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French Impressionist Cinema
French impressionist cinema (first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde) refers to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s. Film scholars have had much difficulty in defining this movement or for that matter deciding whether it should be considered a movement at all. David Bordwell has attempted to define a unified stylistic paradigm and set of tenets. 1 Others, namely Richard Abel, criticize these attempts and group the films and filmmakers more loosely, based on a common goal of "exploration of the process of representation and signification in narrative film discourse." 2 Still others such as Dudley Andrew would struggle with awarding any credibility at all as "movement". 3 Filmmakers and films (selection) *Abel Gance ('' La Dixième symphonie'' 1918, '' J’Accuse'' 1919, '' La Roue'' 1922, and, above all, ''Napoléon'' 1927) *Jean Epstein ('' Coeur fidèle'' 1923, ''Six et demi onze'' 1927, ''La Glace a Trois Face'' 1928, and '' The Fall of the House of Usher' ...
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David Bordwell
David Jay Bordwell (; born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including ''Narration in the Fiction Film'' (1985), ''Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema'' (1988), ''Making Meaning'' (1989), and ''On the History of Film Style'' (1997). With his wife Kristin Thompson, Bordwell wrote the textbooks ''Film Art'' (1979) and ''Film History'' (1994). ''Film Art'', currently being published in its 12th edition, is still used as a seminal text in introductory film courses. With aesthetic philosopher Noël Carroll, Bordwell edited the anthology ''Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies'' (1996), a polemic on the state of contemporary film theory. His largest work to date remains ''The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960'' (1985), written in collaboration with Thompson and Janet Staiger. Several of his ...
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The Smiling Madame Beudet
''La Souriante Madame Beudet'' (''The Smiling Madame Beudet'') is a short French impressionist silent film made in 1923, directed by pioneering avant-garde cinema director Germaine Dulac. It stars Germaine Dermoz as Madame Beudet and Alexandre Arquillière as Monsieur Beudet. It is considered by many to be one of the first truly " feminist" films. It tells the story of an intelligent woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Synopsis Monsieur Beudet frequently puts an empty revolver to his head and threatens to shoot himself as a practical joke or to emphasize his frustration. He does this so often that it no longer surprises his wife or friends. One night, Monsieur Beudet gets some theater tickets, but his wife refuses to go with him. While he is gone, Madame Beudet spends some time reflecting on her marriage to a slovenly, unromantic man who does things like lock the lid of her piano when he's upset with her; she puts a bullet into her husband's revolver so he will accidental ...
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Subjectivity
Subjectivity in a philosophical context has to do with a lack of objective reality. Subjectivity has been given various and ambiguous definitions by differing sources as it is not often the focal point of philosophical discourse.Bykova, Marina F. (February 2018). "On the Problem of Subjectivity: Editor's Introduction". ''Russian Studies in Philosophy''. 56: 1-5 - via EBSCOhost. However, it is related to ideas of consciousness, agency, personhood, philosophy of mind, reality, and truth. Three common definitions include that subjectivity is the quality or condition of: * Something being a '' subject'', narrowly meaning an individual who possesses conscious experiences, such as perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires. Solomon, Robert C. "Subjectivity," in Honderich, Ted. '' Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2005), p.900. * Something being a ''subject'', broadly meaning an entity that has agency, meaning that it acts upon or wields power over some other ...
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Poetics
Poetics is the theory of structure, form, and discourse within literature, and, in particular, within poetry. History The term ''poetics'' derives from the Ancient Greek ποιητικός ''poietikos'' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" and "productive". In the Western world, the development and evolution of poetics featured three artistic movements concerned with poetical composition: (i) the Formalism (literature), formalist, (2) the Metaphysical objectivism, objectivist, and (iii) the Aristotelianism, Aristotelian. (see the ''Poetics (Aristotle), Poetics''). Aristotle's ''Poetics'' is the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. The work was lost to the Western world for a long time. It was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic commentary written by Averroes and translated by Hermannus Alemannus in 1256. The accurate Ancient Greek, Greek-Latin translation made by William of Moerbeke in 127 ...
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Symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's '' Les Fleurs du mal''. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The term "symbolist" was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the Symbolists from the related Decadents of literature and of art. Etymology The term ''symbolism'' is derived from the word "symbol" which derives fro ...
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Nana (1926 Film)
''Nana'' is a 1926 French silent drama film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling, Werner Krauss and Jean Angelo. It was Renoir's second full-length film and is based on the 1880 novel by Émile Zola. It was shot at the Bavaria Studios in Munich and the Neuilly Studios in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Claude Autant-Lara. Plot A government official, Count Muffat, falls under the spell of Nana, a young actress. She becomes his mistress, living in the sumptuous apartment which he provides for her. Instead of elevating herself to Muffat's level, however, Nana drags the poor man down to hers - in the end, both lives have been utterly destroyed. Production The film stars Renoir's wife, Catherine Hessling, in an eccentric performance as the flawed heroine Nana. Jean Renoir's film is a fairly faithful adaptation of Émile Zola's classic novel. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open ...
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Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His films '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. He was ranked by the BFI's '' Sight & Sound'' poll of critics in 2002 as the fourth greatest director of all time. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975 for his contribution to the motion picture industry. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an '' auteur''. Early life and early career Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline (née Charigot) Renoir and Pierre-Auguste ...
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La Femme De Nulle Part
''La Femme de nulle part'' (''The Woman from Nowhere'') is a 1922 French film directed by Louis Delluc. The screenplay was one of three screenplays published under the title ''Drames du Cinema'' in 1923. Plot In a villa close to Genoa, a man says goodbye to his wife and young son. He is going to spend one day and one night in the city to take leave of a friend embarking on a boat. An older woman arrives, who had lived many years before in that house. She asks for permission to see again the house and the park. The husband invites her to spend the night. While he is upstairs packing, a young man hides a letter under the staircase leading to the house. Once the husband has left, his wife retrieves the letter, it is a message from her lover insisting that she should leave her house and elope with him. The older woman watches her from the window of her bedroom while she reads the letter. A moment later, she goes to the young woman's bedroom and sees that she is packing. She tells he ...
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Louis Delluc
Louis Delluc (; 14 October 1890 – 22 March 1924) was an Impressionist French film director, screenwriter and film critic. Biography Delluc was born in Cadouin in 1890. His family moved to Paris in 1903. After graduating from the university, he became a literary critic. During the First World War, he was married to the Belgian actress Ève Francis, who acted in many of his films. In 1917, Delluc began his career in film criticism. He went on to edit ''Le Journal du Ciné-club'' and ''Cinéa'', establish film societies, and direct seven films. He was one of the early Impressionist filmmakers, along with Abel Gance, Germaine Dulac Germaine Dulac (; born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider; 17 November 1882 – 20 July 1942)Flitterman-Lewis 1996 was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early chil ..., Marcel L'Herbier, and Jean Epstein. His films are notable for their focus on ordinary events ...
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Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier (; 23 April 1888 – 26 November 1979) was a French filmmaker who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked on cultural programmes for French television. He also fulfilled many administrative roles in the French film industry, and he was the founder and the first President of the French film school Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC). Early life Marcel L'Herbier was born in Paris on 23 April 1888 into a professional and intellectual family, and as he grew up he demonstrated a multi-talented disposition for sports, dancing, debating and the arts. He attended a Marist school and then the Lycée Voltaire, followed by the École des Hautes Études Sociales in Paris. He worked hard at his education and by 1910 he had obtained his ' ...
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Germaine Dulac
Germaine Dulac (; born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider; 17 November 1882 – 20 July 1942)Flitterman-Lewis 1996 was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film. With the help of her husband and friend she founded a film company and directed a few commercial works before slowly moving into Impressionist and Surrealist territory. She is best known today for her Impressionist film, ''La Souriante Madame Beudet'' (''The Smiling Madam Beudet'', 1922/23), and her Surrealist experiment, '' La Coquille et le Clergyman'' (''The Seashell and the Clergyman'', 1928). Her career as filmmaker suffered after the introduction of sound film and she spent the last decade of her life working on newsreels for Pathé and Gaumont. Biography Germaine Dulac was born in Amiens, France ...
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Richard Abel (cultural Historian)
Richard Owen Abel (born 1941) is a professor of Comparative Literature in the University of Michigan, United States. He has presented several anthologies of French texts translated in English including Colette's first review about '' The Cheat'', Louis Delluc's critics, and Marcel L'Herbier's manifesto. He won the Theatre Library Association Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ... Award in 1985, 1995 and 2006.Theatre Library Association online


Bibliography

*Abel, Richard ''The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910'' University of California Press, 1999 *Abe ...
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