Introduction to Film Studies Film Form and Film

Introduction to Film Studies Film Form and Film Style

Film Form and Content – Stories and themes Form – the way in which they are shown

(Art) Form refers to composition, techniques and media used: physical aspects of the art work. Film noir – strong contrast between light and shadow, large shadows, composition – lamp post, wet pavement and reflection of light

What is a film made of? • What is told – stories (narrative) • How stories are told -- (1) narrative (arrangement of stories), (2) mise-en-scène (3) montage • (1) Narrative • Narrative is made of a combination of stories - Story is a ‘event unit’ (It relates a event occurring to whom, when, where and how)

How stories are told: Narrative - Narrative is made up of several of these interrelated ‘event units’ • Story or event unit – e. g. virgin birth; visit of three Magi; massacre of the innocents; flight into Egypt; baptism; Last Supper; Passion • Narrative, The Old Testament (The Bible) • Not only that, stories or event units are arranged in a certain order in a narrative. Chronological order in The Last Testament • Various and intentional ways of combining stories and event units in narrative

• Mise-en-scène in film refers to everything present and takes place in front of the camera. It includes: set, location, actor, acting, costumes, make-up, and prop • Refers to how they are shown. It includes composition, lighting, camera position, camera angle, camera movement, film stock, aspect ratio, etc. • Montage refers to the ways in which photographed film strips are combined and arranged. • Narrative, mise-en-scène and montage - formal aspects of a film

Narrative • Script writer organizes and arranges stories into a narrative NARATIVE STRUCTURE • Classical narrative structure • Beginning – Middle – End • Exposition – Development – Climax (denouement)

Beginning / Exposition • Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) • Rick, an American expatriate, runs a bar-club, in Casablanca, Morocco.

Middle /Development • Suddenly, Rick’s former love, Ilsa turns up and they fall in love again. As she is married to a Hungarian spy, Rick has to give up her in spite of her wish to stay with him in Casablanca.

End /Climax • At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her she would regret it if she stayed.

Denouement “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. ”

Narrative • A framing (or frame) narrative surrounds a main narrative and typically provides a context or setting for it. This framing narrative often begins and ends the film like bookends, but sometimes simply begin a film. • Framing narrative in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon ‘A woodcutter and a priest under a half-ruined gate to stay dry in a downpour tell a commoner what they witnessed at court. ’ The film begins and ends with the same three characters and in the same location.

Framing Narrative • The frame narrative sandwiches the four conflicting narratives of the same event – the murder of a samurai.

Bandit’s Account • Tajomaru, a notorious brigand, claims that he tricked a samurai and killed him in the duel that the samurai’s wife requested, but she escaped while they were fighting.

Wife’s Account • Tajomaru left after he raped her. She begged her husband to forgive her, but he looked at her with disdain. His look disturbed her so much that she fainted. She woke up to find that her husband dead with a dagger in his chest.

Samurai’s Account • The samurai claims by way of a medium Tajomaru, after raping his wife, asked her to travel with him. She accepted and asked Tajomaru to kill her husband. Samurai killed himself and his wife fled.

Woodcutter’s account • After Tajomaru raped Samurai’s wife, he begged her to marry him, but instead she freed her husband. As Samurai was reluctant to fight Tajomaru, his wife criticized both of them unmanly and spurred them to fight one another. Samurai was killed.

Climax: Frame Narrative • At the gate, the three are interrupted from their discussion by the sound of a crying baby. They find a baby abandoned in a basket, and the commoner tries to take a kimono and an amulet. The woodcutter intervenes and takes her to his home to raise her.

Narrative

Openings and Endings • A narrative starts from its very beginning – ab obo or ab initio • Casablanca begins with an introduction in which the film’s backgrounds are explained away. • Alfred Hitchcock’s Stranger on a Train (1951) Tennis star Guy Haines meets Bruno Anthony, a stranger on a train. Knowing from a gossip magazine that Guy wants to divorce from his wife, Bruno proposes the perfect ‘crisscross’ murders. Strangers on a Train Part II

Openings and Endings • Medias-res - an artistic and literary technique of relating a story from a midpoint rather than the beginning. • Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire (1947) is about the murder of a man in his girlfriend apartment in Washington DC. A homicide captain discovers evidence that one or more demobilized soldiers are involved in his death. The film begins with the murdering and then shows the events leading up to the killing. Medias-res • Crossfire

Openings and Endings • Another typical example of medias-res found in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather (1972) • It is about the conflicts and continuing fighting between New York Mafia families, and the death of a godfather and the rise of a younger one. The story begins as Don Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia family, oversees his daughter’s wedding. He is consulting a Italian. American who wants help from the godfather. • Opening scene