1920-30 International Developments
The 1920s saw Hollywood ’s virtual domination of international commercial film-making. National resistance to this domination, particularly in Europe, took the form of import quotas and the development of alternatives to the classical Hollywood , or ‘classic realist’, style. The decade witnessed an extraordinary degree of experimentation with three major alternative styles, or movements, emerging in film: French Impressionism, German Expressionism and Soviet Montage. There was also a limited degree of co-operation between European countries to compete against the tide of U.S. imports.
France and the Impressionists
French film production was crippled in the post war era with (once mighty) exporters Pathé and Gaumont drastically cutting back on production to concentrate on the less risky business of distribution and exhibition. Despite pleas from sections of the industry, the French government put no quotas on film imports until the 1930s. Hence the industrial base of production, wrecked by the war and suffering a chronic lack of capital investment, remained small scale. The lack of large, artificially lit studios, for example, is apparent in the frequent choice of outdoor locations and country houses for settings. Costume dramas and historical epics, often shown as serials, Méliès-like fantasy films employing trick photography and comedies remained the most popular genres for French commercial cinema in this decade.
According to Bordwell (1994) the crisis in the French film industry probably helped the French Impressionist Movement (1918-29) to make its mark in this decade. Relatively small budget productions by directors like Abel Gance, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac and Jean Renoir (who sold some of his father’s paintings to fund his films) were highly influential on a national and international level. Impressionism, a popular style of painting in France between 1870 and 1900 had emphasised the effects of light and colour, rather than details of form. Impressionist theories emerged after the war that also treated film as an art form. Film, like painting, could convey the vision of an artist and create intense, if fleeting, emotional experiences for the spectator. The filmmaker Louis Delluc suggested that by filming objects we might see them in a new way. The term ‘photogénie’ was used to describe this. ‘Photogénie’, a central concept in Impressionism, occurred due to the difference between human perception and the way a camera recorded reality (through framing, focusing, the use of black and white film and so on) which might help us glimpse an object in a fresh light revealing the essence, or even the soul, of the recorded image.
Impressionists stressed the unique qualities of the film medium. Louis Delluc wrote of the need for films that were truly cinematic and distinctively French. The group of filmmakers that gathered around him rejected the stagy tradition of Film d’Art. Their films were often highly romanticised, intimate studies of French ‘low life’. While the style of the Impressionists was somewhat literary and self-consciously artistic, they preferred restrained, naturalistic acting because it appeared more suited to the medium than the theatrical style traditionally used. They also developed technical devices to assist the telling of stories that were particular to cinema. Superimposition might suggest memories or a dream; filters and gauzes erotic rapture or mental isolation; slow-motion, distorting lenses, mirrors or out of focus shots subjective points of view or states of mind. Many of these techniques had been used in other countries, for similar effects, but the Impressionists used them far more extensively and purposefully. Camera movement, editing and lighting were other areas where Impressionists developed a range of striking innovations. In ‘La Roue’ (The Wheel 1922) the director Abel Gance made use of rapid cutting, including the first known use of single frame shots to suggest, albeit subliminally, a man’s life literally flashing through his mind shortly before he falls from a cliff.
Careful lighting and arrangement was used to enhance the ‘photogénie’ of objects as much as possible. The pictoral beauty of rural locations was a major interest from 1918-22 and intense psychological exploration characterised the period 1923-25 when rhythmic cutting was employed. In the final three years of the movement 1926-29 there was a diffusion in Impressionist filmmaking as the style’s technique had been widely imitated and was, therefore, rather commonplace (Bordwell). The creative energy of the movement was somewhat dissipated on grandiose projects like Abel Gance’s ‘Napoleon’ (1926) which employed a huge triple screen and soared over budget, or was diverted into abstract, surrealist and Dadaist experimental cinema, known collectively in France as cinéma pur ‘pure cinema’ (see chapter Avant Garde). The general recovery of French commercial film-making and the introduction of sound finally put an end to the small independent companies that had led the Impressionist movement. The Impressionists left a small number of high quality, innovative works that were very influential both within and outside of France .