Yet one can hardly read any paragraph about American studio workhorse Vincente Minnelli without coming across at least one reference to his painterly aesthetic. Because of this, it’s rare for the term to be applied to a Hollywood studio director, who is not only subject to the whims of the system but also wedded to a studio’s entrenched style. There’s an aesthetic unity to their films that makes them feel like the products of single artistic-not merely auteurist-visions. There is seemingly no shortage of directors we might call painterly, from Maurice Pialat to Terence Davies to Olivier Assayas, which doesn’t mean that their films necessarily have the look of paintings but rather that they compose each frame with an attention to light and color equal to that of narrative. Yet since the term, when applied to cinema, is essentially conjoining two art forms wildly disparate in fundamental, industrial ways, it’s perhaps worth investigating further. What does it mean to call a filmmaker “painterly”? It’s an oft-used descriptor, and it seems to make a lot of intuitive sense, at least. The Art of Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris and Gigi
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |