Time and film style

Abstract

This thesis proposes that the temporality of the moving image is not just its basic condition, but also an alterable stylistic parameter. By analysing three broad stylistic categories of cinema - Classical Continuity-editing, Montage, and Long Take - it is demonstrated that the time of a sequence or shot operates as an active element within the formal fabric of the work. Beyond this, it shows that these film styles may in fact be defined by the characteristic ways in which they treat time. Methodologically, it adapts concepts from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson and Hans Georg Gadamer, fusing them with close textual analysis to allow the theory to grow around the practical instance of its object. One of the primary goals is to establish a critical idiom capable of dealing appropriately and sympathetically with this neglected aspect of film aesthetics, to uncover a suitable vocabulary for talking about the expressive use of time in cinema. This study contributes to the existing body of research on cinematic time (which is primarily concerned with ontology and ideology) by addressing the distinct lack of critical and theoretical work that engages with the temporality of cinema at the microscopic level of the moment to moment passage of a scene, that is, the temporal stylistics of cinema.

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