'The Artist' - equal parts homage, spoof and musing on the fleeting force of fame.

The key to Michel Hazanavicius' tale of an artist’s fame and fall through the golden age of Hollywood is in its understanding of the cinema of the 1920's. In its humour, its photography, its music, The Artist understands its subject. It understands that the introduction of sound at the end of the 1920's handicapped the artistry of film for over a decade. From The Jazz Singer in 1927 till the late 30's film was crippled by the seduction of the new technology, not dissimilar to the current wave of 3D films. The 20's were a time of great visual innovation, when DP's such as Willy Hameister were literally changing the way audiences watch a film and German expressionism was really flourishing. It is undeniable that the landscape of cinema today would have been far different and more progressive had the talkies been put on hold for another decade. Hazanavicius and his DP, Guillaume Schiffman, have an innate understanding of the way films were shot and directed and why they were made in such a way. This most admirable quality of the film is that it is shot with the freedom of a silent film from the 20's before actors and the photography would be coordinated around a ‘cleverly’ hidden microphone.

The film has been rightly praised for its celebration of the joy and purity of cinema, however, it must be noted, and not enough have, the definite grounding the film has in spoof. It is at no point a mockery of silent cinema but it is reflective and knowing in its comedy and that is what keeps the film fresh and accommodating in 2012. The reason the comedy and charm work are the simple fact that, physically, comedy is timeless in a way that a biting political satire is intrinsically of its time.

The Artist is also an intelligent, if slightly shallow, musing on the disposable nature of fame. It is this facet of the film that falters slightly - but only very slightly. The film has the odd moment that feels too self-referential and obtuse. The audience do not need George Valentin's despair to be labelled by a cinema advertising 'Lonely Star'. Such slip of subtlety feels at odds with the film at its best and most inventive, for example the brilliant dream sequence or when George loses his shadow. However, such minor quibbles do not detract from the genuine charm, intelligence and fun to be experienced in The Artist.

Great film, 'Shame' about the script.

Shame is the tale of New Yorker Brandon's crippling and life-consuming sex addiction. His sterile, cultivated life is put under further strain when his impulsive, loving but unstable sister, Sissy, comes to stay indefinitely. It is from this point one's investment is lessened to only accommodate for the outer sensory pleasures the film provides: the sights, the sounds, the physical action. The writing is often melodramatic and poorly judged, not fulfilling the pain and intimacy Michael Fassbender's staggering, brave performance is longing for. The scripting, again, does not allow for the revealing depth the narrative should have provided. It instead reads like a show reel of every provocative possibility that may befall the life of a sex addict.

The film is shot beautifully by Sean Bobbitt who shows, more than ever, his eye for capturing an intimate elegance. When merged with the yearning, melancholy score the film evokes far more emotion and thought than any of the dialogue or human contact, which, when the film is based around an uncontrollable lust for human contact, is a problem. If anything, Shame is too controlled, too assured in it's vision to feel organic or naturally unfolding. The film is on the surface genuinely awe inspiring, though the pretension of humanistic reality and profundity is lacking and ultimately far less involving than the film's promise.

The Startling Importance of 'The Last House on the Left'

The 70’s were a time of change, both in cinema as well as the landscape of society. As David Flint stated in his preface to the DVD of The Last House on the Left (1972), films such as “Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby and Straw Dogs brought horror out of the gothic castles and into a contemporary world which was only too recognisable”. The Last House on the Left was intrinsically an exploitation film driven by the theme of violence begets violence and a desire to make money. However, it was one formed from intelligent and reflective minds that had an intension and inspiration behind the sleazy exploitation film that itself asked ‘Can A Movie Go Too Far?’

    The basis of The Last House on the Left was from the Bergman film The Virgin Spring and notably the television footage of the Vietnam War. The narrative was taken nearly verbatim, contemporary setting aside, from Bergman’s film in its salaciously themed tale of rape and revenge and the, now debatably passé and over-used, theme drawn from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.” The film garnered more than its fair share of controversy in its troubled life and was only approved by the BBFC for public release in 2002. Despite its rapturous history, it was a film that meant something at its time. It intended to demonstrate that violence wasn’t quick and throwaway; when John Wayne shoots to kill we are left with no sense of violence or lingering horror. Ironically, the message was that violence shouldn’t be glorified and such acts were, in fact, heinous and deplorable, and vile to the upmost degree. It was this meaning and reflection, this confrontation, that was so important and it was also the reason that the film received so much criticism.

   Though the film was shunned for its still shocking brutality and violence it was the fact that the men behind it, Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham, knew the horrors their film revolved around, in a way comparable to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), and the novelty that they produced having had, despite both working on the sex education documentary, Together, very little experience in filmmaking. The appreciation of the film is, of course, by the definition of art, entirely subjective. Whether or not one can understand the purpose that the violence serves for the film is irrelevant for those who feel simply that such exposition of violence is foul and destructive. However, the film is a statement and an artist’s refection on the time, socially and politically, they were working in, and for that it holds an importance and context that no Saw, Hostel or any number of horror remakes of today can claim to possess. As Mark Kermode notes in his review of the remake of The Last House on the Left, “the time and the place of the original were so much a part of why it was important, when you decontextualize it and turn it into something else, what you do is take away the meaning of it.”       

The rise of the 'video nasty' (A teaser segment from my largest piece on film ever) *a work in progress*

The 1970’s were undoubtedly one of, if not the most, progressive and creatively rich years in American cinema to date. It was rife with the ambitiously unprecedented force of new directors of the 60’s and they challenged narrative conventions and developed representations of culture, politics and emotive discourse and exposition. In the wake of the Vietnam War and the subsiding of Cold War paranoia, film dared to delve deeper, to look further and create some of the most powerful and illuminating works of art and human reflection ever. With new possibilities also comes new threats and it could be argued, and many have, that film has facilitated some of the most abhorrent, voyeuristic and morally corrupt items dared to be considered art or entertainment.     

    Lessons learnt from a slew of European visionary talent, Clouzot, Bergman, the pivotal Italian neo-realism movement helmed by such influential figures as De Sica, Renoir and Rossellini, all create a veritable smorgasbord of inspiration. These earlier talents not only fed inspiration but also created a benchmark many would strive to reach, but, when film was not studio led out of necessity and independently funded cinema became a viable possibility, the flood gates really opened.

    The 70’s were the years that filmmakers such as Coppola, Scorsese, Polanski, even directors like Milos Forman were working in America at the very peak of their powers creating the best of their art. Taxi Driver (1976) reviewed and re-established the role of narration in film and looked at social and political insecurities further than the most confrontational Film Noirs of the 40’s. Chinatown (1974) looked at 30’s political and economic corruption with a subtlety and ambiguity nearly unheard of in films of its ilk. Though the 70’s were home to some of the most forward-thinking films, it was also the birthplace of what were, in the UK in 1982, coined the ‘video nasties’. The term ‘video nasty’ was one used to identify a very certain glut of film that were defined by their low production values and exclusively and unashamedly extreme and exploitative violence and/or sexual content. In the decade and a half preceding the Video Recordings Act in 1984 there was a very noticeable lack of a regulatory power guarding the sales of videos. This allowed low-budget ‘shlock’(something that is inferior or shoddy) cinema, largely from the U.S.A and Italy, to find an audience they would have never reached if they had attempted to be passed under the eyes of the British Board of Film Censorship and into cinemas. The ‘video nasty’ thrived in the years before the Video Recordings Act and were lapped up by the “corrupted and depraved” and lambasted and damned by the civilized figures of authority in equal measure. However, somewhere between The Toolbox Murders (1977), Hard Gore (1974) and I Spit on Your Grave A.K.A Day of the Woman (1978) and the heady heights of The Godfather (1972) can be found the sharpest and darkest portraits and reflections of contemporary American society.