instances illustrate another feature of the gaps that classical narration creates: they are filled." (39)
Next we move to time in the classical film. Temporal order of the film is important, while we can see flashbacks (through a character remembering or retelling a story) we rarely see flashforwards. Duration and deadlines (Cinderella must leave the ball by midnight) also direct the viewers understanding of time. "Classical narration's insistence upon closure rewards the search for meaning and makes the time span we experience seem a complete unit." (47) Crosscutting of simultaneous or parrallel events also structure our understanding of time in classical cinema.
Space in film also serves the narrative of classical film. Shots are framed spatially to give or retain information and editing also contributes to the ways we understand space, or it is dictated, even if it wouldn't make sense realistically (the way figures are grouped around a dining table for the camera's benefit), the viewer is always addressed. "What makes the continuity devies so powerful is exactly their apparent neutrality; compositional motivation has codified them to a degree of rigidity that is still hard to realize." (57)
A type of editing particular and important to the classical style is decoupage - "the parceling out of images in accordance with the script, the mapping of the narrative action onto the cinematic material."(60) From this we get sequences of shots. "The classical sequence possessed the Aristotelian unities of duration, locale, and 'action,' and that it is marked at each end by some standardized punctuation." (61) Each scene has its own climax, but it doesn't end - that climax leads to another scene. Finally, the author discusses ways some films differ from these norms.
The second excerpt from this book deals with film practice since 1960. While The New Hollywood has changed some conventions from the classic period, classical film production can always integrate other modes (say, the art film) under its norms. Further, "The New Hollywood has absorbed narrational strategies of art cinema while controlling them within a coherent genre framework...The New Hollywood can explore ambiguous narrational possibilities but those explorations remain within classical boundaries." (377)
Next the author suggests alternatives to the classical mode reconfigured as New Hollywood. "One cannot simply oppose narrative or pleasure; one must at the same time show how films can construct systematic alternatives." (380) "Yet just as we must define the classical mode partly by its standardization of production and division of labor, so a historically specific description of alernative modes must construct the ideological, technological, and economic bases that support them."(383) Referring to third cinema - "One cannot reduce alternative styles to their productive contexts, but radical cinema, especially of the modernist sort, has insistently demanded a revolutionizing of the means and relations of production in ways that have affected film style." (384) "The historical and aesthetic importance of the classical Hollywood cinema lies in the fact that to go beyond it we must go through it." (385).
Keywords
Style, Paradigm, Norm, Narrative, Time, Space, Cause, Production.
Other Thoughts
This was a good introduction to lots of "oh of course!" moments of how narrative is constructed spectrally in film.
"Our examination of classical narration has shown that it accustoms spectators to a limited and highly probable range of expectations. Classical narration's reliability habituates the viewer to accepting regulated impersonality and sourceless authority." (82)
"The classical style can be linked to its conditions of production much more precisely than is generally acknowledged. Every cut testifies to narration, but every cut also implies some sort of work." (84)
Other QE Works Cited
Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? (Film and Media Studies)
# posted by SMRT : 12:34 PM
