French Impressionism

Group Members

Tan Kwan Ping 1403078

Ch'ng Po Liang 1405012

Wong Zhida 1402750

Lim Jun Liang 1404491

Introduction

French Impressionism also known as the avant-garde aesthetic or narrative avant-garde is a term applied to a group of filmmakers in 1920’s who are Abel Gance, Marcel L’Herbier, Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein. In the past era, there are a several changes of film movements in France. This is to transform the Hollywood tradition by exchange the abstract of cinema and filmmaking. The impressionist filmmakers uses this style to form their own independent company after their works been proved financially successful. Germaine Dulac had made some important impressionist film such as “La souriante Madame Beudet” and “Gossette” in 1923 whereas Jacques Feyder was made his impressionist films from 1923 to 1926. Bordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin (2010) stated that during the World War I, French film industry was interrupted as the personnel were conscripted, studio were moved to wartime uses and the export was stopped. Therefore, in 1915, American films began to step into France until year 1917. In these years, Hollywood films dominated the market. After the war ended, French film making was still not fully recovered yet they tended to use a lot of techniques to recapture the audiences by imitating the Hollywood production methods.

The filmmakers gained the name of impressionist by giving the narration subjective depth and capturing the memory of the characters’ mind. An impressionist film will motive such events as a character’s dreams or hallucination. They will try to highlight the emotional state of the characters. Eventually, they liked to play around the moods and feelings such as creating a love triangle with a small numbers of characters. French impressionism often included the flashback scene. It can be one or a series of them which bringing the audiences to the characters’ dreams and mental states. Thus, we can get into the character's emotion in detailed.

The idea of impressionism was hoping to be famous as Hollywood’s products. Unfortunately, it was not welcomed by the foreign audience, it was just popular among the French society. That is why some of their companies had been absorbed by the big companies since they got no enough money to continue their experiment on the sound film. From day to day, the cost of production also increased at that era. French Impressionism has come to the end by 1929. But things that the filmmakers created and done such as their ideas and subjective style were brought us a great history in film industry. Until now, these innovation is still work in our film industry. For example, director wants to give their audience feels what the actor is actually sensing or feeling throughout the film in some abnormal state of mind. They work in a few techniques of camerawork and editing.

Characteristics

There are several characteristics found in French Impressionist films. Emotions of  the character or film is important in order to make the audience feel the same way. There are some filmmakers that thinks that cinematography is a form of art. Art is another way of expression, which communicates artists’ perspectives that consecutively produce experiences. Different experiences will show different kind of emotions. Nevertheless, the emotions or feelings are not directly portrayed in art but delivered through a suggestive manner to the audience. This type of film gives the audience an immediate impression.

In French Impressionist film, the cinematography and editing is used to show the characters’ personal experience and impressions. The film interest focus on inner action instead of external physical behavior. The film normally uses the superimpositions to show a character’s thoughts or feelings (Bordwell & Thompson, 2009, p.465). This technique is used by dissolving two visuals cutting cross each other in a scene. French Impressionist film also use filter is placed on the lens to achieve a subjective effect, and distorting shots are established such as a shot into a curved mirror or shooting from an oblique angle to show dizziness. Distorted or filtered shots or camera movements are used to show the scene of characters who are drunk or feeling dizzy.  

There are also scenes when the camera slowly focuses on the character’s expression by using close up shot. This is to show the character’s feeling in great detail. Mobile framing that is used in French Impressionist film shows the point of view of the characters. As French Impressionist film focus on the thinking or feeling of the character, the frames usually changes all the time by changing the camera height, camera angle and camera distance, to show from the angle of the character. Besides that, the camera movement of French Impressionist film is smooth. To achieve a smooth camera movement, there is a series of technological innovation. They tie their camera to cars, wheels, or rollers in order to achieve a smooth camera movement.

As French Impressionist focus on personal emotion and inner action, a lot of flashback is used to depict memories. Furthermore, they even insist to show the dreams, fantasies and mental states of characters (Bordwell & Thompson, 2008, p.451). French Impressionist film also uses point-of-view editing and rhythmic editing to show the mental states. Point-of-view editing is used to show things from the angle of a single character. Rhythmic editing is usually used for violence scene, which the rhythm accelerates, and the shots get shorter and shorter (Bordwell & Thompson, 2008, p.451).

Title of the film, In the mood for love

The film “In the mood for love”, it matches French Impressionism as I will analyze and discuss about the characteristics of the film that makes it a French Impressionism film. The movie emphasizes on using French impressionist cinema techniques, which are the camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing patterns and optical devices.

Scene of smoke rising up from Mr Chow

As for the camerawork, there are different types of categories that could explain this technique. One is the camera distance to show a synecdoche, symbol or subjective image. By using close-up, it focuses on the character’s emotions and let the audience feel their perspective in the movie. For example, when the both main characters were standing in front of their doorstep, preparing to open the door, the close up shot of the character gives a clear image of the character’s face which tells the people what the character is feeling. Another example is when they both were eating inside a restaurant, the camera focuses on the faces to show their emotions. Another part of camerawork is the camera angles. They used peeping angle to show what people is thinking about them, because they did everything very secretly, raising suspicion. The second aspect used in the film is Mise-en-scene. When talking about the lightings used in the film, it is clear that the mood changes with the lightings used in the film. The scenes which are dark or only with one light source represents loneliness or hiding from the outside society as if the person is trapped. The third category is to show the arrangements and movements of figures in space. For example, in the scene that focuses on the cigar smoke on top of Chow, as if it shows that his mind is clouded with dillema.

Scene of  Mr Chow and Ms Lu buying noodles

Another aspect is through optical devices, filmmakers in French impressionism use it for multiple reasons, such as for significant details. One of the brilliant examples is when shooting scenes involving their cheating spouses, the face of them were not revealed, this is because it is not important to the story. This has emphasized that the story only focuses on the two main characters and also to sympathize the two main characters which are Mr. Chow and Ms. Lu. Another way of using optical devices is also to convey abstract meaning. For example, the scene that shows the both of the characters buying noodles, it shows the time they spent meeting each other and getting close to each other, as an abstract meaning, they are becoming friends as time passed by.

Scene of Mr Chow and Ms Lu freezing in time

            The last aspect is the editing patterns in the film, it could relatable to French Impressionist cinema style of editing. The first way is to include temporal relations between shots to indicate flashback moments or fantasy. For example, there are some scenes where the characters freezes, it is to show that they are embedding that moment as a memory.

References

Bordwell, D. (1980). French impressionist cinema: film culture, film theory, and film style. Ayer Co Pub.

Abel, R. (1984). French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-1929 (p. 23). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Aitken, I. (2001). European film theory and cinema: a critical introduction. Indiana University Press.
Hayward, S. (2000). Cinema studies: The key concepts. London: Routledge.

Video Tribute

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJfKgh3-zgM&feature=youtu.be

Characters

Ch’ng Po Liang - Detective Eugene

Lim Jun Liang - Victim

Tan Kwan Ping - Detective Trux/ Murderer

Wong Zhida - Cameraman

Synopsis of "Behind the mask"

One day, a mysterious man tracked a person to the car-park to kill for his twisted-hobby. That person realized that he was being tracked by a man in a mask with a steel rod and ran in attempt to escape but he failed. He was injured after falling to the ground and could not defend himself. The mysterious man killed the person. Later, two detective reached the crime scene to investigate. After the investigation, one of the detective, Detective Eugene decided go back to his office and continue to investigate the case. Meanwhile, the other detective, Detective Trux picks up the murder weapon and tries to hide it after he thought Detective Eugene has left the scene. However, as Detective Eugene was heading back to his office, he realizes that he missed something important, the murder weapon. He started to recall and returned to the crime scene. When he reach the crime scene, he sees Detective Trux was trying to hide the murder weapon. Detective Eugene starts questioning Detective Trux about what was going on, Trux confessed his crimes and about his twisted hobby to Detective Eugene. Eugene decides to call the police and arrest Detective Trux. However, Trux uses the steel rod to kill Eugene, in order to stop Eugene calling the police.

Characteristics found in the video

Camera distance:

Close up shot, as synecdoche, symbol or subjective image. Example the scene of the murder. A close up shot of the killer after he killed the victim. The close up shot is to show his mental state, a psycho killer who enjoys killing people.

Camera angle:

High and low angle: Example, the scene of the detective decides to make the call, a low angle shot on the murderer when he want to kill the detective. The low angle shot for this scene is to show the feeling of creepiest and menace from the murderer.

Camera movement:

Independent of subject, for graphic effects or point of view. Example, the scene of the mysterious man chasing the victim. The camera movement used is tracking to give the effect as if you are watching the murder from the point of the murderer.

Superimposition:

Example the scene when detective Eugene is asking why his partner/ the murderer had to commit the crime. The superimposition shows the mental state of the murderer, his psychotic mind.

Flash back:

Example when the detective leave the crime scene, he started thinking about the case and suddenly he recall that he missed something, The flashback shows the lethal weapon of the case.