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.
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.
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.
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.
Cannes c. 1950’s
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.
The Golden Lion Venice Film Festival
Sophia Loren at the Venice Film Festval
Important Examples of Art Cinema from the
1950’s
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).
1950’s
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)
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)
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)
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.."
Bergman Biographical Notes:
Born: Ernst Ingmar Bergman in Uppsala, Sweden, 14
July 1918.
Education: Palmgrens School, Stockholm, and
Stockholm University, 1938–40.
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.
Characteristics of Bergman’s 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.
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)
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 8:1).
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.
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
The Dance of Death
The Triumph of death Pieter Breugel the Elder 1562
The Dance of Death (1493) Michael Wolgemut
Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel
Official Ingmar Bergman Website
Carol Reed (1906-1976) The Third Man
(1949)
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.
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
http://www.thethirdman.net/pages/derdrittemann.html