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109

Dreyer

1
terms
3
notes

Schrader, P. (1972). Dreyer. In Schrader, P. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. University of California Press, pp. 109-148

relating to the writing of the lives of saints; (derogatory) adulatory writing about another person

121

A comparison between Dreyer’s and Bresson’s Joan of Arc films is not only convenient but also fruitful, explicitly establishing their different attitudes toward hagiography.

—p.121 by Paul Schrader
notable
2 years, 7 months ago

A comparison between Dreyer’s and Bresson’s Joan of Arc films is not only convenient but also fruitful, explicitly establishing their different attitudes toward hagiography.

—p.121 by Paul Schrader
notable
2 years, 7 months ago
129

[...] Anne and Martin attempt to hide their love, romancing only on clandestine field trips. This conflict is reflected in the decor: the parsonage is claustrophobic and chiaroscuric; the fields are bucolic and well-lit. [...]

—p.129 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago

[...] Anne and Martin attempt to hide their love, romancing only on clandestine field trips. This conflict is reflected in the decor: the parsonage is claustrophobic and chiaroscuric; the fields are bucolic and well-lit. [...]

—p.129 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago
140

The late Gothic cathedral is the reductio ad absurdum of the Scholastic method with its sic and non, its internal contradictions eternally interlocked: saints and gargoyles, Pantocrators and crucified Christs, oblique lines of force and verticals and horizontals. The lines of tension often clash randomly, lacking focus or climax; Gothic art furnished a dramatic space but not a dramatic focus to which all characters and lines were inevitably drawn. Worringer found in Gothic statuary a microcosm of the Gothic style: the face was often naturalistic, the robe abstract. The body, wrapped in stiff robes, represented the order of Byzantium; the face, often empathic, cried out the humanism of Florence. The inherent contradiction of Gothic life drove the abstract line into near chaos. The impulse of the Gothic man toward true knowledge, Worringer wrote, “being denied its natural satisfaction, thus exhausts itself in wild fantasies. . . . Everything becomes weird and fantastic.”31 The final solution of Gothic architecture was one of self-negation: instead of defining space, it attacked it; instead of creating order on earth, it thrust instability into the heavens.

i dont really get what he's talking about but i like the bravura

—p.140 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago

The late Gothic cathedral is the reductio ad absurdum of the Scholastic method with its sic and non, its internal contradictions eternally interlocked: saints and gargoyles, Pantocrators and crucified Christs, oblique lines of force and verticals and horizontals. The lines of tension often clash randomly, lacking focus or climax; Gothic art furnished a dramatic space but not a dramatic focus to which all characters and lines were inevitably drawn. Worringer found in Gothic statuary a microcosm of the Gothic style: the face was often naturalistic, the robe abstract. The body, wrapped in stiff robes, represented the order of Byzantium; the face, often empathic, cried out the humanism of Florence. The inherent contradiction of Gothic life drove the abstract line into near chaos. The impulse of the Gothic man toward true knowledge, Worringer wrote, “being denied its natural satisfaction, thus exhausts itself in wild fantasies. . . . Everything becomes weird and fantastic.”31 The final solution of Gothic architecture was one of self-negation: instead of defining space, it attacked it; instead of creating order on earth, it thrust instability into the heavens.

i dont really get what he's talking about but i like the bravura

—p.140 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago
142

At times Dreyer’s tension even bursts out of the frame. In a well-known composition from The Passion of Joan of Arc, a guard, partially hidden by the left vertical frame line, is tugging at Joan’s arm while Joan herself is struggling to pull herself outside of the right vertical frame line. The frame line seems an arbitrary restriction on a tension which is on the verge of flying apart. The effect is similar to that which one experiences standing in the nave of a Gothic cathedral as the lines of force explode from the ceiling driving straight through the aisles, through the walls, and out into the flying buttresses. The frame or the nave, the movie or the cathedral themselves, are artistic restrictions upon a reality which by itself would disintegrate.

—p.142 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago

At times Dreyer’s tension even bursts out of the frame. In a well-known composition from The Passion of Joan of Arc, a guard, partially hidden by the left vertical frame line, is tugging at Joan’s arm while Joan herself is struggling to pull herself outside of the right vertical frame line. The frame line seems an arbitrary restriction on a tension which is on the verge of flying apart. The effect is similar to that which one experiences standing in the nave of a Gothic cathedral as the lines of force explode from the ceiling driving straight through the aisles, through the walls, and out into the flying buttresses. The frame or the nave, the movie or the cathedral themselves, are artistic restrictions upon a reality which by itself would disintegrate.

—p.142 by Paul Schrader 2 years, 7 months ago