"My god, Michelle. It's taken me so long to come to you." (American Gigolo, 1980)
[...] The secret of transcendental style is that it can both prevent a runoff of superficial emotions (through everyday) and simultaneously sustain those same emotions (through disparity). The very detachment of emotion, whether in primitive art or Brecht, intensifies the potential emotional experience. ("Emotion cannot be projected without order and restraint.") And emotion will out. The trigger to that emotional release occurs during the final stage of disparity, decisive action, and it serves to freeze the emotional into expression, the disparity into stasis. [...]
[...] The decisive action is an incredible event within the ban structure. The prescript rules of everyday fall away; there is a blast of music, an overt symbol, and an open call for emotion. The act demands commitment by the viewer (the central character has already commited himself), and without commitment there can be no stasis. [...]
[...] In Pickpocket [the decisive action] it is Michel's imprisonment and his expression of love for Jeanne. [...] In the final scene, Michel, who has led the "free" life of crime, is now in jail. Jeanne comes to visit him in prison and he, in a tottally unexpected gesture, kisses her through the bars saying, "How long it has taken me to come to you." It is a "miraculous" event: the expression of love by an unfeeling man within an unfeeling environment, the transference of his passion for pickpocketing to Jeanne.
The decisive action forces the viewer into the confrontation with the Wholly Other he would normally avoid. He is faced with an explicably spiritual act within a cold environment, an act which now requests his participation and approval. Irony can no longer postpone his decision. It is a "miracle" which must be accepted or rejected. [...]
[...] Bresson calls this the moment of "transformation": "There must, at a certain moment, be a transformation; if not, there is no art." [...]
[...] This "transformation" does not resolve disparity, it accepts it. Disparity is the paradox of the spiritual existing within the physical, and it can not be "resolved" by any logic or human emotions. It must, as the decisive action makes inescapably clear, be accepted or rejected. If the viewer accepts the decisive action (and disparity), he accepts through his mental construct a view of life which encompass both. On screen this is represented by stasis. [...]
[...] Stasis is the quiescent, frozen, or hieratic scene which succeds the decisive action and closes the film. It is a still re-view of the external world intended to suggest the oneness of all things. [...]
[...] The secret of transcendental style is that it can both prevent a runoff of superficial emotions (through everyday) and simultaneously sustain those same emotions (through disparity). The very detachment of emotion, whether in primitive art or Brecht, intensifies the potential emotional experience. ("Emotion cannot be projected without order and restraint.") And emotion will out. The trigger to that emotional release occurs during the final stage of disparity, decisive action, and it serves to freeze the emotional into expression, the disparity into stasis. [...]
[...] The decisive action is an incredible event within the ban structure. The prescript rules of everyday fall away; there is a blast of music, an overt symbol, and an open call for emotion. The act demands commitment by the viewer (the central character has already commited himself), and without commitment there can be no stasis. [...]
[...] In Pickpocket [the decisive action] it is Michel's imprisonment and his expression of love for Jeanne. [...] In the final scene, Michel, who has led the "free" life of crime, is now in jail. Jeanne comes to visit him in prison and he, in a tottally unexpected gesture, kisses her through the bars saying, "How long it has taken me to come to you." It is a "miraculous" event: the expression of love by an unfeeling man within an unfeeling environment, the transference of his passion for pickpocketing to Jeanne.
The decisive action forces the viewer into the confrontation with the Wholly Other he would normally avoid. He is faced with an explicably spiritual act within a cold environment, an act which now requests his participation and approval. Irony can no longer postpone his decision. It is a "miracle" which must be accepted or rejected. [...]
[...] Bresson calls this the moment of "transformation": "There must, at a certain moment, be a transformation; if not, there is no art." [...]
[...] This "transformation" does not resolve disparity, it accepts it. Disparity is the paradox of the spiritual existing within the physical, and it can not be "resolved" by any logic or human emotions. It must, as the decisive action makes inescapably clear, be accepted or rejected. If the viewer accepts the decisive action (and disparity), he accepts through his mental construct a view of life which encompass both. On screen this is represented by stasis. [...]
[...] Stasis is the quiescent, frozen, or hieratic scene which succeds the decisive action and closes the film. It is a still re-view of the external world intended to suggest the oneness of all things. [...]
Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Da Capo Press, 1972.
