The French Impressionism

           French Impressionism according to the Film Art by David Bordwell and Kirsten Thompson was an avant-garde style that operated largely inside the film industry. 

          World War I had a bad impact on the French film industry. On 1915, American films began to rise in France and soon, by the end of 1917 Hollywood cinema took over the market. After the war, the French film industry had never recovered and most films that were shown were American films. Because of this the French film industry tried to recover and recapture the market so they imitated Hollywood film style. As a result, it encouraged the younger French directors to view cinema as an art similar to poetry, painting, and movie rather than a commercial craft. 

         The younger directors experimented on cinema. They centred on emotion, which is usually about a love triangle. This has become their basis for exploring brief moods and shifting sensation in filmmaking. They patterned it all to the Hollywood style. 

          Impressionist films were giving the story a psychological depth and revealing the role of a character’s consciousness. So it emphasizes more on the personal emotions. It controls plot time and subjectivity. Flashbacks are also common to impressionist films to show memories. Another important thing is that it portrays the character’s dreams, fantasies, and mental states. 

         The smiling Mme. Beudet by Dulac in 1923 contains almost the main character’s fantasy life and her imaginary escape from dull marriage. 

      Filmmakers made an experiment on the cinematography and editing to show mental states or the character’s thoughts and feelings. As in La Roue, Norma’s image is covered with smoke from an engine, representing the fantasy of the engine driver, who is in love with her. To even more exaggerate the subjectivity, the impressionist cinematography and editing presented the character’s point of view. An example of this is L’ Herbier’s El Dorado in 1920. There is s scene here where a man was drinking in a cabaret. To show the atmosphere, a distorted or dizzying camera movement was made to portray how the man was feeling.

          French Impressionism may have ended on 1929. But its influences of the Impressionist form which are the psychological narrative, subjective camera work and editing will be forever in the history of the film industry as it influenced the Hollywood style mainly on horror films and film noirs.