The term Mannerism was set by the end of the Renaissance, in the 16th. Later it has been used by the Italian painters who stressed on the idea of form and technical skill. Because of its continuous stressing on form and technique, Mannerism has assume...
The term Mannerism was set by the end of the Renaissance, in the 16th. Later it has been used by the Italian painters who stressed on the idea of form and technical skill. Because of its continuous stressing on form and technique, Mannerism has assumed by time a negative meaning. The term traces origin from the word ‘Maniera’ that means form or method and refers to some writers whose subjective style was based on the idea of imitation. Even though Mannerism refers just as an artistic movement, it influenced the latest generations of artists from the point of view of social and psychological changes.
In the 16th century the artists masters of Renaissance -Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raffaello- focusing on the concepts of harmony and balance, had reached the point of a complete style which put the artists of the next generations into a crisis of creation. Those new artists tried at that point to find their personal way of expression in the ‘form’ of things. They actually without a real reason, created a new artistic movement, giving through their works the idea of subjectivity, following the pre-existing methodologies. During the 20th century Mannerism influenced the cinema making as well. Even though cinema does not seem to have things in common with Mannerism because of the historical period, social changes, subjectivity of artists, it tried to understand and go through those differences finding in the Mannerism idea a useful instrument for making films.
Mannerism has been a film genre connected to the imitation of real things. While Mannerism, like in the pictures, is connected to the expression of conventional forms, the film genre imitating mechanically the reality cannot reach the point of evolution comparing to the past. The historical genre following the idea of ‘form’ assumed by the former generations, transforms itself into a subjective genre creating another kind of ‘form’. It is at this point of the research that Mannerism appears. Mannerism tries to overcome social changes, the audience experiences, film industry in order to bring those important points into a new change. New Film Noire, the French Noir by Jean-Pierre Melville, the Hong Kong Noir of the 80s by John Woo, the American Western, the Spaghetti Western by Sergio Leone, all these new film genres through distortion, exaggeration and reduction, represents the metamorphosis of the past generations.
The American Western genre just immediately before the War had reached the point of maturity of the classic genre and started to have contacts with Mannerism. From the second half of the 50s till the end of the 60s the Western genre overthrew the historical values and through a self awareness idea of ‘form’ influenced the 70s too with a new genre called Detective Film. The American Western Film Genre deals with the community problems and the metamorphosis of the characters. The protagonists of the first Western films under the objectives of ‘public security’ were fighting against the rascals of the society, becoming a sort of stereotype characters. The detective film <Dirty Harry> of the 70s is a typical example of an American Western were the protagonist fights against the evil of the society and be far apart from the first American Western films influenced the development of the genre in the future. At this point Mannerism becomes close with this film genre. The oppressions due to the attachment and emotions about the past brought the directors to use Manneristic theories while creating their movies, because of metamorphosis of main characters and distortion of stereotypes made up by an esthetic and formal structure.