Sex, art and sophistication: the meanings of ‘Continental’ cinema
2009; Routledge; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14443050802672486
ISSN1835-6419
Autores Tópico(s)Australian History and Society
ResumoAbstract From the late 1930s until the early 1970s, foreign language films were commonly categorised by Australian film exhibitors and distributors as ‘Continental’. Continental films were earmarked for exhibition to audiences described as ‘discerning’ and ‘sophisticated’, epithets which distinguished their more ‘discriminating’ taste from the popular preferences of mainstream cinema audiences. But ‘Continental’ had ambiguous connotations. Foreign language cinemas exploited the association of ‘Continental’ with high culture, for example, by appropriating French icons, but ‘Continental’ could also mean scurrilous and sordid. It was the Continental cinema audience's apparent transcendence of these moral ambiguities, its seemingly effortless appreciation of ‘art’, and its cosmopolitan approval of select aspects of foreign ‘culture’ that demonstrated its sophistication and cultural distinction. In its attitudes towards sex, art and ethnic diversity, the Continental cinema audience anticipated the more widespread social and cultural changes that would transform Australian society in the 1960s and 1970s. Keywords: foreign language cinemaContinentalcosmopolitansophisticated1950s Australia Notes 1. Film Weekly, 22 May 1952, 2 October 1952; Diane Collins, Hollywood Down Under: Australians at the Movies, 1896 to the Present Day, Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, 1987, p. 243. 2. A similar culture of Continental cinema existed in other Australian capitals, especially in Melbourne, where a Savoy cinema opened at the same time as its Sydney sister, but an examination of the cinema culture in other cities is beyond the scope of this paper. 3. ‘Foreign language popular cinema’ is the term used by Deb Verhoeven, ‘Twice born: Dionysos Films and the establishment of a Greek film circuit in Australia’, Studies in Australasian Cinema, vol. 1, no.3, 2007, p. 278. On migrant cinema, see also Frank de Chiera, Foreign Language Film Exhibition and Distribution in Australia, Australian Film and Television School Research and Survey Unit Monograph no. 13, 1979; Ina Bertrand and Michael Giglio ‘Cinema Italia: The rise and fall of Italian language cinemas in Melbourne’, Australian Scan: Journal of Human Communication, no. 4, August 1978. 4. See Film Weekly, 27 January 1955, p. 3; ‘You too, can make money with continental product’, Film Weekly, 14 December 1961, p. 25; Charles Higham, ‘Foreign films; two audiences’, Bulletin, 23 February 1963, p. 18. There is some evidence that migrants, particularly those from Central Europe, did attend Continental cinemas, and that Australian-born movie-goers did visit migrant cinemas, at least from time to time. 5. Verhoeven, ‘Twice born’, pp. 278–9, 281; de Chiera, Foreign Language Film, p. 38. 6. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1984, p. 60. 7. Robert Sommer, Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design, Eaglewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1962, p. 23. 8. Bourdieu, Distinction. Contrast Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow, Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, who question the applicability of Bourdieu's thesis to contemporary Australia. 9. There is little written evidence of how Continental cinema audiences perceived themselves. The reminiscences of Phillip Adams suggest they too considered themselves members of a sophisticated cultural elite, as does Film Weekly's relentless mockery of their pretensions: see Phillip Adams, ‘Clearly migration has been good for Australia … but has it been all that good for migrants?’, Age, 12 July 1980, Weekend Review, p. 18; Phillip Adams, ‘The happiest summer of all’, Age, 9 October 1982, Saturday Extra, p. 4; Film Weekly, 6 October 1955, p. 11; Frank O'Connell, ‘Let's laugh at the warden of the ivory tower’, Film Weekly, 18 December, 1952, pp. 49, 52. 10. This stereotype has been identified by John Murphy, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Kensington, 2000, p. 2; Richard White, ‘Introduction’ in Judith O'Callaghan (ed.), The Australian Dream: Design of the Fifties, Powerhouse Publishing, Haymarket, 1993; Brian Head and James Walter (eds), Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, p. 14. 11. Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia, Duck Press, Adelaide, 1982, p. 231. 12. Ian Britain, ‘Barry Humphries and the “Feeble Fifties”’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 28 no. 109, 1997, pp. 19–20. 13. Ken Inglis (ed.), Nation: The Life of an Independent Journal of Opinion 1958–72, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 21–4; Albert Moran, ‘Media Intellectuals’ in Head and Walter, Intellectual Movements, p. 113; Kylie Winkworth, ‘Followers of Fashion: Dress in the Fifties’ in O'Callaghan (ed.), Australian Dream, pp. 60–1; Geoffrey Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788–1972, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1973, p. 203; Emily Pollnitz, ‘Writing the “Long-Haired Frustrates” back into the history of the “Wiener Schnitzel Society”: Musica Viva, 1945–52’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 88, 2006, pp. 61–71; Janis Wilton and Richard Bosworth, Old Worlds and New Australia: The Post-War Migrant Experience, Penguin, Victoria, 1984, pp. 132–3; Symons, One Continuous Picnic; Andrew Brown-May, Espresso! Melbourne Coffee Stories, Arcadia, Melbourne, 2001, p. 50. 14. RM Crawford, Australia, Hutchinson & Co, London, 1960, p. 195; Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, 2nd ed., Penguin, Victoria, 1998, p. 100. 15. Film Weekly, 23 December 1954, p. 32. 16. Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come, p. 181. 17. Phillip Adams, ‘The happiest summer’ (emphasis in original). Adams is referring to the Melbourne Savoy. 18. Ghassan Hage, ‘at home in the entrails of the west: multiculturalism, ethnic food and migrant home-building’ in Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth and Michael Symonds, home/world: space, community and marginality in Sydney's west, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1997, p. 126; Ghassan Hage, ‘Anglo-Celtics Today: Cosmo-Multiculturalism and the Phase of the Fading Phallus’ in Ghassan Hage, Justine Lloyd and Lesley Johnson (eds), An Inquiry into the State of Anglo-Saxonness Within the Nation, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1995, p. 70. 19. See Wilton and Bosworth, Old Worlds, p. 36; Wenche Ommundsen, ‘Not the m-word again: Rhetoric and silence in recent multiculturalism debates’, Overland, no. 159, 2000, p. 9. 20. Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, 2008, pp. 93–96; Ann-Mari Jordens, Redefining Australians: Immigration, Citizenship and National Identity, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1995, p. 77; Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, pp. 67, 74–5, 151–3; Wilton and Bosworth, Old Worlds, p. 18; Gwenda Tavan, ‘“Good neighbours”: Community organisations, migrant assimilation and Australian society and culture, 1950–1961’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 28 no. 109, 1997, pp. 77–9. 21. Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, p. 161. See also Jock Collins, Migrant Hands in a Distant Land: Australia's Post-War Immigration, 2nd ed., Pluto Press, Sydney, 1991, p. 229; Wilton and Bosworth, Old Worlds, pp. 91, 146. 22. Tavan, ‘Good neighbours’. The Good Neighbour Movement was, however, primarily directed towards the assimilation of British migrants: Jean I Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947–1977, Research Report for the National Population Inquiry, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1978, p. 29. 23. Ken Rivett, ‘The immigration reform movement’ in Nancy Viviani (ed.), The Abolition of the White Australia Policy: The Immigration Reform Movement revisited, Centre for the Study of Australia-Asia Relations, Griffith University, Nathan, 1992; Kenneth Rivett (ed.) (The Immigration Reform Group), Immigration: Control or Colour Bar? The Background to ‘White Australia’ and a Proposal for Change, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1962, pp. 87–8. 24. Inglis, Nation, p. 21. 25. Adams, ‘The happiest summer’. In his analysis of Australian eating habits, Michael Symons has dissected the popular theory that post-war immigration was responsible for increased interest in European culture: One Continuous Picnic, pp. 221–32. 26. Film Weekly, 21 July 1955, p. 6, 4 August 1955, p. 15. 27. Of the French film The Woman of Antwerp: Film Weekly, 19 September 19 1953, p. 5. 28. A quarter of the 1.3 million immigrants who arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1961 hailed from Southern Europe (particularly Italy and Greece) and a fifth from Eastern Europe (mainly Poland, the Baltic States and Yugoslavia): John Lack and Jacqueline Templeton, Bold Experiment: A Documentary History of Australian Immigration since 1945, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, p. 76. 29. Brown-May, Espresso!, pp. 68–9. 30. Hage, ‘entrails’, p. 100. 31. By 1954, there were only 1446 French-born and 508 Swedish-born immigrants residing in Sydney. By comparison, there were almost 19 000 Italian-born residents: Census of the Commonwealth of Australia 1954, p. 20. 32. Hage, ‘entrails’, pp. 132–4; Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, p. 159. See also Maris E Buchanan, Attitudes towards Immigrants in Australia, National Population Inquiry, Research Report no. 3, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1976, pp. 10, 17, 21–2, 31–2. 33. Film Weekly, 12 February 1959, p. 7. 34. Tavan, ‘Good neighbours’, p. 84. 35. Tavan, ‘Good neighbours’, p. 80. 36. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998, p. 101. 37. Film Weekly, 20 March 1952, p. 20. 38. Compare the Film Weekly review of the French film Lost Property (13 January 1955, p. 11) with its review of the Italian film The Lovemakers (17 October 1963, p. 10). 39. Film Weekly, 31 December 1953, p. 1. 40. Verhoeven, ‘Twice born’, p. 277. 41. Collins, Hollywood Down Under, p. 13. 42. Of the Italian comedy Two Pennyworth of Hope: Film Weekly, 9 June 1955, p. 15. 43. Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 33. 44. Robert Kapferer, ‘France Gets the Lowdown: The Films Aussies Like (and Dislike)’, Film Weekly, 8 March 1951, p. 3. 45. See Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 31–48. 46. Of the neo-realist film Il Ferroviere: Film Weekly, 7 May 1959, p. 6. 47. Film Weekly, 2 January 1964, p. 8. 48. Film Weekly, 9 August 1962, p. 8. 49. Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come, pp. 162–3. 50. Programme for The Queen of Spades, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 51. See Stephen Alomes, ‘Cultural Radicalism in the Sixties’, Arena, no. 62, 1983, pp. 31–2; Donald Horne, Time of Hope: Australia 1966–72, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1980, pp. 89–91. 52. Film Weekly, 13 June 1940, p. 22. 53. Steve Neale, ‘Art Cinema as Institution’, Screen vol. 22 no. 1, 1981, p. 32. 54. Programme for Jour de Fête, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 55. Film Weekly, 13 March 1952, p. 9, 27 August 1953, p. 13. 56. Film Weekly, 13 March 1952, p. 23, 2 October 1952, 6 August 1953, p. 15; 15 April 1954, p. 9; 27 May 1954, p. 6. 57. Film Weekly, 1 December 1955, p. 3. 58. Collins, Hollywood Down Under, p. 245. 59. Brown-May, Espresso!, pp. 68–9; Cassandra Pybus, Seduction and Consent: A Case of Gross Moral Turpitude, Mandarin, Melbourne, 1994. 60. Early Issues undated. issue 8, May 1966. 61. Film Weekly, 13 March 1952, p. 23. 62. Film Weekly, 9 September 1954, p. 8. 63. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1951, p. 1. An amended version of the film was released as The Wanderer in 1952: Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June 1952, p. 3. 64. ‘You too, can make money with continental product’, p. 38. 65. Richard White, ‘The Importance of Being “Man”’, in Peter Spearritt and David Walker (eds), Australian Popular Culture, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1979, p. 151. See also Verhoeven, ‘Twice born’, p. 276. 66. Collins, Hollywood Down Under, p. 246. 67. Ina Bertrand, Film Censorship in Australia, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1978, pp. 103, 179. 68. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1951, p. 1; Film Weekly, 12 August 1954, p. 3. 69. Chief Commonwealth Film Censor's Report 1959. 70. Chief Commonwealth Film Censor's Report 1960–1. 71. Film Weekly, 11 September 1969, p. 3. 72. Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 5. 73. Continental, no. 1, undated, p. 22. See also Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa, Australian Readers Remember: An Oral History of Reading 1890–1930, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 167. 74. Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 4–5, 35, 41. 75. Film Weekly, 7 September 1939, p. 45. 76. Film Weekly, 14 May 1953, p. 18 (emphasis added). 77. See, for example, reviews of Dr Knock and Adorable Creatures in Film Weekly, 10 December 1953, p. 7, 27 May 1954, p. 6. 78. Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 4. 79. David A Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 3rd ed., WW Norton & Co, New York and London, 1996, pp. 378, 524, 536. 80. Lyons and Taksa, Australian Readers Remember, p. 141. 81. Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations, Foreign Languages in Australian Schools: Report on the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations’ survey of foreign language study in Australian primary and secondary schools, 1972, made to the Federation at the Council meeting, Hobart, May 1975, Melbourne, 1979, Tables 5–7; Joseph lo Bianco and Alain Monteil, French in Australia: New Prospects, Centre d'Etudes et d'Echanges Francophones en Australie/ Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations, 1990, p. vii; Colin W Nettelbeck (ed.), The Alliance Française in Australia, 1890–1990: An Historical Perspective, Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations, Victoria, 1990; Wilton and Bosworth, Old Worlds, p. 137. 82. Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688–1980, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. 96. 83. Peter Kirkpatrick, The Sea Coast of Bohemia: Literary Life in Sydney's Roaring Twenties, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1992, p. 32. 84. Kirkpatrick, Sea Coast of Bohemia; White, Inventing Australia, p. 96. 85. Film Weekly, 4 May 1939, p. 40. 86. The Showman, January 1957, p. 5. 87. Programmes for The Queen of Spades and The World of Apu, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 88. Programme for Les Enfants du Paradis, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 89. Programmes for The Queen of Spades and The World of Apu, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 90. Film Weekly, 5 August 1954, p. 3; Programme for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). See also Brown-May, Espresso!, pp. 2, 50. 91. ‘Paris Theatre has a French Accent’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 September 1954, p. 12. 92. See, for example, Film Weekly, 4 February 1960, p. 12. 93. Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 66–8, 82–95. 94. Programme for Never on Sunday, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film) (emphasis in original). 95. Film Weekly, 4 May 1939, p. 42. 96. Ross Thorne, Cinemas of Australia via USA, University of Sydney Department of Architecture, Sydney, 1981, p. 340. 97. Cook, History of Narrative Film, Chapter 19. 98. Film Weekly, 16 June 1955, p. 1. 99. Robert Nery, ‘Translation, Ethnocentrism and Cinema’ in Maryanne Dever (ed.), Australia and Asia: Cultural Transactions, Curzon Press, Britain, 1997, pp. 95–7. 100. Programme for The World of Apu, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). See also ‘Kissing is Tabu but Indian Films Hit the Highspot’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1954, p. 8. 101. Frank Ryland, ‘Japan is Learning How to Make Films’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 1947, p. 10; Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1954, p. 8. 102. Film Weekly, 6 October 1955, p. 11, 8 December 1955, p. 4. 103. Maryanne Dever, ‘Introduction’ in Dever (ed.), Australia and Asia, p. 5. 104. Film Weekly, 17 May 1962, p. 8. 105. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March 1955, p. 13. 106. Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, p. 156. 107. Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan Through 100 Years, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 111. 108. Film Weekly, 15 January 1959, p. 1. 109. Programme for The Queen of Spades, Mitchell Library Ephemera Collection (Film). 110. Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, p. 5. 111. See also Robin Gerster and Jan Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 5, 40; Horne, Time of Hope, p. 2; Geoffrey Bolton, The Oxford History of Australia – Volume 5: The Middle Way, 1942–1995, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 168, 189; Verity Burgmann, Power and Protest: Movements for Change in Australian Society, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993, p. 2. 112. Gerster and Bassett, Seizures of Youth, 1991, p. 129; Horne, Time of Hope, pp. 122–31; Bolton, Oxford History of Australia 1942–1995, pp. 168, 183. 113. Tavan, ‘Good neighbours’, p. 89.
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