UNIT III

1) Impressionism
The French impressionist cinema is a period of time from the
late 1920s to the mid-1930s.
French Impressionist Cinema is something of an umbrella term
for a wide variety of French films made between WWI and
WWII that defy the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema.
This was a period in which many filmmakers were working
against the rules and conventions that had previously been
established.
They were making movies that challenged both their own
audience and the types of movies that were being made in
Hollywood at the time.
These films have become known as impressionist because they
tended to emphasize mood over story and took on a more
subjective perspective than was common at the time.

2) Expressionism
Expressionistic art could be crudely described as that which
seeks to convey emotional and psychological states, rather than
a realistic representation of the world.
In Germany from 1920 Expressionist cinema began to develop,
taking film as an art form in new directions which were distinct
from the emerging Hollywood production methods.
Directors like F.W. Murnau with Nosferatu and Robert
Wiene in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari employed techniques such
as exaggerated use of angles, totally non-naturalistic set design
and dark story themes which moved cinema away from attempts
to be realistic: their influence has touched films such as Blade
Runner, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands.
The influence of Expressionist painting and drama on The
Cabinet of Dr Caligari can be seen in the film's use of extreme
canted camera angles, exaggerated gestures by the actors and
irregular distorted shapes. The film shows how cinema
 relatively early in its life absorbed the influence of visual art to
develop a new artistic approach to film story telling.

3) Neo-realism
It must be said that neorealist style, like most styles, does not
have an inherent political message.
The most common attribute of neorealism is location shooting
and the dubbing of dialogue. The dubbing allowed for
filmmakers to move in a more open miss-en-scene.
Principal characters would be portrayed mostly by trained actors
while supporting members (and sometimes principals) would be
non-actors.
The idea was to create a greater sense of realism through the use
of real people rather than all seasoned actors. The rigidity of
non-actors gave the scenes more authentic power. This sense of
realism made Italian neorealism more than an artistic stance, it
came to embody an attitude toward life.

Characteristics;
 A new democratic spirit, with emphasis on the value of
ordinary people
 A compassionate point of view and a refusal to make
facile (easy) moral judgements
 A preoccupation with Italy's Fascist past and its aftermath
of wartime devastation
 A blending of Christian and Marxist humanism
 An emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideas

4) New Wave
The New Wave is a film movement that rose to popularity in the
late 1950s in Paris, France. The idea was to give directors full
creative control over their work, allowing them to favour
 improvisational storytelling instead of strict narratives. The
results changed the world.
New Wave filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès
Varda, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude
Chabrol wanted to experiment with film form and style but
didn't have the budgets to do it. Instead of succumbing to the
studio stylings, they favored portable equipment to have a run-
and-gun style. Techniques included fragmented, discontinuous
editing, and long takes that allowed actors to explore a scene.
The combination of realism, subjectivity, and commentary
allowed these movies to have ambiguous characters, motives,
and even endings that were not so clear-cut.

5) Cinema Novo/Third Cinema

Cinema Novo was a revolutionary film movement in Brazil
from 1963 to 1968. It was a counterpoint to the Cinema
Marginal, the dominant film movement in Brazil.

The Cinema Novo is characterized as an attempt to break with

the stylistic conventions of Brazilian cinema.

It was led by a generation of young filmmakers that wanted to

present their country’s social and economic realities through an
artistic language that had previously been described as being
“neo-realist” or “poetic realist.”

Elements of neorealism in the Cinema Novo may be found in its

use of nonprofessional actors, location shooting, and lack of
glitzy sets and costumes.
The films of Cinema novo are characterized by their use of
handheld cameras, natural lighting, and sound.
Cinema novo films often focus on the lives of poor people who
live in urban slums.
 Many of these films were produced by directors who had ties to
socialist or communist groups.
Several of them were made with government assistance, but
these financial ties led to controversy later when the military
took over power in Brazil and moved against ‘leftists.’

6) Avant-Garde
Avant-garde is a term used in the military literally means fore
guard. This term was used to typify various aesthetic groups that
arose immediately before and after the First World War. The
Avant-garde movement that arose after the war showed the
horrors of the war.
Avant-garde is a movement that seeks to break the tradition and
politicise the issues. It was in 1920 when a small group of
theorists first used avant-garde. French theorists like Louis
Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein sought to create avant-
garde cinema. The members pointed out that the theoretical
approach to cinema addressed the issues like realist versus
naturalist films, spectator-screen relationship, editing styles,
subjectivity, and psychoanalytical potential of a film, auteur
cinema and the semiotics of the film. With this they turned to
making film with experimentation as its central part.

Avant-garde which is also called as experimental film works in

3 overlapping levels-
o Genres
o Possibilities of film language
o Redefining subjectivity along with its representation

 Stages of Avant-garde

1. Subjective Cinema
 The major influences were from the work of modernist painter
in the early part of the avant-garde movements.

2. Pure Cinema
The influence from Sergei Eisenstein’s montage theory and
Bertolt Brecht’s theory of distanciation. The films exhibit the
structures and materiality which draws attention to the artifice of
the cinema. In pure cinema the spectator doesn’t evidence the
narrative structure of the films. This type reflects the
revolutionary role of the avant-garde.

3. Surrealist Cinema
This type denaturalizes the dominant cinematic language
bringing the theory of the counter cinema into practice. This
stage is a collision between the first two stages of avant-garde
bringing the irrational dreams and fantasies that are normally
repressed.

7) Surrealism
Surrealism is an art movement that was founded by Andre
Breton in 1924, and outlined in his book The Surrealist
Manifesto. Over the years, ‘surrealism’ has come to be regarded
as a technique in addition to being an art movement. Surrealism
as a technique relies on the juxtaposition of symbols, images, or
actions to create a world outside of reality, a super-reality.

Characteristics of Surrealism:
 Dreams and nightmares
 Human yet inhuman
 Escape from reality

8) Existentialism
Existentialism was pioneered by the 19th-century philosophers
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. It was well suited to
the intellectual and artistic movements of the 20th century
because it does not depend upon belief in God or other
metaphysical factors.

In existentialism, even events like death and imprisonment can

be meaningless and absurd. Existentialist dramas have a
reputation for being bleak and somber, but existentialism in
films often plays up this absurdity for darkly comic effect.