DOROTTYA JÁSZAY, ANDREA VELICH Eötvös Loránd University
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Film & Culture edited by: DOROTTYA JÁSZAY, ANDREA VELICH Eötvös Loránd University | Faculty of Humanities | School of English and American Studies 2016 Film & Culture Edited by: DOROTTYA JÁSZAY, ANDREA VELICH Layout design by: BENCE LEVENTE BODÓ Proofreader: ANDREA THURMER © AUTHORS 2016, © EDITORS 2016 ISBN 978-963-284-757-3 EÖTVÖS LORÁND TUDOMÁNYEGYETEM Supported by the Higher Education Restructuring Fund | Allocated to ELTE by the Hungarian Government 2016 FILM & CULTURE Marcell Gellért | Shakespeare on Film: Romeo and Table of Juliet Revisioned 75 Márta Hargitai | Hitchcock’s Macbeth 87 Contents Dorottya Holló | Culture(s) Through Films: Learning Opportunities 110 Géza Kállay | Introduction: Being Film 5 János Kenyeres | Multiculturalism, History and Identity in Canadian Film: Atom Egoyan’s Vera Benczik & Natália Pikli | James Bond in the Ararat 124 Classroom 19 Zsolt Komáromy | The Miraculous Life of Henry Zsolt Czigányik | Utopia and Dystopia Purcell: On the Cultural Historical Contexts of on the Screen 30 the Film England, my England 143 Ákos Farkas | Henry James in the Cinema: When Miklós Lojkó | The British Documentary Film the Adapters Turn the Screw 44 Movement from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s: Its Social, Political, and Aesthetic Context 155 Cecilia Gall | Representation of Australian Aborigines in Australian film 62 Éva Péteri | John Huston’s Adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead”: A Literary Approach 186 FILM & CULTURE Eglantina Remport & Janina Vesztergom | Romantic Ireland and the Hollywood Film Industry: The Colleen Bawn (1911), The Quiet Man (1952), Leap Year (2010) 169 Eszter Szép | Sequential Arts: Moments From the Parallel History of Comics and Film 196 Andrea Velich | The English ‘Monarchy Film’ Revisited: From The Private life of Henry VIII (1933) to Elizabeth (1998) and The Queen (2006) 210 Dorottya Jászay | Glossary 227 Being Film GÉZA KÁLLAY | Film & Culture ► 5 “FILM SHARES WITH OTHER GREAT ARTS THE PROPOSAL THAT EVERYTHING MATTERS — AND YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT ‘EVERYTHING’ MEANS.” (CAVELL AND KLEVAN 169) FILM & CULTURE–KÁLLAY–BEING FILM ‘What is film?’ — this question will be taken here as a phil- is a multiple art form, like novels, photographs, dramas osophical one, concerning the ‘ontology’ (the ‘what-ness,’ in print: lots of copies of the same film are in circulation. the ‘very being’) of film. On the everyday level, everyone Like novels, films, in most cases, display some narrative growing up in our (‘Western’) culture is familiar with structure (a ‘plot’), as well, but this narrative is performed films: generally, we are exposed to them — through televi- in front of us, in our immediate presence, and often, as sion, the internet, later in the cinema, in the ‘movie-thea- in drama, through characters doing things, talking, etc. tre’ — before we can read and write. We live in an age when However, if we watch films, the actors are unaware of our one can ‘make a film’ (photograph, video-recording) with presence; they ‘are’ ‘in’ the screen, in a virtual manner; her smart-phone quite easily, and is even able to trans- whereas actors on stage are not only conscious of their au- mit it to a wide audience. Film, as an ordinary phenom- dience but they heavily rely on audience-responses. On the enon of our everyday lives, is a series of moving images theatrical stage the ‘conjuring up’ is relatively limited to (‘pictures’) that are viewed on a smaller or larger screen, a setting depicted through scenery, stage props, etc. Film and are now mostly seen in colour. The black-and-white can do more in this respect: for a backdrop, it can have an film that was the tradition until approximately the mid- absolutely ‘realistic’ interior (e.g. a restaurant); there can 1960s, is today used almost exclusively for artistic purposes. be a ‘real’ landscape where the fictional plot is set. For ex- Film is an artefact: a kind of combination of animated ample, an imaginary story taking place in the Alps might photography and, in one way or another, acting (in a broad be shot in the Swiss Alps. Moreover, through simple pho- sense: i.e., if we allow, that e.g. natural phenomena, like tography, shots of (actual) houses, cities, nature, and the trees, can become ‘characters,’ too, as in nature films). shapes and colours of these (besides the characters acting), Moreover, film — as opposed to the singularity of, for ex- constitute a very important partof ‘film-language’ as well. ample, a painting by Botticelli, or the singularity of the It does not need much theorizing, either, to see how performance of a play one evening in this or that theatre – film differs from other ‘pictorial representations,’ such as 6 FILM & CULTURE–KÁLLAY–BEING FILM paintings. ‘Photographic mimesis’ and verisimilitude (even a new way of seeing: we do not, so to speak ‘watch a film’ in black-and white) is possible in painting as well, but this but we see, we re-visit the world through it. Film, in a cer- requires considerable effort from the painter. Photographs, tain sense, is ‘transparent’ (cf. Bazin 9–22, Walton 246–249, still or moving, do not make such demands on the per- and Coleman 22–45). son holding the camera: the ‘natural,’ default-case feature As we learn about “mechanisms” behind phenomena, of a photo is that it shows (or at least it is very close to) we are also told that film, considered from the material what the naked eye would also see. Thus, the camera, and point of view, usually is a transparent strip of cellulose what the camera fixes, the shot, can be thought of asan - triacetate, perforated on the edges, and covered with photo- other ‘eye’; the camera is much closer to ‘visual aids’ like graphic (especially today with iron-oxide) emulsion which telescopes, microscopes, glasses and mirrors than to the makes it sensitive to light. It is a tape of various widths painter’s hand guided by the painter’s eye and imagina- and lengths but it is helpless without lighting, cameras, tion. This statement does not mean that shooting a photo projectors, and thousands of other, man-made devices. or a film is ‘unimaginative.’ We also learn that while watching a film, we are vic- On the contrary, there are choices: the angle, the per- tims of a constant optical illusion: the strip contains still spective, the closeness to or the distance from an object, images which, when speeded up by a projector and thus a person ‘represented,’ not to mention the deliberate ‘dis- following one another in quick succession, create the im- torting film-tricks’ applied with respect to the everyday pression that the images are ‘moving’ (hence the name: perception of ordinary reality (with accompanying sounds “movie,” “moving pictures”). These attributes are neces- and music). All of these decisions can easily put movies sary physical prerequisites for films ‘to be;’ but when we on the artistic (astounding, provoking) level. This concept ask what film is, we are rather interested in the function precisely means that, since the camera is, in the default and in the impact of the ‘full product’ on and in our lives. case, a means of mechanical reproduction, it can become The ‘being’ of film, at least when we wish to discuss it, is 7 FILM & CULTURE–KÁLLAY–BEING FILM ‘how we are with respect to it’; i.e. film exists in our atti- and their own conventions and style keep changing with tudes to it, and its relation to us. It is a truism that films can the times, for example: a comedy from the 1930s is very be made for lots of purposes: there are obvious differences different from one made in the 1980s. between, for example, a ‘family film’ about somebody’s In addition, there is an interesting divide between wedding, newsreels (effectively used for propaganda pur- films that ‘only’ have a script, and those films whose -or poses especially between the two World Wars), and the igin go back to some already more or less well-known so-called ‘feature film’ (a ‘long film,’ where running time printed fictional stories, such as novels or dramas. It is is usually between 60 and 210 minutes) such as Star Wars, also part of today’s multiple-mediality that films have a produced by one of the powerful Hollywood film studios. counter-effect on the printed medium: a popular film is Films fall into numerous types and genres, usually ac- often remade into comic strips, children’s books, whole cording to their subject matter (love, history, etc.), specific novels or dramas. In what follows, the ‘ontology’ of film medium (cartoon or not), and style, some of them orig- will be addressed with the assumption that we are first inally borrowed from other aesthetic media (novel and and foremost talking about feature films to be primarily drama). These types and genres include: documentary, shown in cinemas (‘movie theatres,’ as opposed to televi- newsreel, silent movie, action movie, adventure film, disas- sion), made for artistic purposes, these purposes including ter film, spy film, superhero film, thriller, suspense movie, ‘entertainment’ as well. crime story (‘whodunit,’ ‘gangster film’), film noir, horror If film — like poetry, a play, a painting, or a novel — is film, splatter, gore film, science-fiction, fantasy, comedy, considered as a form of art, it is hard to tell what film is. In slapstick, dark comedy, remarriage comedy, melodrama, art, compared to the everyday world, there is some surplus family drama, history drama, romance, western, musi- of meaning, an excess of force, a potential for resilience, cal, animated film, cartoon, experimental film, etc. (cf. an excess of energy and significance which simply takes us Bordwell and Thompson 318–383).