Realism

Mondays lesson was all about Poetic realism, we watched 'A day in the country' by Jean Reneor (the music is still stuck in my head) which showed us how french independent film varied from other French cinema of the time. 'A day in the country' was both beautiful to look at and interesting to watch, the middle-class family, father, mother, mother-in-law and daughter gave us, the audience something to relate to haven't we all had a holiday where our families have embarrass us? It reminded me of the TV series 'The Royal Family'. The elements of comedy from family conflicts were there but also (even in The Royal Family) a great sadness. Classing of class. In between humours scenes, in between the lines we know that the classes cannot mix in the society portrayed.
 In Thursday Lesson we looked at how Realism could be more grim, less poetic. Socialist realism came in 1932 from Russia, Eisenstiens 'The old and the new' is a story about how Machines take over mens jobs. Men are no longer needed in the fields. For some reason the men seem to be happy about this which tells me that this film isn't really realistic, but there are realism elements to the film, for instance the camera work of the men cutting the grass, the camera shows the pov of the scythe and then contrasting shots of the locust and the machine. It's beautiful the look at, the wind blowing on the grass makes it look like water and distracts from the reality that these men are going to loose their jobs. The problem with this film is that it had to be modified for the governments aproval, thus Eisenstiens vision's could be said to have been warped. In reality these men would not be smiling at the end of the film, in reality a machine probably wouldn't have taken their jobs. But this all adds up the making the film one of Socialist realism.
 After looking at Socialist realism we looked at Britain's influence on Realism in cinema, Social Realism is a strand of Realism that for me is easier to identify with, These films are gritty, real, films like 'This is England' where people talk how they would, real people are used, sometimes in the place of actors, theres a dark truth, things don't always end well.