What is Art Cinema?

There is no absolute definition for what constitutes Art Cinema, and the term itself has been widely debated over the years. Is Art Cinema a genre in and of itself? What is the difference between Art Cinema and Experimental Film? Is an Independent film automatically an Art Film?

Despite the interchangeable nature of these terms, it is generally agreed upon that Art Cinema refers to films that are produced outside of Hollywood. This means that Art Films tend to be evaluated in contrast to the standard Hollywood model of filmmaking.

As we have established in earlier discussions, Hollywood has long favoured action-oriented narratives, made easy to follow by employing the tried and tested continuity system.

Art films tend to challenge these conventions in various ways. For example, films may stray from goal-oriented narratives in favour of character driven stories, focusing instead on inner-dilemmas. Narratives may be episodic, with unexplained gaps or ambiguous sequences. Films may end with no conclusive resolution, leaving the audience begging for answers.

An art film may also adopt unconventional approaches to mise-en-scène and film technique, pushing the limitations of the medium in an attempt to discover new ways of presenting stories.

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) is an early example of an art/experimental film. The film departs from linearity and employs a dream-like circular narrative, featuring visual motifs and asynchronous sound. Watch the film in full here.

Conventions of Art Cinema

According to David Bordwell, Art Cinema is a genre with its own set of conventions which he summarised in his 1979 article “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice”:

· Art films make narrative structure secondary to “authorial expressivity”

· This results in “a loosening of the chain of cause and effect”

· Art films often deal more with the inner drama of the character’s psyche — moral dilemma or identity crisis

· Art films probe dilemmas, but usually offer no clear resolution, “refusing… readily answered conclusions”

· Art films feature unexplained gaps, deliberately ambiguous sequences, and “a distinctive visual style”

The oppositional nature of the art film, provokes the viewer to ask:

How is the story being told?

Why tell the story in this way?

By challenging the conventions of mainstream cinema, the Art Film invites the viewer to become an active participant, rather than a passive recipient of information. Michael Haneke’s, Hidden (2005) puts this idea into practice.

From the opening sequence, Haneke unsettles the viewer’s trust, making them suspicious of the images they are presented within the film. Thus, the director gets his point across: not to trust the mediated image, in particular, those created by the mass media.

Origins

The origins of the Art Film can be traced back to the early 1920s, which saw a number of Art and avant-garde movements experiment with the medium:

· Soviet films that experimented heavily with montage

· Cinema Pur, a French avant-garde movement that used film to transcend conventional narrative structures

· The Surrealist movement which saw film as a new means of exploring Freud’s theories of the subconscious mind

· German Expressionist Cinema which pushed the boundaries of mise-en-scène creating a unique visual language

Un Chien Andalou (Salvador Dali & Luis Buñuel, 1929) is generally considered to be the most famous Surrealist film. The film defies narrative logic and instead focuses on the symbolic images linked together through graphic editing.

The German Expressionist films that came out of Germany in the 1920s also contributed to the concept of the Art Film. The movement was concerned with capturing the subjective reality of the individual and rejected the notion that art should be beautiful.

Film sets were characteristically distorted, featuring angled lines and shadows that had been painted onto the walls creating a chiaroscuro effect that would later inform the Horror and Film Noir genres. The mise-en-scènecame to mirror the interior mindset of the character, one that was dark and disturbed, as seen in the example below:

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

Other notable examples:

Nosferatu (F.W Murnau, 1922)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

While the movement had an expiry date, filmmakers working in Hollywood such as Hitchcock, incorporated the techniques developed by German Expressionism into their own work. The manipulation of mise-en-scène as a means of conveying subtext soon became standard filmmaking practice.

Question:

• Can you think of a contemporary filmmaker whose work is reminiscent of German Expressionist Cinema?

Post-WWII Cinema

Post-WWII Art Cinema, in particular, Italian Neorealism was characterised by a return to authenticity and a rejection of the commercial studio approach. The narratives in these films focus on poor and middle class people who had experienced the demoralising effects of the war. Many films from this time adopted an almost documentary style approach, aligned with Social Realism.

Characteristics of Italian Neorealism:

· True to life, everyday narratives

· Shooting on location made possible by…

· The Éclair camera, which was lightweight allowing freedom of movement

· Preference for natural light, and the extended take

· Avoidance of intrusive editing or special effects

· Use of non-actors

The scene below is from Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria De Sica, 1948). Note how the scene lacks the usual tension and drama, given the significance of the item that has been stolen (a bicycle, the key to this man’s livelihood during hard economic times).

Questions:

Neorealist films were dubbed as ‘films without action’, bringing them closer to reality than Hollywood’s larger than life tales.

• What is it about this scene that makes it feel more authentic, and like ‘real life’?

Consider the above list of characteristics in your answer.

Italian Neorealism had far-reaching influence on its European counterparts, including the French New Wave Cinema. These critics turned filmmakers took to the streets with a new vitality that challenged conventional filmmaking practices, combining Neorealism and their love for Hollywood gangster films.

The most contentious of the bunch was Jean-Luc Godard, who pioneered a style that defied film convention — using jump cuts, crossing the line, and direct-to-camera asides in an attempt to distance the viewer.

His first feature film Breathless (Godard, 1960) features regular breaks in continuity as well as the liberal use of the then revolutionary jump cut as seen in the sequence below.

This was not a sign of lazy filmmaking, but a critique on the constructed nature of cinema. By employing what is better known as the alienation effect (click on the link for further info on this term) the audience can become critical of the material that is being presented to them. The scene below from Bande Apart (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964), is a playful example of this:

Godard’s films had an enormous influence on modern cinema. A lot of modern non-continuity editing and non-linear visual storytelling originates from his work.

Art Cinema in the 1960s began to flourish around the world with a growing list of ‘Auteurs’ pushing the bounds of the medium. The list below is worth investigating in your own time:

• Michaelangelo Antonioni (Italy)

• Federico Fellini (Italy)

• Luis Buñuel (Spain)

• Ingmar Bergman (Sweden)

• Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia)

• Stanley Kubrick (England)

• Akira Kurosawa (Japan)

The New Hollywood

Following the demise of the Production Code in 1968 came a new generation of filmmakers hired by Hollywood to attract the youth market.

This period in American filmmaking would later be described as The New Hollywood, a time marked by innovation and risk-taking infused with 1960s counterculture. The result: a catalogue of films that were groundbreaking and artistically inclined.

The raw and youthful spirit found in French New Wave cinema directly influenced The New Hollywood. Like their European counterparts, their films favoured freedom and authenticity, expressed through a hand-held camera style and on location shooting.

An early example of this can be seen in the explicit violence and exploration of sexually taboo subject matter found in Bonnie & Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967). The film owes much to the films of Godard and Truffaut -with its alienated characters, episodic structure and frequent unexplained gaps in action. The clip below is the final scene of the film that was shocking to its audiences in 1967 due to its violent nature.

The 1960s counterculture was captured in Easy Rider (Dustin Rikert & Dennis Hopper, 1969) with its experimental approach to editing. The psychedelic sequence is reminiscent of the music video form, a form which owes much to the experimental film genre.

Content warning: the scene below contain depictions of drug use and nudity.

After a series of economic losses, followed by the box office successes ofJaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) and Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), The New Hollywood gave way to a new era: The Blockbuster. This model has monopolised much of moviemaking in Hollywood ever since. Apart from a resurgence of the Art Film in the 1990s, the demanding nature of Art Cinema has relegated the genre to a niche market.

The Independents

It is worth mentioning that there were a number of self-funded, independent filmmakers producing work during this period who played a significant role in the evolution of the Art film. The films of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, Kenneth Anger, Alejandro Jodorowsky and John Cassavetes, for example, have become cult art classics.

Some more examples…

There are a handful of directors who have carved out a space for themselves somewhere between the mainstream and Art Cinemas. Influenced by their predecessors, these filmmakers have made their somewhat experimental and idiosyncratic approaches to cinema accessible to a wider audience.

Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)

Questions:

• What is it about this sequence that makes it surreal?

• Can you identify some similarities between this sequence and early examples of avant-garde films shown earlier in this lecture?

Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)

Questions:

• How does the manipulation of image and sound through editing capture the mind state of addiction?

• What is the connection between time (temporality) and the portrayal of altered mind states in this scene?

Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)

Based on the events surrounding the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003) employs a circular narrative through multiple perspectives and tracking shots. Van Sant’s innovative approach has rendered this dark subject into something mesmerising and poetic.

Questions:

• Do you agree with what Gus Van Sant has created?

• Do you think it is okay to portray culturally sensitive subject matter in an artistic way?

Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986)

The film follows the incarceration and subsequent escape from jail of three men. The film rejects conventions, by focussing on the authentic interactions between the characters rather than the mechanics of the escape.

Questions:

• What characteristics of mise-en-scène associated with Neorealism can you identify in the scene?

• What effect does this approach have upon the scene? Were your expectations met or challenged?

In your tutorials, you might want to discuss the role of Art Cinema within the larger context of the film industry. Is it an important role or not?

References

Bordwell, D. (1979). “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice”. Film Criticism. Vol, 4. No. 1 (Fall). pp. 56–64.