Naturalistic Visual Style
The first of these components is the lack of overly pictorial, expressive interventions in the visual style of ordinary fictional realist films. Explicit, readily recognized stylistic manipulations are generally absent. These might include extreme lighting effects, elaborate camera movements, editing for discontinuity, or elaborate production design. Such elements will call the viewer’s attention to a film’s formal design, emphasizing surface and texture. By contrast, the visual style of ordinary fictional realism is relatively unobtrusive. As a film’s formal design becomes more elaborate and insistent, the film begins to move out of this mode.
The camerawork in A Beautiful Mind serves the characters, the dialogue, and the story, providing viewers with compositions that focus attention on the emotional meaning of scenes and on important events and turns in the narrative. Doing so, the camerawork does not announce its presence with stylistic flourishes. Instead, it observes the characters and their doings, and most viewers would find it difficult to recall details of the cinematography, though not details of the story that the cinematography has illuminated.
Like most films in this mode, A Beautiful Mind employs continuity editing to replicate, on screen, basic perceptual cues that viewers use to infer relations of time and space in their daily lives. The film uses the eyeline match, shot-reverse-shot cutting, inserts matching the master shot, the 180-degree rule, and transitional material to prepare for changes of screen direction. As a result, the editing creates very strong visual and narrative continuity. The action flows over the cuts, and the screen world built from shot to shot links up in a physically coherent way.
The editing creates a realistic impression of time and space in which the physical constancies in the world on screen do not depart in fundamental ways from those that viewers observe in their own lives. The physical positioning of characters does not change arbitrarily from shot to shot. In a similar fashion, the lighting, set, and costume design all aim for an unobtrusive naturalism. Visual design and shot construction in A Beautiful Mind achieve an impression of ordinary realism by avoiding cinematic designs that look excessively artificial or elaborately arranged.
Linear Narrative Structure
Films in this mode often employ a linear narrative in which the sequence of events has a clear logic, that is, in which events are chained together as a series of causes and effects.
The action at the beginning of the film sets in motion events that lead to the final outcome.
The narrative thus moves forward in one predominant direction. The story traces Nash’s life from the onset of his schizophrenia, when he is a student at Princeton in 1947, to his winning of the Nobel prize in 1994. The story has a linear and chronological structure, and 327
Modes of Screen Reality
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (UNIVERSAL/
DREAMWORKS, 2001)
Balanced compositions and camera posi-
tions that facilitate continuity editing—
note how the close-ups match the master
shot and use the eyeline match—help give
A Beautiful Mind its naturalistic visual style.
The visual design serves the characters
and dialogue and calls little overt atten-
tion to itself. In this scene, Nash’s wife
(Jennifer Connelly) visits him when he is
confined to a psychiatric hospital. Frame
enlargements.
it shows the viewer how Nash battled his psychological disorder and ultimately triumphed over it. His victory, and his winning of the Nobel prize, gives the story a satisfying and up-beat resolution.
NONLINEAR DESIGNS Narratives that are nonlinear tend to move films out of the mode of ordinary realism. Nonlinear designs emphasize a film’s style and structure, and in cases where the designs are especially elaborate, they may require the viewer to work actively to make sense of the story. The kaleidoscopic structure of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977), for example, presents the story of Alvy Singer’s relationship with Annie in a nonchronological fashion, leaping in and out of different time periods 328
Modes of Screen Reality
in the lives of the characters. This doesn’t prevent the audience from enjoying the movie, laughing at the gags, or feeling sad when Annie and Alvy finally break up. But the film’s complex design sets some challenges for the audience. Because it is so fragmented, the story is not as easy to follow as it is in A Beautiful Mind. Furthermore, viewers notice the fragmented narrative as a design ; the film’s structure announces itself in an assertive manner.
Multiple flashbacks are a common way of breaking up what would otherwise be a linear narrative. One of the most famous films to employ multiple flashbacks is Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). The film’s story is set in Japan’s twelfth century and centers on the details surrounding the rape of a noblewoman and the death of her samurai warrior husband. The events of the crime are recalled differently by four separate narrators: the bandit accused of the rape, the noblewoman herself, the spirit of the dead samurai accessed through a medium, and a woodcutter who was an unseen witness to the tragedy. As each narrator presents a different version of the events under question, the film flashes back to the crime, but each time the story told in the flashback changes. In the case of Rashomon , the multiple flashbacks signal a didactic intent on the part of the filmmaker and encourage the viewer to extract the following lesson: that truth is relative and that people will perceive those versions of reality that best suit their own self-images.
Plausible Character Behavior
Characters should behave in believable ways. This is one of the most important constituents of the viewer’s sense that films in this mode are realistic. When characters act in ways that are unmotivated or improbable, the viewer’s level of belief in the fiction suffers, and such a viewer is likely to say that the film was not very realistic. Viewers are scrupulous judges of character behavior. If that behavior is not dictated by the demands of genre or story formula, viewers expect that it will conform with their own sense of what is right and appropriate under the circumstances.
Nash’s schizophrenia becomes worse—he becomes delusional and sees people who aren’t there—when he stops taking his medication. Although it has very destructive consequences, his decision not to take his pills seems entirely plausible because the pills dull his mind, which he cannot accept when it becomes difficult to work out scientific problems. Even worse, the pills have made him physically unresponsive to his wife.
Because images and stories in this mode seem so accessible, critics and viewers sometimes regard ordinary fictional realism as an easy accomplishment or as synonymous with no style at all. On the contrary, the elements of linear narrative, unobtrusive visual design, and plausible character behavior do not denote the absence of cinematic style. They should not be misunderstood as indicating a zero-degree level of style, nor should one assume that a filmmaker can readily achieve these attributes. Like the others, this mode is a highly constructed one, involving the deliberate design and manipulation of elements of structure. The appearance of ordinary realism is one that is constructed and created. That this is a paradox in no way diminishes the achievement.
Historical Realism
Ordinary fictional realism generally represents a time or place not too far removed from the social world of the film’s audiences. Many films in the realist mode, however, aim at the recreation of a more distant past. Such films include Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), set in late nineteenth-century, aristocratic New York society; 329
Modes of Screen Reality
CLOSE-UP
Italian Neo-realism
Filmmakers who value realism often try to achieve
consciousness in their viewers because, by empha-
it by shooting on real locations and by minimizing
sizing glamour, wealth and romance, they offered
stylistic flourishes, such as elaborate lighting
designs
distorted views of society. Zavattini urged filmmak-
or camera movements. By minimizing stylistic ma-
ers to use the cinema as a medium for documenting
nipulation, filmmakers may feel that they get closer
and recording authentic social reality, rather than for
to a realistic portrait by getting farther from cinematic
creating glossy, if entertaining, fantasies. He wanted
artifice and embellishment. Using real locations and
filmmakers to show the everyday rather than the ex-
non-professional actors can help to strip away com-
ceptional, to show things as they are rather than as
mon forms of stylistic adornment.
they seem, to show the relation of the people to their
One of cinema’s most important traditions of
society rather than to their dreams, and to show the
realism, in this regard, was practiced by Italian film-
common people, workers and peasants, rather than
makers in the 1940s and 1950s and became known
idealized heroes and wealthy, upper-class aristocrats.
as neo-realism (the new realism). The neo-realists
In 1943, critic Umberto Barbara coined the term
produced many film classics ( Open City, Bicycle
“neo-realism” to describe this approach to cinema.
Thieves, Umberto D ), and their work has been tre-
Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943), a dramatization
mendously influential.
of a U.S. crime novel, signaled a decisive break with
Neo-realism developed as a reaction against the
Cinecitta style by capturing the bleakness and pov-
style of studio-made films that typified Italian cin-
erty of the contemporary Italian countryside, and it
ema before and during World War II. In 1942, critic
is often regarded as the first neo-realist film. Roberto
and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini called for a new
Rossellini’s Open City (1945) received international
kind of filmmaking and argued that studio-made
acclaim for its shot-on-location portrait of resistance
entertainment films (like those produced by Italy’s
fighters in the Nazi-occupied city of Rome. Equally
Cinecitta studio and by Hollywood) produced a false
powerful is Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948),
BICYCLE THIEVES
(PRODUZIONI DE SICA,
1948)
Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani)
and his wife, Maria (Lianella
Carell), struggle to keep their
family together when Ricci
loses his job. Their struggle
takes place amid widespread
unemployment, and De Sica’s
use of locations visualizes their
economic desperation. As Ricci
searches for his bicycle, De
Sica’s camera takes the viewer
on a visual journey through
post-war Rome.
Frame enlargement.
( continued)
330
Modes of Screen Reality
about the desperate search by an unemployed laborer
Hollywood cinema in the 1940s because it required
and his son for the stolen bicycle that the laborer
expensive studio resources and because it communi-
needs in order to work.
cated the glossy production values that neo-realism
aimed to avoid. As with lighting, composition, and
Neo-realist Techniques
camera movement, the neo-realists used editing
Neo-realists like Rossellini and de Sica preferred to
with restraint. They avoided montage as a way of
shoot on location rather than using artificial sets and
achieving effects, believing it to be an inherently un-
to employ non-actors or semi-professional actors.
realistic structural device and overly manipulative of
Lamberto Maggiorani, for example, who plays Ricci,
the viewer’s response.
the owner of the stolen bicycle, had been a factory
Using these simple approaches, neo-realist
worker before De Sica cast him in the film. He gives
directors concentrated on what was in the frame
an affecting, honest performance, fresh and powerful
rather than on the properties of the image itself.
because it does not rely on a trained actor’s carefully
Neo-realist directors did not wish to create images
developed techniques.
so complex and self-conscious that they called
The neo-realists aimed to avoid intricate plots
attention to themselves as artificial creations.
and fancy narratives. They believed that elaborate
Instead, they wanted to portray authentic subjects
plotting and intricate storytelling (as in, for example,
rooted in the conditions of postwar Italian soci-
Citizen Kane) tended to create movies with artificial
ety. The results were often uncompromising and
designs. Neo-realists also employed a casual, open
powerful. Bicycle Thieves ends with Ricci, driven by
style of composition instead of deliberate and com-
desperation and the inability to find his bike, at-
plex framings. Camera set-ups tended to be func-
tempting to steal one. The attempt fails; he is de-
tional and basic. The neo- realists avoided elaborate
tained by a crowd and humiliated before his son,
equipment like booms and dollies and the extrava-
who has witnessed his father’s crime. The crowd
gant camera movement these make possible.
allows Ricci to go, and as the film ends, father
Lighting set-ups tended to be very spare and
and son disappear into the city, jobless, penniless,
unadorned. The neo-realists avoided the elabo-
without prospects. In a Hollywood movie, Ricci
rate high-contrast and low-key lighting popular in
would be a hero, and he’d find his bike. De Sica
THE 400 BLOWS (LES FILMS DU CARROSSE, 1959)
A new generation of portable, lightweight cameras and sound recording
equipment enabled director Francois Truffaut to shoot this autobiographical
film about his childhood on location in Paris. The city’s presence in the film is so extensive that is becomes a kind of character and enhances the authenticity of the childhood world that Truffaut dramatizes. Frame enlargement.
331
Modes of Screen Reality
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (RIALTO PICTURES, 1966)
Italian neo-realism exerted a powerful influence on this landmark film about the Algerian war for independence, waged against French forces occupying the country.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo shot the film in Algeria using nonprofessional performers, some of whom were guerillas who had fought the French. In the film’s many crowd scenes, Algerians played themselves, enacting emotions—nationalist pride, anger at French colonialism—that were still deeply felt. The results were extraordinary. Although the film recreates events, it feels completely authentic, as if Pontecorvo’s cameras were witnessing history, catching events as they occurred. Frame enlargement.
concludes the movie in a way that is true to the
equipment, using mostly hand-held cameras to
situation and avoids a melodramatic triumph.
achieve a more observational, less calculated style.
Neo-realism disappeared as a distinc
t film move-
Much of the power of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront
ment in the 1950s, but its methods have been highly
(1954) was created by shooting on the streets and
influential. Many of the French New Wave films broke
dockyards of New York City. These are not neo-realist
with studio traditions by shooting on location, and
films, but they are influenced by the tradition and
the city of Paris appears so extensively throughout
what it demonstrated. Stripping away the medium’s
Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), Jean-Luc
customary tools and visual embellishments and
Godard’s Breathless (1959), and Agnes Varda’s Cleo
emphasizing real locations—these have become es-
from 5 to 7 (1962) as to become a character in these
sential methods used by filmmakers for creating what
movies. Steven Spielberg worked mainly on loca-
they feel are honest and truthful depictions of the
tion for Schindler’s List (1993) and avoided expensive
world. ■
James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day (1993), set among the British aristocracy circa World War II; and Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Schindler’s List (1993), which aims at a visual and cultural re-creation of Poland and Germany during the Nazi era.
The most prolific filmmakers to work consistently in this mode have been director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, a team whose literate and nuanced films include The Bostonians (1984), A Room with a View (1985), Howard’s End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), and Jefferson in Paris (1995).
The historical realist mode works by accumulating authentic period detail.
Meticulously decorated sets and costumes evoke now-vanished eras. Production 332
Modes of Screen Reality
BARRY LYNDON (WARNER BROS., 1975)
Production design is a key element of style that helps establish the period setting of films in the mode of historical realism. Director Stanley Kubrick conducted extensive research into 18 th -century European society, and the production design by Ken Adam and Roy Walker brings this period to life with exacting detail. Frame enlargement.
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 50