During the first half of Wednesday’s class, Robin showed us a series of clips from various French films. Whilst different in terms of content, genre and style, each of these extracts had something in common: the extraordinary fluidity and originality of coverage that is distinctly unique from American cinema.
A typical American film is full of rules. More or less, all scenes have similar set ups; everything is governed by formulaic ways of coverage and editing that audiences have become familiar and comfortable with through repeated use. Pick a scene out of any mainstream film, we can probably recognise the use of things like the master shot or the shot-reverse shot. It is a rarity to see extremely creative cutting in popular cinema nowadays.
Perhaps this is because the purpose of editing in Western cinema is to hide its presence. The mentality is that we should create products using logical progressions, so that the audience is unaware of the cuts. Or perhaps it is just a quality of American cinematic culture, that coverage is not an element that is focused on as much as things like mise en scene and acting.
French cinema, however, is vastly different. Although I didn’t consciously pick up this fact during the first viewing, Robin noted that the French approach is different because none of the scenes have any semblance of a master shot. Instead, the characters are continuously moving around the frame, creating a dynamic sense of space and movement that is a rarity in typical Hollywood films. My initial reaction was how effortlessly the scenes work despite how complicated they probably were to shoot. Static shots and straight cuts are nowhere to be seen, and the way the space was used was infinitely more interesting than in American cinema.
All of the extracts seem to have a different approach to coverage with no sense of convention. We wondered why this is the case…is this something they are specifically taught in film school? Is it used as a cinematic or narrative tool? Is découpage something that French cinema emphasises, something creators are taught to think extensively about?A cultural phenomenon because it’s present in all French films? Or is it just pure instinct and intuition?
At this stage, I have the answer to none of these questions. But I hope that through more investigation of The Scene, I can continue to develop a better understanding.
