WOMEN IN MOTION: Dance, Gesture and Spectacle in Film, 1900-1935 – by Elizabeth Ann Coffman (1995) PDF Download

 

WOMEN IN MOTION: Dance, Gesture and Spectacle in Film, 1900-1935 – by Elizabeth Ann Coffman (1995) PDF Download

Lillian Gish said once that she thought Dorothy Scarborough’s novel would make a perfect movie because “It was pure motion. “Victor Seastrom’s The Wind (1928) is also a perfect movie with which to develop a theory for reading gestural style in silent film because of the lack of much symbolic direction (there are very few intertitles) and the specific nature of Gish’s own performance style. The film opens with Lillian Gish’s character, Letty Mason, travelling on a train through a deserted Western landscape. Shots of Letty on the train are intercut with shots of the train in motion through the landscape. These shots of the landscape soon include indexical proof of the wind that whips up the desert sand, and deposits it in Letty’ s lap through the train window. Other shots within the interior of the train include glance/glance reverses between Letty and the male antagonist, Wirt Roddy. In a rather short period of time, Gish manages to portray a range of emotions that include nervousness, f lirtatiousness, and fear with only slight adjustments of her face and body.

Women in motion – dance, gesture, and spectacle in film, 1900- 1935DOWNLOAD

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