FILM 2700: HISTORY OF THE MOTION PICTURE
PROFESSOR SHELDON SCHIFFER
MAYMESTER VERSION
Office hours: 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM Daily
Office: 25 Park Place South – Room 1023
phone: 404-413-5623
email: schiffer@gsu.edu
http://schiffer.gsu.edu/wordpress/history
[Lecture 9]
Modernism in Motion: European and Asian
Cinema Define the Modernist Movement
Europe was devastated and the US loaned billions to rebuild it. The infrastructure for
cinema culture was greatly diminished, but the demand for entertainment was there
for the US to negotiate favorable terms with the Western allied countries for its
Hollywood products. But how would indigenous cinema culture survive and
rejuvenate under these conditions? And if so, would the happy endings and
unambiguous closures of Hollywood films satisfy the survivors of the WWII
apocalypse?
Economic Organization
In a (Post WWII Colonized) Europe
• US - International Marketing Agency
• The Motion Picture Export Association of America
(MPEAA) founded to insure US position for
Hollywood in foreign markets
• Argued that it was a rhetorical bulwark against
communist and fascist ideologies
• In reality, it was a means to force low domestic
quotas and liberal penetration of US product onto
foreign screens, for maximum ability to take
profits back out of the host country.
Historical Question 9.1
How did the post-War European nations resist
colonization of their film industries by Hollywood?
Economic Organization
In a (Post WWII Colonized) Europe
• All countries countered with measures to protect
domestic production
– Germany, the losing country, wrested liberal access to
Hollywood
– Italy, a loser, still setup laws to protect own screens–
Andreotti Law of 1949
– France and the UK, allied winners, created many
protectionist barriers
– Quotas on maximum number of American movies
– Quotas on maximum hours of screen time per week
or days per year of American movies
Economic Organization
In a (Post WWII Colonized) Europe
• All countries countered with measures to
protect domestic production
– Flat fee for each American imported film
– Frozen profits must remains within host country
– Direct support of domestic production with
government funded agencies
– Tax on movie ticket for all films to support
domestic production
– European countries created treaties with each
other for international co-productions
Historical Question 9.2
What new technologies and cultural institutions
assisted the European and developing world film
industries to produce indigenous and resist
Hollywood?
Technological Innovations in Response
to Destroyed Studios
• 35mm Handheld Reflex Cameras with
Interchangeable Magazine
– Germany’s Arriflex – Arriflex
– France’s Éclair Caméflex
Cultural Innovations to Create Cultural
Identity for European Content
• Film Festivals
– Venice (Italy),
– Cannes (France),
– Locarno (Switzerland),
– Karlovy Vary (Czech)
Historical Question 9.3
What aesthetic principle are oppositional to Classical
Hollywood?
What are the characteristics of Cinematic
Modernism?
[Hint: These answers overlap.]
Modernism in the Arts Defined
• The concept of modernism is born first from the plastic
and design arts. Modernism generally defined, refers to
the expressive qualities of an art form where its most
implicit material aspects bring the viewer/reader to a
reflexive awareness of the making of that work of art.
• Often stripped of all aspect that infiltrate from other
art forms, that which remains is the essence of the
modernist expression for that art form.
• For cinema, after WWII, modernism as an art
movement began to formulate itself in all places
outside Hollywood, and to a degree within Hollywood.
Cinematic Modernism
• Revelation of creative act and production process by author
• Abstraction of form down to most elemental characteristics
of the medium (movement, graphical shapes, photographic
trace)
• Moral and Factual ambiguity
• Fragmentation and discontinuity of time and space, or
presentation of literal real time
• Randomness
• Subjective POV
• Awareness and/or presentation of the unconscious in
character and/or authorial voice
In Opposition to Classical Hollywood
• Hides the production process
• Presentation of “objective” POV, hiding subjectivity
• Three act structure around a hero’s journey toward a
singular objective, with beginning, middle and end in that
order
• Narrative structure emphasizing cause and effect logic and
chronology (opposes randomness)
• Unambiguous moral and factual truths
• Idealized and “naturalized’ roles of family, gender, race,
ethnicity
• Integration of other art forms to the service of narrative
Modernisms as an Expression of
National Identity
• Aside from the economic distinctions of
European film conditions, filmmakers turned
again to European art movements.
• After WWII, the concept of Modernism, took
root, and in various national cinemas was
applied a mean to express what Hollywood
nor the genres that Hollywood had formalized,
could not.
Cinematic Modernism
That Expresses "Objectivity"
• Veracity through Objective Realism – presenting to the viewer the
unpleasant and uneventful aspects of modern life, or taking that which is
quite traumatic and presenting it with a de-dramatized artistic attitude
(less emotional or melodramatic)
• Long unbroken takes – provides the sense that ideas and feelings
accumulate in real time, characters and audience share the same stretch
of time to accumulate the experience, author is guiding viewer to see
what is important
• Randomness – allowing aspects of the filming or editing to be affected by
uncontrolled forces, such as weather, untrained non-actors, real locations
with real activities happening simultaneously
• Natural sound with detailed effects – including sound that is more
expressive of the environment, then the characters
Cinematic Modernism that Express
Subjectivity vis-á-vís Character
• Character Subjectivity through reflexive form – using
camera or editing where audience experiences the
psychological motives and states of characters through the
formal traces of the film medium
• Affected Acting Styles – halting or fragmented
action, abrupt or unmotivated shifts in character attitude,
less expository voice over
• Presentation of the unconscious through dreams,
memories, fantasies, hallucinations - often as unframed
scenes, and as realistic experiences, no less real than
“objectively” presented scenes
Cinematic Modernism that Express
Subjectivity vis-á-vís Character
• Spatially dissociative sound and image –
presenting cutaways not in the space of
characters just seen, creating disorientation and
de-anchoring of time and place for audience that
goes unresolved for some time
• Ambiguity moral and factual uncertainty of
character behavior, causal uncertainty to the
action on screen, uncertainty of character
intention,
Cinematic Modernism that Express
Subjectivity vis-á-vís Author
• Authorial Subjectivity through reflexive form – using
camera or editing where audience becomes aware of
the invasive hand of the author toward constructing
the experience,
• Jump cuts of picture and sound – creating
discontinuous action
• Spatially dissociative sound and image – presenting
cutaways not in the space of location just seen,
creating disorientation and de-anchoring of time and
place for audience that goes unresolved for some time
Cinematic Modernism that Express
Subjectivity vis-á-vís Author
• Authorial commentary – through camera movement,
editing, sound, music or any other cinematic means
• Ellipsis – allowing for missing parts for the audience
imagination to ponder and debate
• Ambiguity – morally uncertain judgment of character
behaviors, causal uncertainty to the behavior on
screen, uncertainty of authorial intention
Historical Question 9.4
For each non-American national cinema, what
aspects of cinematic Modernism does the national
cinema use?
Italian New-Realism
• Life in a war torn environment
• Critical attitudes toward Roman history
• Idealized myths in art were contradicted and
rejected by artists.
• Filmmakers sought to represent life as it
seemed, unsweetened by ideals, and using the
equipment available.
Italian New-Realism
• Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946), Roberto Rosellini –
events of war 1943-44, in Rome under Nazis and Italian
fascists as partisans resist and die, and in coutryside, as
Allied troops invade Italy
• Bicycle Thief (1948), Vittorio de Sica – Father and son
worker in seek of stolen bicycle needed for survival,
ultimately try to steal another
• Ossessione (1943), Luciano Visconti – banned during war by
Fascists, based on Postman Rings Twice story, drifter hooks
up with married woman and plot to murder husband
Post-War Attitudes Beyond Europe
• While Europe divided into Soviet-Aligned or
NATO-Aligned states, the rest of the world
faced off as proxy cites of ideological
orientation between these same powers
Other Neo-Realisms
As Post-War Attitudes
• Some nations were re-colonized through
forms of economic dependence.
• Raw materials could not be manufactured
unless through a developed First (NATO-US) or
Second (Sino-Soviet) state.
• Often, these countries were controlled by
puppet democracies or dictatorships where
the political class benefitted
Neo-Realism as Post-War Attitudes
• The artisanal filmmakers of each of the
countries below exchange and interpret their
realities through the aesthetics of modernism,
as largely expressed through the aesthetics
Neo-Realism roughly during the years
indicated:
Neo-Realism as Post-War Attitudes
• Italy (1945-58) Filmmakers: Rossellini, deSica Movement Name: Original
Neorealists
• France (1959) Filmmakers: Truffaut (some argue 400 Blows is more neorealist then new wave)
• Germany (1945-58) Filmmakers: Staudt, Lorre, Lang Movement Name:
Trümmeflm movement (Rubble film)
• Spain (1951-55) Filmmakers: Berlanga, BardemPoland (195060) Filmmakers: Wajda, Ford, Kalwerowicz Movement Name: Polish
School
Neo-Realism as Post-War Attitudes
• China (1945-60) Filmmakers: Fu Mei, Junli
• Brazil (1950-62) Filmmakers: dos Santos
• Cuba (1959-69) Filmmakers: Alea Movement Name: CineLiberación
• Japan (1950-60) Filmmakers Naruse, Mizoguchi and
Ozu Movement Name: Gendai-geki (films in contemporary
period) Movement Name: Shomin-geki (films of ordinary life)
Neo-Realism as Post-War Attitudes
• USSR (1953-58) Filmmakers Chukrai, Kaltazov, Eisenstein (last years of
life) Movement Name: Socialist Realism Liberalized (by de-Stalinized New
Humanism after Stalin's death)
• India (1953-77) Filmmakers: Dutt, Ghatak, Ray Movement Name: Parallel
Cinema
• Algeria/Italy (1966) Filmmakers: Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers)
• Argentina (1955-62) Filmmakers: Birri
• Mexico (1946-65) Filmmakers: Buñuel (neo-realist period), Fernandez