Impressionist History

Impressionism started in France in the 1860's and went through the rest of the 19th century, spreading throughout the Western world as painters in country after country caught on. Up until that time, painter's were judged by how closely they could render the surfaces of the world: flesh, glass, steel and lace. Photography was invented in France in the mid-19th century, and in some people's minds, photography started making this "realistic" painting obsolete. So all those painter's you've seen, Cezanne, Monet and Van Gogh, turned to an "impressionistic" style where the brushstroke could capture the essence of something - light, summer air, frost. And they moved away from the subjects of their fathers and grandfathers, the large history paintings with characters and action and moralizing ("The Death of Socrates" by David).



So what I'm suggesting is that something very similar happened in movies and, more importantly, continues to happen today. It happened very fast and very simply: D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein hammered out the film language we now use: long shot, medium shot, close up; head shot and reaction shot; linear- and cross-cutting. That freed up the hundreds of hacks to churn out thousands of movies, increasing in length until we got to the one and a half hour feature that was good enough until the pretentious 70's arrived and started making those bloated two hour features we're stuck with today.

I've described the Storytellers and the Entertainers.
The most pure Impressionists were those experimental film makers who dispensed with plot entirely.

At this point (yesterday, in fact) Mike said, "So Bergman is an Impressionist, right?"
The question implies that I'm describing styles here, and that because plot is not the most important element of a Bergman film, it follows that he's an Impressionist, and more interested in getting certain responses from his audience than he is in telling a story.

And, I think, that's not what I mean at all.

(And I think if I were a better writer I would have explained my point better by now.)

My point is a little more extreme (please don't say radical) than what Mike implied: what I'm saying is that all Hollywood movies today are made by storytellers and entertainers. And the impressionists are not making movies at all. They're making music videos and commercials. I'm saying that commercials (drug and alcohol commercials in particular) have become the impressionist visual form of the 21st century.

The weekend is here. Jack is one week old. Comments are encouraged