European Art Cinema

John White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317572053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

European art cinema includes some of the most famous films in cinema history. It is elite filmmaking that stands in direct opposition to popular cinema; and yet, it also has an intimate relationship with Hollywood.

This guidebook sketches successive phases of art cinema in Europe from its early beginnings of putting Shakespeare's plays on the screen, through movements such as Expressionism and Surrealism, to the New Waves of the 1960s and more recent incarnations like Dogme 95. Using film examples, John White examines basic critical approaches to art cinema such as semiotics and auteur theory, as well as addressing recurring themes and ideas such as existentialism and Christian belief. The different levels of political commitment and social criticism, which appear in many of these films, are also discussed.

The book includes case studies of eight representative films:

• The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1920)

• Earth (Dovzhenko, 1930)

• A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)

• Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959)

• Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)

• Comrades (Douglas, 1986)

• Le Quattro Volte (Frammartino, 2010)

• Silence (Collins, 2012).

1

INTRODUCTION

There was a period around the 1970s when the term ‘European art cinema’ was generally understood to refer to the films of a pretty definite group of Continental filmmaking auteurs working at the time. In his essay, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Practice’, published at the end of that decade, David Bordwell argued that you could consider this body of work, what he called ‘the “art cinema”’,

as a distinct mode of film practice, possessing a definite historical existence, a set of formal conventions, and implicit viewing procedures.

(1979, 56)

The aim of this book is to consider the same term, ‘European art cinema’, but within a much wider historical context, to argue in fact that there has always been in some guise or other the very definite presence within European cinema of filmmakers who have seen their work as offering, or whose work has been seen by others to offer, an enhanced artistic experience when set against mainstream cinema of the time. The exact relationship of these various ‘art cinemas’ to mainstream cinema has been defined differently by different groups of filmmakers at different historical moments according to their agreed and, just as often argued over, aims.

Much of what will be considered as ‘European art cinema’, in addition to being part of a somewhat vague catch-all grouping, could perfectly justifiably be seen as elitist and complicit in a rather Eurocentric perspective on cinema. Even so, it remains the case that awareness of the body of work seen to fall beneath the umbrella concept employed here is important to anyone who may wish to study film. So, while it does not seek to underplay any negative features of the term, this book, nevertheless, argues for the importance of having an awareness of ‘art cinema’ made in Europe over the past 100 years or so. Failing to explore the concept of ‘art cinema’, and the body of work that has in various senses been seen as ‘art cinema’, denies us the opportunity of engaging with some of the most profound insights and challenging questions raised by film texts.

Following Bordwell’s approach to art cinema of the 1970s, given above, Janet Staiger has argued that both ‘independent’ cinema and mainstream Hollywood have:

•a definite historical existence

•a set of conventions

•implicit viewing procedures.

(2013, 22)

This book will consider the films under discussion here in relation to this same tripartite perspective. Staiger, we should note, is not under any illusion that some simple ideological split exists between the two forms of cinema she is discussing. Both independent films and Hollywood movies, she says:

exude fairly conservative ideologies as well as occasionally progressive ones. An alternative film practice, as with art cinema, does not guarantee better representation of women, or minorities, or social justice. In fact, often indie films reinforce sexism and racism, and revel in elitist viewing practices for the initiated cinephile.

(2013, 25)

Again, this is a line of argument that should be seen as underpinning everything found in this book.

Much of the historical record currently on offer dealing with the development of film in Europe depends on a conceptualization of European cinema as an ‘art cinema’ that came and went as a succession of cultural waves throughout the twentieth century. This may be a questionable historical record that can be interrogated on various levels, but it is the ideologically in-place history and needs to be understood as such before it can be questioned. The ‘waves’ highlighted in this historical record are usually each seen in relation to the production of a body of related work made in a specific time and place but may, on occasion, also be viewed as related to the exhibition and promotion of particular bodies of work. So, for example, a range of significant films in the late 1950s and early 1960s that challenged what had gone before are undeniably linked to a group of filmmakers connected to the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma based in Paris. Equally, various bodies of ‘cutting edge’ European film work need to be seen from an Anglocentric perspective as linked to the founding of the Film Society in London in 1925. This was the organization that ensured works such as Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1928) from the Soviet Union were shown in a conservative, class-structured Britain. Of course, within both of these particular contexts – Cahiers du Cinéma in Paris and the elite intellectual club of the original Film Society – we might see the making, screening and promotion of films as existing (and being contained) within very ‘safe’ middle-class enclaves.

It is not possible to study filmmaking in Europe, nor assess received cinema history, without investigating the ascribed ‘art’ dimension given to much European film. As part of this enquiry we should expect to question both the validity and the usefulness of the term ‘art cinema’. However, we should also expect to acquire an enhanced understanding of the insights that critical analysis of ‘art cinema’ can continue to offer. It is possible to be too keen to reject any use of the term ‘art’ as elitist and divorced from the mainstream experiences of making and watching film. In order to reject anything it is important to know what you are rejecting. It is also possible that, unless care is taken, that which is rejected may be something that actually carries useful understandings of the human condition that can be, and should be, developed and carried forward. When preparing their book, Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover found that:

The sense of art cinema as elitist and conservative remains in such force that many scholars to whom we spoke about this volume responded with perplexity that we would endorse such a retrograde category.

(2010, 5)

Galt and Schoonover, however, felt that the category continued to be useful in helping to define a certain area of ‘cultural, economic and aesthetic meaning’ (5).

The working hypothesis here will be the suggestion that it is possible to view ‘art cinema’ as a genre, seeing it as ‘art film’ produced specifically for cinema exhibition. One element of this approach will be to interpret this type of film in relation to various concepts of ‘art’; and this will involve some exploration of the use of the term ‘art’ within Western cultural history. At the same time, these films will be categorized as strongly related to, but distinct from, ‘art film’ made to be exhibited in a gallery space or constructed as installation art. Here our interest is with film which manages to continue to find a niche within the arena of cinema exhibition. This is, therefore, film which depends on the commercial market but has an ambiguous relationship with the concept of being seen as ‘commercial’. Part of its definition of itself is to see itself as eschewing popularity, the mass market, and, therefore, a mass audience. Its self-proclaimed aim is usually to achieve something over and above entertainment, and its proponents tend to view themselves as driven by something beyond the desire to ‘turn a profit’.

This book will consider the term ‘art cinema’ solely in relation to European films. It would be fair to say that the implication here is that ‘art cinema’ has been predominantly defined by, and critically evaluated in relation to, ‘European art cinema’. Whether this elevation of European film has validity and can be sustained, either historically or within a contemporary context, should be carefully considered by the reader. Beyond this, the introduction of such a geographical space brings additional difficulties. Put simply, what do we mean by ‘Europe’? How are we to define this spatially, politically and culturally shape-shifting space? Certainly, in a book of this size it will be impossible to do justice to the full extent of the body of work we might, like a Victorian taxonomist, classify beneath the overarching term of ‘European art cinema’. All that can be hoped is that an introduction to some of the key parameters can be put in place and that the reader will be able to apply these structures of thought to further films.

Following a short introductory chapter, Chapter 2 briefly considers how we might map out the problematic parameters of European art cinema. Chapter 3 then offers a historical overview of the development of European art cinema, which the reader should understand as a version of a history that could be re-evaluated in many ways and from many alternative perspectives. Chapter 4 considers two important theoretical approaches to art cinema. Chapter 5 investigates some key themes found in European art cinema. Chapter 6 looks at the socio-political outlook of certain European art films. Chapter 7 briefly reviews experimental filmmaking within European art cinema. Chapter 8 offers some reflection on European art cinema in relation to Hollywood. Chapter 9 considers eight short case studies, before Chapter 10 gives a few concluding thoughts.

2

OUTLINING THE THEORETICAL LANDSCAPE

DEFINING ‘ART’

The whole notion of ‘art cinema’ as some different and distinctive realm of film should be seen as highly contentious. Necessarily, the implication is that some works made for cinema do not attain the status of ‘art’ while others do; that, while some filmmakers manage to elevate their work to the level of ‘art’, others merely ‘craft’ products that, while they may be perfectly functional, fail to move beyond this level of serviceability. Such distinctions between ‘art’ and ‘craft’ depend on ‘a notion of aesthetic experience that sharply distinguishes between practical, physical activities on the one hand and contemplative ones on the other’ (Markowitz 1994, 69). Applying the term ‘normative dualism’ (Jaggar 1983, 27–47), Sally J. Markowitz argues in our society ‘we not only distinguish the mental from the physical but we value things mental over things physical’ (1994, 68). She contends this dualism ‘has a powerful effect on how most Westerners view the world’ and ‘is so well entrenched (in our culture) that we take its validity – and its innocence – for granted’ (68). Markowitz suggests the work of ‘marginalized groups’ is often seen as ‘craft’ rather than ‘art’ but says there is more to this culturally ingrained distinction than simply the fact that ‘art’ tends to be made by upper-class white men. We do need to find ‘the lost or misclassified artworks of women and non-Western peoples’ and appreciate more fully ‘the (different) values of craft traditions’ (67), she argues, but this is not enough. Beyond this, we should ask what is behind our tendency to value the sorts of qualities we take art to have; a tendency, she says, which occurs alongside an ‘enshrining’ of ‘the act of interpretation’ (68).

Jean Renoir would presumably have had no truck with this sort of debate. In My Life and My Films, he said:

You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to be called art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix … The pastry-cook who makes a good cake is an artist. The ploughman with an old-fashioned plough creates a work of art when he ploughs a furrow.

(1974, 99)

The obvious questions, of course, are what constitutes a ‘good’ cake and what if the furrow is all over the place? To which there are a range of responses, such as: the quality of a cake is determined not by any immutable culinary laws but by the thinking of the person consuming it, and, has the furrow been deliberately created in a non-conventional way and does this deliberation, or the contemplative act behind its construction, elevate it to the status of work of art. All of which, probably, only takes us back to Markowitz’s dilemma of why we in the West might value such deliberative thought, whether relating to the creation of the object or the interpretation of the meaning seen to reside within the object. Those who see themselves as artists might at this point question what is meant by a ‘deliberative thought’ that results in a ‘deliberative act’ of creating a non-linear furrow. While they might agree a lot of contemplation goes on during the creative process they might be far from happy with the notion of this as a deliberate, calculated, rational pattern of thought and might be more likely to view creative acts as of much less certain origin.¹

Earlier in his book, Renoir does not seem to have been thinking about cakes and furrows when he offers a much more elevated definition of art, suggesting that:

A work of art is only worthy of the name if it offers the beholder the chance of uniting with the creator. To gaze at The Raft of the Medusa is like having a conversation with Géricault.²

(1974, 55)

How we define ‘art’ is intensely problematic, as is, by extension, the definition of ‘art cinema’. A person could use the term ‘art’ in a closed and exclusive fashion at one moment and then shortly afterwards employ apparently the same term in an open and inclusive manner.

Frequently, art is associated with beauty, but that does not help much because it just means we have to define ‘beauty’. Often, art is associated with creativity, but that does not help because it...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Outlining the theoretical landscape
• 3 A brief historical overview of European art cinema
• 4 Key critical approaches to European art cinema
• 5 Key thematic approaches to European art cinema
• 6 Political aspects of European art cinema
• 7 European art cinema and experimental film
• 8 European art cinema and Hollywood
• 9 Case studies
• 10 Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Suggestions for further reading
• Index