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Page 1: Understanding cinema:french new wave,italian neorealism and indian parallel cinema

UNDERSTANDING CINEMA

Faiqa J Dabir2014

Indian Parallel Cinema

French New Wave

Italian Neorealism

Page 2: Understanding cinema:french new wave,italian neorealism and indian parallel cinema

What is Italian Neorealism?

A movement of film realistically reflecting the difficult economic and moral conditions in post-WWII Italy

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Origins of Neorealism

World War ⅡMussolini and Fascists

rejected to make realism films.

Did not want to show the negative side of Italian Society.(unemployment,inequality.etc)

Page 4: Understanding cinema:french new wave,italian neorealism and indian parallel cinema

Origins of Neorealism• WW II destroyed Italy as economically and politically.• Fascism fall off.• The war destroyed studios and created economic crisis.• The directors search a new method to give life to Italian

Film.• The inventions of technology help them to take camera

and focus them to street.• It destroy all other isms in cinema and created a

neorealist method.

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Origins of Neorealism

1943 End of the World War ⅡNeo-realism became the mainstream of Italian cinema and literature.

…response to the political turmoil and desperate economic conditions afflicting the country

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Style and Methods of Neorealism• Captured the “beauty of ordinary life”• “Open form narrative;” ranges from partisan heroics to

contemporary social problems• The new realism included the notion of abolishing

contrived plots and professional actors• simple realist style films• Documentary-like visual style with an avoidance of special

effects or unnatural lighting• The use of actual locations, especially city exteriors,

rather than studio sets

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Style and Methods of Neorealism• On-location shooting

• Long takes

• Natural light

• Medium and long shots

• Working class protagonists

• Environment as important as actors

• Poverty, crime, social injustice common themes

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Key Directors

Roberto Rossellini Luchino ViscontiVittorio De Sica

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Pinnacle of Neorealism

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Pinnacle of Neorealism

Di Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) of 1948 was given an honorary Academy Award in 1950.

It appears on critics’ and directors’ lists as one of the most important and influential films ever made.

The film placed sixth as the greatest film ever made in Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002

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Demise or Decadence of Neorealism• Postwar Italian governments did not approve of films that

portrayed Italy in a negative light.

• A 1949 law strengthening production and exhibition of Italian films imposed censorship on scripts that “slandered Italy.”

• The following developed:

Allegoric Fantasy-Miracle in Milan(1952),Desica

Melodrama Film-Senso(1954) ,Luchino Visconti

Pink Neo-realism-Bread, Love and Dreams(1953),Luigi Comencini

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After effects• It opened the door to filming on location rather than in a

studio

• It showed filmmakers that movies can be used to highlight the reality of societal problems and make viewers consider social change

• In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in particular, it demonstrated that you could make great films inexpensively with your own country’s landscape and people—without lavish sets or expensive stars.

• The movement did influence the French New Wave, Hollywood and TV

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What is a New Wave in Cinema?

A New Wave is a movement in cinema which seeks to stylistically and narratively differentiate itself from the

dominant paradigm of mainstream film production. Usually, the people driving the movement are young and are driven

by an ideological/political imperative.

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Origins of the French nouvelle vague• Due to the Nazi occupation of France,

American cinema had been banned during World War II. After the war, restrictions were lifted and Hollywood product flooded the French market.

• Fearing that there was little exhibition space for alternatives to Hollywood, Andre Bazin established a number of cineclubs in which he would screen non-Hollywood, non-commercial films. Other like-minded people began to do the same, and an underground movement was born.

• The screenings were organised and attended by people like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut who would go on to be leading figures in the French New Wave movement.

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Cahiers du Cinéma• In April 1951, the first issue of

Cahiers du Cinéma (Notes on Cinema) was published. CDC was headed by Bazin, Jacques Donoil-Valcroze and Joseph Marie Lo-Duca.

• The magazine aimed to restore French cinema to prominence, as well as to discuss all film with the same kind of intellectual context which other art forms were treated with.

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The Director’s Cinema• Andre Bazin firmly believed in evaluating a film through

the prism of the director.

• CDC constantly interviewed filmmakers, and established a canon of directors who they believed to be above the corporate machinations of studio filmmaking.

• These names included Jean Renoir (France), Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan) and Alfred Hitchcock (America).

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Alexandre Astruc - Camera stylo (1948)

• ‘The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the arts have been before it, and in particular painting and the novel.’

• ‘After having been a successful fairground attraction, an amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or a means of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually becoming a language.’

• ‘By language I mean a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in a contemporary essay or novel.’

• ‘That is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of caméra-stylo.’

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The Auteur Theory• Truffaut believed that too much of a premium had previously been

placed on the screenwriter, rather than the filmmaker.

• He proposed la politique des Auteurs, which valued a director’s personal stylistic and narrative contributions to a film over all else. Filmmakers who achieved this were auteurs, and those who adhered to generic conventions were labelled as metteur un scene – literally, a stage setter.

• This was a hugely influential mode of thought.

• Bazin, on the other hand, surprisingly attacked Truffaut for ignoring the historical, social and industrial factors involved in film production and for simplistically assuming that a director alone was responsible for a film.

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The Auteur Theory and The nouvelle vague

• When Truffaut turned to filmmaking, he naturally tried to make his films as personal/auterist as possible. Other contemporaries followed suit, and this loose movement become what is now known as the nouvelle vague.

• These films were shot by groups of friends on a low-budget using newly available, cheaper cameras.

• Truffaut defined the members as sharing nothing in common but their rejection of the excess of mainstream cinema.

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Key Directors

Francois Truffaut Jean-Luc Godard

Jacques Rivette

Claude Chabrol

Eric Rohmer

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Stylistic TendenciesA general disregard for many (but not all) of the principles of continuity editing. The films featured techniques such as: • Jump cuts rather than eyeline matches• Breaking the 180 degree rule• A heavy reliance on lighter, handheld cameras rather than

staged, static shots• Extremely long takes, as opposed to the quick cuts of

Classical Hollywood• Filmed on location rather than studio.

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Stylistic Tendencies• All of this amounts to a film style which does not attempt

to conceal that the viewer is watching a film. In fact, it often seeks to actively remind them of this fact.

• Narrative is subservient to personal style rather than vice versa.

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Why was the nouvelle vague important?

• Presented a clear alternative to Hollywood, establishing that not all films needed to be made in a uniform fashion.

• Influenced other New Waves (Japanese, Czech, Thai, British) and continues to be a reference point for left wing and art cinema today.

• Had a theoretical underpinning which remains influential in Film Studies to this day – auteur theory, intellectual discussion of film as a legitimate art form.

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What is Parallel Indian Cinema

The term Parallel Indian Cinema refers to the New Indian Wave, commonly known as the Art Cinema, or Parallel

Cinema i.e. a genre of Cinema which re-emerged after 90s, as an alternative to commercial movement, the former is

known for its serious content (blended with naturalism and realism), modern man dilemmas, and a constant search for

‘Self’ with a keen eye on the socio-political conditions.

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Origin of Parallel Cinema• Cinema was born out of the impetus to represent the reality in a

more convincing manner. • With the passage of time and the new technological

achievements, cinema gradually metamorphosed itself into an entertainment medium.

• However cinema, like any other art forms, cannot be oblivious to the social changes that take place every day. It in fact mirrors the reality.

• Indian cinema is no exception. It has always reflected the social, political and economic changes throughout its history.

• In the 1970s, parallel cinema movement addressed this reality without any reservation. The birth of parallel cinema in India however was not a sudden phenomenon. The seed was sown much earlier.

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Scope of Parallel Cinema• Through this form of cinema people could see the best of

Indian cinema .• It exposes us to the best of foreign cinema too.• Certain literary-cum-cinema critics created waves among

the young film makers who were frustrated with the mindless songs-dance dramas made in India.

• The Main Objective was to promote the flow of standard art, culture, literature through media.

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Most Common Themes • Modern Man Dilemmas

• Socio Political Scenario

• Search for ‘SELF’

• Alienation

• Narcissism

• Quest for power

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Canvas of characters• High Seriousness of content

• Naturalism

• Realism portrayed in characters

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Key Directors

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Decline• By the early 1990s, the rising costs involved in film

production and the commercialisation of the films had a negative impact on the art films.

• The fact that investment returns cannot be guaranteed made art films less popular amongst filmmakers.

• Underworld financing, political and economic turmoil, television and piracy proved to be fatal threat to parallel cinema, as it declined.

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Resurgence• The term "parallel cinema" has started being applied to

off-beat films produced in Bollywood, where art films have begun experiencing a resurgence. This led to the emergence of a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir,

urban films reflecting social problems in the city of Mumbai. 

• Other modern examples of art films produced in Bollywood which are classified as part of the parallel cinema genre include Yuva, Dor, Ship of Thesus, Sonchidi, Dhobi Ghat. 

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