LALLOUZ INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE :: Celluloid Cousins

by Gregory Dark

There can be few speakers of either language who have not had experience of the truth of that adage. What seems to be less well appreciated is that France and America are also two countries divided – in their case, by a common ethic.

“What?” I can hear all my American friends howling.

“Quoi?” choruses an equally disbelieving gaggle of Frenchmen.

“Us and the French??? WHAT???????”

“Nous et les Américains??? QUOI????????”

Both would claim cinema as their own. And both have some right to that claim. Both have come to represent the opposite ends of the film-making spectrum: America symbolising the block-buster and box-office-buster; France symbolising the ‘art’ movie.

As is the case with so many generalisations, whilst this one may contain some truth, it is very far from being the whole truth. The fact of the matter is that, much more than either (probably) would care to admit, both (properly recognised by the other) exist to the enhancement of one another. Steven Spielberg is an admirer of François Truffaut just as much, apparently, as Truffaut was of Hitchcock. Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen are fêted when they visit France, just as are Claude Berri and Bernardo Bertolucci in America.

For very many years, there was a mutual respect, even an interdependence between the two cultures – as indeed exemplified by the fact that its basic material, the film itself, is measured width-wise metrically (usually 35mm) and length-wise in feet (in rolls usually of either 400’ or 1,000’).

This apparent anomaly has always appealed to me. It’s always seemed to me to represent the universality of film, its ability to cross national and cultural divides. If globalisation has any kind of acceptable face – a very big ‘if’ indeed – I suggest that cinema is one of them. Mostly because it respects the fact that each culture, as well as each film-maker, has its own cinematic voice.

It’s no surprise that Americans love the movies. It is quintessentially American. It was begging to be adopted by America as its own. It’s a new art form, the first born since the United States was founded. It’s bold, brash, dynamic, bristling with energy, relentlessly fast-moving. It perforce combines the aesthetic and the mercantile: it’s fun and it contains the potential of enormous profit. As an American art-form it was made to measure. Its appeal to the French is, like the films the French tend to make, more subtle. Maybe it’s as simple as that anything which increases life’s quota of pleasure is good news to the hedonism which, I have always felt, is at the centre of French culture.

Hedonism is often used as a term of rebuke. Not by me. Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure. And there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure, indeed to the contrary. Whilst pleasure may not be the only constituent of happiness, it is an important one.

My only problem with the ‘pleasure industry’ currently besieging the world is that it short-changes the wannabe hedonists. There is nothing wrong with (the occasional) Coca-cola but it is not claret, nothing wrong with (the occasional) fast-food burger but it is not Chateaubriand.

Both the Americans and the French have an understanding of film that the British somehow lack. And it is quite as much for that reason as its common language with America which has made Britain, on the whole, such a second-rate film-making country.

The British thought of cinema, and maybe some still do think of it, as theatre on celluloid. But the French and Americans understand, or have intuited, that cinema’s evolution has very little to do indeed with the theatre. Its major influence is not the stage but the big top.

It is indicative that still, now over a hundred years since its birth, cinema has found no effective means of entering a character’s mind. It has yet even to discover its own convention to replace the theatre’s aside or soliloquy.

Yeah, yeah, I know you spend a fair amount of your lives being rude about each other. If you took the anti-French jokes out of his routine, Jackie Mason would have to resurrect Dan Quayle. Jackie Mason has French counterparts – believe me – and in spades! But just curtail your incredulity for a while and think about it for a moment.

The Statue of Liberty itself, almost the American icon, was a gift to that country from the French. The rebellions of both against their royalist yokes were only divided by some 13 years (1776 and 1789). Both at that time hated the British. The ‘inalienable rights’ of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ to my ears sound remarkably similar to the triple aspiration of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’. Both countries are fiercely independent, obsessively chauvinist – and mind-blowingly self-confident, in a way that both would designate of the other as ‘arrogant’.

And, of course, they’re both great countries. Of those I have visited, two of my favourite in the world. Partly because both, in their hugely different ways, take pleasure so very seriously.

Which is, I suspect, one of the reasons they both love the cinema.

It is no accident, in my opinion, that so many of cinema’s early pioneers came directly from either circus or variety: Chaplin and Stan Laurel, to name but two. Both Keaton and Harold Lloyd were acrobats who could act, not vice versa. Car-chases are trapeze artistes on wheels; special effects create an exotic world that heretofore had been represented by fire-eaters and sword-swallowers; locations in movies bring a world to our doorstep in the way to our ancestors that lion-taming did or performing elephants.

Both circus and cinema are media of the visceral and the vicarious. Both are involved with spectacle and spangles and the illusion of glamour. Both provide an escape-route from reality – which can sometimes be healthy, and which at other times can be extremely unhealthy.

‘Birth of a Nation’, ‘Battleship Potemkin’, ‘The General’ and Gance’s ‘Napoleon’ are enormously diverse ventures. But they are all involved with spectacle. They appeal to emotions rather than intellect.

Which is not to say, of course, that either the Americans or the French are incapable of thought. (Though when you see who both are capable of voting for, you do have to beg that question! Not, I hasten to add, that Britain either has too much to crow about in that regard.) The canons of both French literature and American include way too many examples of intellectual excellence for anyone to be able to disparage the cerebral capacity of either. And that is also not to say that the cinema is not capable of profundity. Because, again, far too many examples exist to disprove such sophistry.

But it is a medium more of polemic than philosophy, of the didactic than of dialectic. It is not, in my experience, a medium which is too comfortable with debate.

The Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté) was presented to the United States by France in 1886, commemorating the centennial of the United States, as well as a gesture of friendship. It stands on Liberty Island in the New York Harbor, and welcomes all visitors.

Certainly, at one time, it was undeniably the most powerful propaganda tool of history. Some would argue that such distinction is now television’s. Given the fact, though, that we continue to go to the cinema almost always to see a specific film in a darkened space projected onto a screen up to 74 times larger than life, I’m not totally convinced by television’s claim. (Which is not for a moment to underestimate television’s power. That, though, is subject for another essay.)

Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi film director, is perhaps the most notorious of movie propagandists. But Eisenstein too, for all the brilliance of his film-making, was presenting a very one-sided view. Chaplin likewise, in so many of his films, most famously ‘Modern Times’ and ‘The Great Dictator’. Propaganda doesn’t cease being propaganda just because it’s being used on the side of the good guys.

‘The Great Dictator’ is one of my favourite films. I unabashedly salute Chaplin for having had the courage to finance it himself, and to have kept on financing it until he himself considered it right. It is also worth remembering that, as a consequence of his ‘left-wing’ bias, he later fell foul of Senator McCarthy and his henchmen.

Apart from his tribute to Chaplin, I have also been a great admirer of Richard Attenborough’s work. But he too is a propagandist, overtly with ‘Oh! What A Lovely War’ and ‘Gandhi’, but more subtly too in ‘A Bridge Too Far’, even in ‘Shadowlands’.

And because cinema is such a medium of propaganda, it cannot not be one. Film-makers today who avoid mention of situations condone them. That is a hugely powerful form of propaganda. It forms part of the nothing that Burke was talking about when he coined his famous axiom: ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’

It is now far too rare that any film coming out of mainline Hollywood contain even the slightest criticism of the status quo. There may be a token anti-Bush joke or two. But such is, if anything, designed to foster an illusion of free speech. It’s as innocuous as the best man telling stag-night jokes about the groom. The intention of such ‘satire’ is to foster endearment not censure.

The Lumière Brothers. (from l to r) Auguste Marie Louis Nicholas (1862-1954) and Louis Jean (1864-1948) were born in Besançon, France. The brothers were listed amongst the earliest filmmakers.

One of the Algonquin wits described satire as being ‘that which opens of Monday and closes on Tuesday’. Corporations hide in the skirts of such wisdom, and will demand they have no responsibility beyond the financial one to their share-holders. (That too is too broad a subject to be dealt with in an ink-byte.) Satire, though, is also one of the most efficient checks that citizens have on their governments. Even the Spiro Agnews of this world (those, in other words, lampooned as a matter of course) hate derision.

‘The Simpsons’, no question, is outstanding satire. So was the British tv ‘mocumentary’, ‘The Office’. But both their targets (generally) were us: Western man and the general world we inhabit, rather than specific political and/or economic and/or ethical subjects.

The invasion of Iraq is more often criticised for being inefficient than immoral; Guantanemo Bay continues to operate with barely a word of censure from anyone bar those, like Michael Moore, who is, to the status quo, the acceptable face of criticism.

As it was, News International sought to renege on the contract they had with Mr Moore for his book ‘Stupid White Men’, and his film ‘Fahrenheit 911’ had enormous difficulties finding both a distributor and an exhibitor. Now, I was a huge fan of ‘Bowling for Columbine’ – indeed sent Mr Moore the only fan letter I have ever written as a consequence of it. I was considerably less enthusiastic about either his book or this latter film. His problems with media executives, however, did not arise because his work failed to meet aesthetic or journalistic standards!

The world's first movie poster, 1895. ‘L'Arroseur Arrosé’ (The Waterer Watered and The Sprinkler Sprinkled). A French black and white short silent comedy film. Directed and produced by Louis Lumière. First screening June 10, 1895. Known to be the earliest example of film comedy, as well as the first film to ever portray a fictional story.

The word ‘liberal’ has now become almost a term of abuse. I have absolutely no idea why. The Constitution of the United States was drawn up by liberals. Liberals abolished slavery, brought children out of the mines, introduced universal suffrage, died for issues like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of expression. Liberals protested against the British concentration camps in the Boer war, and the futile slaughter in the Crimean. If the liberals had been heeded, maybe the atrocities could have been avoided that were the Somme and Auschwitz, Biafra and apartheid.

I am a liberal. I make no apology for that. Indeed I am fiercely proud to call myself one. And, for all its overuse, I return to the axiom at the heart of any liberal, Voltaire’s adage: ‘I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it.’

But as the major studios increase their stranglehold on exhibition – what, in other words, actually gets seen in the cinema – that principle is increasingly being disregarded. The erosion is insidious but, thus far, inexorable. It is deliberate and it is accidental and it is consequent, all at the same time. It is being ushered in through the front-door and is also now sneaking in at the back.

The internet is just not providing sufficient antidotes to counter this erosion. The internet is a regiment of musketeers firing grape-shot at the atomic bombs of the mass-media. It lacks the cohesion to constitute an opposition. The internet is the guerrilla groups pitted against the armed forces which are the world’s mass-media.

The big film production and distribution companies are (in the business) referred to as the ‘majors’. And the majors are not any longer film-makers. Indeed most of the majors are no longer the majors: Warner Brothers is not Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox is not 20th Century Fox. Warner Brothers is now part of Time/Warner/AOL; 20th Century Fox is a part of Mr. Murdoch’s News International.

In the days before digital photography, professional movie stock represented to Kodak a tiny, tiny fraction of its turnover. It was valuable from a marketing perspective, but of itself had a financial value that was almost derisory. It is not true that movies represent within these conglomerates a tiny fraction of their turnover. But, as opposed to when companies were dedicated to film production, film is now only a part of their interest.

Even when they were so dedicated, the majors sought to squeeze out the independents. The independents threatened their markets, they added further perils to the already enormously risky sport of investing in films. This is an entirely fallacious argument. I am quite sure that both Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett are too intelligent to consider J.K. Rowlings their “opposition”. Indeed, both probably (as I do) go down nightly on their prayer-mats in thanks to her. She has re-opened a market to us writers which was very quickly being lost.

When it was that people used to go regularly to the cinema, it might have been the case that one film played ‘in opposition’ to another. That is no longer the case. If there are two films at the multiplex that appeal, a person will that week go to the cinema twice; if the following week there are none, he won’t go at all. We need no more evidence of this than our own lives.

If the conglomerates were genuinely interested in cinema, as opposed to selling their film in whatever medium they can, they would be encouraging and supporting independents. But for years now, the ‘majors’ have been trying to squeeze out the independents. The hanging-on is tenuous.

Le Cinematographe, 1895. The Lumière camera was used for both film projection and development. Weighing only twelve pounds, the machine was far lighter than the Kinetoscope, invented by rival, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson.

There are plans afoot that the major studios will stop distributing physical prints of their films to cinemas and instead will transmit signals by satellite from operational centres, presumably in California. My guess is that, apart from such an exercise cutting transport costs and reducing the likelihood of viewable piracy, this is designed further to squeeze out independent film-makers – the French films, and the arts’ house films. I don’t believe the motive behind the move is anything other than economic and mercantile. But its consequences will be, I fear, both political and censorious – and extremely serious.

Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat, 1895. Auguste Lumière & Louis Lumière. This short film shows a steam train’s arrival at the Marseilles Ciotat Station. At its world premiere, the audience panicked and dashed from the screening. It seems that most were unfamiliar with cinema, and were frightened at the sight of the train headed straight toward them! Watch it right here on LIM MEDIA QUICK VIEW.

With ‘The Prophet of the New Millennium’ already published, author Gregory Dark’s second book, ‘The God of the New Millennium’ is hot off the presses. Dark is currently working on his third and final book of the trilogy, 'Man of the New Millennium', which is scheduled for publication sometime in 2009. Visit www.prophetofthenewmillennium.com

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ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT