French Impressionist Cinema, also referred to as the first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde, is a term applied to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s.
Film scholars have had much difficulty in defining this movement or for that matter deciding whether it should be considered a movement at all. David Bordwell has attempted to define a unified stylistic paradigm and set of tenets. 1 Others, namely Richard Abel, criticize these attempts and group the films and filmmakers more loosely, based on a common goal of “exploration of the process of representation and signification in narrative film discourse.” 2 Still others such as Dudley Andrew would struggle with awarding any credibility at all as “movement.” 3
Read more about French Impressionist Cinema: Filmmakers and Films (greatly Abridged), Periodization, Stylistic Paradigm, Relation To/Deviation From Hollywood Stylistics, Criticism, Theory
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or cinema:
“The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)