Cinema of the Inner State
French Impressionist Cinema was a significant avant-garde movement of the 1920s that sought to elevate film from mere narrative entertainment to a true art form. While it shares a name with the 19th-century painting movement, its aims were different. The painters sought to capture the fleeting impression of light on the external world; the filmmakers sought to capture the fleeting impression of events on the internal world of a character. Their primary goal was to achieve a deep psychological realism, conveying a character’s subjective thoughts, emotions, memories, and perceptions directly to the audience through purely cinematic means.
Central to the movement was the concept of photogénie, a term championed by critic Louis Delluc. Photogénie refers to the unique power of the camera to reveal the hidden, soulful essence of a person or object through framing, lighting, and movement. For the Impressionists, film was not about simply recording reality, but about transforming it to reflect an inner, emotional truth.
A New Visual Language
To achieve their goal of depicting subjective states, the Impressionist filmmakers pioneered a host of innovative visual techniques that have since become part of the standard cinematic language:
- Superimpositions: Layering multiple images to represent a character’s thoughts or memories overlapping with their present reality.
- Optical Distortions: Using filters, curved mirrors, or shooting through textured glass to simulate altered states of perception, such as intoxication or dizziness.
- Rhythmic Editing: Cutting shots together in a rapid, rhythmic pace to convey excitement, anxiety, or the quickening pace of a character’s thoughts.
- Subjective Camerawork: Moving the camera in a way that mimics the character’s physical or emotional point of view, such as a shaky camera to show panic or a slow, drifting camera to represent a dream state.
Unlike the Surrealists, who rejected narrative, the Impressionists often worked with conventional stories. However, their true focus was not the plot itself, but the psychological experience of the plot. Key filmmakers of the movement include Abel Gance (Napoléon, La Roue), Jean Epstein (The Fall of the House of Usher), and Germaine Dulac.