Message from discussion
how come we still talk primarily about directors?
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From: missguy...@hotmail.com (miss guydid)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films,alt.movies,rec.arts.movies.current-films,alt.cult-movies
Subject: Re: how come we still talk primarily about directors?
Date: 12 Jun 2004 13:38:28 -0700
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Chris Collins <raisinja...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<BCF04EA6.8241%raisinjack9@earthlink.net>...
> In article 7b98c3ee.0406101718.7e268...@posting.google.com, choral reef at
> symphonic...@hotmail.com stated:
>
> > some people are more partial to 'auteur theory' than others. some
> > reject it passionately.
> > yet, all of us still talk of the director as being the primary
> > artistic force behind movies.
>
>
> The Cahiers crew succeeded in imprinting it on the popular imagination. Or
> rather the media that has replaced it.
>
> What the auteur theory came out of was the sense that film was a processed,
> impersonal medium with a contrived, stagey air of unreality about it.
> Imagine the studio system as a conveyor belt, each movie emerging with
> 'product' stamped on it. What it had in glamour and accessibility and
> shorthand realism, it lacked in psychological purity. So, they sniffed out
> what struck them as psychologically pure and canonized it.
>
actually, it's the opposite. when cahier crew came up with the theory,
there were plenty of film artists around, like bergman, mizoguchi,
renoir, satyajit ray, etc.
the cahier crew made the then-outrageous argument that many of those
conveyer belt movies that came out of hollywood were indeed works of
auteurs.
> The dream of Truffaut especially was to create a cinema as intensely
> personal, as pure, as the novel. As a form, at its best, the novel gives you
> a sense of the internal life of the writer to the point of becoming a
> controlled psychic exorcism with all of his experiences, fears, and desires
> gushing out, usually between the words. It can feel like the writer is
> sitting in a room and directly addressing you, offering universal truths
> without being didactic, and we revere writers who can reach that level. Why
> can't a movie be the same? Must film be an irreparably schizo medium?
> What's between the words in Hitchcock?
i don't think so. that would have closer to what resnais was aiming
it. or bergman. truffaut wanted film as an artistic outlet; he was
enamoured with the filmMAKING. he wanted to be liberated thru film,
for his personality to merge with the rest of the world. he grew up a
lonely kid hungry for attention and film was his means to connect. he
didn't so much want to draw people into his world as draw himself out
into the larger world. 'love on the run' is where personal has become
totally public: not just truffaut but his movies about himself and his
thoughts about his movies about himself.
>
> At least that's the impression that I get from 'The 400 Blows.' I think
> Truffaut may have said as much somewhere.
this is his first, cautious, thoughtful movie. as it was largely
about his childhood, it tended to be more personal than his later
films where he was more interested in the outward telling than in
self-exploration.
jules and jim is, foremost, personal FILMMAKING and only secondarily a
personal film.
>
> And you know how those Frenchies love their 'theories.'
with truffaut it was less theory than a hammer. it was godard and
rivette who were the real theoreticians. truffaut was essentially a
romantic and sentimentalist and he abandoned his theories in practice
as his career progressed. later, he just wanted to make normal, even
conventional, films. it was godard who got involved in the meaning of
cinema and dismantled it into i dunno what during his vertov yrs. and
rivette is a big mystery to me except secret defense and va savoir.
among the new wavers, truffaut eventually became the least auteurish.
he later insisted more on story and characterization than visual style
or personal expression unlike rohmer who stuck to his moral tale
format, godard with his intellectual antics, and rivette with his
incorrigible formalistic austerity.
>
> The problem is that film is made with a dark room full of people in mind
> (you all). Novels are conceived in terms of the reader, an individual (you).
> Film is experienced collectively, the novel personally. It's public rather
> than private speech, with about a dozen authors at that! And public speech,
> for better and worse, can never be as nakedly honest as private speech.
> People are always more guarded and self-conscious -- rhetorical -- speaking
> to a crowd, and a crowd has a psychology and set of responses all its own.
i disagree. it depends on the movie. i'm sure LOR fans experience it
collectively. but, i don't think anyone gives a damn who thinks what
in the next seat when watching stuff like faithless or mulholland
drive. and i never felt as alone as when i saw AI.
also, cinema offers a world so fully realized that you become totally
pulled into its reality. it becomes only you and the movie. in a
stage play, you're always aware of the fellow audiences and the
actors. watching tv, you are aware of the refrigerator in the other
room. when reading a book, you stop and go, maybe talk on the phone,
then return to the book, take a bite out of apple, scratch your crotch
and look for lice, go to the washroom, look out the window, talk to
family or friends. it's actually more collective than filmviewing
unless you're totally concentrated on the reading and few people are.
most read on buses or at the beach with scantily clad women around and
how much can you concentrate on words when there's a nice ass going
by?
but when you watch a movie, it's you and the movie. the movie takes
you far far away and you feel like you're in lala land. you forget the
world outside, you forget other people in the theatre. in fact, when
it's over, you feel kinda embarassed that it's just a movie and other
people experienced the same and are getting up and walking out and
going to the washroom and going wee and wee while another guy goes
into a toilet stall and starts flushing to drown out his fart. it's
when the movie ends and you walk to the car among other people that
you realize you're back in collective reality. movie takes you away
from the collective.
>
> The power of film is its mass hypnotic effect, somewhat like Hitler's
> speeches. It makes us feel part of something larger, and closer to the other
> people viewing. You're an emotional hostage. Because of that it's probably
> the most politically powerful medium: think of how much 20th century
> totalitarianism invested in it.
not really true. yes, film is powerful but its use by totalitarian
powers has been overestimated and its impact overrated.
russian people didn't like eisenstein and few people saw his films. a
film lecturer once told my class that the most popular filmmaker
during early soviet era was charlie chaplin. so despite lenin's
yakking about potential of cinema, it had little to do with bolshevik
seizure or maintenance of power.
same with hitler. triumph of the will came after hitler gained power
and he didn't rely on film to gain or hold power.
mao and his peasant army took china without cinema and cinema under
mao was mostly dull propaganda and had little to do with communist
hold on power.
ho chi minh and vietcong's resolve to spread communism in vietnam had
little to do with film. and taliban and khmer rouge banned film and tv
altogether.
in fact, film, despite or because of its power, is dangerous to
totalitarians because of its liberating power, like music.
totalitarians have been more eager to control film than use it.
in fact, the most devastating and farreaching use of film have been in
capitalist countries where it's all about personal freedom,
individualism, consumerism, feeding fantasies.
totalitarians feared cinema just as they feared rock music. i suppose
a totalitarian can order the creation of pro-commie or pro-fascist
rock band but what'd be the point, just as it's ridiculous when
rockers espouse radical dogmatism--the clash's maoism.
> (Television has the same hypnotic power, but stripped of cinema's positive
> attributes [mythological resonance, connectedness]. It has the same powers
> of persuasion, but numbs and isolates people beyond the possibility of
> trying to do anything about it.)
taliban didn't allow tv but i don't think afghanis were doing anything
about anything. under mao's china, less than 1% of the people owned
tv. yet, i don't think the average chinese was all that thoughtful or
conscientious about politics.
people want entertainment. they'll get it thru tv, gossiping on the
phone, playing cards, watching sports, going bowling.
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