1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,480 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,480 --> 00:00:04,010 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,010 --> 00:00:06,340 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,340 --> 00:00:10,690 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,690 --> 00:00:13,320 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,320 --> 00:00:17,129 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,129 --> 00:00:17,753 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:25,864 --> 00:00:27,530 DAVID THORBURN: We make a transition now 9 00:00:27,530 --> 00:00:29,380 to the final segment of our course 10 00:00:29,380 --> 00:00:32,770 in which we-- and this transition 11 00:00:32,770 --> 00:00:37,120 always induces a kind of guilt in me, 12 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:39,810 a kind of deep ambivalence and disappointment, 13 00:00:39,810 --> 00:00:42,140 and awareness of the simplifications 14 00:00:42,140 --> 00:00:45,620 and reductions that are embedded in all syllabi 15 00:00:45,620 --> 00:00:47,020 and in all curricula. 16 00:00:47,020 --> 00:00:48,920 And it's a good opportunity for me 17 00:00:48,920 --> 00:00:52,440 to remind you that even the primary emphasis of our course, 18 00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:55,190 which is on certain forms of American film, 19 00:00:55,190 --> 00:00:58,170 is itself highly selective and simplified 20 00:00:58,170 --> 00:01:00,530 and reductive as you-- as I told you. 21 00:01:00,530 --> 00:01:02,410 They were-- in the Hollywood system, 22 00:01:02,410 --> 00:01:04,900 they were making 500 films a year. 23 00:01:04,900 --> 00:01:07,390 Think of the small number we've actually seen, right? 24 00:01:07,390 --> 00:01:10,719 It's the tiniest sampling of what's actually available. 25 00:01:10,719 --> 00:01:12,260 And what I've tried to do is give you 26 00:01:12,260 --> 00:01:17,920 a kind of taste of what that phenomenon of the Hollywood 27 00:01:17,920 --> 00:01:21,610 film was like without trying to pretend at all that I was 28 00:01:21,610 --> 00:01:25,150 coming anything close-- not just couldn't be exhaustive-- we 29 00:01:25,150 --> 00:01:30,340 couldn't even be extensive or mildly serious 30 00:01:30,340 --> 00:01:33,970 about trying to do justice to the complexity of that body 31 00:01:33,970 --> 00:01:35,370 of material. 32 00:01:35,370 --> 00:01:39,860 And that's even truer of course in this moment-- 33 00:01:39,860 --> 00:01:41,550 in these final moments of the course, 34 00:01:41,550 --> 00:01:44,760 where I try to do sort of a brief acknowledgment 35 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,340 of the fact that there are profound and powerful 36 00:01:47,340 --> 00:01:50,840 traditions of cinema outside the United States-- in fact 37 00:01:50,840 --> 00:01:55,120 some more profound or at least as profound and some more 38 00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:57,590 powerful ones many people would say 39 00:01:57,590 --> 00:01:59,812 than the achievement of American cinema-- 40 00:01:59,812 --> 00:02:01,520 than the achievements of American cinema. 41 00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:03,470 And perhaps the strongest example 42 00:02:03,470 --> 00:02:05,700 of that-- the most dramatic example of that-- 43 00:02:05,700 --> 00:02:07,220 is French film. 44 00:02:07,220 --> 00:02:09,500 It has a kind of parallel history. 45 00:02:09,500 --> 00:02:12,420 At virtually every stage of the history 46 00:02:12,420 --> 00:02:14,010 of French film-- of American film, 47 00:02:14,010 --> 00:02:16,780 you can find a kind of counterpart story 48 00:02:16,780 --> 00:02:19,310 in French film as if-- it's almost as if-- and in fact, 49 00:02:19,310 --> 00:02:21,100 there have been historians who have tried 50 00:02:21,100 --> 00:02:22,860 to argue about the priority. 51 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:24,410 Who invented film? 52 00:02:24,410 --> 00:02:27,030 Were the French more advanced than the Americans? 53 00:02:27,030 --> 00:02:30,630 Who first developed forms of serial movies? 54 00:02:30,630 --> 00:02:35,870 Who first developed forms of the chase-- of the comic chase film 55 00:02:35,870 --> 00:02:37,260 in the early silent era? 56 00:02:37,260 --> 00:02:38,210 And so forth. 57 00:02:38,210 --> 00:02:40,600 And I think these arguments are not 58 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:42,600 very helpful about priority. 59 00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:45,300 But it is very important to remind you 60 00:02:45,300 --> 00:02:50,450 that the history of other national cinemas, and most 61 00:02:50,450 --> 00:02:54,180 especially the histories-- the history of French cinema 62 00:02:54,180 --> 00:03:00,490 has the same complexity, nuance, detail that American film has. 63 00:03:00,490 --> 00:03:03,510 We can speak-- and just let me very quickly remind you. 64 00:03:03,510 --> 00:03:06,830 I've asked you to read a chapter from David Cook's history 65 00:03:06,830 --> 00:03:10,590 of narrative film that deals with the complex achievements 66 00:03:10,590 --> 00:03:13,550 of French film in both the silent and in the sound era. 67 00:03:13,550 --> 00:03:15,410 And I hope you read those chapters 68 00:03:15,410 --> 00:03:18,120 and reread those chapters closely, and think about them. 69 00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:21,100 Just as a reminder, however, we-- there 70 00:03:21,100 --> 00:03:26,089 are arguments, just as Edison and-- the earliest films that 71 00:03:26,089 --> 00:03:28,630 were made in the United States are associated with the Edison 72 00:03:28,630 --> 00:03:29,190 company. 73 00:03:29,190 --> 00:03:32,970 So the same kind of thing is true for the Lumiere films 74 00:03:32,970 --> 00:03:36,640 that were developed in the 1890s in France. 75 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:40,240 And of course, just as they were pioneering directors who 76 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:43,280 explored and the nature of cinema, 77 00:03:43,280 --> 00:03:46,980 the possibilities of this new medium in the United States, 78 00:03:46,980 --> 00:03:50,430 an identical activity was taking place in France. 79 00:03:50,430 --> 00:03:52,110 And some of you of course know about 80 00:03:52,110 --> 00:03:56,230 the essential contribution of the early pioneering director, 81 00:03:56,230 --> 00:04:01,520 Melies, who talks extensively about him in the chapter I 82 00:04:01,520 --> 00:04:05,870 asked you to read-- the man who in fact invented the science 83 00:04:05,870 --> 00:04:08,270 fiction movie, in the film A Trip to the Moon, 84 00:04:08,270 --> 00:04:13,690 and did so many other early experiments with for-- 85 00:04:13,690 --> 00:04:17,459 with combining the reality of film 86 00:04:17,459 --> 00:04:20,640 with certain forms of surrealist imagination. 87 00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:23,680 The tradition of discourse about film in France 88 00:04:23,680 --> 00:04:26,300 probably is deeper and has a longer life 89 00:04:26,300 --> 00:04:27,710 than in any other society. 90 00:04:27,710 --> 00:04:30,820 And many people would say that along with Eisenstein, 91 00:04:30,820 --> 00:04:33,470 the great Russian director, it's the French who 92 00:04:33,470 --> 00:04:37,240 elaborated the first systematic forms of film theory. 93 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:44,600 And there were in the silent era and in the '20s, in France, 94 00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:46,690 a series of developments that encouraged 95 00:04:46,690 --> 00:04:50,060 a systematic kind of theoretical approach to film. 96 00:04:50,060 --> 00:04:54,180 I won't mention names here or particular or particular 97 00:04:54,180 --> 00:04:57,130 theorists-- simply acknowledging the fact 98 00:04:57,130 --> 00:05:00,070 that the French tradition of discussion 99 00:05:00,070 --> 00:05:02,740 about film, and in the equation of film, 100 00:05:02,740 --> 00:05:06,530 is at least as rich as that of any other society. 101 00:05:06,530 --> 00:05:11,270 I say this because making John Renoir stand 102 00:05:11,270 --> 00:05:13,550 for this whole rich tradition is unfair, 103 00:05:13,550 --> 00:05:17,070 even to so remarkable and influential director as Jean 104 00:05:17,070 --> 00:05:17,710 Renoir. 105 00:05:17,710 --> 00:05:20,080 But having made that basic apology, 106 00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:25,160 let me now make my transition to Renoir himself. 107 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:30,210 Some of you will recognize Renoir's name I hope. 108 00:05:30,210 --> 00:05:35,970 He's the second son of the great impressionist painter, Auguste 109 00:05:35,970 --> 00:05:36,700 Renoir. 110 00:05:36,700 --> 00:05:42,470 And in fact you can-- he was himself a subject 111 00:05:42,470 --> 00:05:43,730 of his father's paintings. 112 00:05:43,730 --> 00:05:47,480 There's the young Renoir with blonde reddish hair 113 00:05:47,480 --> 00:05:50,460 as he appears in one of his father's paintings 114 00:05:50,460 --> 00:05:55,220 in the period 1895 to 1899, when young Jean appeared 115 00:05:55,220 --> 00:05:56,360 in a series of paintings. 116 00:05:56,360 --> 00:06:01,050 In some of the paintings his gender is very ambiguous. 117 00:06:01,050 --> 00:06:03,190 He looks-- not just that he has long hair, 118 00:06:03,190 --> 00:06:06,340 but he even seems dressed in a kind of girly way. 119 00:06:06,340 --> 00:06:08,200 And he's sometimes mistaken for a girl 120 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:10,130 when people look at the images. 121 00:06:10,130 --> 00:06:12,900 But isn't it interesting that this great film artist 122 00:06:12,900 --> 00:06:16,450 is himself in a series of-- is already 123 00:06:16,450 --> 00:06:20,980 in a series of immortal works of art created by his father? 124 00:06:20,980 --> 00:06:24,090 Jean Renoir grew up in an atmosphere 125 00:06:24,090 --> 00:06:29,740 of avant garde-- almost avant garde frenzy-- 126 00:06:29,740 --> 00:06:32,430 many of the most distinguished artists and performers 127 00:06:32,430 --> 00:06:34,960 of the day were regulars in his household 128 00:06:34,960 --> 00:06:37,084 because his father by the-- he was born late 129 00:06:37,084 --> 00:06:38,750 in his-- very late in his father's life. 130 00:06:38,750 --> 00:06:41,420 And his father was already a very famous painter 131 00:06:41,420 --> 00:06:44,620 by the time Jean was born. 132 00:06:44,620 --> 00:06:49,540 When he grew to adulthood, he-- around the time of the First 133 00:06:49,540 --> 00:06:55,020 World War-- he served first in the cavalry in 1913 134 00:06:55,020 --> 00:06:58,430 very briefly, and was actually injured-- 135 00:06:58,430 --> 00:07:01,310 he was kicked by an animal, I think a horse or a mule 136 00:07:01,310 --> 00:07:03,010 kicked him, and he was laid up. 137 00:07:03,010 --> 00:07:06,590 Then he re-enlisted in the infantry where he was wounded 138 00:07:06,590 --> 00:07:09,590 and he said finally-- so this is very rare in the first World 139 00:07:09,590 --> 00:07:12,830 War-- he ended up serving also in the Air Force. 140 00:07:12,830 --> 00:07:15,230 And he was briefly a pilot in the French Air Force. 141 00:07:15,230 --> 00:07:17,720 So he served in all three branches of the French-- 142 00:07:20,420 --> 00:07:21,654 First World War. 143 00:07:21,654 --> 00:07:24,320 And the film you're going to see tonight, the great masterpiece, 144 00:07:24,320 --> 00:07:28,380 such-- the great influential, deeply influential film, 145 00:07:28,380 --> 00:07:32,430 Grand Illusion, is a war film of a certain Renoirish sort 146 00:07:32,430 --> 00:07:35,920 as you'll see this evening. 147 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:42,220 He also served briefly as a prisoner of war 148 00:07:42,220 --> 00:07:44,320 during the First World War. 149 00:07:44,320 --> 00:07:47,900 And that experience of course, in some degree, 150 00:07:47,900 --> 00:07:52,960 in some central way, informs the story and the experience 151 00:07:52,960 --> 00:07:55,210 of Grand Illusion, which is also a story 152 00:07:55,210 --> 00:07:58,945 about-- a film about prisoners of war during wartime. 153 00:08:02,770 --> 00:08:05,140 You can get some sense of-- do we 154 00:08:05,140 --> 00:08:08,600 have some pictures of his father's paintings? 155 00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:12,740 Let me just get-- these are just of course among some of Renoir, 156 00:08:12,740 --> 00:08:14,270 Pierre's most famous paintings. 157 00:08:14,270 --> 00:08:15,770 And I thought that it would be-- you 158 00:08:15,770 --> 00:08:17,353 would be interested to see them to get 159 00:08:17,353 --> 00:08:23,520 some sense of-- to remind you of the importance of his father's 160 00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:29,080 art, and of the asking you-- and also as a way of encouraging 161 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:31,380 you to imagine what the impact might have been 162 00:08:31,380 --> 00:08:36,500 on the young boy to have grown up in an environment like this. 163 00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:38,346 I don't know, that does look like Jean. 164 00:08:38,346 --> 00:08:39,929 Maybe there's another picture of Jean. 165 00:08:42,480 --> 00:08:44,169 He had kind of a jowly face. 166 00:08:44,169 --> 00:08:48,770 And that may be among the oldest images of him that he-- him 167 00:08:48,770 --> 00:08:51,460 at the oldest age that his father painted him at. 168 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:59,840 He worked on his first-- after he emerged from the First World 169 00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:03,200 War, he had conflicting ambitions. 170 00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:06,670 But he moved into film fairly soon. 171 00:09:06,670 --> 00:09:09,770 He wrote a script in 1924. 172 00:09:09,770 --> 00:09:14,840 He began to make his own movies around the same time. 173 00:09:14,840 --> 00:09:18,490 I have a very brief list of some of his films. 174 00:09:18,490 --> 00:09:19,565 Would you put those up? 175 00:09:19,565 --> 00:09:22,320 I want to talk very quickly about a couple of his films, 176 00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:26,060 and then turn to certain other important matters. 177 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:29,870 But the most important thing to say about Renoir's-- Jean 178 00:09:29,870 --> 00:09:33,190 Renoir's career-- is that like some important American 179 00:09:33,190 --> 00:09:38,340 directors, his career spans both the silent and the sound era. 180 00:09:38,340 --> 00:09:42,560 And he made some significant experimental silent films 181 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:47,480 of which the most well known in terms of experiment 182 00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:48,910 is the film The Little Match Girl, 183 00:09:48,910 --> 00:09:51,390 based on a Hans Christian Andersen story. 184 00:09:51,390 --> 00:09:53,590 And it uses certain kinds of surreal imagery 185 00:09:53,590 --> 00:09:57,630 that's very surprising, especially in a silent film. 186 00:09:57,630 --> 00:10:01,670 And it-- and I mention that he made a silent version 187 00:10:01,670 --> 00:10:06,170 of a novel by Zola, Nana, as a way of simply also reminding 188 00:10:06,170 --> 00:10:09,480 you from a very early stage, Renoir 189 00:10:09,480 --> 00:10:13,020 understood that the movies were a form that 190 00:10:13,020 --> 00:10:20,430 could sustain the most ambitious kind of artistic act-- aims. 191 00:10:20,430 --> 00:10:25,800 And it's a measure of his sense of that, 192 00:10:25,800 --> 00:10:29,020 that he would adapt, even during the silent era, a film by one 193 00:10:29,020 --> 00:10:33,880 of France-- by a classic French author. 194 00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:36,900 But his mostly-- but his really significant work 195 00:10:36,900 --> 00:10:39,470 begins in the sound era, and in what's 196 00:10:39,470 --> 00:10:41,610 often called his French period. 197 00:10:41,610 --> 00:10:44,780 And the films I've listed between 31 and 39-- 198 00:10:44,780 --> 00:10:46,320 not a complete list of his films, 199 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:48,290 this is a very selected list-- but it's 200 00:10:48,290 --> 00:10:50,820 a list of his most-- of some of his most significant-- all 201 00:10:50,820 --> 00:10:53,830 of his most-- among his most significant films for sure. 202 00:10:53,830 --> 00:10:56,290 No really important title is missing, 203 00:10:56,290 --> 00:10:58,840 although there are many other interesting films that he made. 204 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:00,940 And it's the period between 31 and 39 205 00:11:00,940 --> 00:11:04,200 when he left France, after Rules of the Game, 206 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:06,770 while-- when the Second World War was imminent, 207 00:11:06,770 --> 00:11:08,470 came to the United States. 208 00:11:08,470 --> 00:11:10,490 And the films of the '40s that I've listed there 209 00:11:10,490 --> 00:11:11,620 were made in Hollywood. 210 00:11:11,620 --> 00:11:13,500 And he was very welcomed in Hollywood. 211 00:11:13,500 --> 00:11:15,890 And there are people who-- film scholars 212 00:11:15,890 --> 00:11:18,820 who are great fans of these three films, these three 213 00:11:18,820 --> 00:11:21,800 titles, that he made in the United States. 214 00:11:21,800 --> 00:11:23,560 Then he left the United States. 215 00:11:23,560 --> 00:11:28,430 The film, The River, which many Renoir buffs love as much 216 00:11:28,430 --> 00:11:30,430 as his primary films, although I find 217 00:11:30,430 --> 00:11:33,110 it a much slower and less powerful film, 218 00:11:33,110 --> 00:11:35,140 although visually incredibly beautiful. 219 00:11:35,140 --> 00:11:36,650 It's set in India. 220 00:11:36,650 --> 00:11:39,120 And the river is the Ganges. 221 00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,230 And it's a very, very remarkable meditation 222 00:11:42,230 --> 00:11:45,190 on the power of place in society. 223 00:11:45,190 --> 00:11:49,520 But his central achievement are the films of his French period 224 00:11:49,520 --> 00:11:51,910 running through the 1930s. 225 00:11:51,910 --> 00:11:55,760 And I want to say a word about some of these. 226 00:11:55,760 --> 00:11:59,970 Well, one of them, La Chienne, stars 227 00:11:59,970 --> 00:12:02,715 the same character who stars in Boudu Saved From Drowning-- 228 00:12:02,715 --> 00:12:08,320 and you're going to see a clip from that film in a moment-- 229 00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:09,990 Michel Simon. 230 00:12:09,990 --> 00:12:15,260 And La Chienne announced a kind of complexity and ambitiousness 231 00:12:15,260 --> 00:12:21,440 in Renoir's work that-- would deeply significant. 232 00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:24,370 It had a kind of moral or political claim. 233 00:12:24,370 --> 00:12:28,340 It was a film set in the slums. 234 00:12:28,340 --> 00:12:32,750 And it was about an aborted, or an abortive or tragic love 235 00:12:32,750 --> 00:12:36,880 affair, between a working man played by a proletarian, played 236 00:12:36,880 --> 00:12:39,400 by Michel Simon, and a prostitute who 237 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:45,020 is unkind to him at the end, and throws him over at the end. 238 00:12:45,020 --> 00:12:49,110 And the film's interest in the life 239 00:12:49,110 --> 00:12:51,660 of the low-- in the lives and circumstances of the lower 240 00:12:51,660 --> 00:12:56,170 social orders was especially significant. 241 00:12:56,170 --> 00:13:03,380 And Michel Simon's immensely powerful physical performance 242 00:13:03,380 --> 00:13:05,440 was also memorable. 243 00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:07,440 And you'll see a version of that in a moment. 244 00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:09,990 In the following year, he made what many people call 245 00:13:09,990 --> 00:13:12,110 his first great masterpiece, a film called 246 00:13:12,110 --> 00:13:13,780 Boudu Saved From Drowning. 247 00:13:13,780 --> 00:13:18,490 It's a-- the French title is [FRENCH], saved 248 00:13:18,490 --> 00:13:22,980 from the waters, [FRENCH], the waters, plural. 249 00:13:22,980 --> 00:13:25,190 And the French title is a little better 250 00:13:25,190 --> 00:13:27,400 as I'll try to say in a moment. 251 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:31,050 He made-- I mention the Madame Bovary partly again 252 00:13:31,050 --> 00:13:33,080 to show you something about his ambition. 253 00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:34,880 He's trying to say in effect, look, 254 00:13:34,880 --> 00:13:36,670 the film is an equivalent art form 255 00:13:36,670 --> 00:13:39,770 to the great novels of our past. 256 00:13:39,770 --> 00:13:42,380 In 1935, he made a film that many 257 00:13:42,380 --> 00:13:47,890 identify as a forerunner of Italian neorealism, 258 00:13:47,890 --> 00:13:49,730 the movement we'll be studying next week. 259 00:13:49,730 --> 00:13:53,000 And I talk a bit about Toni in next week's lecture. 260 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:56,800 It's a film, very experimental in certain ways, 261 00:13:56,800 --> 00:14:00,570 it uses a lot of non-professional actors. 262 00:14:00,570 --> 00:14:05,179 And again, it's about the circumstances of the working 263 00:14:05,179 --> 00:14:05,970 class in some ways. 264 00:14:05,970 --> 00:14:10,590 It's about French Quarry workers who 265 00:14:10,590 --> 00:14:15,030 were treated with a kind of clarity and attentiveness 266 00:14:15,030 --> 00:14:18,740 that previous films had not-- had rarely 267 00:14:18,740 --> 00:14:22,560 granted to members of the-- not only the lower social orders, 268 00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:25,910 but here, immigrants-- not even natives. 269 00:14:25,910 --> 00:14:28,997 His two masterpieces come in '37 and '39. 270 00:14:28,997 --> 00:14:31,330 Again, remember I've left out a number of titles there-- 271 00:14:31,330 --> 00:14:33,510 this is a selected list-- the film 272 00:14:33,510 --> 00:14:37,010 you'll see tonight, Grand Illusion, and what many people 273 00:14:37,010 --> 00:14:41,320 think of as his greatest film, a deep, complex, satire 274 00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:46,510 on contemporary French life in the-- just before the war, 275 00:14:46,510 --> 00:14:47,960 called Rules of the Game. 276 00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:51,180 The primary label that's attached to Jean Renoir's work 277 00:14:51,180 --> 00:14:53,290 is that of poetic realism. 278 00:14:53,290 --> 00:14:56,945 And it's a way of trying to distinguish a form of movie 279 00:14:56,945 --> 00:15:01,300 making that emerges, of which Renoir is the most 280 00:15:01,300 --> 00:15:03,360 dramatic and powerful exemplar. 281 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:08,420 But there were many other examples in French cinema. 282 00:15:08,420 --> 00:15:13,620 And it's worth talking a little bit about a key forerunner 283 00:15:13,620 --> 00:15:16,600 to the tradition of poetic realism, a director named 284 00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:19,130 Jean Vigo, who died tragically young, 285 00:15:19,130 --> 00:15:23,520 as you can see from his dates, who made the three films-- 286 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:25,760 three titles I've listed there. 287 00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:32,200 And these films had an immense influence on later filmmakers. 288 00:15:32,200 --> 00:15:37,330 Zero for Conduct is a film set in a-- it has surreal elements. 289 00:15:37,330 --> 00:15:39,950 And its plot is hard to follow. 290 00:15:39,950 --> 00:15:42,440 But essentially, it tells the story of children going back 291 00:15:42,440 --> 00:15:43,100 to school. 292 00:15:43,100 --> 00:15:46,730 It's a-- and following them once they 293 00:15:46,730 --> 00:15:48,230 get into a kind of boarding school, 294 00:15:48,230 --> 00:15:50,420 and rebel against their house masters. 295 00:15:50,420 --> 00:15:53,060 And there's a sort of comic element in the film. 296 00:15:53,060 --> 00:15:54,810 And there's also an element that might 297 00:15:54,810 --> 00:15:58,780 be called an impulse toward lyric retardation, by which I 298 00:15:58,780 --> 00:16:01,597 mean, the retarding is the retarding of the plot. 299 00:16:01,597 --> 00:16:03,180 I don't mean mental retardate-- right? 300 00:16:03,180 --> 00:16:06,170 There's a kind of lyric impulse to celebrate what's 301 00:16:06,170 --> 00:16:09,090 going on right in front of you at the expense of the plot, 302 00:16:09,090 --> 00:16:12,630 as if the story almost stops moving at a certain point, 303 00:16:12,630 --> 00:16:18,500 while the camera and the-- well the camera itself sort 304 00:16:18,500 --> 00:16:24,340 of indulges in witnessing a spectacle so intrinsically 305 00:16:24,340 --> 00:16:26,580 interesting in itself that it seems to lose interest 306 00:16:26,580 --> 00:16:27,740 in the ongoing story. 307 00:16:27,740 --> 00:16:30,371 So there's this tension in Vigo's films 308 00:16:30,371 --> 00:16:31,370 from the very beginning. 309 00:16:31,370 --> 00:16:35,730 And what some scholars have seen a tension between denotation 310 00:16:35,730 --> 00:16:39,020 and connotation, between the denotation being 311 00:16:39,020 --> 00:16:41,241 the simple realism, the ongoing story. 312 00:16:41,241 --> 00:16:41,740 Right? 313 00:16:41,740 --> 00:16:45,560 And the connotation being the poetic or lyrical impulse 314 00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:47,840 of the film to sort of celebrate life 315 00:16:47,840 --> 00:16:49,620 in its complexity and its nuance, 316 00:16:49,620 --> 00:16:52,320 without any interference from the demand that you 317 00:16:52,320 --> 00:16:53,400 follow a story. 318 00:16:53,400 --> 00:16:56,780 And this tension is a fundamental element, 319 00:16:56,780 --> 00:17:00,240 not only in poetic realism, but as you'll 320 00:17:00,240 --> 00:17:05,150 see, in the Italian form of this, called neorealism 321 00:17:05,150 --> 00:17:06,230 that emerges out of it. 322 00:17:06,230 --> 00:17:11,020 And it's somewhat of a grittier and more historically 323 00:17:11,020 --> 00:17:16,240 politically engaged kind of drama-- kind of film, 324 00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:18,849 even though it's a direct outgrowth of the kind of thing 325 00:17:18,849 --> 00:17:20,530 we're saying about poetic realism. 326 00:17:20,530 --> 00:17:23,490 And in both forms, in both kinds of film, 327 00:17:23,490 --> 00:17:26,710 there is this retarding impulse, this lyric impulse, 328 00:17:26,710 --> 00:17:29,810 in which the story's desire to get on with itself 329 00:17:29,810 --> 00:17:32,570 is sometimes in conflict with the camera's desire 330 00:17:32,570 --> 00:17:36,670 to look at what it sees, to revel 331 00:17:36,670 --> 00:17:39,140 in what it wants to look at. 332 00:17:39,140 --> 00:17:45,640 And so Jean Vido, partly indeed because of his tragic life-- 333 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:50,210 short life-- and partly because he was the son of an anarchist, 334 00:17:50,210 --> 00:17:53,240 of a political anarchist, of a serious anarchist, who 335 00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:56,240 wrote about theories of anarchism 336 00:17:56,240 --> 00:17:58,600 as a political movement-- and he himself 337 00:17:58,600 --> 00:18:00,880 was very hostile to authority, Jean Vigo. 338 00:18:00,880 --> 00:18:08,900 And his films animate a kind of anarchic, 339 00:18:08,900 --> 00:18:14,330 anti-establishmentarianism, that is very distinctive. 340 00:18:14,330 --> 00:18:20,020 He's almost always on the side of the weak and the powerless. 341 00:18:20,020 --> 00:18:22,250 Let me say a few words about what we might call 342 00:18:22,250 --> 00:18:24,570 the key features of neorealism. 343 00:18:24,570 --> 00:18:27,050 One of the most fundamental elements of neorealism 344 00:18:27,050 --> 00:18:30,800 is what could be called a mise en scene style, that is to say, 345 00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:32,820 it's committed to long takes. 346 00:18:32,820 --> 00:18:35,710 The poetic realism is interested in the external world, 347 00:18:35,710 --> 00:18:38,970 and in the relation between characters and the outer world. 348 00:18:38,970 --> 00:18:42,640 And although it will use abrupt cuts of various kinds, 349 00:18:42,640 --> 00:18:46,230 it won't do so at the expense of your experience 350 00:18:46,230 --> 00:18:47,200 of the outer world. 351 00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:50,490 It wants the audience to take in what it sees, 352 00:18:50,490 --> 00:18:52,150 and to make judgments about it. 353 00:18:52,150 --> 00:18:56,180 It doesn't try to-- in the way that certain other kinds 354 00:18:56,180 --> 00:18:58,230 of styles might do-- to manipulate 355 00:18:58,230 --> 00:19:02,230 your response in quite the-- in so dramatic a way. 356 00:19:02,230 --> 00:19:04,570 And what follows from this mise en scene style 357 00:19:04,570 --> 00:19:07,250 is what some scholars have called in camera editing. 358 00:19:07,250 --> 00:19:10,210 because what's going on is because the camera, the tape, 359 00:19:10,210 --> 00:19:12,740 because the camera is going-- well the style 360 00:19:12,740 --> 00:19:14,880 is committed to long takes, what will happen 361 00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:18,740 is the camera will alter its focal length-- its depth 362 00:19:18,740 --> 00:19:24,380 of field-- or it will simply move and change its-- 363 00:19:24,380 --> 00:19:30,420 the object of its gaze while it is in operation. 364 00:19:30,420 --> 00:19:33,850 So that it's-- instead of a series of cuts that are made 365 00:19:33,850 --> 00:19:37,350 in the editing room, it's the camera man working the camera 366 00:19:37,350 --> 00:19:40,130 who's making certain decisions that in another kind of film 367 00:19:40,130 --> 00:19:42,740 would be made by a film editor after the fact. 368 00:19:42,740 --> 00:19:46,510 And this creates an effect of not exactly improvisation, 369 00:19:46,510 --> 00:19:50,780 but an effect of-- an effect that creates the impression 370 00:19:50,780 --> 00:19:52,710 that there's a kind of-- sometimes at its most 371 00:19:52,710 --> 00:19:57,250 powerful or compelling moments, as if the camera is actually 372 00:19:57,250 --> 00:19:59,170 almost a living witness to what it's seeing. 373 00:19:59,170 --> 00:20:03,580 And it's responding in very nuanced, and sometimes very 374 00:20:03,580 --> 00:20:06,180 abrupt ways, to what it sees and hears. 375 00:20:06,180 --> 00:20:09,970 So there are sometimes moments in both poetic realist films, 376 00:20:09,970 --> 00:20:13,350 and in Italian neorealist films, in which a noise will occur, 377 00:20:13,350 --> 00:20:15,540 and you'll suddenly see the camera turn to find out 378 00:20:15,540 --> 00:20:18,964 what the noise is, as if the camera is humanized 379 00:20:18,964 --> 00:20:19,880 in this kind of scene. 380 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:21,546 And what follows from that is the camera 381 00:20:21,546 --> 00:20:24,170 is all-- not always, but usually set at eye level. 382 00:20:24,170 --> 00:20:28,820 It does not give a lot of fantastic distorting angles 383 00:20:28,820 --> 00:20:31,120 of vision because it's not interested in that kind 384 00:20:31,120 --> 00:20:37,240 of surreal or expressionist representation. 385 00:20:37,240 --> 00:20:40,230 So mise en scene style in camera editing. 386 00:20:40,230 --> 00:20:41,930 A second fundamental feature would 387 00:20:41,930 --> 00:20:44,130 be filming on location, right? 388 00:20:44,130 --> 00:20:45,530 No more in studio. 389 00:20:45,530 --> 00:20:49,170 There's a kind of gross fundamental realism 390 00:20:49,170 --> 00:20:52,640 to these kinds of films because they use natural lighting. 391 00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:57,620 They insist or try to insist on themselves 392 00:20:57,620 --> 00:21:01,850 as actually photographing a world you recognize as real, 393 00:21:01,850 --> 00:21:04,370 not a world that has been artificially constructed 394 00:21:04,370 --> 00:21:10,000 in a studio-- in a studio space. 395 00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:12,165 What follows also from the location filming, 396 00:21:12,165 --> 00:21:13,790 is a commitment to what might be called 397 00:21:13,790 --> 00:21:15,810 true light and sound, right? 398 00:21:15,810 --> 00:21:19,530 It's very rare in these kinds of films to have external sound. 399 00:21:19,530 --> 00:21:22,330 The sound, even the music that comes up in many of these, 400 00:21:22,330 --> 00:21:24,660 in most of these films-- this is a wonderful habit 401 00:21:24,660 --> 00:21:27,150 of Renoir himself. 402 00:21:27,150 --> 00:21:29,320 Sometimes you actually think the music is not 403 00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:30,390 a part of the drama. 404 00:21:30,390 --> 00:21:31,600 But then you discover it is. 405 00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:33,790 Almost all the music in Renoir's films 406 00:21:33,790 --> 00:21:36,080 is part of the dramatic texture. 407 00:21:36,080 --> 00:21:37,750 It's not imposed from the outside. 408 00:21:37,750 --> 00:21:42,040 It's not a soundtrack that doesn't grow out of the action. 409 00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:43,920 So if you hear music in a Renoir film-- 410 00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:46,940 I'll show you an example of it in a moment from Boudu-- 411 00:21:46,940 --> 00:21:48,890 it turns out that the music is being played 412 00:21:48,890 --> 00:21:50,010 by characters in the film. 413 00:21:50,010 --> 00:21:53,200 And you actually end up seeing them with their instruments. 414 00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:54,730 So true light and sound. 415 00:21:54,730 --> 00:21:59,250 And what that also means is sometimes sound is obscured. 416 00:21:59,250 --> 00:22:02,710 Sometimes sound is overlapped with other noises. 417 00:22:02,710 --> 00:22:05,250 Sometimes dialogue is hard to hear because there 418 00:22:05,250 --> 00:22:07,990 are noises in the real world. 419 00:22:07,990 --> 00:22:10,610 I noted that this was an aspect of a number 420 00:22:10,610 --> 00:22:14,930 of American directors in the post studio era, 421 00:22:14,930 --> 00:22:17,179 and especially in a film like McCabe 422 00:22:17,179 --> 00:22:18,720 where Altman does this kind of thing. 423 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:22,280 And I think that it's very probable, even though I don't 424 00:22:22,280 --> 00:22:24,110 know this for certain, that Altman himself 425 00:22:24,110 --> 00:22:26,680 went to school on these films and knew 426 00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:29,190 the experiments with sound or the treatment of sound 427 00:22:29,190 --> 00:22:33,200 that was characteristic of Renoir's films, 428 00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:37,810 and other forms of Ita-- of both French and Italian forms 429 00:22:37,810 --> 00:22:41,730 of realism-- what was called realism. 430 00:22:41,730 --> 00:22:44,854 And then two other features-- one already 431 00:22:44,854 --> 00:22:46,770 implied in what I was saying-- a camera that's 432 00:22:46,770 --> 00:22:49,220 very fluid in motion. 433 00:22:49,220 --> 00:22:52,380 Not in gigantic motion, but very subtle kinds of motions. 434 00:22:52,380 --> 00:22:53,990 And if you watch Renoir's camera, 435 00:22:53,990 --> 00:22:57,790 you'll see that it's almost constantly making these minute 436 00:22:57,790 --> 00:23:02,240 adjustments to what it's looking at or to what it wants to see. 437 00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:05,260 And then finally, something I've already said, 438 00:23:05,260 --> 00:23:08,420 there's a great emphasis on what could be called depth of field. 439 00:23:08,420 --> 00:23:11,600 That is to say, you're aware of the dimensionality 440 00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:13,220 of the images you're looking at. 441 00:23:13,220 --> 00:23:16,640 So there's a background, a middle ground and a foreground. 442 00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:22,630 And very often, you'll see the camera change its focal length, 443 00:23:22,630 --> 00:23:26,470 and what will-- if the foreground was in focus, 444 00:23:26,470 --> 00:23:30,910 you'll actually experience the camera shifting its focus, 445 00:23:30,910 --> 00:23:33,580 bringing in the background that had been out of focus before. 446 00:23:33,580 --> 00:23:35,940 And the effect of this while it-- because it takes place 447 00:23:35,940 --> 00:23:37,590 within your experience of viewing it-- 448 00:23:37,590 --> 00:23:41,040 doesn't take place hidden behind edits-- 449 00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:43,820 is to make you part of the process in some sense. 450 00:23:43,820 --> 00:23:46,650 Again, to make you feel that the camera's behavior 451 00:23:46,650 --> 00:23:49,870 is a part of your experience of the film, 452 00:23:49,870 --> 00:23:52,870 that you're experiencing the film through a medium that 453 00:23:52,870 --> 00:23:54,830 has a kind of immense sensitivity 454 00:23:54,830 --> 00:23:57,460 to what it's looking at, an immense respect for what it's 455 00:23:57,460 --> 00:23:58,050 looking at. 456 00:23:58,050 --> 00:24:01,565 Well, so, key features, let me just summarize them again-- 457 00:24:01,565 --> 00:24:05,890 a mise en scene style, which means in camera editing, 458 00:24:05,890 --> 00:24:08,930 especially filming on location. 459 00:24:08,930 --> 00:24:10,930 Commitment to true light and sound. 460 00:24:10,930 --> 00:24:13,440 A fluid moving camera. 461 00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,030 Commitment to depth of field. 462 00:24:15,030 --> 00:24:16,750 What we might call, again, creating 463 00:24:16,750 --> 00:24:20,320 this tension between a kind of lyrical impulse, 464 00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:24,280 a kind of celebratory or a poetic impulse as some people 465 00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:28,500 have said, and an impulsive simply to deal with the world, 466 00:24:28,500 --> 00:24:30,230 to capture the world, to describe, 467 00:24:30,230 --> 00:24:32,200 or to dramatize the world fully. 468 00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:37,590 Well, I think I can show you or dramatize these principles more 469 00:24:37,590 --> 00:24:41,490 fully for you, if I give you some examples. 470 00:24:41,490 --> 00:24:44,880 But as a way of introducing this, 471 00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:50,710 I want to talk very quickly about one formulation 472 00:24:50,710 --> 00:24:53,910 immensely influential formulation about Renoir 473 00:24:53,910 --> 00:24:56,050 that I think you'll find helpful and interesting. 474 00:24:56,050 --> 00:24:58,710 And these are lines that have been written about Renoir 475 00:24:58,710 --> 00:25:02,290 by the great critic, Andre Bazin, 476 00:25:02,290 --> 00:25:05,070 who was a great champion of Renoir's work-- also 477 00:25:05,070 --> 00:25:07,100 a great champion of Italian neorealism, 478 00:25:07,100 --> 00:25:12,110 and one of the great theorists of the cinema. 479 00:25:12,110 --> 00:25:15,510 And we can capture-- I think when-- 480 00:25:15,510 --> 00:25:17,680 I think that Bazin captured something 481 00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:21,480 of Renoir's importance in these passages from his book 482 00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:24,430 titled, John Renoir, published in 1971. 483 00:25:24,430 --> 00:25:27,810 "No one has grasped the true nature of the screen better 484 00:25:27,810 --> 00:25:31,120 than Renoir," so wrote Bazin. 485 00:25:31,120 --> 00:25:33,370 No one has more successfully rid it 486 00:25:33,370 --> 00:25:35,910 of the equivocal-- of equivocal analogies 487 00:25:35,910 --> 00:25:38,160 with painting and the theater. 488 00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:40,310 Plastically the screen is most often 489 00:25:40,310 --> 00:25:43,150 made to conform to the limits of the canvas. 490 00:25:43,150 --> 00:25:45,600 And dramatically, it's modeled on the stage. 491 00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:47,140 You see what he-- Bazin is saying, 492 00:25:47,140 --> 00:25:50,720 is he's reminding us that when a new technology emerges, 493 00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:52,970 old habits are so deeply embedded that it's 494 00:25:52,970 --> 00:25:54,820 very hard to free oneself from them, 495 00:25:54,820 --> 00:25:57,370 even though there's nothing inherent in the new technology 496 00:25:57,370 --> 00:25:59,980 that requires you to see the world in the ways 497 00:25:59,980 --> 00:26:01,767 that the older systems did. 498 00:26:01,767 --> 00:26:04,100 And then there's a period of transition that's involved, 499 00:26:04,100 --> 00:26:06,290 a period of experiment and discovery. 500 00:26:06,290 --> 00:26:08,680 What Bazin is saying here is that Renoir 501 00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,450 is one of the great pioneering discoverers, right? 502 00:26:11,450 --> 00:26:14,810 Because with these two traditional references in mind, 503 00:26:14,810 --> 00:26:17,890 directors have conceived their images as boxed 504 00:26:17,890 --> 00:26:19,720 within a rectangle. 505 00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:21,720 As do the painter and the stage director. 506 00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,330 And in fact this still happens today 507 00:26:23,330 --> 00:26:25,505 with lazy or foolish directors. 508 00:26:28,110 --> 00:26:30,040 Renoir on the other hand understands 509 00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:32,920 that the screen is not a simple rectangle, but rather 510 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:35,840 the surface of the viewfinder of his camera. 511 00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,510 It is the opposite of a frame, right? 512 00:26:38,510 --> 00:26:40,820 There's stuff that goes on outside the frame. 513 00:26:40,820 --> 00:26:43,960 If it's look-- this is a brilliant piece 514 00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:44,990 of writing I think. 515 00:26:44,990 --> 00:26:47,420 Technically, this conception of the screen 516 00:26:47,420 --> 00:26:52,690 assumes what I, Bazin, shall call lateral depth of field. 517 00:26:52,690 --> 00:26:55,570 Lateral depth of field-- that is to-- but it's an oxymoron. 518 00:26:55,570 --> 00:26:58,960 Again-- contradiction, but how could there be a lateral? 519 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,220 But what he means is that you become aware of things going on 520 00:27:02,220 --> 00:27:06,480 on the margins of the visual field, 521 00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:10,930 even outside of what you can actually see. 522 00:27:10,930 --> 00:27:14,670 Since what we are shown is only significant in terms of what is 523 00:27:14,670 --> 00:27:18,240 hidden from us, and since the value of what we see is 524 00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:21,980 therefore continually threatened, the mise en scene, 525 00:27:21,980 --> 00:27:24,210 right, what is put in the scene, right, 526 00:27:24,210 --> 00:27:28,190 the mise en scene cannot limit itself to what is presented 527 00:27:28,190 --> 00:27:29,540 on the screen. 528 00:27:29,540 --> 00:27:33,830 The rest of the scene, while effectively hidden, 529 00:27:33,830 --> 00:27:36,430 should not cease to exist. 530 00:27:36,430 --> 00:27:38,420 The action is not bounded by the screen, 531 00:27:38,420 --> 00:27:40,350 but merely passes through it. 532 00:27:40,350 --> 00:27:43,140 And a person who enters the camera's field of vision 533 00:27:43,140 --> 00:27:46,190 is coming from other areas of the action, 534 00:27:46,190 --> 00:27:50,250 and not from some limbo or some from imaginary backstage. 535 00:27:50,250 --> 00:27:51,180 You get this? 536 00:27:51,180 --> 00:27:52,380 Think how exciting this is. 537 00:27:52,380 --> 00:27:55,940 What a fundamental insight it is into the way 538 00:27:55,940 --> 00:27:58,100 a film can become compelling, and why 539 00:27:58,100 --> 00:28:01,230 it is that so many films might seem factitious 540 00:28:01,230 --> 00:28:05,360 to us despite the gross reality of the cinematic image. 541 00:28:05,360 --> 00:28:09,260 Likewise, the camera should be able to spin suddenly. 542 00:28:09,260 --> 00:28:12,020 Renoir is full of moments in which the camera will 543 00:28:12,020 --> 00:28:17,370 make a wide swa-- sometimes 360 degree circle, sometimes 544 00:28:17,370 --> 00:28:20,460 180 degree turns, in order to remind us 545 00:28:20,460 --> 00:28:22,520 of what has not been in the frame, of what 546 00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:24,450 is on the margins of the frame. 547 00:28:24,450 --> 00:28:26,600 So the camera should be able to spin suddenly 548 00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,850 without picking up any holes or dead spots in the action. 549 00:28:30,850 --> 00:28:33,450 Well I want to give you two examples of this, which 550 00:28:33,450 --> 00:28:36,140 are, among other things, instances of what I call-- put 551 00:28:36,140 --> 00:28:41,190 my outline back up-- instances of what I call 552 00:28:41,190 --> 00:28:44,090 visual style as moral vision. 553 00:28:44,090 --> 00:28:49,890 And I'll hopefully be explaining that term as we look at it. 554 00:28:49,890 --> 00:28:52,510 So the first clip I want to show you 555 00:28:52,510 --> 00:28:54,780 is from the film you're going to see tonight. 556 00:28:54,780 --> 00:28:57,470 And it's a way of alerting you to qualities 557 00:28:57,470 --> 00:28:59,930 not just in this scene, but elsewhere in the film 558 00:28:59,930 --> 00:29:01,580 that I hope you'll become much more 559 00:29:01,580 --> 00:29:03,650 attentive to, because we're taking the time 560 00:29:03,650 --> 00:29:05,140 to single them out now. 561 00:29:05,140 --> 00:29:09,950 So here is a scene from-- are we ready? 562 00:29:09,950 --> 00:29:17,072 From Grand Illusion, from relatively early in the film. 563 00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:24,120 Now, as I've told you, the film is about prisoner-- 564 00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:25,740 French prisoners of war. 565 00:29:25,740 --> 00:29:28,087 So here's a scene. 566 00:29:28,087 --> 00:29:28,920 These are prisoners. 567 00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:30,420 But it's the First World War. 568 00:29:30,420 --> 00:29:32,920 They're allowed to receive packages 569 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:38,540 from their-- in the mail, and what people-- 570 00:29:38,540 --> 00:29:41,440 that relatives and friends send them is food very often. 571 00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:43,720 All right. 572 00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,220 Can you make it a little louder, not that it really matters? 573 00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:51,730 Now, watch the camera's behavior. 574 00:29:51,730 --> 00:29:52,990 Can you freeze it one second? 575 00:29:52,990 --> 00:29:54,620 Look at the window there. 576 00:29:54,620 --> 00:29:55,740 Why is that significant? 577 00:29:55,740 --> 00:29:57,448 What do you notice in the window already? 578 00:29:57,448 --> 00:29:58,340 Movement, right? 579 00:29:58,340 --> 00:30:02,080 Do you see how-- and the way the scene began, we know where 580 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:03,502 that character has come from? 581 00:30:03,502 --> 00:30:05,710 Even though these two characters are in confrontation 582 00:30:05,710 --> 00:30:08,230 and talking to each other, we're aware of activity 583 00:30:08,230 --> 00:30:09,560 in the window behind them. 584 00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:11,960 We're aware of other people in the room. 585 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:13,990 It actually may seem as if it's very easy 586 00:30:13,990 --> 00:30:14,940 to create this effect. 587 00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:17,400 But of course it's profoundly difficult. 588 00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,650 And Renoir is the pioneer in creating 589 00:30:20,650 --> 00:30:22,580 these kinds of effects. 590 00:30:22,580 --> 00:30:25,062 How fluid the camera is, how-- that's 591 00:30:25,062 --> 00:30:26,270 what I want you to watch for. 592 00:30:26,270 --> 00:30:28,300 Your awareness of the fact of action 593 00:30:28,300 --> 00:30:32,447 that's going on partly outside the frame. 594 00:30:32,447 --> 00:30:33,280 All right, continue. 595 00:30:53,508 --> 00:30:55,960 And the man at the head table is the wealthiest 596 00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:56,670 of the prisoners. 597 00:30:56,670 --> 00:30:58,000 And he gets the best food. 598 00:30:58,000 --> 00:30:59,424 So he shares it with his comrades. 599 00:31:03,510 --> 00:31:08,120 It's a tremendously good meal for prisoners. 600 00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:10,460 This is the least violent war movie ever made. 601 00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:38,410 Are you beginning to notice how each of the characters 602 00:31:38,410 --> 00:31:40,269 is individuated in this scene? 603 00:31:40,269 --> 00:31:41,810 I don't have time to talk about this. 604 00:31:41,810 --> 00:31:42,518 Watch it tonight. 605 00:31:42,518 --> 00:31:44,160 Maybe I'll say a bit about it tonight 606 00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:45,930 when I introduce the film. 607 00:31:45,930 --> 00:31:47,810 Look, each one of them we can almost-- 608 00:31:47,810 --> 00:31:49,880 we can tell what social class they belong to 609 00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:51,930 from their dress, from their mode of speech. 610 00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,560 You see how quietly, but complexly, the camera 611 00:31:58,560 --> 00:31:59,848 examines the space? 612 00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:11,258 And that's Jean Gabin, one of the central characters, 613 00:32:11,258 --> 00:32:12,716 and one of the great French actors. 614 00:32:18,150 --> 00:32:20,179 All right, we have to stop this because-- I'm 615 00:32:20,179 --> 00:32:21,470 sorry I have to cut this short. 616 00:32:21,470 --> 00:32:22,290 It's a brilliant scene. 617 00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:23,220 Watch for it tonight. 618 00:32:23,220 --> 00:32:24,670 Comes fairly early in the film. 619 00:32:24,670 --> 00:32:27,920 Watch how each of the characters is individuated as this scene 620 00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:28,570 goes on. 621 00:32:28,570 --> 00:32:30,900 How crowded the scene is in one sense. 622 00:32:30,900 --> 00:32:34,780 How you're aware of activities, and even conversations, 623 00:32:34,780 --> 00:32:39,600 that are taking place outside the frame of the camera itself. 624 00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,160 And when the camera shifts over to one set of characters, 625 00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,420 you're aware of other conversations that are ongoing. 626 00:32:45,420 --> 00:32:49,520 In other words, the sense of reality that this style creates 627 00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:53,810 is profound and compelling it seems to me-- powerful. 628 00:32:53,810 --> 00:32:58,890 But I want to show you another and even more dramatic clip, 629 00:32:58,890 --> 00:33:01,660 partly because it comes from a film you've not seen, 630 00:33:01,660 --> 00:33:08,690 and because it captures certain other qualities in Renoir's 631 00:33:08,690 --> 00:33:09,190 work. 632 00:33:09,190 --> 00:33:12,930 And this is the famous ending of Boudu Saved From Drowning. 633 00:33:12,930 --> 00:33:16,990 Let me set the scene for you while Kristen's getting it up. 634 00:33:16,990 --> 00:33:21,060 In this scene-- this comes at the very end of the film. 635 00:33:21,060 --> 00:33:22,350 The film is a satire. 636 00:33:22,350 --> 00:33:25,510 And Boudu is a bum, a [FRENCH], of whom 637 00:33:25,510 --> 00:33:28,420 there were tens of-- there were thousands, 638 00:33:28,420 --> 00:33:31,210 if not tens of thousands living in Paris during the era 639 00:33:31,210 --> 00:33:32,730 when the film was made. 640 00:33:32,730 --> 00:33:36,230 A kind of tramp, like the character 641 00:33:36,230 --> 00:33:39,100 that the Chaplin figure plays in the American films. 642 00:33:39,100 --> 00:33:41,890 Although Michel Simon is a much more massive 643 00:33:41,890 --> 00:33:43,480 figure than Chaplin. 644 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:45,810 And in the very beginning of the film, 645 00:33:45,810 --> 00:33:49,750 he plays this-- he seems to try-- he jumps into the river 646 00:33:49,750 --> 00:33:52,880 to try to commit suicide because he's lost his beloved dog. 647 00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:54,400 He's a figure of despair. 648 00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:58,740 And a middle class bookseller, named Lestingois, spying him 649 00:33:58,740 --> 00:34:02,390 through his spy glasses, looking out 650 00:34:02,390 --> 00:34:07,940 of his book-- out of the windows of his bookshop, sees this bum. 651 00:34:07,940 --> 00:34:09,840 And at first he goes, oh, what a perfect bum, 652 00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:10,909 he thinks to himself. 653 00:34:10,909 --> 00:34:13,780 What a perfect embodiment of what a tramp is. 654 00:34:13,780 --> 00:34:15,850 And then he becomes upset when he sees the guy 655 00:34:15,850 --> 00:34:17,530 jump into the river, and he runs out, 656 00:34:17,530 --> 00:34:19,389 he dives into the river to save him. 657 00:34:19,389 --> 00:34:22,260 And it turns into a kind of comic scene of saving. 658 00:34:22,260 --> 00:34:24,730 People gather on the bridge and look down and so forth. 659 00:34:24,730 --> 00:34:27,270 He pulls him out, brings him into his home. 660 00:34:27,270 --> 00:34:29,110 His wife is very resentful of it. 661 00:34:29,110 --> 00:34:31,850 But eventually, she adapts. 662 00:34:31,850 --> 00:34:35,070 And he moves into the middle class bookseller's home. 663 00:34:35,070 --> 00:34:36,889 And of course he wreaks havoc there 664 00:34:36,889 --> 00:34:39,060 because he stands for nature itself. 665 00:34:39,060 --> 00:34:41,489 He can't be civilized or tamed, right? 666 00:34:41,489 --> 00:34:45,050 He's Boudu soul, saved from the waters, right? 667 00:34:45,050 --> 00:34:46,889 So he's saved from the waters at the end. 668 00:34:46,889 --> 00:34:49,232 But as you'll see, at the end-- at the beginning. 669 00:34:49,232 --> 00:34:50,940 But as you'll see at the end of the film, 670 00:34:50,940 --> 00:34:52,400 he's back to the waters. 671 00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:54,162 So here-- so what happens essentially 672 00:34:54,162 --> 00:34:55,620 is among other things in the course 673 00:34:55,620 --> 00:34:59,900 of the story, this figure of nature, 674 00:34:59,900 --> 00:35:01,720 turns out that he can't quite be civilized. 675 00:35:01,720 --> 00:35:04,890 One of the things he does is he manages to have a love affair 676 00:35:04,890 --> 00:35:07,510 or to seduce-- I shouldn't call it 677 00:35:07,510 --> 00:35:10,190 a love affair-- both Lestingois's mistress, 678 00:35:10,190 --> 00:35:13,830 a young maid who works in his house, and his wife. 679 00:35:13,830 --> 00:35:16,340 And a kind of semi scandal occurs 680 00:35:16,340 --> 00:35:23,710 in which far-- in which the tramp character, played 681 00:35:23,710 --> 00:35:27,790 by Michel Simon, wins the lottery and becomes very rich. 682 00:35:27,790 --> 00:35:31,830 So he then-- a marriage of convenience is arranged. 683 00:35:31,830 --> 00:35:35,550 And he's going to marry the maid that had been the bookseller's 684 00:35:35,550 --> 00:35:36,050 mistress. 685 00:35:36,050 --> 00:35:37,841 And this sort of straightens everything out 686 00:35:37,841 --> 00:35:40,270 because there had been a kind of scandal brewing. 687 00:35:40,270 --> 00:35:42,190 And in the final scene of the film 688 00:35:42,190 --> 00:35:49,220 is the wedding party, in which Boudu, his new bride, 689 00:35:49,220 --> 00:35:52,970 the bookseller, and his wife are in a boat together celebrating 690 00:35:52,970 --> 00:35:55,240 the wedding. 691 00:35:55,240 --> 00:35:57,570 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 692 00:35:57,570 --> 00:35:58,980 And of course, these images would 693 00:35:58,980 --> 00:36:03,960 have invoked Renoir, Pierre's paintings very powerfully 694 00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:05,064 as well. 695 00:36:05,064 --> 00:36:07,956 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 696 00:36:11,240 --> 00:36:15,800 Many of Jean Renoir's treatment-- films set in nature 697 00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,310 are said to have been influenced in some ways 698 00:36:18,310 --> 00:36:20,200 by his father's paintings. 699 00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:23,730 There's Michel Simon and his new bride. 700 00:36:23,730 --> 00:36:25,480 You see how there's music, but it's coming 701 00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,781 from source inside the story. 702 00:36:28,781 --> 00:36:32,227 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 703 00:36:36,720 --> 00:36:39,460 That's the bookseller in the back, with the white hat. 704 00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:41,493 Everything looks wonderful. 705 00:36:41,493 --> 00:36:45,580 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 706 00:36:45,580 --> 00:36:47,830 One thing I think, one reason I wanted you to see this 707 00:36:47,830 --> 00:36:49,560 is look how leisurely this is. 708 00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:50,950 I mean, where is it going? 709 00:36:50,950 --> 00:36:52,920 We're at the end of the movie yet, now, 710 00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:56,340 and yet look how the film sort of, almost as if it doesn't, 711 00:36:56,340 --> 00:36:58,730 even at this stage, doesn't want to end-- 712 00:36:58,730 --> 00:37:01,036 doesn't want to move forward. 713 00:37:01,036 --> 00:37:05,799 [SILENCE] 714 00:37:05,799 --> 00:37:07,340 All right, he reaches for the flower. 715 00:37:11,308 --> 00:37:13,292 [SPLASHING] 716 00:37:13,292 --> 00:37:16,764 [SCREAMING AND CRYING] 717 00:38:00,010 --> 00:38:02,830 Now remember, he's just been married. 718 00:38:02,830 --> 00:38:03,830 What's happening to him? 719 00:38:03,830 --> 00:38:05,549 Where's he going? 720 00:38:05,549 --> 00:38:09,215 [SCREAMING ON FILM] 721 00:38:09,215 --> 00:38:11,420 Often when I show this to my classes, 722 00:38:11,420 --> 00:38:14,820 because I'm always worried about time, I get impatient here. 723 00:38:14,820 --> 00:38:17,130 But in fact, it's a bad reaction, 724 00:38:17,130 --> 00:38:20,730 because the film wants us to savor what it's doing. 725 00:38:20,730 --> 00:38:21,480 Right? 726 00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,950 Can you feel the sort of lyrical tendency just to sort of look 727 00:38:24,950 --> 00:38:28,600 at the world in its beauty? 728 00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:30,680 As if the impulse to tell a story and the impulse 729 00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,820 to photograph the world are in some degree in conflict, 730 00:38:33,820 --> 00:38:36,730 because the world keeps resisting the categories 731 00:38:36,730 --> 00:38:38,340 you put it in. 732 00:38:38,340 --> 00:38:42,040 The camera keeps discovering new things to look at. 733 00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,320 So here Boudu comes ashore. 734 00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,400 Think of how anarchic this vision of life 735 00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,000 is, because he's just deserted his new bride, 736 00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,120 and his new wedding, and all that. 737 00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:51,620 Right? 738 00:38:51,620 --> 00:38:52,770 Doesn't seem to matter. 739 00:38:52,770 --> 00:38:53,910 He gets up on shore. 740 00:38:56,490 --> 00:38:58,890 He's still wearing his wedding clothes. 741 00:38:58,890 --> 00:39:01,820 And this becomes then a highly symbolic moment. 742 00:39:01,820 --> 00:39:05,040 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 743 00:39:06,890 --> 00:39:09,490 He sees a scarecrow. 744 00:39:09,490 --> 00:39:13,120 Now he's going to shed his middle class identity 745 00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,670 by changing clothes with it. 746 00:39:15,670 --> 00:39:18,700 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 747 00:39:39,230 --> 00:39:41,720 I suppose one fundamental aspect of the satire 748 00:39:41,720 --> 00:39:43,490 is-- what the film is saying is look, 749 00:39:43,490 --> 00:39:46,230 nature is always more untamed and difficult 750 00:39:46,230 --> 00:39:50,300 than middle class romantics imagine. 751 00:39:50,300 --> 00:39:51,870 It's not a tamable thing. 752 00:39:51,870 --> 00:39:57,970 Oh here he comes, eating is bread, newly free again. 753 00:39:57,970 --> 00:39:58,470 Right? 754 00:39:58,470 --> 00:40:02,870 Identifies with the goat, shares his food with the goat. 755 00:40:02,870 --> 00:40:06,370 [SILENCE] 756 00:40:09,140 --> 00:40:13,050 [SINGING ONSCREEN] 757 00:40:13,550 --> 00:40:15,653 [GOAT BLEATING] 758 00:40:15,653 --> 00:40:18,611 [SINGING AND MUMBLING ONSCREEN] 759 00:40:42,175 --> 00:40:45,652 Pay attention to the camera. 760 00:40:45,652 --> 00:40:48,628 [MUSIC ONSCREEN] 761 00:41:37,730 --> 00:41:40,240 OK, shut it off. 762 00:41:40,240 --> 00:41:44,270 At one point in Bazin's book on Renoir, 763 00:41:44,270 --> 00:41:45,987 he talks about this sequence. 764 00:41:45,987 --> 00:41:47,570 And I want to remind you that he talks 765 00:41:47,570 --> 00:41:49,620 about this sequence in an era before it 766 00:41:49,620 --> 00:41:52,660 was possible to easily replay the movies, right? 767 00:41:52,660 --> 00:41:54,970 It was an era long before video tape, 768 00:41:54,970 --> 00:41:56,969 long before television actually. 769 00:41:56,969 --> 00:41:58,760 And when you wanted to watch a movie again, 770 00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:00,650 you have to get projectors and show them. 771 00:42:00,650 --> 00:42:04,006 So very often when Bazin was writing about his film, 772 00:42:04,006 --> 00:42:05,130 he was working from memory. 773 00:42:05,130 --> 00:42:06,960 And he makes some technical mistakes. 774 00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,140 But he gets the essence of the scene right. 775 00:42:09,140 --> 00:42:10,600 Listen to this. 776 00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:13,520 He says, "Renoir the moralist is also the most realistic 777 00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:16,490 of filmmakers, sacrificing reality as little 778 00:42:16,490 --> 00:42:19,580 as possible to the thrust of his message. 779 00:42:19,580 --> 00:42:22,660 The last scenes from Boudu could serve as an epigraph 780 00:42:22,660 --> 00:42:25,350 to all of Renoir's French work. 781 00:42:25,350 --> 00:42:28,680 Boudu, newlywed, throws himself into the water"-- 782 00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:30,029 not exactly, it's an accident. 783 00:42:30,029 --> 00:42:31,570 It's important that it's an accident. 784 00:42:31,570 --> 00:42:34,180 It's not like he was planning his escape, right? 785 00:42:34,180 --> 00:42:35,160 Because he's nature. 786 00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:36,620 He doesn't think. 787 00:42:36,620 --> 00:42:38,770 He stands for the natural, right? 788 00:42:38,770 --> 00:42:42,730 But by accident, the boat overturns, 789 00:42:42,730 --> 00:42:46,160 and Boudu makes his escape because it's possible to do so. 790 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:47,960 It's not as if it's premeditated. 791 00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:50,890 That's important. 792 00:42:50,890 --> 00:42:52,930 "Dramatic or psychological logic would 793 00:42:52,930 --> 00:42:55,580 demand that such an act have a precise meaning. 794 00:42:55,580 --> 00:42:57,120 Is it despair or suicide? 795 00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:58,230 No it's not at all. 796 00:42:58,230 --> 00:43:00,860 In fact, it's just an accident." 797 00:43:00,860 --> 00:43:04,900 Boudu is-- without maybe even fully 798 00:43:04,900 --> 00:43:07,650 realizing it is trying to flee the chains 799 00:43:07,650 --> 00:43:08,778 of a bourgeois marriage. 800 00:43:11,370 --> 00:43:13,230 "Renoir like his character, forgets 801 00:43:13,230 --> 00:43:15,770 the act in favor of the fact, and the true object 802 00:43:15,770 --> 00:43:19,350 of the scene ceases gradually to be what Boudu intends." 803 00:43:19,350 --> 00:43:19,850 Right? 804 00:43:19,850 --> 00:43:21,120 What is Boudu up to? 805 00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:22,220 Why is he doing this? 806 00:43:22,220 --> 00:43:25,080 I don't even think Bazin's right to even raise the question 807 00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:27,690 because what we think he is doing is just enjoying himself, 808 00:43:27,690 --> 00:43:28,860 right? 809 00:43:28,860 --> 00:43:30,719 Then it occurs to him, when he gets on land, 810 00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:32,010 that he's free of his marriage. 811 00:43:38,900 --> 00:43:40,530 "Renoir, like his character, forgets 812 00:43:40,530 --> 00:43:41,840 the act in favor of the fact. 813 00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,040 And the true object of the scene ceases 814 00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,530 to be Boudu's intentions, and becomes 815 00:43:46,530 --> 00:43:48,320 the spectacle of his pleasure. 816 00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:51,130 And by extension, the enjoyment that Renoir 817 00:43:51,130 --> 00:43:53,780 derives, or we as viewers derive, 818 00:43:53,780 --> 00:43:55,760 from the antics of his hero. 819 00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,600 The water is no longer water, but more specifically 820 00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:00,900 the water of the Marne-- a tributary 821 00:44:00,900 --> 00:44:04,100 of the Seine-- in August. 822 00:44:04,100 --> 00:44:05,910 Michele Simon floats on. 823 00:44:05,910 --> 00:44:08,550 It turns over, sprays like a seal. 824 00:44:08,550 --> 00:44:11,640 And as he plays, we begin to perceive the depth, quality, 825 00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:13,990 and even the tepid warmth of the water. 826 00:44:13,990 --> 00:44:18,110 When he comes up on the bank, an extraordinary slow--" 827 00:44:18,110 --> 00:44:20,410 He calls it a 360 degree pan. 828 00:44:20,410 --> 00:44:21,970 Remember that final move the camera? 829 00:44:21,970 --> 00:44:23,740 But it's probably 180 degrees. 830 00:44:23,740 --> 00:44:25,680 He's remembering it imperfectly. 831 00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,170 "--shows us the countryside he sees before him." 832 00:44:28,170 --> 00:44:29,550 The world he sees before him. 833 00:44:29,550 --> 00:44:32,100 "But this effect by nature descriptive, 834 00:44:32,100 --> 00:44:34,520 which could indicate space and liberty regained, 835 00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:36,580 is of unequal poetry because what 836 00:44:36,580 --> 00:44:40,070 moves us is not the fact that this countryside is once more 837 00:44:40,070 --> 00:44:43,470 again Boudu's domain," although that is one effect of it. 838 00:44:43,470 --> 00:44:44,390 Boudu is free. 839 00:44:44,390 --> 00:44:46,790 And the camera shows the beauty and freedom 840 00:44:46,790 --> 00:44:50,390 of the world in that 180 degree pan. 841 00:44:50,390 --> 00:44:52,920 "but that the banks of the Marne and all their richness 842 00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:55,600 of detail are intrinsically beautiful. 843 00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:57,460 And you're aware of that, aren't you? 844 00:44:57,460 --> 00:45:01,840 At the end of the pan, the camera picks up a bit of grass, 845 00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:06,042 where in close up one can see the dust 846 00:45:06,042 --> 00:45:08,250 that the heat and the wind have lifted from the path. 847 00:45:08,250 --> 00:45:11,320 One can almost feel it between one's fingers. 848 00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,460 If I were deprived of the pleasure of seeing Boudu again 849 00:45:14,460 --> 00:45:17,550 for the rest of my days," I remember the first time 850 00:45:17,550 --> 00:45:19,390 I read those lines, and I realized 851 00:45:19,390 --> 00:45:23,190 what it meant to be a movie critic or a literary critic. 852 00:45:23,190 --> 00:45:25,750 Think of what's implied by that. "If I 853 00:45:25,750 --> 00:45:30,090 were deprived of the pleasure of seeing Boudu again 854 00:45:30,090 --> 00:45:33,500 for the rest of my life" as if this would be a deprivation too 855 00:45:33,500 --> 00:45:34,901 horrible to contemplate. 856 00:45:34,901 --> 00:45:35,400 Right? 857 00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:38,876 It made me realize my own vocation in a way. 858 00:45:38,876 --> 00:45:41,250 "If I were deprived of the pleasure of seeing Boudu again 859 00:45:41,250 --> 00:45:43,510 for the rest of my days, I would never 860 00:45:43,510 --> 00:45:47,620 forget that grass, that dust, and their relationship 861 00:45:47,620 --> 00:45:49,222 to the liberty of a tramp." 862 00:45:49,222 --> 00:45:52,350 The point of this exercise is to remind you 863 00:45:52,350 --> 00:45:54,960 of the immense power, the potency, 864 00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,190 of even a single camera move. 865 00:45:57,190 --> 00:46:03,860 Think what that 180 degree pan suggests, as Bazin brilliantly 866 00:46:03,860 --> 00:46:05,080 argues for us. 867 00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:09,180 So the conclusion then is that the visual style of a film, 868 00:46:09,180 --> 00:46:12,840 over a certain films anyway, can express a moral vision. 869 00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:16,300 And by moral vision, I don't mean moralistic-- what's 870 00:46:16,300 --> 00:46:18,830 didactically right and wrong-- but a vision of having 871 00:46:18,830 --> 00:46:21,650 to do with the values and assumptions you make 872 00:46:21,650 --> 00:46:23,400 about the nature of the world. 873 00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,470 There's a moral vision implicit in the tentativeness, 874 00:46:26,470 --> 00:46:30,920 the hesitancy, the retarding impulse 875 00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:35,700 to dwell and linger on things, in Renoir's camera, 876 00:46:35,700 --> 00:46:39,470 and in the basic habits of poetic realism 877 00:46:39,470 --> 00:46:42,000 that you will see brilliantly embodied 878 00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,690 in the film you're going to watch tonight, Grand Illusion.