World on Film E-Book

Martha P. Nochimson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1048

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This uniquely engaging and lively textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to international film, from the golden age of European cinema to the contemporary blockbusters of India and Asia, and the post World War II emergence of global film culture.

• Offers an overview of film culture in European countries such as France, Sweden and Spain, as well as Africa, Hong Kong, China, and India, in a clear and conversational style to engage the student reader

• Provides a detailed exploration of the impact of globalization on international cinema

• Includes a comprehensive companion website (http://www.wiley.com/go/worldonfilm ) with an expansive gallery of film stills also found in the text, plus access to sample syllabi for faculty and a detailed FAQ

• Addresses the differences in visual and narrative strategies between Hollywood-influenced movies and international cinema 

• Highlights key words within the text and provides a comprehensive glossary of critical vocabulary for film studies

• Each chapter includes in-depth case studies of individual films and directors, cultural and historical context, selected filmographies, and ideas for projects, essays, and further research

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgments

How to Use This Book

Part I Nations Make Movies

Introduction: Other Languages, Other Stories

The Point, So Far

Talking about International Film

National Film Cultures

Questions in the Chapters

Summary

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

1 France: French Revolutions at the Movies

The Movies Are Born in France

Case Study: Jean Renoir

Renoir’s Peers and the Golden Age of French Cinema

For Further Thought

Projects

The Fourth and Fifth Republics and the Prologue to the New Wave

The New Wave

Case Study: Jean-Luc Godard

Beyond the New Wave

For Further Thought: Dogme 95

Mini Research Mission

Projects

Further Reading

2 Russia: Utopia and Dystopia

The Russian Revolution and the Golden Age of Soviet Cinema

Stalinism and the Ebb and Resurgence of Soviet Cinema

For Further Thought

Projects

New Freedoms

Case Study: Andrei Tarkovsky

Post-Soviet Cinema

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

3 Germany: From Darkness toward Light

Early History

For Further Thought

Projects

Nazi Cinema and Beyond

Case Study: Werner Herzog

New German Cinema and the International Community

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought: East German Cinema

Projects

Further Reading

4 Italy: The Myth of History, Neorealism, and Beyond 150

Italian Cinema and the Risorgimento

The Evolution of Neorealism

For Further Thought

Projects

Case Study: Federico Fellini

Debating Italian Postwar Recovery

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

5 Japan: Screening Feudalism and Modernism

Early Film in Japan

Meiji Era and Taishd Era Japanese Cinema (1896–1926)

Film During the Shōwa Era

Case Study: Akira Kurosawa

For Further Thought

Projects

The New Wave and Beyond

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

6 India: Cinema of Combination and Contradiction

Film in Colonial India

Early Postcolonial Indian Film

For Further Thought

Projects

Bollywood Takes Charge

Case Study: Amitabh Bachchan

Bollywood and Parallel Cinema

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

Part II Movie Making in the Global Village

Introduction: They Do It Their Way

When Is a Film Foreign?

Reading Movies in the Global Village

Culture under a Microscope: A Modern Muddle or a New Mirror?

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

7 Spain: Luis Buñuel, Playing with Ideas

The Arc of Buñuel’s Career

Conclusion

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

8 Sweden: Ingmar Bergman, Being and Nothingness

The Arc of Bergman’s Career

Conclusion

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

9 Hong Kong: Wong Kar-wai, Now You See It . . .

The Arc of Wong’s Career

Conclusion

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

10 Senegal: Ousmane Sembène, Postcolonial Pioneer

The Arc of Sembène’s Career

Conclusion

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

11 Mainland China: Jia Zhangke, Freedom and the Sixth Generation

The Arc of Jia’s Career

Conclusion

Mini Research Mission

For Further Thought

Projects

Further Reading

Glossary

Index

This edition first published 2010© 2010 Martha P. Nochimson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nochimson, Martha.World on film : an introduction / Martha P. Nochimson.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4051-3978-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-3979-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Motion pictures. I. Title.PN1994.N495 2010792.09–dc222009033121

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Working on World on Film has allowed me to spend my days for several years in the company of directors and actors of surpassing brilliance, courage, and passion: a joy from start to finish. Most of my encounters have been in front of a screen watching, sometimes with eyes wide with astonishment, cinema of beauty and originality. No matter how many times you watch a Fellini film, you are prone to amazement. The same might be said for the work of Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu, Vittorio De Sica, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and performances by Jean Gabin, Amitabh Bachchan, Marcello Mastroianni, and Toshiro Mifune. I have also read autobiographical works by some of the artists discussed in the following pages and, in two instances, I have had the rare pleasure of in-person conversation: with Wong Kar-Wai and Jia Zhangke. The sky was never as wide and high as it has been during the preparation of this text.

I have had immense support from the University Seminars at Columbia University and colleagues, friends, and family. Inverting the traditional order, I would like to thank first my editor at Wiley-Blackwell, the incomparable Jayne Fargnoli, and her associates Margot Morse and Ken Provencher, who is now setting sail in his own career in film studies. Thank you to Karen Backstein, intrepid copy editor, whose meticulous work is responsible for a lot that is good about the final form of World on Film. Thank you to Robert Belknap, the Director of the University Seminars at Columbia, for his support and guidance, and I’d like to express my appreciation to the University Seminars at Columbia University for assistance in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. The ideas presented have benefited from discussions in the University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. Thanks, for the time and trouble they took advising me about the chapters, should go to Patricia Erens, Lucy Fischer, Joseph Kickasola, Thomas Leitch, Cynthia Lucia, William Luhr, Gina Marchetti, Linda Mizejewski, Rekha Morris, Diane Negra, Frank Tomasulo, and Jill Watts. For their support, many thanks to Bob Cashill, Gary Crowdus, Jane Gaines, Krin Gabbard, Abe Hendin, and Arthur Vincie. And from the bottom of my heart to my “essential person,” Richard Nochimson.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Although there is a distinctly global flavor to American life today, there is noticeable student discomfort with engaging world film. Subtitles, is the cry. The students don’t like subtitles! But while there is an undeniable truth here, it may not be a productive focus in considering pedagogy. World on Film is predicated on a pedagogy that will provide students with a comfort zone that trumps subtitles in the assignment of world film. It is also sensitive to the need to bridge the gap for students into the “wilds” of other cultures by providing basic background information that will allow them to appreciate the significance of the work on its own cultural terms without either sounding remedial or compressing the information to an economy that will make it impossible to absorb. (Think: textbooks on international film that are often a laundry list of names and titles.)

In each chapter, World on Film immediately highlights the real intersections between American students and films from other cultures, and addresses its readers with key images that tap into the more universal discourse of sight to serve as a springboard into the deeper waters of background and analysis. The language of the chapters, while pointing toward sophisticated concepts, is jargon free. World on Film principally addresses lower-division Film Studies majors in undergraduate college, but can also be used effectively in elective college courses created for non-majors and in film classes open to high-achieving upper-division high-school students.

World on Film is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the development of national film cultures from the inception of moving pictures to the end of the twentieth century. The second part traces the trend toward international rather than national film that began in earnest after World War II. In the first part there are six chapters, each of which contains at least one case study about a leading figure in the nation’s history of cinema, plus a healthy selection of films, offered chronologically, that represent major cinematic developments. Each offers mid-chapter and end-chapter thought and writing exercises and a list of secondary sources. The second part contains five chapters about filmmakers who represent the cresting tide of internationalism in world film.

World on Film contains at least ten times more material than can be taught in one course. It is intended as a resource cabinet from which cultural background information and in-depth discussions of individual films may be extracted from chapters of interest to create an array of designs for courses on international film. The introductions to both Parts I and II are intended to give the students important guidelines for the study of whatever films are chosen by the instructor; it is advisable to assign them and discuss them in class whenever World on Film is assigned. However, many different course outlines based on this book are possible. In fact, each chapter in Part I could be the basis of a single course. It would also be possible to focus on one film culture while drawing single films from other chapters that illustrate the international repercussions of that film culture. For example, in a course on Italian cinema, film selections from the chapters on India, Japan, France, and/or Germany might be assigned to illustrate the influence of neorealism.

It would be possible to teach a course on Western European film by assigning selections from the chapters on France, Germany, Italy, and Russia in Part I and from the chapters on Luis Buñuel and Ingmar Bergman in Part II. Similarly, a course on Asian film could be developed using the chapters on Japanese and Indian film and the chapters on Jia Zhangke and Wong Kar-Wai. A course on film from the global village could use all the chapters in Part II, and selections from Part I to alert student to influences, either from or on the auteurs in Part II. Specific ideas for course designs are available online at www.wiley.com/go/worldonfilm. Also available there is a troubleshooting guide that proposes solutions to problems frequently encountered by instructional faculty in world film classes, and some supplementary class assignments. Bon voyage!

PART I NATIONS MAKE MOVIES

INTRODUCTION Other Languages, Other Stories

What are you looking at?

You are looking at an image of one of the most familiar figures in mass entertainment: the beautiful, bosomy blonde. Made-up and dressed to attract attention, she pauses at this moment to check her appearance. And yet, in context, this golden girl, Cléo (Corinne Marchand), in this frame from Cleo from 5 to 7, directed by French filmmaker Agnès Varda, is not likely to give the spectator the typical uncomplicated Hollywood promise of romance and sexuality. Students who have seen the film know that Cléo is checking her image to reassure herself about her body because she fears she is dying, not a very sexy situation. As she surveys her pretty face, she tries to escape into the fantasy of her beauty, but while director Varda lets Cléo do what she needs to, she does not allow the audience to escape with her. Varda throws this asymmetrical image at us to make us feel some of Cléo’s insecurity. Asymmetry in frame composition creates an unbalanced image in which one side dominates the film frame; the norm is balance, with objects and people placed so that the audience feels that everything is all right. An asymmetrical frame immediately challenges the usual aesthetics of commercial film, which has traditionally composed images so that the object or character of importance is squarely placed in the middle of the frame, with all the other elements in the image positioned interestingly around it. In this frame, the main character in the film, Cléo, is and isn’t in the center of the frame. Director Varda is doing some very interesting things with the convention of framing the heroine in a central position. Varda places Cléo’s real body significantly off center on the extreme right of the frame while her mirror image, multiplied many times over, occupies the rest of the screen. Cléo is given a lot of importance here, as is conventional, but at the same time the real woman is hardly present. Would you say that Varda is showing us a woman who is more image than person? At the very least, Cléo’s beauty has an eerie, unreal aura.

Its unreality is further emphasized by the startling nest of images in the mirror that form an infinite regress. Infinite regress refers to a chain of images in which each image contains an image of itself. This visual effect can be created using mirrors, as above, or when a film character looks at a picture of her/himself looking at a picture of him/herself. The chain of images continues until the image becomes too small for human perception, but the suggestion remains that this chain is infinite. In Figure 0.1, the primary object, the flesh-and-blood Cléo, is almost discarded in favor of a never-ending series of her reflections. Where is the real? Cléo appears to be locked into a set of appearances. So instead of celebrating the glamour and sexuality of the blonde, as Hollywood inevitably does, and asking us to believe that it is real, this image implies that the glamour that surrounds Cléo is a kind of hallucination. It’s an interesting and telling image. However, when you screen the film, you will see that this shot flies by. Alone it would mean little. In context, that is as part of the larger sequencing of images, it serves as a foreshadowing of later events that validate this first impression. In fact, the next frames already suggest that Cléo herself is a primary victim of the illusion of her glamour. Does Cléo see what you see? Does she give any hint of being struck by what the mirror suggests about her lack of freedom? Not really. Cléo seems to be hypnotized by her face and body. Her pleasure is so intense that she appears narcissistic at this point in the film. Narcissism is a personality deformation that cuts a person off from reality because of a radical preoccupation with self.

What strikes you about the above analysis? Most students say that they are surprised by how much they learn when they take the time to look closely at one image. In some ways, Figure 0.1 is a story unto itself. Without any words, it predicts Cléo’s discovery, as the film unfolds, of how unhappy she is as a sex symbol, and how much she wants her freedom. The further into the film you go, the more its visual information brings you ever deeper into the problem of her situation and creates suspense about when and if she will know as much as you know about her by the film’s closure, that is, its end.

FIGURE 0.1 An image from Cleo from 5 to 7 aka Cléo de 5 à 7 (Dir. Agnes Varda, 1962). B&W (including one color sequence). 90 mins. This is an asymmetrically composed frame that occurs early in the film. Here, Cléo (Corinne Marchand) assesses her beauty in a large wall mirror that also reflects her back in a mirror behind her, in a chain of images known as infinite regress. What is asymmetricality? What is infinite regress? Who is Cléo?

Also consider for a moment that this extremely telling image does not require that you look at a subtitle. It communicates in an international language, the image.

Welcome to World on Film.

For many people subtitles are the biggest barrier to enjoyment of, and interest in, international film. Too many people are so preoccupied with the unhappy anticipation of having to deal with annoying subtitles that they find it impossible to get excited about seeing films in other languages from other countries. But not always. Director Ang Lee’s Chinese-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon aka Wo hu cang long (2000) overcame that prejudice. Americans flocked to see it in huge numbers. Why? They were anticipating the visual spectacle of martial arts in midair. But wait. All international film gives you visual spectacle. We began this book with visual spectacle, too. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is simply more obvious and simpler; it gives you images that are something like sports events; the visual spectacles you will survey in this book are more magical than that. This book will lead you to a new appreciation of looking when you watch a movie. It will allow you to see that the images are speaking to you and that you only need to receive their messages. In other words, you have much more power than you think when it comes to understanding international film. Subtitles exist to give you prompts in English that dissolve the verbal language barriers between you and the film. But verbal language is only a secondary part of virtually all the films you will read about in this book. The problem is not the subtitles but an unnecessary dependence on them. You don’t need to learn to love subtitles, you need to learn the visual language of film that World on Film will help you master. To test out your relationship to subtitles, try watching a part of one of the assigned films without its subtitles. What do you lose? What do you gain? How does this experience alter your attitude toward international film?

In fact, Agnès Varda was part of a group of French cinéphiles, that is, movie lovers, who piled into the Cinémathèque Française, a famous screening-room in Paris, in the 1950s and 1960s, to see American movies in English even though they didn’t have subtitles. It was the images that fascinated them. And when they began to make their own movies, it was the images that were most important to them as directors. This group of cinéphiles became known as La Nouvelle Vague/The New Wave, and you will learn more about them in Chapter 1. Something new happened to them when they couldn’t rely on their own language and narrative traditions to help them understand a film – and something new will happen to you when you move beyond the comfort zone of your language and narrative traditions. Cléo and the other films you will read about in World on Film will get your eyes moving with new strength and insight. For this reason, at the beginning of every chapter, you will be asked to look very carefully at an image from an important film. From there, the book will take you with more depth into other aspects of the film, including the story and the specific cultural characteristics of the national film culture you are studying, to aid you in making your interpretation and in understanding its place in the development of film in that country.

Warning: even when you get into the exciting practice of mining images not only for their beauty but also for their meaning, you will need to get used to the pace of international film.

The good news, which is also the bad news, is that the pace of nearly all the films you will study in your international film course is much slower than you are used to. Bad news first. Many students who are not familiar with international film feel impatient when they first see films from other cultures. You may experience a “get on with it” feeling at first. That’s part of the reason why many students need a college class experience in order to get into international film. Ultimately, becoming comfortable with the slower pace of many international masterpieces will be worth your efforts. There’s a lot of excitement in movies that many American audiences miss because they are too absorbed with the plot. Of course, most international films have plots and Hollywood movies also contain images, some of them every bit as eye-popping as the images you will see in your international film course. But Americans don’t always have time to enjoy their beauty and mystery because Hollywood plots rush forward so fast that you are likely to rush by even the most captivating images so that you can concentrate on the dialogue, hoping it will explain the action. Exactly the opposite will happen in the discussions in this book.

In the films you study in an international film course, the slow pace of the story makes room for you to think about not only what is happening, but why, and to look at the images that tell you more than words about what is going on inside the characters and maybe inside you too. For example, the image of Cléo, above. It is part of a pattern of extraordinary lingering images, many of which exploit Marchand’s beauty, glamour, and sensuality. But not for the usual Hollywood reason that “sex sells.” You get to look at her image so carefully because this tells you much about the problems that arise for her as a character, and for you as part of the audience precisely because her beauty is part of what “sells” her as an entertainer, and even as a woman. Cléo is a singer, and director Agnès Varda intends to give you insight into what it means to be a woman who is not only constantly observed, but whose life depends on being looked at. Varda doesn’t lecture you; she allows you to think about what it means to look at a glamorous celebrity by letting you look at her often, and by leaving clues to the problem of being objectified, or turned into a thing who is only important because she is there for someone else’s visual pleasure. How will you notice these clues? At first, you will depend upon your instructor and on class discussion. But as you become accustomed to being an active part of the audience, you will begin to recognize them yourself and class will become a place where you can tell your classmates what you see and learn what they have seen.

Now the good news. All of the above means that most of what bothers you most about subtitles comes from the habits you have learned from Hollywood about watching movies, habits that make fast action your main option as a filmgoer. This course will give you more options. Once you begin to allow yourself to look at international films emphasizing what you see, instead of worrying about whether you are getting the plot, it won’t matter so much if you miss a subtitle or even pay little attention to them the first time you see the film. Through the magic of current technology, you can always rewind to see a subtitle you have missed, but more important, you will develop new habits that free you from dependence on those subtitles. Moreover, World on Film will help you to feel more comfortable about learning to concentrate on the images by giving you the major details of the plots from the films you are screening for the first time so that you will feel less pressure to see how it all turns out. Instead, you can focus on puzzling out what the director shows you about why events unfold as they do, by making the kind of frame analysis modeled for you in the discussion of Figure 0.1. You will need to cultivate patience to become good at doing independent analyses. But you will be rewarded not only by having some wonderful new movie experiences, but also by becoming an international tourist in a new way.

As you read the chapters in this book on different national film cultures, you will leave the United States without paying a penny for airfare. Below, we will discuss in detail what “national film culture” means. Here let us say that while real travel to other countries is a wonderful experience, all too often American tourists in Europe, Asia, and Africa continue to see the new lands with American eyes, that is, as though everyone had the same values and history as America. In the great international films through which World on Film will guide you, you will try to see other countries through their eyes. Other stories and other languages will become expressive in their own terms. The world will become bigger and smaller at the same time: bigger because there will be so much more to it, smaller because you will no longer feel distant from it. Other countries will cease to be places that ought to be more like America. With additional options for seeing movies, you will begin to understand that the films you are observing have a different point of view from the point of view of Hollywood films. This new perspective will make even more sense when you know something about the history and culture from which the film grew. World on Film will give you the cultural information you need in order to understand the films; and it will point you toward further reading, if you want more extensive information about a subject that particularly interests you.

Experience with films from other countries will break up stereotypes you have absorbed, stereotypes you probably don’t suspect you have stored away. For example, if you were told that you were going to meet a French person, what would you expect? If you are not familiar with France, your assumptions might be highly colored by the movies you have seen. A lot might also depend on whether you have seen old American films as well as new ones, since some clichés vary greatly from generation to generation. Women who saw American musical comedies in the 1930s starring Maurice Chevalier, a charming song-and-dance man who came to Hollywood from France to star in movies like Love Me Tonight (Dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1932), thought he was a typical Frenchman, and often equated France with idealized love. Chevalier frequently shrugged his shoulders in a way that was supposed to be “very French.” It’s true that shrugging is a more common part of body language in France than it is in America, but stereotypes exaggerate a small truth beyond its value. How much shrugging do you see in Cléo?

Similarly, in the late 1950s, American men who saw Leslie Caron, a lovely French actress and dancer, play the title role in Gigi (Dir. Vincente Minelli, 1958), which traces the development of a young girl into a woman, often assumed that she was a typical Frenchwoman, but she was a Hollywood fantasy of an adorable young Parisian. In that film, a new generation saw a much older Maurice Chevalier, still shrugging in a “very French” way that strengthened old stereotypes. So, although Caron and Chevalier are both French, as is Louis Jourdan, Caron’s co-star and love interest in the film, and although the story was based on a novella by the French author Colette, Gigi was made from an American point of view by Hollywood. The film was shot on location in Paris, but showed only the most beautiful and famous areas in the city, which may have created the impression that Paris had no crime, no dirt, and no poverty. In other words, the pieces of the film were French, but they were assembled according to values and clichés from American culture. A French film not only uses French actors, it is written by a French writer and directed by a French director, all of whom are influenced by the history and traditions of the French nation. When you see the films that have emerged from French film culture, you will understand that Gigi is an American fantasy of France that imagines it as a place full of champagne, romance, and love. As is usual when an American made film is set in France, in Gigi we are shown an image of the Eiffel Tower, to ensure that the American audience knows the location of the story. In Cléo, we see all kinds of neighborhoods, all kinds of people, and not one shot of the Eiffel Tower. It’s a very different Paris than American audiences are used to.

Today, is the Eiffel Tower still the essential landmark for American films set in France? Who are the French actors who currently define French men and women for American audiences? Do they convey the same idea of France that Hollywood portrayed in the twentieth century? Or have things changed? In Part II of this book, we will discuss some major international shifts in film culture caused by globalization, that is, increasing international economic interdependence. This shift has weakened the notion of a national film culture. What has taken the place of that concept? That is getting ahead of our story. These current international developments will be explored in Part II of World on Film.

Love, champagne, and the Eiffel Tower are all clichéd, often silly, parts of American fantasies about ordinary French life, and you will cast them aside once you have seen real French films. There is just as much love and champagne in America as there is in our media fantasies about France. And there are much more profound and interesting ways of knowing you are in a French setting. You will also be liberated from Hollywood cultural clichés, especially those about Asians and Africans, who inevitably appear in Hollywood films as subordinate characters who are portrayed as less powerful and beautiful than the American characters; often they are the villains whom American stars defeat. For the most part, the visual information supports their secondary roles in the narrative. The best lighting, costumes, and places in the frame compositions are reserved for the American characters. Conversely, in Indian, Chinese, Hong Kong, and African films; Indians, Chinese, and Africans are the main characters. Seeing Asians and Africans as the heroes of their own stories and at the center of the frame may be quite a new experience for you.

At the same time, the films you will study in World on Film will also reveal the concerns you have in common with people who live in other countries, perhaps more than you have in common with the heroes in the American films you are used to. For example Cléo does not contain a plot in which its protagonist must battle external adversaries in tense life-or-death situations; win the love of a handsome but unattainable man; or foil the plans of a criminal mastermind determined to rule the world, the menu of stories from which Hollywood likes to choose. But how many students have days like that? By contrast, in Cléo, director Varda strips away the surface of the heroine’s life so that we can see what lies beneath outer appearances, a process that many people must go through in order to mature, grow, and change. Under the veneer, her surface, she is a person with fears and hopes you may identify with even if you are not exactly in Cléo’s situation. The veneer that slowly gets scraped away is made up of images of Cléo’s success: she is not only beautiful, but a famous singer, she also has a rich, good-looking lover who denies her nothing; she lives like a queen. Or she has done so. The film begins shortly after Cléo has had some tests taken to see if she has stomach cancer.

As the film unfolds, Cléo waits for the results. While she waits, she looks at herself with more honesty than ever before. You will make discoveries with her, as she becomes increasingly aware of her narcissism and begins to notice that she is trapped by the luxuries that other people envy. She begins to see that her rich, very “devoted” lover is more interested in her as a beautiful object than as a person; and she realizes that her life with him has been an act calculated to please him, but that has left no room for her feelings and needs. The possibility that she may have cancer clears her mind of many of the falsehoods she has been living with. Paradoxically – in opposition to what might be expected – the threat of death sets Cléo on the road to freedom. Many people find that a shock like the discovery of cancer makes them see life in a new way. Does this sound familiar?

Because this is not a Hollywood film, we don’t discover that Cléo is headed toward a more open life only when she or the script verbally tells us she is. Instead, much of what we learn grows from the images in the film. By the end, we have had a few shocks about how disguised she was when we first met her, including seeing Cléo strip off the glamorous blonde wig we thought was her real hair and learning that her real name is Florence. To understand where she is going in life, we watch what happens to her face and body after she leaves her expensive apartment, her suffocating daily routine, and the false identity she and others have built for her. The possibility that she is facing death brings about rebirth out of the ashes of her old identity when she finally meets someone she can talk to without selling herself: Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), a young, openhearted soldier on his way to Algeria, whom she encounters by chance. In fact, the main action of the film is Florence/Cléo’s discovery of a man who is in the same position she is. Both she and Antoine are facing possible death, he on the battlefield, she from a disease. Together they share a few hours of complete honesty and friendship, walking around a beautiful Paris park. Symbolically it is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year and the beginning of a season of abundant life. It is also significant that Florence/Cléo meets up with a soldier going to Algeria, since it turns her attention from her artificial life of luxury and fame toward the larger world of politics she has ignored previously.

Since you may not know about this aspect of French history, here is some background. In 1962, when this film was released, the morality of France’s military presence in Algeria was a hot topic in France, and among politically aware people all over the world. Algeria had been a colony of France since the 1830s, when it was conquered by France. Between 1954 and 1962, the Algerians waged a guerrilla war for independence that was met with shocking violence on the part of the French colonial government, including torture. This conflict took place during the time of the Fourth Republic in France, which was formed right after the end of World War II, but collapsed in 1958, due to its instability and the crisis caused by the Algerian War; war hero Charles de Gaulle formed the Fifth Republic. The French public was as divided about the questions of Algeria as Americans were during US military action in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and during the Iraq War at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some of the French endorsed independence for the Algerians and were against their government’s policy. Some supported the government. In 1962, Algeria finally achieved independence. French audiences would have known that it was uncertain whether Antoine would live to return to France, since, as you know, guerrilla violence is unpredictable, even after a formal ceasefire. Neither Antoine nor Cléo say anything about what they think of Algeria. But given their mutual desire for freedom for themselves, what do you think French audiences would assume about their sympathies?

A journey to freedom communicated by a transition from confining to open images, from a selfish life to a life aware of political developments? This concept may not even make sense to a filmgoer educated by Hollywood, where a fight for freedom is the result of a plot that ends in a violent battle. Many Americans are trained to believe that films about freedom should involve violence, guns, cars, airplanes, explosions, suspense, and multimillion dollar CGI effects. Many students are disappointed by characters who do not express themselves through violence, even though most of them would never resort to hitting or shooting people with whom they disagree or by whom they feel abused. Some psychologists have investigated why ordinary, law-abiding people take pleasure in seeing violence committed in a fictional world. This is a question worth pondering. One possibility is that the extreme violence we see onscreen distracts us from our problems. It might even be cathartic. That is to say, it might purge us of some of our own inner tensions and anger. And we do need a temporary vacation from what ails us every so often. But don’t we also need to gain more clarity about our problems? Cléo is actually the kind of film that uses the allure of the movies to bring us closer to our own lives. One part of the interesting invitation to look more carefully at the way we live that Varda gives us is her refusal to close the story with the kind of certainty that we all idealize but rarely find in life. At the end of the film, the audience is given no idea whether either Cléo or Antoine will survive. In Cléo’s final discussion with her doctor, we learn that the tests were positive, but whether she can survive her cancer is left up in the air. And no one can predict whether Antoine will survive his national service in Algeria so that they can one day embark on the love relationship that may be in its initial stage.

With its delight in ordinary life, and its refusal to nail down a happy ending, Cléo is representative of some of the challenges and rewards posed by the films of the French New Wave, which you will learn about in Chapter 1. Cléo also gives you a good start in learning to trace meaningful patterns of images throughout a film and to accustom yourself to a more slowly paced plot that has an inconclusive ending. It also provides a good opportunity to begin to look at the question of escapism in movies. Cléo is about putting an end to escapism and to grandiose lies that people tell themselves about their lives. Not only does Cléo stop fooling herself during the movie, but we are asked to learn to stop fooling ourselves as we watch her story; that is, we are asked to stop being escapist when we go to the movies. Hollywood trains us to expect escapism, to enter into a fantasy world where the colors are brighter, all desires are fulfilled, and there are no obstacles that the hero can’t overcome. Movies that discourage escapism are much less dizzily optimistic about the limits to human will and desire from which we all suffer. In this course, you will see many movies that refuse to give us fantasy reassurances about the big obstacles to personal happiness like disease, injustice, the fortunes of history, and death, which are either impossible or extremely difficult to overcome, as well as the less dramatic, but often formidable, boundaries to our wishes. Yet you will be given a form of optimism, the hope that we can look realistically at the world and understand it, even when we can’t immediately overcome.

In Cleo from 5 to 7, the first frames show us escapist stories that the film eventually rejects. The first frames show the pictures in a deck of tarot cards, which are in color, as Cléo is given a reading by a woman who claims to be predicting Cléo’s future. Tarot is a fortune-telling system that was developed thousands of years ago. Each card shows a picture of another figure or object that is supposed to have a definite meaning for the life of the person getting the reading. Isn’t this like the escapist stories that Hollywood tells? Both tarot and Hollywood films deal in certainties. Cléo’s tarot reading predicts death and she is very much afraid. But the rest of the film, which is in black and white, pulls her away from the tarot story toward an open universe in which neither the future nor the present is written in stone, and, of course, isn’t as colorfully intense. But it is more mysterious, open, and full of possibility. In her film, director Agnès Varda shows a real antagonism toward tarot and other escapist stories, but that doesn’t mean that you have to reject Hollywood in order to enjoy the kind of story Varda tells. You only need to see a new way of thinking about stories.

The Point, So Far

To summarize:

Reading an international film requires that you think of the images as important, primary sources of the meaning of the story.Subtitles are an important, but secondary, part of your additional resources for understanding the film.Developing your skills as an observer will make reading subtitles less annoying because you will be much less dependent on them.Learning to read international film means seeing other stories in other languages with the eyes of the country in which it was made, not with American eyes.You will need cultural information about the history, religion, art, and literature of the film culture you are studying, which will be provided by World on Film, along with suggestions for sources of further information.You will need cultural information about the values and aesthetic beliefs of the directors who made the films you study, which will be provided by World on Film, along with suggestions for sources of further information.Your experiences with international films will break down old, useless stereotypes and give you a bigger picture of the world you live in.Screening international films will frequently offer you non-escapist fictional experiences and give you more ways of seeing movies than you had before.You do not need to give up enjoying Hollywood movies in order to add new movie pleasures to your life.

Talking about International Film

You will need a vocabulary to talk about international film similar to the one you used when you discussed American film in film classes. If you have never taken any other film classes, you will benefit from reading a book with a general introduction to film study. (See “Further Reading” at the end of this chapter.) You will also need to use the skills you have learned in your composition classes to write your class essays. If you don’t feel that you have good composition skills, you will benefit from reviewing your notes from your composition course. The reason you need a special vocabulary and fluency in organizing your thoughts around a thesis in an expository essay is that it’s not likely that you will be able to make precise, knowledgeable statements about the films you see in class without the necessary words and organizational skills. Everyone talks about movies but most people stop at expressing their feelings as they are walking out of the theater. This feels good, but doesn’t allow you to communicate complex thoughts about the many levels that are present in a really good film. A good vocabulary of film terms also allows you to process your thoughts over time. As you know, there are certain movies that stay with you for a few days, or weeks, and in the case of a movie that hits you with a really deep impact, months. Using the specialized vocabulary developed by film scholars helps you to focus clearly on the elements of the film that most interest you. If you are also practiced in organizing the thesis structure of a formal expository essay, you are in an even better position to deal with your thoughts in an orderly way, so that they don’t confuse you by flying around wildly in your head.

This book will assist you in recognizing and understanding the special vocabulary of film studies by highlighting the necessary terms in bold print. Next to all the terms that are highlighted, you will usually find a very brief definition of not more than a few words so that the explanation doesn’t interrupt the ideas being discussed. If the term has been used often in previous chapters, there may be no definition, but the bold font will let you know that the definition is in the Glossary at the back of the book, where you will find an extensive definition of the term. Some words in this book that are not film criticism terms but may not be part of your daily vocabulary will also be defined briefly and parenthetically, but these will not be highlighted in a bold font nor will they be in the Glossary. If the brief definitions of these words are not sufficient, please consult your dictionary. But make the effort to get clarity if you don’t understand a word. Many students believe they can guess at the meanings of unfamiliar words, but often these guesses are imprecise or wrong. You will not gain much from this book if you don’t understand the words in the text, so use these chapters as opportunities not only to increase your vocabulary of film terms, but also to increase your general vocabulary.

To use your new vocabulary properly, you will need to distinguish between the necessary special film studies vocabulary used in these pages and jargon, in its worst sense, that you might hear or read elsewhere. Jargon is a term with several meanings. It can be a neutral word that simply refers to the terms special to a profession or intellectual discipline. It can also mean gibberish, pretentious, vague, or meaningless language that pretends to express complex ideas. When you are just beginning to study a subject it is not always easy to tell the difference, because new words that are actually quite valuable in creating clarity may at first sound like gibberish to you. They might sound pretentious and confusing as well. The discovery of whether or not new words you encounter while reading film criticism are jargon takes time. It takes work. It takes active thinking about what is going on in your classroom. It takes consultation with your professors and with your fellow students. If you are unfamiliar with any of the terms used in this book or in classroom discussions, you will learn more if you make a focused effort to evaluate whether these words are useful in exploring the new films you are seeing and any new ideas connected with them.

To take two easy examples of how useful film studies vocabulary functions, consider two of the vocabulary words highlighted in bold in this Introduction: image and escapist. Both of these words give you a precision you would not have if you used synonyms, or words that mean almost the same, and more economy in your writing, too. In most cases, you would have to use many words in order to say what you can say in one good word from your vocabulary of film critical terms. In film criticism, the word escapist describes a kind of entertainment that functions like a narcotic; it deals in fantasies that distract you from troubling realities. Non-escapist entertainment uses fantasies too, but these give you a new way to look at and consider the problems that bother you, perhaps from a new perspective. Both escapist and non-escapist movies have their good points. But it’s important to make distinctions between the two in order to be more aware of the possibilities offered by mass entertainment. The word escapist is helpful in making that distinction. What other word could you use? Would the words “romantic,” “evasive,” “dreamy,” or “idealistic” do as well?

Similarly, the word image does a special job in film criticism that even close synonyms can’t do with equal effectiveness. Film critics use the word image to mean a visual composition as it appears on film. But what about the word, “picture,” its nearest relative? Why should film critics prefer the term “image?” One reason might be that “picture” is associated with tangible objects, which the visual composition on film is not. The word image contains the connotations of an appearance, which is closer to the situation of film, which originally was an impression captured on film stock. Today, the image is more likely to be a collection of digital information. But whatever the mode of delivery, the visual impact of the cinema is based on immateriality, which is the reason film scholar and critic Gilberto Perez has called cinema “the material ghost.”

Getting comfortable with the special film criticism vocabulary will be part of your written assignments in this course. But only part. To write your essays for your international film course, you will also need to discover your thesis in response to the question posed by your essay assignment. Then you will need to support your thesis with many examples organized into paragraphs. Of course, within these paragraphs you will need to pay attention to your sentence structure and your word selection. Your instructor may decide to pick your essay assignments from the suggested projects that appear at the end of every chapter in this book. For example, take a look at question 4, which you will find at the end of this introduction as one of the possible essay topics: Cléo is not the only kind of woman in Cleo from 5 to 7. Cléo’s manager, Angèle (Dominique Davray), exudes quite a different kind of femininity. Her friend Dorothée (Dorothée Blank) is still another kind of feminine person. Explore the differences among them. How do the images associated with each woman define who she is? How would you go about organizing an essay to respond to this question?

Most composition books tell students to brainstorm first before they arrive at a thesis. In composition courses, brainstorming is a pre-writing process. It means to let your mind wander freely as you jot down possible ideas for writing your essay. For question 4, you would need to look carefully at Cleo from 5 to 7 and make notes freely about all the places in the film that Cléo, Angèle, or Dorothée appear. (Actually you wouldn’t have to make notes about all the places that Cléo appears since she is in every scene, just the ones that seem most interesting to you.) Then you would need to review your notes. What conclusions can you come to about the characterization of each woman? How are they different from each other? Similar? Are there more similarities than differences or the reverse? This process leads you to form a thesis for your essay: that is, your main statement that all your paragraphs and examples support. One possible thesis could address the balance between similarities and differences. You might come up with a thesis that asserts that “If we examine the women in Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7, we will see that the filmmaker asserts that all women are essentially sisters under the skin, whatever their apparent differences may be.” Alternatively, your thesis might declare: “In Agnès Varda’s New Wave film, Cleo from 5 to 7, the pronounced differences between Cléo (Corinne Marchand), the principal character; her manager, Angèle (Dominique Davray); and her friend Dorothée (Dorothée Blank) are based not on innate character, but on their differing social positions.” This is not to say that these are the only two possible conclusions you might come to. Your choice of thesis will depend on what your own notes tell you about the characterizations of the three women. If this process is not familiar to you, consider checking out Timothy Corrigan’s book on writing about film, listed in the “Further Reading” list at the end of this chapter. Note: It is standard practice in film criticism to place the name of the actor in parentheses after the name of a character the first time the character is mentioned.

Whichever question you choose, your best answer will not be based entirely on your assumptions, which come out of an American context, but also on your knowledge of the French national film culture that produced Cléo. In this introduction, you find out only a very little about French film culture, but in the Chapter 1 you will learn a great deal more and will be better prepared to answer essay questions. To prepare you for taking culture into consideration when you write, let us now discuss the meaning of the term “national film culture.”

National Film Cultures

So, Cleo from 5 to 7 is part of the French national film culture. But what is a national film culture? The kinds of stories that tend to be told within a national film culture and the way shots are composed and framed are determined by a common history, sometimes a common religion, and the main traditions of painting and literature that have evolved over time in a particular nation. The relationships films from a national film culture form between the audience and the main characters involve the way individual identity is constructed within a particular national society, and how the sexual, family, racial, and economic values embedded within the culture are available for each person in that culture to define him or her self. But films don’t usually “sell” one set of beliefs in a pure form; that would be propaganda. Most films generally contain not only the main values of a society but also many ruptures from them: elements in the film that may, either intentionally or inadvertently, oppose some familiar beliefs. And, since film has been somewhat international from its inception in 1896, many film cultures are also very strongly influenced by one or more different national film cultures. To study a national film culture is to study not only the dominant practices in that culture. It also means studying the tensions in the film with those practices and the way influences from other film cultures operate on them. In Part I of this book, you will be given the information and tools to study these interesting forces and counterforces in a number of film cultures.

Cleo from 5 to 7, as part of the New Wave movement in film that began in France after World War II, primarily sets itself in opposition to the way films had been made in the country before the war, and in opposition to many of the values of the parents of the New Wave filmmakers – and their parents. Some of the filming practices in Cléo are the result of movies that were made in Italy after the end of World War II by filmmakers known as the neorealists. You will learn more about them in Chapter IV. World War II marked an important change in cinema in Europe. Prewar French films were called les films de papa by the New Wave directors. You will learn all about this in Chapter 1, in which you will trace the development of French film culture from 1896, and the experiments of the Lumière brothers, the first filmmakers in the world. You will go on a time trip through the changes in French history, as well as the changes in the films that reflected or questioned that history. Along the way you will meet the different generations of filmmakers in France, and examine some of the evolutions in technology that transformed the way movies were made as well as the primary influences from other film cultures on the country you are studying. This will be the model for all the chapters in Part I of this book. After you have studied the sampling of film cultures selected by your professor for your class, you will begin to make important distinctions among the perspectives of different peoples. Many values that you now think are universal will be revealed to you as conditioned by the culture in which you were brought up. For example, while Western cultures have designated blonde, young, slim women as the most attractive female type – the consequences of which are dramatized in Cléo – you will not find this to be the case in Asian and African cultures. As a matter of fact, you will see major variations in standards of sexual attractiveness in both men and women in different European film cultures, and in different historical eras in those cultures.

Of course, you will not have time in your course, especially if it is only a semester, to cover all or even most of the chapters in this book. World on Film focuses on many more subjects related to international film than can be included in a single semester. It is designed this way to give your professor maximum freedom to structure the class in new and interesting ways each time it is taught. As far as you are concerned, studying a selection of chapters will give you the tools to do further work on your own in exploring films that are not covered during the course of the semester. Any selection of film cultures will give you insight into the study of how they overlap and the ways in which they are extremely different. Even if you are able to take a two-semester survey of international film, you would not be able to cover all the national film cultures in Part I, and also all the groundbreaking, transnational filmmakers in Part II. And even if you could, this book does not cover all the film cultures that exist. Any way you slice it, this is an introduction that will be satisfying in opening up some interesting doors for you, but it is not intended as the final word about anything. If you are now beginning to wonder how some film cultures and transnational film directors were selected out of all the possibilities for inclusion, that is a fair question. It would be useful for you to think about the criteria by which these national cultures and individuals were chosen.

The selections in Part I have been determined by three considerations: influence, accessibility, and their place in the canon. (You will find more about the canon below.) First influence. The national film cultures represented are the ones that have been most dominant in determining the growth of film as a form of entertainment and expression since it began. This means, as you will soon see, that the primary national film cultures had early and continuing access to technological changes in filmmaking and support from the culture, either because of government encouragement or because they became economically viable early and continued to thrive. In addition to American film culture, which is not covered in this book, the most aggressively developed film cultures were those in France, Russia, Germany, and Italy. World on Film will give you some insight into why this was so. All European countries developed some kind of film industry once film was demonstrated to be a viable form of entertainment, and all are interesting. The hope is that your study of the primary European film cultures, dominant in terms of size and the scope of their contributions to world narrative, visual, and sound traditions, as well as to film technology, will equip you to study more national film cultures either in other courses or on your own.