Definition of Art-house Movies

Before diving into the technical aspects and definitions of art films, I will try to simplify the definition.

Art house films are movies that deal with serious (and often psychological ) themes. The biggest defining feature is being slow-paced and hard to understand. That is because art films usually lack a well-defined conflict and do not follow a clear storyline. This is the main reason that many people consider art-house movies to be boring.

Another main characteristic of such films is that they depend heavily on visual language. In order to understand these films, you should have at least a minimum knowledge of film language and the interpretations of different camera angles, movements, and colors.

Now let’s get a bit technical in the definition of the word “Art” in art movies.

Art films are usually intellectually challenging movies in contrast to emotionally entertaining.

They have some defining features such as ambiguity, a distinctive directorial style, and characters lacking clear goals.

In order to consider a film (or any other form of art) aesthetic, the spectator should look for beauty, originality, solutions to artistic problems, use of metaphors, sensitivity to emotions, highly graphic cinematography, violation of narrative conventions…

Cinema’s main and distinctive function in capturing what’s in front the camera turns out to be the grounds of film-as-art arguments.

Expressive Cinema

Rudolf Arnheim, the German author and film theorist, worked under the assumption that art should be expressive. Meaning that the input or the subjectivity of the artist should be present in the work rather than being just a copy of reality.

For example, watching an event on screen is affected by technical limitations and artistic decisions that prevent the images on the film to be accurate. That is because the depth of the camera lens is different from that of the human eye. The size and shapes of the objects are optically manipulated, and the range of vision is defined by the frame and camera movement. Exploiting these discrepancies in cinema is what makes the medium artistic and what gives meaning to the images.

To make more sense of this statement, consider a close-up low-angle shot of a character. The resulting image will be distorted by having the character’s head seem small with respect to the body, and the character would seem to be towering above the viewer. But this distortion is considered to be communicating a specific meaning. Such shot would be analyzed as giving the character power and a strong standing point. By that, the shot is said to be expressive.

Realism

But by just accounting for the limitations of film to achieve expressiveness is to miss another capacity of cinema as a representational art form.

The French film theorist Andre Bazin seems to be an advocate for the argument that realism is the core of film art.

Bazin defined realism in cinema by recording what is happening in front of the camera using medium-long shots, long takes, and deep focus imagery.

Conclusion

No matter how theorists define the art house films, and whether they gave the art an expressive or a presentational aesthetical value, they seem to be mostly considering how the meaning of films is created in relation to how the objects, characters, and events are presented on screen.

The Linear Narrative

Linear is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a story that follows one line of narrative.

So, imagine that the movie is a journey from point A to point B. Throughout this journey, the events will drive the story of the movie.

The movie first starts with the stage of exposition. This part is often referred to as the stage of equilibrium. Here the scene is being set to the audience, and the world of the characters is presented.

Then, the disequilibrium. This is when something disrupts the state of normal and causes the events of the story to happen.

As the events complicate, the events of the movie ultimately reach the climax. A point where the stakes for the characters are the highest.

When this peak point is reached, the main characters will try now harder to restore the equilibrium.

The movie ends with the resolution. Here, the main characters would achieve in returning to the initial point. They could also reach another point that better or worse from where they initially started at the beginning of the movie. But they learned their lesson and suffered the circumstances.

For example, let’s use Toy Story.

Toy Story

By the end of the movie, Buzz has accepted his fate as a toy and is welcomed into Andy’s group of toys. whereas at the beginning he wasn’t even there.

So, to put it short, a linear narrative goes like this:
Movies start where characters in their everyday life, something happens that shakes this normality. Then, things get worse as the characters try to fix them. The movie ends with the characters returning to where they started or learning something new or even failing hard at it.

As you might now be thinking: Not all movies follow this linear narrative structure… you are correct.. here comes the non-linear structure.

Non-linear Narrative

The non-linear narrative tends to break up this simple line and put it back together in a different order.

These are the movies that do not follow the three act structure.

All Movies have a begining, middle, and end… But not necessarly in this order –Godards

Movies that follow this type of narrative like to mix things up. And because the events are not told in a straightforward manner, it will be up to the audience to do the thinking and guessing in order to understand the story and figure out the chronological order of the events of the story.

This doesn’t mean that movies with a non-linear narrative are ALWAYS hard to understand…

Almost all French New Wave movies follow the non-linear narrative… But Let’s have more known and popular movies as examples in this post.

A good example of a complicated non-linear narrative would be Christopher Nolan’s Memento.

Memento has two sets of narratives running throughout the film. One in black and white and one in color.

These two narratives are broken up and mixed together! So you see a piece of one then a piece of the second and then back to the first… Scenes in black and white and other scenes in color.

Christopher Nolan’s Memento

Already the narrative is pretty nonlinear.

But memento takes it another step further. The colored narrative is actually being shown to us in Reverse.

The black and white sequence starts at the beginning and the colored sequence starts at the end. This completely screws up the narrative with the final clip transitioning from black and white to color showing the end of the first narrative and the start of the second. 

I think that is as much complicated as it can be for a movie. But there are many other examples for movies that do not have a linear narrative structure but are still easy to follow and understand.

let’s take a look at Forrest Gump as an example. The movie has a nonlinear narrative and it’s really easy to understand. 

Many people will argue that Forrest Gump actually follows a linear structure… After all, it follows Forrest from when he was a boy, we see him grow up to an adult. But the thing is it’s a broken story.

The movie starts with Forrest waiting on a bus stop, and the movie continues as Forrest is telling other people how he came to this point.

Forrest Gump

So, in a way, Forrest Gump starts from the end and takes us back to the beginning through Forrest’s stories.

In the case of Forrest Gump, the use of the non-linear narrative was not to make the movie more complicated or to make an artistic statement. The non-linear narrative can also be a convenient way for the writers to easily skip through all the boring bits that happen in between the events of a movie.

Conclusion

There is no better or correct narrative structure. Linear narratives are of course very successful. But it’s important to try out new things when writing your own screenplay.

If you are writing a screenplay, try messing up the order of events by having the end at the beginning or, putting bits in the wrong order. See if it makes your story more compelling and powerful. If it doesn’t add anything then leave it you’ve tried and that’s what’s important.

Citizen Kane Summary

The movie starts with an old man on his dying bed. In the first scene the man says the word: “Rosebud” before he dies. And the journey begins in a search for the mystery of the meaning of Rosebub. After that it is revealed that this old man is actually the wealthy newspaper publisher Charles Kane. The audience are introduced to a documentary about the life of Charles Kane. The producer of this showreel is unsatisfied by the result because he thinks that it does not reflect the real character of Kane, so he send a reporter to search for the meaning of Kane’s last word. The reporter starts his investigation and interviews different people who were close to Kane in an attempt to find the meaning of Rosebub. The movie tells us the story of Kane from his childhood until he died through the interviews of his associates and through flashbacks.

Why is Citizen Kane and Important Movie?

Citizen Kane was considered as a turning point towards a new form of narrative cinema where the movie defied the conventions of the classical movie narrative. The story of the film is told from the perspective of six narrators by a series of flashbacks. This way of storytelling added complexity and ambiguity to the film narrative. Another modification in the typical narrative is that the film presented the ending of Kane since the beginning, the viewer knows that Kane will be successful and rich and that he will die at an old age. The enjoyment that the audience get from the narrative is no longer through suspense about what will happen to the character, but rather from understanding why his life turned out the way it did. In Citizen Kane, the spectator needs to put together bits and pieces presented by the six different narrators in order to get a hold on the whole narrative.

The ending: What is Rosebud?

In the end of the movie, the characters did not succeed in knowing the significance of the word “Rosebud”, but we are given an additional shot that Rosebud was engraved on a sled that belonged to the young Kane before he was taken from his parents. So, before the last shot the film ends with an open ending. But the final shot introduced the meaning of Rosebud to the audience and not to the characters. By that the movie has 2 endings. This is a new technique which adds to importance of Citizen Kane in film history.

The Death of Cinema?!

The death of cinema is not a new concept. Cinema has faced many technological advancements throughout its history. First, the introduction of sound, and then the wide screen formats. These advancements changed the way films were produced and distributed. But the notion of the (hypothetical) death of cinema that concerns this article is the impact of television on cinema. To be clear, I don’t blame contemporary TV series for this assumed death of cinema. But the effect of television as a medium on cinema has long been discussed by many critics and scholars. Some went to the extent of saying that the invention of TV was starting point for the death of cinema.

The death of cinema does not mean the vanishing of cinema as a medium where films cease to exist and cinema theaters close their doors. It would rather refer to a shift in the dominant narrative medium. Meaning that cinema loses its hegemony in being the main source of audio/visual storytelling to TV. But, as the quality of television had developed, one might be able to think of this phenomenon as if television is being affected by cinema. But this idea may be controversial. Film critics tend to be defensive about cinema and refuse to transcend its artistic legacy to TV. Critics consider that the big screen is essential for the existence of cinema. Only the films that are watched in a movie theater projection, in the dark, without the ability to interrupt or modify the experience can be regarded as cinema.

The improvement of TV’s content should not mean that one medium would replace the other. Traditional TV programming contained mainly soap operas and sitcoms, which characterised the medium. But during the 1980s and 1990s, the style and content of these programs went through a considerable change. TV series started to stand in opposition of the mass-audience popular forms. This lead to rise of cultural niche programs (think of Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, and The Wire).

But is TV actually taking the place of cinema?

There are two approaches for this question:

1. Audiences prefer TV over going to cinema

If the question is suggesting that people are just watching TV rather than cinema, then the answer is NO!

TV is not taking the place of cinema in this sense. And the numbers back this argument. According to The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the number of movie admissions and film revenue seem to be fairly stable in the last couple of years. Statistics show that the admission number to cinema has been almost stable since the 1970s. So there is no sensible negative effect of the rise of cinematic Quality TV series on the popularity of cinema. This rise in quality in TV shows has started since the 90s (about 30 years ago). It would be far fetched to consider this (relatively new) genre of TV to be competing with the 100 year of cinema. Cinema seems to be standing strong as the main source for narrative and fiction entertainment.

Percentage of The US Population that Went to Cinema on Average Weekly

2. TV is replacing cinema in the artistic sense

Another way to answer the question is by looking at the question in the artistic sense. So, the question would be: Is TV replacing cinema as the home for artistic audio/visual storytelling?

Here I would give my vote for TV. The shows of this second golden age of TV are having great cinematic quality and artistic value. In comparison you can easily notice that the movies that are gaining the most recognition are commercial movies. Mainly action, fantasy and super-hero genres. The more “serious” content is on TV. There you can find many popular shows with deep psychological characters, controversial plots, symbolic meanings, and creative story-telling… Think of shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, The Man in the High Castle, The Young Pope, Mr. Robot, The Affair, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones... and many others. Please write the name of the shows that you think we must add to this list in the comment section.
I will not dive deeper in the artistic value of TV, but you can read about Art in film here.

On an ending note, I think that we should not consider TV and cinema as enemies in a war where one should take the place of the other. Each has its own experience. Cinema has (and still is) providing us with great movies that satisfies all tastes. TV is picking up in the artistic sense, and the quality of its content is increasing. After TV was based mainly on soap operas, sitcoms, and talk/game/reality shows. The more competition, the more good content for us!!

What do you think about this cinema V/S TV argument? I would like to read your thoughts.

Film Theory: The Auteur Theory

When we look at the auteur theory we have to keep in mind that a film is a collaborative medium. Many creative minds put their input in making the film, and not just the director.

We should not disregard the importance of the writers, cinematographers, actors, editors, crew… Instead, we will regard the director as the conductor of this team and the decision-maker. This is why the auteur theory considers a film as the product of the director.

History of the Auteur Theory

Auteur theory came to light in the 1950s in France. Although the term has been circulating in film studies long before that. During the Second World War, American films were banned in France due to the German occupation. But after the war ended, American movies flooded the French cinemas. At that time, French film critics were hungry for good cinema and began studying French and American films.

These critics (of the film magazine cahier du cinema) accused French films of depending only on the script and disregarding the visual element of cinema. They considered that these movies have low artistic value and that they lack social realism.

Critics were also fed up with movies produced and written by the same old filmmakers (They called these movies: Cinema de papa).

In response to this situation, the Cahiers group considered “better” movies that have unique visual style and that hold ideological and psychological baggage to be auteur cinema.

They argued that just because American directors had little say over the production process, this did not mean that they could not have the auteur status. So they had a special recognition for directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawkes, John Ford, and Samuel Fuller.

Another form of auteurism is the total author where directors have complete authority over their movies.

Examples are Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda in France, Wim Wenders, Margarethe von Trotta in Germany, and David Lynch in the United States.

List of Auteur Directors

• Alfred Hitchcock
• Howard Hawkes
• John Ford
• Samuel Fuller
• Jean Vigo
• Jean Renoir
• Jean-Luc Godard
• Agnès Varda
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Wim Wenders
• Margarethe von Trotta
• Orson Welles
• Stanley Kubrick
• David Lynch

When you watch the films of these directors you will easily recognize a unique style in all their movies. You can probably know a Hitchcock film without reading his name on the credits.

When does a Director become an Auteur?

There is no list that the movies of a director should fulfill in order to be considered an auteur. In order to apply this theory, we should study every director separately. I will try to make a checklist or criteria to label auteur films, but this list is not exclusive, and not all films have to contain all these elements.

Elements of the Auteur Movies/Directors

• Movies of the director have a unique and distinct style
• The movies of the director share similar themes
• The director is the screenplay writer
• Films are independently produced (not studio films)
• Movies depend heavily on visual style (camera language)
• Movies communicate philosophical, psychological, or social ideologies

Alfred Hitchcock: Theme Auteur

Alfred Hitchcock

Let’s see then why Hitchcock is an auteur director.

First, all his films follow the same genre: Thriller. The suspense became Hitchcock’s signature in movies. All the movies directed by Hitchcock have psychologically complex characters, and we expect twisted ending in the resolution. Concerning the themes of the movies, Hitchcock films usually center around ordinary characters who are wrongfully accused. The director also has a special interest in the mother-son relationship.

Let’s examine some of Hitchcock’s famous films and see how this pattern exists in most of his movies:

Shadow of a Doubt: The routine of an ordinary family is disrupted when trouble comes with Uncle Charlie when he visits them.

Vertigo: The main character (Johnny) is accused of the murder. In fact, Johnny couldn’t save his partner and the woman he was assigned to follow because he actually couldn’t save them due to his fear of hight.

North by Northwest: The police and criminals are both following the main character (Roger Thornhill) because each side thinks he is someone else. then, there is the “Mother”. the first person Roger calls when he gets arrested is Mother, only to discover later that she is anything but affectionate to her son.

Psycho: The ultimate representation of the unhealthy mother-son relationship.

Easy Virtue: John’s mother does not approve of his wife. The mother believes that the wife is hiding a secret, and will do whatever she can to reveal the truth.

Jean-Luc Godard: Style Auteur

French director Jean-Luc Godard filming scenes for ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ in a junkyard in Battersea, south London, 1968. (Photo by Andrew Maclear/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

All the French New Wave directors are considered auteur. After all, the auteur theory was popularized by the filmmakers and critics of this wave. In an article about auteurism, I can not but talk about the French Director/writer/critic Jean-Luc Godard.

He made many great films that defined the auteur theory and the French New wave. His films are still enjoyable and worth watching till now. Some of Godards movies include Breathless (1960),  Le Mépris (1963), and Pierrot le Fou (1965).

We can recognize the signature of Godard in all his movies mainly through his unique and innovative style. Godard’s filming tends to disregard the rules of filmmaking. So he uses jump cuts heavily in his films. He also relies mostly on a hand-held camera. His movies are mostly shot in real locations using natural light.

But the most important thing in Godard’s films (as an auteur) is: Drawing attention to the cinematic artifice.

This means that Godards (and all French New Wave filmmakers) have no problem in reminding the audience that they are watching a film. This can be done by talking about cinema or revealing the filming process. So his characters may directly address the camera or are filmmakers themselves.

We can recognize a recurring theme in Godards movies.

His themes mostly reflect the existential crisis and the boredom of the youth. And this is not only reflected in the story and the characters of the film, but also the style. These themes can be explored through the non-motivated dialogue and the non-linear and fragmented narrative of the film.

Practical uses of the Auteur Theory

• Study the whole filmography of a director instead of singular films
• A tool to understand the personality and philosophy of the director through his or her movies
• Help to point out unique cinematic techniques and to label them (Hitchcockian style or Tarantino style) in order to be re-used by other filmmakers
• Relate the movies and themes used by a director to his or her personal life

Criticism of Auteur Theory

Many critics and readers are against this theory. They think that the auteur theory is useless and does not qualify as a theory. This point of view has many arguments that seem to be logical.

First, why should all the credit go the one person (The director)?

That is, as we all know, any film is the product of many people. Screenplay writers can have their own consistent style, so why can’t they be considered film auteurs?

Actors, directors, editors, cinematographers, special effect artists all have a significant input in a movie, they have their own style. Can’t they all be auteurs?

Then, why in the first place should there be a signature style in all the movies of an “auteur director”?

After all, a good film should stand on its own. So why should we study the whole filmography of a director who might have good and bad movies in his/her showreel?

Learn more about the Auteur Film Theory:

YouTube Video: The Origins of Auteur Theory by Filmmaker IQ (Recommended)
Book: Postmodern Auteurs: Coppola, Lucas, De Palma, Spielberg and Scorsese (Recommended)
E-Book: Auteur Theory and My Son John (Film Theory in Practice)