International Cinema: The Art of Ellipsis

In 1936, film critic Roger Leenhardt declared, “cinema is the art of ellipsis.” But this claim seems to contradict our most basic understanding of film. After all, movies are about what we see, not about what we don’t. Or are they? In fact, Leenhardt was suggesting that the richest tradition in cinema explores the dynamic between the seen and the unseen, the shown and the unshown. In this course, we will carefully study four international film classics that effectively exemplify this dynamic in terms of narrative, character, and, most importantly, cinematic style. Films studied will be: Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game (France, 1939); Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring (Japan, 1949); Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (US, 1959); and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up (Iran, 1990). 3 hrs. lect./3 hrs. screen