FTVMS 101 - Notes - Week 11

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NATIONAL CINEMAS/TRAINSPOTTING

 

National Cinemas

Hollywood dominance in overseas markets

Attempts to counter Hollywood

1. Protective measures for the local industry in the form of quotas or subsidies
2. The valorising of national cinema as art rather than mere entertainment
3. The valorising of film-makers as distinctive artists
4. The branding of cinema as national cinema.

Two opposing models of cinema:

1. Hollywood – commercial model – entertainment – genres and stars
2. European National cinemas – subsidised model – art – the auteur

National Cinema and Film Style

Key issues to note

1. The importance of historical context
2. The dominant narrative and stylistic issues defining a national cinema

German Expressionism - the Weimar republic (1918-1933, interiority and psychic states. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919)

Soviet Constructivisim – the post revolutionary period (1924-1933) Montage. The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Italian Neo Realism – (1945-1953) Caesar Zavattini. Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1951) 

The French New Wave or nouvelle vague – (1959-1968), self-reflexivity and film form,  A bout de souffle (Jean Luc Godard, 1959)

 

British Cinema

A British art cinema – derived from European art cinema and British television drama – contemporary, socially engaged, realist in style. The role of Channel Four. 

The Celtic fringe – Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The Bridal Path (Frank Launder, 1959), My Name is Joe (Ken Loach, 1998)

Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1995).

TRAINSPOTTING

Director: Danny Boyle, writer: John Hodge, Producer: Andrew MacDonald. Adapted from the cult novel by Irvine Welsh and fully funded by Channel Four, cost £1.7 million. Made more than £12 million at the British box office, and over $72 million world wide.

The setting of both book and film: an unfamiliar version of the Edinburgh

The Social context - post industrial Scotland

The casting – Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Ewan Bremner, Kelly MacDonald, Shirley Henderson and Peter Mullan.

The visual style.

Murray Smith - ‘black magic realism’, and ‘aesthetic redemption’:

The representation of place

The use of music,

Differences between film and novel