form
While most viewers feel comfortable discussing films from the perspective of their narrative content, their use of form is another matter. What do we mean when we say “film form?” In any artistic medium, form really refers to “how.” It’s one thing to say that a painting depicts a beautiful landscape of trees and fields and sky, but it’s another to describe how the artist actually conveys that landscape. Form is where the point of view of different artists really becomes visible. There’s no single way to paint a landscape, and there’s no single way to tell a story; that’s why old or familiar stories can feel fresh again when a film artist takes a new formal approach to telling them.
Decoding form in literature is a matter of looking at the kinds of words that a novelist uses; close study reveals patterns of language that emerge with scrutiny, shedding light on the kinds of metaphors that the author relies on to express ideas. In painting, form might be the kinds of colors that an artist uses, or the style of brushstrokes. In music, the form might be the kinds of instruments the musician uses—a song with an acoustic guitar sounds quite different from one with an electric guitar, for instance.
In cinema, understanding form often involves juggling some combination of all the formal elements of other art forms because they exist simultaneously. A film is a collection of dialogue, images, color, light, shadow, sound, music, movement, stillness, faces, places, stories, poetry, and more, all taking place more or less at the same time. Film form can often be difficult to deconstruct because it’s so overwhelming.
The good news is that watching films for form is a little bit like flipping a switch that gets your eyes to see it. And once you see film form, you can’t unsee it. You’ll always find yourself noticing shots for their design, or thinking about the thematic possibilities of color, or tracking the way that musical cues guide your emotions. Think about the formal elements in the collection of images below from a variety of films, taken out of context and presented without any story details. Study them closely – what do you notice about them?
One of the most common formal strategies used by filmmakers is to match form and content. Basically, this means that in general, they rely on formal decisions that follow naturally from the story being told. Take a look at the collection of images below from You’ve Got Mail (1998, Ephron).
Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you can probably guess purely from the way the images look that You’ve Got Mail is a light comedy about a romantic relationship between two people. While you might be able to pick that up from the people who appear in the images, the real clue is how the images feel to you. They’re well-lit and bright, and the camera privileges the faces of the characters who appear in the story, perfect for audiences to feel their emotions.
By contrast, look at the images below from The Witch (2015, Eggers). They’re dark and foreboding, with heavy shadows hanging over the characters, creating a sense of overriding doom. The design overwhelmingly communicates dread, with imposing shapes inside the images making the characters seem small and insignificant compared to whatever sinister forces may be lurking in the woods.
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that The Witch is a horror movie set in colonial America, and is a dark, twisted coming-of-age story about a young woman’s flirtation with evil. The form matches the storytelling.
The simultaneous nature of film form is really important to grasp because it’s one of the features that makes cinema its own unique medium. In the commentary at right, I break down the various elements of film form as used in the crime thriller Blood Simple (1985, Coen). In the scene, a man discovers a dead body inside a bar—worried that his girlfriend is responsible, he rushes to cover up the crime in a sequence that occurs nearly completely without dialogue. Pay attention to the multiplicity of formal elements on display in the sequence.
|
|
The kind of detail-oriented analysis I offer in the commentary for this sequence of Blood Simple is an indication of the difficulty of exploring cinema as an art form. It demands attention because its primary mode reflects synthesis. The cinematic experience is dependent upon juggling a number of different responses at once: as the moving image plays out on screen, you have to think about story, characters, setting, lighting, music, sound, camera shots, camera movement, editing, costume, makeup, special effects, performers, directors, studios, genre, and more. The list could go on. But, not only do you have to think about all of these different things, you have to try to process them all at once. Writer VF Perkins addresses some of this difficulty that you may experience as a spectator: “Emotional reactions may be strongly invoked but intellect and judgment are never completely submerged. The subconscious does not take complete charge of the film-dream as it does of the real one. Part of our mind remains unengaged in the fantasy. We know that the experience is unreal and in an important sense unimportant. We are freed from the responsibility of acting upon what we see and feel. Consequently, we can trace our reactions with a detachment which is unattainable in dreams and very difficult in any real situation of like intensity. We can analyze our dreams and our real experiences after the event. In the cinema we can observe our involvement while it is taking place. We enter the film situation but it remains separate from ourselves as our own dreams and experiences do not.”
Perkins illustrates the long history of comparisons between cinema and dreaming. Think about the two experiences—they share fundamental similarities. You are in the dark, unable to move, images flickering across your field of vision that you cannot control. This course asks you to think about the ways in which those cinematic dreams may be art objects. For them to be works of art, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt—think about the decisions that have been made by filmmakers along the way to arrive at the end result. Cinema shares this fundamental characteristic with other art forms. In Perkins’ estimation, “In any medium, style is formed by a pattern of decisions; but decisions can operate only where alternatives exist.” In other words, a good place to begin is to think about what you see and hear, and why. If the filmmaker offers a close-up of an object or a character, think about why he/she chose that particular shot over another one. If you hear a particular piece of music, think about what meaning the filmmaker might have wanted it to create. Think about the film’s ideas, its emotions, its arguments—what is it trying to say? Beyond this, how is it trying to say it? What techniques does the filmmaker use to express these ideas, emotions, or arguments? These are foundational questions that can help you understand any medium of art. This semester, we are going to apply this approach to cinema.
style
David Bordwell makes a convincing argument for the importance of paying attention to film style: “Film style matters because what people call content comes to us in and through the patterned use of the medium’s techniques. Without performance and framing, lens length and lighting, composition and cutting, dialogue and music, we could not grasp the world of the story. Style is the tangible texture of the film, the perceptual surface we encounter as we watch and listen, and that surface is our point of departure in move to plot, theme, feeling—everything else that matters to us. And since filmmakers devote painstaking care to fine points of style, we must dig into details. A comprehensive discussion of any film can’t stop only with style, but style should claim a lot of our attention.”
The term style is important because it gives a name to the process of decision-making undertaken by filmmakers as they construct sequences in their films. To think about film style is to acknowledge that there is a human being behind the camera making choices about how stories are going to be told. Consider the images below from Bringing Out the Dead (1999), a drama about paramedic Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), who wrestles with the agony of his inability to save patients’ lives over three nights on the job in a New York City ambulance.
Director Martin Scorsese is well-known for his stylistic adventurousness, and Bringing Out the Dead is one of his more expressive films. He uses light to create an almost dreamlike atmosphere, conveying the nocturnal lifestyle that Frank’s night shift job requires of him. Frank is plagued by insomnia and guilt, which Scorsese expresses through deeply adopting his point of view through the images.
Scorsese’s style is highly enunciated, forcing viewers to notice his interventions—dramatic lighting, narrational music cues that comment on the scenes or images or states of mind of the characters, a dynamically moving camera, jagged editing, slow and fast motion, expressive color, and more. Not all film style is so visible, however. For much of the studio era in Hollywood, which began in the 1920s, the general approach taken by most filmmakers working inside the system was to adopt a kind of “invisible style,” in which the camera moves and edits were carefully disguised so as to maintain the illusion for the audience. Essentially, while Scorsese wants you to notice the style, filmmakers in Classic Hollywood did not.
That’s not to say there was no editing or the cameras didn’t move—filmmakers have used both since the dawn of the medium. However, those stylistic cues were undertaken much more quietly. A camera move would be executed in the following manner—as characters move on screen within the setting, the camera would follow them or anticipate their movements. This way, the camera move would be eased by the motion of the actor on screen. You can see this laid out in the series of screenshots below, which are all taken from one continuous moving camera shot in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936, Capra). In this brief moment, lawyer John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille) comes into his office and is greeted by his fellow employees.
As you can see, the camera moves with him, tracking to the right as he comes down the hallway; it follows behind as he opens the office door and walks in; then it tracks left as he turns; it continues to follow him through the office as he sees more people; he hangs another right, and the camera trails behind; then he goes through his office door where his colleagues are waiting. The camera moves, yes, but you don’t really focus on that because you’re following Cedar through the space.
The other major piece of invisible style is continuity editing, in which new shots appear with a cut bridged by the movement of actors. Each new shot presents a risk that the audience will lose their place in the narrative, and continuity editing tries to smooth those out. Watch the commentary at right on a sequence from The Letter (1940, Wyler), which examines the invisible style and continuity editing in action. Pay close attention to the ways in which subtle edits and camera moves can reflect important shifts in character relationships.
|
|
Invisible style was based on a system of best practices undertaken in Hollywood in the classical period that is largely still adhered to today. We still have continuity editing, and many camera moves are aligned with the movements of actors in the frame to smooth them out.
Some stylistic decisions are products of their time. A film from the 1940s will look different from a film made in the 1950s. The 1980s have a strong visual and auditory identity, with bright, colorful looks and synthesizer driven music that is instantly recognizable in retrospect. In the commentary at right, you can watch 1980s style on display in the cop thriller To Live and Die in LA (1985, Friedkin). Look for the neon lighting and listen to the very specific sound of the musical scoring in particular.
|
|
Film form is what separates it from other artistic mediums. Learning to pay attention to film form helps deepen your relationship with the stories that films tell, because formal elements are shaping your perception of the characters, the themes, and other aspects of narrative content. Once you start to notice filmmakers’ formal choices and stylistic decisions, you’ll find your experience of cinema gets much richer.
clip quiz - film form
RAGING BULL (1980, Scorsese)
Identify one of each of the following elements of film form in this clip from Raging Bull: a close-up; a camera movement; a use of music; a sound effect; a cut from one shot to another. Describe what you see carefully and be specific about time-stamps. |
|
MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001, Lynch)
What mood do the formal elements in this scene from Mulholland Drive generate? Identify the dominant feeling, and point to specific formal choices that achieve that effect. |
|
UNSTOPPABLE (2010, Scott)
The narrative content of this scene from Unstoppable is that a freight train is speeding out of control. How do the formal choices match that narrative content? Where do you see alignment between what’s going on in the scene and how the scene is constructed from a visual and auditory perspective? |
|
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013, Coens)
What formal elements dominate, either auditory or visual, in this sequence from Inside Llewyn Davis? Which are most prominent and what emotions do they generate? |
|
Form in after hours
Few directors have as sterling a reputation as Martin Scorsese, who is surely one of the most important American filmmakers who ever lived; not least, this reputation has been hard-earned through total control of the formal dimensions of the cinema. He can work fast and loud, as in several of his gangster films, with roaring soundtracks and quick camera movements, or he can work slow and quiet, as in his many dramas about faith, social custom, and aging, with careful, precise editing and lingering silences.
After Hours (1985), Scorsese’s Kafka-esque odyssey into the strangeness of the New York City night, shows him taking the first approach. Made after the collapse of his first attempt to make a long-gestating passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, fell apart at the last minute, After Hours was something of a back-to-basics, small film for Scorsese. The disappointment of several box office failures and the loss of The Last Temptation of Christ (which he would eventually get made in 1988) took a toll on him, and After Hours was an opportunity for the filmmaker to rediscover what he loved about the art form itself.
Computer analyst Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) lives a boring, lonely life in New York City; he works all day and doesn’t have much to go home to at night. A series of miscommunications sends him into a waking nightmare in which he is alternately blamed for causing the suicide of Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), a woman he meets in a diner, accused of committing a series of burglaries by a growing mob of angry neighborhood watch members, and other assorted crimes and misdemeanors. At a certain point, Paul just wants to go home, but the city’s vast array of weirdos and freaks seems to be conspiring against him.
The energy of After Hours comes through in Scorsese’s many formal choices, which are apparent from the first moments of the film. As Paul sits in his open-floorplan office instructing new employee Lloyd (Bronson Pinchot) in the operating system, the camera whirls through the busy office space, starting the movie at a brisk pace.
The camerawork in After Hours is restless, with Scorsese working with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus for the first of what would become several collaborations; the camera is constantly in motion, expressing something about both the pace of life in New York City and the swirling circumstances that land Paul in trouble with just about everyone he meets. The film’s visuals feel dangerously out of control, as if the world itself were about to spin off its axis. Paul can barely keep up with all the things he’s accused of doing, with events racing ahead of him before he can catch his breath. The camera’s breathless dives and drops force a dramatic realignment of audience expectations—when the camera moves so suddenly, it’s disorienting. Above all, this is what After Hours is about—what happens when you can’t figure out what the hell is happening? What does that feel like?
It might feel something like one of the film’s trick shots, which comes early on. As Paul arrives at Marcy’s downtown apartment to meet up with her, he rings the bell and finds himself introduced to Marcy’s roommate Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), an artist living in the Soho neighborhood. The buzzer to let him up is broken, so she tosses the keys down from the second story window; for a brief moment, the camera itself takes on the point of view of the falling keys as they plummet to the sidewalk in front of Paul. The sense of the ground rushing up to meet the lens, over something as simple as a set of keys falling to the cement, is a nice microcosm of the film’s major ideas—something that seems simple can quickly spiral into something much more meaningful.
Scorsese is also well-known for his formal control of the soundtrack of his films, with his use of popular music as a significant feature of his work. His films have produced a number of iconic musical moments. In After Hours, the assault of a punk rock song as Paul wanders into a nightclub looking for Kiki lends an intensity to the images; when Paul returns to the same club later after the punks have left the building, he plays the soft country ballad “Is That All There Is?”, sung by Peggy Lee, on the jukebox. The use of that particular song almost dares the universe to throw something else at him, while simultaneously capturing the mood Paul feels at this point in the film—he can’t quite believe he’s come this far.
After Hours demonstrates how filmmakers express the themes they are interested in through stylistic and formal choices. All films do this, but take different approaches. Some are more subtle, and some are highly expressive. The key takeaway, however, is that all filmmakers make formal choices to shape audience understanding of the stories they tell. While many formal elements work on most audiences without them really noticing, as film students, your job is to start noticing and articulating how those formal choices contribute to the overall experience of an individual film.