Film Neoformalism

ROZBOR FILMU / FILM ANALYSIS [English summary]

Radomír D. Kokeš (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2015)

The book focuses on possibilities of analyzing a film as a system. Its aim is to deal with the process of asking questions in such a way that their answers will contribute to convincing solutions of exactly formulated tasks related to the structure of a film work. It is not a broadly conceived exposé of numerous kinds of analyses of numerous types of films; it rather follows the method of in-depth study of a limited scope of issues. As such, it consists of four sections. Each of these sections offers different questions and answers, presents different findings to the reader and follows different methods of work with the explication. All sections logically follow from the others, and thus analysed topics reappear in various contexts, as well as complement and develop each other. An invariable background of the explications in the book is formed, first, by aesthetic norms of the classic Hollywood film, second, by traditions of the Czech cinema and third, by Kristin Thompson’s and David Bordwell’s neoformalist poetics.

(1) The first section is titled TO OBSERVE and it presents the basic tools for an analysis of a work of art. It sees the work as a system, where it distinguishes between basic components of narrative, style and the fictional world. It explains each of these components separately on specific examples. It gives special attention to the films: A Close Shave (GB, 1995) and Once upon a Time in the West (USA/Italy, 1968). The subject matter of the explication is a film work.

(2) In the second section, TO PLAN, the book approaches to discussion and writing about film as a way of issues-solving. It explains the importance of finding, posing, and answering question about the structure of a film. It gives examples of the films Titanic (USA, 1997) and Bloody Sunday (GB/Ireland, 2002). For a better understanding of the topic it deals with, it offers a conception of two types of theses: centripetal and centrifugal. The subject matter of the explication is the analysis as such.

(3) The third section TO WRITE AND READ / TO READ AND WRITE is the most guiding one, as it focuses on practical aspects of analytical writing, theoretical coherence and the field of recommended publication, which can help to enhance this sensibility. The subject matter of the explication is a written analytical text.

(4) The final section APPENDIX: THREE ANALYTICAL FORMATS AND A READER makes it easier to understand on a higher level the various ways of structuring analysis and its functions. It presents three formats of such texts: an analytical essay, an analytical study, and poetological study. Adaptability to analysed issues follows primarily from six case-studies of the films Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Czechoslovakia, 1966), Arsenic and Old Lace (USA, 1944), Speed Racer (USA, 2008), Memento (USA, 2000), Smugglers of Death (Czechoslovakia, 1959) and A Tooth for a Tooth (Austria-Hungary, 1913). Each of these more or less comprehensive studies deals with a different issue, asks different questions and (intentionally) addresses readers with different levels of experience. The subject matter of the explication is a unity of approach on the one hand and a variety of issues-solving on the other hand.
The book aims to show the widest range of the explanatory possibilities of its approach, which it labels a poetics of fiction. When working with its case-studies, it repeatedly proceeds in the chapters from formally playful films (like A Close Shave, Titanic, Speed Racer or Memento) to structurally complex works (like Once Upon a Time in the West, Bloody Sunday or Smugglers of Death). This enables it to cover a wide range of challenges, which one can encounter in the process of an analysis of (not only audio-visual) works. And finally, the last chapter introduces the theme of a historiographic dimension of the book. It presents original research of the beginnings of Czech cinema.

The field of an analysis of a film authorship is rather suppressed in the explications, although it remains crucial and as such it is primarily dealt with in the second section of the book, which can thus be also seen from this perspective as an original contribution to authorial poetics and questions of a realistic effect in the work of the director Paul Greengrass.

Given the reasons stated above, Film Analysis wants to be (a) a comprehensible guide to the analytical process of a wide readership (especially students of programmes in history and theory of the arts, cinephiles and beginning critics), (b) a collection of original analyses, which explain a variety of issues related to structures of film from the perspective of the poetics of fiction, and (c) a source of helpful tools for not only film analysis, but also the analytical process as such (for example, kinds of theses or analytical formats).

The book aims to effectively describe, explore and explain serial fiction. Provided approach – serial fiction poetics – aims to (1) present a systemic explanation of serial fiction, (2) capture a variability of artistic possibilities of serial narrative and, (3) offer tools for the analysis of actual serial works. Its concept of seriality serves as foundation for the first and second aims; it remains as mere background for analytical hypotheses with regard to the third aim. Serial fiction poetics assumes the presence of a space-time continuum, which is created by the work through interaction with its audience. This is process is termed a fictional macroworld: narrated stories take place within its conditions and settings. Each episode of a serial constitutes an episodic world; seriality denotes a relationship between the state of affairs in a macroworld at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macroworld at the end of the previous one. Depending on the intensity of connectedness between these two states and the relations of fictional characters to them, the book presents a typology of seriality, which serves as a functional and heuristic categorization, yet not as a substantive one: a separate, a non-sequential, a semisequential, a sequential, a disrupted. The book is divided into three parts. The first part of the book gives a systemic explanation of seriality, using the five types top-down. The second part of the book explores variable possibilities of serial narrative. The third part of the book attempt to offer the greatest possible degree of aesthetic sensitivity towards those works analysed and those explanations presented. The three parts develop and transform, with respect to these three aims, which differ from each other but are also interrelated, only to answer the questions posed, in correspondence with the individual dimensions of serial fiction poetics, in ways that are at the same time systematic and aesthetically sensitive.
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Každý den čteme, posloucháme či sledujeme všeliká vyprávění na pokračování, která se vracejí k týmž postavám, příběhům či světům. Jak jsou vystavěna? Kterak vedou naši pozornost? Lze jim vůbec porozumět coby samostatným dílům? Odpovědi hledá filmový teoretik Radomír D. Kokeš (autor knihy Rozbor filmu) na příkladu televizních seriálů, jež vysvětluje právě skrze jejich vnitřní uspořádání, práci s divákem a hledání jednotného přístupu k různorodým dílům. Výklad je rozdělen do tří oddílů a jeho názornost posiluje množství rozmanitých příkladů, dílčích rozborů i rozsáhlejších podrobných analýz seriálů, které čtenář zná či možná bude chtít poznat. Kniha Světy na pokračování nabízí zcela nový pohled na fenomén seriálového vyprávění, jímž může zaujmout odborníky stejně jako fanoušky.

This article, through a systemic analysis of the film and its complex comparison with other Cinderella adaptations, as well as with domestic film traditions, attempts to find the answer to the question connected to why Three Wishes for Cinderella was able to gain such international understanding and popularity. The answer is seen in the central thesis of layering. On the level of a fictional world the film effectively uses two layers of its ordering: non-private and private ones. On the level of narration, the film takes the viewer's attention along two lines over the course of events: the top and the bottom ones. In the top line Cinderella and the Prince seem to be considerably passive, whereas the dramatic actions are conducted by authorities: the King and the Queen announce a ball with the aim of marrying the Prince, Cinderella's stepmother along with her daughter systematically prepare for the ball. In the bottom line, the viewer concurrently watches the gradual approximation of the main heroes, their meeting at the ball is mainly the narrative peak witin the long-term courting process. Lastly, the article examines the tactics unfolding from the principle of layering on the level of a film style. It focuses firstly on the ways of staging action during longer shots, when the spatial relations are complicated with the help of sudden changes in the focal distance. Secondly, it tries to explain how the apparently discrete  levels of stylistic means cooperate during the creation of an expressive special-making impact. Thirdly, it points to seemingly elusive moments, when the objective intermediation is temporarily disrupted. In other words, layering is used as a kind of label for a set of tools and tactics. All of them are rooted in a wider context of the previous adaptations of the fairy-tale (as for narration and world of fiction), or in the context of a history of film style (long takes, use of long lenses, etc.).

„Kann jemand, der diese Musik gehört hat, … noch ein schlechter Mensch sein?“

Zentraler Untersuchungsgegenstand dieses Aufsatzes soll die audiovisuelle Inszenierung solcher sinnlichen Erfahrungen im Spielfilm Das Leben der Anderen sein – die Choreographie zwischen Abhören und Zuhören, Beobachten und Verstehen, dem Eindringen in die Privatsphäre fremder Menschen und Empathie. Mit Blick auf entscheidende Momente im Film werde ich folgenden Fragen nachgehen:

I. Welche Eindrücke rütteln an Wieslers politischen Überzeugungen und wie werden diese entlang der Schwelle zwischen Sichtbarem und Hörbarem, visualisiertem und akusmatischem Ton verwirklicht?
II. Inwiefern entwirft Wieslers Konfrontation mit sinnlichen Erfahrungen, Musik und Literatur eine Parabel auf die Bedeutung von Kunst in der Politik?

This article focuses on the films HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) and HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019). Both handle the spiral narrative, which is recognised by the article as a specific storytelling pattern with a protagonist stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality – and this protagonist is not only fully aware of this situation but also tries to deal with it. What for other unaware characters is a closed loop is for the protagonist an open experience with an odd number of turns of time spiral. The spiral narrative is known mostly from high-budget films such as GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) or EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014). Nevertheless, as the article explains, it occurs in dozens of other theatrical films, VOD films, television films or television shows. However, what are the reasons why, when there is an extensive set of works to choose from, does the article takes just the doublet of HAPPY DEATH DAY films? (1) On their example, the article discusses author's general hypothesis about spiral narrative works as a series of applications of the innovative narrative schema as an aesthetic tool. Such a hypothesis consists of three broader dimensions: (a) the aesthetic dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the art work; (b) the creative dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as part of the problem-solution process of filmmaking; (c) the production dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the competition of audiovisual production. (2) An even more important reason, though, for selecting just these two films has been the fact that HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U is a sequel of HAPPY DEATH DAY. In the "post-classical era" of global franchises, sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and transmedia storytellings, this does not seem to be exceptional. However, in the context of the spiral narrative, this is an unprecedented step that raises several questions the article asks.

Norm as a tool of structural analysis and writing of aesthetically based history is a concept designed by Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. For several decades, American film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have been handling this notion. After a review of the original concept, the article follows three main goals: (1) The broadest aim is to reconstruct specific roles the concept played in the process of establishing the so-called neoformalist poetics approach. By returning to Mukařovský's starting points, we should be able to more clearly understand how his concept of norm was employed and transformed by neoformalist poeticians in order to solve the problems of film studies as an academic discipline on the one hand and problems in formulating concrete research projects on the other. (2) The more particular goal is to point out certain shifts in neoformalist poeticians' handling of the concept of norm after they formulated the classical Hollywood cinema model. The concept of norm was initially used by them as a tool for bottom-up research of the stylistic history of cinema, as a hollow category for its unbiased explanation. However, consequently it has also become a somewhat filled category applied rather top-down as an interpretative background for assessing its alternatives. (3) The final goal is to answer the question why this re-assessment and interrogation of roles played by norm in neoformalist poetics matters now. By returning to the original concept of norm and by the treatise of its changing functions for film study, the article aims to remind us of the usefulness and flexibility of this research tool. As is suggested in the last part of the article, we still know too little about historical poetics of so-called regional cinemas. If we want to understand them properly, the concept of norm is highly worthwhile – but only if is reached by bottom-up research as the hollow category for the unbiased explanation of certain cinematic phenomena.

Film Acting, Czech Silent Cinema, and Questions of the Film Style Research / This article focuses on formally analytical research of film acting and raises two questions. (1) To what degree it is a feasible approach towards film acting outline and how does it explain the continuities and discontinuities of a stylistic history of Czech silent cinema till 1922? (2) To what degree such aim is or is not attainable with the help of existing knowledge in the field of international film style historiography? In its first part, this study follows top-down argumentation. It reflects the already existing interpretative frameworks associated with the early history of film acting, mainly in large foreign cinemas (for example the American and the French). These are related to the cinematic practices of Czech cinema in this particular era on one side, and the constructive principles of preserved Czech films from the late teens and early 1920s on the other. Instead of mechanically identifying the similar or even the same features, this article attempts to critically examine the validity, usability and explanatory value of these interpretative frameworks vis-à-vis the stylistic history of Czech cinema. The second part of this article reverses the previous process of the argumentation as it moves from the bottom to the top. It focuses on a thorough stylistic and narrative analysis of particular Czech films on the background of identified period filmmaking practices in Czech cinema. The article thus offers a synchronic explanation of certain stylistic aspects of a one year of Czech film production (1918) and discusses three three-reels films with a strong female protagonist: Čertisko (The Little Rascal), A vášeň vítězí (And the Passion Triumphs), and Učitel orientálních jazyků (The Oriental Languages' Teacher). In connection with these films, the article analyzes the principles of the acting techniques, explores the questions of cinematic staging and, above all, explains their functions in particular film works, which are compared one to another and put in a broader historical context.

Spiral as an Innovative Schema of Film Storytelling / This article deals with a specific pattern of audiovisual storytelling, where a character is stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality, is aware of that and tries to find a way to deal with it. It introduces the term "spiral narrative" for this narrative pattern known from films such as the 1993 Groundhog Day. It identifies it as an innovative schema which helps American film and television creators to defamiliarize various amounts of already established models of narrative development. The first part of this article defines the spiral narrative schema on the one side and the so-called loop narrative schema on the other side, explaining several aesthetic norms in films that exploit the spiral narrative schema. It also inquires into the possible ways in which spiral narratives can affect the viewers as well as the aesthetic sources of the spiral narrative schema as such. The second part brings a much more specific explanation using reasonably detailed analyzes of three films (the short 12:01 PM shot in 1990, the television film 12:01 from 1993, and the already mentioned Groundhog Day). These three analyzes reveal a historical trajectory, which might functionally explain the process of the establishment of the spiral narrative as an innovative auxiliary pattern in popular American audiovision.

Tato studie o práci výjimečného filmového badatele Adriana Martina byla napsaná při příležitosti vydání českého překladu jeho knihy Mizanscéna a filmový styl (2019, NAMU). Text nejdříve stručně charakterizuje Martinovu specifickou pozici v souvislostech dějin myšlení o filmu. V následujících kapitolách jej pak zasazuje jak do specifických kontextů australských, kde jeho přístup hrál významnou roli, ačkoli vlastně vždycky působil jako solitér stojící spíše mimo etablované instituce, tak obecněji do kontextů obecněji mezinárodních, do nichž vstoupil zejména v novém tisíciletí a rychle se adaptoval na mnohé výzvy, které přinášelo online publikování. V závěrečné části se článek analyticky zaměřuje právě na knihu Mizanscéna a filmový styl, již funkčně srovnává s dvěma jinými podobně ambiciózními publikacemi, které volí vůči ní alternativní cesty (Johna Gibbse a Davida Bordwella).

At the most general level, this article wants to answer the question of what it requires to write an aesthetic history of Czech cinema. As such, it tries to sketch possibilities of a research project on a poetics of Czech cinema illustrated through an example of Czech cinema to the period around the opening of Barrandov studios in 1933. The poetics of cinema explores construction principles of film works regarding (a) their relationship to individual works and groups of works, and (b) their relationship to particular empirical conditions of the creation of these works in synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

The article argues in accordance with these starting points that an internal cohesiveness of a research corpus is key for such a research project. However, Czech cinema represents a very diverse group of films. What is more, it is hard to decide what categories all the films fall into, let alone get a convincing corpus based on them. Yet, as is discussed in the first part of the text, if we define the research corpus based on a dominant language, dominant place of production and preferred distribution type, we can arrive at a logically consistent corpus of so-called regional cinema. In other words, it is possible to create a group of films that aim at functionally comparable goals.

In the second part, the article begins from the long-term perspective, by a polemics with such explanations of poetic approaches to regional cinemas in comparison to Hollywood cinema on the one hand, or international stylistic tendencies on the other. The first argument is that in the case of Czech cinema, in the 1930s studio requirements for systematic work and standard procedures were confronted with practices, preferences, and systems of norms from periods when filmmakers adopted them in an unsystematic way and with no externally prescribed standards. The second argument is that there were several parallel dominant systems of feature film norms in the 1920s that did not tend towards unification. They follow a different creative logic than in the case of international norms.

The third part of the article comes back to the question of the relationship between creative and studio continuities from a more short-term perspective in the analysis of the first film made in the Barrandov studios, Murder on Ostrovní Street from 1933. The article asks the following question: To what measure and in what ways is Murder on Ostrovní Street a project representing a stylistic continuity or, discontinuity, in its relation to films made in previous years? The text demonstrates that although the film was supposed to perform a variety of self-conscious film techniques, it did so in continuity with conventionalized practices of Czech films and filmmakers from previous years.

The fourth part of the article, the epilogue, reflects from previous findings to more general reflections on how research into so-called Czech regional poetics can contribute to the overall knowledge of an aesthetic history of Czech cinema.

This thesis examines television series The Knick (Cinemax, 2014) primarily as an ambitious aesthetic work. The methods of formalism, neoformalism, theories of television narration and style, theory of hospital drama genre and theory of television branding are applied in a way which allows their thorough conjunction and creates consistent approach that leads to clear results. The phenomenon of quality TV is understood as a meta genre, which has deformative potential towards norms of the main genre. The analysis also includes observation of the atypicall sound design of the series. The main interest of the bachelor thesis is not as much in recounting the specifics of the series' novelty on television market, as in mapping its formal system in all its complexity, and "breaking the glass armor of familiarity" in consonance with the neoformalist doctrine.

Annotation:
This bachelor’s thesis aims at presenting meaning of the film Ashik-Kerib (Sergei Parajanov, 1988) in the context of Azerbaijani culture (particularly folklore, music, literature and religion). The film is based on 16th century Azerbaijani romantic dastan (epos) Ashiq Qerib as retold by M. Y. Lermontov in his fairy tale. This dastan is presented as the main source of Azerbaijani folklore. The Film analysis focuses mainly on sound (speech, singing, music, noises) and its meaning in the context of film interpretation as a whole. As to methodology, the thesis is based on the neoformalist analysis, which is followed by the interpretation based on Vladimír Suchánek’s concepts of film art. Interpretation of spiritual aspects is primarily based on the motif of “return”, which can be found in both Islamic and Christian traditions (Parable of the Prodigal Son).

Keywords:
Ashik-Kerib, Sergei Parajanov, Ashiq Qerib, ashiq art, bard, Azerbaijani culture, folklore, Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, Azerbaijani poetry, neoformalism, film sound, Vladimír Suchánek, art, spiritual cinema, Christianity, Islam, God, Parable of the Prodigal Son, eschatology, Paradise lost.

Mit dem von David Bordwell und Kristin Thompson initiierten Neoformalismus/ Kognitivismus wird einer der meistverbreiteten filmtheoretischen Ansätze vor dem Hintergrund seines Entstehungskontextes dargestellt. Betrachtet werden nacheinander die theoretischen Grundannahmen und die stilistischen und narra- tologischen Konzepte der neoformalistischen Filmanalyse sowie das kognitivis- tische Modell des Filmverstehens und der Filminterpretation. Am Ende werden bekannte Einwände gegen das Paradigma diskutiert und weitere Kritikpunkte formuliert.

The analytical study demonstrates how the process of storytelling in the film employs techniques and centripetal tactics in order to lead the viewer’s attention in a comprehensive and intelligible way despite the complex network of information provided by the film and their rapid presentation. In doing so, it uses an inner logic of splitting the narrative into four blocks, within which the motifs of the first allow for the development of the second and third but return only in the fourth. Each block employs a different model of work with information and different techniques of composition, thanks to which the hectic system of the work does not repeat itself in a tiresome way, but rather develops in a spiral. A comparison of the beginning and ending of the film reveals that the film, on the background of spy games, action clashes and travelling around the world, approaches the largely intimate motif of inner reconciliation. The dominant construction principle of the system of the work is the effort to present the information provided by the film and ongoing action as taking place at present. In its concluding part, the study relates the explicated systemic traits of The Bourne Supremacy to three more general frameworks. Firstly, the relation of the film to the trilogy is explained, claiming that every new film in the series develops the techniques of the preceding one. Secondly, The Bourne Supremacy is assessed from the perspective of aesthetic norms of action films in the period 2002–2008, against which the Bourne trilogy seems to be narratively and stylistically progressive. Thirdly, the features of the trilogy analyzed in the study are related to analytically inferred tradition of the so-called action films of motion, which according to this study has been developing at least since the 1930s and against which the Bourne trilogy appears thoughtfully evolutional rather than radically revolutionary.

In 2015 zond Omroep Max de achtdelige televisieserie GOEDENAVOND DAMES EN HEREN uit op NPO 1.1 Deze – volgens de makers – nostalgische dramaserie vertelt het verhaal over de opkomst en de intrede van televisie in het Nederlandse huishouden gedurende de jaren ’60. In de serie wordt een gedramatiseerd verhaal verteld over verschillende personages met elk een eigen verhaallijn die uiteindelijk elkaar zullen treffen richting het einde van de serie.

De personages in de serie kunnen op verschillende manieren met elkaar in verband worden gebracht. Dit kan familiair zijn, maar ook op zakelijk of vriendschappelijk niveau. In dit onderzoek ga ik specifiek in op de onderlinge machtsverhoudingen tussen de personages in een specifiek gekozen scène uit aflevering één. Het doel van dit onderzoeksverslag is om inzicht te krijgen in de manier waarop personages kunnen worden geconstrueerd door middel van stilistische en esthetische technieken en keuzes. Door middel van een neoformalistische filmanalyse verwacht ik een antwoord te geven op de vraag: op welke manier worden door middel van stilistische en esthetische technieken en de daarbij behorende keuzes onderlinge machtsverhoudingen tussen personages geconstrueerd in GOEDENAVOND DAMES EN HEREN?

Neoformalismus? Coby určující pro východiska, postoje, možnosti a vůbec rozpoznávání tzv. neoformalistické filmové analýzy se zpravidla považuje studie z roku 1988 "Jeden přístup, mnoho metod". Ve svém krátkém "úvodovém" článku se vůči této zavedené praxi ostře vymezuji, když vysvětluji, proč je (nejen) s ohledem na práci Kristin Thompsonové důležité rozlišovat mezi neoformalistickou filmovou analýzou jako programem a neoformalistickým filmovým analyzováním jako badatelským postojem.

O reposicionamento contemporâneo do conceito de barroco na discussão teórica sobre a cultura e a arte teve seu principal momento entre o final dos anos 1960 e meados dos 1990. Uma vez que este reposicionamento já constitui um legado para a atual pesquisa na área de artes, o conceito mantém uma sobrevida no trabalho de autores que, sob diferentes perspectivas, persistem na intenção de compreender a especificidade de uma estética barroca e explorar o seu potencial explicativo dos fenômenos culturais mais recentes. Neste projeto de pesquisa, partiremos de um diálogo crítico com o semioticista italiano Omar Calabrese, tendo em vista a fundamentação de uma teoria da forma barroca capaz de atestar a sua relevância no estudo de produtos artísticos atuais, particularmente no cinema, no vídeo e nas artes interativas Para isso, proporemos uma reapropriação do conceito de barroco como forma ou estilo, igualmente sustentada por Calabrese, sem, no entanto, embasá-la na semiótica, e tampouco retornando a uma filosofia da história ou a uma metafísica, tal como elaboradas tradicionalmente pelos teóricos historicistas do barroco (Wölfflin, Focillon, d'Ors etc.). Como alternativa a estes modos de fundamentação, pretendemos ancorar nossa teoria nas contribuições à estética que a filosofia analítica anglo-saxã tem desenvolvido desde os anos 1950, particularmente por meio de uma crítica da tradição formalista (Bradley, Bell, Fry, Greenberg etc.) e da elaboração de hipóteses sobre a possibilidade de um neoformalismo contemporâneo (Beardsley, Eldridge, Danto, Zangwill etc.).

Based on an early twentieth-century approach to literary criticism developed in pre-Soviet Russia by a group known as the Russian Formalists, neoformalism is an aesthetic approach originally proposed by the critic Kristin Thompson. Using an analysis of the structure and composition of the text, and the way that it operates in “cueing” the audience’s response, this essay takes a neoformalist approach to the modern vampire.

Co-edited book on the cinematography of Orson Welles. The contributors are Michael Braun, Oliver Fahle, Vinzenz Hediger, Klaus Kanzog, Guido Kirsten, Stefanie Kreuzer, Michaela Krützen, Melanie Letschnig, Sulgi Lie, Fabienne Liptay, Tanja Prokic, Ivo Ritzer, Marcus Stiglegger, and Birk Weiberg.

ROZBOR FILMU / FILM ANALYSIS [english summary]

Radomír D. Kokeš (Brno: MuniPRESS, 2015)

The book focuses on possibilities of analyzing a film as a system. Its aim is to deal with the process of asking questions in such a way that their answers will contribute to convincing solutions of exactly formulated tasks related to the structure of a film work. It is not a broadly conceived exposé of numerous kinds of analyses of numerous types of films; it rather follows the method of in-depth study of a limited scope of issues. As such, it consists of four sections. Each of these sections offers different questions and answers, presents different findings to the reader and follows different methods of work with the explication. All sections logically follow from the others, and thus analysed topics reappear in various contexts, as well as complement and develop each other. An invariable background of the explications in the book is formed, first, by aesthetic norms of the classic Hollywood film, second, by traditions of the Czech cinema and third, by Kristin Thompson’s and David Bordwell’s neoformalist poetics.

(1) The first section is titled TO OBSERVE and it presents the basic tools for an analysis of a work of art. It sees the work as a system, where it distinguishes between basic components of narrative, style and the fictional world. It explains each of these components separately on specific examples. It gives special attention to the films: A Close Shave (GB, 1995) and Once upon a Time in the West (USA/Italy, 1968). The subject matter of the explication is a film work.

(2) In the second section, TO PLAN, the book approaches to discussion and writing about film as a way of issues-solving. It explains the importance of finding, posing, and answering question about the structure of a film. It gives examples of the films Titanic (USA, 1997) and Bloody Sunday (GB/Ireland, 2002). For a better understanding of the topic it deals with, it offers a conception of two types of theses: centripetal and centrifugal. The subject matter of the explication is the analysis as such.

(3) The third section TO WRITE AND READ / TO READ AND WRITE is the most guiding one, as it focuses on practical aspects of analytical writing, theoretical coherence and the field of recommended publication, which can help to enhance this sensibility. The subject matter of the explication is a written analytical text.

(4) The final section APPENDIX: THREE ANALYTICAL FORMATS AND A READER makes it easier to understand on a higher level the various ways of structuring an analysis and its functions. It presents three formats of such texts: an analytical essay, an analytical study and poetological study. An adaptability to analysed issues follows primarily from six case-studies of the films Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Czechoslovakia, 1966), Arsenic and Old Lace (USA, 1944), Speed Racer (USA, 2008), Memento (USA, 2000), Smugglers of Death (Czechoslovakia, 1959) and A Tooth for a Tooth (Austria-Hungary, 1913). Each of these more or less comprehensive studies deals with a different issue, asks different questions and (intentionally) addresses readers with different levels of experience. The subject matter of the explication is a unity of approach on the one hand and a variety of issues-solving on the other hand.
The book aims to show the widest range of the explanatory possibilities of its approach, which it labels a poetics of fiction. When working with its case-studies, it repeatedly proceeds in the chapters from formally playful films (like A Close Shave, Titanic, Speed Racer or Memento) to structurally complex works (like Once Upon a Time in the West, Bloody Sunday or Smugglers of Death). This enables it to cover a wide range of challenges, which one can encounter in the process of an analysis of (not only audio-visual) works. And finally, the last chapter introduces the theme of a historiographic dimension of the book. It presents an original research of the beginnings of Czech cinema.

The field of an analysis of a film authorship is rather suppressed in the explications, although it remains crucial and as such it is primarily dealt with in the second section of the book, which can thus be also seen from this perspective as an original contribution to authorial poetics and questions of a realistic effect in the work of the director Paul Greengrass.

Given the reasons stated above, Film Analysis wants to be (a) a comprehensible guide to the analytical process of a wide readership (especially students of programmes in history and theory of the arts, cinephiles and beginning critics), (b) a collection of original analyses, which explain a variety of issues related to structures of film from the perspective of the poetics of fiction, and (c) a source of helpful tools for not only film analysis, but also the analytical process as such (for example, kinds of theses or analytical formats).

Conference Paper. Part of my research project Historical Poetics of Czech Cinema (1911-1938): Punctual Analytical History of Film Style and Narrative. My research results from the presumption that better understanding of centripetal poetics of so called small nation cinema (without international expanding and norm-establishing ambitions) can possibly bring fresh insight into the world cinema’s film style history. At the first glance the Czech cinema seems to be relatively unimportant, but its inconspicuousness could be surprisingly interesting and fruitful even for international public. That would happen not just by exploring systems of all preserved films, but also under the necessary condition of answering right research questions. Needless to say that finding such questions could be much more difficult than answering them.

This book offers an approach to film music in which music and visuals are seen as equal players in the game. The field of Film-Music Studies has been increasingly dominated by musicologists and this book  brings the discipline back squarely into the domain of of Film Studies. Blending Neoformalism with Gestalt Psychology and Leonard B. Meyer's musicology, this study treats music as a cinematic element and offers scholars and students of both music and film a set of tools to help them analyse the wide ranging impact that music has in films.

English: The present study deals with the analysis of narrative and style in the film production in the Czech lands between 1911‒1915; it presents, in particular, a comparison of two distinct narrative trends, one present in the films of the Kinofa company and the second one represented by the films made with ASUM with special regard to the former ones. The analysed material is perceived from two different perspectives: vertically, from top to bottom (the general argument is demonstrated on a restricted sample of extant films) and the other way round (a thorough analysis of one example verifies the validity of the general argument). The nature of the Czech cinema in the given period is being drawn against the background of the silent era, as well as the aesthetic norms of the isochronal international cinema.

Czech: Studie nabízí poznání organizujících principů stylu a vyprávění ve filmech kinematografie českých zemí natočených v letech 1911-1915. Ze dvou vypozorovaných trendů se studie zaměřuje na jeden spojený s výrobnou Kinofa, kdy druhý trend výkladu slouží jako komparativní materiál. Soustřeďování na Kinofu přitom umožňuje zaujmout dvě perspektivy: shora-dolů (platnost tezí je demonstrovaná na souboru dochovaných děl) a zdola-nahoru (zevrubná analýza jednoho díla odhaluje platnost tezí ve specifické podobě jednoho systému). Poznání o povaze kinematografie v českých zemích ve zkoumaném období je současně vztahováno (a) k její povaze během celého němého období, (b) k mezinárodním estetickým normám v soudobé kinematografii.