Art in cinematic narration : the interplay of pictorial texts in films

Abstract

This paper explores how filmmakers use painting and calligraphy/writing as prop and image, blending various styles of painting and calligraphy/writing to portray characters, create settings, depict sequences, frame narrative structures and convey meaning. This study will examine ideas about the artistic value of Chinese and English calligraphy, and their integration into cinematic images. Besides written texts, I also examine the ways that both Chinese and Western paintings are used creatively to advance the visual rhetoric and narrative strategies in cinema. I will focus on the compositional designs of cinematic images, their cultural implications and narrative elements such as setting, characterization, metaphor, hyperbole and irony. Susan Felleman in Art in Cinematic Imagination points out that a small but significant body of scholarly work in the past decade has discussed the use of non-cinematic visual arts, such as painting, in films (2). However, little work has been done on written words in cinematic images. This paper aims to expand the discussion about painting in cinema, as well as to the examination of written texts integrated into cinematic images.