Form

The workers and students revolts in France, in May 1968, sparked interest in the debates on culture and art during that earlier twentieth-century upheaval, the Russian Revolution in October 1917. Screen, for example, published articles from the Russian journals Lef and Novy Lef, ¹ while Sylvia Harvey’s book, May 68 and Film Culture, is the classic account of the recovery and reworking of the debates between the two historical conjunctures. The debates from the Russian Revolution seemed to map pertinently onto the 1970s’ debates concerning the extent to which it was necessary to break with dominant cinematic forms, exemplified by Hollywood. A renewed appreciation of the cultural politics of form underpinned this debate. As we saw in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, it was realised that visual and audio representation or form shapes the way spectators engage with the ‘content’ of a story, what we see and how we evaluate what we see (and hear). Furthermore, form may encourage certain skills and capacities and discourage others. For example, formal experimentation may try and wean spectators away from modes of decoding that encourage fairly simple allegiances with certain characters, values, authorities and institutions. Formal experimentation may try and sustain a more complex ‘working through’ of the issues which the story content is mulling over, rather than hurry to firm up for the spectator what is the ‘right’ position to take in alignment with this or that character or issue. Another important contribution which formal innovation can make to the cultural and political skills of the audience is the ability to make links and connections, to handle material in a layered manner, historically, for example, by playing with temporal structures or socially by extending the context for events by bold editing decisions (montage is particularly important here).