MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist, and Random Speculation

[knives]

But perhaps I'm only writing this because I've just come home from a screening of "Melancholia", which blew me out of my socks... (I don't think anyone has complained about Criterion releasing "Antichrist", btw).

You missed out on a lot then. I think there's an entire thread with people complaining about just that.

[zedz]

I think the received notion that international film culture somehow stopped, or was horribly degraded, after the sixties is an incredibly dangerous one. But in my opinion this is generally expressed by a constrained and outmoded canon that runs aground after it hits the French New Wave and its Italian contemporaries (Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti).

The problem might rather be that a 'good' canon can only be established with a lot of hindsight, and possibly only by people who didn't have to live through the time they're talking about.

But that isn't at all the case with the canon we've been saddled with: Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman, Godard, Kurosawa et al. were pretty much immediately canonized (didn't L'Avventura make the first Sight & Sound list that it was eligible for?), and the problem is that the canon has barely shifted since then. I think the 'hindsight' requirement is a post facto justification for this stagnation, which is a recent phenomenon. If you go back to the 30s and 40s, contemporary filmmakers such as Chaplin, Clair and Eisenstein were acknowledged masters, and Rossellini and de Sica (and neorealism in general) were canonized almost immediately. It's only since the seventies that 'great film culture' has had this retrospective bias.

[knives]

I think there are a fair amount of people who have been canonized (maybe not to the mainstream degree as the '60s stuff but that's cultural) in the last thrity years. Yang, Hou, and Tsai have been canonized even just looking at one country. Actually now that I think about though I don't like him AW is pretty much canonized at this point and Tarr was right in '94. So while it's not as culturally pervasive as in the '60s there is still a growing cannon.

[John Edmond]

There are degrees of canonicity. The 62 Sight and Sound Poll put L'Avventura in at the second best film of all time - it's safe to say none of Yang, Hou or Tsai's films made it into the 92 or 02 top ten.

[zedz]

And I'm afraid Yang is barely in the criterionforum.org canon, let alone any real world one. Hou has the most secure claim of those three, but it's still really shaky compared to any of those 'old masters'. I don't think any of his films has ever been in hollering distance of the Sight and Sound list, for example, and that's probably the strongest litmus test of a serious critical consensus on the canon that we have.

[knives]

That's why I mentioned degree myself. I doubt any of those three save Yang would have been too known in the west during those two polls. Another part of may be that the best films are simply harder to find. Getting a French film an international release was never hard especially compared to a Tai or Iranian films. When France and Italy start to get to that level again I'm sure there will be more instant classics, but now all of the Bergman's and Antonioni's are in the crevices.

[Cold Bishop]

And isn't there the fact that much "art film" seems to be largely subsidized and almost expected to be made for a niche-audience? The films of Bergman and Fellini may be pegged as the stereotypical "European Art-House Film", but their movies were made to make money. They wouldn't have names like Grimaldi and DeLaurentiis behind them otherwise. They made populist films that also advanced the artform, and I believe that's why they're so easily fetishized (justifiably, in my opinion).

While I know changing tastes and distribution models play a major role here, I don't think it's the same. I don't believe a Tsai Ming-Liang has any illusions about crossover appeal. At the same time, I'm sure a middlebrow director like Guillaume Canet knows he's not transforming the cinematic landscape just because he has an international success (and that's okay,). The fact is that a parallel cinema syndrome has entrenched itself in pretty much every major national film industry. Even Hollywood, whose great legacy is precisely the avoidance of this, has created a greater rift between mainstream-all-ages/tentpole/blockbuster films and mature/indie/oscar-bait films than it's ever seen before. And while filmmakers certainly can't be blamed for what corporate consolidation and the global economy has wracked on the film industry, I do think most important filmmakers have shrugged their shoulders and just given into the fact their films are only going to be seen by a select few.

If there are so few Kurosawas and Antonionis these days it's because no one has that sort of exposure. "Important" filmmakers of now, be it Costa or Tsai or Tarr, are really more analogous to what a Rivette or a Kluge we're going through in their days; even now they have infiltrated the Film Canon only to a marginal degree. Those "important" filmmakers who have both crossover appeal and genuine vision could probably be counted on two hands, and all of their rights are already going to be sewn up by other outfits: MoC is not going to release any Almodovar or Wong or Trier anytime soon, and if they want to continue releasing Costa or Dumont, they're going to have to be mindful of the limited audience.

[knives]

Speaking of MOC this larger ability to go into the past made by the home video market has probably also slowed down things greatly. If I can project my Blu ray to be better than a theatrical release why should I move away from my comforts and pay for theatrical stuff?n That sort of situation no doubt slows down things and leaves less time to see the new.

[zedz]

I think Cold Bishop makes some good points about the scale of the arthouse audience nowadays, but most of the points I was making were about attitudes within the critical / arthouse audience sectors of cinephilia: i.e. that even among people who attend film festivals and watch subtitled films there seems to be a continued acceptance of the 60s canon.

Also, I don't know where knives' ideas about Yang's reception came from. I don't think any one of his films enjoyed a commercial release in an English-speaking territory until Yi-Yi. A couple of them (I'm thinking of A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong) barely even made it out onto the festival circuit. A Brighter Summer Day, famously, has never been released in any form in the USA or Great Britain (though I believe it had a television screening in the latter). He's practically the poster child for a neglected contemporary master.

[knives]

I meant to type Hou there.

[knives]

Also isn't it a tad disingenuous to say that all of them were canonized immediately when even Godard, the one who could most readily have that applied to them, had been as established critic for years beforehand. As for the rest you mentioned Bergman had to wait for at least Smiles of a Summer Night, but he was canonized until the double team of Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal came out while L'Avventura was at least Antonioni's third feature. While I do agree that we're going slower at it than was done in the '60s there are situations where somebody is immediately canonized once they have a big hit. The two most blatant examples I can think of is Tarr with Satantango and Kiarostami with Close-Up. With each of those movies that was basically the first time either was noticed on a very large international scale with something that just blew people away and at least in the case of Close-Up was canonized right after Cannes. Probably the stronger example, for better or worse, is von Trier who is in that Godard position of making a first feature that did immediately canonize him with at least a significant portion of the critical community (though I think none of his films have made Sight and Sound if we are using that as our yard stick). Soderbergh likewise is in that same place now that I think about it. I just don't think this issue is as black and white as you're making to be even if canon as a general concept is a problem.

[John Edmond]

Don't judge me, I was just personally curious. But here is the average age of the films on each SoS poll:

52 - 18.55
62 - 20.4
72 - 26.5
82 - 32.9
92 - 46.3
02 - 50 (be thankful for the two Godfathers saving us from complete ossification)

Obviously we have to kill all the critics who appeared in the '80s.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's also worth considering the possibility that Sight and Sound is itself an ossified and past-oriented marker of canon. I mean, if you go by the imdb top 250 (and really, why wouldn't you?) 8 of the top 20 are from 1990 onward.

[Cold Bishop]

but most of the points I was making were about attitudes within the critical / arthouse audience sectors of cinephilia: i.e. that even among people who attend film festivals and watch subtitled films there seems to be a continued acceptance of the 60s canon.

Well, I don't think the cinephilic community is immune to this either. What is a canon? It's people finding a common consensus among the multitude of individual opinions. I think just as the "common ground" of the mass audience has eroded for most art-house film, I think the ability to create a critical common ground is more difficult. Not to overly-romanticize the social currency of the critic in the past, but certainly the influence and perceived relevance of the film critic has gotten worse. Not just its influence to the public at large, but its influence among other critics (and cinephiles). There are plenty of critics and cinephiles who'll talk your ear off about Ceylan or Diaz. But so what? Just as the market/audience for art-house films has grown fractured, marginalized and insular, so has the cinephilia that follows it. And just because cinephilia is a subculture doesn't mean it's any healthier cut off from the general public than cinema. I don't think a canon is possible without some audience validation. If only a select few watch Platform or Le Quattro Volte, only a fraction of what use to turn out for The Bicycle Thief or Rashomon, who's going to care when someone praises them?

And, while this is going into some controversial territory which I'll probably immediately regret, aren't those films from the 20s-60s better precisely because they could engage a larger mass audience? Isn't the ability to make a film that doesn't compromise one's vision, but still has mass appeal, one of the highest qualities a filmmaker can have? Doesn't knowing that a potential audience is out there make a filmmaker rise to the occasion in a way he may have not otherwise? And as such, doesn't the influence and atmosphere that exists when a large public engages with "art-house" film ultimately trickle down and help even marginalized figures who probably won't ever have a hit, but who may have a bigger reception than otherwise (e.g. Rivette and Kluge in the 70s)?

I think of the people I know, and I could recommend Maldone to any one of them, even if they don't watch classic or foreign or silent films. It'd be a hard sell for some, and they all wouldn't like it, but I think if they all agreed to meet the film halfway, they would at least find it inviting. As much as I like a film like Police, Adjective, I couldn't just do the same... and at some point, you have to wonder what that says about the film.

[knives]

While I don't disagree with you I don't think Police, Adjective is a good example, maybe Aurora would be a better example as a lot of people I've shown Police to have liked it and it really is on the same ground as Drive is only slightly more niche for the subtitles.

[swo17]

here is the average age of the films on each SoS poll:

52 - 18.55
62 - 20.4
72 - 26.5
82 - 32.9
92 - 46.3
02 - 50 (be thankful for the two Godfathers saving us from complete ossification)

Obviously we have to kill all the critics who appeared in the '80s.

The average age should be increasing each time the poll is taken, by about 5 years if the new decade is represented about as well as those preceding it. If the increase is much less than this, newer films are making more of a presence, and if much more, older films are. So the '62 poll might be thought to have allowed too many films from the '50s in (unless we consider that it was just a really above average decade), the '92 poll seems to have let too few new films in (unless we attribute that to the '80s having been terrible), and the '72, '82, and '02 polls appear to have more or less let in their fair share of films from their respective preceding decades.

[lubitsch]

I also find the discussion slightly baffling. People clamor for what they want to see and can't. Few contemporary films aren't available at least in their native countries on DVD. They might lack subs but this is often corrected by fansubtitling.
For older films there's a supremely small selection of films on English subbed DVDs and a slightly larger if you take into account native releases and fansubtitling again. Still we could comfortably sail the Titanic through the gaps that still exist within the earlier decades of national cinemas, be it Tapiovaara or Gremillon, Fährmann Maria or Fievre.
I am also not really under the impression that current arthouse filmmakers are underexposed quite the contrary every long take borefest director gets his DVD edition and club of followers. It's an international style ranging from Tsai over Tarr to the Berliner Schule which gets as much public recognition as it ever can hope to achieve and far too much critical attention. In fact I'd say that quite a lot of pretty good contemporary films don't get the exposure they deserve being labeled as "middlebrow" which is the ultimative disparaging verdict.

[zedz]

And, while this is going into some controversial territory which I'll probably immediately regret, aren't those films from the 20s-60s better precisely because they could engage a larger mass audience? Isn't the ability to make a film that doesn't compromise one's vision, but still has mass appeal, one of the highest qualities a filmmaker can have? Doesn't knowing that a potential audience is out there make a filmmaker rise to the occasion in a way he may have not otherwise?

These are interesting and important questions, but I'm afraid I'm one of those demented optimists who thinks that the 'rejection' of a lot of great subtitled / arthouse cinema by audiences is more a problem of the international distribution network and the media that supports it than a problem of the films themselves. The decline of serious criticism is one factor here, but so too is the widespread co-option of all media by the Hollywood publicity machine, which stipulates that for a certain internationally synchronised period, everybody is supposed to care about the Green Lantern movie. Non-Hollywood cinema is muscled out of multiplexes by the studios, and alternative venues collapse with alarming regularity; marginal films get further marginalised.

But personally, I don't see that a film like Certified Copy is any less user-friendly than any number of supposedly 'middlebrow' Europuddings, even if it does have a lot more to think about under the surface, just as I don't see why the people who used to enthuse about L'Avventura or Last Year at Marienbad couldn't be just as intrigued by What Time Is It There? or Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. Sure, there are the deliberately confrontational and aesthetically challenging 'tough films' - which have always been around (not even the Golden Age of Arthouse could make a hit out of Gertrud) - but there are plenty of great films that are perfectly accessible to moderately adventurous audiences. But those audiences have probably never heard of them, and they're getting out of the habit of seeking out interesting, challenging films.

And I have to say that my conception of the canon and knives' seem to be completely incompatible. For my money, you don't get to enter it after one well-reviewed film and a smattering of festival screenings. If it's a canon that's only acknowledged by a miniscule community of scattered cinephiles, it's not really a canon at all.

[perkizitore]

I think it's safe to assume that 'Intentions Of Murder' will be released on Dual Format sometime next year.

[swo17]

It's actually not safe to assume, since Nick has specifically said twice that they aren't releasing it (materials not up to snuff).

[knives]

And I have to say that my conception of the canon and knives' seem to be completely incompatible. For my money, you don't get to enter it after one well-reviewed film and a smattering of festival screenings. If it's a canon that's only acknowledged by a miniscule community of scattered cinephiles, it's not really a canon at all.

Actually that was my point so we must be on the same road. My point from the beginning was that the canon developing slowly is nothing to worry about and I don't think my examples for recent entries into the canon (Tarr and Kiarostami) are particularly obscured with very wide acknowledgment from even more middlebrow sites like Slate and AVC. I wouldn't call someone like Skolimowski, no matter how much I want this to be true, canonized because he hasn't broken into that more popular arena. My judgment on canon is basically do people who don't care and haven't seen the work of this person at least know to some extent the name. By that consideration Tarr's probably more canon than Pasolini who seems to only be recognized for in the mainstream for Salo.

[zedz]

I guess we have to agree to differ. For me, a film like Satantango, which has only ever enjoyed a handful of screenings in English-speaking territories, is way too obscure to be considered canonical. Before it came out on DVD, how many people had even seen the film in the US or UK? A thousand? And if you're being extraordinarily charitable you might be able to add another thousand viewers as a consequence of the DVD releases.

Pasolini, on the other hand, was an arthouse star in the 60s and 70s, or near as dammit. Almost all of his features were in commercial distribution in America and Britain, and he had at least one hugely influential arthouse blockbuster under his belt (The Decameron). Regardless of the notoriety around Salo, he was an integral enough cultural figure in Britain to allow for casual parody on TV comedy shows. That's what being part of a canon is all about. Pasolini is a good example of a filmmaker who slipped off the international radar to a large extent after his death, however (partly because there were no more films, partly because the existing films became harder to see, and partly because he was so sui generis that he didn't have a particularly widespread influence with subsequent generations of Italian filmmakers, and even if he did, Italian cinema itself receded from view to a large extent in the 80s and 90s), which probably accounts for why you'd only heard of his most notorious film - the one which retained the most critical currency because of its extremity.

[swo17]

I'd say the foreign language films today that have that sort of ubiquitous presence (Amelie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Life Is Beautiful, Run Lola Run, The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, Oldboy, The Secret in Their Eyes, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, etc.) are occasionally of some merit but generally not that highly regarded by people championing more obscure films for canonization.

FWIW though, Diving Bell is getting a whole episode of the Simpsons devoted to it!

[knives]

Part of the thing is I don't think screenings mean much anymore. I know a lot of people who simply don't show up to the theater anymore for anything and yet have seen many more films than myself. That's not really a good thing to judge canonicity on. Exposure in a general sense is probably better and to my knowledge all of Tarr's films (excluding his two most recent) have had US DVD releases and are frequently talked about in even the most unlikely places. If parody and the like are a sign of canonicity, than again Satantango has had many jokes made about it (mostly the length, but whatever).

Though to be honest I don't think canon really matters compared to general availability. Who cares how many people have seen one film compared to the other (though the always unreliable IMDB has Satantango at 2828 views and Werckmiester Harmonies at 3686 compared with Pasolini's 3381 on The Decameron and The Hawks and the Sparrows 1362) when just being able to see the film is what matters.

[swo17]

Probably most of the people that saw Pasolini's films in the '60s and '70s have not rated them on IMDb.