Part of the whole “death of the newspaper” narrative arc (though not the current focus on Google as a supposedly evil aggregator, driven by the commercial interests of news corporations) is the purported death of the critic. Like so many other apocalyptic predictions, this one is no doubt premature, if not altogether wrong – although contemporary cost cutting in print does mean less film criticism and less well remunerated critics. But there’s no doubt that something has changed with the rise of the user review.
In a way, as with so many other developments in new media, the user review replicates an underlying social pattern which is re-emerging as the closed media circuits of modernity fracture. The economics of film, like that of publishing and music, is typical of a certain enduring characteristic of the culture industries – the uncertainty of demand. While the quantum of production is closely tied to the number of screens, the art of predicting which films will make money is a most uncertain one. As a rule of thumb, one film has to make enough to subsidise a larger number which will lose money – what John Howkins calls the nobody knows principle. Producers can try to minimise risk by churning out sequels or franchise films, but the basic rule holds – it’s much harder to say which movie will find an audience than how many red cars will be sold.
So “word of mouth” has always been something that film marketers rely on, and indeed try to foster. And in a way, that’s what user reviews are.
There’s also a broader social phenomenon at work here – a decline in trust for authority figures of all kinds. In a real way, this is a positive development – because it represents a democratisation of knowledge. Though it’s not without its costs.
It does mean that there’s no particular premium given to the opinion of someone who writes a film column in a newspaper or a magazine – unless that writer has the ability to speak to readers on a basis of relative equality and to reveal their own personality. That may be why there’s much more affinity with film critics on tv – we all have opinions about whether we agree more with David or Margaret, or lament the absence from the box of Fenella Kernebone – because we feel we’ve come to know them as people. But there’s not much kudos for just being an “expert” on film – as with many other domains.
That holds whether we’re talking about mass market movies or niche indie or arthouse ones. There’s an interesting little stab at some research on the disjunction between the preferences of critics and scholars and film bloggers at Critical Culture. Pacze Moj finds quite a difference between -
“critical popularity” and “popular popularity”.
One of the factors, aside from what we might call the meta-level ones, that accounts for this phenomenon is that critics are often writing for a specialised audience. It’s well recognised, I think, that academic film criticism has its own vocabulary, interests and approaches – which is precisely why film is taught in universities. But I think it’s less well recognised that the classic newspaper film review has its own generic form, and its own view of what a “well made film” is which is quite distinct from that of vernacular audiences. Increasingly, it may be the case that a quite narrow set of criteria of value is being applied which appeals more to other film reviewers than to film viewers. And to editorial and journalistic canons of the “well made film review”…
For example, at the moment, I’m watching Doomsday on dvd. In many ways, it’s quite a silly film, but self-consciously so. It really is a postmodern pastiche of all sorts of post-apocalyptic science fiction action movies from the last few decades – making extremely conscious and obvious references to Highlander, Mad Max, The Matrix, and to other big box office flicks like Fight Club and Lord of the Rings. For critics, this is a turnoff. It’s also playing around with a bit of Shakespearian scene sequencing. It’s full of holes, and the mood and narrative pacing switches about a lot, but that’s part of the point.
For folk like me who like these films, all this is a positive source of pleasure… which is one reason why I’m likely to pick a film to watch based on the user reviews at IMDB and around the blogs and fansites.
The more free tickets around the traps, the less likely it’s worth seeing. Two recent examples: Easy Virtue and Elegy.
My new film review site Cinema Takes could do with an audience and some feedback. I’m working on a set of criteria for the star ratings. Any suggestions welcome.
One of the issues for an independent reviewer, even for someone paying seniors rates, is the cost of cinema tickets. Another is access to the early previews so that the review has relevance for lovers of the silver screen version.
Kevin – I was thinking of user reviews based on dvds. But you raise a good point.
One element missing here is that movies themselves have changed quite a bit since film school became available as a form of study. Most of the classic film directors were unschooled and made things up as they went, inventing genres and discovering which techniques translated from plays to film or from books to film.
Now you can get a crash course in it, you end up with “film school films” – anything starring Sean Penn for example, or “big budget films” of the Spielberg/Lucas/Joel Schumacher variety, or the Dreamworks style of film where they attempt to cram so many bits of pop culture into one film it becomes like a high speed game of “name that tune” or “spot that reference” which is tiresome.
You can see them coming, you’ll know all the tricks they’re going to use and for me it makes them harder to watch.
Then again, the fanboy internet phenomenon is for me a real minefield – some subcultures of it will ignore practically all the dross in a bad film just for one particular scene. Equally, the critics of fanboys are just taking easy potshots but always refuse to divulge what they actually like (I suspect they like nothing at all).
I miss the old style film reviewers – Ebert is still around, and the archive of Doug Pratt’s laserdisc reviews used to be available on the web (seems to be down at the moment) but those guys knew “film school” stuff and equally were fanboys of particular things in their own right. It’s a balance that worked for me personally. That, and the disquieting feeling that movies are at a low ebb at the moment and all the groundbreaking entertainment of the last 10 years has come from high quality cable TV in the US – Sopranos, Six feet under, From the earth to the moon, John Adams etc, or from wacky 30 second youtube videos.
Personally, the fanboy culture bores me to tears, but each to their own. It could be because sci-fi is about my least favourite genre. It seems that it also becomes a closed, narrow circuit.
Here’s an Australian critical site which is great.
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/
Most daily film reviewers aren’t very knowledgeable. They’re attempting to supply consumer guides, rather than review films. And the trouble about word of mouth, is that films are pulled very quickly if they don’t do well enough on the first weekend of release. There’s always more films to bung on.
But one of the contemporary myths going around is that because of DVDs and downloads we have access to most films that are getting made around the world. Not true. If you look at any international film festival, most of those films are still very hard to see in Australia in any form. Besides, it’s still important to see films on 35mm prints. An old-fashioned view I know, but there you go.
Thank God for places like Melbourne Cinematheque that actually import 35mm seasons of work by directors we’d never get to see otherwise.
John Adams, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is brilliant, btw. Well worth the time it takes to download. I’d categorise it as the television of ideas – as well (for me anyway) being extremely enteretaining with powerhouse performances. My main disappointment was the shallowness of the portrayal of Alexander Hamilton – a fault in the script, not the acting I think.(But then again I find Hamilton fascinating as an historian because he’s an example of the early American capitalist.) Anyway, recommend LPers go to the trouble of getting it. Highly enjoyable for political wonks.
I almost bought Australia on DVD last week. Should I?
Kevin @1 — you state that free tickets for a film are a sign that it’s probably crap, and yet in the next breath that movie ticket cost is an issue even if you’re paying seniors price.
Please, don’t keep us guessing — what is the right price for a ticket?
Another question re, audience size.
Frequenters of movie shows, or movie websites, or critical reviews are a fairly consistent number, yes? They don’t swell and shrink with the unpredictable verve of audiences for a given movie.
The point I’m trying to make is this: the bigger the audience that a movie attracts, then surely by definition the smaller the proportion of that audience who are in any way “plugged in” to the critical community. Does this not imply that the more film producers “listen” to the critical community, they are perhaps limiting themselves to the preferences of a small clique and likely missing the broader popular mark?
Is this not a reflection of the wider distrust in the mainstream media generally and how (increasingly) these “experts” are being moulded/guided to an industry PR point of view. Jon Stewart’s taking apart of CNBC (and specifically Jim Cramer) for kowtowing to Wall Street is just a sample of this.
We’re seeing the same across the entire media spectrum where PR spin is produced as news on a daily basis – and frankly we’re all jack of it. This is WHY we’re all turning away from newspapers. This is WHY we’re pirating the crap Hollywood movies (who’d WANT to pay to see this tripe anyhow) and WHY we’re all seeking out new music online because of all the bile that the mainstream is producing.
If the critics decoupled themselves from the industry and the whole “insider access” crap, then perhaps they’d wake up and move on like the rest of us already have?
Here’s a dreadful “review”.
I don’t know if your formula actually works, mercurius. But the first audience a producer markets to is potential investors, not cinema audiences. The two things aren’t the same. THe answer maybe to cut out the middleman, but it’s hard thing to achieve.
I attended the World Premiere of STAR TREK last night.
Yes, I am awesome.
OMG I WAS 5M FROM SYLAR!!!!
w00t!!!!
/gen y WOM affective contagion building excitement about the film
The plot is organised around a time travelling type of thing where most of the action is directed towards ’setting things right’. This could be understood as a metonym for the whole franchise.
/relatively intelligent cinema rag critic attempting to make a consumer’s decision ofr him or her
The Cartesian play of mind (logic) and body (emotion) is best explored through the relationship of Spock and Kirk. The latent homoerotic bond between Spock and Kirk, indicated by the quinessential slash Spock/Kirk fiction of fans, can be seen to be manifest in the homosocial competition of the young Spock and Kirk over the romantic attention of Nyota Uhora. The jocular should slap delivered to Spock by Kirk is thus charged with a Vulcan-logic and heteronormative deconstruction of homoerotically sexualised affect.
/academic-ish critical reading of the film that seeks to disrupt the hegemonic heteronormative reading
Most daily film reviewers aren’t very knowledgeable. They’re attempting to supply consumer guides, rather than review films.
Classic. Luvvies. The give that keeps on giving
Comparative impressions may be useful here.
1. Does the “death of the critic” make it more likely than the late 1906s that crud finds its way onto cinema screens? Probably not.
2. Is there greater availability compared with the late 1960s of edgy, clever, engaging movies? Probably.
3. Has the hypothesised “death of the critic” enabled the above welcome development? Probably not.
4. Is the movie audience more compartmentalised and perhaps even ghettoised since the late 1960s? Probably.
5. Did edgy, avant-garde film makers of the late 1960s seek to engage the mass market with greater determination than their current counterparts? Probably.
I’d suggest that one of the interesting developments in film culture during the past 40 years is that film makers and their backers are content to preach to their core choirs. Thus critics are confronted with discussing a very segmented film culture wherein film makers hardly acknowledge each other.
It is thus very unlikely that a movie like “Patton” would be made today. This movie sought to engage and provoke both Left and Right, progressive and conservative.
I’m not sure how I work out which films to see. Word-of-mouth is OK but that only works for the more popular films. Trailers are deliberately designed to exaggerate the quality of a film. I don’t watch TV. newspaper critics over-emphasise the importance of originality as an inevitable consequence of their profession and end up praising odious crap like Pan’s Labyrinth.
But it doesn’t matter. Going to the movies with friends is a fun experience regardless of whether you like the movie or not. I went with a group of friends to see The Reader in what was a sparsely populated cinema. The reaction of myself, the group and the sparse crowd was extremely negative.
We then went for a coffee and sweets and ripped into the movie for every reason we could think of. It had been painfully slow and morally obtuse. Neither lead was ethically or intellectually appealing. Ralph Fiennes was the dullest major character ever to make it to the big screen. The film had briefly flickered with interest when the literacy/guilt issue emerged but nothing of consequence had come of it. Michael Berg’s family members were interesting portrayals, but nothing had come of them, either. We were all heartily sick of the use of convenient deaths to provide poignant but meaningless conclusions. And so it went on.
It was one of the great evenings!
Katz wrote:
No, nor would a guy like Warren Oates get any screen time. Nobody is going to make “The Last Picture Show” or “Le Mans” or “Klute” or “They Shoot Horses…” as the market for them has evaporated or been eclipsed by better television productions that blur the lines between cinema and TV. The technology in peoples homes in the west has improved so much that the smaller style pictures make more sense in the more intimate setting of a lounge room. Hence the movie industry moving to the blockbuster/remake/comic book/grossout comedy model where the experience matters a bit more and your average teen gets a chance to get out of the house. Do adults even go to the movies any more?
I went and saw The Duchess.
@ Paul Burns
I haven’t seen the movie ‘Australia’, and I probably won’t after reading this:
Things I would rather do than watch Australia again
As long as somebody stops that bastard Bazza from doing “The Great Gatsby” – please, somebody stop him. Please.
Although, that makes two certified grown ups that still go to the actual cinema to see a movie. Maybe being a parent has skewed my perspective too much.
I’ll be going to see ‘Monsters v Aliens’ next week, so that’s three. Other recent cinema experiences include ‘Madagascar 2′ and ‘Watchmen’.
d
You know I actually disagree with this. I think one thing the internet has truly done is not created new things, so much as given old things a new, levelling platform.
I think the lack of avenues for a “popular” voice, or a formal setting for the informal interactions we had, led to a perception of orthodoxy, that probably didn’t really exist (have people changed so much in 12 years or so?), a Greater Idiot Theory, if you will (“Sure, I don’t believe that, and you don’t believe that, and no one I really know does, but there are a bunch of idiots out there who do!”.
I think the internet has quickly reduced the some of the unknown quantities with discourses of all types. Responses are easily found, available, and dissected. Does that make sense?
Btw, you’re right on the money with your thoughts about how reviews are changing, or changed. Something else that’s also not mentioned is how the job changes you too: I was a film reviewer with various places, mainly ABC radio, for about 4/5 years; seeing 4 -6 movies a week, every week, for years on end does funny things to your priorities and perspectives, especially during the Jan-Apr Crappy Film Flood.
Here’s some statistics pertaining filmgoing in relationship to age groupd in Australia, from 74 – 2007.
http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/wcrmagepattern.html
Actually, I loved ‘Australia’ and I think it’s a greatly misunderstood film by critics. I think there are many critics about who can’t understand anything that isn’t realism. That may be related to Mark’s point about the ‘well made film’, although I’m still not sure exactly what’s meant by that phrase. There’s also a myth that it bombed in Australia, when it, in fact, is the second highest grossing Australian film ever after ‘Crocodile Dundee’. It seems that word of mouth actually worked positively for it. But that’s another story.
If you look at the stats above, the situation seems quite complex. People in all age groups are seeing fewer films than in 1974, which is to be expected. But the over 50 audience seems to be the one that’s growing, both in terms of the percentage of people seeing the films and the frequency in which they go. The over 35 audience isn’t shifting that much in any direction. So, maybe the retiree audience is the one to aim for. It’s the teen audience which is dropping, which also makes sense. I imagine games and other webby sort of stuff is biting into it. Will that change as they age?
I went to a talk by a woman who’s the Thinker in Residence in Adelaide; Genevieve Bell, who’s an anthropologist employed by Intel to talk to people about how they use technology. One of the things she was very clear about was that once people have kids, their use of the internet drops markedly and their use of tv rises. She argued it was because people get tired and just want to veg out. It’s also why you get more kids than adults going to the movies. It’s easier for them to get out of the house. And cheaper – no babysitters, which is something may also have in common with the over 50 crowd.
I’m an unusual part of the audience because I’d see about 100 films per year at the movies, and a lot of the people I know do the same thing. It’s only two films per week after all. Once you look in places other than the multiplexes, there are many other ways to see films, at least in large cities.
Word, Fine, so did I, and I think you are bang-on about the critics. And I was deeply disappointed that Germaine Greer seemed to be one of them, which is particularly odd for a Shakespeare expert, although I think to some degree she was just doing her usual ‘Australia-bashing dancing monkey for the Poms’ routine. Critics of Australia who attacked it for being ‘derivative’ reminded me of the people who trash the Harry Potter books for being ‘derivative’ — in both cases without realising that both the Luhrmann film and the Rowling books are gorgeously OTT examples of (among other things) pastiche.
DR @ 15 – does it matter if people go to the cinema anymore? Isn’t most of the money made out of DVD sales these days?
Oh, my. I sure hope film criticism isn’t dead or dying, though it probably will die if publishers stop giving critics jobs.
A Job is what turns a fan or buff with everything going for him / her, but with nothing more than personal taste and whimsy to indicate what he or she needs to talk about, into a public critic with a stake in mass film culture.
Senses of Cinema is really excellent, and homegrown in all the best possible ways. (Unlike Australia, which I hated, for among numerous other reasons seeming to prove that Fredric Jameson was right about the facility of postmodernism. Give us an Australia thread!?!)
Just at a tangent for a minute, let me add that I get so cross with aspects of G. Greer for exactly the same reason that she has given* for getting so cross with aspects of Australia: that when she is good she is fabulous and I love her to bits, and I want her not to be as bad as she can be when she is bad.
*at the 2008 Adelaide Writers’ Week session in her honour, and no doubt in other places
Oh enough with the Germaine Greer bashing. Her review was very good, very true, but the definitive, crushingly good one was Peter Conrad’s in “The Monthly”. It was so incisive, so layered, it pleasurably hurt.
@ Pav
I’ve decided that GG raises things she wants to see people argue about. I don’t think she really cares which initial position she takes anymore. It would be too easy to judge her present position on things by what she said 30 years ago and “prove” that she was wrong..
Chris wrote:
It seems to vary widely from film to film. “Australia” did fine in the cinemas and on DVD it’s a bit of a smash, but it struggles to stay on the front page of the bit torrent sites (that might tell you something about who went to see it I suppose).
From my point of view, DVD made people think twice about video collections and ownership in a way that VHS and Laserdisc never did. It legitimised genre films and other nostalgic trash, which is great for somebody like me who loves that garbage, having spent much of my teenage years digging through the worst tapes the local video store had.
Some films really benefited from the early success of DVD – Verhoeven’s “Showgirls”, a stinker of a film bombed with critics and in the cinema but sold well when released on DVD in it’s very early days and it really turned the industry on it’s head in some ways. It was no longer about marginal money trickling back from video shops, selling discs was suddenly big business. The model seems to have largely settled on covering your costs on cinema receipts and making your profits on disc sales, but it’s hard to work out exactly which films are making money as the blockbusters dominate the studio reporting.
As far as I can tell, cinemas are still important (see Fine’s link above – half the people in my age group still go) but it’s an effort for most people so I would guess fewer risks are taken on what people want to see.
Chris @ 24, ’straylian and NZ cinema ticket sales are good to very good depending on releases on a given month.
There are films that have performed extremely well at cinemas even before DVD or ancillary incomes. I’d disagree with David that Australia has done well at cinemas, I’d say the marketing and advertising costs were stupendous, and when you consider the distributor will see 1/3 of the gross figures to put against costs, it’s probably done okay business, but is making out like a bandit on DVD. And then there’s TV to come, it’s Australian results will go some way to balance the losses from US release.
Death of critics? They are bumping off with alarming regularity in the USA Laura – the net is thriving, but the MSM critical mass is deflating week on week. The shift from MSM to on-line is so fast you can’t even see the vaour trails at present!
Chris, it’s generally believed that a cinema release greatly helps DVD sales. Of course, there are exceptions to this. The catch 22 is that any sort of cinema release is extremely expensive and can be prohibitively so for very small films. Most cinemas still only have 35mm projectors. An example of this is the Village Crown complex in Melbourne. It has 16 screens and only one has digital projection. The cost of striking a print is about $20,000 – $30,000, so even a limited relaease is a major investment by a distributor. Then you’ve got advertising costs. Of course, this will change and films will be projected digitally in the future. The new broadband initiative may help with this. But at the monment cinemas use a beautiful but quite clunky analogue system. And don’t get me started on those cinemas that advertise themselves as being digital and actually just screen DVDs at $15 per person. What a ripoff!
Glen @ 11 — LOL.
And that comment goes a long way towards what I was going to say, which is that one asks oneself what one wants from a film (book/concert/whatevs) review and then seeks out the kinds of reviews one likes to read in the places where one is most likely to find them. Opinion, knowledge, analysis, emotional response and aesthetic judgement are all quite different things.
FWIW, those little potted reviews in the AGE are good value when I’m making up my mind what I’d like to see. And I go very much on what I’ve liked in the past. I’ll always, for instance, go to see a Coen Brothers movie and avoid the action extravaganzas.
Went with my daughter to see “Let the Right One In” the other night – she’s been on a steady diet of Buffy, Angel and Twilight so I thought a different take on the vampire story might be fun. Slow movie, very multilayered, but there are intruding bits of bathos where someone gets attacked by cats and the cats are all too obviously stuffed props. Like the stuffed bat which always cracks me up in the old b & w Nosferatu!
It does mean that there’s no particular premium given to the opinion of someone who writes a film column in a newspaper or a magazine – unless that writer has the ability to speak to readers on a basis of relative equality and to reveal their own personality.
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Yes and no.
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There’s a concept native to the French of the cinephile. Literally a love of cinema but it’s meaning is distinguishable from a movie fanatic, a film geek, in that there’s a certain philosophical element that the geeks can take or leave. I’m not sure Tarantino’s co-workers way back in his video store days would’ve considered publishing an Ontology of Cinema or such like in their fanzines.
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But they may have.
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A lot of film critics have a job because their taste and knowledge is seen as superior to the general audience. The best example of this I ever came across was Ian Penman’s columns in The Face. He could make you feel like a right berk for liking anything. But it made you think: Why do I like this? Is it actually good or just dross?
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Granted, you go too far down that road and you end up one of those intolerable boors who watch Tout Va Bien for fun and think Tarkovsky sold out when he made Solaris. But at some middle point you do tend to obtain that critical reflection that makes you a selective and cultivated cinephile.
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It’s for that reason that I went with Margaret and David. The Movie Show kids are fine and dandy (film geeks and film theory buffs but not cinephiles) but there was a certain depth they don’t have. At least yet. Of course that depth had M&D (Stratton in particular) prejudicially turning his nose up at SFX blockbusters on general principle even when they were good.
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Times have changed. Margaret’s favourite (Hollywood) film last year: Iron Man. David’s The Dark Night Returns.
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N’uk.
I’ve always thought it was a typically high style Gallic end run to coin the word “cinéaste”, along with “mise en scène” and “auteur’.
And it worked. N’est-ce pas?
It worked? Not really. French films are generally and have always been, crap. Not sure why. Any suggestions as to why? I’d put French films on a par with circa 1950s American for depth and interest. They’ve never had a decent film industry, even if Bardot and Depardieu were cute, but then even their best films were American or Italian produced.
What I would like to know is why I cannot find anything on the net about husband-and-wife team Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch who co-wrote, among many other film jewels, the screenplays for three of the best Westerns ever: ‘Hud’, ‘Hombre’ and ‘Home from the Hill’ (1960s), and a host of other to-die-for films, including ‘Norma Rae’, released in 1979. I watched all these films over the 4 day Easter break. These two screen writers were obviously communist. The scripts, characterisation, dialogue and moral tales therein are sublime. Where is their story? Their homage?
Why do you assume Posey that what I said automatically related to what you want to say next and not to the actual topic thread?
Why do you assume I assume anything? How dull. You some sort of punitive, patriarchal gatekeeper and rulemaker, Nabokov?
If so, take a flying leap, sonny.
Also, French films like films of all other countries are generally 90% crap. It’s that other 10% we watch, discuss and debate. There’s no way French filmmakers could pull off the Godfather trilogy, Ereaserhead or Themla and Louise. Or the other hand there’s no way any Yankee film maker could have pulled off La Haine, the Fifth Element or Rules Of The Game.
On the other hand, no one but Australia could have pulled off “Pure Shit”.
Exceptions do not negate the norm, Nab.
For decades French films have overwhelmingly been frou-frou pap. I’m seriously curious as to why.
The French film industry has never matched that of Italy, Germany, Russia, or further afield, Japan, China, and never, ever, matched the best of the American film industry. And then, even so, America’s best films – from the 30s-70s – were made by first generation German, Russian, Polish, Italian, Latino and Hispanic and other immigrant actors, screenwriters and directors.
Not French, mind you.
Women in French films are never more than the well-worn, time-honored, patriarchal images/ideals of women as virgin/ingenue, temptress, mistress, actress, whore, older women – all little more than sexual objects for typically flagging and inadequate male libidos.
I don’t wonder such a film industry has its male defenders.
“You some sort of punitive, patriarchal gatekeeper”
“I’d put French films on a par with circa 1950s American for depth and interest. They’ve never had a decent film industry, even if Bardot and Depardieu were cute, but then even their best films were American or Italian produced.”
I’ll just let those two comments settle side by side.
However why the use of the word “patrichial”? Why do you assume I’m a bloke just because I don’t uncritically endorse your thoughts?
And whether I’m a bloke, gay or a chick it’s hard not to get the hots for Alain Delon warily bonding with a jumpy canary in Le Samouraï.
“I’ll just let those two comments settle side by side.”
Playing God again, Nab?
“However why the use of the word “patrichial” (sic)? Why do you assume I’m a bloke just because I don’t uncritically endorse your thoughts?”
Why the whiny, obnoxious hostility to sincere, direct thoughts?
And now I think about it Posey, I can refute your half-arsed cruising for a bruising point with two words. Two simple words. Too simple words. To simple words. Words too simple. Simple too words, Words too simple. Simple to words. Too simple two words.
Jacques Tati
The whole world needs to take Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.
SPROINNG!!!
“Cruising for a bruising”, eh, Nab? Jesus, wasn’t it ever so? And it comes so easily to you too, these words, don’t they, sonny? Fairly slips off the tongue, smooth as silk, cold as a grave and as deadly as a whack to a proffered temple by a hand-held hunk of rock.
But enough about your world Posey. Any response of substance to what I just pointed out as a highlight of French cinema?
Don’t get me started on French films. I just parted with far too much of my hard earned to see Summer Hours, an excrutiatingly boring film worth crossing continents to avoid.
Your serve now Posey.
SPROIING!!!!
Olivier Assayas. Very interesting director.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000801/
I’d agree that a lot of what comes out of France is pap, adding that there’s a distinct niche (at least in this country) for anything French to be marketed as “arthouse” whether or not it merits that description (which is now much more of a commercial/marketing category anyway…)
But I do wonder that anyone can discuss French film without taking about the “New Wave” – Truffaut, etc.
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/michaelwalford/entry/fronacois_truffauts_new/
To a great degree, the New Wave established an identification between French film and stylistic experimentation with genre conventions, which persists to this day despite its inapplicability to a lot of actually released films. Assayas has fun with this in Irma Vep, which among other things is a satire on the French notion of the director as auteur:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116650/
Eric Rohmer’s a director who never really fit that categorisation – a story teller par excellence:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006445/
Les amours d’Astrée et de Céladon is pretty amazing – a recreation of the bizarre (to us) 17th century romance by Honoré d’Urfé with very few concessions to the canons of cinematic narrative:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0823240/
I also think any statement about “women in French film” is obviously a generalisation. No doubt something could be said about “women in French film”, and it may well be that there are problematic aspects to their portrayal (where would there not be?), but an assertion is not an argument.
“Don’t get me started on French films.”
Why should we? Especially since your viewpoint seems to be based on one crappy film you saw once. Should we dismiss all the high tech, propulsive power and canny storytelling of the US film industry on the basis of Predator Vs:Aliens – Requiem?
Can we all be a little less snarky, please? Thanks!
Snark is very web 2.0 boring, I believe. Just read that in the New York Magazine.
“Can we all be a little less snarky, please?”
But, but, but they started it.
I fully agree la nouvelle vague was a much needed circuit breaker but jeez don’t some of the core texts of its canon age baldly. EG ‘À bout de souffle’ looks so awkward now. (Though the Jean Seberg business with the SHAPE car still retains its guerilla joie de vive).
I guess that’s the penalty you pay for being a well trampled pathfinder.
On the other hand I can’t think of any other country besides France that would have give “Irréversible” a mainstream release. Well OK, perhaps the UK or Australia. But there’s no way we’d have dared make it here.
Nabs, if my late Ma were still with us she’d be saying sternly ‘I don’t care who started it — you finish it!’ Which I always felt was dreadfully unfair.
Reading back through this thread it’s quite noticeable isn’t it who threw around personal insults when people didn’t agree with them and who actually mentioned films, made points about them and threw the odd link in as well.
I guess some people are more interested in proving to themselves they’ve made a point than they are in having a good old hearty-farty chinwag barney about a great art form. “I don’t care what I lik!. It’s what you like I don’t like!”
Now what film by Truffant did this rejoinder just remind you of?
I’ll give you a clue. In english it’s called La Nuit Américaine.
Indeed it is. And I’ve taken that into account. But it’s unnecessary to respond in kind.
Truffaut trackback!
“But it’s unnecessary to respond in kind.”
I can’t help it. I need some release from driving a truck full of nitroglycerin over dodgy South American mountain passes while Luigi rabbits on in in my ear about why he doesn’t fear death cos’ he’s gonna die anyway soon. Arrgh! It’s enough to make a bloke look for Good Work in the Legion. Or join the DGSE as case officer for a emo assassin.
Anyway, to certain certainment populace adhering here I dance in your general direction.
Nabs, I have another two words for you. Max Ophuls. Great great director. Posey is posing, I think.
And yes, Mark. Eric Rohmer. Fantastic director. As are his contemporaries still making films such as Jacques Rivette and Agnes Varda.
A second opinion on Summer Hours.
It’s a remorselessly unsentimental depiction of how to remain civil, despite provocations. No one wins, but dignity is salvaged.
Plus an extended track by the Incredible String Band.
What’s not to like?
How do we judge another country’s film output? There are over 200 films produced in France every year. We only see a tiny proportion of those. Some of them aren’t distributed here because they’re local comedies fit only for the French. Some of the others because they’re too strange and difficult and don’t fit into the narrow range of the ‘art-house’ French genre that does well here.
For instance, one of the best directors working is Arnaud Desplechin. Not one of his films has received a theatrical release here. They’re odd, tricky films which don’t sit comfortably in any genre and hence, are difficult to market. His last one; ‘A Christmas Tale’ was part of the Palace French Film Festival, but I doubt it will get a release.
We don’t, if we’ve got any brains.
Very true, PC.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 64 in response to “How do we judge another country’s film output?”
I sometimes get the impression some of you have spend so long writing academic papers that any other form of communication seems deficient.
Somebody says something like “French films are crap” on an opinion forum. No wars are started. Nobody dies. Eventually some other people who like French films express a different view and mention a few films and directors that they appreciate. Some of us take it on board and are more likely than before to watch and potentially enjoy a movie we wouldn’t otherwise have seen. And just like that, the world has become a better place.
The point is that someone saying something like, ‘French films are crap’ is silly and is going to be called silly for doing so, unless that person has a very deep knowledge of French films and can argue the case. Otherwise, what’s the point of the statement?
Fine @ 67
Because it’s an effective way to provoke a reaction, and thus expose one’s superficial views to potentially useful knowledge and opinions. And because a lively debate can be fun.
“Because it’s an effective way to provoke a reaction, and thus expose one’s superficial views to potentially useful knowledge and opinions. And because a lively debate can be fun.”
Okay, so what’s wrong with PC’s statement? Sounded lively to me.
Wise woman, your ma, PC. That’s not just wise advice about arguing with strangers on the internet, I tell you, that’s a philosophy of life. You write off a nation’s cinematic output, you best be ready with citations of Gallic film mediocrity, unless you want to hear the crashing noise of your car being turned over by Gerard Depardieu and Emmanuelle Beart pretending they’re young angry dispossessed folks in a Paris banlieue c. 2005. Mind you, they’d do aggravated arsonbetter by far than John Malkovich or Dustin Hoffman. I wouldn’t mind seeing Milla Jovovich try, but the less said about that, the better.
Now as to film itself as an art form throughout the twentieth century—hasn’t it been a disappointment?
Having sat through the critically aclaimed Slumdog Millionare, possibly the most over-rated film in cinema history, I would have to agree.
I also think that most critics are incapable of distinguishing a good film from a mediocre film if the hype is sufficiently persuasive.
“Now as to film itself as an art form throughout the twentieth century—hasn’t it been a disappointment?”
Oh certainly. I don’t think it would be going too far to say that cinema as an art form has gone precisely NOWHERE since Roundhay Garden Scene.
I don’t know, FDB. Film’s certainly made itself into a bit of an industry.
FDB @ 69
Damn! Hoist with my own petard. Whatever that means.
I’m not interested in French film because most of it particularly in the last three decades is inconsequential and insubstantial, imo.
btw thanks, Jenny. Never been called brainless before, but there’s always a first for everything, I guess.
Molly Haskell wrote the best feminist book on women in film – or on film fullstop – including French film, of which she is well qualified to speak: “From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies”. David Walsh and numerous others have pretty much king hit François Truffaut’s nice, but tepid and innocuous output.
Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934) was sublime. But that’s about it for me.
“Hoist with my own petard. Whatever that means.”
Something about the unforeseen consequences of lighting farts, I’m pretty sure.
Posey – It worked? Not really. French films are generally and have always been, crap.
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Um
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#1. French cinema dominated the global markets until the first world war.
#2. French cinema was acknowledged as one of the finest until the 1980s when it took a dip following the death of François Truffaut. It’s bounced back.
#3. Your generalization viz women in French cinema is unbelievable and would fill quite a few A4 pages of rebuttal.
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De gustibus non est disputandum and all that but it appears that you’re making generalizations about a subject you know very little about.
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People here have mentioned la nouvelle vague but the French cinema had a huge legacy of excellence before that. Try this. Okay maybe you don;t like it. But judged solely on its technical merits you can’t say that it isn’t good. And its technical skill is the least of its merits.
Mark – Olivier Assayas. Very interesting director.
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Yeah and very stimulating in conversation.
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Nice guy. I hated him (he was married to Maggie Cheung at the time – lucky bastard!)
Around 96, Adrien? I remember Cheung and Assayas both being guests of BIFF about the time Irma Vep came out…
Err, I haven’t been following this – but anyone who dismisses French cinema almost certainly hasn’t seen much of it. And may have understood even less. Its not always as dumbed down as Anglocinema, so you do have to pay a bit of attention.
Oh Im sorry, J’ai provoqué un stoush, et je frappez le trolleoisie. Mais, je me’en fous.
And Adrien – oh yesitty yes. I could have listened to Maggie talk film – pretty much forever. Where did she go? why do I have to endure the others?
Hang on – thats not her!
Ok – quiz time: who was that beautiful, whispering Asian-Australian film critic on SBS, who was my imaginary girlfriend without realizing it, in the 90s? Cant remember her name, which just goes to show how fickle crushes can be.
posey said “Women in French films are never more than the well-worn, time-honored, patriarchal images/ideals of women as virgin/ingenue, temptress, mistress, actress, whore, older women – all little more than sexual objects for typically flagging and inadequate male libidos.”
I disagree.
Jeanne Moreau, “Le journal d’un femme de chambre” (1964)
Yeah, Posey should watch some Chabrol. Not only is it great plot action in the Hitchcock vein (Chabrol is also a Hitchcock scholar) – but he’ll find the primary narrative dwells on paranoid, controlling, obsessive masculinities.
This seems a most appropriate time and place to point all Melbourne readers towards the excellent Louis Malle season commencing at ACMI tonight as part of the Melbourne Cinemateque.
The prints are glorious copies loaned from French consulate, the opening film is Lift to the Scaffold. Even if you don’t dig the film – near impossible I would have thought – then just close your eyes and listen to the Miles Davis improvisations. Unquestionably one of the greatest film scores evah.
And just a note on A Christmas Tale per Fine at # 63, I have a feeling that this most excellent feature film will see a local release this year, perhaps around July 9th. The first Desplechin to see commercial release in Australia, oui oui oui!
Oh, excellent news re the Desplechin. I’ll be at the Malle this evening. My favourite Malle is ‘Le Feu Follet’. Gloomy, gallic melancholy.
It’s really important that films are screened in the way they’re meant to be seen; on good 35mm prints, which is why the Cinematheque is doing such important work.
ACMI truly is one of my fave things about Melbington.
You should try to get to the Malle season, if you possibly can Lefty E. I think you’d really like ‘Lift to the Scaffold’, because of the Miles Davis score.
All Australian films are unmitigated crap.
They portray Australian men as cross-dressing inarticulate Gallipoli-venturing homicidal studious shy football-loving muscular morons, nothing but sex-objects for their assiduously attentive women.
If you want real films, see some Italian.
I thought Ten Canoes was great.
I thought The Proposition was great.
I really liked The Tracker. Thought that was a fitting risposte to all the dumb tracker roles Gulplil did previously.
Guess I have a theme going …
I liked Lantana. And Jyndabine. I liked the (sexualised) menace of the Australian landscape that keeps on popping in aust film and lit. The real fear of that sunburnt country everyone loves.
“They portray Australian men as cross-dressing inarticulate Gallipoli-venturing homicidal studious shy football-loving muscular morons, nothing but sex-objects for their assiduously attentive women.”
Sounds good to me.
And that’s just Stone.
So wierd you put up Stone. I used to go to the same gym as Sandy Harbut. While he was hanging upside down at gym, and I was doing crunches, he used to tell me abut his fascinating life. He is a very *interesting* bloke. A well as the atrocious acting in the iconic Stone, he hung out with Eddie Mabo, and used to tell me about some of the magic the Meriam Islanders could do against whiteys. It was vewy scarey. All while hanging upside. And as he was talking, all I could hear in my head was that gravediger screaming “SAAAAATAAAAN” over and over again. Good old Sandy.
A real conundrum next week at ACMI.
You have a double bill of Les Amants (my favourite Malle) and Feu Follet (Fine’s favourite Malle). That’s ACMI screen One.
On Screen Two, simultaneous with the two films described above is the best looking 35mm film I saw last year – Three Monkeys – which screens as part of the Turkish Film Festival. I would drop anything and everything to go see this film on the best screen in Melbourne – were it not for hot competition from Louis Malle next door.
That’s the best celluloid problem I’ve seen thrown up in ages. And another reason why LE, and a few hundred like him love their ACMI.
Stone is a deadset classic. Sadly, with a few honourable exceptions, Australian cinema peaked in the 1970s.
Around 96, Adrien? I remember Cheung and Assayas both being guests of BIFF about the time Irma Vep came out…
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‘97.
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Some HK film people I know hate Maggie Cheung. One starlet told me that Irma Vep was ‘just about her’.
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The generation gap in HK is fierce. You should hear what they say about Jackie Chan!!!
They portray Australian men as cross-dressing inarticulate Gallipoli-venturing homicidal studious shy football-loving muscular morons, nothing but sex-objects for their assiduously attentive women.
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I third that. A flick for the Oz Russ Myer.
Let’s face it most films about humans are crap.
However animal romance on screen is quite another kettle of fish.
Casey, that Sandy Harbutt story is marvellous.
Well, ‘Lift to the Scaffold’ proved to be well worth viewing last night. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season.
As for Olivier Assayas – interesting but a very patchy filmmaker, I think. The best of his is ‘Cold Water’ produced in the’90s. ‘Demonlover’ is a truly awful film and ‘Clean’ which reunited him with Maggie was a major disappointment. ‘Irma Vep’ is fun, however.
Something fishy there Nabakov.
You promised romance, we got porno.
What’s wrong with a kiss, boy? Hmm? Why not start her off with a nice kiss?
The critical impulse lives on
here
Fine, you have no idea how many stomach crunches you can do really fast in increasing intensity when Sandy Harbutt tells you scary stories. It was due to Sandy that I ended up with abs of steel. Love Sandy. Scared the crap out of me.
Lefty@ 83
Oh the irony.
But true, enough talk about me and women, let’s talk about you and men.