When we go to the cinema, one of the most common experiences is immersing ourselves in the narrative unfolding on the big screen in front of us. We disconnect from everyday life and, for an hour and a half, we enter a parallel world, where we experience all types of emotions: from anger against the villain to joy for the romantic partner we finally meet. 

However, bringing out emotions is just one of the experiences that cinema can give us. More than watching a film and being affected by the narrative, the characters or the scenography, it is possible to go a few layers deeper, understanding how the work is constructed, in order to cause us so many effects.

Looking at cinema from this perspective is the proposal that runs through two books by North American professor and researcher David Bordwell, released by Unicamp publishers: “On the history of cinematographic style” and “The art of cinema – An introduction” (co-edition Edusp), written with Kristin Thompsom.

Professor of film studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bordwell is considered one of today's leading film theorists and historians. “Within cinema studies, he is perhaps the main figure in the Anglo-Saxon field”, states Fernão Pessoa Ramos, professor at the Department of Cinema at the Institute of Arts at Unicamp, who signs the presentations of the two works. “Leaving this field, in France there are several other scholars, but Bordwell is a very prominent figure.”

Although he is the author of several key works for the analysis and understanding of film narrative, Bordwell had only one book released in Brazil before these two publications, “Figures traces in the light – A encenação no cinema”. “There was nothing else, so it really was a hole”, emphasizes Ramos.

An education of the gaze

The uniqueness of Bordwell's work is precisely that he teaches us how to watch a film, using the cinematic image as raw material, that is, the film as it is projected on the screen, the scene image. He differs, then, from most authors who study cinema and use as support for their analyzes scene photographs, produced in the studios during filming for publicity and other purposes - and not the films as spectators see them. 

As it is based on frames, when analyzing the films, Bordwell offers us a series of tools to watch the films, understanding how the techniques and characteristic elements of cinema - photography, framing, scenography, editing, script , mise-en-scène, sound and music - intertwine, giving rise to cinematographic art. 

“This is important, because without these tools, we look, but we don’t see. We are in the most explicit part, which is the content, which is important, but it is not everything”, explains Ramos. In other words, people tend to give their opinion and take a critical stance on the film, which does not necessarily involve an understanding of the aspects that constitute it as art. “For example, people often say they like a certain film because it presents a view of the world similar to theirs, but cinematic art goes beyond that.”

In this sense, Bordwell's work can be compared to that of several plastic arts scholars who, through analyzes of specific works, provide us with elements to identify periods, movements or artists. “Its objective is not to criticize the film, but to carry out an audiovisual analysis”, explains Ramos. Just as you look at a painting and say “that’s Mannerism”, “that’s Baroque”, “look at this Renaissance perspective”, “that expression is Rembrandt”, “that’s Picasso, that’s Cubism”, Bordwell’s work has this same horizon in relation to cinema.

General logic

As Bordwell argues in “The Art of Cinema: An Introduction,” the distinction between art cinema and entertainment cinema is not useful for understanding cinema, as many artistic features were discovered in productions intended to entertain audiences. Certain resources have remained over time, others can change, under the influence of technology, for example.

“Cinema is art because it offers filmmakers the means to provide experiences to viewers, and these experiences can be valuable regardless of their pedigree”, argues the North American. “Films for audiences large or small belong to that very comprehensive art we call cinema.”

In this way, questions such as: What are the principles that make up a film? How do the various parts relate to each other to create a whole? Assuming that a film is not a random compilation of elements, Bordwell argues that there is a pattern, a general logic that controls the relationships between the parts. It is this general logic that he calls form, the key to the filmic experience, to the bond that is established between the viewer and what unfolds in front of them.

The concept of form is not restricted to cinema – it can be applied to other arts: literature, music, etc. – and is of central importance in engaging the human senses, feelings and mind in a process. It is through the way that a film captures our imagination or that we become involved in a novel. Often, the elements that make up a form become a standard - from a director, from a cinematographic school or even in films from different authors, genres and eras.

“All films borrow ideas and narrative strategies from other films and other art forms. Much of what happens in films is dictated by traditional rules, usually called conventions,” says Bordwell. Therefore, it is common for patterns that we see in a film to remind us of others.

In the satirical comedy “Wheel of Fortune”, by the Cohen brothers, the perspective shown in two scenes uses exaggeration with the intention of creating humor: in the scene in which the boss, Headsucker, hovers over the street in a steep and centered composition and in another scene that shows the impersonal arrangement of work tables at the Headsucker company.

Another line of Bordwell's analysis is to focus on the different aspects that make up and give materiality to a film. For example, what are the instruments used by directors to guide the viewer's attention?

One of them, which has survived time and the changes that cinema has undergone throughout its existence, is contrast. In most black and white films, bright clothing or well-lit faces stand out, while darker areas tend to be obscured, as in VI Pudovkin's “The Mother.”

The same principle works for color films, when using a bright costume shown in a duller setting.

The cinematic style

For Bordwell, the filmic experience, that is, the way we are affected by the film, depends on the fabric made up of moving images and the sound that accompanies them. “The public gains access to the story or theme through this fabric of sensory materials”, states the author in the book “On the history of cinematographic style”. 

In this sense, for him, studying cinema means studying techniques and the ways in which they interact, creating the formal system of the film. And, in Bordwell's view, the formal system of film is style, which can be individual or group - that is, we can talk about the style of an author or a group (German Expressionism, French New Wave, the Hollywood studios , for example) or a genre (musical, western, among others). 

Style can be defined, then, as the characteristic and recurring technical choices in a body of works. Or even as “the systematic and meaningful use of media techniques in a film”. These techniques are classified into broad domains: mise-en-scène (staging, lighting, representation and ambiance), framing, focus, control of chromatic values, in addition to aspects related to editing and sound.

Thus, when talking about Hitchcock's style, it is not limited to the way he treats dialogue with suspense, but also concerns the staging, which covers several aspects – from the direction of actors, to lighting and sound. In two of the director's classics, “Devil's Feast” and “Rear Window”, Hitchcock limits the actions to a specific space: an apartment.

Taking this starting point, Bordwell adopts a different tack than most studies on the aesthetic history of cinema, which normally distinguish it from the history of cinema technology, the history of the film industry or even studies of the relationship between cinema and society and culture. “It is not easy to clearly define these types of stories, and any specific research project will often mix them”, states the author in “On the history of cinematographic style”.

Thus, its focus lies on patterns of continuity and stylistic changes, seeking to demarcate these dimensions in the historiography of cinematographic style, as Fernão Pessoa Ramos explains: “This is a book that has a reflection perspective. Bordwell provides an overview of the main reference works on the history of cinema”. From this panorama, he establishes three periods – the classical period, the rupture of Andre Bazin and the modern vision.

Analysis privileges historical context

Forms and techniques define cinema as art, in Bordwell's view, but cinema's forms and techniques do not exist in a timeless space. In other words, not all techniques and possibilities are accessible to any filmmaker – that's why Grifith couldn't make films like Godard, and Godard couldn't make films like Grifith. 

From this starting point, Bordwell devotes a chapter of “The Art of Cinema – An Introduction” to showing developments in different historical contexts. 

Some of their analyzes are highlighted below:

The classic development of Hollywood

DW Griffith, who began his career in 1908, certainly did not invent all the devices he is credited with, but he did give many techniques a strong narrative motivation. For example, few filmmakers used simple last-minute rescues with alternating cutscenes between rescuers and victims, but Griffith developed and popularized this technique.

By the 1920s, the continuity system had become a standard style that directors at Hollywood studios used almost automatically to create coherent relationships of time and space in narratives. An action clip could provide a cut to a closer view of a scene, as seen in Fred Niblo's 1921 “The Three Musketeers”.

German expressionism

The first film of the movement, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, is also one of the most typical examples. One of the designers, Warm, declared that “the film image must become graphic art”. “Dr. Caligari”, with its extreme stylizations was indeed like an expressionist painting or woodcut in motion. Shapes are distorted and exaggerated in unrealistic ways for expressive purposes.

The new vague

The most revolutionary quality of New Wave films was their casual appearance. The directors admired the neorealists, especially Rossellini, and made their mise-en-scène and external locations, in and around Paris. The cinematography has also changed. The Nouvelle Vague camera moves constantly, panning, following the characters or tracing relationships of place. (...) Perhaps the most important characteristic of New Wave films is the fact that they usually end ambiguously. In “The Misunderstood”, Antoine arrives at sea in the last scene, but, as he progresses, Truffaut closes the zoom and freezes the frame, ending the film with the doubt about what will happen to Antoine.

Hollywood after the arrival of sound

It was “Citizen Kane” that in 1941 strongly drew the attention of both viewers and filmmakers to its focus on depth. Orson Welles' compositions placed the figures in the front space of the scene very close to the camera and the figures in the back space far away in the background.

SERVICE

Degree: About the history of cinematographic style
Author David Bordwell
Translation: Luís Carlos Borges
Unicamp Publisher
Area of ​​interest: Cinema
Price: R$120,00

SERVICE

Degree: The art of cinema – An introduction
Authors: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Translation: Roberta Gregoli
Editor of Unicamp and Edusp
Area of ​​interest: Cinema
Price: R$250,00