- Title
- The porous frame: visual style in Altman's 1970s films
- Creator
- Ford, Hamish
- Relation
- A Companion to Robert Altman p. 285-343
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118338896.ch6
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- This chapter explores the ways Robert Altman's 1970s cinema manipulates, utilizes, deconstructs and re-presents the materiality of celluloid. It examines, in the process, how the director's work in this era results in a distinctive visual style that both takes in and significantly transcends any given film's textual model, be it a Hollywood-based genre piece or European art film. Altman's employment of updated audiovisual technology helped to forge a distinct authorial signature during this period. In Altman's work what would be clearly designated as master or establishing shots in classical cinema can often become medium shots or close-ups, and vice versa. The viewer is confronted by an image where the proximity of the primary subjects in relation to the camera can never be assumed. Altman's cinema, then, is ultimately a rather paradoxical mix. It is remarkably “free” yet often denuded of traditionally affirmed markers of style.
- Subject
- classical cinema; director's work; distinctive visual style; European art film; paradoxical mix; Robert Altman's 1970s cinema
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1332052
- Identifier
- uon:26769
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781118288900
- Language
- eng
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