French Impressionism known as the avant- garde aesthetic. It is a
term applied to a group of filmmakers in 1920s who are Abel Gance, Marcel
L’Herbier, Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein. In the past silent era, there are a
number of change of film movements in France. This is to transform the
Hollywood tradition by alternating the abstract of cinema and film making. It
comes to a favoured new and progressive ideas towards the French Impression
within the film industry. The impressionist film makers operated this style in
large and started to form their own independent companies after their works
been proved financially successful. Germaine Dulac had made some important
impressionist film such as “La souriante Madame Beudet” and “Gossette” in 1923
whereas Jacques Feyder was made his impressionist films from 1923 to 1926.
Bordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin (2010) stated that during the World War
I, French film industry was interrupted as the personnel were conscripted,
studio were moved to wartime uses and the export was stopped. Therefore, in
1915, American films began to step in to the France until year 1917. In these
three years, Hollywood films dominated the market. After the war ended, French
film making was still not fully recovered yet they tended to use a lot of
techniques to recapture the audiences by imitating the Hollywood production
methods.
The young production claimed that film should be an art instead of
commercial craft. Art in the sense of having same category with poetry, painting
and music. Thus, between 1918 and 1928, they started to alter and put this
ideas into the film. Also, the young directors applied the new ways with cinema
which emerging the Hollywood tradition. Impressionism is more focused on
psychological story. According to Bordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin
(2010), Germaine Dulac, a director said “ Another period arrived, that of the
psychological and impressionist film. It would seem stupid to take place a
character in a given situation without penetrating into the secret realm of his
inner life, and the actor’s performance is explained by the play of thoughts
and of visualized sensations.” Cinecollage. (2015) stated that Abel Gance’s film “La dixiѐme symphonie” had been the first major impressionist film in
1918. It storied about the symphony until his friends considered it as a
successor by introducing a series of visual devices. Hence, such attempt
becomes an important factor in French impressionism.
By giving the narration subjective depth and capturing the memory
of the characters’ mind, the film makers gained the name of impressionist. An
impressionist film would motive such events as a character’s dreams or
hallucination. They were trying to highlight the emotional state of the
characters. Eventually, they liked to play around the moods and feelings such
as creating a love triangle with a small numbers of characters. French
impressionism often included the flashback scene. It can be one or a series of
them which bringing the audiences to the characters’ dreams and mental states.
Thus, we can get into the characters’ emotion in detailed.
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| Source from: Film History: France in the 1920s |
The idea of impressionism is being hoped to be famous as
Hollywood’s products. Unfortunately, it was not welcomed by the foreign
audience; it was just popular among the French public. That is why some of
their companies had been absorbed by the big companies since they got no enough
money to experiment the sound film. From day to day, the cost of production
also increased at that particular time. Impressionism has came to the end by
1929. But things that the film makers created and done such as their ideas and
subjective style were brought us a legend in film industry. Until now, these
innovation is still work in our film industry. For example, director wants to
give their audience feels what the actor is actually sensing or feeling
throughout the film in some abnormal state of mind. They work in a few
techniques of camera work and editing.
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