TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

There's no doubt the FNW was one of the most influential and relevant flowerings of talent in film history.  A lot of the theoretical ideas are fascinating.  "Montage implying mise-en-scene" is a simple but now unavoidable way of looking at how films are structured in four dimensions--well, three, but now including time --and likewise, the notion that a film should also be a piece of film criticism is interesting.  The techniques employed were innovative and potentially very cool.

The actual subject matter of many of the NW films, however, leaves me cold--generally pretentious and devoted to people's realistically boring/messy/stupid lives, rather than the escapist, fun motion pictures and heightened, sentimentalized emotional pieces that I enjoy.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but...

When there are so many equally important, and by all the evidence more enjoyable, films which I still haven't seen--I've managed to watch exactly two Billy Wilder movies, for example--it just seems like a bad idea to dive into the FNW out of a sense of scholarly obligation.  (That said, I'm openminded; I'll watch Alphaville, which seems like a good entree, and if it doesn't suck I'll watch Breathless or A Woman is a Woman and if those are good maybe that movie about the lines at the supermarket just being too darn long or that other movie about traffic being bad will start to look appealing.)

[Ideologue]

Wait, does Le Samourai count?  I guess it would (Melville).  That movie looks pretty cool.

[jimmy olsen]

Getting so hyped for Godzilla, looks like it's gonna rock!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1pX97_0rxU

You're going to fuck it all up.

Whatever any of us say will have no impact on the quality of the movie.

[celedhring]

"Montage implying mise en scène" wasn't a FNW innovation, Hitchcock was using it, Eisenstein created and wrote about it... "mise en scène in depth" and "mise en scène in length" were both two traditions of early filmmaking.

The great contribution of the FNW was exposing and breaking the conventions of classical filmmaking. The idea before the FNW was that a story, in a way, "told itself" and that a director wasn't much more than a guy in an assembly line putting together the pieces. Making a film was a mechanical exercise, and the script or the technical (not creative) skills of performers and technical staff would make it better or worse. When Godard started toying with the soundtracks and put the audio of a gunfight while characters are having breakfast, or shot people's backs while they talk instead of their faces, or lit a scene using only the sunlight through the binders of a window... what he was doing was exposing the fact that making a film in such or that way was a conscious, non-innocent decision, and these decisions were not nothing to be "hidden" like classic film did, but something to be cherished and exploited in new ways.

[celedhring]

Wait, does Le Samourai count?  I guess it would (Melville).  That movie looks pretty cool.

Melville isn't a French New Wave director. He influenced them, though.

Le Samouraï is great.

[Ideologue]

Huh.  I was reading a book that attributed that framework to Godard.  I'm aware of the Soviet theoreticians, Eisenstein included, and all their work on how editing creates meaning; I took the Godard, in "Montage, my sweet care," to be on about something related but different, namely about the emotional effects of editing structure and the juxtaposition of shots themselves, not just the Kuleshov effect of imagery.

But it's certainly possible I'm poorly read in terms of Eisenstein--since the extent to which I am well-read is "I read the intertitles when I watched Potemkin"--and Eisenstein wrote about such things extensively.

Melville isn't a French New Wave director. He influenced them, though.

I just remember reading Melville's the one who told Godard to use jump cuts in the middle of long takes in Breathless (I think) so he could bring his movie under the producer-mandated maximum runtime.  And it's kind of in the same timeframe.

What I don't know about the French New Wave could fill a couple volumes.

[Sheilbh]

I think you should watch Breathless because it's got the most beautiful female lead ever.

[celedhring]

Huh.  I was reading a book that attributed that framework to Godard.  I'm aware of the Soviet theoreticians, Eisenstein included, and all their work on how editing creates meaning; I took the Godard, in "Montage, my sweet care," to be on about something related but different, namely about the emotional effects of editing structure and the juxtaposition of shots themselves, not just the Kuleshov effect of imagery.

But it's certainly possible I'm poorly read in terms of Eisenstein--since the extent to which I am well-read is "I read the intertitles when I watched Potemkin"--and Eisenstein wrote about such things extensively.

Melville isn't a French New Wave director. He influenced them, though.

I just remember reading Melville's the one who told Godard to use jump cuts in the middle of long takes in Breathless (I think) so he could bring his movie under the producer-mandated maximum runtime.  And it's kind of in the same timeframe.

What I don't know about the French New Wave could fill a couple volumes.

Eisenstein was all about the emotional effect created by montage, and how a filmmaker could manipulate it, not merely its mechanical effects (like the Kuleshov effect). Just watch the battle on the ice lake scene in Alexander Nevski and see all the ways he uses montage to create emotional content in the audience. Hitchcock was a master of it, too. It's not by chance the FNW guys admired him so greatly, and became one of the first directors to be enshrined by the Author's Theory.

About Melville, yeah, he's a clear example of material needs breeding stylistic innovations. He was among the first filmmakers to use real locations extensively in his films (a distinct modernist trait), but that was because in post-war France there was barely any studio infrastructure left, and new lightweight cameras and sound recording systems enabled filmmakers to go outside and save a lot of francs by not building sets. The same issue breeded Neorrealism in Italy.

Now, just imagine yourself sitting in a cinema in the 1950s and watching "Bob the Gambler"'s portrayal of the seedy Montmartre, besides some Hollywood crime film so obviously shot in a backlot that looks stale and fake in comparison.

[CountDeMoney]

Getting so hyped for Godzilla, looks like it's gonna rock!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1pX97_0rxU

You're going to fuck it all up.

Whatever any of us say will have no impact on the quality of the movie.

Wrong.  You fucked King Kong all up with your Timmay Taint.

[Ideologue]

Eisenstein was all about the emotional effect created by montage, and how a filmmaker could manipulate it, not merely its mechanical effects (like the Kuleshov effect). Just watch the battle on the ice lake scene in Alexander Nevski and see all the ways he uses montage to create emotional content in the audience.

But via imagery (juxtaposition of shots), or structure (length of shots)?  I think that was the distinction Godard was trying to make in his little essay.  And it's not a rhetorical question.  I don't know Eisenstein half as well as I ought.

Hitchcock was a master of it, too. It's not by chance the FNW guys admired him so greatly, and became one of the first directors to be enshrined by the Author's Theory.

Now I'm a lot more versed in Hitchcock than Eisenstein; and the striking thing about the editing is its structural precision, at both the shortest and longest ends of that spectrum--in Psycho and Rope, respectively.  The crash of the cymbals in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56--the quickness of the shot--is explicitly noted in "Montage."  My favorite cut is the cut hidden behind the chest finally being opened in Rope though.

save a lot of francs by not building sets.

Anyway, just finished watching Kobayashi's Sincere Heart.  If you're ever in the mood for a schematic but heartfelt (and superbly class conscious) melodrama about doomed love and Japanese emotional repression, you could do a lot worse.   Write it up sometime today along with My Sons' Youth and The Thick-Walled Room.  Then Gamera: The Invincible.  What?  It's Japanese.

[Ed Anger]

Kobayashi's Sincere Heart.

I liked the Kobayashi Maru better.

[Ideologue]

I've come to believe that pretty much all of his feature-length movies feature a no-win scenario.

[The Brain]

No-win me, no-win you. AHAAAAA

[celedhring]

But via imagery (juxtaposition of shots), or structure (length of shots)?  I think that was the distinction Godard was trying to make in his little essay.  And it's not a rhetorical question.  I don't know Eisenstein half as well as I ought.

He coined the concept of "The fourth dimension of cinema" for starters.

Eisenstein pretty comprehensively analized all elements of montage. His montage theory was way ahead of his time, and really extensive.
He just was too much of an intellectual, and his films were too experimental and aloof. Only when it looked like Stalin might gulag him he made a film for the masses and with Alexander Nevski pretty much laid the basics of epic filmmaking.

[The Brain]