Film Studies Reality Effects and Truth Effects Reality

  • Slides: 19
Download presentation
Film Studies Reality Effects and Truth Effects

Film Studies Reality Effects and Truth Effects

Reality Effects and Truth Effects An alternative way to describe realism (and formalism) To

Reality Effects and Truth Effects An alternative way to describe realism (and formalism) To discuss realism (and formalism) in terms of effects which a film (or art and literature) create on the audience.

Reality Effects and Truth Effects • ‘Reality Effects’ - they come into being when

Reality Effects and Truth Effects • ‘Reality Effects’ - they come into being when representations in moving images give the audience the impression that they mimic the ‘facticity’ of the world around us, or surface appearance. Roland Barthes

Reality Effects and Truth Effects • ‘Truth Effects’ - they come into being when

Reality Effects and Truth Effects • ‘Truth Effects’ - they come into being when representations in moving images agree with viewer’s ideas of what is true about the world in a general sense. They have to do with whether texts conform to what she generally believes about experience. Michel Foucault

Reality Effects • Richard Attenborough’s biographical film, Gandhi, imitates how Mahatma Ghandi looked, how

Reality Effects • Richard Attenborough’s biographical film, Gandhi, imitates how Mahatma Ghandi looked, how he spoke, how the world in which he lived looked like and what his life was like - creation of an impression that the film is mimicking facticity, that is, a reality effect.

Reality Effects • Jinnah and Ghandi Hunger strike Opening Assassination Gandhi interview, Jinnah, 1.

Reality Effects • Jinnah and Ghandi Hunger strike Opening Assassination Gandhi interview, Jinnah, 1. 17 1. 59

Reality Effects • Film images create ‘reality effect’ among audiences when they are impressed

Reality Effects • Film images create ‘reality effect’ among audiences when they are impressed that the images objectively mimic reality. • Filmmakers must imitate reality as faithfully as possible. • Filmmakers recreated Gandhi and the life of Mahatma Gandhi by carefully studying him or his life, and by closely referring to biographies, photographs and newsreels. • Funeral newsreel Movie version Funeral Procession

Truth Effects • Moving images have ‘truth-effects’ even when they are not true, because

Truth Effects • Moving images have ‘truth-effects’ even when they are not true, because they only need to agree to what audiences believe true. • Audiences do not have to have prior accurate knowledge about what a film represents or do not need to know whether it objectively reflect reality or not. • Samuel Fuller’s House of Bamboo (US, 1955) display the images of Japan and Japanese women. False for those who know Japan and Japanese women but true for those who believe them true.

Reality Effects and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Materialist approach to • Idealist approach

Reality Effects and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Materialist approach to • Idealist approach to our cognition • Things do not exist in • Things exist themselves. They independently of the exist only as ideas that individual’s each of us has of them. knowledge of them.

Reality Effects and Truth Effects Materialist conception Idealist conception

Reality Effects and Truth Effects Materialist conception Idealist conception

Film Realism and Reality/Truth Effects • Our impression of moving images being realistic or

Film Realism and Reality/Truth Effects • Our impression of moving images being realistic or not depends on reality or truth effects, or both, that they exert on us. • Reality and truth effects as alternative to film realism

Reality and Truth Effects • Analyse the reality and truth effects that a film

Reality and Truth Effects • Analyse the reality and truth effects that a film make on you. • Riso Amaro, Giuseppe de Santis’s 1949 film. • Francesca and Walter are a criminal couple. To avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of migration workers. She meets a rice worker, Silvana, and is later rejoined by Walter in a rice farm. Robbery, triangle love and murder takes place. Riso amaro

Reality and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Shot on location in the countryside of

Reality and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Shot on location in the countryside of Vercelli and in Veneria and Selve Farms in Lignana, Piemonte. • Non-professional actors found locally. • Local dialects used • Costumes worn by those who worked in rice farms around 1949. Truth Effects • Silvana Mangano as Silvana, Miss Italia contestant, but she is a peasant woman, if you believe so. ) • Rice must have been planted as we see on the screen. We have never seen how rice was planted in Italy but we believe it was like the movies – men plough and women plant, songs and supervisors

Reality and Truth Effects • Reality Effects • Social situation - Reliance on migration

Reality and Truth Effects • Reality Effects • Social situation - Reliance on migration workers - Their exploitation - North/South divide • Customs • Lives of migration workers in farms • Truth Effects • Social situation • Peasants wishing to get out of poverty • Peasants even prepared to commit crimes (stealing and cheating) • Italians are emotional and amorous • Italian way of love

Analyse the reality and truth effects that Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algier exerts

Analyse the reality and truth effects that Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algier exerts on you. Battle of Algiers

Reality and Truth Effects • Record of Algerian Reality Effects straggle for independence •

Reality and Truth Effects • Record of Algerian Reality Effects straggle for independence • Record of Algerian • ‘I have never been to straggle for Algeria, but it looks like independence being shot in Algiers as • Shot on location in the title says so. Algiers • ‘I know that struggles for • The film based on the independence took place accounts of Saadi in Algeria and they must Yacef, a FLN military be as depicted in the film. ’ commander.

Reality and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Cast is nonprofessional except Truth Effects Jean

Reality and Truth Effects Reality Effects • Cast is nonprofessional except Truth Effects Jean Martin, who • Movie characters seem played Colonel to be real Algerian. Mathieu and all found • Colonel Mathieu looks in Algeria. like a real French • Martin served as a colonel. paratrooper during the Indochina War and knew the French paratroop.

Reality and Truth Effects • Against Reality Effects • Truth Effects • Film deliberately

Reality and Truth Effects • Against Reality Effects • Truth Effects • Film deliberately shot • As if we were watching in black & white. a newsreel or documentary. • Reality does not come American version has a with music or sound disclaimer, ‘not one effects. foot of newsreel was • Algerian music for used. ’ Algerian actions and • Music and sound the sounds of gunfire, effects make emotional helicopters and engines effects clearer for French actions