Introduction

There is a famous painting by the surrealist painter René Megritte

in which he draws a totally accurate pipe and writes underneath it
"ceçi n’est pas une pipe" – this is not a pipe. It is, of course, a
picture of a pipe and not the real thing; he is drawing our attention
to the fact that an image is not reality but someone’s
representation of reality. We can regard filmmakers as organising
the reality they want us to see. In a television interview, film
director Michael Winner said, "A film is hundreds of moments
photographed and joined together to create an illusion of
something which did not take place." Occasionally, filmmakers
acknowledge that there are several versions of reality by
constructing a film around these versions. Kurosawa’s film
Rashomon (1950) concerns different views of four people about a
moment of violence. A more modern example of the same idea can
be found in the four viewpoints in Mike Figgis’s Time Code (2000).
The French film director, Jean-Luc Goddard commented once that
"cinema is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the
reflection." He deliberately makes his audience aware, through
various devices, that they are looking at something that has been
constructed rather than a story, which appears flowing and
seamless.

Hollywood & Realism

Mainstream Hollywood films have plots which are structured along

the lines of what is known as ‘classic narrative realism’. One of its
conventions is that a situation is presented, which is then disrupted
in some way and is changed or resolved by the end of the film.
Colin Macabe claims that this form of classic realism is the basis for
the 19th century novel and the standard ‘fictional’ output of film
and television. The content and location may change (it could be
science fiction, horror, romance or adventure, set in the past or in
the future), but the organisation of the story and the way in which
the story seems to unfold of its own accord remain the same. The
truth of what we see is built into the unfolding of the story itself
rather than in the voice of the author. The camera seems to
confirm this idea that what we see unfolding before our eyes has to
be real or true. It is as though the world is revealed to us through
observation and as if ‘seeing is believing’. We have to remember
that realism is an artificial constraint; it is a way of seeing not the
way of seeing.

Photography is a medium that is supposedly ‘realistic’ – we

understand that photographs look like the subject matter they
represent although they are often in black and white and are two
dimensional. A written description of a person may give us a
greater sense of that person than a photograph. A picture cannot
convey all the meanings available about its subject.

Task 1
Use the useful links page or look at film magazines to find a film
still where various characters are shown interacting with each
other. Below is a list of questions to help you think about the
picture - try to answer those which you think are relevant to the
photograph you have selected:
• What do you think is going on in the picture?
• How many points of view are there? The expression on their faces
might help you.
• What do you think might have happened to them or is about to
happen to them?
• How might they be feeling about the situation they are in?
• How might they be reacting to the other people in the picture?

Write one two-minute script taking one character’s point of view.

With a partner, storyboard your script taking into account music,
lighting and location as well as dialogue. Would you use a voice-
over? Who is the narrator?

You have now completed an exercise in organising a few minutes of

your own reality as a filmmaker. André Bazin, film theorist and
critic, concluded that realism cannot be rendered without art, he
said, ‘Realism can only be achieved in one way … through
artiface…" In other words, on film the ‘real’ needs to be constructed
as much as any other kind of fiction.

Task 2
You have already engaged in an activity which involved
constructing your own filmic reality. Now take a short sequence in a
film shot-by-shot and compare what happens on film with what
would happen real life. What has been omitted? Why? What effects
are used to create the passing of time? What has the filmmaker
done to create the impression of actions taking place without us
having to actually witness them? What other devices have been
used in the sequence?

Film time & real time

In Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me (1986) there is a memorable scene

when the boys are caught midway across a single track railway
bridge, spanning a deep river gorge, with a train coming up behind
them.

The bridge cannot be more than 500 metres across and so a train
doing a relatively slow speed of 60 km per hour would cross it in
thirty seconds. However, from the first sighting of the train, just as
it is about to cross the bridge, to the point where it reaches the end
of the bridge, fifty seconds elapse on film and there is no sign at all
that the train is breaking. During these fifty seconds, there are
twenty six different shots; of the bridge, the boys and the train
from different angles, with the train looming ever larger in the
frontal shots, to the point where it dominates the screen, just
before Gordie and Vern jump onto the embankment. Clearly, movie
time has slowed down, as the director tries to convey the suspense
of the race against the train, which he does successfully. For the
audience, the whole scene is enthralling and exciting and the little
matter of time standing still is of no consequence.
This is not the only film where this happens. In Charlie’s Angels
(2000) Natalie and Thin Man are in a car chase when they find
themselves at opposite ends of a bridge. Both cars accelerate at full
speed towards each other, which forces Thin Man over the edge. In
real time, the action would have been over in a few seconds,
however the sequence lasts for much longer, giving the audience
time to see the action from many different perspectives.

Again, in Die Hard 2 (1990), a scene is depicted where Bruce Willis

is trying to get out from under a heavy manhole cover just as the
plane is about to land on top of him. He makes it, just, but for him
to do so, the plane would have had to stand still in mid-air!

The important thing about each of these scenes is that the

elongation of time takes place because the respective directors
wanted to convey the essential aspects of their characters’ struggle
against adversity. In this respect, there is a good aesthetic reason
for time slowing down which is that the characters should be shown
facing up to and overcoming seemingly overwhelming odds. So, in
Stand By Me, the boys get across the bridge to the Royal Forest
and ultimately, maturity and the disappointment of adulthood. In
Charlie’s Angels, Natalie wins the fight against the bad guy, whilst
John McLean escapes

Another example can be found in Billy Elliot (2000). We see Billy

dancing up a street in summer, and then throwing himself against
a fence. When he gets up again, the street is covered in snow and
it is now winter. We assume time has passed to allow the seasons
to change – it has not been necessary for us to be present during
the end of summer and autumn to understand this.

Realism & History

Many historians have misgivings about the value of historical

feature films. The films are created and organised for the cinema
audience rather than for historians or the study of history.
Historical films rarely handle complex historical issues from a range
of viewpoints. Many films lavishly recreate the historical period with
sets and studios to provide a backdrop to a narrative which does
not always have much relevance to the historical period. The
account of history is not presented as an interpretation but as a
final statement of the truth about its subject. The filmmaker is
catering to the audienceÕs expectations about film being a source
of both pleasure and entertainment.

Task 3
Look at any film that deals with historical events, e.g. Gladiator,
Almost Famous.
• How has this film added to your understanding of the period?
• How does the film represent the main historical character and
groups?
• What might have been covered by the film but was left out?
• Why do you think this was?
• What are the advantages of the film if used as a resource for
historians? How about Elizabeth or Saving Private Ryan?
Realism & Documentary

Mainstream narrative cinema is presented in the form of the classic

realist text. This not only presents itself as an invisible form, a
transparent view or ‘window to the world’, but also organises its
narrative in such a way as to present the ‘truth’ of a situation,
finally reaching a resolution without contradiction; a coherent unity.
In contrast, the documentary is primarily a form which offers the
audience information and tries to put forward an argument to
persuade us to think in a certain way. It presents the ‘truth’ of its
argument as self evident and non-contradictory. Often an
authoritative voice-over accompanies images of what we are to
perceive as the ‘real’ world; images and commentary supposedly
form the truth of the situation depicted. The documentary has its
own traditional form and content. It makes use of the hand-held
camera; natural lighting and its locations are often urban or
industrial. In its content, documentary usually deals with the lives
of the working class and the community.

Vertov, the Russian documentary filmmaker of the 1920s and 30s,

often used concealed cameras to record events and capture
‘cinema truth’. The images spoke for themselves. In contrast,
Eisenstein, the Russian filmmaker who made Battleship Potemkin
(1925), advocated and practised a filmmaking style called montage
which involved much cutting and editing to create the desired
effect. His idea was that by editing two images together, you
produce a third image or idea in the minds of the audience:
"Example (from Potemkin) – an illustration of instantaneous action.
Woman with pince-nez. Followed immediately – without transition –
by the same woman with shattered pince-nez: impression of shot
hitting eye."

These two approaches have dominated the history of film theory

since the early films of Louis Lumière and George Méliès. Lumière
was content to let the camera record ordinary events; Méliès was
keen to experiment with camera angles and sets to create films
that went beyond the everyday real world. The main difference in
these two approaches is about how much the director should
intervene to fashion his work.

In the 1930s John Grierson influenced documentary filmmakers in

Britain and abroad. He believed that greater realism would result if
you used location shots, ordinary people and encouraged
improvisation. The documentary drama was an important
development which came out of this tradition. The films of Ken
Loach, the British director, are examples of film making using both
documentary style and content. He has dealt with issues in his
films such as Northern Ireland (Hidden Agenda, 1990), the 1984-5
miners strike (Which Side Are You On?, 1984), conditions in the
building industry (Riff Raff, 1990), illegal money lending (Raining
Stones, 1993) the Liverpool dockers’ strike (The Flickering Flame,
1997), the right to unionise (Bread and Roses, 2000) and social
workers and single parenthood (Ladybird, Ladybird, 1994). Loach’s
film Cathy Come Home (1966) was so powerful and moving that it
contributed to the setting up of the housing charity Shelter.
Task 4
Look at a selection of documentary films and discuss their style and
content. What is the subject matter? What is the point of view of
the documentary? Is it trying to persuade you to have an opinion
or to think in a certain way? Does it have authority? In other
words, is its tone and style important in the effect that it has on
you? Analyse a few minutes of each documentary – examine
camera shots, framing, lighting, studio and location shots,
narration or voice-over, music, interviews.

Task 5
Take a fiction film and analyse it in the same way. Make a list of
the similarities and differences in the treatment of form and
content. It would be useful to take a feature film and a
documentary dealing with a similar area e.g. young people, drugs,
unemployment, war.

Task 6
Take the first three minutes of a feature film and rewrite it in
documentary style. Use a storyboard to illustrate the camera shots,
lighting and location shots that you might use. Would you introduce
a voice-over or a presenter?

Realism & Censorship

In 1913, the British Board of Film Censors – founded in the

previous year – issued its first report and published a long list of
taboo subjects. It explicitly banned too much realism in dealing
with certain subjects: realistic horrors in warfare; painful insistence
of realism in deathbed scenes; realistic scenes of massacre and
torture.

The following list of examples will give you some idea about the
ways in which ‘realism’ has been perceived by the censor since that
time and the concerns around the public reaction to the ‘real’ as
shown on film.

In 1928, the BBFC wanted to ban Robert Wiene’s expressionist

masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, because it was afraid that
the asylum scenes would upset people in the cinema audience who
had relatives in mental hospitals. In 1936, in the proposed remake
of the film, Miss Shortt of the BBFC wrote. "My father has given his
views on horror films and he agrees that it is quite prohibitive to
show any version of this story."

When Love on the Dole was submitted to the Board at script stage
in 1936 it noted, "I do not consider this play suitable for production
as a film. There is too much of the tragic and sordid side of
poverty."

The script for Michael Powell’s Red Ensign on the other hand, was
passed without a single reservation. The film features a managing
director hero who not only persuades his dock worker employees to
give up their strike, but also convinces them to work for nothing
‘for the good of the country’. The Board commented, "Quite a good
story with a patriotic note."

In 1949, The Miracle, directed by Rossellini and scripted by Fellini,

was refused a certificate because of overall blasphemy and in
particular Anna Magnani’s intense description of ‘labour pains’.

The board banned Marlon Brando’s The Wild One in 1954 declaring
that "The behaviour of Brando and the two gangs to authority and
adults generally is of the kind that provides a dangerous example
to those wretched young people who take every opportunity to
throw their weight about."

A marked shift had occurred by the 1970s, illustrated by the

passing of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange by the board in
1971. It caused an uproar both before and after release, with many
MPs claiming that the film was spawning a new generation of
violent youth. The re-release of this film in 2000, after being
banned by Kubrick himself for over 20 years and its good audience
reception, is yet another example of how both the BBFC and
audience’s tolerance has changed over the years.

The growth of the video market, and in particular the availability of

violent videos, which became known as 'video nasties', resulted in
the passing of the Video Recordings Act in 1984. This required that
all videos, with very limited exceptions, must be classified, and the
BBFC was designated by the Home Secretary as the body
responible for classifying those video works. The availability of
video in the home to audiences younger than the age restriction of
the classification means that the BBFC pays particular attention to
concerns about harm from viewing certain material. The Board may
require cuts to videos which were not made to the cinema film, or
may give the video a higher classification than the film to warn
parents about the content. Some films, eg Straw Dogs, still do not
have a video classification because they contain scenes which the
Board does not consider suitable for home viewing with the facility
on videos for repeat playing. If the distributor refuses to make the
required cuts, then the Board will not issue a certificate.

With the advent of video, and more recently DVD, the work of the
Board has increased dramatically. In 2000 the BBFC classified over
500 hundered films and around 7000 videos and DVDs. The Board
now employs 50 people with 13 examiners and 3 senior examiners
watching the films, videos and video games.

In 1985, The British Board of Film Censors changed its name to the
British Board of Film Classification and the secretary was renamed
the director.
In 1989 the BBFC introduced a ‘12’ certificate in film, to bridge the
gap between PG and 15, which was extended to video in 1994.

Also in 1994, the definition of a video recording was extended to

include any devise capable of storing electronic data. All DVDs and
computer games are therefore covered by the Video Recordings
Act.
Despite the statutory regulation of video since 1984, public
concerns about its impact have continued. In 1993 Mr. Justice
Morland passed sentence on two eleven-year-old boys convicted of
the murder and abduction of James Bulger. He remarked, "It is not
for me to pass judgement on their upbringing, but I suspect that
the exposure to violent films may be part of the explanation". On
the other hand, the Government stated in the House of Lords (Lord
Ferres of the Home Office) that there was absolutely no connection
between videos, particularly Childs Play 3 and the actions of the 2
boys. However, the public rallied for stricter regulations on video
and an amendment to the Video Recordings Act was passed in
1994 which required the Board to consider specific issues and the
potential for harm when making video classification.

Task 7
Critics of the violent influence of films and television on the public
suggest that film should mirror the way we live our lives rather
than create fantasy worlds. Discuss why they might think this and
then discuss with a partner the arguments for and against the
realistic representation of our daily lives via-à-vis the presentation
of fantasy.

Task 8
Construct a short questionnaire or draw up a list of interview
questions targeted at a particular audience, e.g. teachers, class
mates, parents, friends, younger children, designed to find out
whether they like to see their own or similar lives mirrored on
screen or if they prefer fantasies – e.g. stories set in the future,
adventure stories or thrillers set in familiar or unfamiliar contexts,
romances. Do they like realistic films? How would they define
‘realistic’? What would a film have to contain to make it realistic?
Would it have to be ‘told’ in a certain way?
Ask your target audience to give you examples of films that they
consider to be realistic and why.