French Impressionism

During the 1920’s film movements in France offered alternative to the classical Hollywood style of narrative. Some of these film movements are not French but instead part of the growing international avant-garde. But two alternative film movements are French in nature. These are French Impressionism and Surrealism. In this post, let's talk about the former.

French Impressionism

After the World War I, the French Film Industry was left paralyzed. Hollywood films dominated the industry. The French film industry people tried to regain audience acceptance by imitating Hollywood productions. Until the French industry encouraged  four young French directors, Abel Gance, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L'Herbier, and Jean Epstein to try their hands making new films. This signaled the birth of French Impressionism. These young directors became experimental on making their films. Psychological narrative dominated their practice. The interest fall not on external physical behavior  but on inner action. (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008 p. 450) Flashbacks are common. They are used to depict memories. Impressionism’s emphasis in personal emotion give the films’ narratives an intensely psychological focus. (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008 p. 451)

 Another Impressionistic style is showing characters point-of-view, by having camera shots of what the character sees and/or perceive in his/her head. To show dizziness and drunkenness, they make distorted or filtered shots or vertiginous camera movements. (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008 p. 451) French Impressionism is also known for  rhythmic editing. It is used to express the character's feeling. During climactic scenes, rhythm accelerates and shots gets shorter. Impressionists also tried using new lenses, multiple frame images and widescreen ratio, which Gance is famous for using such. Impressionists strapped their cameras to cars, carousels and locomotives. L'Herbier had his camera gliding through huge rooms and even plummeting straight down toward the crowd from the dome of Paris stock exchange (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008 p. 451).

L'Argent . An example of French Impressionism film

French Impressionism movement died around 1929 but the influences of the movement remained and continued to be used by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Maya Deren.


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Source:
Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. (2008) French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930) In Film Art: An Introduction (8th ed., pp. 450-452) New York: McGraw-Hill