Establishing Reality And Surpassing It

Renoir’s films span the silent era to the sound era, and from the black and white era to thecolor era. They lie somewhere on the classification scheme between realism andexpressionism, and traditional and modern. As such, they push certain aspects of the art offilm-making to new heights.Starting with the natural instincts on recording the world, Renoir’s films can becharacterized as reality-based. On the other hand, Renoir has also been influenced bytraditional Western Romanticism and modern art. Through the combination of realism andexpressionism, he succeeds within his films at both establishing reality and surpassing it.These two qualities are the primary characteristics of Renoir’s films.This work principally analyzes, investigates and dissects these two primary characteristics.Such an investigation looks at how they have both become the fundamental characteristicsof the art of film-making, otherwise described as the trend in film to reflect reality whilethoughtfully conveying its transcendence.Establishing reality and transcending it while using realism and expressionism as artisticmethods of film-making can be said to be one interpretation of film ontology. Renoir’sfilms offer inspiration for André Bazin’s film ontology. Conversely, André Bazin’s filmontology offers a theoretical basis for Renoir’s cinematographic creations. It ought to besaid that Bazin’s views on films betray a reverence for realism, but also that Renoir’s filmcreations conversely patronize and excessively emphasize the means and aims of realismto the point of transcending them. On one hand the films strive to record the existence ofthe world. On the other hand they fault existence itself, seeking not the absolute existenceof the world, but rather its subjective spirit. The combination of these two aspects is wherethe true significance of film ontology lies.“Reality” and “illusion” exist together in Renoir’s cinematographic works, forming onequality of his style. This work takes as a starting point the binary way his films establishand surpass reality, and goes on to point out how they reflect the value orientation of sucha binary scheme. It also points out how establishing reality and surpassing it are the twomost basic value orientations of the theory of film ontology. Additionally, from anotherangle, it looks at how the binary orientation projected by Renoir’s films betrays andsurpasses an understanding of Bazin’s film ontology. This work also attempts to propose the idea of “Jean Renoir Style.” It points out thatoutside the style of both realism and modern fantasy there exists an in-between stylecalled “Jean Renoir Style,” characterized by “sudden shifts in stylistic form.” Renoir’sfilms exhibit the style’s characterizing qualities in the following manners; first, throughthe combination of realism and expressionism; second, through the use of long cameralenses, deep depth-of-field lenses, complex scene organization, complex video cameramovements, and other innovative uses of the language of film; and third, through suddenshifts between the traditional and the modern. This work ties these three characteristicstogether as “Jean Renoir Style.”...