Theory of film practice (Cinema two)

Burch, Noël

Praeger

To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema

The cinema of Japan, at least until I945, was the only national cinema to derive fundamentally from a non-European culture. Its films thus diverged in important respects from the standard 'Hollywood style' of shooting and editing adopted by the industries of Europe and the US, as well as by colonized nations. In this unprecedented study, Noel Burch confronts the major modes of discourse of Japanese culture with the stylistic development of Japanese cinema, and contrasts the resulting modes of representation with those of the West. Contrary to previous opinion, Burch shows how the period I 896-I 930 was not one of stagnation and 'underdevelopment' but instead constituted a preparatory stage for the I93o-I945 'golden age' of Japanese cinema, during which Ozu, Mizoguchi, and other less well-known masters produced their most distinguished films. Burch also concludes that prewar militarism was.relatively uninfluential on the work of the 'thirties and he views the post-1945 period of 'democratization' as one of regression in cinema, particularly in the works of Ozu and Mizoguchi. Treating many examples with the aid of frame enlargements, Burch illuminates previously unknown aspects of Japanese film history. And his dialectical analysis produces a new understanding of the elements of film structure.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

University of California Press

Major studies on Ozu, Kurosawa, Oshima, architecture, Mizoguchi, Ishida, tradition, surface and depth etc.

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Noël Burch's singularly perceptive view of film and its origins will interest all who care about film theory and history. Life to Those Shadows presents a critique of "classical" approaches to film: the assumptions that what we call the language of film was a natural, organic development, and that it lay latent from the outset in the basic technology of the camera, waiting for the prescient pioneers to bring it into being. The view that film language was a universal, neutral medium, innocent of any social or historical meaning in itself, is also challenged here.Burch's major thesis is that, on the contrary, film language has a social and economic history, that it evolved in the way it did because of when and where it was constructed—in the capitalist and imperialist West between 1892 and 1929.From this perspective, the book examines the emergence of what it defines as cinema's Institutional Mode of Representation and the sociohistorical circumstances in which it took place. Central to the Institutional Mode are the principles of visualization—camera placement and movement, lighting, editing, mise-en-scène—that filmmakers and audiences came to internalize over the first three decades. Special emphasis is laid on the all-important change that occurred in the placing of the spectator, from a position of exteriority to the film image—implicit in both film-form and viewing conditions during the primitive era (pre-1909)—to the imaginary centering of the spectator-subject—completed only with the generalization of lip-synch sound after 1929. Burch contends that this imaginary centering of a sensorially isolated spectator is the keystone of the cinematic illusion of reality, still achieved today by the same means as it was sixty years ago.

Life to Those Shadows

Noël Burch's singularly perceptive view of film and its origins will interest all who care about film theory and history. Life to Those Shadows presents a critique of "classical" approaches to film: the assumptions that what we call the language of film was a natural, organic development, and that it lay latent from the outset in the basic technology of the camera, waiting for the prescient pioneers to bring it into being. The view that film language was a universal, neutral medium, innocent of any social or historical meaning in itself, is also challenged here. Burch's major thesis is that, on the contrary, film language has a social and economic history, that it evolved in the way it did because of when and where it was constructed―in the capitalist and imperialist West between 1892 and 1929. From this perspective, the book examines the emergence of what it defines as cinema's Institutional Mode of Representation and the sociohistorical circumstances in which it took place. Central to the Institutional Mode are the principles of visualization―camera placement and movement, lighting, editing, mise-en-scène―that filmmakers and audiences came to internalize over the first three decades. Special emphasis is laid on the all-important change that occurred in the placing of the spectator, from a position of exteriority to the film image―implicit in both film-form and viewing conditions during the primitive era (pre-1909)―to the imaginary centering of the spectator-subject―completed only with the generalization of lip-synch sound after 1929. Burch contends that this imaginary centering of a sensorially isolated spectator is the keystone of the cinematic illusion of reality, still achieved today by the same means as it was sixty years ago.

Theory of Film Practice (Princeton Legacy Library)

This classic in film theory, presents a systematic study of the techniques of the film medium and of their potential uses for creating formal structures in individual films such as Dovzhenko's Earth, Antonioni's La Notte, Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Renoir's Nana, and Godard's Pierrot le Fou.
Originally published in 1981.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Princeton University Press

This classic in film theory, presents a systematic study of the techniques of the film medium and of their potential uses for creating formal structures in individual films such as Dovzhenko's Earth, Antonioni's La Notte, Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Renoir's Nana, and Godard's Pierrot le Fou.
Originally published in 1981.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Battle of the Sexes in French Cinema, 1930–1956

In The Battle of the Sexes in French Cinema, 1930–1956, Noël Burch and Geneviève Sellier adopt a sociocultural approach to films made in France before, during, and after World War II, paying particular attention to the Occupation years (1940–44). The authors contend that the films produced from the 1930s until 1956—when the state began to subsidize the movie industry, facilitating the emergence of an "auteur cinema"—are important, both as historical texts and as sources of entertainment.Citing more than 300 films and providing many in-depth interpretations, Burch and Sellier argue that films made in France between 1930 and 1956 created a national imaginary that equated masculinity with French identity. They track the changing representations of masculinity, explaining how the strong patriarch who saved fallen or troubled women from themselves in prewar films gave way to the impotent, unworthy, or incapable father figure of the Occupation. After the Liberation, the patriarch reemerged as protector and provider alongside assertive women who figured as threats not only to themselves but to society as a whole.

Sellier, Geneviève

Duke University Press Books

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Books by Burch, Noël

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Theory of film practice (Cinema two)

To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema

To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema

Life to Those Shadows

Life to Those Shadows

Theory of Film Practice (Princeton Legacy Library)

Theory of Film Practice (Princeton Legacy Library)

Theory of Film Practice (Princeton Legacy Library)

Theory of Film Practice (Princeton Legacy Library)

The Battle of the Sexes in French Cinema, 1930–1956