Neoformalism

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The Neoformalismus is an approach within the film theory . It goes back to the Wisconsin Project of film scholars David Bordwell , Kristin Thompson and formerly Janet Staiger, whose theory has been taught at the University of Wisconsin since the 1979 publication of the standard publication Film Art .

The overall project

With regard to its scientific status, the neoformalist approach is one of three sub-areas of the overall research project on film history , film theory and film analysis . Further cornerstones are cognitivistically oriented film theory and the historical poetics of film.

The former tries to determine the interactive relationship between the viewer and the cinematic text structure and to model the process associated with cinematic text and information processing in schematic theory. The cognitivism according to David Bordwell therefore includes an active reception attitude on the part of the viewer.

The historiographical approach to a poetics of film provides the theoretical and methodological basis for a history of cinematic styles to be viewed analytically through the cognitive research model.

Based on the Russian formalism of the early 20th century , the film-scientific superstructure is based on the classic style system of Hollywood films , whose analytical focus is on a) the specific technology (mode of film practice) , on b) style (institutional mode of representation ) and c) of film production (mode of film production) are. The aim of the revisionist approach is to synthesize aesthetic, sociological, economic and technological approaches into a historiography of film. Neoformalism thus forms a principle which - on the basis of a series of structural equivalences in a series of cinematic examples - determines the content or the subject of a particular science.

The classic Hollywood cinema

Based on Bordwell, the Classical Hollywood Cinema - which primarily refers to the cinema between 1917 and 1960 - is divided into the investigation of technological changes, the work organization and power relations in the studio system as well as the economic conditions of Hollywood film production. Accordingly, the traditional Hollywood cinema is a stylistic system with specific structural principles or a set of standardized norms and conventions like the concepts of the Russian formalism.

style

The concept of style by David Bordwell fulfills the function of a dynamic system whose fulfillment and deviation from cinematic conventions a continuous process of automation and alienation implied. The latter categories denote two ends of a central concept of neoformalism.

alienation

The concept of alienation (Russian ostranenie = "strange or strange to do") goes back to a work called Art as a Process, 1916 by the Russian formalist Viktor Sklovskij , who described the work of art as a technique that de-automates our perception and thus a foreign view to enable the apparently familiar. The history of aesthetic forms (e.g. film as an aesthetic system) is the history of ever new de-automation and deviations from aesthetic norms, which are based on innovative artistic processes. cinematic devices , Russian priem ], new forms of expression and progressive contextual integration. The formal reference value therefore results from the representation system of the film itself, i.e. from its form, so that its content, i.e. what is represented, takes a back seat. The work of art in the sense of (neo-) formalism has the ability to renew our mental processes again and again.

The program of neoformalism

The neo-formalist approach assumes that the formal structures of the film produce a specific meaning (their “sense”) only during the reception process. The study thus focuses on cognitive aspects of film comprehension: What does the viewer do with the film text and how does it have to be made in order to understand it? Bordwell undertakes a differentiation between the systems of causal chronological action management ( Syuzhet or Plot ) and the system of style. Both are linked by the narrative logic and the principles of time and space (especially by the continuity system of classic Hollywood films). The narration is the process of negotiating between plot and style. Using mental-cognitive processes, the viewer repeatedly creates hypotheses about past events and the further course of the plot, checks them, modifies them, possibly rejects them and creates new ones. He thereby constructs the complete, complex fabula . He is helped by cues from the film plot, e.g. B. The behavior of the characters, scenes, dialogue, etc. They serve as carriers of meaning and offer starting points for interpretation. The viewer encounters the clues in the plot with relevant knowledge from different areas, a schema-based knowledge that does not have to be learned, but largely corresponds to an understanding of everyday situations.

The prerequisites for understanding film are different schemes (narrative, general situational), semantic fields and the ability to abstract. Bordwell differentiates between two main variants of schemes: action-based and person-based (agent-based). Action-related means to recognize the canonical story structure (beginning, middle, end), to recognize typical moments of action ( exposition , climax ). Person-related means characters can be seen in their role-person relation. Both processes can be consciously fulfilled or broken through plot constructions.

Neoformalism is primarily interested in delimiting film from its hermeneutical procedures, which in the interpretation of films have so far claimed to be able to decipher a socially symptomatic content. The scientists primarily criticized the Marxist and psychoanalytic film theory of the 1970s and 1980s, the formal design principles of which served the sole purpose of pre-figuring the recipient in his cognitive process of understanding by making it clear beforehand what the analysis was aiming at. Bordwell described such psychoanalytical guiding concepts of the SLAB theories ( Saussure's - Lacan's - Althusser's - Barthes' theories) as superimposed models , whose poststructuralist content primarily ignores the specific creative, semiotic and stylistic properties of the film as a whole would. Kristin Thompson, on the other hand, said that u. a. the psychoanalytic concept of whoever has the view has the power or the Freudian paradigm of the almost exclusively sexually connoted dream symbols would rather contribute to reducing the complexity of a cinematic work than they would mean an appropriate form of representation of cinematic structural principles. Nevertheless, neoformalism has to be held up to its rigid defenses against emotional processes, psychological and ideological effects that are triggered in the recipient during film perception. Influencing parameters of social and cultural backgrounds are also not examined.

See also

• Film theory
• Formalism (art history)
• Russian formalism

literature

• David Bordwell , Kristin Thompson: Film Art. An Introduction. Addison-Wesley, Reading Mass. u. a. 1979, ISBN 0-201-00566-2 .
• David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, Kristin Thompson: The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Columbia Univ. Press, New York 1985, ISBN 0-231-06055-6 .
• David Bordwell: Narration in the Fiction Film. Methuen et al. a., London 1985, ISBN 0-416-42130-X .
• David Bordwell: Cognition and Understanding. Seeing and forgetting in MILDRED PIERCE. In: montage / av. Issue 1/1/1992, pp. 5-24.
• Britta Hartmann, Hans J. Wulff: From the specifics of the film. Neoformalism, Cognitivism, Historical Poetics. In: montage / av. Issue 4/1/1995, pp. 5-11.
• Kristin Thompson: Neoformalist Film Analysis: One Approach - Many Methods. (PDF; 289 kB) In: montage / av. Issue 4/1/1995, pp. 23-63.
• Britta Hartmann, Hans J. Wulff: Neoformalism - Cognitivism - Historical Poetics of the Cinema. In: Felix Jürgen (Ed.): Modern film theory. Bender, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-9806528-1-0 .
• Kristin Thompson: Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-674-83975-7 .

Web links

• Essays on Neoformalism by Kristin Thompson and others in montage / av, issue 4/1/1995 - Journal for Theory and History of Audiovisual Communication
• Markus Stauff: According to the theory? Notes on the importance of theory and politics in cultural studies and neoformalism. In: Media Studies Reviews. 1, 1999, pp. 22-34.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kristin Thompson: Neoformalist Film Analysis: One Approach - Many Methods. ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 289 kB) In: montage / av. Issue 4/1/1995, pp. 23-63.