Screening Modernism

by Kovacs, Andras Balint

• ISBN13: 9780226451633
• ISBN10: 0226451631
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs like Antonioni, Fellini, and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works,Screening Modernismis the first comprehensive study of European art cinema's postwar heyday. Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, Andras Balint Kovacs's encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovacs begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema. Exploring not only modernism's origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars,Screening Modernismultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.

Author Biography

András Bálint Kovács is associate professor in the Institute for Art Theory and Media Research at ELTE University in Budapest.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

What Is the Modern?

Theorizing Modernism

Modern

Modernism

Avant-garde

Cinema and Modernism: The First Encounter

The Institution of the Art Film

Modernist Art Cinema and the Avant-Garde

Theories Of The Classical/Modern Distinction In Cinema

Style Analysts

Evolutionists

Modern Cinema and Deleuze

Modernism as an Unfinished Project

The Forms of Modernism

Modern Art Cinema: Style Or Movement?

Narration In Modern Cinema

Classical versus Modernist Art Films

The Alienation of the Abstract Individual

Who Is "the Individual" in Modern Cinema?

The Role of Chance

Open-Ended Narrative

Narrative Trajectory Patterns: Linear, Circular, Spiral

Genre In Modern Cinema

Melodrama and Modernism Excursus: Sartre and the Philosophy of Nothingness

A Modern Melodrama: Antonioni's Eclipse (1962)

Other Genres and Recurrent Plot Elements

Investigation

Wandering/Travel

The Mental Journey

Closed-Situation Drama

Satire/Genre Parody

The Film Essay

Patterns Of Modern Styles

Primary Formation: Continuity and Discontinuity

Radical Continuity

Imaginary Time in Last Year at Marienbad

Radical Discontinuity

The Fragmented Form according to Godard

Serial Form

Styles And Forms Of Modernism

Minimalist Forms

The Bresson Form

Abstract Subjectivity and the "Model"

Bresson and His Followers

Analytical Minimalism: The Antonioni Form

Psychic Landscape?

Continuity

Antonioni and His Followers

Expressive Minimalism

Naturalist Forms

Post-neorealism

Cinéma Vérité

The "New Wave" Style

Ornamental FormS

Theatrical Forms

Modern Cinema Trends

The Family Tree of Modern Cinema

Appearance and Propagation of Modernism (1949-1958)

Critical Reflexivity Or The Birth Of The Auteur

The Birth of the Auteur

Historical Forms of Reflexivity

The Emergence of Critical Reflexivity: Bergman's Prison

Reflexivity and Abstraction: Modern Cinema and the Nouveau Roman

The Return Of The Theatrical Abstract Drama

The Destabilization Of The Fabula: Neorealism And Modernism

Voice-Over Narration

The Dissolution of Classical Narrative: Film Noir and Modernism

Fabula Alternatives: Hitchcock

Alternative Subjective Narration: Rashomon

An Alternative To The Classical Form

The End of Neorealism

Modernism in Story of a Love Affair Neorealism Meets Film Noir

Rosselini: The "Neorealist Miracle"

The Short Story of Modern Cinema (1959-1975)

The Romantic Period, 1959-1961

Neorealism: The Reference

Eastern Europe: From Socialist Realism toward Neorealism

Heroism versus Modernism

Jerzy Kawalerowicz: The First Modern Polish Auteur

The Year 1959

Forms of Romantic Modernism

Genre and Narration in the Early Years

Sound and Image

Background and Foreground

From Hiroshima to Marienbad: Modernism and the Cinema of the Elite

The Production System of the "New Cinema"

Established Modernism, 1962-1966

Western Europe around 1962

The Key Film of 1962: Fellini's 8 ½

Czechoslovak Grotesque Realism

The "Central European Experience"

Jancsó and the Ornamental Style

Summary

The Year 1966

The Loneliness of the Auteur

Political Modernism, 1967-1975

The Year 1968

Conceptual Modernism: The Auteur's New World

Reconstructing Reality

Counter-Cinema: Narration as a Direct Auteurial Discourse

The Film as a Means of Direct Political Action

Parabolic Discourse

Teorema

The Auteur's Private Mythology

The Self-Critique of Political Modernism: Sweet Movie

Summary

"The Death Of The Auteur"

The Last of Modernism: Mirror

Mirror and Serial Structure

The Disappearance of Nothingness

Appendix: A Chronology of Modern Film

Bibliography

Index

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