Summary


The purpose of this thesis is to base and contrast notions of "cinematographic situation" and "cinematic spectacle", as theoretical and practical conceptual tools for film analysis, and furthermore for any sort of social or communicative phenomenon. This is mainly done through Robert Bresson's and Guy Debord's filmic works, as well as their theoretical writings, for the most part the "Notes on Cinematography" of the first and "The Society of the Spectacle" of the second.


The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part develops a parallel analysis of Bresson and Debord contributions, from the three-step analysis structure of Paul Schrader's "transcendental style". Notions of everyday life, disparity, and ecstasy, are here equated to those of everyday life, separation and unification, central in Debord. This triads also refer to three areas of study involving subjectivity, objectivity and unification, each with its respective problematics. The first part involves subsequently definition of a new phenomenology, so-called unitary style, and a new category of analysis, arising from taking into account not only patterns of filmic writing, but also interlocutor's behavior and conditions of dialogue.

The second part of the thesis carefully analyzes theoretical and practical contributions of main examples of cinematographic situations. The first two blocks, on Debord and Bresson, are developed from parallelisms in bio-filmographies, notions of cinema and art, and filmic-research careers. This approach, rather descriptive than analytical, results into three precepts that in both cases lead form-content of contributions: renounce cinematic spectacle, transform by editing-détournement, integrate into cinematographic situations. At the end of these two blocks dedicated to Debord and Bresson, a summary chapter provides transition to a third block, devoted to "Cinema 68". Even though the phenomenology and proposals of this third case are schematically rather than deeply reviewed, the cluster of films and filmmakers here presented serves to connect the two authors studied above with their social and filmic context. This gaze at a very specific social and cinematographic context, very present in Bresson's and Debord's everyday and filmic activity, is eventually used to highlight tangencies and echoes in French cinematography, not only of their time but of all times.