FS344American Film Since 69

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FS344American Film Since 69

• The Auteur

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Introduction

• Last Two Weeks
• Social influences on Renaissance
• Cultural revolution liberal politics
• This week
• The Artistic Influences on Renaissance
• Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave
• Authorship and Cinema
• Renaissance and the Auteur

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A few things first

• Film scene analysis
• Due Wed Oct 13 (Week 5)
• Presentations
• Thanks to our brave presenters from last week!
• Remember
• The write-up (10) is due the same day as you
  present (5)
• Must be a coherent paper based on what you
  present in-class so structured, organised,
  detailed and with a bibliography
• Research your topic your mission is to further
  the knowledge of the whole class beyond the
  lecture
• So make sure you come to the lecture that week
  and/or talk to me the week before about your topic

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Factors Birth of the Renaissance

• Social
• Increasing of
• anti-establishment films
• social commentary, directed at youth
• 80 of film-going pop between 16 and 25
• Major studios ignored
• The youth market
• Left to smaller studios like AIP
• Then success of 1967 and 1969 youth films
• Jump on the bandwagon

• Aesthetic
• Film school directors
• European Art Film
• Italian Neo-Realism
• French New Wave
• Auteur Theory

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Italian Neo-Realism

• A Viewers Guide to Film Theory and Criticism by
  Robert T. Eberwien
• "Neorealist films are characterized by
• a pronounced social consciousness on the part of
  their makers,
• a concern for the lower classes and their despair
  and squalor,
• and a stark realism of technique relying heavily
  on long takes and depth of field
• Flourished in the post World War II years
• Grounded in realism and documentary traditions
• Directors like Zavattini, De Sica, Rossellini,
  Visconti
• Films like
• Ossessione (Visconti 1942), Rome, Open City
  (Rossellini 1945), Bicycle Thieves (De Sica 1948)
• Whole movement 1942-1952

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Stylistics

• loose, episodic narratives that evolve
  organically
• documentary visual style
• real locations
• nonprofessional actors
• conversational speech
• simple style filmmaking
• natural lighting
• different film stocks
• dubbed in dialogue

• End of movement
• shift away from left wing politics
• greater prosperity
• Influenced other national cinemas
• French New Wave
• U.S. Renaissance

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French New Wave

• La Nouvelle Vague 1959-1964
• Group of French filmmakers
• François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude
  Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer
• Film critics for film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma
• Other wavesincluded Britains angry young men
• Most influential French New Wave
• Background in film theory/criticism
• They changed notions of filmmaking

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New Critical Attitude

• Cahiers criticised
• Cinema du papa glossy, formulaic, and
  studio-bound cinema of 1940s and 1950stradition
  of quality
• Praised
• French Poetic Realism of 1920s/30s Jean Renoir
• Italian neo-realist directors De Sica
• Even Hollywood Hitchcock, Howard Hawks
• Government subsidies 1950s for art
• Allowed them to put theory/ideas into practice
• Initial collaboration
• developed common use of form, style and narrative
• Philosophy
• Existentialism, Sartre, the individual
• young anti-heroes spontaneous immoral
  anti-authoritarian

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New Style

• New technology
• Hand-held cameras Faster film stocks
  Light-weight sound/lighting
• Experimentation improvisation
• Alternative to Hollywood consciously breaking w/
  convention
• Principles of the New Wave
• Cinema should bear the subtlety and
  expressiveness of novels
• Departure from the tyranny of narrative
• Reject heavy emphasis on plot, dialogue,
  literariness of studio films
• Reject montage in favour of mise-en-scene, long
  takes, deep focus
• Emphasis on emotional/psychological impact
• Cinema must express human thought
• Cinema must be truly cinematic
• Film is a medium of personal expression

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Innovative Style

• Semi-documentary style
• realism
• inexpensive, unpolished
• shaky handheld camera
• location shooting
• natural lighting
• Discontinuous editing
• jagged editing, jump cuts
• destruction of spatial, temporal continuity
• Irrelevant shots
• Long takes

• improvised dialogue
• dialogue overlap
• Monologues
• Voice-overs
• direct sound recording on portable tape machines
• Loose scenarios
• Open endings
• A Bout de Souffle
• Godard 1959
• Tirez sur le Pianist
• Truffaut 1960
• Les Cousins
• Chabrol 1959

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Film Authorship

• New Wave directors
• thought the director as the author of the film
  auteur
• The studio system model team
• European Art cinemas emphasis on director
• Astruc writes Cahiers article (1948)
• la caméra stylo director writer artist
• Francois Truffaut writes Cahiers article (1954)
• les politiques des auteurs
• Argued that the most interesting films were those
  that functioned as a medium of personal
  expression-
• They bore the distinctive imprint of their
  "author"
• The notion of the auteur based on certain
  assumptions
• The best films are the product of their director
• Film is an expression of the dirs individual
  personality
• There is thematic/stylistic consistency across a
  dirs films

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Auteur Theory

• Truffaut didnt mean it as a theory
• but as a politique (policy)
• a certain way to look at value films
• "There are no good and bad movies, only good and
  bad directors."
• Transformed into a theory by US critic Andrew
  Sarris
• a way of reading/appraising films through the
  imprint of auteur
• Truffaut et al at Cahiers
• recognized that moviemaking was an industrial
  process
• however, auteurism as an an ideal to strive for
• using the commercial apparatus just as a writer
  uses a pen
• they valued the work of those who neared the
  ideal
• Hitchcock, Welles, Hawks
• Auteur vs metteur en-scène

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Renaissance Auteurs

• Italian Neo-Realism French New Wave
• Both had an impact on the Renaissance
• New Style
• realism disruptive, non-continuous filmmaking
  
• New Artistry
• Auteur theory offered a new wave to recoup studio
  or commercial directors as artists
• Gave unprecedented power to new directors
• During the Renaissance in the late 60s and 70s
• Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg,
• De Palma, and Scorsese 

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Studio Film to Package

• In the 1950s,
• Studio System broke up
• Audiences disappearing
• Loss of income from theatres
• Bad investment
• permanent staff/depart
• Majors scaled down ops
• Hired out facilities to independent prods
• Independent prods became the rule rather than
  exception

• Productions put together
• on a film-by-film basis
• Assembled as a package
• Producer organizes script, stars, etc
• Then tries to get financing for it
• Selling the package
• directors name became important for financing
• the auteur

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Renaissance auteurs

• New gen of filmmakers
• Some young
• the movie brats in their 20s and 30s
• Some from film school
• Francis Ford Coppola)
• Some intellectuals
• Terrence Malick
• Many returned
• to traditions of classical studio genres

• But also older guys
• like Robert Altman and Woody Allen
• others from TV (Rafelson)
• Or film critics (Bogdanovitch)
• others counter-culture
• de Palma J. Carpenter
• Others tried making
• art films

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All informed by a movie consciousness an
intense awareness of film history its influence
of contemporary culture
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Recession Experimentation

• Studios not sure what people wanted
• sometimes stars were popular and led to series
• some mature films successful so theatres offered
  both G and M
• growing interest in foreign films so studios
  distribute them   
• Recession anyways so Hollywood more open
• to films that dwelled on mood, characterization,
  psych ambiguity
• loose narratives, flashy editing, realism, sparse
  dialogue
• play with character subjectivity, unclear
  temporal ordering
• popular music vs classical scores

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The Auteur in Hollywood

• Auteur
• personal signature on each film
• similar themes and stylistics across all films
• Success for the auteur was 1 of 2 paths
• To produce modest pictures that cost little but
  return a lot
• To produce mass-market mainstream films that
  return more
• Hollywood
• 1970s a directors cinema
• 1980s power back in hands of exec producers
• 2 reasons
• directors out of control brought an end to the
  freedom
• also the predominance of the blockbuster (Week 5)

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Auteur Post-Renaissance?

• Auteur?
• A big name still can guarantee an audience
• But they have less power than they did in the
  1970s
• Director does 1 or 2 commercial successes
• gives money/reputation to do more personal
  projects
• Directors who do retain power?
• producers
• executive producers
• own production company
• Failure Coppolas own studio (1980) Zoetrope
  Studios
• Success Spielberg with prod companies
• Amblin Entertainment DreamWorks

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Taxi Driver

• Directed by Martin Scorsese
• Released 1976
• Staring
• Robert DeNiro
• Jodie Foster
• Cybill Shepherd
• Harvey Keitel

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