1/2 Stanley Kubrick’s extraordinary Barry Lyndon (1975, clips 1 and 5-7) is the greatest cinematic exploration of 18th century aesthetics. The “Grand Manner” advocated by Joshua Reynolds and Britain’s Royal Academy of Art (1768-) fused the approach to topographical precision introduced by painters of the Northern Renaissance (image 2) with the spatial idealization of 17th century France (images 3-4). The French emphasis on rationalized order manifested itself in both the balanced Arcadian landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) and the physical gardens designed by André Le Nôtre during the long reign of King Louis XIV. Claude’s paintings (image 3) are remarkable for their focus on shifting qualities of light and the use of both natural features and human figures as compositional devices that draw the viewer’s eye gracefully into the distance. By comparison, the structuring of physical space in Le Nôtre’ gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte (1661, image 4), and even more grandly at Versailles (1685), was overtly theatrical and predicated upon a proto-cinematic play with optical illusion. While ambling along demarcated paths, the viewer simultaneously takes in a series of shifting vistas and becomes part of the larger design. In this sequence, Kubrick combines these approaches, merging several actual spaces into a composite that filters the eighteenth century through its own artifice. The sequence begins with the formal garden at Compton Acres (clip 1) and ends with a view of the lake constructed at the Palace of Blenheim by “Capability” Brown (1773, clip 7 and image 8). Throughout, acts of looking and being seen are connected to both the conventions of optical point-of-view and to the paradigmatic formal device of the 1970s: the zoom lens. By slowly collapsing planes together, Kubrick highlights the confluence of presentation, perception, position, and power. The layered illusionism is deepened by the anachronistic use of Franz Schubert’s Romantic music - Piano Trio in E-Flat, Op. 100 (1827) - which draws out the deep wells of emotion lying beneath the refined surface of characters that are, like us, prisoners of time. Follow the links in post 2 below to learn more. #filmsecession #stanleykubrick #barrylyndon #franzschubert #18thcentury #claudelorrain #andrelenotre #painting #architecture #gardendesign #northernrenaissance #louisxiv #filmhistory #arthistory #filmmusic #filmschool

We are excited to announce the launch of Film Secession Folio! This is a new way for us to highlight the broad range of themes and ideas explored on the site. In anticipation of our upcoming Exhibition on Marcel Ophuls (1927-2025), the focus this time is on documentary filmmaking and the Second World War. Please join the newsletter or click the link in our bio to access the full folio (image 5). The most underrated of the wartime films of Humphrey Jennings, Words for Battle (1941, clips 1 and 4) is a montage documentary largely shot at the height of the Blitz in 1940. The final section begins, surprisingly, with the statue of Abraham Lincoln in London's Parliament Square (clip 1). Among other things, the extraordinary sequence responds to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935, clip 2). In Riefenstahl's film, historic statues from the center of Nuremberg are shown in the round and from approximately the point-of-view of Hitler's moving car, as if to suggest that the German Renaissance has been revived by his presence. American filmmaker Frank Capra was shaken by his first viewing of Riefenstahl's film. Struggling to find a way to communicate the urgency of the Second World War to a skeptical American public, he produced counter-propaganda by taking found footage from existing newsreels, re-editing it, and adding explanatory narration in an "everyman" idiom. Walter Huston's speech in part 4 of Why We Fight (1943, clip 3) is exemplary. Jennings instead presents a montage of vantage points of the Lincoln statue and connects it to the most august possible rhetoric. In clip 4, Laurence Olivier's voiceover transitions from Winston Churchill's "Darkest Hour" speech (1940) to Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (1863). Words for Battle ends, however, not with speech, but with a forty-second montage of interlinked horizontal movements. These are elegantly synchronized with Handel's Water Music (1717), and the grandeur of both the music and the recited texts is passed on to the many individual men and women united in common purpose. At this moment of greatest possible national crisis, the unique possibilities of cinema were being rediscovered and reinvented. Clips 1 and 4. Words for Battle (Humphrey Jennings, 1941) 2. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) 3. Why We Fight: The Battle of Britain (Frank Capra, 1943) 5. Film Secession Folio: "The Documentary War" (Below) #filmsecession #documentaryfilm #secondworldwar #humphreyjennings #leniriefenstahl #frankcapra #marcelophuls #blitz #winstonchurchill #abrahamlincoln #statues #sculpture #handel #london #filmhistory #arthistory #filmmusic #filmschool