[READINGS ON CINEMA] Mechanisms of Film

Readings: “Film Form and Narrative” by Allan Rowe and Paul Wells; “The Close-Up” and “The Face of Man” by Bela Balasz

Suspension of Disbelief. Is this the ultimate goal or mechanism of film narrative?  The answer is yes, at least in the ‘classical’ narrative of film forms. Hollywood has perfected such operation which dominated the world cinema order after World War I when European Cinema fell economically. Still, the latter had its counter-cinema that is ‘anti-classical’. Both forms still persist today in spite of dominance, reemergence, and evolution of one over the other. Alongside comes the ‘avant-garde’ that is characterized by its experimental nature. These film forms have their respective conventions or orthodoxy that either conforms or defies mechanisms of filmmaking at its core. 

The differences in film forms are apparent when conventions are set and audiences are marked and distinguished with expectations. For one, the manner of storytelling implicates the film narrative. The structure, treatment, and flow of the story are heavily signified in the manipulation of the characters, order of events, and visual representation. Such conventions dictate conditions upon which the narrative is told: classical narrative primarily relies on linear storytelling, anti-classical does not, while avant-garde challenges, if not all, certain terms of storytelling. Furthermore, audiences serve as a great factor from which these mechanisms are created. Being plot-literate and film-literate indicate the level of understanding and engagements of the audiences to the film narrative, and the processes of such narrative to its audiences. At the surface, classical Hollywood exhibits escapism that indulges its audience with pleasure while the so-called ‘art cinema’ induces “higher degree of concentration, interpretation, and personal participation” of its spectators. This relationship is manifested between film forms and narrative and the audiences, as cinema perpetuates human experience through its evolving medium.

Distinct among the arts, film has its own code of representation. Mise-en-scene signifies cinematic elements that make it special and different, illusionary and motivated, and meaningful and contextual.  Indeed, watching film turns into reading film for the properties and forms of this medium are complex and necessary to analyze in order to grasp its intricacies, attempts, failures, and feats. The setting, props and costume, performances and movement, camera, lighting, editing, and even sound, all essentially contribute to the narrative that the film is presenting. Ultimately, the formulation of a close-up shot and the face it usually highlights is unprecedented in terms of visual artistry and thematic content. This kind of construction of a film shot, that is poetic, is reflective to the potential and constant development of cinema as it introduces newer and newer techniques, styles, and treatment of telling a story. It does not stop from Todorov and Propp; it shall not. For cinema and storytelling only have time and space as its limitation to do its best!

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Written on 18 September 2019 as a response to the given readings:

Film Form and Narrative by Allan Rowe and Paul Wells

The Close-Up by Bela Balasz

The Face of Man by Bela Balasz

ENTRY LINKS TO THIS SERIES:

WEEK 1 –	Interpretations and Critics	[01 September 2020]
WEEK 2 –	Arts and Critiques, Artists and Critics	[08 September 2020]
WEEK 3 –	The Audience, Filmmaker, and Critic	[15 September 2020]
WEEK 4 –	Film as an Art, Medium, and Reality	[22 September 2020]
WEEK 5 –	Mechanisms of Film	[29 September 2020]
WEEK 6 –	The Power of Images and Moving Images	[06 October 2020]
WEEK 7 –	The Film Author	[13 October 2020]
WEEK 8 –	Film and Linguistics	[20 October 2020]
WEEK 9 –	Film, Philosophy, and Psychology	[27 October 2020]
WEEK 10 –	Film and Feminism	[03 November 2020]