Subjektivní objektivita ve filmu Máte doma lva?

Bc. Čeněk Folk, DiS.

Bachelor's thesis

Subjective objectivity in the movie Do you keep a lion at home?

Abstract:

Neoformalistická analýza snímku Máte doma lva?, který v roce 1963 natočil režisér Pavel Hobl jakožto svůj celovečerní debut.

Abstract:

The topic of my Bachelor thesis is a neoformalist analysis of the Czech movie Máte doma lva? (Do You Keep a Lion at Home?) which was shot in 1963 by the Czech director Pavel Hobl as his feature-length film debut. In terms of film genre we can assign this movie to children’s (or family) film, musical or modern fairytale. It’s an innovatory unconventional work, because Hobl combines various approaches to a film medium: the movie is a combination of feature film, documentary shots, different kinds of animation, black & white and color negative. My thesis consists of four chapters. The aim of the first chapter – Theoretical and Metodological Reflections – is to describe theoretical approaches to the film analysis which the whole work is based on and to clarify main terms which are used in the analysis. As for the approaches, the fundamental one is neoformalism, connected particularly with two names – David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Thompson defined the neoformalist approach as such and Bordwell determined four historical modes of film narration. The last cruical theoretical approach is total history, described by Barbara Klinger, working with synchronous and diachronic fields of film research. The second chapter – Context – summarizes the developement of the children’s film genre in Czechoslovakia, where this genre has a strong basements partly due to one of the oldest film festivals for children and youth, which takes place there, and partly due to the post-war policy of Czech film industry, which strongly focused on this field in the post-war era. The second chapter also contains short biographies of the main film crew members, the historical circumstances in which the movie was created and, last but not least, the film statistics such as its budget, time needed for production, number of viewers and countries to which the movie was exported. This data is also compared with other movies created in the same year. The main part of this thesis – the neoformalist analysis – is the base of the third chapter. At first the dominant of the movie is defined. The most dominant principle for the analysed movie is the presence of both subjective and objective realities next to each other which, as time passes, interconnect so that finally the viewer is not able to distinguish between them anymore. Two more sub-chapters conclude this part: the film narration analysis, which seeks to identify how the elements of the film narrative work together and what is their meaning, and finally the film style analysis which has basically the same aim as the previous part, but at the level of the film stylistic language. The final fourth chapter, called Reception of the Movie, is based mostly on an archive document that was created shortly after the film release. It’s a research of the children’s reception of the Máte doma lva? movie – how they understand the film structure and its means and what they like and dislike the most about the movie. The second sub-chapter consists of several reflections of film critics from the time the movie was released.

Keywords

Neoformalistická analýza, Máte doma lva?, Pavel Hobl

Language used: Czech

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 26. 8. 2014

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 2. 9. 2014
• Supervisor: Mgr. Lukáš Skupa, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Bachelor programme / field:
General Theory and History of Arts and Culture / Film and Audio-Visual Culture Studies