European Culture, National Cinema, the Auteur and Hollywood

22 Pages·1995·0.481 MB·English

by  Thomas Elsaesser

European Culture, National Cinema, the
Auteur and Hollywood
“TheonlythingthenationsofEuropehaveincommonisAmerica”
JohnNaughton,TheObserver
“LivinginthethcenturymeanslearningtobeAmerican”
DusanMakavejev
Europe: The Double Perspective
From these two quotations one might derive a somewhat fanciful proposition.
Whatif–attheendofthethcentury–EuropehadbeendiscoveredbyAmer-
icarather than America being “discovered”by theEuropeans attheend of the
th century? Counterfactual as this may seem, in a sense this is exactly what
did happen, because with Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller,
GertrudStein,Josephine Baker and somanyotherUS American writers, musi-
cians, and artists exiling themselves temporarily or permanently in “Europe,”
theygaveanametosomethingthatbeforewasFrance,Britain,Germany,Spain,
orItaly.
So,thereisadoubleperspectiveonEuropetoday:Onefromwithout(mainly
American), where diversity of geography, language, culture tends to be sub-
sumed under a single notion, itself layered with connotations of history, art-
works, the monuments of civilization and the sites of high culture, but also of
foodandwine,oftourismandthelifestyleofleisure(dolcefarniente,luxe,calme
et volupté). The other perspective is the one from within (often, at least until a
few years ago, synonymous with Western Europe, the Common Market coun-
tries): the struggle to overcome difference, to grow together, to harmonize, to
toleratediversitywhilerecognizinginthecommonpastthepossiblepromiseof
a common “destiny.” There is a sense that with the foundation, consolidation
andgradualenlargementoftheEuropeanUnion,thesedefinitions,evenintheir
double perspective,are no longer either adequate or particularly useful.Hence
the importance of once more thematizing European culture, European cinema,
andEuropeanidentityattheturnofthemillennium,whichinviewofUSworld
36 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood
hegemony, globalization, and the end of the bipolar world model, may well
cometobeseenastheonly“European”millenniumofworldhistory.
Thecinema,whichcelebratesitscentenary,isbothaFrench(Lumiere)andan
American (Edison) invention. A hundred years later, these two countries – as
theGATTaccords(ordiscords)haveshown–arestilllockedinastruggleasto
thedefinitionofcinema–aculturalgoodandnationalheritageoracommodity
that should be freely traded and open to competition. That France should take
theleadinthisispartlyduetothefactthatitisalsotheonlyEuropeancountry
stilltopossesssomethinglikeanationalfilmindustryandafilmculture.
National Cinema
Ithasoftenbeenremarkedthatinordertotalkabouta“nationalcinema”atall,
one always tries to conjure up a certain coherence, in the first instance, that of
theNation.Inthisrespect,itisquiteclearlyanotionwithalotofhistoricaland
even more so, ideological ballast. A nation, especially when used in a context
that suggests cultural identity, must repress differences of class, gender, race,
religion, and history in order to assert its coherence, and is thus another name
for internal colonization. Nationhood and national identity are not given, but
gained,notinherited,butpaidfor.Theyexistinafieldofforceofinclusionand
exclusion,aswellasresistanceandappropriation.
Nationalcinemaalsofunctionslargelybymoreorlessappropriateanalogy.If
we take the economic definition, it is like the “gross national product” or the
“nationaldebt.”Butitisalsolikethe“nationalrailwaysystem”orthe“national
monuments”: in the first instance a descriptive or taxonomical category. With
the last analogy, however, another meaning comes into view. Like the national
opera company, or the national ballet, national cinema usually means that it is
orwantstobealsoaninstitution(officially,oratleastsemi-officially),enjoying
state patronage and, when defined as culture, often receiving substantial state
support. Thus it implies an economic relationship, and indeed, historically, the
cinemasofEuropehavebeenpartoftheirnations’politicaleconomyeversince
themiddleoftheFirst World War,when themovingpictures’propagandava-
lue was first seen in action. Since then, governmental measures, encompassing
taxationandtariffs,censorshipandcityordinanceshavelegalizedbutalsolegit-
imized the public sphere that is national cinema, making both the concept and
thestate’srelationtoitoscillatebetweenanindustrialandaculturaldefinition.
Thatthisdefinitionhascomeunderpressuresincethesisevident:thedis-
mantlingofwelfarestates,privatization,deregulationandthetransformationof
the media and communication networks under commercial and market princi-
EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 37
ples have been the single most important factors that have put the idea of a
nationalcinemaincrisis.
The International Market
Whatcouldbesaidtobethelowestcommondenominator,thedefaultvaluesof
national cinema? It may mean nothing more historically precise or metaphysi-
cally profound than the economic conditions under which filmmakers in a gi-
ven country try to work. It functions as part of an industry required to turn a
profit, as artisans selling individually crafted objects in a volatile market, or as
artists,sponsoredbythestateanditsculturalinstitutions,representingacultur-
alvision.
However,whenlookedatasanindustry,thecinemaisnotanational,butan
internationalbusiness,inwhich,asithappens,differentnationsdonotcompete
onthesameterms.Forinstance,theonlycinemawhichforlongstretchesofits
historyhasbeenabletooperateprofitablyasanationalone–theAmericancin-
ema – is not usually referred to as a national cinema at all, but has become
synonymouswiththe international filmbusiness,ifnotwith“the cinema”tout
court.Itsuggeststhat“nationalcinema”isactuallynotdescriptive,butthesub-
ordinatetermwithinabinarypairwhosedominantandreferredpoint(whether
repressedorimplied)isalwaysHollywood.Ifthis
international film business draws attention to the
economic realities of film production in competi-
tion fortheworld’sspectators,the term“national
cinema” may disguise another binarism: an au-
teur cinema as sketched above can be more viru-
lently opposed to its own national cinema com-
mercial film industry than it is to Hollywood
films.Suchwasthecasewiththenouvellevagueor
the second generation of New German film-
makers: the “politique des auteurs” of Truffaut,
Rohmer and Chabrol, or Wim Wenders’ and
Fassbinder’s cinephilia were based on a decided
preference of Hollywood over their own national WimWenders
cinema.
The paradox arises because national cinema presupposes a perspective that
takes the point of view of production – the filmmakers’, the film industry’s –
whenpromotingorsellingfilmsatinternationalfestivals.Whatisgenerallynot
included in the meaning are the preferences of audiences, and therefore, the
38 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood
“nationality” of a country’s film culture. A moment’s reflection shows that no
onewhogoestothecinemahasa“national”filmculture;orrather,everyone’s
nationalfilmcultureasopposedtoanationalcinemaisbothmulti-nationaland
cross-generic:high-profileHollywoodblock-busters,filmsonreleaseintheart-
cinemas around town, star vehicles and films d’auteur. For a country’s film cul-
ture, national provenance is important in much the same way as the label
stitched on my sweater or trainers: I show my brand loyaltyand advertise my
taste. The situation is altogether different if we were considering television,
wherethereisindeedsomethinglikea“nationalaudience,”justasthereis“na-
tional television.” But precisely to the degree that one is talking about a “na-
tional cinema,” one is not talking about audiences, but filmmakers: a fact that
runstheriskofleavingonewithaone-sided,ifnotesotericpointofview.
For in the international film business, the idea of national cinema has a very
contradictory status: While Hollywood product dominates most countries’ do-
mestic markets, as well as leading internationally, each national cinema is both
national and international, though in different areas of its sphere of influence.
Nationally, it participates in the popular or literary culture at large (the New
German Cinema’s predilection for filmed literature, the intellectual cult status
of French directors such as Bresson, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer; the acceptance
ofFellini,Antonioni,orFrancescoRosiasItaly’ssacredmonsters). Internation-
ally,nationalcinemasusedtohaveagenericfunctioninthewaythataFrench,
Swedish or Italian film conveyeda set of expectations for the general audience
whichweremirrorimagestothoseofHollywoodgenres.Italiancinemausedto
mean big busts and bare thighs – and this in films that the more high-brow
critics thought of as the glories of Neo-Realism: Rome Open City, Ossessione,
Riso Amaro. As the ubiquitous Guilio Andreotti recommended, when he was
Italy’s movie czar in the late s: Meno stracci, pui gambe (less rags, more
legs).
From the perspectiveof Hollywood, on the other hand, it makes little differ-
ence whether one is talking about the Indian cinema or the Dutch cinema, the
French cinema or the Chilean cinema: none is a serious competitor for Ameri-
ca’s domestic output, but each national cinema is a “market” for American
films,withHollywoodpracticesandnormshavingmajorconsequencesforthe
national production sector. In most countries this has led to different forms of
protectionism,bringingintoplaystateinterventionandgovernmentlegislation,
but usually to very little avail, especially since the different national cinemas,
however equal they may seem before Hollywood, are of course emphatically
unequal among themselves, and locked into yet another form of competition
witheachotherwhentheyentertheEuropeanmarket.
Yetparadoxically,anationalcinemaispreciselysomethingwhichreliesforits
existenceonanationalexhibitionsectoratleastasmuchasitdoesonanational
EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 39
productionsector;withoutHollywood,nonationalexhibitionsector;withouta
national exhibition sector, i.e., cinemas, whether privately run or state-subsi-
dized prepared to show independent releases, you cannot have a national cin-
ema.Thisisatruththatsomenationalcinemasdiscoveredtotheircost:untilan
American major had put money into distributing a Wenders or a Herzog film
world-wide,theirfilmscouldnotbeseenbyGermanaudiences.Inasense,they
had to become Hollywood (or at least Miramax or Buena Vista), before they
couldreturnhometoEuropeasrepresentativesoftheirnationalcinema.
Colonization, Self-Colonization and Significant Others
What could in the s, be at stake in renewing a debate about national cin-
ema?Ifthestruggleover“realism”(thesocialandpoliticalstakesin“represen-
tation,”whetherindividualorcollective,ortheimportanceofdocumentationas
recordandreference)hasmovedtotelevision,thenitistherethatthe“national”
(in the sense I defined it above as exclusion and inclusion, appropriation and
consensus) is now being negotiated. As a consequence, the “national cinemas”
task may well be to set themselves off even more decisively from their realist
traditions, and engage the Americans at their own level: weightlifting onto the
screensthemythologiesoftwo-and-a-halfthousandyearsofEuropeanciviliza-
tion, bringing to the surface the collective unconscious of individual nations at
particularpointsintheirhistory(whichiswhatoneof
thepioneers ofthestudyofnationalcinema,Siegfried
Kracauer, in From Caligari to Hitler, was claiming that
theWeimarcinemadidforGermanyintheperiodbe-
tween the world wars), or giving expression to the
more delicate pressure points of communal life in
times of transition, crisis and renewal (as the new
waves from neo-realism to the New German Cinema
weredoingfromthelatestotheearlys).
In Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road, perhaps the
finestoffilmsfromthestomeditate abouta“na- KingsoftheRoad
tionalcinema,”oneoftheprotagonists,contemplating
thebarbed-wirefencethenstillseparatingEastandWest,half-jokingly,half-re-
gretfully agrees that “The Yanks have colonized our sub-conscious.” We can
take this perhaps by now over-used phrase in two directions: we can turn it
around and say, yes, the national, even in Europe, has become a “colonial”
term. Onlya state that can admit to and make room for the multi-cultural, the
multi-layered within its own hybridities can henceforth claim to be a nation,
40 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood
and therefore only films that are prepared to explore hybridities, in-between
states, the self-in-the-other can be in the running for a national cinema. This
mayfinallygiveachancetothosefilmmakingnationsatthemarginsofcultures
by which they feel colonized. For instance, the Australian and New Zealand
cinema,whichintheshas,withCrocodileDundeeontheonehand,and
AnAngelatMyTableorThePianoontheother,quitesuccessfullyportrayed
thecomicandthepoignantsidesofitsangstascolonized(cinema)cultures.
The second thought that occurs, when hearing that “The Yanks have colo-
nized our unconscious” is the example of directors like Wenders himself, who
was only identified in his own country as a filmmaker with typically German
subjectsafterhehadbeenrecognizedbyhis“Americanfriends.”Butitisnotall
on the side of the colonizers. If one takes, for instance, Black Cinema in the US
in the figure of the filmmaker Spike Lee, or even Italo-American directors like
Francis Ford Coppola, one might well be tempted to regard their emphasis on
ethnicityasanewnationalcinemainsidetheinternationalcinema.However,as
Spike Lee has remarked: “If Hollywood has a color problem, it’s neither white
nor black nor yellow, it’s green – the color of the dollar.” What he presumably
alsomeantbythisjibeisthatthechancesofblacksmakingfilmsinHollywood
dependneitherontheircolor,northeirtalent,norevenonthesizeoftheblack
audience:Hollywood’shugebudgetshavemadeitsodependentonitsexports
that for the first time in its history, it can no longer amortize its films on the
home market. Yet in its export markets (the largest of which are Great Britain,
Italy,France,Germany,alongwithJapan,AustraliaandCanada)audiencesare
apparentlyveryresistanttonon-whiteheroes.Thus,Hollywoodhasitselfbeen
“colonized” by its “European” or “national” audiences, except that Holly-
wood’s dependency on its exports is a fact not exploited by those audiences to
put pressure on Hollywood, since they have in common nothing except that
theyareHollywood’sexportmarkets.
On the face of it, then, national cinema can no longer be thought of in the
traditional terms, but only in the context of these place-shifts and time-shifts,
theculturalpalimpseststhatconnecttheever-expanding,constantlyself-differ-
entiatingfieldofmediarepresentationswhichisthecontemporaryeverydayof
movies, television, advertising. In this situation, national cinema becomes a
doubly displaced category. It is at best a retrospective effect, so to speak, one
thatonlyposteritycanconfer,asitsiftsthroughthenation’sactiveandpassive
imagebank,hopingtodiscovertheshapeofitssuperegooritsid.Butnational
cinema is also a displaced category, insofar as this is a shape, whether mon-
strous, pleasing or only mildly disfigured, that can only be recognized from
without.Thelabelnationalcinemahastobeconferredonfilmsbyothers,either
byothernationalor“international”audiences, orbynationalaudiences,butat
anotherpointintime.Definedbyothercritics,byotheraudiences,thesemirror
EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 41
images are tokens of a national or personal identity only if this other is, as the
phrasegoes,a“significantother.”Giventhemutualdependenciesjustsketched,
Europe (standing in the field of cinema metonymically for European film festi-
valsandthecriticalortheoreticaldiscoursestheseproduce)isasmuchasignifi-
cant otherforHollywoodor Asia,as theUnitedStates isa significant otherfor
Europeanaudiences.
Two European Cinemas: Art-House vs. Genre Cinema,
Art-House as Genre Cinema?
InthecaseoftheFrenchfilmindustry,thefactremainsthatintheperiodofthe
nouvellevagueofthes,foreveryTruffautandGodard,Francehadtomake
aBorsalino(athrillerwithAlainDelon),orinthes,co-produceaFrench
Connection (with Gene Hackman and directed by William Friedkin), and in
thes,foreveryJacquesRivettemakingLaBelleNoiseuse,andeveryEric
RohmermakingLeRayonVert,therehadtobeaClaudeBerrimakingaJean
deFloretteoraJeanPaulRappenaumakingaCyranodeBergerac.
Some European artcinema directorshaveunderstood this position of Holly-
woodandoftheirownpopularcinemaasthe“significantother”quitewell.In
fact,onecanalmostdivideEuropean nationalcinemasbetweenthosewhichin
the overt discourse deny it, only to let it in through the back door (such as the
Italiancinemainthesands,orthefirstwaveoftheNewGermanCin-
ema in the s), and those who acknowledge it, by trying to define them-
selves around it. The directors of the nouvelle vague in the early s, who de-
veloped the auteur theory not for themselves, but for the Hollywood directors
who were their idols like John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Sam Fuller, whom
they sometimes used as sticks to beat their own well-mannered gentleman di-
rectors with, shouting “Papa’s cinema is dead” at the scriptwriter team Jean
Aurenche and Pierre Bost, and directors like René Clément, Claude Autant-
LaraandJeanDelannois.
In the case of the New German directors of the second wave, they appro-
priated and acknowledged Hollywood in an even more intimate form: they
“adopted”someofthekeydirectorsaselectivefatherfigures:DouglasSirkwas
adopted by Rainer W. Fassbinder, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray by Wim
Wenders.ThetwistbeingthatsomeoftheseAmericandirectorswereofcourse
originallyGermandirectorswhohadgoneintoexile,andNickRaywasadirec-
tor who had self-exiled himself from the studio system in the s. Thus, na-
tionalcinemabecomes,ontheonehand,apseudo-oedipaldramaaroundpater-
nity and father-son relationships, and on the other, a matter of exile, self-exile
42 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood
and return. All this acknowledges that a sense of identity for many European
filmdirectorssincetheshasonlybeenpossiblebysomehowre-articulating
the debt to Hollywood and the American cinema, by recognizing themselves
withinthehistoryofthiscinema,andidentifyingwithitslegacy,ifonlyinorder
to rebel against it, as did Jean-Luc Godard since the s and Wim Wenders
sincethelates.
Some among the generation of European directors of the s, on the other
hand,neitherrepressthepresenceofHollywood,norfeelfilialpietytowardsit.
Theyplaywithit,quoteit,useit,imitateit–inshort,theyuseitastheirsecond
nature,alongsideallkindsofotherreferencesandstyles.Theyknowthatimage
andidentityareaslipperypair,traversingandcriss-crossinginrathercomplex
ways geographical territory, linguistic boundaries, history, subjectivity, plea-
suresrememberedandlongingsanticipated.Andthereisagoodhistoricalrea-
son for it, which is also important for our idea of national cinema. For as men-
tionedabove,nationalcinemadoesnotonlyrefertoanation’sfilmproduction,
italsomustincludewhatnationalaudiencessee.BesidesaEuropeancountry’s
artandauteur cinema,therearethecommercialproductions,andthereisHol-
lywood,occupyinginmostEuropeancountriesthelion’sshareoftheboxoffice.
Finally, one needs to add another player, the avant-garde cinema whose film-
makers, however, have almost always refused the label national cinema, be-
causetheysawthemselvesasbothinternationalandanti-Hollywood.
Pictures of Europe
Behindthequestionaboutthefateofthecinemaintheslurksanotherone,
debatedforalmostaslongasthecinemahasexisted,airedafresheveryyearat
the film festivals of Cannes, Venice or Berlin, at FELIX award ceremonies and
MEDIA initiatives: the future of the European cinema vis-à-vis Hollywood
(whether viewed across France’s passionate attachment to its cinematic patri-
mony,ormoredispassionately,acrosstheuneven,butnonethelesstwo-way“ta-
lenttransfer”).
In , a Channel Four program called “Pictures of Europe” neatly as-
sembledallthestandardarguments,voicedwithvaryingdegreesofpessimism,
by David Puttnam and Richard Attenborough, Bertrand Tavernier and Paul
Verhoeven,FernandoReyandDirkBogarde,AgnèsVarda,WimWenders,and
IstvanSzabo.OneoftheleastsentimentalwasDusanMakavejev,whohasprob-
ablymorereasonthanmosttobewaryoftheideaofnationalcinema,butwho
alsoneedstobelieveintheinternationalauteurcinemamorethanothers.Yethe
dismissed the suggestion that he might be threatened by Hollywood: “If you
EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 43
can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Living in the th century meant
learning to be American.” On the other hand, Tavernier (whose knowledge
about and love of the American cinema is probably second to none, noted the
followinginhisdiaryforFebruaryabouttheCésarAwardsofthatyear:
One grotesque and distressing moment comes when Sylvester Stallone is given an
honoraryCésarbyasarcasticRomanPolanski.Afewdayspreviously,JackLanghad,
inadiscouraginglyidioticgesture,madehimKnightofArtsandLetters,evengoing
so far as to assert that the name Rambo had been chosen in honor of Rimbaud
(Arthur)….Theheightofirony:I’dbewillingtobetthatthepeoplewhomadethese
ludicrousawardshavenottheslightestfamiliaritywiththeonlyinterestingfilmthat
Stallonehasdirected,thecuriousParadiseAlley.
Tavernier’s final, typically cinéphile remark reminds us that in academic film
studies, the Europe-Hollywood-Europe question mediated across the nouvelle
vague’s love of the Hollywood film maudit is almost like the founding myth of
thedisciplineitself.European(French)director-criticsdiscriminatingamongthe
vast studio output, according to very European criteria, by creating a canon of
Hollywoodmasterpieces eagerlyadoptedinturnbyAmericancriticsandfilm-
makersalike.ButtherelationbetweenEuropeandHollywoodcanalsobemade
(and has been made) as a hard-nosed economic case, for instance, in Thomas
Guback’s chapter in Tino Balio’s The American Film Industry, or in Kristin
Thompson’s fascinatingly detailed Exporting Entertainment, and most recently,
inIanJarvie’sHollywood’sOverseasCampaign.Thepost-historyoftherela-
tion was also probed in , at twoUCLA- and BFI-sponsored conferences in
London and Los Angeles, while the formal case of how to make the distinc-
tion has been debated among scholars of “early cinema” such as Noel Burch
and Barry Salt around the opposition “deep staging and slow cutting”
(Europe) versus “shallow staging and fast cutting” (Hollywood), and it has
been argued as a difference of storytelling by, among others, David Bordwell
inhisinfluentialNarrationandtheFictionFilm,wherecharacter-centeredcausal-
ity,question-and-answerlogic,problemsolvingroutines,deadlinestructuresof
the plot, and a mutual cueing system of word, sound and image are seen as
typical for Hollywood films, against the European cinema’s more de-centered
plots, indirect and psychological motivation and “parametric” forms of narra-
tion.
Interestinglyenough,even inthetelevision programjustmentioned,thefor-
mal-stylistic opposition Europe versus Hollywood, art cinema versus classical
narrative recurs, but now in the terms in which it has been echoed ever since
the s from the point of view of Hollywood, which has always complained
that European pictures have no credible stars and central protagonists, or in
their editing are much too slow for American audiences’ tastes. This point is
44 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood
taken up by many of the European directors and actors who have worked in
bothindustries:PaulVerhoevenandJeanJacquesAnnaudseeAmericanspeed
as positive qualities, as do J.J. Beneix, Krzysztof Zanussi, Luc Besson. David
Puttnam and Pedro Almodóvar are more even-handed, while Fernando Rey
and Dirk Bogardeprefer the slowerdeliveryof dialogueandthe less hectic ac-
tionoftheEuropeancinema,asdo–notsurprisingly–WimWendersandBer-
trandTavernier.Amongtheactors,itisLivUllmannwhoeloquentlyspeaksout
against Hollywood forms of action, violence and the externalization of motive
andemotion.
PaulSchrader,ontheotherhand,whohasprobablythoughtasdeeplyabout
styleinEuropeancinemaasanyone,arguedthattheconflictbetweenEurope
and Hollywood boiled down to a fundamentally different attitude toward the
world, from which comes a different kind of cinema: “American movies are
basedontheassumptionthatlifepresentsyouwithproblems,whileEuropean
films are based on the conviction that life confronts you with dilemmas – and
while problems are something you solve, dilemmas cannot be solved, they’re
merelyprobed.”Schrader’sdistinctionputsanumberofpertinentfeaturesina
nutshell. His statement might even serve as a basis for teasing out some of the
formal and theoretical implications. For instance, his assessment is not that far
removedfromtheviewofGillesDeleuze,whoinhisBergson-inspiredstudyof
the cinema proposes a more dynamic, and self-differentiating version of Jean-
Luc Godard’s old distinction between “action” and “reflection” (the opening
linesofLePeititSoldat),contrastinginsteadthemovement-imageofclassical
cinemawiththetime-imageofmoderncinema.
TothesedifferenttaxonomiesoftheHollywood/Europedivideonecanreply
thattheproblem-solvingmodelofHollywoodcinemaisnotintendedtocharac-
terize a filmmaker’s personal belief. It does, however, function largely as the
norm that underlies the expectations of both kinds of audiences, American as
wellasEuropean, when it comes to cinema-going as astory-tellingexperience.
Hollywood mainstream or “classical” films are the dominant because they are
made (“tailored” was the term already used by King Vidor in the late s)
around increasingly global audiences, while non-Hollywood cinemas have to
findtheiraudiencesatthemarginsofthemainstream(theso-called“art-house”
audiences), for they cannot even rely on the loyalty of their respective “na-
tional” audiences. There is another point, a cliché perhaps, but for that very
reason, in need of being stated: European filmmakers are said to express them-
selves,ratherthanaddressanaudience.Idonotthinkthatthisisinfactthecase(I
havearguedagainstitatlengthinabookonNewGermanCinema).Forinstance,
ifbyfollowingSchrader,oneassumesthattheEuropeanartcinemamerelysets
its audiences different kinds of tasks, such as inferring the characters’ motiva-
tions (as in Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence), reconstructing a complex time