Studies in International Film Critical Analysis - Essay Example

? The Soviet Montage School and the German expressionist cinema was a sort of resistance to the Hollywood film culture which almost always dominated the world cinema. It was after World War 1 that Hollywood became the nerve centre of the world commercial cinema .Hollywood conceived film production as a factory system and directors and other technicians including the actors were considered as mere links of the conveyor belt of production. It was the capital investing company that counted most. Five major studios in the Hollywood controlled the major share of film productions and distribution .The films thus produced were known in the name of the company like an MGM film or a Paramount film. They produced films which were dream like with flawless linear narrative and with little relation with the realities of life outside the theatre. They conceived of a star system to help the marketing of these films. Hollywood films were exported all around the world and just after the World War 1 Hollywood Cinema was the major influence in the world of cinema globally. Both the German expressionism as well as the Soviet Montage movement countered this Hollywood supremacy and its concept of Cinema. The Soviet Montage: Cinema had evolved a language through the classics of Edwin Porter (The Great Train Robbery – 1905) and D.W Griffith (Birth of a Nation -1915), both of course from Hollywood. But it was the era of silent Soviet cinema of the 20s that gave this language a grammer.The grammer is decided by the director and not by the actor. Actor, unlike in the Hollywood star system was yet another object in front of the camera. After the 1917 October revolution, young film makers in Soviet Union, began working on building a new cinema for the new society. They experimented with the camera and with the shots on the edit table. Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970) was the leader of these experiments in the State Film School. His famous experiment with the stock shot of the face of the actor Ivan Mosjoukin proved that a single shot generated no particular meaning. Two shots juxtaposed and clashing with each other generate a concept or idea in the mind of the spectator. Thus cinema happens not on the screen but in the mind of the spectator. Sergei Eisenstein, the most famous disciple of Kuleshov, clarifies it like this: “A work of art understood dynamically is just a process of arranging images in the feelings and minds of the spectator (Word and Image, Film Sense PP 17). Vsevolod Pudovkin (Mother -1926) and Dziga Vertov (The Man with a Movie Camera -1929) were the other disciples of Kuleshove. Battleship Potemkin: Sergei Eisenstein is not only a master film maker, but also one of the most prominent film theoretician in the history of world cinema. He developed the concept of montage further and found out five different types of montage possible-- Metric Montage which concentrates on the contradictory lengths of the shots, Rhythmic Montage which concentrates on the contradictory movements within the shot, Tonal montage based on the contradiction of color tones or emotional tones, Over tonal Montage depending on the over tones / under tones of color and Intellectual montage, consequential images juxtaposed and generating an intellectual idea. Battleship Potemkin made in 1925 carries all the five types of montages at different stages of the development of the film and hence is a text book for the Soviet Montage theory. The film is based on the incidents of 1905 revolution. The crew of a battleship revolts against the officers on account of bad meat served to them. The officers oppress the revolt and the leader of the rebellion is killed. But the rebellious crew captures the control of the ship which moves to the port of Odessa. The people of the port town join the rebels and start sending the badly needed supplies to the rebellious ship. Suddenly the military appears to take revenge against the people, and the people are shot down brutally on the steps of Odessa. The battle ship returns fire to the military head quarters. The guns are thus made silent. The victorious battle ship, now rejoined by its fleet moves on. The Odessa steps sequence of the film is considered to be the richest 8 minutes on the screen in the history of World Cinema. Here, by using rhythmic and metric montage Eisenstein is able to keep the emotional tempo high, in exposing the brutality of the military and the helplessness of the unarmed people. This sequence ends with the famous intellectual montage construction with three statues of a lion. The sequence just before the Odessa steps, the mist sequence as it is called, gives us the demonstration of tonal and over tonal montage very poetically. Battleship Potemkin still remains the best text of the Soviet Montage theory. The Man with a Movie Camera: Though belonging to the Montage school Dizga Vertov disagreed with the film construction styles of both Eisenstein and Pudovkin.He was against the story telling, acted out films. In the manifesto of his group titled “We: Variant of a Manifesto” Vertov declares that “We consider the psychological Russo-German film-drama –weighed down with apparitions and childhood memories –an absurdity.” (Kino Eye - PP1). He wanted cinema to record the lives of very common people. He wanted to celebrate their lives. And he theorized that the camera is the Kinoglaz meaning the eye of the cinema and it records the Kino Pravda, or the truth of the cinema. “The Man with a Movie Camera” is a work that shows Vertov’s fascination for the camera, his Kino Eye. The whole film is shot using candid camera. All possible editing techniques are used --- dissolves, slow motion, freeze frames, crude animation, and super imposition. The film finally turns out to be a celebration of life of the people along with tram cars, traffic signals, shuttle looms, motor cars and all that surround the man of his age. The film gives one a larger image of a new society emerging with the new man in the centre of it. Here the film itself is an image. That’s how the montage school conceived cinema-Cinema as a wholesome image. German Expressionism: The realities that the post war Germany, (1919 – 1929) faced were grim. German expressionism represents an art movement that tries to look at these realities differently. The lost innocence and total cut off from the past lead to wide spread depression and sex murders all over Germany. The expressionists tried to get into the essence of these realities, declaring that the normal sight of the facts and objects were no more meaningful. Thus in expressionist paintings, straight lines stopped to be normal straight lines. In theatre and cinema, the sets and the characters were not like one sees them normally but were shown according to the perspective of the director. Thus expressionist cinema presented a reality full of betrayals, madness, and clinical insanity, in a very different perspective. The symbolic style of representation blurred the boundaries between reality and dream. The light and dark contrasts with exaggerated settings and tilted camera angles made these films abound with a deeper meaning, often beyond the realistic understanding of life. Cabinet of Dr Caligary: This film by Robert Weine in 1919 is considered to be the first film that initiated the horror /thriller genre in the history of Cinema. In production design and lighting techniques as well as camera angles this film personifies the German expressionism. The protagonist, Francis tells a story from his past to an unknown listener. A traveling fair comes to his town. The main attraction of the fair is Dr Caligary and his slavish companion, a somnambulist named Cesare who can prophesy the future. As soon as the fair reaches, the town clerk is killed. Cesare predicts the death of Alan, a friend of Francis before dawn. Prophesy comes true. More odd homicides follow. Police follows Cesare who dies after escaping capture narrowly. Finally the police discover that Dr Caligary is the head of a mental asylum and was using Cesare , a patient in the asylum, to commit homicides just to prove his theory that people can be manipulated to kill. In the end it is revealed that Francis himself is a patient of the asylum and Dr Caligary gets ready to cure him of his delusions. All characters and actions in the film are metaphorical. The horror element is glorified through expressionist lighting with dark eerie shadows. The sets are awkward and angular. The camera angles are either extreme low or extreme high. Cabinet of Dr Caligari influenced not only the horror film genre but later influenced the film noir genre of Hollywood cinema. Pandora’s Box: Released in 1929 this silent classic by George Wilhelm Pabst is another glorious example for German expressionist cinema. It deals with the story of a cabaret dancer named Lulu. She is innocent like a child. But she has great power to allure men sexually and manipulate them. This leads to tragic consequences to these men. Finally Lulu too had to open herself to her reality, which leads to her tragic death. The lighting and sets of this film too are typically expressionist. The character of Lulu is what inspired the Hollywood to discover the archetypal femme fatale, the fatal woman protagonist of the film noir films. Japanese Cinema: Japanese cinema is another example for a national cinema that broke the dominant Hollywood pattern of storytelling .The Japanese has this knack of culturally internalizing everything. Thus when Akira Kurosawa made a film based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he created not a European or British Macbeth, but a Japanese Macbeth. They know how to turn everything into the Japanese mould. Two main genres of Japanese cinema are gendai-geki and jidai -geki traditions. Gendai-geki films are period films and are centered often on lonely warriors struggling to reconcile between social obligations and one’s own true feelings. Most of the Samurai films belong to this category. Jidai –geki films deal with the day today life of the people and their struggles. Seven Samurai: Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film is a samurai classic belonging to the gendai-geki tradition .The film tells the tale of 16th century Japan where in a village, the farmers are raided and looted by gangs of bandits. A team of seven samurai soldiers come to rescue the villagers. The film has three sections. The first section introduces the panic stricken villagers and the seven samurai. The characters and their relationships are very clearly introduced. The second section deals with the preparation of the villagers for war under the guidance of the Samurai. They are taught how to use their arms and there is a clear bonding happening between the samurai soldiers and the farmers. The third section is the battle. The samurai attack the bandits in advance before they could come to the village. But the bandits have guns which was a clear advantage over the fighting farmers. The farmer army led by the samurai steals one of the guns and fights back. The farmers win the war. But for the samurai no victory means anything. He will have to move to the next battle field. The leader of the Samurai says “So again we are defeated. The farmers have won. Not us”. The film ends in this melancholy tone. In the film Kurosawa uses deep focus camera technique and keeps all the action and actors involved, in focus regardless of their distance from the lens. Close ups are rare and are used with a specific purpose. Because of this brilliant camera technique, the battle scenes are not at all chaotic. They are so realistic. Kurosawa captures all the seven samurai in the same shot when ever possible. The figures are shot silhouetted against the horizon. The sequences are well choreographed and many scenes are left without any imposed music. The ambience audio carries the scenes through. Seven Samurai is often considered as one of the best Japanese movie ever made. Tokyo Story: Tokyo story (1953) by Yasujiro Ozu is yet another great Japanese classic belonging to the jidai -geki tradition. It tells the story of the isolation of elders in post war Japanese society dominated by very ambitious new generation. An elderly couple living in a tiny town decides to visit their children to escape loneliness and to spend some time with their grand children. But no where were they welcome. They get neglected everywhere and finally feel guilty of troubling their children. They find out that there is little virtue and more vanities in their children .On the train back home the old lady get sick and dies. The old man is left desolate and totally lonely. This simple journey from loneliness to much more loneliness has enough drama to engage the audience. Ozu, another master is famous for his low angle shots.Ozu’s logic is that his low angle camera represents the Japanese angle of vision towards reality. During the tea ceremony, the traditional ceremony of preparing and drinking green tea or while watching the traditional theatre performances of Kabuki or Noh the Japanese sit and look at things in front of them from a low angle. Ozu argues that that is the Japanese perspective towards reality and hence this low angle camera. There are 180 degree cuts, with very little camera movements. The shots get connected through an overlapping of space. In dialogue sequences he never cuts away from the person talking. He forces us to listen to him fully. These techniques are used by him in all his films but here they help the film to resound with emotional intensity of the loneliness of the closed world of an elderly couple. To conclude: All the films discussed here represent the national film culture that helped the art of cinema to go beyond the all dominant global Hollywood culture. It was the films like these that gave birth to the great film movements like the Italian Neo-Realism, The French New wave, New German Cinema, the “Cinema Novo” of Brazil and The Third Cinema concept of the Latin Americans. --------------------------------------- Sources referred. 1) Eisenstein Sergei, Film Sense, Translated and edited by Jay Lida, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace & Company , New York, 1975 2) Kino Eye, The Writings of Dziga Vertov, translated by Kevin O’Brian, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1984. Read More