Screening Modernism
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Description
Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs like Antonioni, Fellini, and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works, Screening Modernism is the first comprehensive study of European art cinema’s postwar heyday.
Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, András Bálint Kovács’s encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovács begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema.
Exploring not only modernism’s origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars, Screening Modernism ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.
Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, András Bálint Kovács’s encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovács begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema.
Exploring not only modernism’s origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars, Screening Modernism ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.
András Bálint Kovács is associate professor in the Institute for Art Theory and Media Research at ELTE University in Budapest.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
Part One: What Is the Modern?
1 THEORIZING MODERNISM
Modern
Modernism
Avant-garde
Cinema and Modernism: The First Encounter
The Institution of the Art Film
Modernist Art Cinema and the Avant-Garde
2 THEORIES OF THE CLASSICAL/MODERN DISTINCTION IN CINEMA
Style Analysts
Evolutionists
Modern Cinema and Deleuze
Modernism as an Unfinished Project
Part Two: The Forms of Modernism
3 MODERN ART CINEMA: STYLE OR MOVEMENT? 4 NARRATION IN MODERN CINEMA
Classical versus Modernist Art Films
The Alienation of the Abstract Individual
Who Is “the Individual” in Modern Cinema?
The Role of Chance
Open-Ended Narrative
Narrative Trajectory Patterns: Linear, Circular, Spiral
5 GENRE IN MODERN CINEMA
Melodrama and Modernism Excursus: Sartre and the Philosophy of Nothingness
A Modern Melodrama: Antonioni’s Eclipse (1962)
Other Genres and Recurrent Plot Elements
Investigation
Wandering/Travel
The Mental Journey
Closed-Situation Drama
Satire/Genre Parody
The Film Essay
6 PATTERNS OF MODERN STYLES
Primary Formation: Continuity and Discontinuity
Radical Continuity
Imaginary Time in Last Year at Marienbad Radical Discontinuity
The Fragmented Form according to Godard
Serial Form
7 STYLES AND FORMS OF MODERNISM
Minimalist Forms
The Bresson Form
Abstract Subjectivity and the “Model”
Bresson and His Followers
Analytical Minimalism: The Antonioni Form
Psychic Landscape?
Continuity
Antonioni and His Followers
Expressive Minimalism
8 NATURALIST FORMS
Post-neorealism
Cinéma Vérité
The “New Wave” Style
9 ORNAMENTAL FORMS
10 THEATRICAL FORMS
11 MODERN CINEMA TRENDS
The Family Tree of Modern Cinema
Part Three: Appearance and Propagation of Modernism (1949–1958)
12 CRITICAL REFLEXIVITY OR THE BIRTH OF THE AUTEUR
The Birth of the Auteur
Historical Forms of Reflexivity
The Emergence of Critical Reflexivity: Bergman’s Prison Reflexivity and Abstraction: Modern Cinema and the Nouveau Roman13 THE RETURN OF THE THEATRICAL
Abstract Drama
14 THE DESTABILIZATION OF THE FABULA: NEOREALISM AND MODERNISM
Voice-Over Narration
The Dissolution of Classical Narrative: Film Noir and Modernism
Fabula Alternatives: Hitchcock
Alternative Subjective Narration: Rashomon15 AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CLASSICAL FORM
The End of Neorealism
Modernism in Story of a Love Affair: Neorealism Meets Film Noir
Rosselini: The “Neorealist Miracle”
Part Four: The Short Story of Modern Cinema (1959–1975)
16 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1959–1961
Neorealism: The Reference
Eastern Europe: From Socialist Realism toward Neorealism
Heroism versus Modernism
Jerzy Kawalerowicz: The First Modern Polish Auteur
The Year 1959
Forms of Romantic Modernism
Genre and Narration in the Early Years
Sound and Image
Background and Foreground
From Hiroshima to Marienbad: Modernism and the Cinema of the Elite
The Production System of the “New Cinema”
17 ESTABLISHED MODERNISM, 1962–1966
Western Europe around 1962
The Key Film of 1962: Fellini’s 8 ½ Central Europe
Czechoslovak Grotesque Realism
The “Central European Experience”
Jancsó and the Ornamental Style
Summary
18 THE YEAR 1966
The Loneliness of the Auteur
19 POLITICAL MODERNISM, 1967–1975
The Year 1968
Conceptual Modernism: The Auteur’s New World
Reconstructing Reality
Counter-Cinema: Narration as a Direct Auteurial Discourse
The Film as a Means of Direct Political Action
Parabolic Discourse
Teorema The Auteur’s Private Mythology
The Self-Critique of Political Modernism: Sweet Movie
Summary
20 “THE DEATH OF THE AUTEUR”
The Last of Modernism: Mirror
Mirror and Serial Structure
The Disappearance of Nothingness
Appendix: A Chronology of Modern Film BibliographyIndex
Part One: What Is the Modern?
1 THEORIZING MODERNISM
Modern
Modernism
Avant-garde
Cinema and Modernism: The First Encounter
The Institution of the Art Film
Modernist Art Cinema and the Avant-Garde
2 THEORIES OF THE CLASSICAL/MODERN DISTINCTION IN CINEMA
Style Analysts
Evolutionists
Modern Cinema and Deleuze
Modernism as an Unfinished Project
Part Two: The Forms of Modernism
3 MODERN ART CINEMA: STYLE OR MOVEMENT? 4 NARRATION IN MODERN CINEMA
Classical versus Modernist Art Films
The Alienation of the Abstract Individual
Who Is “the Individual” in Modern Cinema?
The Role of Chance
Open-Ended Narrative
Narrative Trajectory Patterns: Linear, Circular, Spiral
5 GENRE IN MODERN CINEMA
Melodrama and Modernism Excursus: Sartre and the Philosophy of Nothingness
A Modern Melodrama: Antonioni’s Eclipse (1962)
Other Genres and Recurrent Plot Elements
Investigation
Wandering/Travel
The Mental Journey
Closed-Situation Drama
Satire/Genre Parody
The Film Essay
6 PATTERNS OF MODERN STYLES
Primary Formation: Continuity and Discontinuity
Radical Continuity
Imaginary Time in Last Year at Marienbad Radical Discontinuity
The Fragmented Form according to Godard
Serial Form
7 STYLES AND FORMS OF MODERNISM
Minimalist Forms
The Bresson Form
Abstract Subjectivity and the “Model”
Bresson and His Followers
Analytical Minimalism: The Antonioni Form
Psychic Landscape?
Continuity
Antonioni and His Followers
Expressive Minimalism
8 NATURALIST FORMS
Post-neorealism
Cinéma Vérité
The “New Wave” Style
9 ORNAMENTAL FORMS
10 THEATRICAL FORMS
11 MODERN CINEMA TRENDS
The Family Tree of Modern Cinema
Part Three: Appearance and Propagation of Modernism (1949–1958)
12 CRITICAL REFLEXIVITY OR THE BIRTH OF THE AUTEUR
The Birth of the Auteur
Historical Forms of Reflexivity
The Emergence of Critical Reflexivity: Bergman’s Prison Reflexivity and Abstraction: Modern Cinema and the Nouveau Roman13 THE RETURN OF THE THEATRICAL
Abstract Drama
14 THE DESTABILIZATION OF THE FABULA: NEOREALISM AND MODERNISM
Voice-Over Narration
The Dissolution of Classical Narrative: Film Noir and Modernism
Fabula Alternatives: Hitchcock
Alternative Subjective Narration: Rashomon15 AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CLASSICAL FORM
The End of Neorealism
Modernism in Story of a Love Affair: Neorealism Meets Film Noir
Rosselini: The “Neorealist Miracle”
Part Four: The Short Story of Modern Cinema (1959–1975)
16 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1959–1961
Neorealism: The Reference
Eastern Europe: From Socialist Realism toward Neorealism
Heroism versus Modernism
Jerzy Kawalerowicz: The First Modern Polish Auteur
The Year 1959
Forms of Romantic Modernism
Genre and Narration in the Early Years
Sound and Image
Background and Foreground
From Hiroshima to Marienbad: Modernism and the Cinema of the Elite
The Production System of the “New Cinema”
17 ESTABLISHED MODERNISM, 1962–1966
Western Europe around 1962
The Key Film of 1962: Fellini’s 8 ½ Central Europe
Czechoslovak Grotesque Realism
The “Central European Experience”
Jancsó and the Ornamental Style
Summary
18 THE YEAR 1966
The Loneliness of the Auteur
19 POLITICAL MODERNISM, 1967–1975
The Year 1968
Conceptual Modernism: The Auteur’s New World
Reconstructing Reality
Counter-Cinema: Narration as a Direct Auteurial Discourse
The Film as a Means of Direct Political Action
Parabolic Discourse
Teorema The Auteur’s Private Mythology
The Self-Critique of Political Modernism: Sweet Movie
Summary
20 “THE DEATH OF THE AUTEUR”
The Last of Modernism: Mirror
Mirror and Serial Structure
The Disappearance of Nothingness
Appendix: A Chronology of Modern Film BibliographyIndex
“Few scholars have thought so carefully about what constitutes the modern cinema as András Bálint Kovács. Screening Modernism is at once a nuanced synthesis of philosophical ideas and an original, comprehensive mapping of postwar artistic tendencies. Through sensitive analyses of Bergman, Antonioni, Godard, Bresson, Resnais, and other world-class directors, Kovács forcefully shows their rich legacy and suggests its continuing relevance for us. Everyone interested in the expressive resources of cinema, past and present, will want to read this book.”
“András Bálint Kovács has written a monumental work. Impressive in its scope, erudition, originality, critical acumen, and philosophical sophistication, Screening Modernism is a landmark historical study of modernist cinema that makes a permanent contribution to the field.”
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