The Styles of Film: From Neo-Realism to Avant-Garde -- A Brief Introduction

have you ever seen a movie do this [Music] well that was weird what about this as time goes well that seems pretty natural and normal we're going to talk about what our film styles water film tones and the different ways to categorize movies coming up in this video [Music] what is your taste in movies what do you like and prefer well i've got a way to categorize movies i want to show you and it comes from a lot of different textbooks that i've blended together what you see on screen is a two-dimensional way of categorizing movies this is basic it might even be reductive it works though for beginning students and and then you can complicate it later on if you wish this two-dimensional line runs the gamut of a lot or a variety of movies from around the world in time periods from documentary style in which a camera is set up and just records sitewise and sound wise what actually happened all the way over to the right side which is avant-garde and which is abstract that which is not understandable or translatable perhaps into words pure cinema and maybe abstract art period that's hard to define and doesn't seem to have much to do with reality as we go towards the middle from each side we say realism or as i put here neorealism like italian neorealism which is sort of documentary style trying to record what you could actually see your realistic characters realistic plots realistic settings with on the other hand surrealism more dreamlike a little bit more abstract fantasy perhaps or science fiction but somewhat relatable at least to the real world and yet visionary enough to be feeling wild and different to audiences who you can't see those things or feel those things they'll hear those things in real life right smack in the middle is classic hollywood you can call this classicism as the textbooks do a blend of realism and surrealism as it were and we'll explain that in just a little bit i think films you could put on the left side show you how things actually look if you were there yourself the camera is a substitute for the viewer also how things sound if you were there listening to them and so the camera is an observer documenting actual reality as we go over to the right less and less are we talking about actually imitating reality or recording reality as it is we drift farther from documentary style to hollywood sets or movie sets which are created out of thin air by set designers costumes created and there's an artifice as we go more and more towards the right that seems less and less realistic however i would call an expressionism on the right side sometimes called formalism as the way things feel or the way things may be perceived by an individual subject who's undergoing some kind of motions or pain or suffering or happiness or joy that's untranslatable to other people we can't feel what other people feel but we can express that through art and this if i want to show you what my dreams are or what pain feels like yes we can record me feeling pain and screaming let's say but we can also do something visionary something that is sight and sound wise different as say the example in 2001 a space odyssey which shows you what it feels like to become a new person let's say on the right side expressionism or formalism tends to frustrate people because they can't translate it well into reality but on the left side you get things that look realistic and they may trick people because after all are documentaries really recording reality or isn't there editing isn't there context issues with cameras and the answer is definitely yes the camera could be a liar and so it's not necessarily true that documentaries are really real they just look real and sound real to viewers classic hollywood blends the two you have perhaps realistic plots realistic characters characters you might be able to meet in real life perhaps realistic settings and realistic dialogue dialogue that would seem to be imitating reality but on the other hand you have a lot of tricks that show you the emotions of a character in the movie or a bunch of characters such as the quick zoom in in reality you don't ever quickly zoom into a character's face in movies like classical movies you actually do same with extreme clothes shots rarely are you up in somebody's face but in classical movies or other kinds of movies you can be right up in somebody's face there are all kinds of ways in which classic hollywood movies show you how things feel to a subject that often can be sound a musical store really colors a movie and gives you all kinds of feelings that don't exist there's no musical score playing over real life let's say but that's added in in order to make you feel a certain way about what's going on in a movie and so yes i'm arguing that classical hollywood which goes from the 19 teens or 20s all the way to the present day there are a number of classic hollywood movies which i'll put on the screen for you that do sort of both or blend sort of both things they are in fact blending how things look how things sound if you were actually there if such a world existed versus how things feel or how things can be perceived subject wise to an individual or group of individuals who are there but can't translate their perceptions very well now i'm well aware that this two-dimensional line doesn't work for all movies all the time but i think it's a very good place to start as well you know there are scenes in movies that are very surrealistic or even abstract that you know can be dream sequences let's say put into a pretty realistic movie so movies can definitely blend styles blend different tones here no doubt about it so one thing coming up here is that movies do some of them try to simulate reality or imitate it as much as possible or at least part way that would be what's on the left side moving towards the middle but a lot of movies are trying to you know express something that's very hard to express in words perhaps in music alone or in pictures alone and that's where you get to the right side in formalism and expressionism so to sum up one more time the left side of this line is about how things seem to look seem to sound and the farther left that we get the more closer we get to seemingly actual reality as we get more towards the right we have things that are less expressible in words perhaps and they're hard to relate to except you get this powerful feeling perhaps from these that kind of you know communicates to you how it might have felt to a person who experienced the thing that you're watching or was in the situation in the movie let's say in the scene or the context throughout this video i've put up a few examples of movies that sort of fit on this line do you have questions about what movies fit where do you have ways to break up this line or to complicate it let us know in the comments because i do think things can get way more complicated given that there's been a million movies probably made and it's hard to fit them in just five or six different categories here so what other ways can we conceive of the film style line what can we add can we make the line longer can we make it two-dimensional can we make it three-dimensional let me know what your other models are but yes this is an example if you run into a movie textbook say for a college class you'll probably find something like this in fact not just for film but for literature as well thanks for watching please subscribe this channel for more great content have a great day

Channel: Learning about Movies

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Keywords: great movie, film criticism, understanding movies 101, film grammar, film style, realism film, avant garde film, surrealism film, movie styles

Id: rA1RTonQx6E

Length: 7min 45sec (465 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021