Criterion has just released Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1931 film of Weill and Brecht’s “The ThreePenny Opera”. It’s on my list.
Oh, and Cl, “The Lady Vanishes” is on their coming soon list. And Kc, “Kind Hearts and Coronets” is on Criterion. Alec Guinness in top form.
12 comments:
DW, I'm glad you mentioned Brecht again, because I've been reading a little about him and came across this device he employed called "the alienation effect." Maybe you're already familiar with it; seems like the sort of thing that might get talked about in continental philosophy courses. i think it has some relevance to our movie.
On Wiki, it's defined like this: The alienation effect (from the German Verfremdungseffekt) is a theatrical and cinematic device "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer." The term was coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht to describe the aesthetics of epic theatre.
And this: The Alienation-effect is achieved by the way the "artist never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him [...] The audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place." The use of direct audience-address is one way of disrupting stage illusion and generating the A-effect. In performance the performer "observes himself"; his object "to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work."
By disclosing and making obvious the manipulative contrivances and "fictive" qualities of the medium, the viewer is alienated from any passive acceptance and enjoyment of the film as mere "entertainment". Instead, the viewer is forced into a critical, analytical frame of mind that serves to disabuse him of the notion what he is watching is necessarily an inviolable, self-contained narrative. This alienation effect serves a didactic function insofar as it teaches the viewer not to take the style and content for granted, since the medium itself is highly constructed and contingent upon many cultural and economic conditions.
In theater musical and pantomimic effects are used as barriers to empathy; in film self-reflexive film techniques are employed to disrupt the narrative flow and break the fourth wall to draw attention to the film-making process itself by addressing the viewer.
I'm thinking of this in terms of how Wiesler viewed the lives of his espionage targets, sort of like how we view actors performing a drama. How he became alienated from "passive enjoyment" of what he was observing. How his barriers to empathy broke down, how he came to see himself as critical to the drama before him. As INVOLVED. IMPLICATED. No loner PASSIVE.
And I think it has implications for an analysis of Dreyman, too, how his own work was minimalist and engaged the audience.
What do you think?
Hmm. None of the continental philosophy I read was that centered on aesthetics. Perhaps that’s a shame since the methods and ideas would be more relevant there than in many other subjects. I read a bit about “the fourth wall” in American sources that must have done little more than mention Brecht in passing since I don’t remember any detailed look at ‘Verfremdungseffekt’.
Interesting, while reading your quotation, I thought of both Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder as making use of the technique. Then when I went to your Wikipedia article, I saw that they both were listed in the links.
At least narrowly, Verfremdungseffekt seems to be a set of tools to force a shared acknowledgement between viewer and actor or viewer and filmmaker of the artifice. So this could be the actor—not character—noting the audience, or a filmmaker drawing attention to the production. Godard’s famous and flamboyant jump-cuts are an example.
So this doesn’t apply directly to our film which uses only naturalistic style. But at one step removed? Your idea is to consider Wiesler as a viewer of a long series of dramas who, finally, gets sucked into one? Or is it to get us to consider that our usual ease at watching the lives of characters in films—even their sex lives—is in a way bizarre when you consider under what conditions somebody might really be doing that? Wiesler as the viewer without the fourth wall? My first reaction is that this doesn’t seem very promising, but then, the idea hadn’t occurred to me at all, so maybe I need to mull it over. Or were you thinking something else entirely?
When are you going to come up here and whisper Verfremdungseffekt in my ear?
(Let me chew on this for a bit, hon)
In barbershop music, we talk a lot about the fourth wall. Most of the time, we don't want to use it in our performances -- barbershop, with its from-the-heart delivery, lends itself to speaking directly to the audience.
But the fourth wall is used for a more theatrical or artistic feel.
Many mediocre quartets who have a fourth-wall feel to their performances would do better without it.
Can’t get enough of my sexy German accent, can you Kc?
Ben, most discussions of “fourth wall” that I have encountered have been like your concern—making direct contact. “Authenticity” comes up too. Brecht seems to go in the opposite direction and force us out of the “natural” connection in the hope of causing a critical reflection about being the audience and more. Quite the productive concept all in all.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Until I watched "Lady Vanishes" for this group, I'd only seen it on VHS, and the sound was dreadful.
I'd love to see the extras.
Interesting. I just watched "Annie Hall" the other day, with all that talking to the camera and talking to flashbacks. Kind of an over-the-top example.
Yes, “Annie Hall” is a good example of a very in-your-face use. Since I haven’t cared for his more recent work, I haven’t seen any Woody Allen in a long time. I ought to watch “Annie Hall” again since I don’t remember it very clearly. Would you say that the “fourth wall violations” were mostly played for a gag or as critical comment?
In Annie Hall, it seemed very natural to me. I wouldn't call it a "gag." It fit with the whole Woody Allen package.
When I think of a fourth-wall violation gag, I think of the moment in Trading Places when Eddie Murphy looks at the camera. I saw an interview with Eddie Murphy where he said the director told him to look at the camera, and he thought it was a crazy idea until he saw the finished movie.
Eddie Murphy looking at the camera is my favorite moment in "Trading Places."
I might call the "Annie Hall" violations a gag. Is it possible they were both a gag and a critical commentary?
Sure. The guy in the geeky glasses used to be able to write that in his sleep.
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