Cinema History?

[J.R. Hudson]

I'm inclined to devour and absorb cinema history. As a teenager and in my early twenties I'd seen just about every notable work from the 60's and 70's. And I'd seen every film accessible on DVD or LaserDisc by Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, Godard, Truffaut, Carpenter, Gilliam, Kubrick, Bergman, Bresson, Kurosawa, The Coen Bros, Antonioni, Cassavetes, Hitchcock, De Palma, Rohmer, Lynch, Wenders, etc, etc. I was very lucky at the time that my best friend shared the same passion for the best cinema had to offer and our combined LaserDisc collection at the time was a point of pride.

And now that I'm older I've moved my sights largely to international filmmakers like Kieslowski (RIP), Tarkovsky, Hou Hsiao Hsien, the Dardenne Bros, Wong Kar Wai, Leigh, and others. There is so much exciting work happening that gets obscured by the focus on films produced here that it makes it hard to find great films with minimal press. I've started going to film festivals to see more american indies because very few even get a home video release – even the good ones. One of my favorite american indies from last year, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, is available all over the world, but not in the states. ??? Isn't it strange that i had to import an american film from the UK? Speaking of which, DVD and Blu-ray region encoding can be a bit of a barrier as well, unless you spring for a multi-region player... and I have.

Anyway, I say all that to express my personal feeling that a comprehensive understanding of cinema has been essential to learning composition and lighting and dialgoue and editing and acting. I didn't really go to film school. The first time I heard a Scorsese commentary on the original Criterion LDs for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, my head exploded. These films and filmmakers were my film school.

And while I recognize the importance of absorbing "what's come before" to move the artform forward, and while I'm admittedly suspicious of fimmakers who dismiss the importance of studying seminal works and filmographies (because it often shows), I also recognize that often times the innovators and iconoclasts are the people who come to filmmaking with no pre-determined idea of what its "supposed" to be. And I'm jealous of those people.

Great take Zak from both angles.

For me, saying one must need not know or that it is not important is just (shakes head)

All artists, no matter the area; music, art, literature, film .... should be well versed in the eras and history of their chosen passion. So much to absorb and digest.

As far as Disturbia being a remake of Rear Window ? Yeah, it's loosely based on the idea but that's about it.

 

[Jim Brennan]

There is almost no way that any filmmaker could know all the works that someone considers important. I think the important thing is that you never stop exploring those works and trying to learn more. But, if you are limited to only the dreck that Hollywood spews to the multiplexes, odds are you won't get a handle on the potential of the medium. I'm not saying that is the state of anyone here, I just felt like saying it.

There is another factor that I think is equal to (and perhaps at times, more important than) a knowledge of film history. That is, a knowledge of things outside the film world.

Film is in many ways an amalgam of an art form. It takes the drama of the stage, the scores of composing, the stories of literature and the visual aesthetics of painting and photography and it melds them. Because of that, it has the potential to be more (and too often, less) than the sum of its parts.

To me that indicates that a knowledge of those other art forms, at least in some way, can only help you as a film maker. And so much of it is applicable. I can imagine a 17 year old who wants to take the energy of Soundgarden and inject into a film, or the aesthetic touches of Rembrant or Klimt and use that as their visual palette. Shakespeare has been used countless times, as have his original sources. I bet you could use the architecture of Wright and make a movie "feel" like that.

I see so many (too many) filmmakers who only use other films as their sources of inspiration and knowledge. Odds are that the great films that they copy were actually inspired by some thing that was not a film. It becomes incestuous, and by default, frail and faulted.

We won't even get into the value of history, philosophy, or ethics as a fertile ground for cinematic inspiration.

 

[nantnee]

Two points:

Jean Luc-Godard is a master at re-using, re-identifying ideas, characters and cinematography to make an original. For those of you that have seen his films, nuff said. This method can also be compared to todays film artist. Its this sort of assimilation of ideas that todays filmmakers use to re-create great aspects of the cinemas past.

and points 2:

Have any of you seen the South Park episode that was about the Simpsons, or maybe it was Family Guy. To paraphase what the episode was about, it was how a lot of ideas have already been used/done. So the only thing left are altered version of that event. A lot of todays films/tv are not to terribly original, and to keep the demand high, filmmakers turn to the movies that they enjoy and use bits and pieces to create something 'original'.

The majority of people do not have 'sea legs' as far as history in the cinema goes. How many of todays audience have seen Rear Window? To them, Disturbia is NEW.

SIDE NOTE:
For those of you interested in Godard, you should check out La Histoire Du Cinema. its good....

 

[sonnyboo]

How would that make someone any less of a filmmaker? I saw Disturbia - Hated it. I've never heard of Rear Window. And thus, I would not have known Disturbia is a remake of Rear Window. So I'm not a filmmaker by your definition?

I said it was terrifying, and never insinuated that anyone was less of a filmmaker. It's terrifying on a different level, as in the lack of originality in Hollywood today and also on the behalf of those being inspired by things inspired by movies that were inspired by something else without knowing the source material.

At what point did you think I was insulting your skills as a filmmaker?

 

[Mark Harris]

for me, saying one must need not know or that it is not important is just (shakes head)

+1

 

[Mattykins]

It's terrifying that there are people claiming to be filmmakers

It seemed as though you were insinuating anyone who didn't have that knowledge wasn't a filmmaker.

Not my filmmaking capabilities, but those that haven't seen the film.

 

[Rick Meyer]

For those of you interested in Godard, you should check out La Histoire Du Cinema. its good....

As is "Breathless".

To say that a filmmaker does not need to know the history of cinema is like saying a General of the Army does not need to know the history of past war strategies. You learn from it. You imitate it. You need to be familiar with greatness to pay homage to it.

Having said that, I don't think you need to have the comprehension of historical cinema to the degree of a college professor in order to make good movies. But having an understanding of the past certainly helps. And, wouldn’t you want every advantage you can get? I suppose one can argue that knowing about D.W. Griffith is not what made the great ones great. But, I think the great ones just have a natural thirst for this stuff so they gobble up every bit of film related information they can absorb.

When you hear a great director talk about their beginnings, it will often consists of a story about sitting in a darkened movie theater as a child, watching those images on the big screen, and being in awe of the storytelling capabilities of the medium. Filmmakers are a particular kind of artist. They live and breathe this stuff. So, they tend to investigate “why” that movie made them feel a particular way and “why” that was a good storytelling experience. This interrogation process seems to naturally exist for them as an involuntary response to make their films better.

But the thing that I find interesting is that when discussions are raised about cinematic history, the conversation always turns to the director or auteur. While I agree that the impact of historical directors is relevant (and while were at it lets throw in the writers), the thing that is most overlooked when discussing the ‘history of film’ is the WHY the director made the movies (or why writers wrote the movies) they way they did. You have to ask the WHY. It’s not just an artistic kernel that is driving them. You have to examine the era he or she lived in and find the economic, social and political relevance within their movies. That’s what the history of cinema is all about. That’s what makes the study of film history fun. You cannot examine just the directors and writers but you need to scrutinize the time and surroundings from whence they came.

I am a big Spaghetti Western buff. I love ‘em. So, when studying history, you really begin to get an understanding of why movies look and play as they do. Sergio Leone was from Italy. The “Western” genre and the notion of “conquering the great vast West” are solely American conventions. So, you have to ask “WHY” did he decide to not only tackle the American Western genre, but WHY did his protagonist act with such moral ambiguity? Clint Eastwood’s heroic lead was NOTHING like any John Wayne hero we’ve seen but it was by design. If you know the history of this time frame, Italy in a post-WW2 funk, you can see a correlation between the mood the country was in and the mode and tempo of their movies. You can apply this to virtually any film movement from any era.

So, I don’t think the question is properly phrased. I don’t think you should ask, “do you need to know the history of film in order to make great movies?” I think the question is, “of those who make great movies, how many are familiar with the history of film?” I don’t think the answer would surprise you. It would probably be “most.”

 

[sonnyboo]

To say that a filmmaker does not need to know the history of cinema is like saying a General of the Army does not need to know the history of past war strategies. You learn from it. You imitate it. You need to be familiar with greatness to pay homage to it.

truly a brilliant analogy.

 

[David Jimerson]

The more you know about anything, the better off you are.

That said, I don't think you need to be an encyclopedia. If it happens, then hey, but you don't need to know who wrote every film, who shot every film, etc., etc. I think you should be very well-grounded on the what, why, and how, but there's a lot of stuff which might make you a hit at pretentious parties without making you a better filmmaker.

Bill Murray had an interesting take on the question; he said no one knows more about jazz history than the French, but French jazz sucks.

Anyway, I think probably the most important thing to learn about is people.