Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design

by Yvette Biro

Little attention has been paid to the temporal aspect of filmmaking. Turbulence and Flow in Film describes how pace and rhythm create meaning and how film gains its fullness through the flow of images and the speed or slowness of the dramatic action. It demonstrates that the quick or restrained breathing of the sequences is not a secondary element but rather provides the spirit and ambiance of the work.

Yvette Biro thoroughly analyzes this overlooked subject, examining various methods of temporal articulation. Relying on the richness of both classical and contemporary cinema, the author revisits the great masters such as Bresson, Ozu, Tarkovsky, Bergman, and Antonioni, as well as the directors of the Nouvelle Vague. In addition to discovering the new contributions of Asian cinema, she also discusses newcomers, including Jarmusch, Kaurismaki, and Kiarostami.

Genres: Film

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2008

Reviews

[Tim R]

I found this theoretical/critical work to be a difficult read. Two main problems:

Bíro’s language is metaphorical in ways that obscure her meaning. Two ideas “vibrate” — together? Against each other? I don’t know. Elsewhere she claims such-and-such is what gives human life its pulsating dimension. I just don’t know what these words in these combinations mean. You feel that this must be translated from Hungarian or something — which it is.

Second issue is that most of the films she writes about are international art films of the 1980s and 1990s, a category I’m not super familiar with. I admit this may be a problem with me and not the book, but readers like me will feel the age of this 2008 book as the examples within it have lost some relevance.

That being said, there were some really interesting insights about temporality in film scattered throughout the book. I didn’t want to miss them, so rather than giving up I skimmed the book hunting for goodies. I saved a few of them. One interesting idea is that, just as speed is a measure of both distance and time, the experience of a film’s duration depends not only on time elapsed but also on the density of content within that time. A minute may be interminable, two hours may fly by, depending on what fills it (or doesn’t fill it!).

[Steen Ledet]

If one must deal with narrative, certainly Biro’s emphasis on rhythm is one of the better approaches. Insightful book on how narrative is woven from cinematic materials and the significance of the emergent rhythm. One of her final paragraphs expresses her insights better than anything I can say:

“The essence of film drama is not the employment of some mechanistic structure but a complex, heterogeneous, shifting structure that attempts to track the complexities of the human experience.”