I find there's a leisurely quality to postwar directors like Ray,
Minnelli, Preminger and some film noir which seems to be the result of a
longer ASE and increasingly mannered mise-en-scene. V.F Perkins and the
other MOVIE writers were so good at writing about this. Compared with
which the emphasis on dialogue, and concommitant narrative drive in prewar
Hollywood, cf His Girl Friday, Wilder, Leisen et al, seems flat. You could
say the effect is of reading a book, as opposed to looking at a painting
or a photograph.
Richard
On Tue, January 25, 2011 17:31, Greg Tuck wrote:
> As Henry points out I don't think we should equate long take/deep focus
> with a lack of aesthetic complexity and contrivance but it does open up
> the space for a more self reflexive pleasure about our own acts of
> spectatorship, the phenomenology of seeing and listenting, rather than
> relying on affect, shock and other such Pavlovian reponses.
>
> Greg
> ________________________________________
> From: Film-Philosophy [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Henry
> M. Taylor [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 25 January 2011 17:05
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [FILM-PHILOSOPHY] Depth of field - the very elementary
> question -- ADDENDUM
>
> One might also add the aspect of restraint. It is precisely through
> restraint that BEST YEARS achieves the biggest and most effective
> tear-jerk effects, and precisely because they do not seem to be contrived
> (through editing), but seem to impose themselves naturally. Having said
> this, deep-focus/deep staging requires far MORE directorial control than
> would be the case with analytical editing.
>
> H
>
>
>
>
>
>> Exactly, in preserving the spatio-temporal dimensions of quotidien
>> experience it is both more subtle and more realistic.
>>
>> See also the marriage ceremony at the end of The Best Years of Our
>> Lives.
>>
>>
>> Richard
>>
>>
>> On Tue, January 25, 2011 13:54, Frank, Michael wrote:
>>
>>> everything said so far seems to me right on target, but it leaves out
>>> one characteristic of staging in deep space that i think may have been
>>> overlooked, or maybe just so taken for granted that it's not been
>>> articulated . . . note, for example, that henry taylor, discussing
>>> one scene in *Best Years of Our Lives* says that it's "poignant moment
>>> which could not have achieved quite the same effect if the scene had
>>> been divided up into separate shots." . . . but he doesn't explain WHY
>>> presenting this material via editing would be less poignant . . .
>>> and this is a question that i think andre bazin addresses . . . the
>>> argument is that when the scene is staged in deep space [using deep
>>> focus cinematography] it replicates real human perception in which the
>>> viewer has to search out the salient details of a mise-en-scene, and
>>> avoids the excessive rhetorical push - the elbow in the ribs , as it
>>> were - of the director saying, "hey, notice this" - - - and that when
>>> that directorial intrusion on our discovery of meaning is avoided, the
>>> result is - let's say - better
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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