STYLE --- An Introduction

One of the reasons Hou Hsiao-hsien has come to the attention of critics is his cinematic style which, in its systemicity and rigor, has few precedents in the history of cinema. At the same time, no one has brought his approach to filmmaking under close-analysis. While it's reckless to make such assertions, we will argue that Hou's style may be considered unique in the history of cinema. In this section we hope to describe this style with great specificity, for it is difficult to understand the power of his films without first grasping the nature of his approach to cinema and its relationship to thematic concerns. While there are elements of this style in all his films, in City of Sadness this style becomes inseparable from his representation of history.

Hou's style displays characteristics we may describe as self- restricting. This general orientation towards restraint and stylization is reminiscent of Ozu, so much so that one is tempted to borrow Bordwell's characterization of Ozu's work as an "unreasonable style," a comparison we deal with in another section. In Hou's case, the following self-restrictions have been imposed to some degree on all his films:

 

This sounds overly programmatic (a danger in any taxonomy). However, it should be emphasized that these characteristics are entirely interrelated, as the following elaboration will show. Moreover, Hou orchestrates these qualities in a such a rigorous manner that they lend themselves to as rigorous an analysis. These are legible characteristics and not dogmatic rules. At the same time, we hope to show that the rare occurrences of the staples of classical filmmaking (such as the shot- reverse shot) are crucially connected to larger issues of style, theme, and cultural codes.

All are equally important, so we've dispersed the analysis in a decentered structure. By pressing any of the items in the list in the following table of contents, the reader can navigate through the analysis in whatever direction seems interesting. If one plans to read this section selectively, we recommend browsing through the discussions of long shot, locking the camera/spectator into a single axis, and repetition. Other sections of the analysis are particularly dependent upon these aspects of his style.

Main Table of Contents

STYLE --- An Introduction