The Romance of Certain Old Clothes or They Don't Make 'Em like That Anymore; Honor De Cavalleria and Art Cinema's Last Stand
2008; Issue: 75 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoNostalgia for a bygone era of filmmaking is something one usually associates with the paradigm of classical Hollywood: of a particular generation (or a particular breed of cinephile) fondly recalling the kind of stars, films, even genres that once proliferated in a mythically idealised cinematic past. In truth, such a demographic has in recent years been reasonably well catered for. Films like Todd Haynes' Sirkean melodrama Far From Heaven [2002], the Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedy trappings of Down With Love [2003], Steven Soderbergh's Casablanca-inspired The Good German [2006] and more recently George Clooney's screwball pastiche Leatherheads [2008] have all immersed themselves completely and surprisingly unselfconsciously in antiquated worlds of the silver screen's golden yester year. Even those audiences hungry for more demanding fare, whose tastes only recede back as far as the movie brats and the European-inflected American genre worlds of Scorsese, Coppola, Malick and Cimino, have had the likes of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [2007], Spielberg's Munich [2005] and (Clooney again) Michael Clayton [2007] to at least whet their doubtless prodigious appetites. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Concomitantly, films from all over the world have in the last ten or so years begun more and more to cannibalise cinematic history, to draw inspiration from outstanding progenitors who themselves belong to a famed and idealised era of filmmaking: in this case, the first generation of art cinema directors from the 1950s and 60s. We have had China's extraordinary sixth generation raiding De Sica and Bresson in, respectively, Wang Xiaoshuai's Shiqi sui de dan che (Beijing Bicycle, 2001) and Jia Zhang-ke's first film Xiao wu (Pickpocket, 1997). Staying in Asia, there is the example of Hou Hsiao-hsien. His Kohi jiko (Cafe Lumiere, 2003) was made in memory and in celebration of Ozu Yasujiro, a director who further inspired Abbas Kiarostami's magnificent philosophical treatise on cinematic time, space and narrative, Five (a.k.a. Five Long Takes Live Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu) [2004]. Ozu also found favour again in 1990s Japenese cinema, with directors such as Kore-eda Hirokazu and lchikawa Jun explicitly drawing on his body of work, in particular his detached, contemplative visual style and thematic focus on modern life and the Japanese family unit. In Europe, we have Christophe Honore's film Les Chansons d'amour (Love Songs, 2007), which borrows freely and unapolo getically from Jacques Demy, especially Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964). Also from France there is Francois Ozon's Fassbinder-derived Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brulantes (Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 2000), which was adapted from a play from the New German Cinema maestro and in which Ozon kept the fettered, verbose theatricality and sexual role-playing of his early films very much to the fore (not to mention lifting wholesale the transsexual protagonist of In einem Jahr mit Dreizehm Monden / In A Year with Thirteen Moons [1978]). Similarly, the Polish absurdist fable Duze Zwierze (The Big Animal, 2000), from a scenario by Kieslowski, is predicated on an updating of Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar [1966]. In this unassuming film, Bresson's titular donkey becomes a camel abandoned by a circus troupe in a small country village. He has one minder, rather than a series of caretakers whose self-interest he bears stubborn witness to, but is similarly placed at the heart of an inquiry into human inequity, greed and a need for tolerance. Finally, from Mexico, there is Carlos Reygadas' Stellet Licht (Silent Light, 2007), which quotes (or steals, depending on your view of the film) the denouement from Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (The Word, 1955). One may also point here to broader examples of the appropriation of particular national cinematic movements and styles closely allied to the birth of art cinema. …
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