FILM THEORY BAZIN ~ Monsieur Hulot and Time

Monsieur Hulot and Time

by

Andre Bazin

translated from the French by Bert Cardullo. ? {1} or {2} {3 – books by}

FILM LINKS Slow Cinema and the Long Take

To add to my collection of posts on the long take, one from Either/Or/Bored, titled, Slow Cinema and The Long Take.

Nagging feeling it is already mentioned in a previous post. What the heck.

Links in there to:  Top 15 Amazing Long Takes (and onwards to other film lists), Pasolini’s essay,  Observations on the long take, which Janice Lee has on her page here. Jancis wrote, Damnation (2013), an ekphrasis and then some – with very good introductory and post-script essays by others – inspired by the films of Bela Tarr and the novels of Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who Tarr worked with on adaptations of his books including Satantango and Damnation. Lee includes impressive frame by frame after the event sketches at the back. For anyone who has frame grabbed a bit to get to grips with a film, the effort was admirable, spoilt only by the sketches being a bit too sketchy to work from, apart from each having an exact timing. So if you’re into Tarr you can watch the movies and look for the time yourself from hers to see what each was referring to..

Must already be linked to somewhere else in COTA. Who cares, a blog is a searchable database.

Mark le Fanu’s, Metaphysics of the “long take”: some post-Bazanian reflections, and to a film mag 16:9 essay by Mathew Flanagan, Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema.  Also, the first pic I have seen of Bazin. Didn’t imagine him like that at all.

FILM ESSAY GODARD Modifications and Expansions of Bazin’s “Faith in Reality” in the 1960s Works of Jean-Luc Godard

Modifications and Expansions of Bazin’s “Faith in Reality” in the 1960s Works of Jean-Luc Godard

by

Arnab Majumdar

August 19, 2008

FILM ESSAY Modifications and Expansions of Bazin’s “Faith in Reality” in the 1960s Works of Jean-Luc Godard by Arnab Majumdar

Modifications and Expansions of Bazin’s “Faith in Reality” in the 1960s Works of Jean-Luc Godard

by

Arnab Majumdar

August 9, 2008.

FILM ESSAY LONG TAKE Metaphysics of the “long take”: some post-Bazinian reflections by Mark Le Fanu

Metaphysics of the “long take”: some post-Bazinian reflections

by

Mark Le Fanu

(author of The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovski [1987]; Mizoguchi and Japan [2005])

in

P.O.V no. 4

FILM ESSAY The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts by Stephen Prince

The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts
by

Stephen Prince


Film Quarterly, vol 57, No 3, pp 23-33 ( 2004)


Abstract

The tools of digital filmmaking are transforming all aspects of cinema, including production, postproduction, and exhibition. In the process, they are altering the visual characterisitics of the moving image and changing the viewer’s perceptual understanding of the nature of cinema, leading to the emergence, for the first time in the medium’s history, of filmic artifacts.

Things get interesting from page 30 when the discussion turns to how digital video:

….”reads” a scene very differently than film does. One of the unmistakable hallmarks of DV is its clarity and depth of field. DV tends to record everything in deep focus and with extreme sharp focus, whereas varying degrees of shallow focus are the norm for images shot on film. Most shots have a limited focal plane, as determined by the speed of the film, the f-stop and the amount of light available. Even celebrated deep-focus films also include numerous shots where the focal plane is restricited. In contrast, DV produces deep focus as a kind of auto-default, and filmmakers working in the format studiously try to avoid this look.

Price wonders what Bazin, who advocated deep focus, would think of DV, suggesting he would have thought it good. But he then goes on to consider the paradox of film looking more alive than DV, despite being grainy. Films like Lawrence of Arabia, North by Northwest and Citizen Kane that have been digitally re-mastered for DVD have a very different feel from the film versions.

A few other important differences between film and digital are mentioned.

FILM Showing what can’t be filmed {post by David Borwell}

From Film Studies For Free:

Observations on film and Film Art: showing what can’t be filmed.

David Borwell, 4 March 2009, on David Borwell’s website on cinema.