Search results
Post-war films 2 – adaptation and the theatre 6 The British cinema in the post-war period was not overly dependent upon the theatre for its source material. One writer has estimated that ‘of the 1,033 British films of the 1950s listed in David Quinlan’s British Sound Films, some 152 were based on stage plays’.1 On an annual basis the figure never fell below 10 per cent of the annual production output; in some years it reached more than 20 per cent, as in 1948 when there were nineteen stage-originated features out of seventy-four films, and in 1952 when the
Post-war films 1 – genre and British cinema 5 The British cinema emerged from the war period with a high critical reputation, a degree of audience appeal, and with the Rank group well established as a large vertically integrated company ready to challenge the Hollywood majors in the international marketplace. Yet, the early post-war years saw the industry coping with a turbulent period of uncertainty dramatised by a trade war with Hollywood during which the American majors withheld their films from the British market for several months. The uncertainty, however
This book provides an introduction to French film studies. It concentrates on films which have had either a theatrical or video release in Britain, or which are available on video or DVD from France. Most avant-garde film-makers, including Germaine Dulac, were unable to continue in the 1930s, faced with the technical demands and high production costs of the sound film. Exacerbated by the Depression, and above all by the financial collapse of both Gaumont and Pathé, film production fell from 158 features the previous year to only 126 in 1934, and 115 in 1935. While poetic realism was at its height, a talismanic figure in post-war film was faced with a generally lukewarm reception from critics and audiences. Thanks largely to German finance and also to an influx of filmmakers replacing those who had departed, after 1940 French film. If 1968 marked a watershed in French cinema's engagement with politics and history 1974 did the same for representations of sexuality. In that year, pornography entered mainstream French cinema. Although film-making remains male-dominated in France as elsewhere, 'more women have taken an active part in French cinema than in any other national film industry'. A quarter of all French films made in 1981 were polars, and many of those were box-office successes. French fantasy has had a particular national outlet: the bande dessinée. The heritage film often takes its subject or source from the 'culturally respectable classicisms of literature, painting, music'.
3 Reconstruction and retribution: Clouzot’s post-war films Despite the ultimate recognition of Le Corbeau as one of the most significant films made in France during the occupation, its caustic satire of authority and production by the German company Continental Films led to Clouzot and his associates being branded as collaborators and banned from working in the film industry after France was liberated in 1944. This chapter examines the four films with which Clouzot relaunched his career on his return to film-making in 1947 (having effectively been excluded from the
’s presence in post-war film culture remains a blind spot in film studies. 14 Figure 0.3 Wifredo Lam, untitled linocut 005 (5101), 1951 Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries provides the first coherent and expansive look into the dynamic heterogeneity of transnational surrealist film culture since the mid-twentieth century, with a focus on the myriad ways in which surrealists themselves engaged with cinema. Past literature on this subject by critics and surrealists has focused largely on three primary areas: films made by surrealists
Cesare Zavattini is principally remembered as a theoretician of neorealism and as the author of the screenplays of some of the major post-war films of Vittorio De Sica ( Sciuscià/Shoeshine 1946, Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thief 1948, Miracolo a Milano/Miracle in Milan 1951, Umberto D . 1952). In fact, his experience was more extensive and varied. He worked in different media and was especially
as a welcome return to form for Duvivier after the perceived unevenness of his output since his return from America. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (1956), no fan of Duvivier in the past, called it ‘puissante, sobre, dense’ (‘powerful, simple, concise’), with a depth and intelligence worthy of Balzac or Tolstoy. Conclusion Marc-Edouard Nabé (2010: 40) calls Duvivier’s post-war films ‘foisonnants, complexes, hyperconstruits’ (‘prolific, complex, hyper- constructed’). Despite a tricky homecoming, Duvivier’s ease with 58 ‘a paralysed film’; ‘faithful to a visual style
(1938) – this realist mode of production always incorporated theatrically inspired scenes shot in studio. So did Pagnol’s original screenplays, including Merlusse (1935), Cigalon (1935), César , and La Fille du puisatier (1940). His two best post-war films, Naïs (1945) and Manon des sources (1952) were photographed almost entirely on location and confirmed his seminal influence on Italian neo-realism (Leprohon 1976
metropolises of high modernity. These films also tend to be products of an artisanal rather than a commercial imperative, frequently incorporating found footage, and fragments from alternative image systems, into their documentary mise en scène. In many cases, they may even be more familiar to students of animation, assemblage and collage, photography, or post-war film modernism, than to students of the documentary. As figures who can relate to cinema through other arts, the filmmakers discussed in Regarding the Real convey an ambitious, experimental sense of what the
Clair, but he was also drawn by the documentaries of Cavalcanti and John Grierson.’ Continued Patrick: ‘Charles regarded comedy seriously; he would say, “Comedy is creation; tragedy is all too easy, it is but a reflection of life.” When he did direct films of serious content he was deeply involved emotionally, as with The Divided Heart . But in some ways he despised himself for showing that emotion; perhaps it was all part of his distaste of pomposity.’ The late Alexander Walker, one of Britain’s best and acutest post-war film commentators, who had followed