R
realism (see also documentary, naturalism, seamlessness,
sociorealism, suture) The term realism comes from a literary and
art movement of the nineteenth century which went against the
grand tradition of classical idealism and sought to portray ‘life as it
really was’. The focus was on ordinary life – indeed the lives of the
socially deprived and the conditions they had to bear. As far as the
film camera is concerned, it is not difficult to see why it is perceived
as a ‘natural’ tool for realism, since it reproduces ‘what is there’
(that is, the physical environment). Film as cinema makes absence
presence, it puts reality up on to the screen. It purports to give a
direct and ‘truthful’ view of the ‘real world’ through the presentation
it provides of the characters and their environment. Realism
functions in film on both the narrative level and the figurative (that
is, pictorial/photographic). In this regard, physical realism marries
into psychological realism via the narrative structures. Generally
speaking, realist films address social issues. However, because the
narrative closure of these films tends to provide easy solutions,
this form of realism on the whole serves only to naturalize social
problems and divisions and not provide any deep insight into
causes.
There are, arguably, two types of realism with regard to film.
First, seamless realism, whose ideological function is to disguise
the illusion of realism. Second, aesthetically motivated realism,
which attempts to use the camera in a non-manipulative fashion
and considers the purpose of realism in its ability to convey a
reading of reality, or several readings even. As far as the seamless
type of realism is concerned, film technique – supported by narrative
structures – erases the idea of illusion, creates the ‘reality effect’. It
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hides its mythical and naturalizing function and does not question
itself – obviously, because to do so would be to destroy the
authenticity of its realism (see myth). Nothing in the camera-work,
the use of lighting, colour, sound or editing draws attention to the
illusionist nature of the reality effect. The whole purpose is to
stitch the spectator into the illusion – keeping reality safe.
Conversely the realist aesthetic, first strongly advocated by
French film-makers in the 1930s and subsequently by André Bazin
in the 1950s, is one that recognizes from the start that realist
discourses not only suppress certain truths, they also produce
others. In other words, realism produces realisms. And, although
due caution must be exercised when making a realist film, this
multiplicity of realisms means that a film cannot be fixed to mean
what it shows – as occurs in seamless realism. The realist aesthetic
recognizes the reality-effect produced by cinematic mediation and
strives, therefore, to use film technique in such a way that, although
it does not draw attention to itself, it none the less provides the
spectator with space to read the text for herself or himself. In other
words, technique functions in this instance so as not to provide an
encoded preferred reading. Rather, it seeks to offer as objectively
as possible a form of realism. So this type of realism uses location
shooting and natural lighting. Most of its cast is composed of non-
professional actors. It employs long shots using deep-focus
cinematography (to counter manipulation of the reading of the
image), long takes (to prevent the controlling effects of editing
practices) and the 90-degree angled shot that, because it is at eye
level, stands as an objective shot.
After the Second World War, the American public wanted a
more realist view of the country, which it found in the spate of
films noir. In Italy economic necessity as much as a desire for a
non-manipulative realism produced Italian neo-realism, which
picked up on realist traditions already in place in French and Italian
cinema of the 1930s. Indeed, Jean Renoir – one of the major
advocates of a politically motivated socio-realist cinema – is credited
with making the first film of this kind, Toni (1934). In the 1960s
France, for its part, pursued its interest in politically motivated
realist films, albeit on a small scale, with the cinéma-vérité and
documentary works of such film-makers as Jean Rouch. Finally,
from the late 1950s into the 1960s, new wave cinemas emerged from
Britain, France and Germany and provided the slice-of-life realist
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road movie
cinema (see British New Wave, French New Wave, New German
Cinema).
For a full discussion of the debates around realism see Lapsley and
Westlake, 1988, 157–80; Williams, 1980.
reconstructions – see historical films
repetition/variation/opposition– see narration, sequencing
representation – see feminist film theory, gender, sexuality,
stereotypes, subjectivity
resistances – see avant-garde, counter-cinema
reverse-angle shot – see shot/reverse-angle shot
road movie (see also genre) Road movies, as the term makes clear, are
movies in which protagonists are on the move. Generally speaking,
such a movie is iconographically marked through such things as a
car, the tracking shot, wide and wild open spaces. In this respect,
as a genre it has some similarities with the Western. The road
movie is about a frontiersmanship of sorts given that one of its
codes is discovery – usually self-discovery. The codes and
conventions of a road movie have meant that until fairly recently
this genre has predominantly been a gendered one. Generically
speaking, the road movie goes from A to B in a finite and
chronological time. Normally the narration of a road movie follows
an ordered sequence of events which lead inexorably to a good or
bad end (compare the bad ending for the travellers in Easy Rider,
Dennis Hopper, 1969, with the reasonable solution for the
protagonist in Paris Texas, Wim Wenders, 1984). Genderically
speaking, the traveller(s) is male and the purpose of the trajectory
is to obtain self-knowledge, Recently, however, women have been
portrayed as the travellers (as in Thelma and Louise, Ridley Scott,
1991) – and in this we can perceive a readiness to subvert or parody
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