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Master Space - Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler (Hardcover)
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Master Space - Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler (Hardcover)
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This is a unique study of the use of cinematic space by four
important directors in American cinema from the 1930s to the 1960s:
Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg, and William
Wyler. Barbara Bowman examines each of their distinctive styles and
diverse backgrounds and shows how these unique visual styles
complement each other--representing the best in classic American
cinema, from Ninotchka and Shanghai Express to Best Years of Our
Lives to It's a Wonderful Life. These great directors viewed space
not as simple emptiness, nor as something to be manipulated
pragmatically, but as a frame or palette in which to work. Their
arrangements of cinematic space become not just visually recurrent
techniques, but aesthetic touchstones that alert spectators to the
narrative shape of the film and invite the spectator to have a more
self-conscious relation to the film. Bowman explains how Capra's
challenge was to take what is spatially familiar, like James
Stewart's or Gary Cooper's neighborhood or small town, and
defamiliarize it enough so that we see it for the first time.
Lubitsch's creation of film space relies on the indirection so
apparent in his scripts by Samuel Raphaelson; he depends on what
the spectator cannot yet see or only anticipates, relying upon our
imaginations, especially our potential lasciviousness. Sternberg's
veiled shots of Marlene Dietrich and others convey a very basic
skepticism about human capacity for both sight and insight, and
Wyler emotionalizes his films's space by having characters like
Bette Davis confront each other in triangular groups or by double
framing his figures with architectural second frames. Each director
approached film space with his ownsingular style, but all four
techniques shared a common purpose to explain characters or to
teach the spectator to see more intensely.
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