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UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THESIS Degree Year Name of Author C C O P Y R IG H T This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished typescript and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting the thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. COPYRIGHT DECLARATION I recognise that the copyright of the above-described thesis rests with the author and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. LOANS Theses may not be lent to individuals, but the Senate House Library may lend a copy to approved libraries within the United Kingdom, for consultation solely on the premises of those libraries. Application should be made to: Inter-Library Loans, Senate House Library, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. REPRODUCTION University of London theses may not be reproduced without explicit written permission from the Senate House Library. Enquiries should be addressed to the Theses Section of the Library. Regulations concerning reproduction vary according to the date of acceptance of the thesis and are listed below as guidelines. A. Before 1962. Permission granted only upon the prior written consent of the author. (The Senate House Library will provide addresses where possible). B. 1962 - 1974. In many cases the author has agreed to permit copying upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. C. 1975- 1988. Most theses may be copied upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. D. 1989 onwards. Most theses may be copied. This thesis comes within category D. This copy has been deposited in the Library of0 i This copy has been deposited in the Senate House Library, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. C:\Documents and Settings\lproctor\Loca! Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK8\Copyright - thesis (2).doc THE ESTABLISHING SHOT, FILM SPACE AND THE CZECHOSLOVAK NEW WAVE Cesar Ballester School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London PhD Thesis UMI Number: U591814 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U591814 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 ABSTRACT OF THESIS In this thesis I have attempted to reveal the aetiology of the absence of the establishing shot in the editing style of the Czechoslovak New Wave. I have demonstrated that the Czechoslovak New Wave had a unique way of editing that differentiated it from those other so-called new cinemas, which were also questioning the continuity style. Never in the history of sound cinema had so many films been edited with such a large number of scenes that lacked the establishing shot. The absence of the establishing shot in these films provokes several questions. I answer the question why the New Wave questions the continuity style. Most scholarly works on the New Wave have argued that the dramatic change in style of these films was the result of a strong reaction against Socialist Realism. This answers the question only partially, though it is true that Socialist Realism in film rigidly followed the conventions established in the continuity style. My thesis, however, is centred on the other two questions provoked by the absence of the establishing shot. The first of these is why the continuity style does not collapse as a narrative medium without the establishing shot, or rather, how the continuity style works if no establishing shot is needed. Secondly, and this is the ultimate aim of the thesis, it attempts to ascertain why the Czech and Slovak directors employed what might be referred to as the non-establishing-shot technique. It is, indeed, a reaction to Socialist Realism and to a socialist society, but my thesis attempts, I believe for the first time, to understand specially how. The thesis is divided into three parts. Parts I and II analyse the nature of film space and in particular how it is perceived by the spectator. Since the Czechoslovak New Wave questions the spatial conventions of the continuity style I devote Part I to an historical analysis of the origins, development, and institutionalization of the continuity style. Part II provides a theoretical discussion on the nature of film space and how the spectator perceives spatial continuity by means of editing, that is, a close study of the theories of montage developed by Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Bela Balazs, Sergei Eisenstein, and the Czechs Jan Mukarovsky and Jan Kucera. These theorists had a completely different approach to spatial continuity. They all shared a central idea, that of semantic completion, and had a direct influence in the development of the New Wave editing techniques, through the person of Kucera, who taught theory of montage at FAMU to the New Wave directors. Part in constitutes a practical shot analysis of those New Wave films where the non-establishing-shot technique has been employed. The aim of Part IE is to find in what ways the themes present in 1960s Czechoslovakia were conveyed by means of montage. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help of the following persons and institutions: first of all that of my supervisors, Professor Robert Pynsent, Professor Julian Graffy, and Dr Philip Cavendish; secondly that of Renata Clark, from the Czech Centre in London; Peter Hames; Vera Chytilova; Jin Menzel; Alejandro Mehdevi; Eva Papouskova; Vera Vicenikova, from Bolton in Prague; Vladimir Opela and Briana Cechova, Director and Head of the Historical Department respectively at the Narodni Filmovy Archiv in Prague; staff at the NFA library; Richard Kovacik, Manager of the Film Archive Department at the Slovensky Filmovy Ustav; Zdena Skapova; and all the staff at the SSEES Library. Finally I would like to thank my friends and family for their support. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS: ABSTRACT OF THESIS p. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS p. 2 INTRODUCTION p. 4 PARTI ORIGINS OF THE CONTINUITY STYLE. THE ROLE OF THE ESTABLISHING SHOT p. 10 Traditional views on the continuity style and the importance of the Establishing Shot. p. 11 Revisionist Scholarship. The Denaturalization of the Establishing Shot. p. 32 PART II THE CREATION OF AND PERCEPTION OF FILM SPACE. THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE ESTABLISHING SHOT FOR THE CREATION OF SPATIAL CONTINUITY. p. 42 Semantic Completion. p. 43 First Attempts at Theorizing Spatial Continuity: Kuleshov and Pudovkin. p. 51 Bela Balazs and the Temporal Nature of Film Space. p. 69 Eisenstein and Juxtaposition. p. 77 Czech Film Theory: Jan Mukarovsky and Jan Kucera. p. 93 PART HI THE CZECHOSLOVAK NEW WAVE AND THE ABSCENCE OF THE ESTABLISHING SHOT. p. 116 The Czechoslovak New Wave in Context. p. 117 Czech and Slovak Films of the New Wave and the non-ES Technique. p. 133 CONCLUSION p. 216 BIBLIOGRAPHY p. 218 FILMOGRAPHY p. 225 4 INTRODUCTION Between 1962 and 1970 the Czechoslovak film industry produced a series of remarkable films which came to be collectively known as the Czechoslovak New Wave, which was sometimes referred to as the Czechoslovak film miracle. These films radically broke with Socialist Realist aesthetics, absorbing and developing the stylistic innovations that had been carried out by other ‘new’ cinemas in France, Great Britain and Poland since the late 1950s. In Czechoslovakia, filmmakers of five generations took part in this ‘miracle’. The oldest generation were those filmmakers who had started their careers in the 1930s, as Avant-garde filmmakers under the influence of the Devetsil group of intellectuals, led by Karel Teige. They included directors such as Martin Fric, Elmar Klos (who later coupled with Jan Kadar to win an Oscar for best foreign picture in 1965 for Obchod na korze (The shop on the main street), Jin Lehovec, Jin Weiss, and Otakar Vavra, who played a significant role in the foundation of the Prague Film School, FAMU. These Avant-garde filmmakers later succumbed to commercialism and, after the war, to the rules of Socialist Realist directives as laid down by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The second generation started making films only after the Second World War. Directors such as Jin Krejcik or Miroslav Hubacek began by making melodramas or films concerned with the immediate past but soon, like the previous generation, were sucked into the machinery of Socialist Realism. The third generation, who had been formed as filmmakers entirely in the Socialist state, was the first generation to react against official aesthetic norms. Some of them, like Vojtech Jasny and Karel Kachyna, were amongst the first FAMU graduates since its foundation in 1947. Others, like Zbynek Brynych and Ladislav Helge had trained in the nationalized industry itself, at the Barrandov Studios, as director’s assistants. Their attempts, however, to break away from official norms came under strong attack from Stalinist authorities; this prevented this generation from developing new ideas on film until much later. It was in 1962, a new political thaw was under way, that the fourth generation of filmmakers (those who graduated from FAMU in the early and mid-1960s - the one exception being Milos Forman who graduated in 1955, though he did not direct his first film until 1963) managed to break away completely from Socialist Realist aesthetics. The members of this generation were all FAMU graduates: Hynek Bocan, Vera Chytilova, Milos Forman, Jaromil Jires, Pavel Juracek, Ivan Passer, Antonin Masa, Jin Menzel, Jan Nemec, and Evald Schorm.

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