Week 5, February 5th Film Genres and Auteurs Readings: Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 19, Art Cinema and the Idea of Authorship pp 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 pp ; Screening: The Third Man Carol Reed (1949) The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman (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: 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. Genre

Cannes c. 1950’s

Film Festivals: Venice Film Festival (began 1932) resumed in 1946 after cancellation from Cannes Film Festival in France began in 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 ( ) 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 ( ) 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 ( ) 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 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 ( ) 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