The Category of System in David Bordwell’s Concept of Film Aesthetics

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by the category of system in the early books of David Bordwell. They have exerted an enormous influence on the understanding of film aesthetics, but little space has been devoted to their methodological background, including the category of system. In Film Art: An Introduction (1979), all elements of film form have a systemic character, which is visible in the chapter titles, such as “Form as System” or “Narration as a Formal System”. In The Classical Hollywood Cinema, the film aesthetics is based on systems of narrative logic, time and space. In Narration in the Fiction Film, the systems of syuzhet and style are foregrounded. Bordwell’s fascination with systems is rooted undoubtedly in their popularity in the 1970s. But do Bordwellian notions really fulfil the criteria of system theory, especially in its newer version, with such notions as chaos, feedback loop, self-regulation and others? Perhaps even Bordwell himself is not certain of that, since the word “system” disappears from recent editions of Film Art: An Introduction.

Rewriting Ibsen for the big screen

Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the champion of realist theatre. In the early days of cinema, there were several silent film adaptations of Ibsen’s plays. One would think, given his standing as a playwright, that there would be a continuous interest in Ibsen’s work after the conversion to sound. This article examines how the realist theatre – heralded by Ibsen – relates to classical (Hollywood) cinema and how Ibsen in various ways has been rewritten and has recently re-emerged within contemporary cinema.

BOAZ HAGIN’S PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH AS REFLECTED IN THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY FILMS

The Hunger Games is one of Hollywood films that contains deaths and deadly scenes throughout its trilogy. There are plenteous meanings of deaths that can be analyzed from the films, which will develop new meanings and definitions of deaths as an interesting topic to discuss. The researcher employed Boaz Hagin's framework of death because Hagin provides a framework about deaths and how deaths can be meaningful. In his book, he writes a broader range of philosophical description about deaths in Classical Hollywood Cinema which explores the morality and ethical values of mainstream films that portrays death as a meaningful part of life. The research problem is what is the meaning of deaths found in Hunger Games using Hagin’s framework of deaths. This research was conducted using a descriptive qualitative approach aiming at describing the phenomenon and characteristics. The data collected qualitatively by examining them throughout to get relevant issues and ideas and classify them. The findings show that death can bring meanings to characters in the films, such as a death in line where death means as a savior for their beloved ones, death as politic seen from the characters' past life that brings hope for the future, death as the Access, Authority, and Test, can be seen from how the characters use their talent to survive.

«Strong Curtains» and «Dramatic Punches»: The Legacy of Playwriting in the Screenwriting Manuals of the Studio Era

The Hollywood Golden Age was a revolutionary moment in the history of cinema and is pivotal to understanding the historical passage of a peculiar new art form –screenwriting. This early film period, from the Tens to the Sixties, was determined by key interactions between the respective forms of cinema and stage. Together, these interactions form a wider screenwriting “discourse.” There are reoccurring disputes in film scholarship over the paternity of the conventions and techniques of screenwriting. One solution is that techniques of theatre playwriting persisted extensively in the production practices of classical Hollywood cinema. Whether or not its professionals were aware of this is at the heart of this dispute. It is possible to identify the contribution of screenwriting manuals from Hollywood’s Golden Age toward the standardization of screenwriting techniques. The article aims to examine in the screenwriting manuals of this period some statements by practitioners who document the normalization and codification of the narrative structures used in screenwriting over time –in particular, the three-act structure. The validity and origin of the three-act structure are constantly debated among screenwriters. While this formula was known to the early writers of the Silent Era due to its legacy throughout centuries of playwriting and literature, it reappeared in the Seventies in the guise of a new theory. This article attempts to fill in certain gaps in the history of the theorization of screenwriting practices by juxtaposing statements found in screenwriting manuals and the statements of scholars and educators of this field. Ultimately, narrative conventions belonging to the tradition of theatre, as well as technological exigencies were integral in shaping the cinema techniques in use today.

The Last Word

The Last Word argues that the Hollywood novel opened up space for cultural critique of the film industry at a time when the industry lacked the capacity to critique itself. While the young studio system worked tirelessly to burnish its public image in the wake of celebrity scandal, several industry insiders wrote fiction to fill in what newspapers and fan magazines left out. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, these novels aimed to expose the invisible machinery of classical Hollywood cinema, including not only the evolving artifice of the screen but also the promotional discourse that complemented it. As likeminded filmmakers in the 1940s and 1950s gradually brought the dark side of the industry to the screen, however, the Hollywood novel found itself struggling to live up to its original promise of delivering the unfilmable. By the 1960s, desperate to remain relevant, the genre had devolved into little more than erotic fantasy of movie stars behind closed doors, perhaps the only thing the public couldn’t already find elsewhere. Still, given their unique ability to speak beyond the institutional restraints of their time, these earlier works offer a window into the industry’s dynamic creation and re-creation of itself in the public imagination.

Gone Girls of Escamontage

Escamontage designates the coincidence of a subtle cut in film, made without an apparent break in framing, with the disappearance of a woman’s body. This chapter proposes that escamontage constitutes its own form of editing in which concealment is expressed as a formal element and thematic principle. The history of escamontage is conveyed in three key moments: first, its initial articulation in early cinema with Thomas Edison’s The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895); its development in classical Hollywood cinema with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948); and finally, its realization in contemporary digital filmmaking with David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014).

Greta Garbo and Clarence Brown: An Analysis of their Professional Relationship in the Context of Classical Hollywood Cinema

Este artículo consiste en un estudio de la relación profesional de Greta Garbo y Clarence Brown, su realizador más habitual en Hollywood, quien la guio en siete largometrajes —ningún otro cineasta la dirigió en más de dos— y al que la crítica y la historiografía han señalado invariablemente como su “director favorito”. Aunque a finales de los años veinte y durante la primera mitad de los años treinta el tándem Garbo-Brown se consideró el equipo más exitoso de actriz y realizador de la época, a día de hoy su asociación es prácticamente desconocida. ¿Fue Brown realmente su “director favorito”? ¿A qué se debió la reticencia de Garbo a repetir más de dos veces con un mismo cineasta? ¿Por qué permitió, en cambio, que Brown la guiará en siete films? ¿Cuál fue su éxito al dirigirla? ¿Era Garbo una actriz técnica o instintiva? ¿Fue una gran intérprete o simplemente un rostro magnífico dotado de una fotogenia excepcional? Para desvelar estos interrogantes, se han analizado de forma cronológica y en profundidad sus siete películas conjuntas, realizadas a lo largo de once años de colaboración, y se han consultado abundantes documentos del periodo y actuales, así como una entrevista inédita con el director.