¶ … Filmmakers From Two Different Eras Used to Portray Subjects and Ideas
The focus of the research in this study is the techniques utilized by filmmakers from the classical and 'New Hollywood' eras of filmmaking. Towards this end, this study will examine the literature in this areas of inquiry.
Classical Hollywood Cinema & Narrative
The work of David Bordell (nd) examines classical Hollywood cinema and states that there are three views of narrative that are distinct from one another in that a narrative can be "studied as representation, how it refers to or signifies a world or body of ideas" and he states this could be referred to as 'semantics' of narrative which is exampled in the majority of studies on characterization or realism. As well a narrative can be viewed as a structure in the way its "components combine to create a distinctive whole." (Bordwell, nd, p. 17)
Narrative can be also studied according to Bordwell as an art "a dynamic process of presenting a story to a perceiver." (nd, p. 18) Bordwell states that this "would embrace considerations of source, function, and effect; the temporal progress of information or action and concepts like the 'narrator'." (nd, p. 18)
Classical Hollywood film is reported by Bordwell to present "psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals" involving conflict between characters or with circumstances external to themselves and the story concluding with a victory that is decisive or a clear defeat or somehow otherwise resolved but always with an identified problem resulting in "clear achievement or nonachievement of the goals." (Bordwell, nd, p. 18) The principal causal agency in classical Hollywood film is therefore the character who is a distinctive individual "endowed with an evident, consistent batch of traits, qualities and behaviors." (Bordwell, nd, p. 18)
The work of Michael Kokonis writes in the work entitled "Postmodernism, Hyperreality and the Hegemony of Spectacle in New Hollywood: The Case of the Truman Show" that due to the tendency of individuals to adhere to tradition that in the view of films that "we tend to look for those classical values of 'development', 'coherence', and 'unity' in narratives however, what is found are "disappointments that narrative plots become thinner, that characters are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes and that action is carried through by loosely-linked sequences, built around spectacular stunts, dazzling stars and special effects." (Kokonis,, p. 1)
Specifically the work of Buckland (p.166) reports that "Narrative complexity is sacrificed on the altar of spectacle as today's blockbusters turn out to be nothing but calculated exercises in profit-making, all high-concept, high-gloss and pure show." (Kokonis,, p. 1) Kokonis states that there have been "similar cries of warning about the loss of narrative integrity to cinematic spectacle…voiced at different periods usually at times of crisis or change in the history of the American cinema." ( p.1)
New Hollywood & Narrative
Kokonis writes that it is important to understand the changes that are dramatic in nature that the film industry in the United States has transversed through since World War II and which "culminated to a point of radical transformation in the post-1975 period, which has eventually come to beset warrant the term 'New Hollywood'. (Kokonis, p. 1) Bordwell notes that there is a debate centered on the term 'New Hollywood' but has been settled upon as the post-1975 era when the blockbuster mentality transformed the industry. Kokonis notes that there were similar protests concerning the loss of narrative integrity for example the displacement of classicism by the baroque style which served to mark what was the end of the classical cinema's "pure phrase." (Kokonis, nd, p.1)
Dissatisfaction was also expressed in the late 1970s at the time when Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) cited the re-orientation of Hollywood's "aesthetic, cultural and industrial….towards movies with more emphasis on special effects and cinematic spectacle." (Kramer, 301 cited in Kokonis, p. 1) It was noted that stories were no longer refined but were instead "spicing up concepts, refining gimmicks, making sure there are no complexities to fur our tongue when it came to spreading word of mouth." (Kokonis, nd, p.1)
Kokonis writes that it is the opinion of Warren Buckland that these arguments concerning the loss of narrative are "overstated and attempts to reverse the 'unhelpful and hostile evaluative stance' critics hold towards the blockbuster. The argument of Buckland, in part is that "historical poetics can account for the popularity of movies with such a broad appeal (and allows...
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