Expressive elements of motion pictures
- Also called:
- motion picture or movie
- Related Topics:
- History of film
- sound film
- gangster film
- Novi Film
- film editing
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Many observers have seen in films a means of expression comparable to language. The French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, for example, called the cinema “picture writing.” The language of film, however, is not the language of words, even though spoken dialogue has been an integral part of motion pictures since the late 1920s, and written captions were usually required to explain the action before that. It is primarily in the qualities of its images and sounds that the expressivity of the cinema must be sought. Certain basic traits of motion pictures may operate with the logic of natural language, but few theorists have held that cinematic expression follows rules like those of natural language. As Christian Metz, one of the foremost film theorists of the 20th century, argued, it is not linguistics so much as poetics that should serve as a model for those interested in understanding or explaining how a film works.
(Read Alfred Hitchcock’s 1965 Britannica essay on film production.)
Various codes of expression have, nevertheless, been shown to operate naturally or to have been inculcated, and their effects can be calculated. Such codes and effects occur in all aspects of moviemaking and can most readily be categorized into those affecting cinematography, editing, sound, the script, acting, and design.
Cinematographic expression
The filmmaker has a number of ways of modifying the camera’s neutrality and thereby the “reality” that is conveyed to the audience. It is largely by means of these devices that the motion picture becomes such an expressive medium. Several of these expressive techniques should be emphasized. First, there is framing—that is, carefully selecting what will be included within each frame of the film and what will be excluded. Second, there is scale, the size and placement of a particular object or a part of a scene in relation to the rest, a relationship that is determined by the placement of the camera. Third is camera movement, or the lack of it, during shooting. Fourth, there are the peculiar advantages of either colour or black-and-white photography that can be exploited. Finally, through the cinematographer’s skill and knowledge of laboratory processes, other highly expressive techniques can be achieved. Each of these means of expression will be discussed below.
Framing
The process of framing is intended to eliminate what is unessential in the motion picture, to direct the spectator’s attention to what is important, and to give it special meaning and force. Each frame of film, which corresponds in shape to the image projected on the screen, forms the basis for a graphic composition in the same way that the frame of a painting encloses the area in which the painting must be organized.
Several different ratios of frame width to frame height, called aspect ratios, have been used in motion pictures. The most common, known as the Academy ratio, is 1.33 to 1, or 4 to 3, a ratio corresponding to the dimensions of the frame of 35-mm film. By using 70-mm film or a special CinemaScope lens, an image with wider horizontal and shorter vertical dimensions is achieved—a proportion of about 5 to 2, or between 2.2 to 1 and 2.65 to 1. A similar effect, called wide screen, was sometimes achieved without the expensive equipment required for CinemaScope by using 35-mm film and masking the top or bottom or both, giving a ratio of 1.75 to 1, or 7 to 4. Although some theatres in the 1970s were enlarged and widened to accommodate 70-mm images, a trend toward smaller theatres fixed the image ratio close to 1.85 to 1 in the United States and 1.66 to 1 in Europe.
The moderate elongation provided by the Academy ratio has proved most versatile for achieving standard compositional effects. For example, an expansive feeling is easily rendered when small-scale figures in the foreground are shot against a towering sky, as in Days of Heaven. In the wide CinemaScope dimension, the tension established between the outward movement of the composition and the rectangle of the screen can readily be lost; nevertheless, early fears about wide screen’s insensitivity to intimate love scenes proved to be unfounded, at least in the hands of careful cinematographers. A number of foreign directors, notably Kurosawa Akira (Japan), François Truffaut (France), and Miklós Jancsó (Hungary), achieved stunning effects in CinemaScope by overcoming the fear of moving the camera, as seen in, respectively, the battle scenes of Shichinin no samurai (1954; Seven Samurai), the bicycle ride in Jules et Jim (1961), and the nonstop camera dance of Még kér a nép (1972; Red Psalm). Wide screen calls for an altered aesthetic, because the spectator’s eye is invited to roam the visual field, making connections that in the standard ratio are more tightly determined.
Regardless of its ratio, the frame may be divided to show two or more scenes at the same time. This technique is traditionally used for credit sequences, musical interludes, or moments when the presentation on a single screen of two or more simultaneous occurrences results in comic interrelationships, although frame division can be used to dramatic or purely aesthetic effect, as in John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966).
An effective use of framing consists of temporarily or permanently excluding a vital part of the action. Offscreen space may be said to function more actively in cinema than in painting or the theatre. For example, the camera may remain fixed on the hero while the villain is perceived only as a voice saying “Hands up!” or, in a science-fiction film, the camera may linger on the horror expressed by the victim before revealing the monster that is causing it.
Very strong dramatic effects may be obtained by oblique framing—that is, by turning the camera sideways so that the image on the screen appears askew. This was done in the early Russian film The Ghost That Never Returns (1929), in which a prison riot shown by oblique framing gives the impression that the building is being pushed over. Some directors, such as Britain’s Carol Reed, made this a trademark (The Third Man, 1949).
Scale
Since scale in the cinema constantly changes from shot to shot, the spectator can easily be deceived about the size of objects. When appearing next to enormous tables and chairs, for instance, actors can be made to look like midgets or children, as in the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy comedy Brats (1930). By contrast, in King Kong (1933) a small-scale model of New York City was used to give the illusion of the actual city under attack by a giant gorilla. Scale may have a marked effect on the emotional tone of a scene. In the distance an actor may seem lonely, remote, helpless, pathetic; close up the performer may appear powerful, threatening, bestial. The scale of shots for artistic purposes ranges from an extreme long shot (the widest view on the smallest scale), with houses or ships appearing as tiny dots on the horizon; through medium shots, two shots (i.e., a shot of convenient size to include two actors), and others; to the extreme close-up, with part of a face, an eye, or a fist filling the screen (the most restricted view on the largest scale). Telescopic or microscopic shots beyond these extremes are often of scientific rather than artistic interest.
Different scales are occasionally juxtaposed in a single shot to produce an unmistakable dramatic or rhetorical effect. In Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), significant characters are repeatedly framed in the right or left foreground while in the background an action takes place that disturbs that character or that that character somehow controls. The gigantic political poster of Kane that rises behind the podium on which he, in the foreground, makes a speech promising to ruin his rival, Gettys, becomes suddenly the size of a postage stamp when the shot changes to one in which Gettys is in the foreground looking down on the insignificant speaker from a balcony. Through this use of different scales, Gettys is shown to have power over the action.
As has been noted, the camera exaggerates perspective, and this exaggeration adds to the dramatic effect. It is most striking in an ordinary still photograph of an enormous hand or a sunbather’s giant feet that were close to the camera lens. In cinematography, the director ordinarily minimizes the effect of this distortion but occasionally uses it in an extreme form. In Easy Rider (1969), for instance, it was used to give an atmosphere of hallucination and nightmare to a drug-taking session, and in Brazil (1985) it was used continuously to promote an atmosphere of paranoia and nightmare.
Scale is affected by what precedes and follows. The close-up has its most dramatic impact coming after long or medium shots, and after many close-ups it is a relief to escape to the middle or far distance.
Shooting angle and point of view
Another element in motion-picture language is the shooting angle. In common language, the phrases “to look up to” and “to look down on” have connotations of admiration and condescension in addition to their obvious reference to physical viewpoint. In one sense or another, children, dogs, and beggars are often looked down upon, while the preacher in a pulpit, the judge on the bench, and the police officer on a horse are looked up to. Even a slight upward or downward angle of a camera is enough to express a mood of inferiority or superiority.
Upward or downward shooting angles lead to questions of objectivity and subjectivity. In most motion pictures, both for variety and for breadth of treatment, the camera’s viewpoint switches from one character to another and sometimes is associated with none of the characters but merely looks on. The camera may take the viewpoint of the heroine, looking with dismay at the villain as he breaks into her room; in this case, an upward camera angle gives a subjective impression of her fear. Similar subjectivity may be seen in a shot of buildings reeling in the way they might appear to a drunken man, as in the German classic Der letzte Mann (1924; The Last Laugh), or in a rapid camera movement from a window to the pavement below to express a thought of suicide, as in the Italian Neorealist film Umberto D. (1952).
Occasionally an entire motion picture may be shot from one person’s point of view, often with a personal narration accompanying the images. Rarely does this point of view literally take over the optical view of the character for an extended period. (One noted exception is the 1946 film directed by the actor Robert Montgomery, Lady in the Lake, in which the camera actually plays the main character. The entire film is seen from the camera/character’s point of view so that the audience sees only what the camera/character sees. The movie is an interesting experiment in the use of subjective camera, but it is considered an artistic failure.) More often voice-over, music, or other elements are combined with shooting angle to render a particular character’s feelings throughout a film. Alfred Hitchcock is generally considered the master of point of view, controlling (and even misguiding) viewer sympathy.
Extreme upward or downward angles are too far removed from ordinary experience to have many applications in motion pictures, but they may express exceptional situations—a sick man on his back, a baby’s or a dog’s point of view, a woman in a pit or in a coffin, a spy covertly looking down on an enemy meeting. As with scale, the shots that precede and follow alter the effect of the shooting angle. Upward angles are stronger following a level or downward-looking camera, and vice versa.
Camera movement
Framing, scale, and shooting angle are all greatly modified by the use of camera movement. Filmmakers began experimenting with camera movement almost immediately after the motion-picture camera was developed. In 1897 photographers employed by Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière floated a cinématographe, the combination camera-projector devised by the French brothers, in a gondola through Venice to give viewers all over the world a dynamic view of that much-painted city.
One of the simplest and most common movements is to turn, or pan (from the word panorama), the camera horizontally so that it sweeps around the scene. It can also be tilted up or down in a vertical panning shot or in a diagonal pan, as when it follows an actor up a stairway. Panning was possible quite early in film history, but methods of physically conveying the camera itself through a scene developed more slowly. Initially the camera was mounted on a dolly, truck, or other hand-propelled wheeled vehicle to facilitate smooth movement. Later, tracks were laid for the dolly or truck to ride on, providing even smoother, more effortless motion. Trucking, dollying, and tracking can even be combined with panning in a complex movement that may require the adjustment of focus or aperture en route. One such camera movement that is often used imitates the gaze of a traveler who turns in a moving automobile or train to focus on a stationary point of interest.
Often commercial vehicles, such as trolleys, automobiles, or airplanes, are used to transport the camera; the relatively jerky ride they supply simulates real movement more accurately than does the steady motion provided by a specially designed apparatus. Nevertheless, the film industry has long sought equipment that would allow the camera (and the viewer) to weave in and out of action in the most ethereal way. The crane, which facilitates aerial movement, was developed in the late 1920s, replacing the jerry-built movable platforms, the slings, and the sleds that ingenious directors, such as Abel Gance (for Napoléon, 1927) and Marcel L’Herbier (for L’Argent, 1929), both in France, had devised to achieve vertical or elevated swinging movements. Numerous special camera supports were developed in the later 20th century, many of which were originally developed for use on medical and scientific films. Equipment developed in the 1970s and ’80s could be operated from a distance with electronic viewfinders, allowing the camera to follow vigorous continuous action with an ease and intimacy that had previously been unknown, as in the precredit sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The look and style of film art is constantly changing as technological advances increase the mobility of the camera and consequently the flexibility of the spectator’s viewpoint.
Regardless of the level of technical capability, the effect of camera movement depends on the context and the pace of movement. At a deliberate pace the camera can explore a scene and reveal significant details. If it is raised well above the ground, the movement has a dreamlike power, and, when combined with slow motion, it may give a somnolent impression or express recollection or hallucination. The camera movement may end dramatically on a dagger, on a gun half-hidden in an assailant’s hand, or on a suspicious bulge in a pocket. It may link the hero walking in the garden and the heroine watching him with loving eyes from a window. It may bring a dramatic surprise, as in the American western Stagecoach (1939), when director John Ford had the camera, mounted high above a rocky defile, move slowly from the stagecoach below to reveal a band of Indians waiting in ambush. On the other hand, the camera may simply turn away from a scene to leave the remainder to the spectator’s imagination, as when it withdraws from a torture scene or from a love scene. In filming a conversation, the director may turn the camera from one speaker to the other, thus animating the scene with movement and showing the expression of the speaker, or listener, more closely than would be possible with a static two shot. Camera movement can even be used to change the scene to a distant place, to a different period of time, or to an imaginary world.
Very rapid camera movements may express a sudden surge of emotion or a contemplated action, as in the suicide from Umberto D. (1952). In The Rains Came (1939), as the heroine realizes with horror that she has drunk from a glass that may be contaminated with typhus, the camera rushes forward to a close-up on the fatal glass, shining in the darkness. These movements are often effected without physically moving the camera, by means of a zoom lens, a lens of variable focal length that simulates the effect of moving toward or away from a subject by increasing or decreasing the size of the subject as the focal length changes. Although a zoom shot is generally smoother than a tracking shot, it always results in pictorial distortion. To zoom in from a distance to a close-up, the focal length of the lens is changed from, for example, 18 mm to 125 mm. The former length curves the picture anamorphically on the sides, giving great depth to the background, while the latter tends to flatten the background. All objects within view are enlarged at the same rate. Tracking in from a distance to a close-up requires careful adjustment of focus, but depth and dimension appear more realistic.
Camera movement is one of the key indicators of the presence of a narrator. When the camera moves independently of the action, the narrator can be thought of as hovering above the action, poetically reacting to it or commenting on it. When the camera moves instead to keep the action in view, to follow as many elements as possible, the narrator can be thought of as a reporter investigating but not commenting on what is seen. The documentary tradition, particularly since 1959, when lightweight cameras and tape recorders first permitted extended handheld filming, represents this investigative function of cinema and of camera movement.
Directorial styles may be cataloged on the basis of an overall predilection for linking elements in a scene via cuts (montage) or camera movement. Eisenstein has already been cited as a master of montage. One of the directors most acclaimed for the expressive use of camera movement is Japan’s Mizoguchi Kenji. Although Mizoguchi was not beyond making strongly rhetorical points by juxtaposing shots, the overall impression his films convey derives from the use of a seemingly floating camera to join not only elements within a scene but also the scenes themselves. In Ugetsu (1953) the hero, seduced in a hot spring by a beautiful ghost woman, moves screen right to join her, while the camera pans left across the pool and then tracks along the ground. The shot dissolves imperceptibly into one in which the camera pans up to reframe the couple picnicking in an extreme long shot. The magical mixture of spaces and the conflation of time sensuously express the erotic imagination to which both the hero and the audience have fallen prey. Mizoguchi is known as a mise-en-scène director, one who is primarily concerned with the relationships within a shot rather than those between shots. His films rely on long takes, camera movement, and the expressive use of elements within the film frame to convey mood and emotion. The possibility of movement was so important to Mizoguchi that at the end of his career he invariably directed from a crane, even during static scenes.
