Publication details
Poetika disonance : ideologický účin Krále Šumavy v pnutí mezi vyprávěním a stylem
| Title in English | Poetics of Dissonance : The Ideological Impact of King of Šumava based on the Tenson between Narrative and Style |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The chapter is at a formal analysis examining the structure of the interplay and effect of the different components of the film. The author considers King of Šumava both in the context of films produced in the 1950s and in the context of Kachyňa’s own work. He comes to the conclusion that the classic Czechoslovak propaganda films of the 1950s and also Kachyňa’s early films are characterised by a harmony between the narrative and stylistic systems, which allows for no doubt and pretends to be making a clear statement, but which violates the logic of narrative and destroys the credibility of the characters involved. By contrast, King of Šumava, although it contains similar motifs like the previous Kachyňa’s films, is characterised by an ambiguity in the message and dissonance between these systems. From the narrative perspective, the film appears at first sight to be a genre work focused on the composition and cohesion of the narrative and containing references to conventional genre features (gunfights with villains, a detective plot, a love affair, et cetera). However, the stylistic devices used by the filmmakers do not correspond to this classification. For example, the gunfights, for which the Classical form in genre film is a fast cross-cutting between all of the sides, are presented unconventionally in King of Šumava in long takes in which attention is often concentrated on a minor detail which diverts us from the focus of the action. Genre elements are thus played down at the expense of artistic features, often only playing a decorative role, and realistic ones, which undermine the fictional nature of the story and refer to the actual World. Thanks to this disharmonious combination of a genre narrative that is absorbing for the viewers and a self-conscious style, the film achieves an ingenious ideological effect of propaganda skillfully concealed in the guise of an artistically / seriously conceived genre film, which cleverly convinces the viewers of the truth of the position it adopts. |
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