Dissolving & Reconstituting Narrative Cinema

15	Flashdance	1983 – Adrian Lyne (USA)
	Video clip textuality	Video clips versus the cinema; death of the Hollywood musical; developments in choreography; developments in montage; narrative fracture

A: Video clips versus the Cinema

FLASHDANCE was perhaps the first major film to mark a conflict between the traditional narrative form of feature films (centering on plot, character and action) and the newer narrative form of the video clip (where plot, character and action did not figure as the essential building blocks for the narrative's construction). Steve Baron's ELECTRIC DREAMS (83) was another film. The accusation of 'anti cinema' quality also has hit films like FOOTLOOSE, COBRA, SUBWAY, HIGHLANDER and TO LIVE & DIE IN L.A. plus a slew of lower budget numbers. The continual debate (exacerbated by the success of TV's MIAMI VICE) evidences a clash of cultural perspectives and a conflict of narrative theories.
 
B: Death of the Hollywood musical

To momentarily exploit an often assumed generalization, dramatic entertainment in the early to mid seventies was mainly defined under terms of realism a realism intent on 'showing things how they realIy are', etc. Considering the popularity then of films working within such parameters (consider films from this period directed by Pollack, Freidkin, Coppola, Scorcese, Aldrich, Siegel, Peckinpah, Altman, Pakula, et al) the fantasy of the musical (and the musical comedy) was somewhat outmoded. Musicals failed to adapt to this climate of realism in order for a '70s musical' form to develop.

The 'realistic' musical as small as it was is basically defined by two directors who developed ways in which to subordinate the fantastic with the realistic. They have also continued to affect the musical in the 80s.

(a) Herbert Ross FUNNY GIRL (68) (dance director) ; TURNING POINT (77) ; NIJINSKY (80) ; PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (82) ; FOOTLOOSE (84).

(b) Bob Fosse dancer/choreographer for KISS ME KATE (53) MY SISTER EILEEN (55) THE PYJAMA GAME (57) &
DAMN YANKEES (58) ; director of SWEET CHARITY (68) CABARET (72) & ALL THAT JAZZ (79).

The experimental approach these films took (by mixing heavy drama with dancing & singing) unfortunately had to compete with a concurrent phenomenon Rock. Over this same period, Rock was establishing new cultural relationships with the cinema in a variety of ways:

I (circa 68-77)
(a) 'rockumentaries' documentaries of large rock concert events (MONTEREY POP, DON'T LOOK BACK, WOODSTOCK, GIMME SHELTER, WATTSTAX, CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH, MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMEN, etc.)
(b) rock soundtracks which replaced the need for a composer & orchestra (WILD ANGELS, THE TRIP, EASY RIDER, ZABRISKE POINT, SUPERFLY, SHAFT, etc.)

II (circa 78-87)
(c) rock video clips which appropriated effects, styles, forms, images from the history of the cinema, and set them to a beat (the work, of Russell Mulchay, Steve Baron, Julian Temple, et al being good examples of this approach to making videos)
(d) films which started to 'look & sound' like rock video clips (as cited above in section A).
 
C: Developments in choreography

The real space of the stage (its physical dimensions) provides the parameters within which the choreographer must mobilize the body dynamically within that space and in synch with the musical score. Early musicals (early 30s mid 40s) the bulk of which feature an actual stage within their plots generally transfer that ' real' space onto the screen, retaining the real time/real space form of the stage musical.

Around the mid 40s, Gene Kelly developed what he termed "choreography for the camera". This means that he would fracture the real space of the stage into a set of discrete spaces whose existence and delineation were solely defined by the dynamics of the score. By editing a set of these spaces together, a form of 7 screen choreography' would eventuate Think of 1944's ON THE TOWN where each verse is sung and danced in a totally different part of New York City. Be it a city or even a room, Kelly would fragment the space totally.

Video clips go one step further in that often there is no real, whole, existent space or stage in the first place. Therefore, fracturing space through editing (in the tracing of body movement through time) takes on a more rhythmic or percussive effect one can out at any point to any location so long as the beat matches it in some way.
 
D: Developments in montage

(a) Montage as executed by the likes of D. W. Griffith and theorized by the likess of Sergei Eisenstein involved three basic modes which were important in the primary developments of film as a language -
(i) spatial
(ii) temporal
(iii) poetic/psychological/symbolic/intellectual

(b) The 'jump cut' as devised by Godard in French New Wave cinema, where scenes would be butted up against one another or out across one another, leaving the viewer to make some sense of the spatial/temporal continuity without any clear indication from the narrative.

(c) A type of 'total abstraction' in editing has also developed in three major areas where a sense of dramatic continuity (either positive or negative) is not a main concern in their narrative structures
(i) the New Novel cinema (Robbe Grillet, Renais, Duras, et al)
(ii) experimental/avant garde cinema (Brakhage, Conner, Lyle, Mekas, Le Grice, Maclaren, et al)
(iii) video clips
 
E: Narrative fracture in FLASHDANCE

Consider this model of how the narrative functions in FLASHDANCE in terms of temporal, spatial and body fracturing through editing

(a) Characters stereotyped 'fragments' (not real or 'fully developed' people; thin & 'two dimensional'; etc.)
(b) Plot a dramatic flow interrupted by the dance/song numbers (ie. one could cut out every dance/song number from the film and one would still be cable to 'follow' the story line)
(c) Action the numbers themselves which serve, to intensify, the Plot stages/points (hence their insertion) and flesh out the Characters (thereby allowing the Plot to move past the number because the characters carry some emotional quality effected by the musical number which allows us to 'identify' with them in a basic sense)
(d) Editing a mix of jump cuts (mainly in the articulation of plot) and basic montage modes (mainly inthe description of Characters), plus a sense of 'total abstraction' (mainly in the musical numbers).
(e) Sound Plot and Character are aurally narrated in mono; Action in the realm of the musical numbers is presented in stereo, at a volume higher than the other scenes.
(f) visuals light,colour, smoke, water - ll of these elements work together to constitute a 'tonal range' for the narrative (thus shaping the text). They aid in the definition of Character, the angling of the Plot, and the intensification of the Action (ie. the musical numbers). ]

(Note this qualification of Plot, Character & Action is a way of specifying the 'textuality' of these kind of 'video clip narratives', in that virtually everything is both made subordinate
to the musical numbers and centered in the numbers themselves.)