Lesson 12: Film Authorship

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Lesson 12Film Authorship

• Professor Aaron Baker

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Previous Lecture

• What is Genre?
• Genre History
• Social Functions of Genre Films
• Genre and Out of Sight (1998)

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Todays Lecture

• Central Ideas, the History of Film Authorship
• Filmmaker Mira Nair
• The Namesake (2006)

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Part I Central Ideas and The History of Film
Authorship
John Ford
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Auteurism

• Auteur Author
• Post WW II French Cultural Formation
• -Magazines, Festivals,
• The Cinemateque,
• Cine Clubs
• Existentialism
• -Holocaust/Absurd World
• -Individual Recreates It

HENRI LANGLOIS, CO-FOUNDER OF CINEMATHEQUE
FRANÇAISE in Paris in 1936, the worlds first
film archive.
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Andre Bazin

• Individual Must Create Own Meaning in Absurd
  World
• The centrality of the activity of the subject
• Film Director as Auteur (Creative Subject)

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Film Can Be Art

• Alexander Astruc
• French Director, Critic
• Camera Stylo (Pen)
• Filmmaker Like Writer
• Films Like Novels, Poems, Plays

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Paris Film Critics

• Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard
• Reject French Cinema of Quality
• Too Literary, Elitist
• Prefer Hollywood Energy, Lack of Pretention

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Truffaut

• Essay, A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema
  1954
• French Cinema relies too much on literature,
  adaptation
• Film Authors, often write their dialogue and
  some of them themselves invent the stories they
  direct.

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Auteurist Critics Championed Cinema

• Rejected Snobbish, Elitist French Intellectuals
  Devaluing Movies as Just
• -Entertainment
• -For the Masses
• -Hollywood Mind Control

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Style and Themes

• Reveals Auteurs Personality (View of World)
• Stylistic and Thematic Patterns
• Subtext in Hollywood Films

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Hitchcock

• Hollywood Filmmaker with Auteur Subtext
• French Critics Rohmer and Chabrol
• -Hitchcocks transfer of guilt

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Stam

• Auteurism Combines
• Idea Romantic Artist (Individual, Outsider)
• Modernist Focus on Form, Style
• Post Modern Celebration of Popular Culture

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Norman Bates in Psycho, 1960

• Nice Young Man and Killer
• Hitchcock Asks Us To Identify with Him, His
  Voyeurism
• Transfer of Guilt. . . to Us.

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French Auteurist Critics and Filmmakers

• Ambivalence Toward
• Hollywood
• -Like Hollywood Energy, Lack Pretention
• -Dislike Its Obsession with Profits Over Art,
  Society

Jean Luc Godard and Brigette Bardot On the set of
Le Mepris (1963)
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Clip 1 Le Mepris (1963)

• Jean-Luc Godard
• Film About Filmmaking
• International Production
• American Producer (Jack
• Palance)
• German Director (Fritz Lang)
• French Writer, Actress (Michel Piccoli, Brigette
  Bardot)

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American Critic Andrew Sarris

• Brought French Auteurism to U.S.
• Notes on The Auteur Theory in 1962
• U.S. Films Best in World
• Great Hollywood Directors Transcend Studio System
• Pantheon

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Auteurism and Society

• The individual transcends society, but society
  is also . . . within him. So there can be no
  criticism of genius or talent which does not take
  into consideration the social determinism.
• --Bazin

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Talent and Context

• Most complete analysis recognizes,
• a directors individual talent, and
• the cultural and social environments in which
  s/he works.
• The concept of an author as a genius outside
  history, who possesses profound, universal
  insights, . . .is now . . . outdated (Lehman and
  Luhr, Thinking About Movies, p. 77).

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E.g. Spike Lee, Style and Race

• Lee has made films with a distinctive formal
  style, yet
• they have been influenced by ideas of race in the
  movie industry and within American society.

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Clip 2 from Do the Right Thing (1989)

• Story about Racial Conflict in Brooklyn
• Direct Address, Wide Angle Lens Distorted
  Thinking About Other Racial Groups

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John Ford and Native Americans

• Stagecoach 1939
• Native Americans as Savages
• 1950s, 60s Civil Rights/New Ideas of Race in
  American Society
• Cheyenne Autumn 1964
• Shows Abuse of Native Americans by Whites

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Auteurism Main Assumptions

• Film can be art
• Involves the contributions of many people, but a
  skilled director shapes, selects, organizes them
• Analysis of film authorship starts with
• thematic concerns
• and
• formal style of the
• moviemaker.

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Form in Spielbergs Films

• He has excelled
• with special
• effects portrayal of
• the fantastic . . .

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Spielbergs Thematic Concerns

• with family dramas
• of divorce, single-
• parent homes, and
• the precarious
• formation of
• romantic couples.
• (Lehman and Luhr,
• p. 80).

Catch Me If You Can (2002)
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Summary Style, Theme and ContextAuthorship
analysis studies filmmakers careers with
definable thematic and formal concerns within
historically specific cultural and social
conditions. (Lehman and Luhr, p. 97).
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Part II The Films of Mira Nair
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Thematic Concerns

• Globalized World
• Indian Culture/Diaspora
• Equality for Women

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Career as Filmmaker

• Born in India in 1957
• Educated at Harvard
• Eight features, including--
• -Salaam Bombay! 88
• Nominated for Oscar
• -Monsoon Wedding 01
• -Vanity Fair 04
• -Amelia 09

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The Namesake (2006)

• Based on novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
• Pulitizer Prize Winner
• Indian Diasporic Identity

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Indian Disapora

• Traditional Indian Culture
• Arranged Marriage
• Immigration and Opportunity
• Calcutta to New York
• Ph. D. in Engineering

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Two Generations

• Bengali Parents Ashoke, Ashima
• Indian-American Children Gogol and Sonia
• 2nd Generation Rebellion
• American or Indian Identity?
• Focus on Both Generations

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Film Form and Global Identities

• Clip 3
• India/U.S.
• Contrasting
• -Colors
• -Landscape
• -Language
• -Music

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Successful Children

• Parents Immigration Offers Children Education
  and Career
• Ashoke to Ashima the options are limitless
• Gogol Yale, Architect
• Wealthy American Girlfriend, Maxine

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Father, Ashokes Death

• Gogol Realizes Value of Multiple Identities
• Language and Pluralism
• Again Colors and Cultural Difference
• Clip 4

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Moushumi and Music

• Bengali, American, French
• Selfish?
• Clip 5 Verdi, La Donna e mobile
• Music and Gogols Choice
• Pearl Jam, Once

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Music Also Defines Ashimas Choice

• Immigration and Sacrifice
• Ashimas Love for Classical Music
• Represents Her Choice to Return to India
• Bahri Music is of great significance in the
  film . . . the sound of rival cultures . . .
  generations in collision. 13

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Nairs Women

• About disasporic Indian women in Nairs films
• They are no longer content to fulfill
  dutifully their roles as custodians of tradition,
  these women might be said to betray a fragile
  social structure with their diversity of
  experiences and choices available to them.
• --Deepika Bahri

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Mississippi Masala, 1991

• Mina (Sarita Choudhury) Lives in Mississippi
  Where Indian Family Owns a Hotel
• Has Relationship with Demtrius (Denzel
  Washington)
• Family Wants Her to Marry an Indian

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Summary

• Film Authorship
• French Ideas of Auteurism
• -Film as Art
• -Director Unifies Film/Communicates Personality
  (World View)
• -Uses Style and Theme
• -Film Can Be Commercial and Meaningful

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Summary

• Mira Nair as Global Auteur
• Her Themes
• -Diasporic Indian Culture
• -Gender Roles
• Represented Through Mise-en-Scene (Color), Sound
  (Music), and Characters Choosing Hybrid
  Identities, Strong Women Resisting Traditional
  Roles
• The Namesake (2006)

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Jonathan Rosenbaum

• Foreign movies have important things to teach
  us . . . . Theyre proof positive that Americans
  arent the only human beings and that the
  decisions we make about how to live our lives
  arent the only options available. Movie Wars,
  page 108

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What We Learn from Nairs Films

• Hybridity of Identity in Global World ( Example
  of Indian Diaspora)
• Value of Tradition (Family, Music, Food)
• Value of Modernity
• -Wealth from Work (Immigrant Experience)
• -Right of Women to Have Same Choices as Men

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End of Lecture 12
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Next Lecture

• The Art Film