Week 5, February 5th Film Genres and Auteurs

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Week 5, February 5th Film Genres and Auteurs

• Readings Thompson Bordwell Chapter 19, Art
  Cinema and the Idea of Authorship pp. 381-402
• Supplementary reading Corrigan, Timothy, White,
  Patricia, with Meta Mazaj, Critical Visions in
  Film Theory Classical and Contemporary Readings
  Part 4 Auteurism Directors, Stars and Beyond
  Alexandre Astruc The Birth of a New Avant-Garde
  La Caméra- Stylo Andrew Sarris The Auteur
  theory Revisited
• Library Reserve. Hayward, Susan Gaze/Look
  pp149-152
• Screening The Third Man Carol Reed (1949) The
  Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman
• www.ingmarbergman.com/
• (1957) Peeping Tom Michael Powell (1960)
  Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock.

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Art Cinema/The Art Film
Post-war cinema witnessed the revival of film as
art and with it the idea of art cinema. Its
definition is quite general - mostly
differentiated from the crass commercialism of
Hollywood cinema. The Concept of art cinema is
distinct from artists cinema which implies a
relationship to the avant-garde (i.e. Kenneth
Anger, Maya Deren) and from the somewhat later
notion of the film maker/ director as an author
or auteur.
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Auteurship

• Auteur Originated in French film criticism
  published in Cahiers du Cinema of the 1950's
  Jacques Rivette and other critics and film makers
  writing for Cahiers Francois Truffaut, Eric
  Rohmer and Claude Chabrol sought to identify
  traces of individual director's style and
  techniques i.e. Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock
  and Nicholas Ray.

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Genre
Genre A generic category or type. The term
genre did not originate with cinema studies but
with the study of visual art and literature.
Genres as category distinctions can be traced
back to the differentiation between various forms
of cultural production which began with
Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle distinguished
between various literary forms lyric poetry,
theatre, comedy and assigned the highest place in
his cultural register to tragedy.
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Cannes c. 1950s
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Film Festivals
Venice Film Festival (began 1932) resumed in 1946
after cancellation from 1943-1945. Cannes Film
Festival in France began in 1946. these
subsequently became the model for many festivals
around the world large and small including our
very own Atlantic Film Festival.
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The Golden Lion Venice Film Festival
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Sophia Loren at the Venice Film Festval
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Important Examples of Art Cinema from the 1950s
Carol Reed (1906-1976) The Third Man Luis
Bunuel Los Olvidados (The Forgotten) titled The
Young and the Damned in the US won directors
prize at Cannes. Akiri Kurosawa Rashomon (1950)
Grand Prize winner, Venice 1951 and Academy Best
foreign language film. Luchino Vistconti Senso
(1954) Federico Fellini (b 1920) La Strada
(1954) Ingmar Bergman The Seventh Seal
(1957) Carl Th. Dreyer Ordet (1955)(The
Word) Sadjit Ray Aparajito (1956) (Apu
Trilogy) Jacques Tati M. Hulots Holiday
(1953) Andrzej Wajda (Kanal 1957) and (Ashes and
Diamonds) (1958) Robert Bresson (b 1907) Journal
d'un cure campagne (Diary of a Country Priest,
1950) Un condamne a mort s'est echappe (A Man
Escapes, 1956).  
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1950s

• The 1950's witnessed a new sense of
  internationalism and the emergence from the 1955
  SEATO conference in Bandang, Bangkok of a third
  world. 1950's also saw the beginning of film
  festivals around the world. This decade also
  witnesses the emergence of two film auteurs of
  the first rank Federico Fellini La Strada 1954
  and Ingmar Bergman (b.1918)

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• 1) After a hiatus of a decade, a revitalized
  Swedish film industry due in large measure to the
  work of Ingmar Bergman
• 2) The acknowledgement of a major international
  film director in Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) from
  India who directed Pather Panchali 1955,
  Aparajito 1956 (Apu Trilogy) Kachenjungha (1962)
• 3) late Western recognition of a Japanese
  tradition in film making - with the important
  work of several Japanese directors Akira
  Kurosawa "Rashomon" 1950, Kenji Mizoguchi
  (1898-1956) The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu and
  Yasujiro Ozu, Banshun (Late Spring 1949), and
  Toyko Monogatari (Tokyo Story 1953)

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• Other Bergman Films
• Thirst 1949
• Monika (1952)
• The Naked Night (1953)
• Wild Strawberries (1957)
• The Magician (1958)
• The Virgin Spring (1959)
• Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
• Winter Light (1962)
• The Silence (1962)
• Persona (1967)
• Hour of the Wolf (1968)
• Shame (1969)
• The Passion of Anna (1970)
• Cries and whispers (1972)
•  

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Ingmar Bergman (b.July 14th, 1918)
"For me a film's suggestiveness lies in a
combination of rhythm and faces, tensions and
relaxations of tension. For me, the lightning of
the image decides everything.."
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Bergman Biographical Notes Born Ernst Ingmar
Bergman in Uppsala, Sweden, 14 July 1918.
Education Palmgrens School, Stockholm, and
Stockholm University, 193840. Family Married
1) Else Fisher, 1943 (divorced 1945), one
daughter 2) Ellen Lundström, 1945 (divorced
1950), two sons, two daughters 3) Gun Grut,
1951, one son 4) Käbi Laretei, 1959 (separated
1965), one son 5) Ingrid von Rosen, 1971 (died
1995). Also one daughter by actress Liv Ullmann.
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Characteristics of Bergmans film productions
-   Same two cameramen   Stock company
(ensemble) of actors Max von Sydow, Gunnar
Bjornstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Ingrid Thulin, Harriet
Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Liv Uhlman.   Complex
interviewing of narratives, extensive use of
symbols for allegorical use.   In the later films
a deep sense of melancholy, brooding, dark heavy
psychological and religious dramas.
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• The Seventh Seal 1957
• Actors Max von Sydow (Antonius Blok), Gunnar
  Björnstrand (Jöns), Bibi Andersson (Mia), Bengt
  Ekerot (Death), Nils Poppe (Jof), Inga Gill
  (Lisa), Maud Hansson (Witch), Inga Landgré
  (Block's Wife), Gunnel Lindblom (Girl), Bertil
  Anderberg (Raval), Anders Ek (The Monk), Åke
  Fridell (Blacksmith Plog), Gunnar Olsson (Church
  Painter), Erik Strandmark (Jonas).
• Gerald Mast suggests "The key question about The
  Seventh Seal is whether it is a metaphysical
  allegory told in earthly terms or whether it is
  an earthly allegory told in metaphysical terms."
  (404)

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Narrative The Seventh Seal takes its title
from the Book of Revelation in the Bible. This
quote opens and ends the film And when he had
opened the seventh seal, there was silence in
heaven about the space of half an hour"
(Revelation 81). Antonius Blok Medieval knight
returns home from the crusades to find death
waiting for him on an isolated beach. Playing for
time Blok challenges Death personified, to a game
of chess to discover the value of living. At the
end Blok loses but not before having discovered
the value of life by saving a young family of
simple peasants Joseph and Mary and their baby.
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Themes

• Central opposition which is key to many of B's
  films the struggle between the ways of life and
  the forces of death.. The church - that is
  institutionalized religion becomes associated
  with death i.e. the Crusades

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The Dance of Death

• The Triumph of death Pieter Breugel the Elder 1562

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The Dance of Death (1493) Michael WolgemutLiber
chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel
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Official Ingmar Bergman Website
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Carol Reed (1906-1976) The Third Man (1949)
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film noir / art film

• Co-produced by Hungarian-born Alexander Korda
  and American movie mogul David O. Selznick.
  Directed by Carol Reed
• Cast Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles,
  and Trevor Howard. T
• Screenplay Graham Greene, later becoming his
  novella of the same name.
• Score Anton Karas wrote the score, which used
  only the zither its title cut topped the
  international music charts in 1950.

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A visually-stylish thriller

• - a paranoid story of social, economic, and
  moral corruption in a depressed, rotting and
  crumbling, 20th century Vienna following World
  War II. The striking film-noirish, shadowy
  thriller was filmed expressionistically within
  the decadent, shattered and poisoned city that
  has been sector-divided along geo-political
  lines. Tom Dirks

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http//www.thethirdman.net/pages/derdrittemann.htm
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