h do not follow Jean Louis Beaudry’s principles of dreams and film. One specific genre stands out in this way and that is the art film. The art film brings deviations from the norm into the foreground and highlights gaps and problems. This creates a feeling of realism and distances the audience from the effects of classical cinema. That is, classical cinema as I have described earlier has the almost hypnotic ability, created by the cinematic setting, “wish fulfillment” and “temporal regression”, to put the audience in a dream like state which makes the use of imagery multiply more effective. Art film calls attention to this process and as a result negates the effect. David Bordwell describes the art cinema as:The art cinema is less concerned with action then reaction; it is a cinema of psychological effects in search of their causes.Art film calls attention to imagery and cinematic devices which lessens the effect of these on the viewer, but the auteurs of such films do this purposely so they may convey there unique message in a different way.Ingmar Bergman’s film, Persona, brings attention to the fictional nature of film through the boy at the beginning who starts to read a book then looks up to a woman’s face and touches the screen it is projected on. Bergman also calls attention to the fact that the audience is watching a film and the actions are not real through the images of the mechanics of a projector at the beginning and the end of the film.Ingmar Bergman uses all sorts of devices to distance us from the story he tells in Persona. But we are still drawn in, mystified and then horrified at this tale of emotional possession told as if it were a dream. The narrative proceeds so calmly and the mood seems so tranquil that it is hard for us to recognize that we are watching what amounts to a vampire taking her victim. He primes us from the beginning to pay attention to his pictures by ...
