This paper analyzes the experimental characteristics and the esthetics of Greenaway's film, 〈The Draughtsman's Contract〉. Greenaway's film is generally known as a narrative cinema. But in this film there are characteristics of a 'structural-film',...
This paper analyzes the experimental characteristics and the esthetics of Greenaway's film, 〈The Draughtsman's Contract〉. Greenaway's film is generally known as a narrative cinema. But in this film there are characteristics of a 'structural-film', which denies the reality-illusion of a narrative cinema. Unlike the structural-film, Greenaway recognizes the reality-illusion as an essential and as an important characteristic of the movie-medium. First of all, Greenaway films unrelated shots of different times and different places. These shots are neither continuous nor unified. Secondly, he combines these discontinuous and non-unific shots in a technical, visual and aural dimension, so that the shots appear to be continuous and unified. Through his technique, Greenaway's films definitely take on characteristics of an experimental film. However, his film is categorically a narrative cinema because the viewers perceive his film as a narrative.
Also, his films are considered to be selfreflexivity-films. Films of this kind deal with problems of illusion and of the viewers' perception.