Cinéma you look
Cinéma du look was a French film movement in the 1980s that was characterized by both striking and non-naturalistic plot settings. The style name was coined by the French film critic Raphaël Bassan .
In terms of style, the films of the Cinéma du look were characterized by a highly artificial design of backdrops and locations, which was intensified by intensive color and light effects. This gave the impression of mannerism , unreality and the stylized nature of the places, figures and scenes. The movement's directors - to be mentioned above all Jean-Jacques Knieix , Luc Besson and Leos Carax - are asked to prefer style over substance and acting over narrative. Your films were "technically brilliant", but "disinterested in (social) realism or in the psychological interpretation of the action spaces".
The focus of the films was on young estranged characters on the fringes of French youth in the time of François Mitterrand . Topics that ran through many films were doomed love affairs, mostly groups of young people rather than families, a cynical view of the police and the use of the Paris Métro as a symbol of underground society. The mise en scène , the backdrops and productions of the Cinéma du look were used to “dress romantic love stories, fantastic events, parables”. The parallels to the “smooth” aesthetics of advertising and music videos, but also to cartoons and computer games, are striking. The mix of high culture (such as the operatic music in Diva and Die Liebenden von Pont-Neuf ) and pop culture (e.g. the references to Batman in Subway ) was an important feature of the film movement. The “lack of interest in reality, its open, illusory character and the obviously allusive qualities” identify the Cinéma du look as originally post-modern or even “neo-baroque” cinema.
Key films of the movement, besides those mentioned, were Betty Blue - 37.2 degrees in the morning (1986), The night is young (1986), In the intoxication of the deep (1988) and Nikita (1990). The French filmmakers were inspired by New Hollywood films (especially Francis Ford Coppola's One with a Heart and Rumble Fish ), late Fassbinder films, TV commercials, music videos, and fashion photography.
literature
- David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson: Film History: An Introduction , 2nd 2002, ISBN 0-07-038429-0 .
- Susan Hayward: Luc Besson . Manchester / New York: Manchester University Press 1998.
- Phil Powrie: Jean-Jacques Brilleix . Manchester: Manchester University Press 2001.
Web links
- Patricia Allmer: Window Shopping? - Aesthetics of the Spectacular and Cinéma du Look ( Memento of January 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), Institute of Film Studies, University of Nottingham (English)
- Will da Shaman: Nikita and The Assassin: Hollywood vs. European Cinema , Netribution Film Network (English)
- Guy Austin: Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction. ( Memento of January 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), Review by J. Emmett Winn (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Hans Jürgen Wulff: Cinéma du look. In: Lexicon of film terms. Hans J. Wulff and Theo Bender, October 13, 2012, accessed June 26, 2014 .
- ↑ first analyzed in La Revue du Cinéma No. 448, May 1989, English translation: The French neo-baroques directors: beinix, Besson, Carax from Diva to le Grand Bleu (pp. 11-23). In: The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle (Under the direction of Susan Hayward and Phil Powrie) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-7190-7028-7
- ^ A b Guy Austin: Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester University Press 1999, ISBN 0-7190-4611-4 , pp. 119-120, 126-128.
- ^ French Cinema - Powrie & Reader
- ^ Bordwell & Thompson 2003, p. 620.