Film Studies

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

Table of Contents

1. Problems of Film Realism and Formalism

2. Take a Photograph or Make a Photograph

3. Reality effects and truth effects

Lumiére-Melies Chart

(Realism) (Formalism)LUMIERE MELIES

The Blair Witch Project Exorcist Full Monty The Gold RushDocumentary SF Fantasy

Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• The Full Monty (1997) by Peter Cattaneo: a British comedy about six unemployed men trying to form a male striptease group to support themselves and their families.

Mostly showing Lumière tendencies but some parts Méliès tendencies: photography in a realist style and fancy narrative

Formalism / Méliès Tendencies

• Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin: a silent comedy about a trump going to the Yukon to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush but being stranded in a cabin by snow storm.

• The Gold Rush

Mostly formalist film with Chaplin’s fantastic mime and impressive comic performance, but realist elements are also included such as location shooting and real historical reference.

Problems of Film Realism

• Film as representation of reality

• What is filmed is not reality itself but its image• A person who appears on the screen is not

herself but her image.• An object who can be seen on the screen is not

itself but its image.

Problems of Film Realism

René Magritte’s painting of of Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)

The picture is not the pipe itself, no matter how lifelike it, but its image.

Marshall McLuhan’s cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall

In the film, he is only the image of McLuhan and not himself

Problems of Film Realism

A film re-presents objects and people

Or re-traces (an event); re-calls (an event); re-produce (reality), re-enact (an event/reality); re-fer to (an event / reality), re-build (reality); re-construct (reality): re-stage (reality / an event)

Film is realization in ‘second-time’; thus actions are suffixed with -re; spatially and temporally different from what it shows.

Problems of Film Formalism

Even fantasy, fantastic images, and forms are constructed on our perception of reality.

It is impossible to create a world totally detached from reality.

Problems of Film Formalism

• Even a creature from Mars have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms, fingers, and two legs.

Coexistence and Interaction

Realism and formalism coexist and interact

Every film is constructed by a dialectic process of film realism and film formalism: of mimicking and changing reality

Coexistence and Interaction

Ridley Scott’s SF film, Blade Runner was inspired by futuristic or postmodern reality – the cityscape of Osaka

Problems of Film Realism and Formalism

• Film is not reality itself but the representation of it. Thus, filmed reality is subject to filmmaker’s interpretation and manipulation.

• It is impossible to create anything which has nothing to do with the reality we perceive; the filmmaker always rely on what he/she knows, has learned and experienced in real life. Filmmaker’s imagination and creation is controlled by real existence.

Problems of Film Realism and Formalism

• Realism and formalism coexist and interact in every film

Our task is:- to identify the extent to which a film is realistic, formalistic or both;- to explore how filmmakers achieve realism or formalism

Take or Make a Photograph

• Photography is a modern invention which has enabled us to record reality ‘as it really is.’

• Question: Is photography an objective recording of reality as it is?

Take or Make a Photograph?

• Choices of exposure and shutter speed

• They reflect the photographer’s intention

Take or Make a Photograph

• John Constable’s two drawings of the same spot.

Dedham Vale from Langham

Take or Make a Photograph

• Photographer finds an interesting moment and compose.

Photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Take or Make a Photograph

• The choice of colour or black and white

• It depends on photographer’s aesthetic sensibility.

Take or Make a Sketch

• John Constable’s series of paintings of the sky

Take or Make a Sketch

• Constable’s studies on cloud-formation based on Alexander Cozens

Problems of Realism

• Constable did not simply record reality but learned how it looks.

• Artist learns how to record reality.• Filmmakers, even those of realist film, watch

and learn how they record and film reality. • Filmmakers always interpret and alter the form

of reality.

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Film (like photography and painting) is not, no matter how realistic it is, the simple, objective recording of reality but the rearrangement of it.

• ‘Virtual reality, O.K. You know what virtual means? O.K., it is like really real. So virtual reality is practically, totally real. But not. -- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lois Kaiser in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

‘Realism’ is a relative concept in two senses

1) There is no pure or perfect form of realism. Some films are only more realistic than others.2) The filmmaker’s and the viewer’s ideas of reality are relative.

An alternative way to describe realismTo discuss realism in terms of effects which a film create on the audience.

Ivan Shishikin’s Oak Grove Ultimate realism

Camile Pissaro’s The Boulevard Montmartre

‘If you ask me what the world looks like to me, it looks like a painting of Pissaro. E.H. Gombrich

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

An alternative way to describe realism (and formalism)To discuss realism (and formalism) in terms of effects which a film (or art and literature) create on the audience.

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• ‘Reality Effects’ - they come into being when representations in moving images give the audience the impression that they mimic the ‘facticity’ of the world around us, or surface appearance. Roland Barthes

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• ‘Truth Effects’ - they come into being when representations in moving images agree with viewer’s ideas of what is true about the world in a general sense. They have to do with whether texts conform to what she generally believes about experience. Michel Foucault

Reality Effects

• Richard Attenborough’s biographical film, Gandhi, imitates how Mahatma Ghandi looked, how he spoke, how the world in which he lived looked like and what his life was like - creation of an impression that the film is mimicking facticity, that is, a reality effect.

Reality Effects

•Jinnah and Ghandi Hunger strike Opening Assassination

Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Moving images have ‘truth-effects’ even when they are ‘objectively’ untrue. They have truth effects as long as they agree to what the audience believes true.

• Samuel Fuller’s House of Bamboo (US, 1955) display the images of Japan and Japanese women. False for those who know Japan and Japanese women but true for those who believe them true.

Film Realism and Reality/Truth Effects

• Our impression of whether moving images being realistic or not depends on both reality and truth effects that they exert on us.

• Reality and truth effects as alternative to film realism

Analyse the reality and truth effects that Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algier exerts on you.Battle of Algiers