Michelangelo Antonioni • Ingmar Bergman • Robert Bresson • Luis Buñuel • John Cassavetes • Charlie Chaplin • Jean Cocteau • Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne • Vittorio De Sica • Jacques Demy • Carl Th. Dreyer • Victor Erice • Rainer Werner Fassbinder • Federico Fellini • John Ford • Louis Feuillade • Samuel Fuller • Howard Hawks • Alfred Hitchcock • Hou Hsiao-hsien • Shohei Imamura • Aki Kaurismäki • Abbas Kiarostami • Krzysztof Kieslowski • Hirokazu Kore-Eda • Shunji Iwai • Stanley Kubrick • Akira Kurosawa • Fritz Lang • David Lean • Ernst Lubitsch • David Lynch • Terrence Malick • Anthony Mann • Jean-Pierre Melville • Kenji Mizoguchi • Lukas Moodyson • F. W. Murnau • Mikio Naruse • Yasujiro Ozu • Sergei Parajanov • Roman Polanski • Otto Preminger • Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger • Satyajit Ray • Jean Renoir • Jacques Rivette • Nicolas Roeg • Eric Rohmer • Roberto Rossellini • Mrinal Sen • Douglas Sirk • Alexander Sokurov • Andrei Tarkovsky • Bela Tarr • Jacques Tati • Hiroshi Teshigahara • Jacques Tourneur • Anh Hung Tran • François Truffaut • Tsai Ming-liang • Edgar Ulmer • Agnès Varda • Luchino Visconti • Erich von Stroheim • Peter Weir • Orson Welles • Wim Wenders • Wong Kar-wai • William Wyler • Zhang Yimou
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One of the ten key members of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette has
carved his own old dark house fusing various hybrid technicques such as
the complot* and the house-of-fiction* as well as examining classic
literary and theatrical texts. Rivette's films rarely clock in under 2
1/2 hrs and have often extended to 4 hours and beyond. Rivette is a
foremost innovator in the contextualizing of film references into his
own narrative structure. Whether it's directly lifting the Tower of
Babel sequence in Metropolis for his debut feature Paris Belongs to Us
or the sophisticated use of Hitchcockian doubles in Celine and Julie Go
Boating, Rivette uses the cinema to propell and deepen his own
narrative rather than pause for a trivial quiz. Rivette is also noted
for his creative use of actors often allowing them to write and block
their own roles.
*The complot is the conspiracy plot. Rivette cites the Balzac novel
(forgot the title will fill in Gary ;) where a wealthy group of 13
aristocrats all conspire to retain their power. An example would be
the suspicion one feels when watching the characters collude towards
the mysterious box in Kiss Me Deadly.
*The House-of-Fiction is the parrallel world running along the initial
narrative line. This world often has taken place literally in large
empty houses. An example of the use of this device as inspiration
would be the middle section of Wim Wenders' The State of Things.
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Director - Feature filmography and DVDBeaver links: Two Deaths (1995), Hotel Paradise (1995), Heart of Darkness (1994), Cold Heaven (1991), The Witches (1990), Track 29 (1988), Castaway (1986), Insignificance (1985), Eureka (1984), Bad Timing (1980), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Don't Look Now (1973), Walkabout (1971), Performance (1970) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
The Films of Nicolas Roeg : Myth and Mind |
On a superficial level, Nicolas Roeg's films are fascinating to look at but difficult to comprehend. Time is nonlinear and lacks monotonic flow. The characters are difficult to understand. The narratives seem to break down. Natural laws seem to be undermined and questionable, laughable conventions. Logic is imbued with a sense of mysticism. Under the surface of the films, lurks a foreboding beyond description; possibly beyond comprehension. This is the world in which Roeg's characters live, forge their identities and make their choices. A world and identities which they cannot escape, which drive their decisions to their inevitable conclusions. Using the complete gamut of cinematic techniques, from Welles-like mise-en-scene to innovative editing and sound, from elaborate camera angles to intricately placed objects - symbols, Roeg stretches the potencies of narrative filmmaking while challenging both senses and intellect. | |
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Director - Feature filmography and DVDBeaver links:
Triple Agent (2004), The Lady and the
Duke (2001), Autumn Tale (1998), A Summer's Tale (1996), Rendezvous in
Paris (1995), The Tree, The Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993), A Tale of
Winter (1992), A Winter's Tale (1991),
A Tale of Springtime (1990),
Boyfriends and Girlfriends (USA), |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
The Taste for Beauty (Cambridge Studies in Film) by Eric Rohmer |
Eric Rohmer has created a unique niche for himself; coming out of the Nouvelle Vague experimental era, his films have strongly established themselves without over-utilization of cinematography adaptations such as tracking shots, jump cuts or reverse angles, and he prefers using only natural sounds (no artificially induced noises or music to enhance the existing soundtrack). The experience subtly conveys to the viewer the ability to identify more closely with the characters and more intimately with the plot and storyline. Mr. Rohmer has stated "Ever since the cinema attained the dignity of an art, I see only one great theme that it proposed to develop: the opposition of the two orders - one natural, the other human; one material the other spiritual; one mechanical, the other free; one of the appetite, the other of heroism or of the grace - a classical opposition, but one our art is privileged to be able to translate so well that the intermediary of the sign is replaced by immediate evidence. A universe of relationships therefore appeared that the other arts may have illuminated or designated but could not show: the relationship between man and nature and between man and objects - directly perceptible relationships that are quite beautiful - but also, since the age of the talkies, the less visible relationship between the individual and society." | |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
The Art of Cinema by Jean Cocteau |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
The Yakuza Movie Book : A Guide
to Japanese Gangster Films |
Director - Selected filmography and DVDBeaver links:
Operetta tanuki goten (2005), Pistol Opera (2001), Kekkon (1993), Yumeji (1991), The Fang in the Hole (1979), A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977), Branded to Kill (1967), Fighting Elegy (1966), Tokyo Drifter (1966), Carmen from Kawachi (1966), Story of a Prostitute (1965), Tattooed Life (1965), Gate of Flesh (1964), The Flower and the Angry Waves (1964), The Bastard (1963), Kanto Wanderer (1963), Go to Hell Bastards (1963), Youth of the Beast (1963), A Hell of a Guy (1961), Tokyo Knights (1961), Clandestine Zero Line (1960), Sleep of the Beast (1960), Underworld Beauty (1958) |
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Director - Filmography and DVDBeaver links:
Offret - (The Sacrifice) (1986), Nostalghia (1983), Tempo di viaggio (1983), Stalker (1979), Zerkalo (The Mirror) (1975), Solaris (1972), Andrei Rublev (1969), Ivan's Childhood (1962), The Steamroller and the Violin (1960), The Killers (1958) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Sculpting in Time: Reflections on Cinema by Andrei Tarkovsky |
Andrei Tarkovsky is
considered one of the most significant filmmakers of the 20th century and
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Jonathan Rosenbaum article on the films of Bela Tarr Director - Filmography and DVDBeaver links: The Man from London (2005), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Journey on the Plain (1995), Sátántangó (1994), City Life (1990), Damnation (1988), Almanac of Fall (1985), The Prefab People (1982), The Outsider (1981), Family Nest (1979) |
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Suggested Reading (CLICK COVER or TITLE)
Hungarian Cinema: A Concise History |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter |
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Director - Feature filmography and DVDBeaver links: "The Twilight Zone" (1959) TV Series (episode "Night Call"), Frontier Rangers (1959) Timbuktu (1959), Mission of Danger (1959), The Fearmakers (1958), Nightfall (1957), Night of the Demon (1957), Wichita (1955), Stranger on Horseback (1955), Way of a Gaucho (1952), Anne of the Indies (1951), Circle of Danger (1951), Stars in My Crown (1950), Easy Living (1949), Berlin Express (1948), Out of the Past (1947), Experiment Perilous (1944), Days of Glory (1944), The Leopard Man (1943), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Cat People (1942), The Magic Alphabet (1942) (as Jack Tourneur), The Incredible Stranger (1942) (as Jack Tourneur), Phantom Raiders (1940), Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939), They All Come Out (1939) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Jacques Tourneur : The Cinema of Nightfall |
Not to be brushed off as a ³cult director,² the work of Jacques Tourneur has an indelible importance in the history of American cinema. His influence is as far reaching as European Giallo films by Mario Bava and Dario Argento, and as modern as M. Night Shyamalan and The Blair Witch Project. Born in 1904, the son of the great silent film director Maurice Tourneur, Jacques began his career in France before immigrating to America in 1934 where he took on an apprenticeship as a second unit director at MGM. It was not until his fruitful collaborations with producer Val Lewton on The Cat People (1942) that Tourneur would make a name for himself, and develop a particular craft--as well as many of the themes and techniques--that would go on to characterize just about his entire body of work. In a Tourneur film, atmosphere is everything. His use of light and dark by interplay between foreground and background, to evoke an atmosphere of doom or suggest a supernatural mood, made him a master of his craft. Whether he was making a film noir or a western, there is a distinctive metaphysical quality to his work, in not just approach to the mise-en-scene, but towards the actors and their performances. Watch a Tourneur film, and you will be immediately struck by how little he actually shows, how far a little understatement can go towards getting your imagination working to produce something that is far more frightening than anything he could show onscreen. It is this subtlety in Tourneur¹s films that also gives them their poetry, ranking him as one of cinema¹s true originals and foremost stylists. |
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Article on Tran from DVDBeaver CLICK HERE Director - Feature filmography and DVDBeaver links: Mua he chieu thang dung aka Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000), Xich lo aka Cyclo (1995), Mùi du du xhan - L'odeur de la papaye verte aka The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) |
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An accomplished aestheticist, Tran Anh Hung uses intricately textured tableaux to de-emphasize dramaturgical tensions, imbue characters with life and create a paradoxical blend of transience and universality. Avoiding proximity to the human element of the film yet always aware of its emotional state, the camera focuses instead on surfaces, forms and colors, while capturing exotically evocative sounds. Concomitant to his visual style is the sensitivity and timidity of the narrative, the leisurely pace and a sense of humor that exudes humanism and innocence. Whether socially involved (Cyclo), or simply tales of sexual awakening (Vertical Ray of the Sun), Tran's films share an unapologetic sensuality and a celebration of beauty and elegance. |
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François Truffaut was instrumental in establishing the French New Wave as one of the most important cinematic movements of the past century. Beginning as a critic for the Cahiers du Cinema, he quickly gained acclaim through his first feature film which was hailed as a masterpiece. Through out his career, Truffaut explored his fascination with the thematic core first exposed in his first films: the loneliness of human existence and the necessity of communication. Truffaut often portrayed characters whose social awkwardness, timidity and naivety determined their actions, turned crystallized passions to obsessions and prevented satisfactory resolutions. His films exhibit his mastery of the medium: dispassionate voice-overs to embody the characters' confusion; awkward dialogue and monologues to replace an inability to express feelings; abrupt cuts and rapid camera motion for a climax; varying color palettes etc. Truffaut left behind him a body of work infused with his fluid style, a sense of melancholy and a yearning for something more. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
The Films in My Life |
Director - Selected filmography and DVDBeaver links Confidentially Yours (1983), The Woman Next Door (1981), The Last Metro (1980), Love on the Run (1979), The Green Room (1978), The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Small Change (1976), The Story of Adele H (1975), Day for Night (1973), Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972), Two English Girls (1971), Bed and Board (1970), The Wild Child (1970), Mississippi Mermaid (1969), Stolen Kisses (1968), The Bride Wore Black (1968), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Soft Skin (1964), Antoine et Colette (1962), Jules et Jim (1962), A Story of Water (1961), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), The 400 Blows (1959), Les Mistons (1958) |
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Tsai Ming-Liang rose to international fame in the early 1990s, winning critical acclaim for portrayals of aesthetically cacophonous, urban landscapes and their psychosomatic influence on their inhabitants (Vive L'Amour, The River, The Hole). While maintaining an emotional distance, Tsai's films use narrative obliquely to emphasize individual thematic elements. Trapped in the banality of their existence, his characters desperately try to overcome their loneliness and their inability to connect with others, a process captured with the film-maker's motionless camera, long silences, expressionist absurdity and deadpan humor. The slow pace, the empty frames and his formalist explorations of the ontology of cinematic spaces and personae, imbue the films with melancholy and nostalgia, while establishing spatial and emotional autonomy, to support an essentially existential core. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Tsai Ming-Liang |
Interview with Ming-Liang Tsai Director - Selected filmography and DVDBeaver links:
The
Wayward Cloud (2005), Bem-Vindo a São
Paulo (segment "Aquarium") (2004),
Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003),
The Skywalk Is Gone (2002),
What Time Is It Over There? (2001), A
Conversation with God (2001),
The Hole (1998),
The River (1997),
Vive L'Amour (1994) |
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