Can someone name some formalist style films?

Question

that's all I really need. thanks and God bless you all. The more recent the better

Answer 1

A perfect example of formalist criticism of auteur style would be the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock primarily made thrillers, which, according to this the Cahiers du cinema crowd, were popular with the public but dismissed by the critics and the award ceremonies (though it should be noted that Hitchcock's Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 1940 Academy Awards, and though he never won the Oscar for directing, he was nominated five times in the category). Truffaut and his colleagues argued that Hitchcock had a style as distinct as that of Flaubert or Van Gogh: the virtuoso editing, the lyrical camera movements, the droll humour. He also had "Hitchcockian" themes: the wrong man falsely accused, violence erupting at the times it was least expected, the cool blonde. Now, Hitchcock is more or less universally lauded, his films dissected shot-by-shot, his work celebrated as being that of a master. And the study of this style, his variations, and obsessions all falls quite neatly under the umbrella of formalist film theory.

Answer 2

Examples of formalist films may include:

Sergei M. Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates (1968)
Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)
Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940)

Some good references are:
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n38botz-bornstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalist_film_theory