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Themes and film techniques
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Probably the French New Wave’s most prominent international figure is Jean-Luc Godard, who could be described as a visionary of film both in France and abroad. Apart of his remarkable career as a screenwriter and director, Godard was first of all a highly esteemed critic of film. Being part of the Cahiers de Cinema as one of the magazine’s most celebrated contributing actors, he was praised for his experimentation with both the thematic and technical aspects of film production (Sterritt, 1999). The abounding literature on Godard is resulted from not only his prolific career but also from his intricate, ground breaking techniques and ideas that he promoted so devotedly. Only due to the prolificacy of his works, some sceptical critics who are not on the same wavelength and do not grasp his creation assert that there is a problem complaining about his work consisting of ‘too many images’, ‘just as the emperor in Amadeus complained of ‘too many notes’ in Mozart’s music’. Nevertheless, this eloquence originated from spontaneity and improvisation has been essential to Godard’s methods/style from the beginning and as explained by Sterritt, ‘the speed of his production is inseparable from its fecundity, variety, and complexity’. Perhaps one of the most …show more content…
The film had plenty of personality on its own to strike a genuinely original note in the cinema medium. Together with the other productions of the early New Wave, Truffaut’s Les 400 coups, Rivette’s Paris nous appartient, and Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes, Breathless had an eye-opening impact on directors from all over the world. As explained by Sterritt (2000 OUT), filmmakers from Hollywood and elsewhere, ‘scrambled to emulate its blend of photographis realism, stylistic exuberance, and performances perching on a razor-thin line between Brechtian self-consciousness and B-movie
Canadian filmmaker and cinephile, Guy Maddin once said, “I do feel a bit like Dracula in Winnipeg. I’m safe, but can travel abroad and suck up all sorts of ideas from other filmmakers… Then I can come back here and hoard these tropes and cinematic devices.” Here, Maddin addresses his filmmaking saying that he takes aspects from different film styles and appropriates them into his own work. In The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin uses a combination of French Surrealist filmmaking and classical American Hollywood cinema, specifically melodrama, to create his own style. In an article by William Beard, Steven Shaviro talks about Maddin’s filmmaking, and he links Surrealism and melodrama together saying, “Maddin’s films are driven by a tension between romantic excess [melodrama] on the one hand and absurdist humour [Surrealism] on the other.” In regards to The Saddest Music in the World, the relationship between Surrealism and melodrama is not one of tension, as Shaviro suggests, but one of cooperation. This paper will analyze two films by filmmakers Maddin was familiar with —Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the Surrealist side, and All That Heaven Allows (1955) by Douglas Sirk on the melodrama side—to showcase the important elements of each, concluding with an analysis of The Saddest Music in the World in conjunction with both film styles. Ultimately, it will be shown how Guy Maddin combines French Surrealist cinema and Hollywood melodrama in The Saddest Music in the World, to create his own unique film style.
In 1959- early 1960 five directors released debut feature length films that are widely regarded as heralding the start of the French nouvelle vague or French New Wave. Claude Chabrols Le Beau Serge (The Good Serge, 1959) and Les Cousins (The Cousins, 1959) were released, along with Francois Truffauts Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows, 1959), Jean-Luc Godards A bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960) and Alain Resnais Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima my love, 1959). These films were the beginning of a revolution in French cinema. In the following years these directors were to follow up their debuts, while other young directors made their first features, in fact between 1959-63 over 170 French directors made their debut films. These films were very different to anything French and American cinema had ever produced both in film style and film form and would change the shape of cinema to come for years. To understand how and why this nouvelle vague happened we must first look at the historical, social, economical and political aspects of France and the French film industry leading up to the onset of the nouvelle vague.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
An auteur is known to hold sole creative control over his or her movies. The director, who passes on foremost stylistic qualities that reoccur in their accumulation of work with fundamental subjects and traditions all through their filmography effectively embody auteurism. Essential surmise of auteurism is known that the director is the product of his own work, adding his own personal influence to his filmography with certain thematic consistencies. The title is immovably applicable to Martin Scorsese who began his filmmaking career in the midst of the New Hollywood
... movie stars like royalty or mythical gods and goddesses, viewing the drama between great archetypal characters in a personal psychic realm. By considering the statements made and their societal impact from a Marxist perspective, Benjamin’s method is highly effective, as it does not simply consider art in terms of pure aesthetics anymore, but considers art’s place in a society capable of mechanically reproducing and endlessly duplicating film, photography, and digital art. His qualm with losing the aura and mystique of an original work is negated by the cult of movie stars, the adoration of fame, the incorporation of soundtracks which embody a particular time period, cinematographic allusions, and time-capsule-like qualities of a film such as Basquiat, a 90s tribute to the 80s, produced both as a part of and resulting from the art movements and trends it addresses.
1959 was an exciting year in the history of filmmaking. An extraordinary conjunction of talent throughout the globe exists. In France, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, and Resnais all directed their first films, thus establishing the French New Wave. In Italy, Fellini created the elegant La Dolce Vita, and Antonioni gave us L’avventura. Most importantly, though, in America, famed British director Alfred Hitchcock gave us the classic thriller North by Northwest, the father of the modern action film.
This New Wave aesthetic solidified film as a mainstream artform, stressing that film was carefully crafted similarly to literature. Individual directors, or auteurs, were expected to “author” their films in much the same way that an author would write a novel. This auteur theory and its accompanying aesthetic became the backbone of the French New Wave and was what drove innovation. Breaking free from the screenwriter, producer, and studio driven systems of the past, and putting the creative power back in the hands of the director was seen as a crucial step in solving Cahiers’ perceived problems with French cinema before the movement.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
Research Proposal Historical Figure – Joseph Conard Sukhdeep Singh 3104126 Hist-1015-003. Prof. Andriy Zayarnyuk. Joseph Conard- “Polish-British Writer” Conard was a tight-lipped man, chary of showing emotions. His books were full of discipline, suspicion, irony and he was very sensitive.
Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, Jules and Jim adapted from the book with the same name, when projected today, can still generate an emotional effect that just as remarkable as the results provoked in the young viewers of 1960s. As a represent film of the French New Wave, Jules and Jim feels like a breath of fresh air injected into the French cinema in that era. Directed by the New Wave’s leading figure Francois Truffaut, Jules and Jim, against the conventional production known as the ‘tradition of quality’, used a free manner to launch an social experimentation, a creative revolution that has been forever recorded in the French film history. This essay will explore these innovative qualities contained in the film and the novel of Jules and Jim. It will firstly begin with the introduction of the revolutionary director Francois Truffaut and discuss his creativity in the film, then examine the French New Wave movement and its influence to the film of Jules and Jim.
Melody Yueying Chen Lending Emptiness The French is privileged to have their effortless chic and unique style, and nowhere is this better depict by the French New Wave films from the late 1950’s to the late 1960’s. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the greatest names in the history of film, was a pioneer of filmmaking back in the new wave era, and stay influential throughout the century.
Film has been one of the most influential forms of modern art. It has told beautiful and captivating stories and can reflect the mood and interests of a culture at any point in time. As people, governments and views change so does the art produced. French film has represented the ideas of the public over the decades.
With more freedom than Hollywood directors, the art film is meant to be read as “the work of an expressive individual.” This is much in line with Sarris’s notion that credits the auteur with overcoming “the gravitational pull of the mass of movies.” Without identifiable actors or genres, art cinema, like auteur analysis, causes the viewer to look for stylistic signatures in the narrative that are shaped by the authorial presence. Bordwell believes that “realism and authorial expressivity, then, will be the means whereby art film unifies itself.”
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
Andrew Sarris’ framework for being an auteur has requirements which include technical competence, having a distinguishable personality that appears in ones films as well as an interior meaning, which described as tension between the filmmakers personality and his/her work. Martin Scorsese, as applied to Sarris’ explanation can be studied as an auteur because of his immense technical know-how as well as his experience; Scorsese has a signature style which includes gritty, violent filmmaking, use of recurring actors and well placed music as well as showing his villains in a likeable way appears to be his interior meaning. For research I screened the films The Departed, GoodFellas, and Gangs of New York. In viewing his three films the elements