NOTES/SUMMARY: FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM AND SURREALISM 1918-1930

Impressionism was an avant-garde style that was largely within the film industry. Most impressionist filmmakers started in French companies and were financially successful. Most formed their independent companies but remained in the mainstream industry by renting studio and releasing their films through established firms.

World War I struck a huge blow to the french film industry. American or Hollywood films began to flood in France and in order to bring back their film industry they tried imitating Hollywood films. but their biggest movement was encouraging younger french directors. these younger directors proclaim that cinema was an art comparable to poetry, painting and music. Cinema should be purely itself and should not borrow from the theater or literature.

Impressionist film techniques involves and manipulate plot time and subjectivity. flashbacks are also common, insistence on registering character's dreams, fantasies, and mental states. The filmmakers experimented with ways of rendering mental states by means of cinematography and editing. Irises, masks and superimposition function as traces of characters thoughts and feelings. These film present characters perceptual experience, their optical impressions so it uses a lot of point-of-view cutting. Other technique such as rhythmic editing is used to suggest the pace of an experience as a character feels it. Violence-rhythm accelerates and shots get shorter and shorter.

Surrealist cinema was a more radical movement, it produced films that perplexed and shocked the audience. this kind of film is directly involved in surrealist painting and literature. It is overtly anti-narrative and attack causality itself. We find things juxtaposed to give disturbing effects.


Source: French Impressionism and Surrealism ( 1 9 1 8- 1930) pp 450- 453 of the book Film Art by Bordwell and Thompson