- Set out to be in opposition to mainstream cinema
- Non linear / non figurative / non narrative
- Open meaning rather than closed meaning
- Requires a different kind of spectatorship by allowing you to create your own meaning
- Avant-Garde films are considerably difficult to define "you can't describe pornography, but you can definitely see it"
'Un Chien Andalou' (1929) Dir. Luis Bunuel
Salvador Dali helped to create the film.
There are loads of readings of the film where people attempt to create a meaning for it.
'Cremaster 3' (2002) Matthew Barney
The Cremaster Cycle is the process of lowering the testicles as you grow into an adult.
Surreal and non-linear film.
Filmed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
'Spirals' (1926) Oskar Fischinger
Early abstract Avant-Garde cinema.
"like an assault on your senses"
Playing with the optics and disrupting the process of seeing, making your brain try and fill in the blanks and add colour to the black and white spirals of the film.
'Lapis' (1966) James Whitney
1960's Bohemian Squat.
Supposed to be a film that works at the same speed as a human brainwave when you're nicely at rest.
Links to your thought process when you're "chilling out".
Psychedelic patterns with bohemian/indian music playing in the background.
Quite a cosmic vibe about it.
'Black Ice' (1994) Stan Brakhage
Romantic Avant-Garde cinema.
Entirely abstract and radical.
Hand-made 'animal process'.
One of the most important, radical, abstract film makers in the 20th century.
'Mothlight' (1963) Stan Brakhage
Leaves and dead moth chopped up and arranged together to make a film.
'Window Water Baby Moving' Stan Brakhage
Movie of the birth of his son, bit "full on".
Brakhage calls his film making an attempt to create a "hypnogogic" vision. Hypnogogia is the state between waking up and sleeping.
'Empire' Andy Warhol
10 and a half hour film of the empire state building.
Static camera filming the building.
In Richard's opinion, art schools are the starting ground for radicalism. This is what all these films tend to do. They take the idea of cinema and jettison it. They look at the media from a fresh view, and are anti commercial. Because the films aren't about making money, they never get shown in cinemas etc as no one will pay to see them.
What is an auteur?In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process.
Examples of auteurs:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Stanley Kubrick
Auteurs are like artists, they create original work, start conventions of genre but don't even necessarily follow them and have control over a cultural production.
Notes on the 'Auteur Theory' by Sarris (1962)
'one of these productions will show technical competence of the director'
'a distinguished style'
'interior of the meaning'
Alfred Hitchcock
Why is Hitchcock classed as an Auteur?
- Long career in film
- Famous in both Europe and America
- Has made innovation in film making
- Master of suspense and audience reception
- Influential in later genres: American slashers/ psychological thrillers
- Inspired by the Avante Garde
- One of a kind and distinctive style
Hitchcock's technical competence:
- expressionist lighting
- story telling visually in a silent era of film
- use of subjective camera
- dolly zoom
- clever use of montage to create tension despite production code "what is drama but life with the dull bits cut out?"
"blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up bloody footprints"
Personal Style:
- expressionism - forms evoke emotion -not realistic or natural
- cameo appearances of the director
- narrative through visuals
- continuous of certain actors
- obsessive of blonde actresses
- suspense - audience can see danger his characters can't see - "there's no terror in the bang of the gun"
Revisited themes:
- Ordinary people involved in extraordinary events
- Mistaken identity
- Murder
- Madness
- Psychotic
- Order/ chaos
- Search for identity
- Guilt/ desire
- Feeling of guilt
- Self destruction
- Gender politics
- Spectators/ spying/ obscure viewpoints
- nature of cinema
The 'Interior meaning'
eg, in Vertigo, there is a deeper meaning of the 'ever living'
eg, birds are a symbol of doom in his films. Birds also feature in lots of different birds eye view camera angles
Example of the 'dolly zoom';
A brief history of Hitchcock:
Around 1920 Hitchcock joined the film industry, as he starting drawing off the sets.
'Nosferatu', 1922, suggesting monstrous beast through shadow.
'The lodger', 1927 by Hitchcock. One of his first films.
'Champagne', 1928 - a character sees their loved one kissing someone else through the bottom of a champagne flute - obscure and interesting camera angles.
'Jamaica Inn' - subjective camera angles.
'Vertigo', 1958 - innovative camera zoom , ie the 'dolly zoom'
'Psycho', 1960
'Rebeca', 1940
'Spellbound' - collaboration with Salvador Dali
'Notorious'
Notes from watching 'Vertigo':
- Theme of voyeurism.
- trauma and its effects decent into madness
- subjective point of view
- Repetition of scenes
- Theme of uncanny likeness, hair of real life person not unlike to characters favoured painting.
- Theme of surreal madness
- coloured filter on camera lense
- Judy - accidental meaning, dressed in green.
- Judy - uncanny likeness to madeleine.
- Character transforms Judy into madeleine.
- colour is used in symbolic/ expressionistic way.
Critique of the Auteur title:
- Mostly males
- canon of films made by 'elites'
- is there such thing as a universal film opinion?
- Capitalist device
- Disguises work of others