Mulholland Drive
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688441
discussing the dream elements within Mulholland Dr (2001)
Lost Highway
http://www.othervoices.org/1.3/bh/highway.php
interesting application of lacan to lost highway and interesting comments on how we read films
Thursday 21 November 2013
Wild Strawberries
interesting and dense dream sequence that changes the characters perception of his life as his subconscious tells him that he may have been successful in his work but he is alone & death is around the corner
within this we see examples of symbolism, conceptual & visualisation - the clock with no hands. the scrunched faced man who mirrors his own disposition on life (displacement, symbolism, visualisation) and then a great example of the revelatory where the coffin breaks open on the ground which is revealed to be his own.
Animation
the various aesthetics of animated film have dream like aspects
- Stop Motion
the fast cutting jittering imagery has something very hyper real about it and yet something that is completely unrealistic in a very unnerving way
Jan Svankmajers The Jabberwocky is a perfect example of this hyper reality that represents so perfectly the dream of a child in frauds view. very surrealist.
hyper-reality
very dense imagery - examples of condensation & subjectivity as well as displacement and conceptual
- Stop Motion
the fast cutting jittering imagery has something very hyper real about it and yet something that is completely unrealistic in a very unnerving way
Jan Svankmajers The Jabberwocky is a perfect example of this hyper reality that represents so perfectly the dream of a child in frauds view. very surrealist.
hyper-reality
very dense imagery - examples of condensation & subjectivity as well as displacement and conceptual
Dreams in the Edit Suite
we don't dream about travelling to any of the various dream landscapes we find ourselves in but we cut from scene to scene "first i was …. then i/we were …" similar to the way a film cuts from scene to scene
use of editing that has influenced dream like quality in film
dreams that have influenced the editing of film?
Jan Svankmajer uses montages of juxtaposing sight and sound to change perception or to make light of scene or simply to add atmosphere
cutting of images to create harmony/contrast.
story can be told through disjointed scenes
SECONDARY ELABORATION - the outcome of the dreamer's natural tendency to make some sort of "sense" or "story" out of the various elements of the manifest content as recollected. (Freud, in fact, was wont to stress that it was not merely futile but actually misleading to attempt to "explain" one part of the manifest content with reference to another part as if the manifest dream somehow constituted some unified or coherent conception).
films that use secondary elaboration - LA JETEE
Long Transitions - examples within stanley kubricks - THE SHINING (see ROOM 237)
long transitions that transpose constructed images from colliding scenes through long fades
creates images within images CONDENSATION - visualisation/symbolism
these images may be hidden or not noticeable without editing software but choice by creators
use of editing that has influenced dream like quality in film
dreams that have influenced the editing of film?
Jan Svankmajer uses montages of juxtaposing sight and sound to change perception or to make light of scene or simply to add atmosphere
cutting of images to create harmony/contrast.
story can be told through disjointed scenes
SECONDARY ELABORATION - the outcome of the dreamer's natural tendency to make some sort of "sense" or "story" out of the various elements of the manifest content as recollected. (Freud, in fact, was wont to stress that it was not merely futile but actually misleading to attempt to "explain" one part of the manifest content with reference to another part as if the manifest dream somehow constituted some unified or coherent conception).
films that use secondary elaboration - LA JETEE
Long Transitions - examples within stanley kubricks - THE SHINING (see ROOM 237)
long transitions that transpose constructed images from colliding scenes through long fades
creates images within images CONDENSATION - visualisation/symbolism
these images may be hidden or not noticeable without editing software but choice by creators
Oneiric Film Theory
Refers to what is described as the depiction of dream like states in film or the use of the metaphor of a dream to analyse film
-Jean Epstein argued films have a dream like quality.
-Raymond Bellour and Guy Rosolato made psychoanalytical analogies between films and dream states - films having "latent" content - used Freuds Interpretation of Dreams
Barthes - viewer as passive. - "para-oneiric" state
" sleepy and drowsy as if they had just woken up"
breton-
viewer enters a state between "awake and flaying asleep"
Rene clair referred to these as a dream like state
Esthetique et psychologie du cinema (1963) discusses connection between films & dream state
- jean cocteau - conscious hallucination
filmmakers who have been described as using oneiric theory
- Ingmar bergman - persona
- Luis Bunuel
- Lars Von Trier
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- David Lynch
- Stanley Kubrick
- Orson Welles - The Trial
i have began looking at the 4 schools of surrealist thought, the subjective, the imagistic, the conceptual and the revelatory and comparing and contrasting these with the 4 types of dream logic - condensation, visualisation, displacement and symbolism.
I will begin by laying these terms and the meaning down so that we may both grasp better understanding of them
Freud's Dream Logic
Condensation - Where one dream object stands for several associations and/or ideas
Visualisation - a thought is transformed into the visual image
Displacement - a dream objects emotional significance to the dreamer is transposed onto another object so as to not raise the suspicions of the dreamer
Symbolism - a symbol replaces a person, idea or action
Freud also hypothesised that "secondary elaboration" could be added to these as this is the act of the dreamer stringing the events of the dream into one story and trying to decipher a narrative from this. this i don't believe to be part of dream interpretation or logic as it not key to deciphering the latent content of the dream it is merely a device used by the dreamer to form cohesion out of their own madness & a dream is not a continuos narrative or thought pattern it is a whole series of thoughts, ideas or desires being connected by the dreamer as interpreter and there only way of possibly being linked together is the dreamer and the knowledge and experiences therein. we can only hope to learn more about the dreamers life experiences as to gain insight to his night experiences.
Surrealist Schools of Thought (i will be using the creation of art to explain these terms)
The Conceptual - this is where the ideas or concepts behind the piece take precedence over the aesthetic nature of the work
The Imagistic - the conveying of meaning and ideas through precise images
The Revelatory - revealing something that was hitherto unknown
The Subjective - something that acts onto the viewer and can be interpreted in a multiude of ways
I will begin by laying these terms and the meaning down so that we may both grasp better understanding of them
Freud's Dream Logic
Condensation - Where one dream object stands for several associations and/or ideas
Visualisation - a thought is transformed into the visual image
Displacement - a dream objects emotional significance to the dreamer is transposed onto another object so as to not raise the suspicions of the dreamer
Symbolism - a symbol replaces a person, idea or action
Freud also hypothesised that "secondary elaboration" could be added to these as this is the act of the dreamer stringing the events of the dream into one story and trying to decipher a narrative from this. this i don't believe to be part of dream interpretation or logic as it not key to deciphering the latent content of the dream it is merely a device used by the dreamer to form cohesion out of their own madness & a dream is not a continuos narrative or thought pattern it is a whole series of thoughts, ideas or desires being connected by the dreamer as interpreter and there only way of possibly being linked together is the dreamer and the knowledge and experiences therein. we can only hope to learn more about the dreamers life experiences as to gain insight to his night experiences.
Surrealist Schools of Thought (i will be using the creation of art to explain these terms)
The Conceptual - this is where the ideas or concepts behind the piece take precedence over the aesthetic nature of the work
The Imagistic - the conveying of meaning and ideas through precise images
The Revelatory - revealing something that was hitherto unknown
The Subjective - something that acts onto the viewer and can be interpreted in a multiude of ways
The Conscious Hallucination
The cinema is designed to induce a state that resembles sleep you are shut off in a dark space devoid of distraction from the outside world and made to experience sequential images that you have no control over but that convey a certain aspect of existence, this is a dream state
"the surrealist praised the way the cinematic image unfolded to approximate the workings of the imagination and the dream-state. the surrealists' untamed eye is the first and foremost an inner eye. of central importance to their views on the cinema is the relationship between viewing of a film and the act of dreaming. to them watching a film unfolding in a darkened cinema embodied the closest thing to a dream. jean goudal described the cinema as a 'conscious hallucination' - even more powerful than literature"
this idea of a "conscious hallucination"a hallucination that thinks and evolves out of itself and not only that that is aware of itself
dreams essentially boil down all our knowledge and being and fuse that with the most recent events of our life that are still floating about in our frontal lobe yet to work themselves into the recesses of our mind
"The cinema, then, constitutes a conscious hallucination, and utilises this fusion of dream and consciousness which surrealism would like to see realised in the literary domain. these moving images delude us, by leaving us with a confused awareness of our own personality and by allowing us to evoke, if necessary, the resources of our memory"
"the surrealist praised the way the cinematic image unfolded to approximate the workings of the imagination and the dream-state. the surrealists' untamed eye is the first and foremost an inner eye. of central importance to their views on the cinema is the relationship between viewing of a film and the act of dreaming. to them watching a film unfolding in a darkened cinema embodied the closest thing to a dream. jean goudal described the cinema as a 'conscious hallucination' - even more powerful than literature"
this idea of a "conscious hallucination"a hallucination that thinks and evolves out of itself and not only that that is aware of itself
dreams essentially boil down all our knowledge and being and fuse that with the most recent events of our life that are still floating about in our frontal lobe yet to work themselves into the recesses of our mind
"The cinema, then, constitutes a conscious hallucination, and utilises this fusion of dream and consciousness which surrealism would like to see realised in the literary domain. these moving images delude us, by leaving us with a confused awareness of our own personality and by allowing us to evoke, if necessary, the resources of our memory"
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