Saturday, November 18, 2006

French New Wave, III

"The very nature of the screen-a completely filled rectangular space that occupies a relatively narrow portion of the visual field - conditions of a gestural plasticity that is very different from the one the theater has accustomed us to...The film actor's gesture has not only gradually become more discreet but more
'self-contained,' distorted so to speak by the proximity of the screen's edge." - Rohmer

Douchet, Jean, Cedric Anger, and Robert Bononno. French New Wave. Zzdap Publishing, 1999. pg. 150-151

1 comment:

skuo said...

This quote is interesting because it describes action as a static language - there is a set of semiotics that connect with the performance to communicate information to the audience in a very structural manner. This is precisely what cinema has been stuck to, maybe in a lesser degree today...but a grammatical formula.