The Rise

In film theory, the 1950s-era auteur theory holds that a director’s films reflect that director’s personal creative vision, as if he or she were the primary “auteur” (the French word for ‘author’). In some cases, film producers are considered to have a similar “auteur” role for films that they have produced.

A present day analogy would the ‘writer-director’ and having control over the final cut or director’s cut of a film.

Auteur theory has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated by film director and film critic François Truffaut in 1954. ‘Auteurism’ is the method of analyzing films based on this theory or, alternately, the characteristics of a director’s work that makes her or him an auteur. Both the auteur theory and the auteurism method of film analysis are frequently associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical Cahiers du cinéma.”

The French New Wave officially kicked off in 1959 with the release of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and immediately picked up with the release of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) which was co-written by Truffaut. These revolutionary feature film efforts were the product of experimentation with various short-films throughout the mid and late 1950s by these film critics-turned-filmmakers.

This was around the same time that the likes of Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lindsey Anderson started the new wave in Britain, the result of several documentary film projects undertaken in the 1950s as part of the Free Cinema Movement. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) were the fore-runners of the British New Wave. Interestingly, 1959 was also the year when John Cassavetes, an established Hollywood actor started his own revolution of independent cinema with the film Shadows (1959).

These revolutions leaked into other parts of the world like Germany where the likes of Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders started the “New German Cinema” movement. Then the wave turned direction and headed eastwards through India with the likes of Satyajit Ray coming out as an established filmmaker with the closure of the “Apu trilogy” in 1959. The wave failed to rise to dizzy heights in the sub-continent but went onto generate a large following further east in Japan with the rise of the “Nuberu Bagu”, the localized name for the “Japanese New Wave”. Shohei Imamura is widely regarded as the key figure of this movement with a surprise association of the already established Seijun Suzuki’s certain works.

All these filmmakers mentioned above have been widely regarded as “auteurs” of their cinema by critics and audiences alike and suddenly the term had transformed the previously mechanical role of the film director into the most important and creative post on the crew. The producer’s prestige of the pre-new wave, industry-controlled era had come to a screeching halt and side-stepped to play second fiddle to the director.

Classic cinema lives

Hero

     Many of the great directors who had defined the classical studio era from the period of World War I to the early age of television were at or approaching retirement. Andrew Sarris’s pivotal book, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 came out just in time to elevate their reputations by dubbing them with the fashionable French term auteur.
     John Ford and Howard Hawks made their last films in this period (7 Women, 1966, and Rio Lobo, 1970). Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, and Vincente Minnelli kept driecting into the 1970s, though few would say their late films stacked up to their earlier ones. Preminger did manage to struggle back after a string of turkeys to make a very creditable final film, The Human Factor, in 1980. Sam Fuller kept working through the 1980s, but he had to go to France to do it. Billy Wilder’s last film came out in 1981.  Most people wish he had stopped with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in 1970.The decline of these greats coincided with the rise of the New Hollywood generation, whose directors, originally dubbed “the movie brats,” have become the grand old men of the current cinema. It also coincided with the early rumblings of the blockbuster (Jaws, 1975) and franchise (Star Wars, 1977) age that we know today. Definitely a shift took place in the 1970s, but to what?

     Many film historians have claimed that the films that have come out of Hollywood since roughly the end of the 1980s are radically different from those of the classical “Golden Age.” Factors like television, videogames, spectacular special effects, moviegoers with short attention spans, the internet, the acquisition of the old studios by multi-national corporations, and the resulting rise of franchises have all given rise to a “post-classical” cinema. This phenomenon is sometimes also referred to as the “post-Hollywood” or “post-modern” era.

     I’m suspicious of the “post” terms, vague as they are. Usually stylistic labels describe what something is, not what it follows. Do we speak of “post-silent” or “post black-and-white” cinema?

It’s amazing to think of it now, but back in the late 1970s, virtually no one had studied the traditional norms of Hollywood filmmaking. We all knew what the distinctive traits of the great auteurs were, but distinctive as opposed to what? Academics kept saying that someone should figure out just what the cinema of the classical studio era consisted of. What principles guided filmmakers? What assumptions did they share? Not realizing how much material was available on Hollywood cinema and mode of production that composed the “classical Hollywood cinema.”

The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985). I now feel like I have a better knowledge of exactly how and why their work differed from standard filmmaking.

Modern American Remakes

I was first very interested in learning more about foreign films that have had great success being recreated as modern American films. I found out that so many films that I have seen are actually remakes. so i looked up the top films that have been remade and have decided to do some reading on them to find out more intorfation that I didnt know, how the old fiml influenced the new one and the success it took on. Recently i noticed that this trend of remaking films isnt just as old as Hollywood itself. Hollywood just did another remake of the Swedish vampire movie "let the Right One in" and that movie isnt even that old. I believe that original  was made in 2008 and the new one "Let Me in" just came out a few weeks ago.

The departed was the number one pick and not only did it succeed in the in hong-kong it did even better in America. When this was announced, people wondered "Wait, Martin Scorsese does remakes? Is he losing it?" Turns out he was not losing it. He just liked the original and wanted to put his own spin on it. The original film is actually three separate movies. They tore up the Hong Kong box office in 2002-2003. It's easy to see why Martin was into them: Duality of man, cops, violence. Right up his alley. He filled his version with scene stealing performances by Alec Baldwin, Jack Nicholson and favored son Leonardo Dicaprio. Plus, it's the first time many of us actually enjoyed Mark Wahlberg's screen presence.<object width="640" height="390"><param name="movie" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM6AeW8ok6E

Another movie that I found out was a remake was The Sound of Music made in 1965. This movie was remade from the Trapp Family from Germany in 1956. "The Sound of Music" is so successful, so iconic, that people simply give you a blank stare when you tell them it's a remake. Can you really imagine anyone else but Julie Andrews playing the indubitable Maria Von Trapp? It's not that the original is bad, per say, it's just slightly forgettable. It also lacked the song-writing talents of Rodgers and Hammerstein. This is truly a case in which the remake surpasses the source material.

Due to its success, The Ring started a trend of remaking just about every Japanese horror film. Sure, most of them suck, but the one that started it all doesn't. Gore Verbinski's remake of Ringu is a taut, scary thriller that, for the most part, follows the original film note for note. These films have become part of the cultural lexicon. Just about everyone is scared to watch sketchy unmarked video tapes now. Even if they won't kill you in a week.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH_aliX6HVc

The Italian Job was first made in England in 1969 and later in 2003 was remade. As crime capers go, you could do a whole lot worse than this spirited remake of the 1969 British original. Also, having seen said original doesn't spoil too much for the remake. The plot and characters are both significantly altered, turning the American film into an homage more than a shot-for-shot redeux. The action scenes are fast and frenetic, featuring the kinds of high speed car chases that just couldn't be done in the 60s. A reported sequel, The Brazilian Job, has been trapped in development hell for the past six years.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Bnf4o1ItU

Golden

The 1930's and 1960's brought a new development to the film industry and they did it with a bang.

 

There was once a time in Hollywood when the stars were truly "larger than life" both on the screen and off. An era where the greatest dramas, comedies, and tragedies were best performed behind the scenes. It is a time when the studios controlled all of Hollywood. The "Golden Era" is when the faces on screen became icons. This was the "Golden Era" of Hollywood  
Hollywood itself began with a man named D.W. Griffith. He created a Hollywood masterpiece in 1915 with Hollywood's first motion picture, "The Birth of a Nation." This movie completely stunned audiences around the world and assisted in created a completely new world: The world of Motion Pictures.
 
Chaplin was the preeminent star of all of the other silent film stars. He appeared on screen in 1914. The movie was "Kid Auto Races at Venice" and it was the baggy pants, enormous shoes, bowler hat, and carrying a bamboo cane that he originated his world famous "The Tramp." Yet, there can be an exception to Charlie Chaplin being alone as the greatest film star of all time.
 
Due to the change in Hollywood and silent films being cut, many great silent stars did not last long with the age of "Talkies." During the 1930's and 1960's a lot of different tecneques were discovered other than famous movies and stars. it truely was the beginning of a era that had a lot of first. First film, first talking film, first color and the tecnology just continues to grow. 

cool

i have a blogger spot