Adaptation of European Art Cinema to the American New Wave (Essay Sample)

Adaptation of European Art Cinema to the American New Wave
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Introduction
American New wave is a term referring to generations of American filmmakers between 1950s and 1990s. The generations are three composing one of the1950s which was more concerned with depicting realism and truth of the American society as it was at the time. This was mainly conducted in the New York City. The second wave came to existence in the 1960s and is referred to as the New Hollywood it was comprised of the counter cultural aspects and mostly depicted the beauty of The French New wave in the filmmaking art. The last of the American New wave occurred in the 1980s and 1990s; it was comprised of filmmakers outside the studio with much autonomy over their activity of filmmaking. These filmmakers collectively believed in autonomous activity of filmmaking rather than being tightly controlled by studio requirements .They were viewing cinema as an art rather than being an object of entertainment as was the case of studio requirements. They paid little attention to the established genres of filmmaking during this period of time ( Benn 2007) .This paper will analyse the characteristics of the American New wave filmmakers as far as their understanding of the filmmaking as an art was concerned.
In the narrative depiction of the classical Hollywood styles, the pattern of filmmaking followed the trend of the European filmmakers of the 1970s.It had a structure comprising of the beginning, middle and end of the film. It had a provision of a general solution at the end of the film; this showed the general overview of the activities, events and the actor in the film. The goals of the characters in this style were psychologically motivated as opposed to social motivation as was the case with classical Hollywood filmmaking practices .The western trends were evidenced in the pattern of events and practices in the Hollywood filmmaking as there existed the main point and a second one upon which judgement was based by the directors at the studio. This was evidenced in the film named ’Shadows of The Empire’ in which there was the main point concerning activities of a state government like protecting its jurisdiction from external attack .A second point is evidenced by showing the responses of the rulers towards external aggregation by use of fire arms to attack the enemies.
The upcoming innovations in the filmmaking industry made the American new wave well compatible to other arts of cinema especially in the European nation of France. This was evidenced when the Hollywood filmmakers made a major breakthrough in the industry to produce certain movies that were of world class style. The level of ratings of the movies on a world scale made it possible for the directors of Hollywood film industry to pay much attention to the requirements of movies production (Ziolkowski 2002).
The films were integrated to suit the art requirements of the 1970s.A new era in filmmaking was opened in the America at the time; this was influenced by the Asian and the European art works which were combined with the original styles of the Hollywood works of art and cinema. Robert Altman as a director of the filmmaking industry of the 1970 carefully integrated the work of classical Hollywood with those of other world styles from Europe and Asia .This made the work of art fully enriched and well integrated to suit the demand of the societies. Despite the critics appeal for the upcoming cultural and political challenges of the 1970s, they have never explored how much the activity of art integration of that time improved the understanding of the societies in the world. It was leading to proper integration and in cooperation of other cultures across the globe.
Todd Berliner did the first analysis of the stylistic innovations of the time thus making filmmaking industry more enriched with new ideas about the activities that should be involved in it .He studied and identified the contributions of the storytelling of the 1970s to the modern developments of the filmmaking in the Hollywood. His success was based upon the revision that he did on the eccentric and commercial films of the 1970.The analysis enabled him come up with ideas that the films of that period were a turning point from the era of storytelling on the podia to an era of modernity in the American filmmaking industry that characterised the independence and integration of other cultural aspects from other parts of the world (Bogle 2011).
Location shooting style or the actual place of the occurrence of an event portrayed in the film made the practice of filmmaking more practical. It was violating the old order of activities of filmmaking; which included a fixed shooting location and fixed known characters. The people began to have realistic understanding of the events as they unfolded and appreciated the fact that fixed location shooting was even more expensive and time consuming and lacked a better reason to stick to. It also gave subjective ideas as opposed to the objective ones since the stage or the studio was designed to match the requirements of the directors rather than depicting the objective realities of the time and events as they appeared in the real location (Evans 2003).
The elimination of the forma musical and spectacular filmmaking practice was a major breakthrough in the filmmaking industry in the Hollywood. This made it easier for the spectators to be swayed towards proper reasoning on how to make judgements on the occurrence of events and activities as they unfold .This created a harmony of appreciation to the filmmakers who could then understand their role as the directors of the people’s emotions on the aspects of the filmmaking as an art. They had to avoid mere creativity and join the world of reality and factualism in their work of filmmaking.
Editing was done to the movies to create a sense of frustration or happiness at a given location of shooting .This gave the actual outcome of the film more admirable to the viewers as they could predict what the possible outcome could be even before the characters reached such a state. A case like annoyance to a given character would be depicted when some annoying actions were done to the character before they show that they were actually annoyed by such actions, this was shown in the film of The 400 Blows of European origin. Consequently this style was enumerated in an American film known as The Star Wars. The spectators could predict a sense of happiness to a given character if an act that could culminate to such feelings were availed to the character (Herridge 2011).
The aspect of continuity in editing was paramount to the classical Hollywood filmmaking .This enabled the editors to create an understanding of the practices of the art in Hollywood by 1970s.The art was blended to look appealing to the listeners and viewers through creation of devices like, eye line matching. It created subsequent flow of the narrative from one phrase to the next as it was constructed to draw attention to other events and activities other than itself. The activities could then be interpreted to mean what they depicted in the films with a lot of ease.
The existence of continuous actions of the actors in the classical Hollywood style made it more appealing hence accepted by the spectators especially those of the 1970s .In this case, space and time were made to be continuous or unified showing that there was an order of events taking place from one time to another and from one place to another. The events occurred without any hindrance from factor of time lapse and different activity. The viewers and the listeners were directed towards achieving a specific objective as per the needs of the art portrayed in the film like ’Revenge of the Sith’ which enabled the viewers to have an understanding that they could have powers to walk in air with a lot of ease .The next step to be taken by the actors could then be preciously predicted by the viewers of the films .This made the films more marketable and influential since the cuts or lapse between time and various activities were eliminated and replaced by understandably clearer and continuous objectives in cinema (Hill et al. 2011).
The use of cinematic style like bridging shot brought about unification of the story line and events leading to the creation of continuation and motivation to the viewers of the cinemas. The classical Hollywood styles of filmmaking lacked this style, after they adopted it from the European art especially from the movie named The Breathless. The Hollywood filmmakers applied it in producing other movies like The Wars of The World (Hill et al. 2011). In this movie, there is the application of bridging shot that connected events leading to elimination of the time lapse hence fostered continuity in the story line.
There was more concern in the motion pictures rather than static ones in American New wave films .This trend of filmmaking was evidenced in the American movie named The Wars of The World. In this movie there is the application of the style of filmmaking that was borrowed from the European culture especially from the Movie named ’The Durant Affair’ of 1961. The classical Hollywood style of filmmaking was more concerned with static pictures and spectacular objects. It paid less attention to motion pictures until 1960s .From this time the filmmakers produced movies that were composed of motion pictures. These motional pictures made the cinema more interesting and kept the viewers lively making them enjoy the beauty of art and that of filmmaking of the Hollywood styles. The more the number of continued motions a film had the better it was in capturing the atten...