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| Impressionism art movement |
Impressionism is an art movement. The term Impressionism has come from the title of a
Claude Monet work, Impression. Soleil Levant (Impression, Sunrise).
Impressionism is a nineteenth century art movement that characterized by
visible brush strokes, open composition, accurate depiction of light, ordinary
subject, human perception and experience. Impressionism was originated by a
group of Paris based artists whose works became famous in the 1870s and 1880s.
The Term Impressionism is involved in French film in 1910s.
French Impressionism (1918-1930)
* The major alternative to Hollywood narrative form,
Hollywood dominated the French film market by the end of 1917.
* Tried to recapture the market through imitation of
Hollywood production method and genres, young directors.
* Young directors such as Abel Gance, Louis Delluc,
Germaine Dulac, Marcel L’ Herbier and Jean Epstein saw film differently from their
predecessors, saw film as an independent art.
* They experimented with new cinema where emotion
became the control component of aesthetic psyche.
* In Hollywood cinema, psychological causes were
paramount, but the impressionist cinema gave narrative, a significant
psychological depth and revealed a character’s consciousness.
* Impressionist films manipulate plot time and
subjectivity; flashback is a common strategy to depict memories.
* Filmmakers tried to explore mental states through
cinematography and editing.
* Used point-of-view cutting (Showing a shot of the character’s
looking at something and then showing the shot of the looked object).
* Used rhythmic editing to show the pace of an experience
as a character feels it, moment by moment.
* Demanded new film technologies, new lenses, wide
screen ratio, frame, mobility, light, cameras.
* Abel Gance used all these new things in making Napoleon
(1927)
* Impressionists stepped their cameras to cars,
carousels, and locomotives to move the camera the people’s eye mows.
* Impressionist films were elitists, failed to make
commercial success with the arrival.
* Legacy: psychological narrative subjects camera
work and editing, (Alfred Hitchcock and Maya Deren).
19/05/2015
