Nobody Waved Goodbye (Owen, 1964) and Le chat dans le sac (Groulx, 1964) are both canonized as “the beginning of a beginning” by Peter Harcourt. These two films were originally documentaries commissioned by the National Film Board (NFB) but made to be into feature films. In fact, they are considered to be the first real narrative films in Canada (Lecture 1). The reason they are “the beginning of the beginning” is because they reflect the different relationship of the French and English films to the documentary traditions of the NFB (Lecture 1) – essentially, the French versus the English tendencies of documentary film, and they are “distinguished representations of their respective cultures” (Harcourt 76). Nobody Waved Goodbye features the …show more content…
André Loiselle’s argument in ‘Subtly Subversive or Simply Stupid” is that the Quebec “stupid” film is politically subversive because of the films’ focus on humour rather than politics. Loiselle says “these films focus on the body primarily to avoid the affairs of the mind” (76), meaning the films are more interested in body humour than they are in politics, because the films are seen as an escape from social issues. Loiselle believes that this mirrors how the Quebec people are at the time: it’s “a symptom of the lack of genuine political commitment of a majority of Quebecers who prefer to wallow in their comfort and indifference rather than get involved,” (76). Essentially these body humours, sex comedies, etc., are just “subversion through laughter” (Loiselle 78). I do agree with the notion that Quebec “stupid’ films are politically subversive, and Les Boys (Saïa, 1997) is an example of this. In Les Boys, there is mention of politics, but that is really all it is, just a mention. One of the characters says “No wonder we don’t have a country” in reference to another who did not vote on, what I am assuming to be, the 1995 referendum. This is just dismissed as a joke, however, and this is the only direct mention of politics in the film. One could argue that the display of women in the film is a political statement in itself, but I agree with Loiselle’s reading that it is simply an objectification of women rather than a political statement
Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).
Greene, Naomi(1999) Landscapes of loss: The national Past of Postwar French cinema (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press)
Removing the sound from Melville’s Bob le flambeur might lead one to believe that he or she is watching a Hollywood film noir, circa 1950. Melville, though not professionally trained as a director, manages to create an oddly stirring and quirky French film shrouded in the sheer curtain of Hollywood film noir. Though he retains much of the Hollywood style, he also employs tools of his own—camera movement and voice-over—to embrace the film in Melville-vigilante-style.
For years Western scholars and novelists have been drawn to the story, yet until now there has been no documentary. Ric Burns's film is a first.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Hewitt, Leah D. “Salubrious Scandals/Effective Provocations: Identity Politics Surrounding Lacombe Lucien,” South Central Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, Cinema Engage: Activist Filmmaking in French and Francophone Contexts, John Hopkins University Press, (Autumn 2000), pp. 71-85
During the 1950's there was a social movement against the pornography industry in Canada. Religious and Feminist groups were concerned about the harmful effects regarding the danger and degradation of women. The opposition to this movement was that pornography was a freedom of expression and sexual orientation. This brought about many political debates and controversies about what is ethically right and what is a personal freedom. This created many problems for the Canadian government on how to legislate pornography and up hold the Common Rights of Canada.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
...first times, decidedly French topics and issues were addressed in film; Cléo’s stranger companion is a soldier in the Algerian War, a topic that had been repressed by the French government for years and was never talked about in media.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Sklar, Robert. Movie-made America: A Social History of American Movies. New York: Random House, 1975. Print.
In this article, Jones discusses the marginalization of motion pictures, yet touches on the great aspects of film, and how these aspects can expect to survive in the future. Major topics that Jones addresses are: developments in video narrative through flawless storytelling, the use of digital tools for film restoration and preservation, and an audience shift from film to digital. These points detail the love and appreciation that goes into filmmaking, and how the narratives, despite having changed formats throughout the years, have been able to survive and appear to be timeless. Jones also further discusses the idea of using audiovisual material to create narratives appealing. He details how the stylistic approach of a film, and the techniques like cinematography and editing, can enhance and provide for a greater narrative. In summary, the sum of the parts of a film are what make the entire experience, which not only makes for a great film, but for a lasting story as
Today, most movie goers categorize ‘silent films’ into one genre and discard the stark differences that make Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, The Great Train Robbery, and Broken Blossoms vastly dissimilar. In my opinion, these films clearly illustrate the evolution from silent film projection on a cafe wall to the birth of the hollywood that we know today. The profound contrast is most apparent in their stories, their performances, and the emotional response each film invokes. Collectively these films provide viewers with a clear perspective on how early film progressed from silent stills into what we call today, The Classical hollywood “silent” film era.
One of the integral things that must be addressed when making a film is the ethics involved. Ethics are a constant issue that have to be carefully considered when filmmaking. This difficult decision-making is highly prevalent in that of documentaries, because of the difficulties associated in filming ‘real people’ or “social actors, (Nichols, 2001).” More importantly, the issues faced by a filmmaker differ between each of the documentary modes. Each particular documentary mode poses different formal choices that must be made in order to operate in an ethical fashion. Two films that have been made both display examples of how ethics must be considered when embarking on a documentary are Etre at Avoir [To Be and to Have], (2001) and Capturing the Friedmans (2003). These films have been made in different documentary modes, highlighting that there is not one mode which is easier or has fewer ethical issues associated with it. Additionally, what must be considered is how these style choices in these different modes affect the power relationships between the filmmaker, the subject and its audience, (Nichols, 2001).
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.