Ah ah. I want this posting re-written but as long as I haven’t, feel free to read this draft.
This is a meta post, which means that I won’t be talking about a specific film, but films and my perception about it in general. For starters, as you all can imagine, I am quite opposed to seeing films from a purely academic perspective, and studying film would be the last thing I would be willing to do in my life, although it’s probably one of my most important interests outside of university. The german Wikipedia gives a quite interesting definition on cineast and the english one only says “movie enthusiast”. Now this is probably a little bit too broad, because you can watch movies excessively without digging deeper at all. Most anime viewers who watch more series than me don’t seem to care about what anime is, the financial state of the studios and their artistic development, names of people besides Anno, Miyazaki and Shinkai, or cross-references and trivia. Still, these people are quite some anime enthusiast like a lot of others are movie enthusiasts without knowing one single author or director’s name. There are other movie enthusiasts like me who haven’t watched all that many films, but know about more titles and names than they ever could watch.
On the other hand, it would not surprise me if there are students of film who are less of a movie lover than the people you find at the AwardsDaily forums, have watched less and are less knowledgeable (same for music, by the way). Studying just teaches you much less and in a very different way than when you actually enjoy it in your free time. (I see that with electrical engineers too, my my.)
Among the people who like movies, there seem to be large differences to me when it comes to their motivation of watching films. Basically what I can observe is this:
a) Social reasons: For example, when I was younger, I have seen quite a lot of horror flicks because I was dragged into those girl’s evenings that always comprised a silly comedy and then a horror movie. Comparably mainstream and social movies would be “American Pie”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Pirates of the Carribean” and “Lord of the Rings”.
b) Pure entertainment: Some people like to watch a lot and actively research what could be interesting. However, they don’t read secondary literature all that much or research about the background of the films. They just enjoy talking about films and the film itself, not the background or the history of film, is what matters. This kind of movie enthusiast would never watch “Citizen Kane” because it’s horribly boring. Or “Casablanca” just because it’s a classic. They have a little bit of a l’art pour l’art approach to films (although it’s not exactly a good comparison as these people don’t necessarily seek “art”). They most probably watch screwball comedies like “Some like it hot”, suspenseful thrillers like “Infernal Affairs” and witty films like “Harold and Maude”. Also, these are the people who would come to watch extremely obscure things that I could never possibly name.
c) Small talk: People who only care about big names to be able to small talk. They obviously also have a bit of a background information for those small talk purposes. Entertainment is less important. Now I have never encountered such a person, but I suppose they exist. After all, I am like that with books – honestly my interest in books is much less of an entertaining nature, but it is a mix of the wish to brag about being well-read and genuine interest in culture, society and history. Most of the books I have read were a drag to read, but they were insightful. (“Citizen Kane” is particularily insightful to film history, by the way, but a drag to watch, imho.) These people only watch the necessary classics or influential films to brag with names like Godard (“Le Mépris”) and Monty Python (“The Meaning of Life”).
d) Academia: People who mainly are interested in films from an academic standpoint which actually stems from a genuine interest from what films are, and how they came to be. I suppose there isn’t all that much to explain about this.
e) “Lessons” for life: Similar to the discussion to whether a piece of literature should necessarily have a message, I am sure a major motivation for people to watch films is its closeness to real life. They transport us to situations that we will never encounter ourselves in a closer way than books or photographs would, or they reflect our own life, relationships and the likes. Or they show something about our society or political situation. Not only enjoyment, but a certain ‘depth’ is sought by people who prefer socio-critical films such as “Tropa de Elite” or “Dancer in the Dark”.
The kind of movie person I think I am, and always want to be, would a mix of all four with a proportion of 1:3:2:2:3. I can only describe it with the term cineast, even though the word is associated with the abominable elitism *cough cough* and I’d actually prefer to call it something else. Basically, I want to know a lot about the background of films (and therefore watch “Citizen Kane”, “2001” and films of the Nouvelle Vague mainly for understanding the history of film), and at the same time, the main purpose is still to enjoy and watch them. Also, I would feel horrible if there was nobody I could talk about them and surely I hope to be able to bring these things up in a business conversation. *harr harr*
Which means that these 4 types of motivation definitely are not mutually exclusive: I am the kind of person who finds parodies and cross-references particularily enjoyable, like in Je t’aime John Wayne and the music video for Kiss Me which accumulates all those great scenes of the film. The background therefore contributes to the enjoyment of film itself. (Hm, I wonder if it’s a bad thing that “Je t’aime John Wayne” isn’t really a good film when it stands for itself taken out of context, but only when related to its references.)
However, I don’t really want to define myself by having watched a lot of movies, so maybe there is a certain elitist aspect to it.
Another aspect I want to bring in is “The Dreamers”, a film that I have been thinking back of a lot while writing this post. Now I know that “The Dreamers” wasn’t exactly well-received among critics (maybe they just hate Bertolucci’s steoretypically freudian father complex personality too much), but personally, I just found it extremely well-reflecting on myself. Just like with “Before Sunrise” (a silly other example) that makes me dream of experiencing such an unusual romantic encounter, I admit that I would have loved to live in a time in which being a film enthusiast actually also has a political meaning and reflects a lifestyle which is intriguingly unconventional and rebellian. Besides my particular attachment to closely intertwined triangle relationships (recommendations are very welcomed although I seriously doubt that something could impress as much as “Jules et Jim” did), I loved the way the three have incorporated films into their life. On top of that, when I watched the film, I was at the museum of the “Cinémathèque francaise” shortly before and learnt a bit about the affair around Henri Langlois which is mentioned in “The Dreamers”. Of course that contributed to my high esteem of this film.
I feel like I am 40 years too late for that crap though (see “The Edukators/Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei”) and having a ménage à trois just doesn’t mean all that much anymore.
Just like in literature or music, there also are different kinds of “mainstream” in film. The ones would call all the Hollywood crap mainstream, then again, among film enthusiasts, Jarmusch is pretty mainstream because everybody knows him. There seems always be another layer of obscurity, especially when you consider regional differences. I would love to talk about this more, but first that is slightly off-topic, and second, I feel that I don’t know enough about the “film scene” in the world to be able to say much about this.
Finally, this brings me to the question: What kind of movie enthusiast are you (if you consider yourself one)? What do you guys think, how would you define your own approach to films?
PS. This commercial is somewhat good XD
PPS. I really should stop writing these kinds of meta postings, because they always leave me with this horrible feeling of being a bad writer and ranting too much. However, I already prepared another meta post which hopefully is going to be better than this one, haha.
PPPS. I could immediately write 2000 words on triangle relationships, how society soils them and how fiction makes them more interesting than real life ever could. (The model of man, wife and “amant” is an affront to the woman in society while the model of a woman with two men is suicidal.)
I guess out of the options you’ve listed, something between b) and e) would come closest to my own motivation for seeking and devoting time to films in my spare time.
More than anything, I love getting pleasure and enjoyment out of cinema in ways that don’t afterward let me feel like I’ve wasted time. When i do research on a director, the history or the techniques of a picture, it is usually out of fascination for how all that relates to the impact of the end-product.
I love how most of the “Alfred Hitchcock Collection” DVDs (which are all rather cheap nowadays :tassilo:) come with extensive making-of features for each individual film. Like that saying goes (I think Truffaut said it in one of his famous interviews with Hitchcock), he “essentially remade all of his films” with basically the same premises, characters and plot developments: but each one of them I’ve seen just seemed totally self-contained and original. There’s just something so assured, even consummate, about his use of technology and sense for suspense, that his films intrigue me so much and I can’t get enough of them XD
This kind of fascination and satisfaction, seeing how different directors put the medium to use in their own distinctive ways, keep me hooked on this whole cinema affair. Orson Welles and his films hold me in similar marvel. I’ve seen “Ambersons” before I actually saw “Kane”, and the former still remains one of the most gorgeous and lovely films I know (LOL, sorry for being such a broken record on this one!). That basically convinced me right away, that there must be more than mere technical mastery and innovation behind the giant that is “Kane”, which so many consider the greates film ever – and that’s what I finally thought after seeing it. I was choked-up every one of the 3 or 4 times I’ve seen that long, continuous shot of the snowy childhood episode, starting outside and continuing into the house through an open window, and that shot alone, next to the long stroll at the dinner party in “Ambersons”, is my favorite out of all films I’ve seen by Welles. For the placement of that single beautiful scene alone, within all the jaw-dropping innovation of the entire rest of the picture and its focus on the gargantuan Kane-Character, i’d immediately put it down as one of my favorite films. To me, it proves Welles to be a wonderfully sensitive storyteller, who knows how to utilize the technology available to him to the greatest benefit of his narrative; for this I admire Hitchcock, too. Like, that “Realization of Judy” sequence towards the end of “Vertigo” is at once really, really clever from a technical point of view, and also utterly devastating and breathtaking, dramatically.
Haha, how I’ve drifted!! But my point is basically, I continue to be so absorbed by films, because they continue to show me in which diversity they can be produced and realized, in what ways gifted filmmakers chose to bring their ideas to the screen and end up astonishing me XD
And it just fuels my interest to seek out new stuff, when such seemingly opposite films as “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “Vertigo”, or “Bug” and “Limelight” amaze and move me in similar ways, which signifies that what makes a great film to me, personally, must in part lie with the commitment a filmmaker devotes to his material, regardless of which genre he may be working in or what audience the film may be directed at.
That’s all.
(I hope I have actually answered your question? LMAO. XD)
Hahaha, do not worry, you definitely have answered my question. Also thank you for getting into details so much! Indeed, these are the aspects I was interested in, and I realize how different I am, I think.
One very obvious thing is that besides “Citizen Kane” and “Rear Window”, I really have never watched anything more from Welles and Hitchcock. I also rarely have watched any Chaplin movies. Basically, my repertoire of old films is still lacking, hahaha. I wonder why, because among the few old films I have seen, I actually have quite a few favourites.
Another thing I totally cannot understand at all were all these film divas. Honestly I don’t relate to them that much, and I don’t think they are much better actresses or more interesting or sexier than others. Same goes for the actors, I can’t really see myself fantasizing about Gregory Peck or Humphrey Bogart (but, hmm, I like Marlon Brando, ahaha).
Back to Welles and Hitchcock – interestingly, I know of them as directors with extraordinary technique who stand for a revolution in film making. I admire that a lot, but without the background information, it doesn’t really reach me. Without knowing what was innovative, I can’t really grasp those films’ greatness, because I have this feeling that I won’t find those films particularily enjoyable as such. As I said, Citizen Kane really was interesting, but besides the very last scene, it had no greater beauty for me (especially the architecture of his houses and the whole scenery gave me the creeps – of course it was intended to be so, but it diminished my enjoyment of the film). Of course it’s a sign of great quality that I felt Kane’s boredom and loneliness through the acting and the directing, but was that enjoyable? Hell no. I have found “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” to be extremely smart, it had a gripping story, a marvelous main character and left a huge impression on me. But I don’t consider it part of my favourite films, because it left me really depressed for a whole day T_T “I think it’s good” and “I like it” are often completely different things when it comes to films, I suppose.
Finally, of course I agree with you that the diversity of film is one of the main reasons why they are such a fascinating medium. So close to reality and yet so far; and their diversity reflects my pursuit of always wanting to see something new. Generic storylines are so easily avoidable in films, which – for me as well – inspires me to watch even more, and find out about it more.
For example, I saw that Gilbert Adair is the guy who translated Georges Perec’s La Disparition. I have always been fascinated by that book (even though it’s very painful to read, haha), and it makes my admiration for Adair grow quite a bit.
Haha, I have to agree on the Divas! With the exception of Cary Grant and Marilyn, whom I both adore, I find many of the others to be quite so-so. I think Lauren Bacall was really sexy in her beginning, like in “To Have and Have Not”, and today she just pops up in the most RANDOM movies, like Dogville and Birth, and she continues to be wonderful in them! :tassilo:
Hitchcock and Welles really do stand out, technically, I guess. But all the craft and conceptual points of filmmaking, like the eccentric and exuberant nature of the “dialogue” in “Cherbourg”, or the integral roles of improvisation and duration in “Celine and Julie go boating” register to me just as importantly as a director’s uniqueness and special aesthetic appeal. I’d include all those aspects, including “technology”, when thinking about the “making-of” of a film. God, I hope I am making sense? haha. Many critics use that term, Mise-en-scène, and I think it is a nicely summarizing term with which to address the particular options and resources a filmmaker chose to deliver his story with.