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A review by wmbogart
Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer by Paul Schrader
Pretty funny how cohesive and convincing this is - you'd never guess it's the same Paul we know and love today. Impressive that he got there as early as he did, before Deleuze fleshed out some of what he was picking up on. Fun to imagine this all as an attempt to reconcile his secular interests with his Calvinist upbringing.
Schrader sets out concrete techniques (delayed cuts, locked frames, little non-diegetic music, a focus on the everyday, etc) and a larger structure that ends in stasis after a decisive action and results in an activation of something in the viewer in closing in that stasis. He takes that (again, surprisingly well-written and thought out) framework and applies it to see how it might or might not result in a kind of "transcendent" experience on the part of the viewer.
It's all present in both Ozu and Bresson, with different views on "transcendence" (Schrader claims Ozu sees it in life, Bresson in a kind of death) but similar approaches beyond the cultural differences. The Bresson piece is the best here I think, if only because Schrader has the theological background to color it. He's clearly thought a great deal about the prison metaphor and its predestination/free-will implications, and is able to extend those implications to the viewer and their participation in films that forgo the typical dramatic devices. It made me laugh out loud when he recognizes his own use of the Pickpocket ending as problematic in this respect. Likewise with the whole non-narrative cinema diagram that plots maybe fifty directors (and a few entire movements) in relation to a "Tarkovsky ring" and within a "surveillance cam"/"art gallery"/"mandala" triangle. A hilarious, borderline unhinged exercise. Love it.
As far as the Dreyer chapter, it's mostly an exercise in comparing his criteria to someone that doesn't check all the boxes, to understand how these techniques do and don't function in comparison with Bresson. He does the same with Tarkovsky a bit, just to outline what does and doesn't fully embody the style he's laid out. But the Ozu and Bresson sections are the heart of it. The leap to seeing this all as "transcendental" is maybe a big one for some (and he's quick to acknowledge this), but it works for me.
Thanks Paul. Hopefully UC Press puts out a collection of his social media posts one of these days so I can shelve it alongside this.
Schrader sets out concrete techniques (delayed cuts, locked frames, little non-diegetic music, a focus on the everyday, etc) and a larger structure that ends in stasis after a decisive action and results in an activation of something in the viewer in closing in that stasis. He takes that (again, surprisingly well-written and thought out) framework and applies it to see how it might or might not result in a kind of "transcendent" experience on the part of the viewer.
It's all present in both Ozu and Bresson, with different views on "transcendence" (Schrader claims Ozu sees it in life, Bresson in a kind of death) but similar approaches beyond the cultural differences. The Bresson piece is the best here I think, if only because Schrader has the theological background to color it. He's clearly thought a great deal about the prison metaphor and its predestination/free-will implications, and is able to extend those implications to the viewer and their participation in films that forgo the typical dramatic devices. It made me laugh out loud when he recognizes his own use of the Pickpocket ending as problematic in this respect. Likewise with the whole non-narrative cinema diagram that plots maybe fifty directors (and a few entire movements) in relation to a "Tarkovsky ring" and within a "surveillance cam"/"art gallery"/"mandala" triangle. A hilarious, borderline unhinged exercise. Love it.
As far as the Dreyer chapter, it's mostly an exercise in comparing his criteria to someone that doesn't check all the boxes, to understand how these techniques do and don't function in comparison with Bresson. He does the same with Tarkovsky a bit, just to outline what does and doesn't fully embody the style he's laid out. But the Ozu and Bresson sections are the heart of it. The leap to seeing this all as "transcendental" is maybe a big one for some (and he's quick to acknowledge this), but it works for me.
Thanks Paul. Hopefully UC Press puts out a collection of his social media posts one of these days so I can shelve it alongside this.