![Carl Theodor Dreyer (1965) by Erling Mandelmann](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Carl_Theodor_Dreyer_%281965%29_by_Erling_Mandelmann.jpg)
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an
independent film
An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, i ...
, aimed at a
niche market
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that it ...
rather than a
mass market
The term "mass market" refers to a market for goods produced on a large scale for a significant number of end consumers. The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds with ...
audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...
. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content".
Film critics and
film studies scholars typically define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films".
These qualities can include (among other elements): a sense of
social realism; an emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director; and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar
David Bordwell
David Jay Bordwell (; born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including ''Narration in th ...
describes art cinema as "a
film genre, with its own distinct conventions".
Art film producers usually present their films at special theaters (
repertory cinema A revival house or repertory cinema is a cinema that specializes in showing classic or notable older films (as opposed to first run films). Such venues may include standard repertory cinemas, multi-function theatres that alternate between old movie ...
s or, in the U.S., art-house cinemas) and at
film festivals
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...
. The term ''art film'' is much more widely used in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia, compared to
mainland Europe
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...
, where the terms
auteur films and
national cinema (e.g. German national cinema) are used instead. Since they are aimed at small, niche-market audiences, art films rarely acquire the financial backing that would permit large production budgets associated with
widely released blockbuster
Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to:
*Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived.
Corporations
* Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain
** Blo ...
films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, one that typically uses lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors), and modest sets to make films that focus much more on developing ideas, exploring new narrative techniques, and attempting new film-making conventions.
Such films contrast sharply with mainstream blockbuster films, which are usually geared more towards linear storytelling and mainstream entertainment. Film critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
called ''
Chungking Express
''Chungking Express'' is a 1994 Hong Kong romantic crime comedy-drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a ...
'', a critically acclaimed 1994 art film, "largely a cerebral experience" that one enjoys "because of what you know about film". That said, some art films may widen their appeal by offering certain elements of more familiar genres such as
documentary or
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews; discussion of the film by arts columnists, commentators, and bloggers; and word-of-mouth promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to a small portion of mainstream audiences to become financially viable.
History
Antecedents: 1910–1920s
The forerunners of art films include Italian silent film ''
L'Inferno'' (1911),
D. W. Griffith
David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the na ...
's ''
Intolerance
Intolerance may refer to:
* Hypersensitivity or intolerance, undesirable reactions produced by the immune system
* ''Intolerance'' (film), a 1916 film by D. W. Griffith
* ''Intolerance'' (album), the first solo album from Grant Hart, formerly o ...
'' (1916) and the works of Russian filmmaker
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...
, who influenced the development of European cinema movements for decades.
Eisenstein's film ''
Battleship Potemkin
'' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent
drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...
'' (1925) was a revolutionary propaganda film he used to test his theories of using film editing to produce the greatest emotional response from an audience. The international critical renown that Eisenstein garnered from this film enabled him to direct ''
October
October is the tenth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the sixth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. The eighth month in the old calendar of Romulus , October retained its name (from Latin and Greek ''ôct ...
'' as part of a grand 10th anniversary celebration of the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
of 1917. He later directed ''
The General Line'' in 1929.
The film by
Alexander Dovzhenko ''
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
'' (1930), filmed under the influence of Eisenstein, is defined by some critics as the pinnacle of art cinema.
Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
creators, such as
Luis Buñuel and
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
(who made ''
L'Age d'Or
''L'Age d'Or'' (french: L'Âge d'Or, ), commonly translated as ''The Golden Age'' or ''Age of Gold'', is a 1930 French surrealist satirical comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel about the insanities of modern life, the hypocrisy of the sexual m ...
'' in 1930), and by the French playwright and filmmaker
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
, whose 1932 avant-garde film ''
The Blood of a Poet'' uses
oneiric Oneiric most commonly refers to:
* Dreams, during sleep
* Oneirology, the science of dreams
Oneiric may also refer to:
* Oneiric (film theory), dreams as a metaphor for film—or in critiques thereof
* ''Oneiric'' (album), 2006, by Boxcutter
* '' ...
images throughout, including spinning wire models of a human head and rotating double-sided masks. In the 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into "entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England,
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
and
Ivor Montagu
Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, in Kensington, London – 5 November 1984, in Watford) was an English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist in the 1930s. He helped to de ...
formed a film society and imported films they thought were "artistic achievements", such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of the Universum Film A.G. (UFA) studios in Germany".
[
'']Cinéma pur
Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". It is usually a form of art film or experimental film, not made for mass entertainment.
Narrative film is the dominant ae ...
'', a French avant-garde film movement in the 1920s and 1930s, also influenced the development of the idea of art film. The ''cinema pur'' film movement included several notable Dada artists. The Dadaists used film to transcend narrative storytelling conventions, bourgeois traditions, and conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space by creating a flexible montage of time and space.
The ''cinema pur'' movement was influenced by German "absolute" filmmakers such as Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Viking Eggeling. Richter falsely claimed that his 1921 film ''Rhythmus 21'' was the first abstract film
Abstract may refer to:
* ''Abstract'' (album), 1962 album by Joe Harriott
* Abstract of title a summary of the documents affecting title to parcel of land
* Abstract (law), a summary of a legal document
* Abstract (summary), in academic publishi ...
ever created. In fact, he was preceded by the Italian Futurists
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
Bruno Corra
Bruno Corra is the pseudonym of Bruno Ginanni Corradini (Ravenna, 9 June 1892 – died in Varese
Varese ( , , or ; lmo, label= Varesino, Varés ; la, Baretium; archaic german: Väris) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, n ...
and Arnaldo Ginna
Arnaldo Ginna, also known as Arnaldo Ginanni Corradini, was an Italian painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He was born in Ravenna, 7 May 1890; he died in Rome, 26 September 1982.
Biography
The son of Count Tullio Ginanni Corradini (who was also m ...
between 1911 and 1912 (as reported in the ''Futurist Manifesto of Cinema''), as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann, who produced ''Lichtspiel Opus 1'' in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film ''Rhythmus 21'' is considered an important early abstract film.
The first British "art cinema" was temporarily opened at the Palais de Luxe in London in 1929 by Elsie Cohen
Elsie Coh(e)n (later Elsie Kellner; 14 June 1895 – 26 January 1972) was a Dutch-born British entrepreneur who opened the first art cinema in the UK. She had a try at what is now the Windmill Theatre for six months before opening The Academy ci ...
. She went on to establish a permanent location at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street in 1931.
1930s–1950s
In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood films could be divided into the artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...
's '' The Informer'' (1935) and Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...
's '' The Long Voyage Home'' (1940), and the money-making "popular-genre films" such as gangster thrillers. William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from the mid-to-late 1940s, such as ''Open City
In war, an open city is a settlement which has announced it has abandoned all defensive efforts, generally in the event of the imminent capture of the city to avoid destruction. Once a city has declared itself open the opposing military will be ...
'' (1945), ''Paisa
Paisa (also transliterated as ''pice'', ''pesa'', ''poysha'', ''poisha'' and ''baisa'') is a monetary unit in several countries. The word is also a generalised idiom for money and wealth. In India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the ''Paisa'' currently equa ...
'' (1946), and '' Bicycle Thieves'' can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement".[
In the late 1940s, the U.S. public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major U.S. cities and college towns. After the Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American film going public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films", and they went to the newly created art-film theaters to see "alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces".][ Films shown in these art cinemas included "British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics". Films such as Rossellini's ''Open City'' and Mackendrick's '' Tight Little Island'' (''Whisky Galore!''), ''Bicycle Thieves'' and '' The Red Shoes'' were shown to substantial U.S. audiences.][
In the late 1950s, French filmmakers began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism] and classical Hollywood cinema, a style that critics called the French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
. Although never a formally organized movement, New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm
Iconoclasm (from Ancient Greek, Greek: grc, wikt:εἰκών, εἰκών, lit=figure, icon, translit=eikṓn, label=none + grc, wikt:κλάω, κλάω, lit=to break, translit=kláō, label=none)From grc, wikt:εἰκών, εἰκών + wi ...
, and their films are an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
, Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the post-World ...
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...
, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma
''Cahiers du Cinéma'' (, ) is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.Itzkoff, Dave (9 February 2009''Cahiers Du Cinéma Will Continue to Publish''The New York TimesMacnab, Ge ...
''. Auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of his films, with a personal signature visible from film to film.
1960s–1970s
The French New Wave movement continued into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the term "art film" began to be much more widely used in the United States than in Europe. In the U.S., the term is often defined very broadly to include foreign-language (non-English) ''"auteur"'' films, independent film
An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, i ...
s, experimental film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
s, documentaries and short films. In the 1960s, "art film" became a euphemism
A euphemism () is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes ...
in the U.S. for racy Italian and French B-movies. By the 1970s, the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as the Swedish film '' I Am Curious (Yellow)''. In the U.S., the term "art film" may refer to films by modern American artists, including Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
with his 1969 film ''Blue Movie
''Blue Movie'' (also known as ''Fuck'') is a 1969 American erotic film written, produced and directed by Andy Warhol. It is the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, and is re ...
'', but is sometimes used very loosely to refer to the broad range of films shown in repertory theaters or "art house cinemas". With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
film, a 1970s experimental underground film, a European auteur film, a U.S. "independent" film, and even a mainstream foreign-language film (with subtitles) might all fall under the rubric of "art house films".
1980s–2000s
By the 1980s and 1990s, the term "art film" became conflated with "independent film" in the U.S., which shares many of the same stylistic traits. Companies such as Miramax Films
Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey Weinstein, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California.
It was ...
distributed independent films that were deemed commercially viable. When major motion-picture studios noted the niche appeal of independent films, they created special divisions dedicated to non-mainstream fare, such as the Fox Searchlight Pictures division of Twentieth Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film studio, film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm o ...
, the Focus Features
Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as part of Universal Pictures, a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in th ...
division of Universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a t ...
, the Sony Pictures Classics division of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Sony Pictures or SPE, and formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.) is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, ac ...
, and the Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage (also known as Paramount Classics) was a film distribution label of Paramount Pictures (which, in turn, has Paramount Global as its parent company), charged with producing, purchasing, distributing and marketing films, generally ...
division of Paramount
Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to:
Entertainment and music companies
* Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...
. Film critics have debated whether films from these divisions can be considered "independent films", given they have financial backing from major studios.
In 2007, Professor Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern cultur ...
argued in her article "Art movies: R.I.P." that " ide from Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five A ...
's '' Godfather'' series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, ...here is not
Here is an adverb that means "in, on, or at this place". It may also refer to:
Software
* Here Technologies, a mapping company
* Here WeGo (formerly Here Maps), a mobile app and map website by Here
Television
* Here TV (formerly "here!"), a TV ...
.. a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman
Bergman is a surname of German, Swedish, Dutch and Yiddish origin meaning 'mountain man', or sometimes (only in German) 'miner'.https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=bergmann
People
*Alan Bergman (born 1925), American songwriter
*Alan Berg ...
's '' The Seventh Seal'' or '' Persona''". Paglia states that young people from the 2000s do not "have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in", an approach which gave "luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or the chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape".
According to director, producer, and distributor Roger Corman, the "1950s and 1960s was the time of the art film's greatest influence. After that, the influence waned. Hollywood absorbed the lessons of the European films and incorporated those lessons into their films." Corman states that "viewers could see something of the essence of the European art cinema in the Hollywood movies of the seventies... nd so art film, which was never just a matter of European cinema, increasingly became an actual world cinema—albeit one that struggled to gain wide recognition". Corman notes that, "Hollywood itself has expanded, radically, its aesthetic range... because the range of subjects at hand has expanded to include the very conditions of image-making, of movie production, of the new and prismatic media-mediated experience of modernity. There's a new audience that has learned about art films at the video store." Corman states that "there is currently the possibility of a rebirth" of American art film.
Deviations from mainstream film norms
Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice", which contrasts art films with the mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "causally related events taking place in space and time", with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot of mainstream films is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, nddeadline plot structures". The film is then tied together with fast pacing, a musical soundtrack to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing.
In contrast, Bordwell states that "the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
and authorial expressiveness". Art films deviate from the mainstream "classical" norms of film making in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a "loosening of the chain of cause and effect".
Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the film.
The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has a story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpretation of the film's message. Art films often "bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and the authorial approach of the director. An art cinema film often refuses to provide a "readily answered conclusion", instead putting to the cinema viewer the task of thinking about "how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?"
Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a ilmgenre, with its own distinct conventions". Film theorist Robert Stam Robert Stam (born October 29, 1941) is an American film theorist working on film semiotics. He is a professor at New York University, where he teaches about the French New Wave filmmakers. Stam has published widely on French literature, comparative ...
also argues that "art film" is a film genre. He claims that a film is considered to be an art film based on artistic status in the same way film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets (blockbuster
Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to:
*Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived.
Corporations
* Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain
** Blo ...
films or B-movies) or their star performers (Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, producer and singer. He was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1990 to 1995, before going on to star in numerous Hollywood films, those of wh ...
films).
Art film and film criticism
There are scholars who point out that mass market films such as those produced in Hollywood appeal to a less discerning audience. This group then turns to film critics as a cultural elite that can help steer them towards films that are more thoughtful and of a higher quality. To bridge the disconnect between popular taste and high culture, these film critics are expected to explain unfamiliar concepts and make them appealing to cultivate a more discerning movie-going public. For example, a film critic can help the audience—through their reviews—think seriously about films by providing the terms of analysis of these art films. Adopting an artistic framework of film analysis and review, these film critics provide viewers with a different way to appreciate what they are watching. So when controversial themes are explored, the public will not immediately dismiss or attack the movie where they are informed by critics of the film's value such as how it depicts realism. Here, art theaters or art houses that exhibit art films are seen as "sites of cultural enlightenment" that draw critics and intellectual audiences alike. It serves as a place where these critics can experience culture and an artistic atmosphere where they can draw insights and material.
Timeline of notable films
The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films: a serious, non-commercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
s. In some cases, critics disagree over whether a film is mainstream or not. For example, while some critics called Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, producer, photographer, and musician. He has earned acclaim as both an independent and mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultur ...
's '' My Own Private Idaho'' (1991) an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality",[Allmovie.com] ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called it an ambitious mainstream film. Some films on this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially made films, produced by mainstream studios, that nevertheless bear the hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films on this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics, or because they introduced an innovative narrative or film-making technique.
1920s–1940s
In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers did not set out to make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer (; 3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968), commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his movies are noted for their emotional aus ...
's '' The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928) and ''Vampyr
''Vampyr'' (german: Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Gray, lit=Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray) is a 1932 horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheri ...
'' (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's ''Un chien andalou
''Un Chien Andalou'' (, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursuline ...
'' (1929) and ''L'Âge d'Or
''L'Age d'Or'' (french: L'Âge d'Or, ), commonly translated as ''The Golden Age'' or ''Age of Gold'', is a 1930 French surrealist satirical comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel about the insanities of modern life, the hypocrisy of the sexual mor ...
'' (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...
's famed and influential masterpiece ''Battleship Potemkin
'' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent
drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...
''. The U.S. film '' Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans'' (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at t ...
uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world rich with symbolism and imagery. Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...
's film '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) is a comedy of manners that transcends the conventions of its genre by creating a biting and tragic satire of French upper-class society in the years before WWII; a poll of critics from '' Sight & Sound'' ranked it as the fourth greatest film ever, placing it behind '' Vertigo'', ''Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...
'' and ''Tokyo Story
is a 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama about an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. Upon release, it did not immediately gain international recogniti ...
''.
Some of these early, artistically oriented films were financed by wealthy individuals rather than film companies, particularly in cases where the content of the film was controversial or unlikely to attract an audience. In the late 1940s, UK director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger (born Imre József Pressburger; 5 December 19025 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaborat ...
made '' The Red Shoes'' (1948), a film about ballet, which stood out from mainstream-genre films of the era. In 1945, David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River ...
directed '' Brief Encounter'', an adaptation of Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
's play ''Still Life
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
'', which observes a passionate love affair between an upper-class man and a middle-class woman amidst the social and economic issues that Britain faced at the time.
1950s
In the 1950s, some of the well-known films with artistic sensibilities include ''La Strada
''La strada'' () is a 1954 Italian drama film directed by Federico Fellini and co-written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman (Giulietta Masina) bought from her mother ...
'' (1954), a film about a young woman who is forced to go to work for a cruel and inhumane circus performer to support her family, and eventually comes to terms with her situation; Carl Theodor Dreyer's ''Ordet
''Ordet'' (, meaning " The Word" and originally released as ''The Word'' in English), is a 1955 Danish drama film, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. It is based on a play by Kaj Munk, a Danish Lutheran priest, first performed in 1932. The film won ...
'' (1955), centering on a family with a lack of faith, but with a son who believes that he is Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
and convinced that he is capable of performing miracles; Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most i ...
's '' Nights of Cabiria'' (1957), which deals with a prostitute's failed attempts to find love, her suffering and rejection; '' Wild Strawberries'' (1957), by Ingmar Bergman, whose narrative concerns an elderly medical doctor, who is also a professor, whose nightmares lead him to re-evaluate his life; and ''The 400 Blows
''The 400 Blows'' (french: Les Quatre Cents Coups) is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut. The film, shot in DyaliScope, stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of ...
'' (1959) by François Truffaut, whose main character is a young man trying to come of age despite abuse from his parents, schoolteachers, and society, this film is the first big step in the French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
and for cinema, it showed that films can be made with little money, amateur actors, and a small crew. In Poland, the Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw ( rus, хрущёвская о́ттепель, r=khrushchovskaya ottepel, p=xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲ:ɪpʲɪlʲ or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period ...
permitted some relaxation of the regime's cultural policies, and productions such as ''A Generation
''A Generation'' ( pl, Pokolenie) is a 1955 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the novel ''Pokolenie'' by Bohdan Czeszko, who also wrote the script. It was Wajda's first film and the opening installment of what became his Thr ...
'', ''Kanal
Kanal may refer to:
* Kanal (unit), a unit of area equivalent to one-eighth of an acre, used in northern India and Pakistan
* ''Kanał'', a 1956 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda
* ''Kanal'' (1979 film), a 1979 Turkish film
* ''Kanal'' (2015 ...
'', ''Ashes and Diamonds
''Ashes and Diamonds'' ( Polish original: ''Popiół i diament'', literally: ''Ash and Diamond'') is a 1948 novel by the Polish writer Jerzy Andrzejewski. The story takes place during the last few days of World War II in Europe, and describes th ...
'', ''Lotna
''Lotna'' is a 1959 Polish war film directed by Andrzej Wajda.
Overview
This highly symbolic film is both the director's tribute to the long and glorious history of the Polish cavalry, as well as a more ambiguous portrait of the passing of an era ...
'' (1954–1959), all directed by Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Witold Wajda (; 6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016) was a Polish film and theatre director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards, he was a prominent member of the ...
, showed the Polish Film School
Polish Film School ( pl, Polska Szkoła Filmowa) refers to an informal group of Polish film directors and screenplay writers active between 1956 and approximately 1963. Among the most prominent representatives of the school are Andrzej Wajda, And ...
style.
Asia
In India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, there was an art-film movement in Bengali cinema known as " Parallel Cinema" or "Indian New Wave". This was an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema known for its serious content, realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...
cinema and began around the same time as French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and Japanese New Wave
The is a group of loosely-connected Japanese filmmakers during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Although they did not make up a coherent movement, these artists shared a rejection of traditions and conventions of classical Japanese cinema in ...
. The most influential filmmakers involved in this movement were Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of fil ...
, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak
Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (; 4 November 19256 February 1976) was a noted Indian film director, screenwriter, and playwright. Along with prominent contemporary Bengali filmmakers Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen, his cinema is primarily remembe ...
. Some of the most internationally acclaimed films made in the period were ''The Apu Trilogy
''The Apu Trilogy'' comprises three Indian Bengali-language drama films directed by Satyajit Ray: ''Pather Panchali'' (1955), ''Aparajito'' (1956) and ''The World of Apu'' (1959). The original music for the films was composed by Ravi Shankar.
...
'' (1955–1959), a trio of films that tell the story of a poor country boy's growth to adulthood, and Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of fil ...
's '' Distant Thunder'' (1973), which tells the story of a farmer during a famine in Bengal. Other acclaimed Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
filmmakers involved in this movement include Rituparno Ghosh, Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose
Goutam Ghose (also spelled Gautam Ghosh born 24 July 1950) is an Indian film director, Actor, music director and cinematographer, who works primarily in Bengali cinema. He is the only Indian to have received the "Vittorio Di Sica" Award, Italy ...
.
Japanese filmmakers
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspo ...
produced a number of films that broke with convention. Akira Kurosawa's ''Rashomon
is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori (actor), Masayuki Mori, and ...
'' (1950), the first Japanese film to be widely screened in the West, depicts four witnesses' contradictory accounts of a rape and murder. In 1952, Kurosawa directed ''Ikiru
is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed and co-written (with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni) by Akira Kurosawa. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. Th ...
'', a film about a Tokyo bureaucrat struggling to find a meaning for his life. ''Tokyo Story
is a 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama about an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. Upon release, it did not immediately gain international recogniti ...
'' (1953), by Yasujirō Ozu, explores social changes of the era by telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find the children are too self-absorbed to spend much time with them. ''Seven Samurai
is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai drama film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story takes place in 1586 during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. It follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who hire seven ...
'' (1954), by Kurosawa, tells the story of a farming village that hires seven master-less samurais to combat bandits. '' Fires on the Plain'' (1959), by Kon Ichikawa, explores the Japanese experience in World War II by depicting a sick Japanese soldier struggling to stay alive. '' Ugetsu'' (1953), by Kenji Mizoguchi, is a ghost story set in the late 16th century, which tells the story of peasants whose village is in the path of an advancing army. A year later, Mizoguchi directed ''Sansho the Bailiff
is a 1954 Japanese period film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Based on a 1915 short story of the same name by Mori Ōgai (usually translated as "Sanshō the Steward" in English), which in turn was based on a folktale, it follows two aristocratic ch ...
'' (1954), which tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery; in addition to dealing with serious themes such as the loss of freedom, the film features beautiful images and long, complicated shots.
1960s
The 1960s was an important period in art film, with the release of a number of groundbreaking films giving rise to the European art cinema. Jean-Luc Godard's ''À bout de souffle
''Breathless'' (french: À bout de souffle, lit=Out of Breath) is a 1960 French crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfrie ...
'' (''Breathless'') (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cut
A jump cut is a cut (transition), cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera posit ...
s and hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conve ...
work. Godard, a leading figure of the French New Wave, would continue to make innovative films throughout the decade, proposing a whole new style of film-making. Following the success of ''Breathless'', Godard made two more very influential films, '' Contempt'' in 1963, which it shown his view on studio filmmaking system, beautiful long take, and film within film, and '' Pierrot le fou'' in 1965, which it is a mash of mash of crime and romance films with and his anti Hollywood style. ''Jules et Jim
''Jules and Jim'' (french: Jules et Jim ) is a 1962 French New Wave romantic drama film, directed, produced and written by François Truffaut. Set before and after World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian J ...
'', by François Truffaut, deconstructed a complex relationship of three individuals through innovative screenwriting, editing, and camera techniques. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni (, ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian filmmaker. He is best known for directing his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and ''L'Eclisse'' (1962 ...
helped revolutionize filmmaking with such films as ''L'Avventura
''L'Avventura'' ( en, "The Adventure") is a 1960 Italian drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Developed from a story by Antonioni with co-writers Elio Bartolini and Tonino Guerra, the film is about the disappearance of a young woman ( ...
'' (1960), influential for its landscape photography and framing techniques, follows the disappearance of a young upper-class woman during a boating trip, and the subsequent search by her lover and her best friend; ''La Notte
''La Notte'' (; en, "The Night") is a 1961 drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti (with Umberto Eco appearing in a cameo). Filmed on location in Milan, the film is the rela ...
'' (1961), a complex examination of a failed marriage that dealt with issues such as anomie
In sociology, anomie () is a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow. Anomie is believed to possibly evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown ...
and sterility; ''Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...
'' (1962), about a young woman who is unable to form a solid relationship with her boyfriend because of his materialistic nature; '' Red Desert'' (1964), his first color film, which deals with the need to adapt to the modern world; and '' Blowup'' (1966), his first English-language film, which examines issues of perception and reality as it follows a young photographer's attempt to discover whether he had photographed a murder.
Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began the 1960s with chamber pieces such as '' Winter Light'' (1963) and '' The Silence'' (1963), which deal with such themes as emotional isolation and a lack of communication. His films from the second half of the decade, such as '' Persona'' (1966), ''Shame
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Definition
Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...
'' (1968), and '' A Passion'' (1969), deal with the idea of film as an artifice. The intellectual and visually expressive films of Tadeusz Konwicki, such as '' All Souls' Day'' (''Zaduszki'', 1961) and '' Salto'' (1962), inspired discussions about war and raised existential questions on behalf of their everyman protagonists.
Federico Fellini's ''La Dolce Vita
''La Dolce Vita'' (; Italian for "the sweet life" or "the good life"Kezich, 203) is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed and co-written (with Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi) by Federico Fellini. The film stars Marcell ...
'' (1960) depicts a succession of nights and dawns in Rome as witnessed by a cynical journalist, this film is a bridge between his previous Italian neorealist style and his later surrealist style. In 1963, Fellini made ''8½
' (Italian title: , ) is a 1963 surrealist comedy-drama film directed and co-written (with Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano and Brunello Rondi) by Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. The metafictional narrative centers on Guido Anselmi, played by Ma ...
'', an exploration of creative, marital and spiritual difficulties, filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo. The 1961 film '' Last Year at Marienbad'' by director Alain Resnais examines perception and reality, using grand tracking shots that became widely influential. Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director.
Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, Ellipsis (narrative device), ellipses, and s ...
's ''Au Hasard Balthazar
''Au Hasard Balthazar'' (; meaning "Balthazar, at Random"), also known as ''Balthazar'', is a 1966 French drama film directed by Robert Bresson. Believed to be inspired by a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1868–69 novel ''The Idiot'', the film ...
'' (1966) and ''Mouchette
''Mouchette'' () is a 1967 French film directed by Robert Bresson, starring Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert. It is based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. Bresson explained his choice of the novel saying, "I found neither ...
'' (1967) are notable for their naturalistic, elliptical style. Spanish director Luis Buñuel also contributed heavily to the art of film with shocking, surrealist satires such as '' Viridiana'' (1961) and '' The Exterminating Angel'' (1962).
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky ( rus, Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greates ...
's film ''Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev ( rus, Андре́й Рублёв, p=ɐnˈdrʲej rʊˈblʲɵf , also transliterated as ''Andrey Rublyov'') was a Muscovite icon painter born in the 1360s who died between 1427 and 1430 in Moscow. He is considered to be one of the ...
'' (1966) is a portrait of the medieval Russian icon painter
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...
of the same name. The film is also about artistic freedom and the possibility and necessity of making art for, and in the face of, a repressive authority. A cut version of the film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival
The 22nd Cannes Film Festival was held from 8 to 23 May 1969. At this festival a new non-competitive section called Directors' Fortnight was added, in response to the cancellation of the 1968 festival.
The Grand Prix du Festival International d ...
, where it won the FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for Fédération Internationale de la PRESse CInématographique) is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world fo ...
prize. At the end of the decade, Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
's '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) wowed audiences with its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and unusual visual imagery. In 1969, Andy Warhol released ''Blue Movie'', the first adult art film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States. According to Warhol, ''Blue Movie'' was a major influence in the making of ''Last Tango in Paris'', an internationally controversial erotic art film, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and released a few years after ''Blue Movie'' was made. In Soviet Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...
, Sergei Parajanov
Sergei Parajanov, ka, სერგო ფარაჯანოვი, uk, Сергій Параджанов (January 9, 1924 – July 20, 1990) was an Armenian filmmaker. Parajanov is regarded by film critics, film historians and filmmakers t ...
's '' The Color of Pomegranates'', in which Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays five different characters, was banned by Soviet authorities, unavailable in the West for a long period, and praised by critic Mikhail Vartanov as "revolutionary"; and in the early 1980s, '' Les Cahiers du Cinéma'' placed the film in its top 10 list. In 1967, in Soviet Georgia
The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR; ka, საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა, tr; russian: Грузинская Советская Соц ...
, influential Georgian film director Tengiz Abuladze
Tengiz Abuladze ( ka, თენგიზ აბულაძე; 31 January 1924 – 6 March 1994) was a Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre teacher and People's Artist of the USSR. He is regarded as one of the best Soviet directors.
...
directed '' Vedreba'' (Entreaty), which was based on the motifs of Vaja-Pshavela
Vazha-Pshavela ( ka, ვაჟა-ფშაველა), simply referred to as Vazha ( ka, ვაჟა) (26 July 1861 – 10 July 1915), is the pen name of the Georgian poet and writer Luka Razikashvili ( ka, ლუკა რაზიკა ...
's literary works, where story is told in a poetic narrative style, full of symbolic scenes with philosophical meanings. In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui's '' The Cow'' (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema
The Cinema of Iran (Persian: سینمای ایران), also known as the Cinema of Persia, refers to the cinema and film industries in Iran which produce a variety of commercial films annually. Iranian art films have garnered international fame a ...
.
Puppeteer Jim Henson had an arthouse success with his 1965 Oscar-nominated non-Muppet
The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an surreal humor, absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential humor, self-referential style of Variety show, variety-sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are ...
short '' Time Piece''.
1970s
In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as ''A Clockwork Orange
''A Clockwork Orange'' may refer to:
* ''A Clockwork Orange'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess
** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (film), a 1971 film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel
*** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (soundtrack), the film ...
'' (1971), Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs, and ''Last Tango in Paris
''Last Tango in Paris'' ( it, Ultimo tango a Parigi; french: Le Dernier Tango à Paris) is a 1972 erotic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud, and portrays a recently w ...
'' (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci's taboo-breaking, sexually-explicit and controversial film. At the same time, other directors made more introspective films, such as Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky ( rus, Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greates ...
's meditative science fiction film ''Solaris
Solaris may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...
'' (1972), supposedly intended as a Soviet riposte to ''2001''. In 1975 and 1979 respectively, Tarkovsky directed two other films, which garnered critical acclaim overseas: '' The Mirror'' and ''Stalker
Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The term ...
''. Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include '' Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenp ...
, who directed ''Badlands
Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded."Badlands" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 47. They are characterized by steep slopes, m ...
'' (1973) and ''Days of Heaven
''Days of Heaven'' is a 1978 American romantic period drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick, and starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz. Set in 1916, it tells the story of Bill and Abby, lovers who travel t ...
'' (1978) shared many traits with Tarkovsky, such as his long, lingering shots of natural beauty, evocative imagery, and poetic narrative style.
Another feature of 1970s art films was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery, which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in German New Wave
New German Cinema (german: Neuer Deutscher Film) is a period in German cinema which lasted from 1962 to 1982, in which a new generation of directors emerged who, working with low budgets, and influenced by the French New Wave and Italian Neore ...
director Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...
's '' Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1973), and in cult film
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage ...
s such as Alejandro Jodorowsky's psychedelic '' The Holy Mountain'' (1973) about a thief and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island. The film ''Taxi Driver
''Taxi Driver'' is a 1976 American film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, and Albert Brooks. Set in a decaying and ...
'' (1976), by Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
, continues the themes that ''A Clockwork Orange'' explored: an alienated population living in a violent, decaying society. The gritty violence and seething rage of Scorsese's film contrasts other films released in the same period, such as David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
's dreamlike, surreal and industrial black and white classic '' Eraserhead'' (1977). In 1974, John Cassavetes offered a sharp commentary on American blue-collar life in ''A Woman Under the Influence
''A Woman Under the Influence'' is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. The story follows a woman (Gena Rowlands) whose unusual behavior leads to conflict with her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) and family. It rec ...
'', which features an eccentric housewife slowly descending into madness.
Also in the 1970s, Radley Metzger directed several adult art films, such as ''Barbara Broadcast
''Barbara Broadcast'' is an American adult erotic film released in 1977. The film was directed by Radley Metzger (as "Henry Paris") and filmed in several elaborate locations in New York City, including the Olympia ballroom and restaurant in the ...
'' (1977), which presented a surrealistic "Buñellian" atmosphere, and '' The Opening of Misty Beethoven'' (1976), based on the play ''Pygmalion
Pygmalion or Pigmalion may refer to:
Mythology
* Pygmalion (mythology), a sculptor who fell in love with his statue
Stage
* ''Pigmalion'' (opera), a 1745 opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau
* ''Pygmalion'' (Rousseau), a 1762 melodrama by Jean-Jacques ...
'' by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
(and its derivative, '' My Fair Lady''), which was considered, according to award-winning author Toni Bentley
Toni Bentley (born 1958) is an Australian-German dancer and writer. Bentley was born in Perth, Western Australia.
Family and early life
Bentley's father, P. J. Bentley, is an Australian biologist and endocrinologist. Her brother, Dr. David Ben ...
, to be the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn, an era in modern American culture that was inaugurated by the release of Andy Warhol's ''Blue Movie'' (1969) and featured the phenomenon of "porno chic
Porno may refer to:
* Pornography, explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with principal intention of sexually exciting a viewer
**Pornographic magazine
**Pornographic film
* ''Porno'' (film), a 2019 American film
* ''Porno'' (novel), a 2 ...
" in which adult erotic films began to obtain wide release, were publicly discussed by celebrities (such as Johnny Carson
John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He is best known as the host of ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (1962–1992). Carson received six Pr ...
and Bob Hope
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 5 ...
) and taken seriously by film critics (such as Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
).
1980s
In 1980, director Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
gave audiences, who had become used to the escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...
and George Lucas
George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairm ...
, the gritty, harsh realism of his film ''Raging Bull''. In this film, actor Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Ridley Scott's ''Blade Runner'' (1982) could also be seen as a science fiction art film, along with ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968). ''Blade Runner'' explores themes of existentialism, or what it means to be human. A box-office failure, the film became popular on the arthouse circuit as a cult film, cult oddity after the release of a "director's cut" became successful via VHS home video. In the middle of the decade, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa used realism to portray the brutal, bloody violence of Japanese samurai warfare of the 16th century in ''Ran (film), Ran'' (1985). ''Ran'' followed the plot of ''King Lear'', in which an elderly king is betrayed by his children. Sergio Leone also contrasted brutal violence with emotional substance in his epic tale of mobster life in ''Once Upon a Time in America''.
Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical and ethical issues like Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Witold Wajda (; 6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016) was a Polish film and theatre director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards, he was a prominent member of the ...
's ''Man of Iron'' (1981), a critique of the Polish communist government, which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Another Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, made ''The Decalogue (film), The Decalogue'' for television in 1988, a film series that explores ethical issues and moral puzzles. Two of these films were released theatrically as ''A Short Film About Love'' and ''A Short Film About Killing''. In 1989, Woody Allen made, in the words of ''New York Times'' critic Vincent Canby, his most "securely serious and funny film to date", ''Crimes and Misdemeanors'', which involves multiple stories of people who are trying to find moral and spiritual simplicity while facing dire issues and thoughts surrounding the choices they make. French director Louis Malle chose another moral path to explore with the dramatization of his real-life childhood experiences in ''Au revoir, les enfants'', which depicts the occupying Nazi government's deportation of French Jews to concentration camps during World War II.
Another critically praised art film from this era, Wim Wenders's road movie ''Paris, Texas (film), Paris, Texas'' (1984), also won the Palme d'Or.
Kieślowski was not the only director to transcend the distinction between the cinema and television. Ingmar Bergman made ''Fanny and Alexander'' (1982), which was shown on television in an extended five-hour version. In the United Kingdom, Channel 4, a new television channel, financed, in whole or in part, many films released theatrically through its Film4 Productions, Film 4 subsidiary. Wim Wenders offered another approach to life from a spiritual standpoint in his 1987 film ''Wings of Desire'', a depiction of a "fallen angel" who lives among men, which won the Best Director Award (Cannes Film Festival), Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released the surprise arthouse hit ''Koyaanisqatsi'', a film without dialogue, which emphasizes cinematography (consisting primarily of slow motion and time-lapse cinematography of cities and natural landscapes, which results in a visual Symphonic poem, tone poem) and philosophical ideology about technology and the environment.
Another approach used by directors in the 1980s was to create bizarre, surreal alternative worlds. Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
's ''After Hours (film), After Hours'' (1985) is a comedy-thriller that depicts a man's baffling adventures in a surreal nighttime world of chance encounters with mysterious characters. David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
's ''Blue Velvet (film), Blue Velvet'' (1986), a film noir-style thriller-mystery filled with symbolism and metaphors about polarized worlds and inhabited by distorted characters who are hidden in the seamy underworld of a small town, became surprisingly successful considering its highly disturbing subject matter. Peter Greenaway's ''The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover'' (1989) is a fantasy/black comedy about cannibalism and extreme violence with an intellectual theme: a critique of "elite culture" in Margaret Thatcher, Thatcherian Britain.
According to Raphaël Bassan, in his article "''The Angel (1982 film), The Angel'': Un météore dans le ciel de l'animation", Patrick Bokanowski's ''The Angel (1982 film), The Angel'', shown at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, can be considered the beginning of contemporary animation. The characters' masks erase all human personality and give the impression of total control over the "matter" of the image and its optical composition, using distorted areas, obscure visions, metamorphoses, and synthetic objects.
In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien's ''A City of Sadness'' became the first Taiwanese film awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film shows the history of Taiwan through one family, and marks another step of the Taiwanese New Wave, which tends to depict realistic, down-to-earth life in both urban and rural Taiwan.
1990s
In the 1990s, directors took inspiration from the success of David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
's ''Blue Velvet (film), Blue Velvet'' (1986) and Peter Greenaway's ''The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover'' (1989) and created films with bizarre alternative worlds and elements of surrealism. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's ''Dreams (1990 film), Dreams'' (1990) depicted his imaginative reveries in a series of vignettes that range from idyllic pastoral country landscapes to horrific visions of tormented demons and a blighted post-nuclear war landscape. The Coen Brothers' ''Barton Fink'' (1991), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, features various literary allusions in an enigmatic story about a writer who encounters a range of bizarre characters, including an alcoholic, abusive novelist and a serial killer. ''Lost Highway (film), Lost Highway'' (1997), from the same director as ''Blue Velvet'', is a psychological Thriller film, thriller that explores fantasy worlds, bizarre time-space transformations, and mental breakdowns using surreal imagery.
Other directors in the 1990s explored philosophical issues and themes such as identity, chance, death, and existentialism. Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, producer, photographer, and musician. He has earned acclaim as both an independent and mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultur ...
's '' My Own Private Idaho'' (1991) and Wong Kar-wai's ''Chungking Express
''Chungking Express'' is a 1994 Hong Kong romantic crime comedy-drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a ...
'' (1994) explored the theme of identity. The former is an independent road movie/buddy film about two young street hustlers, which explores the theme of the search for home and identity. It was called a "high-water mark in '90s independent film", a "stark, poetic rumination", and an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality". ''Chungking Express'' explores themes of identity, disconnection, loneliness, and isolation in the "metaphoric concrete jungle" of modern Hong Kong. Todd Haynes explored the life of a suburban housewife and her eventual death from toxic materials in the 1995 critical darling ''Safe (1995 film), Safe''.
In 1991, another important film of Edward Yang, a Taiwanese New Wave director, ''A Brighter Summer Day'' is portrayal of one normal teenager life that evacuated from China to Taiwan which affacted by political situation, school situation, and family situation that make a main protagonist murders a girl in the end. In 1992, ''Rebels of the Neon God'', first feature film of Tsai Ming-liang, second generation of Taiwanese New Wave, it has his unique style of filmmaking like alienation, slow movement of actor (his recurring cast, Lee Kang-sheng), slow-paced, and a few dialogues.
Daryush Shokof's film ''Seven Servants'' (1996) is an original high art cinema piece about a man who strives to "unite" the world's races until his last breath. One year after ''Seven Servants'', Abbas Kiarostami's film ''Taste of Cherry'' (1997),[In 1990, Kiarostami directed ''Close-Up (1990 film), Close-up''.] which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, tells a similar tale with a different twist; both films are about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. ''Seven Servants'' was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes, a leisurely pace, and long periods of silence. The film is also notable for its use of long shots and overhead shots to create a sense of distance between the audience and the characters. Zhang Yimou's early 1990s works such as ''Ju Dou'' (1990), ''Raise the Red Lantern'' (1991), ''The Story of Qiu Ju'' (1992) and ''To Live (1994 film), To Live'' (1994) explore human emotions through poignant narratives. ''To Live (1994 film), To Live'' won the Grand Jury Prize.
Several 1990s films explored existentialist-oriented themes related to life, chance, and death. Robert Altman's ''Short Cuts'' (1993) explores themes of chance, death, and infidelity by tracing 10 parallel and interwoven stories. The film, which won the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, was called a "many-sided, many mooded, dazzlingly structured eclectic jazz mural" by ''Chicago Tribune'' critic Michael Wilmington. Krzysztof Kieślowski's ''The Double Life of Véronique'' (1991) is a drama about the theme of identity and a political allegory about the East/West split in Europe; the film features stylized cinematography, an ethereal atmosphere, and unexplained supernatural elements.
Darren Aronofsky's film ''π (film), Pi'' (1998) is an "incredibly complex and ambiguous film filled with both incredible style and substance" about a paranoid mathematician's "search for peace". The film creates a David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
-inspired "eerie '' Eraserhead''-like world" shot in "black-and-white, which lends a dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings" and explores issues such as "metaphysics and spirituality". Matthew Barney's ''The Cremaster Cycle'' (1994–2002) is a cycle of five symbolic, allegorical films that creates a self-enclosed aesthetic system, aimed to explore the process of creation. The films are filled with allusions to reproductive organs and sexual development, and use narrative models drawn from biography, mythology, and geology.
In 1997, Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include '' Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenp ...
returned from a 20-year absence with ''The Thin Red Line (1998 film), The Thin Red Line'', a war film that uses poetry and nature to stand apart from typical war movies. It was nominated for seven 71st Academy Awards, Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Some 1990s films mix an ethereal or surreal visual atmosphere with the exploration of philosophical issues. ''Satantango, Sátántangó'' (1994), by the Hungarian cinema, Hungarian director Béla Tarr, is a -hour-long film, shot in black and white, that deals with Tarr's favorite theme, inadequacy, as confidence trick, con man Irimias comes back to a village at an unspecified location in Hungary, presenting himself as a leader and false Messiah, Messiah figure to the gullible villagers. Kieslowski's ''Three Colors'' trilogy (1993–94), particularly ''Three Colors: Blue, Blue'' (1993) and ''Three Colors: Red, Red'' (1994), deal with human relationships and how people cope with them in their day-to-day lives. The trilogy of films was called "explorations of spirituality and existentialism" that created a "truly transcendent experience". ''The Guardian'' listed ''Breaking the Waves'' (1996) as one of its top 25 arthouse films. The reviewer stated that "[a]ll the ingredients that have come to define Lars von Trier's career (and in turn, much of modern European cinema) are present here: high-wire acting, innovative visual techniques, a suffering heroine, issue-grappling drama, and a galvanising shot of controversy to make the whole thing unmissable".
2000s
Lewis Beale of ''Film Journal International'' stated that Australian director Andrew Dominik's western film ''The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'' (2007) is "a fascinating, literary-based work that succeeds as both art and genre film". Unlike the action-oriented Jesse James films of the past, Dominik's unconventional epic perhaps more accurately details the outlaw's relinquishing psyche during the final months of his life as he succumbs to the paranoia of being captured and develops a precarious friendship with his eventual assassin, Robert Ford (outlaw), Robert Ford.
In 2009, director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed that his 2002 film ''Punch-Drunk Love'' about a shy, repressed rage-aholic was "an art house Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, producer and singer. He was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1990 to 1995, before going on to star in numerous Hollywood films, those of wh ...
film", a reference to the unlikely inclusion of "frat boy" comic Sandler in the film; critic Roger Ebert claims that ''Punch Drunk Love'' "may be the key to all of the Adam Sandler films, and may liberate Sandler for a new direction in his work. He can't go on making those moronic comedies forever, can he? Who would have guessed he had such uncharted depths?"
2010s
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's ''Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'', which won the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or, "ties together what might just be a series of beautifully shot scenes with moving and funny musings on the nature of death and reincarnation, love, loss, and karma". Weerasethakul is an independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer, who works outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system. His films deal with dreams, nature, sexuality, including his own homosexuality, and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia. Weerasethakul's films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures (such as placing titles/credits at the middle of a film) and for working with non-actors.
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include '' Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenp ...
's ''The Tree of Life (film), The Tree of Life'' (2011) was released after decades of development and won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival; it was highly praised by critics. At the Avon Theater in Stamford, Connecticut, a message was posted about the theater's no-refund policy due to "some customer feedback and a polarized audience response" to the film. The theater stated that it "stands behind this ambitious work of art and other challenging films". ''Drive (2011 film), Drive'' (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, is commonly called an arthouse action film. Also in 2011, director Lars von Trier released ''Melancholia (2011 film), Melancholia'', a movie dealing with Depressive episode, depression and other mental disorders while also showing a family's reaction to an approaching planet that could collide with the Earth. The movie was well received, some claiming it to be Von Trier's masterpiece with others highlighting Kirsten Dunst's performance, the visuals, and realism depicted in the movie.
Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin (2013 film), ''Under the Skin'' (an example of "arthouse science fiction film, arthouse sci-fi") was screened at the 2013 Venice Film Festival and received a theatrical release through indie studio A24 the following year. The film, starring Scarlett Johansson, follows an Extraterrestrial life, alien in human form as she travels around Glasgow, picking up unwary men for sex, harvesting their flesh and stripping them of their humanity. Dealing with themes such as sexuality, humanity, and objectification, the film received positive reviews and was hailed by some as a masterpiece; critic Richard Roeper described the film as "what we talk about when we talk about film as art".
This decade also saw a re-emergence of "art horror" with the success of films like ''Beyond the Black Rainbow'' (2010), ''Black Swan (film), Black Swan'' (2010), ''Stoker (film), Stoker'' (2013), ''Enemy (2013 film), Enemy'' (2013), ''The Babadook'' (2014), ''Only Lovers Left Alive'' (2014), ''A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night'' (2014), ''Goodnight Mommy'' (2014), ''Nightcrawler (film), Nightcrawler'' (2014), ''It Follows'' (2015), ''The Witch (2015 film), The Witch'' (2015), ''The Wailing (film), The Wailing'' (2016), ''Split (2016 American film), Split'' (2016), the social thriller ''Get Out'' (2017), ''Mother!'' (2017), ''Annihilation (film), Annihilation'' (2018), ''A Quiet Place (film), A Quiet Place'' (2018), ''Hereditary (film), Hereditary'' (2018), ''Suspiria (2018 film), Suspiria'' (2018; Suspiria, a remake of the 1977 film of the same name), ''Mandy (2018 film), Mandy'' (2018), ''The Nightingale (2018 film), The Nightingale'' (2018), ''The House That Jack Built (2018 film), The House That Jack Built'' (2018), ''Us (2019 film), Us'' (2019), ''Midsommar (film), Midsommar'' (2019), ''The Lighthouse (2019 film), The Lighthouse'' (2019), ''Color Out of Space (film), Color Out of Space'' (2019) and the Academy Award for Best Picture winner ''Parasite (2019 film), Parasite'' (2019).
Roma (2018 film), ''Roma'' (2018), is a film by Alfonso Cuarón inspired by his childhood living in 1970s Mexico. Shot in black-and-white, it deals with themes shared with Cuarón's past films, such as mortality and class. The film was distributed through Netflix, earning the streaming giant their first Academy Awards, Academy Award nomination for Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Picture.
Arthouse animation (with Oscar-nominated titles like ''Song of the Sea (2014 film), Song of the Sea'' and ''Loving Vincent'') was also gaining momentum during this era as an alternative to mainstream animated features alongside the works of acclaimed animators Satoshi Kon, Don Hertzfeldt and Ari Folman from the previous decade.
Tom Shone said of the work of Christopher Nolan: "He has completed eleven features, [...] all ticking the boxes of studio entertainment, yet indelibly marked with the kind of personal themes and obsessions that are more traditionally the preserve of the art house: the passage of time, the failures of memory, our quirks of denial and deflection, the intimate clockwork of our interior lives, set against landscapes in which the fault lines of late Industrialisation, industrialism meet the fissure points and paradoxes of the information age."
Criticism
Criticisms of art films include being too pretentious and self-indulgent for mainstream audiences.
''LA Weekly'' film critic Michael Nordine cited the films ''Gummo'' (1997) as being an "art-house exploitation film, exploitation flick" and ''Amores Perros'' (2000) exemplifying "the art-house stereotype of featuring more dead dogs than ''Where the Red Fern Grows'' and every other book you had to read in middle school".
Related concepts
Arthouse television
''Quality artistic television'', a television genre or style which shares some of the same traits as art films, has been identified. Television shows, such as David Lynch's ''Twin Peaks'' and the BBC's ''The Singing Detective'', also have "a loosening of causality, a greater emphasis on psychological or anecdotal realism, violations of classical clarity of space and time, explicit authorial comment, and ambiguity".
As with much of Lynch's other work (notably the film ''Blue Velvet (film), Blue Velvet''), ''Twin Peaks'' explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life lurking beneath its surface. The show is difficult to place in a defined television genre; stylistically, it borrows the unsettling tone and supernatural premises of horror films and simultaneously offers a bizarrely comical parody of American soap operas with a Camp (style), campy, melodramatic presentation of the morally dubious activities of its quirky characters. The show represents an earnest moral inquiry distinguished by both Surreal humor, weird humor and a deep vein of surrealism, incorporating highly stylized vignettes, surrealist and often inaccessible artistic images alongside the otherwise comprehensible narrative of events.
Charlie Brooker's Emmy Award-winning UK-focused ''Black Mirror'' television series explores the dark and sometimes satirical themes in modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies; while classified as "speculative fiction", rather than art television, it received rave reviews. HBO's ''The Wire'' might also qualify as "artistic television", as it has garnered a greater amount of critical attention from academics than most television shows receive. For example, the film theory journal ''Film Quarterly'' has featured the show on its cover.
In popular media
Art films have been part of popular culture from animated sitcoms like ''The Simpsons'' and ''Clone High'' spoofing and satirizing them to even the comedic film review webseries ''Channel Awesome, Brows Held High'' (hosted by Kyle Kallgren).Brows Held High Night Thread – The Avocado
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See also
* American Eccentric Cinema
* Anime
* Auteur theory
* Cannes Film Festival
* Cinema of Transgression
* Classical Hollywood cinema
* Criterion Collection
* Czechoslovak New Wave
* European art cinema
* Experimental film
* Extreme cinema
* Film criticism
* Film genre
* FilmStruck
* Golden Age of Television (2000s-present)
* Independent animation
* Independent film
* Independent Film Channel
* Independent Spirit Award
* International Tournee of Animation
* L.A. Rebellion
* List of directors associated with art film
*Literary fiction (semi-analogous concept in the world of literature)
* Minimalist film, Minimalist and Maximalist film, Maximalist cinema
* Music video
* New Hollywood
* No wave cinema
* Parallel Cinema
* Slow cinema
* Souvenirs from Earth—art TV station
* Sundance Film Festival
* Surrealist cinema
* Swansea Bay Film Festival
* Television studies
* Toronto International Film Festival
* Turner Classic Movies
* Underground film
* Video essay
* Vulgar auteurism
References
External links
*
Brows Held High
' on YouTube
Top 100 Art House and International Movies – Rotten Tomatoes
The 25 best arthouse films of all time, The Guardian
10 Great Movies That Are Perfect Introductions To Arthouse Cinema – Taste of Cinema
{{DEFAULTSORT:Art Film
Aesthetics
Experimental film
Film genres
Film styles
Film theory
Independent films
Theories of aesthetics
Visual arts