Visual Dramaturgy – from Caligari to Shutter Island

Stutterheim, Kerstin

Abstract

Visual dramaturgy has been an important aspect of storytelling since the beginning of cinema. David Bordwell, describing cinema as ‘providing successive pictorial displays’ (Bordwell 2006: 11) directs our focus onto the relevance of the visual level of film productions. In his book on Visual Style in Cinema, he reflects on ‘managing what the spectator sees’ (Bordwell 2006: 11) by discussing selected movies throughout the history of cinema. With his ‘middle-level theorie’, he discusses from the position of an educated spectator (Rost 2006: 9). Visual Dramaturgy though allows the author as well as the creative team to choose and plan elements of the story that lead to Visual Style. This concept was introduced by Sergei Eisenstein in 1929 (Eisenstein 2010; Eisenstein 2018), among others, although he explores methods and pattern of visual storytelling in earlier texts too (cf. Eisenstein 2006).1 Thus, the conceptualisation of perspective and style, of place, weather, light conditions, clothing etc. as impacting the narrative, is what we also call visual dramaturgy. Eisenstein adds to these aspects also elements of composition as relations of bright and dark, small and large, dominant and less remarkable. Visual Dramaturgy hence focusses on visual elements that supports or impact on the story, the development of the action, explicit or implicit. Thus, in the screenplay by applying visual dramaturgy an author can guide or inspire visual design, perspective and setting, cinematography and colour concept, set and costume design. Visual elements are fundamental to our everyday lives and play a crucial role in how we orient ourselves and understand the world around us, on the basis of which we can understand the world depicted. Visual Dramaturgy hence contributes to the course of the story and its arc of tension just as much as the spoken dialogues. The aesthetic quality of the visual narration adds implied meaning to the story told. (cf. Stutterheim 2019: 124) Thus, in this chapter, I will focus on a few aspects of visual dramaturgy, as perspective, visual counterpoint, style, usage of objects of and discuss these through a few selected film examples.

Citation

Stutterheim, K. (in press). Visual Dramaturgy – from Caligari to Shutter Island. In Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Screenplay Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing

• Deposit Date: Jan 28, 2025
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Screenplay Theory
• ISBN: 9781501394065
• Keywords: Visual Dramaturgy; Film; Narration; Storytelling; Aestetics; Cinema
• Publisher URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/
• Contract Date: Aug 22, 2023