Heck no,

The cinephile loves the idea of film.

That means loving not only its accomplishments but its potential, its promise and prospects. It’s as if individual films, delectable and overpowering as they can be, are but glimpses of something far grander. That distant horizon, impossible to describe fully, is Cinema, and it is this art form, or medium, that is the ultimate object of devotion. In the darkening auditorium there ignites the hope of another view of that mysterious realm. The pious will call Cinema a holy place, the secular will see it as the treasure-house of an artform still capable of great things. The promised land of cinema, as experimentalists of the 1920s called it: that, mystical as it sounds, is my sense of what the cinephile yearns for.

Now, lots of people love books or paintings or classical piano. Odds are you're one of them. However, as Bordwell observes, these sorts of appreciation contain within them a solid sense of discrimination. Not so with the rough and scruffy cinephile:

[Lovers of novels or music] love their art, I suspect, because of its great accomplishments. Who with literary or musical taste would embrace the subpar novel or the apprentice toccata? But cinephiles will watch damn near anything looking for a moment’s worth of magic.

Bordwell doesn't press into this discrepancy, instead offering a very humorous passage on how these good but indelicate cinephiles speak to one another, massaging egos or jousting in verbal contests that are a big part (maybe the only part) of their socialization ritual.

Yet there seems more to be said about the distinction in the quote above. According to Bordwell's view, the art lover enjoys "accomplishment," something achieved and brought to a close in the past. The critic loves what Catullus wrote up until the instant that he polished his verses off with pumice. The art lover looks at David's Belisarius for what David poured into it up until the moment that it was dried and varnished. Of course the art-lover surely has an affection for painting as an act and a practice, yet there seems a certain "endedness" to the object of affection. When these lovers love, they channel their feeling into a thing to which time and sensibility has given hard parameters.

But the gravity of the cinephile's love lies outside completed works, even outside the idea of completion. He or she probably has great love for things that Yasujiro Ozu or Andrei Tarkovsky put in their films until the final cut's print. But for these people the true object of affection is an idea, and so the orientation of desire is always forward-directed, looking for "potential" "prospects" over "the distant horizon" at the "promised land." They necessarily love that which does not yet exist more than that which exists. So I'd wager that the cinephile can't enjoy watching a film in the same way that art lovers enjoy surveying the Belisarius, because for the cinephile the object that promises gratification is somewhere beyond the visible. The film is not a bounded world promising some grand gratification, it's just a teaser.

According to my reading, Bordwell's medium-specificity is likewise really just a red herring. One can surely appreciate an unboundedness in literature, and one can surely feel for a film as an artwork with "endedness." In fact, Bordwell is onto something subtler than some distinction of mediation, suggesting a paradigm of two differing models of covetousness that diverge or interlock in the way that lovers of arts understand what they long for in the works that bring them satisfaction.

He is not merely enumerating specimens of people or the varieties of their appreciation, but he is also using time and expectation to draw out different types of love, which is always what we talk about when we talk about taste.

I recently found David Bordwell's blog. His name sounded familiar, and after a bit of googling, I realized I'd read his book Film Art Introduction in film school.

At the time, I found him insufferably pedantic, but I'm starting to appreciate him more. Take the following quote about editing: "Intensified continuity [a pretentious film-school term if I've ever heard one] is about using brief shots to maintain the audience’s interest but also making each shot yield a single point, a bit of information. Got it? On to the next shot."

This blew my mind. I mean, I knew that it was true. I had a sense about this, in the same way I knew what the Kuleshov Effect was before I'd heard the term, even though I'd never quite articulated it.

I even shoot my own shorts this way. I can think of only one shot in the past year that accomplished two points. I just never realized I was doing it until Bordwell pointed it out.

Excited by this concept, I called a friend to discuss the implications. It seemed like we'd hit a wall in terms of coverage; I mean, you can't have less than one meaning per shot (although the coyote in Collateral comes close).

Should we go back to long takes? Fuck Brian De Palma and his "Hey, look at me, I've got a steadicam!" style of shooting.

On the other hand, take David Fincher, and Seven. The scene where Brad Pitt meets Morgan Freeman is a single, four minute long dolly shot. It's not show-offy, MTV-style, music video aesthetic. (And Fincher started out as a music video director.) But the scene isn't boring. The writing, the acting, the composition, the lighting, the set design, hell, even the rain effects all work together to create an absolutely engrossing scene.

My friend pointed out that getting that right is hard as fuck. One-shot-one-point is much easier. Each shot/point gets exactly the emphasis it needs, because you can cut it longer or shorter, pick the medium shot or the close up, whatever.

Maybe I rely on lots of coverage because I'm not as good a director as Fincher.

...Yeah, that's definitely the reason.

Anyway, the point is, this discussion would never have happened without David Bordwell. I suggest you check him out.

Denne trenden har ført til at deep focus blir mindre og mindre vanlig en gjennomsnittlig Hollywood-film. Som nevnt i Bordwells punkt to, så er totalbilder der to eller flere karakterer holder en samtale i samme bilde, gått mer av moten. Dermed blir det ikke behov for dypfokus. En hel dialogscene kan for eksempel bestå bare av tette nærbilder. Disse nærbildene filmes som oftest med telelinse[ii], jamfør punkt tre, en annen faktor til mindre fokusdybde i moderne filmer. Hvis flere plan i bildet inneholder narrativ informasjon, velger man heller å skifte fokus enn å holde begge plan skarpe . Man har også et lavere lysnivå på settet for å få mer komfortable arbeidsforhold, som igjen gjør at fokusdybden blir mindre.

Point Break (Katryn Bigelow, 1991): En hel dialogscene består bare av tette nærbilder fanget med telelinser.

Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007): Handling i to plan, men regissøren og fotografen velger å bare holde ett plan i fokus.

Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001): Til og med pistolen er ute av fokus, selv om den er en del av handlingen. 

Utviklingen i intensified continuity kan skyldes regissørers higen etter å fange samme handling eller dialog fra mange forskjellige vinkler og utsnitt, såkalt coverage (kan oversettes med dekning). Den amerikanske filmkritikeren Dave Kehr forklarer det slik:

”If there is a single word that sums up the difference between filmmaking at the middle of the 20th century and the filmmaking of today, it is “coverage.” Derived from television, it refers to the increasingly common practice of using multiple cameras for a scene (just as television would cover a football game)”.[iii]

Å planlegge og koreografere hvordan handlingen skal spille seg ut i et enkelt utsnitt er ikke lenger vanlig for regissører. Regissøren Steven Soderbergh kommenterer det slik:

“That kind of staging is a lost art, which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. (…) That’s not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.”[iv]

I dag lever deep focus og deep staging ironisk nok beste velgående i amerikansk TV, mediet som har fått mye av skylden for at det har blitt mer og mer forkastet i nåtidens Hollywood-produksjon. De fleste tv-produksjoner filmes med et kamera, så regissører som jobber i tv er nødt til å planlegge staging og valg av utsnitt. Den amerikanske regissøren Martin Scorsese spådde på 90-tallet at widescreen-tv ville føre til

”the use of close-up in the foreground and a figure in the background, whether it is all in focus or it is slightly off one character or another –it all emphasizes things in a different way.”[v]

Scorseses merknad om fokus som er ”slightly off” er nettopp kompromisset i deep staging som er nevnt i avsnittet over. I følge Bordwell har dette forekommet i amerikansk filmproduksjon siden 70-tallet. Scorsese fikk rett, og i tv-serier har slike komposisjoner fått sitt inntok de siste årene:

House MD (2004-)

Heroes (2006-)

Ikke bare deep staging, men ekte dypfokus forekommer i flere amerikanske TV-serier, fra seriøse drama som Six Feet Under (2001-2005) til komiserier som Scrubs (2001-2008). En grunn til bruken av deep staging og deep focus kan være ren produksjonseffektivitet, at det er mer tidsbesparende (dermed også billigere) å la hele handlingen foregå i samme bilde enn å bryte opp scenen i forskjellige utsnitt og tagninger. Samtidig blir dette virkemidlet brukt bevisst av serieskaperne, på kreative måter. Skaperen av Six Feet Under, Alan Ball, ønsket bevisst et utrykk som var ”anti-TV”. Han ville ha totalbilder med forgrunn-bakgrunn dynamikk der han slapp å bruke et shot-reverse-shot mønster.[vi] Komiserier som Scrubs er som oftest skutt på 16 mm, mens Six Feet Under og andre serier som er filmet i 35 mm tar ofte i bruk split-focus diopter for å få ønskede dypfokus-effekter.[vii]

Six Feet Under (2001-2005)

Scrubs (2001-2008)

Deep focus i digitale formater

Digital videoformater har flere kvaliteter som skiller dem fra tradisjonell 35 mm film. En av dem er stor fokusdybde. Grunnen til dette er at de fleste digitale bildesensorer  produserer bilder av dårligere oppløsning enn film. Som nevnt tidligere, mindre oppløsning resulterer i større fokusdybde (f.eks. 16 mm kontra 35 mm). Mange av de profesjonelle HD-kameraene som har blitt brukt i Hollywood-produksjoner frem til nå har en såkalt 2/3 tommers (2/3”) sensorbrikke, som produserer bilder som har mindre kvalitet enn standard film. Kamera med 2/3” sensor har dermed en fokusdybde som ikke er mulig å oppnå med 35 mm film.

Filmskapere som bruker video og andre digitale formater i sine produksjoner prøver ofte å minke formatets fokusdybde, for å få et utseende som minner om vanlig film. Filmen The Anniversary Party (Alan Cumming & Jennifer Jason Leight, 2001) er filmet på DV  av John Bailey (ASC).  DV (digital video) har en kvalitet som er langt dårligere enn både HD og film, og fokusdybden er nærmest uendelig. For å forhindre dette Bailey plasserte kamera på avstand fra skuespillerne og brukte lengre linser for å få mindre fokusdybde og dermed et mer ”filmatisk” utseende. [viii]

Andre filmskapere tar derimot bevisst i bruk digitale formater for å få en dypfokus-estetikk. Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006) er av de mange storbusjettsfilmene som er blitt skutt digitalt de senere år. Fotografen Dion Beebee (ASC) mente at HD-formatets fokusdybde var noe man skulle utnytte:

"We also decided that there were attributes of HD technology we liked and wanted to exploit, like the increased depth of field. Because of the cameras' chip size (2/3"), they have excessive depth of field that we decided not to fight, but rather utilize.” [ix]

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Speed Racer (2008), regissert av Andy & Larry Wachowksi er et annet eksempel på å ta nytte av digitalkameraenes fokusdybde. Inspirert av japansk tegnefilm ønsket de seg det fotograf David Tattershall (BSC) kaller ”super deep-focus”. Speed Racer ble filmet på Sonys F-23, som er et digitalkamera med 2/3” sensorbrikke. Men som Roger Deakins påpekte tidligere i denne teksten, lysmengden som kreves for å få dypfokus kan bli ubehagelig varmt. Tattershall deler sine erfaringer: ”the amount of tungsten light needed to maintain a T5.6 stop for high-key sequences on large stages can get uncomfortably hot for everyone”. For å oppnå de mest ekstreme dypfokuskomposisjoner i Speed Racer tok Wachiwski-brødrene og Tattershall heller i bruk greenscreen, for å så sette sammen de to bildene i postproduksjon. [x] På samme måte som man 67 år tidligere under produksjonen av Citizen Kane hadde skapt dypfokus med filme to plan separat, gjorde man her det samme, bare ved hjelp av digitale hjelpemidler.

Deep focus i Speed Racer. Jenten i forgrunnen ble filmet mot en grønn skjerm for å så bli lagt oppå bakgrunnen i postproduksjon. Speed Racer er et eksempel på at dypfokus kombinert med sterke farger kan bli en kombinasjon som krangler om oppmerksomheten. 

I 1995 hadde Toy Story, den første helaftens digitale animasjonsfilmen, premiere. Klassisk animasjon hadde blitt produsert av at man la todimensjonale tegninger oppå hverandre. Ved introduksjonen av digital animasjon, såkalt CGI (computer-generated imagery), fikk man nå en animasjon som ble skapt av at man plasserte tredimensjonale objekter i en virtuell mise-en-scene.

Dataanimasjon på Over the Hedge (2006). En virtuell mise-en-scene komplett med digitale lys og kamera.  

Dybden i de dataanimerte filmene var mye mer fremtredene, og animatørene var ikke begrenset av optikken på et kamera. 3D-animasjon kan skilte med en enorm fokusdybde uten at seeren reagerer på at det bli unaturlig, og animasjonsskaperne benytter seg av denne muligheten.

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (Carlos Sandanha, 2006)

Horton Hears a Who! (Jimmy Heyward & Steve Martino, 2008)

De senere år har det kommet filmer som har valgt å følge trenden i resten av Hollywood med mindre fokusdybde. Craig Ring, VFX Supervisor på Over the Hedge (2006) forteller at man bevisst ønsket mindre fokusdybde i denne filmen:

”Live action cinematographers use (limited depht of field) all the time to to help the viewers look where they are supposed to look.  It is a tool that we have had available at computer graphics , but haven’t used nearly as extensivly as we have on Over the Hedge.”[xi]  

Liten fokusdybde i Over the Hedge. 

 Et spørsmål om dannelse?

”(…) What I call ”new brutalism”in cinema (…)  is a form of naïveté, because it’s made by people who I think don’t really have a grasp of cinemas history”, sier regissøren John Boorman. [xii] Han støttes av regissør og filmhistoriker Peter Bogdanovich: ”You see so many movies.... the younger people who are coming from MTV or who are coming from commercials and there's no sense of film grammar. There's no real sense of how to tell a story visually. It’ just cut, cut, cut, cut, you know, which is pretty easy.”[xiii]

Man kan spørre seg om skoleringen til en filmskaper har innvirking på bruken av dypfokus. Da teknikken fikk sin renessanse på 70-tallet ble den tatt i bruk av regissører som hadde utdanning fra filmskoler og kjente til de klassiske verkene fra filmhistorien. I dag mangler flere regissører denne formelle skoleringen, og har heller gått veien gjennom reklame og musikkvideoer. Nye regissører i dag som derimot er bevisst på filmhistoriens visuelle grammatikk, som Sofia Coppola eller M. Night Shyamalan, bygger opp sine  filmer med mye lengre tagninger som innholder gjennomtenkt staging. ^[xiv]

På en annen side, så kan man kanskje si at sitatene ovenfor kan oppfattes som snobbete. Greg Toland ble i sin tid faktisk kritisert av sine kollegaer for sin aggressive dypfokus i Citizen Kane.^[xv] På samme måte kan man spørre om den nye trenden med hurtig klipping, nære utsnitt og liten fokusdybde faktisk er en estetisk begrunnet trend, som i eksempelet med Craig Ring i kapittelet ovenfor. Selv bevisste regissører som Roman Polanski og Mike Nichols har begynt å klippe sine filmer hurtigere^[xvi], men bruker forsatt deep staging og til tider deep fokus.

Tidligere musikkvideo-regissør, nå spillefilm-regissør Brett Ratner innrømmer villig at han filmer mer dekning enn han trenger for å sikre seg muligheter i redigeringsrommet. ”I am not a master filmmaker yet. Sometimes I’m just trying to figure things out, so I start one place and then change my mind, and then I go back. I drive my editor crazy.”[xvii] En mer skolert regissør som Steven Soderbergh sier følgende: ”The geography of the scene — to me, that’s the job, carrying all of that around in your mind. (…) I had a pretty polished cut of The Good German (2006) two days after we wrapped, it was shot to go together very, very specifically.”[xviii]

Dette er vel den største forskjellen blant gårsdagens og dagens regissører. Man er ikke like bevisst på planlegge sin tagninger, utsnitt og staging, og utsetter heller disse valgene til redigeringsprosessen. Deep focus en teknikk som krever gjennomtenkt planlegging og et bevisst ønske om hvordan man skal koreografere sine scener.

Jan Ingar Grindheim

Frame : The space bounded by the four sides of the screen.

Mise - en - scene (the 'e' in scene should have an accent) : The arrangement of objects and people within the frame.

Sequence : A series of shots edited together into a self-contained unit. 

Most sequences represent a single narrative action from start to finish.  The special types of sequences are: a) The flashback sequence, which depicts an event from a time prior to the film's main story, b) The dream sequence, which depicts a character's internal imaginations, and c) the dance or fight sequence.

(My note: ) When discussing film, many writers will either drop the "sequence" descriptor (i.e., "In the flashback, Barbara Stanwyk looks exactly the same as she does during the rest of the movie") or will use the word "scene" instead (which is arguably a less accurate but also a less pretentious term, i.e., "The fight scene?  Which fight scene?  The whole damn movie was a fight scene!")

Diegesis : The world in which the film story takes place. 

This term (Diegesis) is often used to describe kinds of sound.  Diegetic sound has its ostensible source within the world of the film.  Extra-diegetic sound comes from a source external to the world of the film (i.e., mood music or a voice-over).

Camera angle : The position of the camera during a particular shot.  Examples: low (shot from below, looking up), medium (shot head-on), high (shot from above, looking down), bird's eye (very high, shot from directly above). 

This term (camera angle) may also refer to the distance at which something is filmed.  Examples: a close-up is shot form very close to the subject, so that a single subject takes up the majority of the screen (such as a face or a small object), a medium shot is shot from a middle distance, and a long shot is shot from far away, as in a distant landscape. 

(My note: ) Long shots might also be called panoramic shots, in the case of landscapes.

A fixed camera angle is one which does not move during the course of the shot. 

Camera angles are often referred to in degrees, according to the degrees of a circle.  For instance, if a film "cuts 180 degrees," this indicates that the next shot is taken from a point exactly opposite the object filmed from the previous shot.

Mobile shot : Any type of shot which is not fixed.  In a panning shot ("pan"), the camera swivels from left to right or vice versa without changing its position on the ground.  In a tracking shot ("dolly shot") the camera as a whole moves in any direction (not merely swivels).  A zoom shot achieves the same effect as a tracking shot towards or away from an object, but using a special lens.  Hand-held camera refers to any camera movements which are jerky and unstable, regardless of whether the camera was actually held in a person's hand at the time of production.  Point-of-view (POV) shots are intended to represent a single character's visual perspective, are also sometimes done with the hand-held camera method. 

Editing : the way that the film is cut, or that shots are spliced together.  Bordwell says this also called montage, which I have some reservations about that I won't get into right now.  Anyway, Continuity editing is the most common and has the appearance of "seamlessness."  Non-continuity editing refers to specific practices that have a jarring effect.

Editing proceeds according to "matches."  In an eye line match, the next shot reveals what the character in the previous shot was looking at.  In a movement match, the next shot reveals a continuation of a motion begun in the previous shot.  In a graphic match, the next shot connects an object which physically resembles one in the previous shot.

Not every edit takes the form of a straight cut.  A shot may also end with a dissolve, where one shot overlaps with and fades into another, a fade-out, where the shot fades to black or white, a wipe, where one shot is replaced by another through a wiping motion, or an iris-in, where the shot is gradually enclosed by a circular border.

A jump cut is an example of non-continuity editing.  It is a cut to a shot of the same object taken from a camera angle which differs from the previous one by less than 30 degrees or more than 180 degrees, also called "violating the 180 degree rule". 

Lighting : the way that the scene is lit.  High-key lighting is bright, with high contrast but not many shadows.  Low-key lighting is dim and shadowy.

Sound : Dialogue refers to words spoken by characters within a film.  Voice-off indicates dialogue spoken by a character just off-screen.  Voice-over indicates dialogue spoken not only off-screen, but outside the world of the film (i.e., a documentary's narrator).  Diegetic sound comes from a source inside the film world (an orchestra playing music).  Extra-diegetic sound comes from a source outside the film world (orchestral music on the soundtrack when the characters are nowhere near an orchestra).

 Example of Diegetic Sound from O Brother Where Art Thou? (low quality clip, sorry)

Here is an example from the opening sequence of Paprika that I would describe as a montage.  It is also an example of extra-diegetic sound:

The credits were still rolling, the lights came up, and the brewing desire to release the pressure valve fell on everyone's lips as opinions increasingly became secret confessions of an anxious reader to an absent author.  The film in question is James Gray's Two Lovers, best described by Andrew O'Hehir as "a romantic drama about Leonard (Gray regular Joaquin Phoenix), a damaged 30ish Brooklynite living with his parents, who must choose between a nurturing, socially appropriate girlfriend (Vinessa Shaw) and a drugged-out, unavailable shiksa goddess (Gwyneth Paltrow)."   The ensuing discussion skipped the usual interpretative dance of grasping connections to the human condition, or what's left of it.  Instead, superficial assessments were the preferred format of the day, ranging from Gwyneth's miscasting to "ugly" Manhattan lawyer types to hatred of the Jewish father.  Even worse, "authentic" portrayal of NY life and "believability" of the characters' psychologies and emotions were buzzing in the air as indicators of artistic honesty.  Then again, if we take the director's word for his work (neither a good nor bad idea), we would be stuck with Gray's meditative study of love as a solipsistic projection, in which the dictum "save one person, save the world" isn't that far from the religious upbringing of the main character and his impulse to save the messed-up girl, and his fiancee's impulse to save him.  Would that be the measure of success, when a filmmaker fully translates every feeling and meaning to his audience?  Gray admits to be reading Jacques Lacan and Louis Aragon during the film production, but how are we supposed to notice his subliminal projections in the final product?

These points are not moot in any shape or form, they reveal surely the film's immense ability to elicit a spectrum of responses beyond the original intent of the filmmaker in demanding a serious consideration of his work as some lasting examination of modern relationships and their discontents.  There will always be a gap between intention and reception, encoding and decoding, and generations of old and young.

Interview with James Gray courtesy of Salon.com

[audio http://media.salon.com/mp3s/2008/may/conversations_gray.mp3]

Perhaps, Paltrow's "miscasting" was not an error in judgement but an indication of an actress's failure to escape her extradiegetic persona, in which she constantly inhabits her offscreen self or play variations on an established theme whether she wanted to or not.  However, this doesn't mean she fails within the level of the film itself, rather the aura of Gwyneth forever haunts and complements the blonde bimbo shell that is Michelle.  In short, Gwyneth plays Gwyneth really well, and O'Hehir is acute in pointing out that she is the quintessential femme fatale, desirable but never tangible, her first appearance in the film marks the arrival of fantasy rather than flesh, the ghost of her former role transported to a different film.  As much as I despise the God-given wisdom of the auteur, his final say as our final say, the "oh jeez, we got it now, thanks mister," I have to credit Gray for being his own best analyst in regards to the doomed lovers' last encounter.  He mentioned that he wanted Gwyneth (ooops, i mean Michelle) to appear as if she's floating in the dark alleyway before she emerges in front of Leonard.  An inevitable farewell to an ideal woman, a Hollywood construction more real than real.  And a side rebuttal to one vocal commentator:  Vanessa Redgrave in a Joe Wright's film is not the same as Gwyneth Paltrow in a James Gray's movie.  It's like saying Judi Dench's cameo in Pride and Prejudice was also his desperate ploy for funding.  Get it straight.

Moreover, the overrated focus on a film's capacity to mimic reality, to capture an imprint of life, as if it could've existed, eventually leads us to a dead end in the art of film criticism since it means fantasy narratives are playing another deck of cards to make us believe otherwise.   In the case of Two Lovers, destiny is laid out like a minefield, there will be causalities, there will be survivors, a  safe pathway is painfully visible.  Keeping in mind that there are two separate occasions where Michelle and Leonard  stare straight into the camera, knowing all too well that their intimate embrace is one stemming from vulnerability rather than potentiality.  Only Vinessa Shaw's character is out of this loop.  What we have forgotten when it comes to cinema is neither illusion or realism, but the creation of microcosms, of fictions passing off as realities (rather than REALITY), distinct in their individuality, but always in dialogue with each other, eventually cementing into transparent codes and conventions we take for granted.  It's appropriate that critics have labeled Gray as an old-fashioned craftsman, producing films they used to make in the old days, because in the very tone of that nostalgic sentiment lies the truth of their words---he's doing something that WAS done before, just reassembled into new permutations.  That familiarity tells us more about how we as moviegoers have deeply ingrained cultural memory into our consciousness of history and our perception of everyday reality.

In laying out the above expositions on the multi-faceted experience of watching Two Lovers, I want to probe into the wider phenomenon of film reception, which encompasses more than just watching, but all the tactile senses and more.  I admit that I was giggling at particular moments in the film because those were the scenes that retreated from the overall cumbersome trajectory, moments where the characters would exhibit ludicrous behaviors such as demanding an inscription on your arm as a lullaby, displaying your naked breast to a pathetic man across the hall, or asking your son if he needs help using Expedia.  At other times, I'm simply amused by the physical pleasure of seeing Joaquin doing breakdancing or Gwyneth with smeared mascara.  Spoutblog writer, Karina Longworth even cites that she was asleep for the first half of the film until that nightclub scene captivated her to the end. Her review fluctuates between adoration and ambivalence; she clearly enjoyed the film, but was uncertain on how to judge it as a critic. Does it always have to funnel down towards a recommendation for yourself, or for others?   Film historian and cinephile, David Bordwell, performs an admirable job categorizing the nature of reception into these two components that make for competing rivals and strange bedfellows:

I can like films I don’t think are particularly good. I enjoy mid-level Hong Kong movies because I can see their ties to local history and film history, because I take delight in certain actors, because I try to spot familiar locations. But I wouldn’t argue that because I like them, they’re good. We all have guilty pleasures—a label that was coined exactly to designate films which give us enjoyment, even if by any wide criteria they aren’t especially good.

The difference between taste and judgment emerges in this way: You can recognize that some films are good even if you don’t like them. You can declare Birth of a Nation or Citizen Kane or Persona an excellent film without finding it to your liking...There aren't any fully “objective” standards, but they are intersubjective—lots of people with widely varying tastes accept them.

What Bordwell is hinting at, though he never mentions explicitly, is the ongoing transformation of taste into judgement, of elitist proclivities becoming the gold standard.  Taste is always shifting from one person to another, but judgement is harder to change, it requires an informal consensus with time as an overseer.  In my agreement with O'Hehir, Two Lovers continue to diverge reactions because it's a successful failed experiment, fascinating, frustrating, and inherently fictitious to its bittersweet finale.  Everyone left the room with something to say instead of a forgettable nod of acceptance. Tolerance would've been boring!

I will not conclude with a report on film appreciation, for a simple call to arms is much more bearable and easier to administer in the realm of critical reception and pleasurable enjoyment.  Broadening of one's taste (the inclusivity principle) and a cautious judgment of judgment will keep any filmgoer from being too satisfied and too picky with his meal.  Without reverting to archaic rules of appropriateness, when to laugh, when to cry, when to tremble in suspense, it would be better to refer to these selected musings of Susan Sontag in her seminal essay Notes on Camp rather than just grouping everything under that misused umbrella term, camp.  It shouldn't be a label, but a contentious neologism to be argued for and against.

18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naïve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying.

41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.

Just one minor exception to social propriety:  Don't ever holler at the screen unless you're at a sing-a-long.

Of course, this boldness exhausts neither the content of Bordwell's post nor the issue that occasioned it. For his part, Kugelmass draws on Bordwell's adjacent discussion on taste in order to confront a ramification of the blog revolution: there is a change in our ability to "canonize" cultural works, a task that has classically and quintessentially fallen to the critic, but which now seems unnecessary if not impossible.

Kugelmass believes that we today witness the end of the puny tyranny of the canon:

Now that the blogosphere (in conjunction with social networking sites) has decentered and diversified our knowledge of what’s out there (aesthetically speaking) to such an extreme degree, the idea of a consistent and well-policed canon has become ridiculous.

Personally, I'm not sure whether or not the canon is ridiculous, or if this ridiculousness is newfound. But let's congratulate Kugelmass on his imagery and enjoy contemplating the idea of "canon police" prowling the streets, ferreting out underground cabals of Robert Ludlum fans and clandestine covens of Harlequin romance readers. To protect and serve, you betcha.

Okay, now back to work.

Da har Atonement kommet ut på dvd, med regissør Joe Wrights lærerike kommentatorspor som bonusmateriale. Wrights filmatisering av Ian McEwans roman om krig, kjærlighet, skam og skyld har blitt berømt for et spesiell klipp: når James McAvoys karakter Robbie vandrer gjennom det absurde landskapet som Dunkirk var i slutten av Mai måned 1940. Dette fem og et halv minutt lange steadicam-shotet fikk mye medieoppmerksomhet når filmen ble gitt ut, men de fleste artikler fokuserte på klippets tekniske bravur, ikke det bidrag til filmens narrativ. Filmkritiker Ty Burr i The Boston Globe skriver følgende:

"The shot screams ”look at me!”. Wright is a born moviemaker but he doesn't yet have the directorial maturity to make a show-off moment like this organic to the narrative: You're forced out of the film into frank admiration of technique." (1)

Filmhistorien inneholder mange slike shots som er imponerende nettopp på grunn av krevende utfordringen det er å filme dem. Vi finner eksempler i Orson Welles Touch of Evil (1958), Jean-Luc Godards Weekend (1967), Martin Scorseses Goodfellas (1990), Brian DePalmas Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) og Snake Eyes (1998 ) og nå nylig i Alfonso Cuarons Children of Men (2006). Robert Altmans The Player (1992) innholder et 10-minutter langt meta-klipp der karakterer går rundt og snakker om… nettopp tracking shots.

Et tracking shot er et klipp der kamera beveger seg på en dolly, kran, steadicam eller ved hjelp andre gjenstander (Godard tok i bruk en rullestol i À bout de souffle (1960)). Denne kamerakjøringen trenger ikke nødvendigvis å være lang eller avansert koreografert.

Ett av de fire punktene i den amerikanske filmteoretikeren David Bordwells definisjon på den visuelle trenden i Hollywood etter 1980, døpt Intensified Continuity, er økning i kamerabevegelser.(2) Bordwell kommenterer også at man har fått en to dominerende metoder i hvordan man koreograferer dialogscener. Den ene fremgangsmåten kaller han enkelt og greit stand-and-deliver. Her plasserer regissøren skuespillerne rett opp og ned for å så klippe mellom dem. Her er et eksempel fra Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2007):

Den andre metoden døper Bordwell walk-and-talk. Da lar regissøren kamera følge  skuespillerne mens de sier sine replikker og beveger seg fra A til B. Dette er på ingen måte en ny ide, det er et virkemiddel som har blitt brukt i mange eldre filmer, det mest kjente eksempelet er kanskje The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942). Denne strategien er blitt meget vanlig i dagens Hollywood-film. Walk and talk er også en effektiv måte å regissere tv-serier på, som The West Wing eller House M.D.

Her er eksempler fra en del gjennomsnitts Hollywood-filmer som har vært på kino her til lands denne våren:

Be Kind Rewind

I Could Never Be Your Woman (Amy Heckerling, 2007)

Street Kings (David Ayer, 2008 )

Som i eksemplene over er det vanlig å sette kamera klokken 12 for skuespillerne og få en planimetrisk komposisjon der karakterene går rett frem. Variasjoner forekommer, som å filme skuespillerne fra 45° vinkel og la løypen deres være litt mer kronglete.

Her kommer kommer Joe Wrights kommentatorspor til Atonement inn i bildet. Robbie og Cecilia (Keira Knighley) går sammen ned til brønnen (der katalysatoren for resten av filmens plot skal finne sted) mens Robbie prøver å føre en samtale. Joe Wright sier følgende:

” I kind of try to keep (the actors) moving around each other so that they are moving within the frame, because otherwise it is just the background moving.”

Spennende kommentar fra Joe Wright. Som tidligere nevnt på denne bloggen, så har jeg stor sans for Wrights kommentarspor ene og alene fordi han deler med seeren (i mine øyne) sitt største talent som regissør, nemlig staging og blocking av skuespillere.

Jeg lastet klippet opp på youtube, komplett med Wrights kommentarer. God fornøyelse!

Jan Ingar Grindheim

To make a long story short, Bordwell wants to make short stories long: he has written a long blog post about the virtues of writing long blog posts.

Here's the conclusion:

I’d like to see more of what might be called “research essays.” If the critical essay of haut journalism tips toward reviewing while being more argument-driven, the research essay leans toward academic writing, while not shrinking from judgment, and even parading tastes.

[...]

This isn’t to discourage people from jotting down ideas about movies and triggering a conversation with readers. The review, professional or amateur, shouldn’t go extinct. But we also benefit from ambitious critical essays, pieces that illuminate movies through analysis and interpretation. Web critics could write less often, but longer. In an era of slow food, let’s try slow film blogging. It might encourage slow reading.

It's a very intriguing notion, one to which I am instinctively sympathetic. Of course, "slow blogging" raises a number of questions. How would the blogger make "slow use" of the aptitudes of the blog format - episodic structure, self-referencing, links, visuals - to enhance the likelihood of slow reading? Does the notion of slow reading jive with the way people really respond to electronic text, and could that response be remade or reconditioned? What kind of thinking does slow reading encourage, anyway? Are there arguments and ideas that the slow blogger can uniquely create, as Bordwell suggests, or is this simply grafting the academic essay onto a more dynamic armature? What is "slowness" in this context, and how do we recognize its intellectual virtues as distinct from those that we associate with brevity and pithiness?

Like I say, there's a lot to think about in Bordwell's post, a fact which already suggests that the slow format may indeed have a number of unexploited competencies. I'd be happy to hear from readers who know of blogs (on film, or anything else) that you might describe as "slow" in Bordwell's sense.

Short-Term Memories

If the internet was your only source of film information, you would be led to believe that the only films that exist are those in production, upcoming or currently on release. Visit the pages of sites such as Cinematical.com, Rope of Silicon and Empire Online and here are the kinds of questions being posed: ‘Is a Good Videogame Adaptation Possible?’ or ‘Does Speed Racer Miss the Mark With Kids?’

Fine, these are popular sites concerned with popular cinema. Yet these sites not only have huge readerships, their articles are also circulated around the internet via an ever-complex network of links. These can take the form of news aggregators, fan blogs, message boards, and other large-scale film sites. The problem is that these articles swamp the internet and circulate limited perspectives on film history.

My concern is with how these sites deal with, question and write about film history. The short answer is that many of them do not write explicitly about film history. That in itself is quite telling of an apathy towards looking at older cinema and where today’s films have come from. Then there are history articles, but in many cases they seem limited in how far back they are prepared to go.

I want to point out one article I came across entitled ‘The Greatest Five Seconds in Movie History’ which is just one of hundreds that could be discussed here. The title itself is similar to many others online that use attention-grabbing terms such as ‘The Greatest’, ‘In History’, and ‘All-Time’. It turns out that these five seconds are to be found in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) when Darth Vadar reveals to Luke Skywalker, ‘I am your father’.

On the effects of the original Star Wars (1977) on audiences, the author writes: ‘Republicans and Democrats sat side by side, mouths agape, in like wonderment during the cantina scene. A Jew and a Muslim were both enthralled by the awesome sight and voice of Darth Vader. Young people and old gripped their chairs on the roller-coaster ride culminating in the exhilarating destruction of the Death Star...STAR WARS had, in effect, engendered a cinematic community that wasn't bound by borders or ideologies or even culture.’

On the basis of this article it would seem as though world peace had briefly been solved in 1977. The author suggests that: ‘That sentence changed movies and by extension, America, forever.’

If The Empire Strikes Back were such an international hit, why would it only change America and not other parts of the world? This points to the dominating American perspective on cinema to be found on the internet, but this can also clearly be found in printed film histories.

The ‘All-Time’ of the title is quickly discovered to be mere hyperbole. Instead we find a lack of perspective where the idea of All-Time hits the 1970s and stops abruptly.

Empire Online is the online extension of the British magazine that I used to read when I was younger. I distinctly remember articles on The Godfather (1972), Scorsese and Star Wars. Its retrospective articles would often largely point to the 1970s and that seemed to be the limit of its memory. Needless to say may of its writers grew up during that period, which seemed to fuel the hyper coverage of the Star Wars films on re-release.

But then again Empire is a magazine for the public and articles on older cinema do not sell. It also is manipulated by the industry: when five stars are awarded to the big Summer films, you can’t help but suspect that this is merely an extension of studio marketing.

There are certain topics that sell well online: comic book films, superheros, video game adaptations, and movie lists (Top 10 Villains, Top 10 Explosions, etc.). These articles get hundreds, if not thousands, of hits a day and a continuous stream of comments. Maybe there is no room for articles on older cinema?

But surely there are many viewers out there who want to know more about all kinds of cinema but just cannot find the resources to do so.

Alternatives

So what are the alternatives? For starters I would head for Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell’s blog and stay subscribed. Renowned film scholars of works such as Classical Hollywood Cinema and Film History, theirs is perhaps the most insightful film writing online.

Film history is so rich, vast and exciting that it can be frustrating when online writing only deals with a fraction of that period. I often wonder why there isn’t a greater urgency to find out more about what came before. Surely this would give viewers and writers a more mature understanding of the films they see today.

Over at the marvellously wide-ranging and thoroughly smart blog Observations On Film Art and "Film Art", run by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, there's just been a fascinating postby K.T. It deals with Alberto Cavalcanti's wartime British propaganda film, WENT THE DAY WELL? which I've always found to be a rich and provocative film. Thompson's post is very welcome because Cavalcanti's film, like a lot of Ealing Studios' output, is better known in the UK than abroad, and it deserves to be celebrated more widely. I heartily second Thompson's suggestion that the Criterion Collection should release the film.

Nevertheless, I felt compelled to add my own two cents, because I think Thompson's description of the film only touches on part of why it's so interesting. You should read her excellent summary of it first, which gives a good sense of the film's charm and excitement. [She has now responded to this post at the foot of her post, so you can read where she agrees and disagrees with the following.]

(Capsule version for the lazy: German fifth columnists infiltrate a proverbially sleepy English village and take it over, but are defeated when the villagers turn on them.)

BUT -- WENT THE DAY WELL? is a very peculiar piece of work. Nearly everything in it works on at least two levels, often with contradictory meanings. Thus, the introductory scenes, in which as Thompson rightly says, the villagers "innocently cooperate in typical British fashion, giving directions and offering tea and spare bedrooms," also serve a straight propaganda purpose, as a warning to audiences not to be so trusting. Nearly all the behaviour we see at the start of the film is marked by casualness, carelessness, and a lack of awareness that there's a war on. Nevertheless, the villagers are charming and quirky and appealing. The scenes entertain with light comedy, set up the major characters, build tension and dramatic irony based on our foreknowledge of the German plot, and also serve as a wake-up call to the home front.

Once the action starts, with surprising ruthlessness, the film becomes more subversive. According to Cavalcanti, a pacifist, his objective was to show that when war comes to even a place as charming as Bramley End, the people become monsters. Without the slightest change in underlying personality, peace-loving and jocular countryfolk pick up weapons and set about slaughtering their fellow humans.

Of course, since Cavalcanti had been commissioned to make the film to help the war effort, and also as a piece of commercial entertainment, he had to disguise his message. So, as Thompson notes, when the villagers realise the danger they face, "they come through with English pluck and resourcefulness – the women as well as the men," and yet Cavalcanti allows us to read the action scenes another way.

The cheerful, stiff-upper lip approach of the characters (most of them played by much-loved character actors like Harry Fowler  and Thora Hird) can seem pretty callous. "Can't even hit a sitting Jerry," Hird scolds herself, after failing to kill an opponent from a distance with her rifle. The suggestion that even within the gentlest country lady or village postmistress there lurks a savage killer is what gives the film an extra twist. Cavalcanti spoke of this intent long after the fact, and there's no reason to think he was playing up to pacifist critics -- the deep ambivalence and disgust at violence is all there in the film, as are the conflicted feelings provoked by the sheer evil of the Nazi threat.

All of the combat is presented in insistently domestic or rustic settings, using household objects like a pepper pot and an axe for firewood as weapons. The sight of hand grenades skittering across the floorboards of an English country manor is an arresting one. And the massacre of the Home Guard (a defensive unit composed of men unfit for normal service, and nicknamed "Dad's Army" during the war) occurs on a sunlit and leafy country road...

As Thompson explains in detail, Cavalcanti's career was a strange and complicated one -- he directed in France, Britain and Brazil. Like my friend Travis Reeves, he moved from production design (Marcel L'Herbier's L'INHUMAINE) to sound design (the classic documentary short NIGHT MAIL, in which music by Benjamin Britten and poetry by W.H. Auden are synchronised to the sounds of a chugging steam train.)

By no means all of his work is as interesting as WTDW. Ealing Studios lumbered him with CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE and NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, neither of which he seem to have inspired much enthusiasm in him. But his British post-war noir THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE is rousing stuff, with a sensational shoot-out in an undertaker's at the climax ("It's later than you think," declares a framed homily), culminating in a subjective camera death plunge that anticipates Kubrick's falling camera from CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

His work in the horror compendium DEAD OF NIGHT is sensational, and everybody should see that film for Ronald Neame and Robert Hamer's contributions also. The movie is not only a sui generis oddity in the output of Ealing, but represents a number of directors and actors (notably Michael Redgrave in Cavalcanti's ventriloquist story) at their very best, and ranks high in my top ten of supernatural horror films of all time. A useful idea is illustrated: powerful effects can be created by combining traditional British emotional restraint with SCREAMING HYSTERIA.

Of Cavalcanti's work outside Britain, RIEN QUE LES HEURES is extremely hard to see, but worth the effort if you can manage it -- an amazing "city symphony" portrait of Paris (Cav had worked on Ruttman's BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A CITY) which seems to throw up a startling cinematic innovation every few seconds. One startling sequence shows a steak delivered to a restaurant table, and then the history of the steak is projected ONTO THE MEAT ITSELF -- we see the cow being slaughtered, dismembered and the meat transported to the restaurant and cooked. Then the diner calmly cuts up the "screen" upon which this pocket-sized version of Franju's LE SANG DES BÊTES has just appeared.

Returning to his native Brazil, Cavalcanti played a central role in setting up the modern Brazilian film industry, but he remained something of a nomad, a man without a home. None of his Brazilian films are currently available. If you are tainted with Portuguese, you can read more HERE, including a piece from my pre-blogging days, translated by foreign hands. Sifting the words through the dead fingers of Altavista Babelfish, I find I had this to say:

"In each country where it worked, Alberto Cavalcanti helped to create popular films that had been artistic triumphs, successes and safe niches in the history of the cinema of the countries. But exactly the international nature of its workmanship has very worked against a full agreement of its brilhantismo."

I couldn't agree more.

I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost.

                        Steven Spielberg (1)

Watch again some of the great action films of all time, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "The Road Warrior." These masterworks of choreography have extended shots that let the viewer actually appreciate the situations unfolding. It seems to me the "Bourne" makers don't have the skill to put together a well-designed action sequence. They make up for it by splicing shots so quickly that it creates the illusion of intense action. Frankly, it just gives me a headache.

Craig Sikurinec, i en kommentar på robertebert.com. (2)

La oss følge Craig Sikurinecs råd og ta en titt på Steven Spielbergs Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), den første filmen om Indiana Jones. Etter 1 time og 13 minutter, prøver vår helt Indiana Jones å stjele et fly fra nazistiske arkeologer. Jones blir stoppet av en mekaniker, som han sparker vekk, og de begynner å kjempe. Spielberg viser begynnelsen av slosskampen i et totalbilde (long shot), og klipper så inn på et medium long shot.

Det klippes så til en robust tysk soldat som går ut av brakken sin og oppdager kampen. Den storvokste tyskeren går da bort og en ny runde med slossing begynner.

Her er en video av scenen:

Vi kan også ta et mer kompleks actionsekvens som eksempel, nemlig skyteepisoden i Marions bar i Nepal, som finner sted etter nesten en halvtime. (jeg har ikke tatt med absolutt alle klipp i denne sekvensen, bare dem jeg fant nødvendig for å forklare eksempelet)

Marion blir truet av Major Arnold Toht og følget hans som er på jakt etter egyptisk amulett. Geografien i scenen har blitt etablert flere ganger, ved å klippe ut på totalbilde hver gang nye personer entrer rommet. Utsnittene blir nærmere når scenen dramaet intensifiseres, og konfrontasjonen mellom Marion og Toth når sitt klimaks da Toht truer med en glødende jernstang i et closeup.

Vi hører et piskeslag, og den glødene jernstangen blir revet ut av Tohts hender i et medium shot slik at vi forstår at mannen med pisken må stå bak dem. I en insert får vi se at jernstangen havner ved en gardin som tar fyr, og brannen skal bli en ekstra faktor i kampen som kommer. Toth griper Marion mens Indiana Jones dukker opp bak dem med en pistol og sier: ”Let her go”. Vi får så se Toth og Marion i closeup, en av Toths banditter i medium close-up, før det klippes ut til en over-the-shoulder der vi ser hele banden, og en skygge av en mann med maskinpistol som kommer rundt hjørnet.

Indiana Jones reagerer på skyggen og fyrer av et skudd mot den, og mannen dukker unna. Kaos oppstår, og i to totalbilder får vi se hvor personene flytter seg hen.

Vår helt må søke tilflukt bak et hjørne, og en skyteduell starter i shot-reverse-shot mønster (selv om Spielberg pussig nok i noen shots har puttet både helt og skurk i samme side av skjermen). Nye situasjoner oppstår, og det klippes da ut til totalbilder for å vise karakterenes posisjon i forhold til hverandre.

I denne scenen er klipperytmen hyppigere enn det første eksempelet, utsnittene nærmere, og den involverer flere personer (og dermed mange akser). Slik sett kan den fremstå litt mer kaotisk, men Spielberg prøver bevisst å gi seeren et overblikk over situasjonen ved å orientere om personenes posisjoner ved bruk av oversiktsbilder.

Actionsekvensene i Raiders of the Lost Ark fremstår som om filmskaperen ønsker å la seeren få se hva som foregår på skjermen, og gi dem en forståelse om hvor personene er plassert i forhold til hverandre.

Paul Greengrass’ film The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) tar i bruk en helt annen taktikk enn Raiders. Her prøver man å skape spenning ved å gi publikum en følelse å være midt oppe i handlingen, og dette gjøres ved nære utsnitt og ved en meget kjapp klipperytme. Men Greengrass velger også å forkaste geografien i mange scener for å gi seeren inntrykk av kaos. På grunn av mangel av totalbilder og hyppige aksebrudd greier ikke seeren å orientere seg om hvor personene befinner seg i forhold til hverandre. Her kommer valget av nære utsnitt inn. Hurtig klipperytme gjør ikke nødvendigvis at geografien forkastes, som vi skal se nedenfor.

Å vise snapshots fra denne filmen vil nok ikke si så veldig mye, så jeg poster heller en video. Denne scenen er hentet fra midt i filmen (1t 6m), når Jason Bourne, filmens protagonist, havner i en slåsskamp i Alger i Marokko. Denne slosskampen kan deles opp i to, en del i en stue og en annen del inne på et bad. Det som er forskjellig med disse to delene er at i den siste delen er geografien klar, men ikke i den første.

Sekvensen starter med et imponerende shot av Bourne som hopper gjennom luften, og etterfølges av et nærbilde av protagisten når han lander i stuen. Vi får se reaksjonene til Nicky, en alliert av vår helt, og leiemorderen som jakter Bourne, i to nærbilder. Bourne og leiemorderen begynner å kjempe i en rekke nære utsnitt, før vi etter hvert får servert et kjapt medium shot for å få et minimalt overblikk. Nærmest hele kampen utspilles i små utsnitt, det klippes bare ut til medium shot/halvtotal ved et fåtall anledninger, som da leiemorderen tar et akrobatisk stunt.

Flere av bildene er så nære og så korte at man knapt ser hva som foregår, så det blir  et effektfullt lydspor som forteller oss hva som skjer. Aksen brytes mangfoldige ganger, så karakterene hopper fra den ene siden av skjermen til den andre under kampens hete.

Da slosskampen forflytter seg inn på et bad skifter stilen over til et mindre kaotisk mønster. I det karakterene entrer rommet får vi et totalbilde, og mange av klippene er halvtotaler der vi ser begge kamphanene i samme bilde. Respekt for aksen overholdes helt frem til Bournes kvelertak, så karakterene befinner seg konsekvent på hver sin side av skjermen for 12 sekunder.

Her ser vi viktigheten av totalbilder og konsekvente akser for å gi seeren en følelse av oversikt i geografien.

Raiders of the Lost Ark og The Bourne Ultimatum står som to motpoler når det gjelder å presentere sine actionsekvenser. Mens Raiders er tilbakelent og betraktende, slår Ultimatum deg i ansiktet med sine intense slosskamper.

Nå skal det legges til at Indiana Jones-filmene er bevisst regissert og koreografert etter idealer fra klassisk Hollywood-film. Steven Spielberg tar i bruk mer moderne virkemidler i actionsekvensene i Saving Private Ryan (1998). Her blir vi vitne til ristende, håndholdt kamera, men man tyr ikke til den aggressive klipperytmen som man tar i bruk i The Bourne Ultimatum. Ved vide utsnitt og klassisk kontinuitetsklipping blir geografien i scenen og mellom karakterene er fortsatt klar, selv om bruken av håndholdt gir deg en følelse av ”å være midt oppe i det”. Dette er det den britiske filmviteren Geoff King kaller impact-aesthetic, og Saving Private Ryan var en av katalysatorene for denne trenden i amerikansk filmskaping. The Bourne Ultimatum bygger på tradisjonen om impact-aesthetic, men det er viktig å se forskjell her. Spielberg, som er en regissør av den gamle skolen, ofrer ikke geografien eller kontinuitetssystemet selv om han tar i bruk mer direkte virkemidler som håndholdt kamera og blod på linsen. Greengrass bryter til tider alle regler i sitt ønske om å formidle kaoset som Jason Bourne befinner seg i og hans mangel på oversikt. Når dette går på bekostning av skjermens geografi finner mange det uoversiktelig.

Jan Ingar Grindheim

PS: Denne posten er inspirert av en artikkel på bloggen til David Bordwell, ”Unsteadicam Chronicles”, en meget interessant analyse om ristende kamera og hurtig klipping i Bourne-filmene. Bordwell linket videre til diskusjonen på robertebert.com og intervjuet med Steven Spielberg, som ble utgangspunktet for min post.

(1)http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/02/spielberg_qanda200802?currentPage=3

(2) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070816/COMMENTARY/70816001

Channel 4, home of the cut-price movie matinee, has been showing afternoon films all week starring that AXIOM OF CINEMA, Joan Collins. Two of them had solid auteur credentials, if we can allow the use of the a-word, so I checked them out. That's Shadowplay -- faithfully watching Joan Collins movies, so you don't have to.

ESTHER AND THE KING has the double-whammy of being directed (and produced, and co-written) by mighty eye-patch wearing wild man Raoul Walsh, and photographed by Mario Bava. I'd caught glimpses of this movie and I'm a sucker for Bava's trademark Disneyland Blue, which is on display in nearly all this movie's interiors. Word has it that Walsh liked Bava'swork so much he delegated most of of E&TK to him. It's certainly a film that has more in common with Bava's KNIVES OF THE AVENGER or HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD than it does with WHITE HEAT or GENTLEMAN JIM. Since Bava's primary focus is the visual, when given his head as a cinematographer he can really subsume a film into his style, becoming its auteur by default (I still don't like that word, but you know what I mean -- the person with the unifying vision). And since energy was always a big part of the Walsh approach, and there's far less of that in his later work, there is a void to be filled.

(Late-period Walsh is unlikely to win the consideration lately awarded to late Hawks, Ford or Lang. Persons hoping to admire Walsh in his Mature Phase are recommended to sit through THE SHERIFF OF FRACTURED JAW, a Western of Damaged Brain uniting Kenneth More [British cinema's perennial "decent bloke"] with Jayne Mansfield [I.Q. of a genius but she kept it off the screen] and then give the whole thing up as a bad job.)

Bava fills the void with mind-frazzling candy colours, seen to best advantage in the film's numerous palace entertainments, starring dancing girls in revealing tunics, or unconvincingly miming Nubian singers -- the voice is THAT WOMAN who does all the Ennio Morricone wailing. While it doesn't quite slide into the autistic trance-state of Howard Hughes' SON OF SINBAD, which stops the "plot" for a belly-dance every 3 frames (David Bordwell would break his clicker trying to keep score), giving new meaning to the phrase "navel-gazing", this is still a film more interested in bringing on the next dance number than in sorting out Judeo-Persian politics -- and who can blame it? Even in Channel 4's lamentably cropped 16:9 version, these scenes have a wondrous lustre and pop, as fleshy Italian chorines writhe and stagger. 

A classic Bava shot: symmetrical framing, asymmetrical and unmotivated coloured lighting on the lions.

Of course, Bava wasn't hugely interested in performance, and I know you'll shudder in terror as you read this, but Joan Collins is the best actor in ESTHER AND THE KING. There, I've said it. Such a thing exists -- a film where Joan stands supreme, talent-wise, if only because she's surrounded by an unbeatable selection of human planks, lugs, stiffs and dolts. The camp harem commandant is the closest thing to a characterisation on offer (eunuch = homosexual in E&TK's schema).

Joan's scenes in the harem are among the most amusing. She starts the film in fine form, attempting random bursts of American accent and doing truly extraordinary things with her face while everybody around her is trying to act. In closeup she's more subdued, having presumably been fed the Hedy Lamarr dictum on how to look beautiful: "Just stand still and look stupid." This, Joan can do.

The Persian shagging-palace is depicted herein as a less austere version of the famous Rank Charm School, where the real-life Joan, along with Barbara Steele and Julie Christie, was educated in deportment, enunciation and, well, charm. This fine institution is satirised in Lauder and Gilliat's LADY GODIVA RIDES AGAIN, a film in which Joan has an uncredited cameo, along with half the British film industry ("Laughable term!" says Alistair Sim). The school's graduates were trained in disguising any traces of a working class accent (the late Stratford Johns took great satisfaction in telling me how "common" the Collins sisters were back in the early '50s), walking with a book balanced atop their heads, and getting out of cars without revealing their underwear to the photographers (not yet known as paparazzi) -- would that today's celebs boasted such a skill-set!

Gorgeous lifelike colour by Deluxe!

Joan gets sent to finishing school all over again in THE GIRL ON THE RED VELVET SWING, a true-crime story directed by Richard Fleischer. Fleischer did a stupendous job with (working backwards) 10 RILLINGTON PLACE (the Christie murders, very accurate), THE BOSTON STRANGLER (heavily fictionalised) and a very decent job on COMPULSION (Leopold & Loeb, quasi-accurate as far as it goes). This movie climaxes act 2 with a scandalous homicide, but it isn't primarily a crime film, more of a woman's picture (red drapes behind the credit sequence) and Joan is the woman whose picture it is.

Ray Milland is Stanford White, America's greatest architect of the gilded age. Farley Granger is the spoiled and possibly psychotic Harry Thaw. Joan is Floradora Girl Evelyn Nesbitt, who throws herself at the married Milland ("She's a stupid slut," pronounced Fiona, and I believe there was a hint of disapproval in her tone) before allowing herself to be wooed by Granger.

Things the movie omits to tell us: White was carrying on with lots of other chorus girls too; he may have drugged their champagne in order to date-rape them; Thaw was a coke fiend; he had a fondness for beating women with a dog whip; Nesbitt became impregnated by John Barrymore; her abortion was procured at a finishing school run by the mother of Cecil B DeMille.

In the movie, Joan's abortion is instead a nervous breakdown (I guess the logic is, "We need something shameful but not sexual"), presented in a series of lap dissolves as she tosses in her delirium: montage=mental illness. Producer and co-screenwriter Charles Brackett (working with Walter Reisch, previously his collaborator on NINOTCHKA) struggles to get any dramatic fire going. Joan is remarkably good-ish in this -- she must have devolved a bit between GIRL and ESTHER. 20th Century Fox had planned to cast Marilyn Monroe, but she was on suspension. Ray Milland is always reliable, but can't really be outstanding in the part as written. Granger has the flashiest role but he can't quite make a show-stopper out of it, he's not really that kind of actor. Brad Dourif had the role in RAGTIME, and he's a much better idea.

At the film's "climax", Joan must sway a jury single-handedly, with a testimony so powerful that they are forced to acquit a man arrested for publicly shooting an old guy in the face, in the crowded theatre of Madison Square Garden, while shouting "He ruined my wife!" (In the real-life case, nobody could say for sure whether it was "wife" or "life". A minor point -- the guy was still dead.)

DIGRESSION: Now, I've seen Joan in the witness box FOR REAL, and I have to say, she wasn't thatcompelling. This was when she attempted to follow her sister Jacqui into the world of best-selling bonkbuster novels, and was sued by her publisher for the return of her six-figure advance after she failed to provide them with sufficiently publishable dross (a sample:"'Don't call me your little cabbage,' she said savagely. 'I'm nobody's cabbage.'"). Joan, her head inserted into wig styled like freshly whipped soufflé, made a poor witness, mainly because she seemed too profoundly THICK to understand when she was being asked a question, of that she was expected to answer. But in fairness to her, this may have been a deliberate strategy -- her best chance of winning the case (she won) was in proving that the publishers got exactly what they deserved when they asked her to knock up a couple of novels. Skeptics may wonder whether Joan is a good enough actress to fool an entire courtroom, but I remind you: she was playing the part of a dumb actress. "Stand still and look stupid" may be equally good advice for the witness box.

DIGRESSION ON DIGRESSION: The best movie star courtroom scene played for real was that of Lana Turner, defending her daughter for knifing well-endowed gangster Johnny Stompanato to death. She gave a real Lana Turner performance, completely artificial from beginning to end and completely convincing to everybody concerned.

END OF DIGRESSIONS: Fleischer's direction only takes off during the scene when Millandfinally gets Collins on his swing. With dizzying, nauseating POV shots, Fleischer shows her ascending to the ceiling and attempting to kick holes in the skylight. We get a glimpse of the campy wallow in bad taste this film could have been if Fleischer had been allowed to report the true story and play to Joan's strengths. The Fleischer of MANDINGO could have had a ball with that.

The movie needs more SUBTLE FORESHADOWING, like the skulls, screen right.

Is this sort of exercise necessary? It's hip to be square.

Consider Back to the Future (released the same year as NiFF was published). It might have begun with Marty McFly skating down the street for several minutes on the way to Doc’s laboratory. Instead, the narration introduces Marty by showing him cranking up the lab’s amplifier to overdrive. He strikes a star pose, hits a guitar chord, and is blasted off his feet. He’s shaken up but awestruck: “Whoa. . . Rock and roll.” We now assume that Marty likes to take risks, that he’s committed to his music, that he’s a bit preening, and that he can bounce back. Likewise, before Marty comes in, during the opening shots exploring the lab, we get information about Doc as well, though more indirectly. For both characters, the narration encourages us to leap to conclusions that will be confirmed again and again in the story that follows.

...from my recent piece about camera movement and its various motivations. Miklos Jancsó was cited by David Ehrenstein as something of an exception to all "rules" normally followed, and this is sort-of true, I think. Watching THE ROUND-UP (the only classic Jancsó I've seen recently with this issue in mind) I felt that the shots were nearly all straightforwardly motivated by the need to follow action -- though what they do with that need is very creative and unusual. Jancsó would progress to sequence shots lasting well over ten minutes, but at this point in his career he only had access to film magazines capable of holding five minutes at a time, so he was technically constrained in this way.

[John Orr of Edinburgh University rather confusingly introduced the film with a statement about the filmmaker "editing within the shot without cutting", which strikes me as basically inaccurate in literal terms ("cutting" and "editing" are synonyms) and unnecessarily convoluted if taken as some kind of metaphor. Let's be clear, a sequence shot is a single shot which cover an entire scene. THE ROUND-UP does have cuts within most of its scenes, but far fewer than the average film.]

[I asked Jancsó about what the long take meant to him, and he talked about giving the audience time to think. He spoke with disdain of the modern fast-cutting style which forces ideas upon the audience, as in commercials. But I'm not sure I totally buy this argument, at least, not as a total explanation.]

Jancsó very occasionally moves the camera up to get an overview, which is more of an authorial statement, and also has to do with exploring space, but 90% of the tracking here is following characters -- but in an extremely elaborate way. I'm told David Bordwell talks about certain overt stylistic moves in terms of their excess in relation to story function and/or normative industry practices, and that seems on the money as a description of Jancsó. Moving actors serve as a pretext for camera movement, but cannot account for the elaboration and excess of it. The real motivation for these sinuous, incisive tracking shots may be purely formal. Jancsó will follow one character until he discovers another, then follow that one, but first behind him and then in front, with foreground objects wiping frame and new compositions created with other elements whenever the character pauses. It looks very much like Janscó is deliberately devising ways to make the shot ever more stimulating and complex, not to express thematic concerns but to explore the possibilities of sheer cinematic beauty. I haven't looked at it lately but THE RED AND THE WHITE is obviously even more "excessive".

There is still an element of economy to this -- filming in long takes allowed Janscó to make big costume films very quickly (26 days for THE ROUND-UP) -- but we should separate narrative economy clearly from the financial kind. Indeed, in terms of narrative, THE ROUND-UP feels like it could be told in half the time, but Jancsó's visual and atmospheric elaborations extend the movie into a baroque dimension where time often seems suspended.

One can rhapsodise about how Jancsó's choreographed moves create a closed world in which his characters are trapped, so that the stylistic curlicues become a thematic element, but in a sense, when faced with a stylist as extreme as this, it may be wise to allow that sometimes the primary motivation for moving the camera may simply be the desire to move the camera -- an interest in the shapes that can be created in four dimensions. Everything else is a pretext -- you need to have the pretext, but we shouldn't mistake it for the real point.

1. Overhearing Dialogue – Sarah Kozloff
2. Historical Poetics in Cinema – David Bordwell
3. The accessibility of knowledge.

• Interlibrary loads
• Bordwells website - http://www.davidbordwell.net/

4. The X-Files a textual analysis.
5. Key epistemological approaches in genre studies.
6. Marxian film theory
7. Academic snobs vs. the anti-intellectuals
8. Serial killers and the occult
9. Heurmeneutics
10. Dublin
11. I really want to believe
12. The Witch Trials and Cotton Mather
13. Sleepy Hallow – A review
14. Brick

That’s in for now, I think my head is empty… I wanna stop before I start making stuff up… so for now…

K

Werden Filmsets auf Hausdächern gebaut, wie ich gerade bei David Bordwell erfahren konnte. Das Set hier wurde für Johnnie To's Exiled auf dem Dach des Milkyway-Gebäudes errichtet. Ein sehr empfehlenswerter Film übrigens, der auch penetrantestes Product Placement noch auf eine höhere Ebene heben kann und einem bekannten Energydrink eine fast schon poetische Relevanz zuspricht. Taurine Vague wenn man so will. Aufs Bild klicken für die volle Ansicht.

"A great deal of what contributes to suspense in films derives from low-level, modular processes. They are cognitively impenetrable, and that creates a firewall between them and what we remember from previous viewings."

Ob diese Firewall eine evolutionäre Entwicklung ist, die im Prozess der Anpassung an die Umwelt entstanden ist oder etwas, das wir durch Sozialisierung internalisieren, das lässt Bordwell offen. Aber er wagt gleichzeitig einen - vielleicht erschreckenden - Schritt, der Filmsprache weiter als komplexe Anordnungen und Strukturen darstellt:

"Many of these cues don’t merely guide our attention to the critical suspense-creating factors in the scene. These cues are arresting and arousing in themselves. They trigger responses that, in the right narrative situation, can generate suspense, regardless of whether we’ve seen the movie before."

Durch das richtige Einsetzen und die richtige Anordnung und Beziehung untereinander von visuellen, akustischen und narrativen Elementen entstehen Filme, die immer wieder anschlussfähig sind: gutes Handwerk wirkt also nach. Das Erschreckende ist nur, wenn wir das weiter denken. Denn generell könnte man dann jede Form der Kommunikation unter diesen Vorgaben sehen. Gezielt eingesetzte cues würden da ungeahnte manipulative Möglichkeiten erschließen. Aber einen Trost gibt es doch: mit unserem Wissen können wir diese Reaktionen verorten und in Bezug setzen. Unter der Bedingung, das unser Wissen genügend ausgebildet ist, natürlich. Also doch nicht ganz so düstere Aussichten.

Immerhin ist damit aber eine alte Differenz erklärt: das schwache Fleisch und der willige Geist, aus dem Bauch heraus durch den Kopf gehen und alle anderen binären Gegensatzpaare. Und ich kann auf niedere Unterhaltung flashen, das dann aber gleichzeitig in Frage stellen. Das schlechte Gewissen somit kultivieren. Großartig.

"Very often the predictable nonconformist is just as orthodox as the conformist."

Nach Bordwell kann man vor allem dem Indie Noir vorwerfen, ebenso wie das Mainstreamkino Konventionen entwickelt zu haben. Konventionen, bei denen die Attitüde mehr zählt als die filmische Qualität. Und die in ihrer Antihaltung ebenso erstart sind wie ihre Angriffsziele - wie das Punkrockgeschäft, um mal eine Analogie anzubringen. Und ich sag euch wer schuld ist: der Tarantino mit seinen Zitatmashups, jede Menge Coolness aber keine Seele. Ideal für den Massenverzehr geeignet. Denn diese Beschreibung gilt für andere, aber nicht für ihn:

"They don’t try to be outlaws; they don’t strut; they don’t trail brimstone; they are not cool. Their films display a mature tact that goes deeper than either quirkiness or bleeding-edge daring."

Aber genug davon, jetzt endlich die bewegten Bilder. Zuerst Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, eine Dokumentation über Zinédine Zidane, von 17 Kameras eingefangen während eines Fußballspiels. Also keine Kinderbilder oder Interviews; nur Bilder von Zidane während des Spiels. Fußball ist ja der Teufel, aber der Trailer sieht vielversprechend aus:

Wired-Artikel hier, offizielle Seite da.

"The stretched-out duration of action sequences, I submit, involves not one-off attractions for their own sakes but micro-stories, short but twisting paths toward short-term goals, quick adjustments to a fast-changing situation. The gunplay, the escapes, the explosions, the bodies dangling from skyscrapers—all operate according to fundamental narrative principles of conflict, struggle, suspense, and resolution...When fans replay exciting escapes and fights, they’re not escaping narrative: they’re immersing themselves in it."