In August 1914 France was going to war. When general mobilization orders for WWI were announced, the French film industry was already retreating from the American cinematic establishment. Large companies were no longer able to produce films in the number or scale that had previously been achieved. A vacuum of sorts opened up which was filled by smaller, independent companies that were often more willing to experiment artistically and risk innovative methods and tactics. Unlike traditional big budget productions, which often incorporated several reels and focused on heroic, historic, or comedic subjects, these films were shorter and had a strong psychological focus. Out of this focus on inner life came many of the most advanced strategies of representation and narration yet seen in French film, including extraordinary lighting, framing, and editing techniques. These films continued to evolve through the 1910s and into the ‘20s, when the experiments of such avant-garde filmmakers as Marcel L’Herbier, Jean Epstein, and Germaine Dulac created Impressionist film. (http://www.paloaltoonline.com. 01/03/03)
Between 1918 and 1928, in a series of extraordinary films, the younger directors more common to this new style, experimented with cinema in ways that posed an alternative to the dominant Hollywood formal principles. These directors used emotion as the heart of their work and ‘intimate psychological narrative dominated their filmmaking practice’ (Bordwell, David. “Film Art” p.453). The difference between French Impressionism and Hollywood cinema, where psychological causes were also paramount, was the style’s interest in giving narration considerable psychological depth, revealing the workings of a character’s consciousness. Also unique to Impressionist films was its manipulation of plot time and subjectivity. Flashbacks were a common feature; sometimes the bulk of a film would be one flashback or a series of them. The film style also insisted on depicting character’s dreams, fantasies and mental states, tying back to the concept of psychological depth. An example of this is Dulac’s The Smiling Mme. Beudet (1923), which consists almost entirely on the main character’s fantasy life. A trend in French Impressionist films is the exploration of feelings and emotion. ‘The interest falls not on external physical behaviour, but on inner action’ (Bordwell, David. “Film Art” p.454). Gance’s La Roue (1922) rests essentially on the relations among four people, and the director seeks to trace the development of each character’s feelings in great detail. Impressionism’s emphasis on personal emotion gives the film’s narratives an intensely psychological focus.
As with Impressionism in painting, Impressionist film created a rougher image, forcing the audience to participate by themselves putting various parts together into a whole. As the painters had used colour, the filmmakers used sequences of brief, seemingly unrelated and often elliptical shot sequences, edited in such a way as to juxtapose, and therefore link, these unrelated shots in an attempt to render the mental states of the characters. They experimented with different forms of rhythmic montage to suggest the pace of an experience as the character feels it, moment by moment. Often this was accompanied by music, which helped to set the pace of a scene and invoke certain moods.
It is said that French Impressionism as a distinct movement had ceased by 1929, however its influences – the psychological narrative, subjective camera work, and editing – have remained to this day. They have continued to operate, for example, in the work of Alfred Hitchcock and Maya Deren, in Hollywood ‘montage sequences’, and in certain American genres and styles such as the horror film and film noir. A more recent example of Impressionist influences in mainstream cinema is the film American Beauty (2000).
Directed by Sam Mendes and starring the Oscar award winning Kevin Spacey, American Beauty is a wry observation of suburban American dysfunction. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a self-absorbed 40-something middle class American man. Despite an affluent lifestyle, he is unhappy, unloved and lacking in purpose. He adopts an openly self-centred approach to life, quitting his job and doing as he pleases. And while his newfound honesty creates mayhem for his family, it leads him to consider what it is he values in life. The movie is strengthened by its brutal, if beautifully realised, study of suburban disappointment. Beneath the wealthy façade of middle America lurks lives empty of beauty and reason. The distorting effect of ambition and selfishness is most profoundly embodied in the relationships between people, one of the many features of French Impressionism this film incorporates.
An obvious trait adopted from this foreign film style is the focus on dreams and fantasies, as well as the use of flashbacks to depict memories. In a way, the whole film is one flashback. Burnham narrates the movie, another common element of French Impressionism, from the realms of the after life. “I’ll be dead in a year”, he tells us in almost the first words of the movie. “In a way, I’m dead already”. This movie is the story of his rebellion and the drastic psychological changes he went through which led him to his freedom, and ultimately, his death. Dreamy sequences are also used extensively to illustrate Burnham’s psychological state. As stated before, the interest in French Impressionist films falls on inner action, as opposed to external physical behaviour. While Burnham’s external behaviour develops quite interestingly, it’s the inner thoughts and processes that lead him to these actions that intrigue the audience.
Music plays a major, yet often overlooked role in this film. It helps to create a certain tempo with various scenes, an element common to impressionism. The music used in American Beauty follows, and helps to set, the pace of various scenes. For example, at the dinner table, where an elegant, sophisticated mood is presented, music is used which incorporates this mood. Another example is the work party. The music actually starts in the previous scene, indicating a change of mood is about to come.
Another common feature of French Impressionism is the juxtapositioning of certain shots to create certain meanings. This feature is evident in American Beauty particularly in the scene where Burnham is murdered. A gun is seen pointing at the back of his head, however it immediately jumps to the next shot of the wall, where blood appears after he has been shot. The audience is not actually shown his murder, however we are positioned to assume that it has in fact occurred. This juxtapositioning continues when we see his next-door neighbour walking back to his house, covered in blood. Because we are not shown who murders Burnham, we assume his neighbour is the culprit through the use of juxtapositioning in this shot.
It is not by chance that this film has incorporated these elements of French Impressionism. Recent times have seen a change in the way films are made. Many directors have turned to foreign film to intensify an industry, which for many years seemed shallow and repetitious. Audiences long for something different and thought evoking, so this is what mainstream directors have turned to, and American Beauty is no exception. While maintaining accessibility for a wide cultural society with the use of popular actors and modern concepts, the adoption of foreign film influences has turned this movie into something of a masterpiece, causing us to look closer at our lives and minds, just as early French Impressionist films would have longed for us to do.
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