French films are shit. Porquoi?

Not disagreeing, it's just that my initial prompt for asking is that I feel 70's and 80's French cinema is v much overshadowed by those figuring towers from the 60's and I wanted to explore what was going on beyond that.

Guess his standing isn't great but I caught some 80s Carax and I liked them.

Will respectfully disagree that Malle was at his best in the 80s

Bresson still essential in the 70s
Jacques Deray made a number of interesting, mainstreamish thrillers throughout the 70s and 80s
Marguerite Duras stands alone
Claude Berri's Jean De Florette and Manon des Sources - MASSIVE hits in the 1980s
I don't really know Claude Sautet's work from the 70s, but again I think he was a reliable, more mainstream auteur

Two favourites from the 1980s:

Le Cop aka My New Partner (1984) - genuinely entertaining French comedywith a great lead performance from Phillipe Noiret as a corrupt cop
La Letrice (1988) - a film about reading and erotic pleasure, couldn't really get any more French if you tried

"Marguerite Duras stands alone"

Very much so.

If Swiss and Belgian Francophones count, Alain Tanner and Chantal Akerman.

Malle began the decade with two of his strongest films, though, yeah, Au Revoir les Enfants is meh.

New 4K restoration of The Mother and the Whore opens Cannes with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Françoise Lebrun in attendance:

https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actualites/eustache-les-yeux-neufs/?fbclid=IwAR0K8g-Z9Bt6TdEh3Aqlg4xgZQn31zDUg3KGgol14-KIfyURajRLGRsDPwk

Is there an ok for a DVD?

I think that's the plan - legit, remastered physical media releases for all of Eustache's stuff, finally approved by his estate.

Great, great news!

Janus Films has the US rights, so forecasters are anticipating Criterion Collection editions.

Did the auteur movement signify a shift in opportunity and power from playwrights to screenwriters to directors? How was this enabled by Hollywood? Has a similar shift ever been thought possible from composers to conductors? Is there a difference in performative or interpretive license or in recognition of sources of inspiration or authorship? Does the concept of inspiration in the arts or in human endeavor originate from what one can do with language?

What does a shift in opportunity mean?

I think if it means power or credibility or prestige then there is some of that. You seldom get a retro season which is focused on a producer or cinematographer though you get seasons on an actor. The focus on a director definitely takes it away from the array of technicians that work on film.

Auteur theory was never a 'movement'

My apologies for poor word choice. I blame Wikipedia, although retrospectively a source for self-justification in the face of ILX critics ;) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_New_Wave

I think I meant directors realized they had leverage in the culture among critics and gatekeepers and influences to create or modify popular understanding of a genre.

influencers

Sorry I can't really make sense of your second post. Directorial power in and out of Hollywood existed before and after auteurism and was of course economically based - ie if you were a proven hitmaker (like Chaplin, say) you had much greater freedom than a studio contract director. I can't think of any directors who set out to 'modify popular understanding of a genre', or what this actually means in practice - what genres in particular do you mean?

Don't ever use 'influencers,' especially applied retroactively

To answer your question --

Auteurism and the rise of the university are inexorably connected.

I think I would like to focus not so much on popular reception but on what forms of art (or science) enable with respect to authorship or creativity, and the origins of such a concept in particular in relation to creativity with language. (I am sorry for using influencers; I feel very badly about that.)

One thing worth pointing out is the French cinema industry was based around the director in a way that the US wasn't, even before auteur theory was ever conceived (US industry would have producer in that role).

Just a few bits and bobs:

I guess the New Wave had a lot of writers/critics, who loved literature and old Hollywood, who then sorta empowered themselves to make the films they wanted to make. Some of those made money, so producers got into the action in the 60s. The 'new wave' in turn also made for a pre-packaged writing up of new Waves (the Taiwanese new Wave etc.) when trying to introduce a crowd to films from far away places.

However those conform to films that are in conversation to Western modes of filmmaking.

The reviews of the Cimino biog remind me that yes there was an era where a few directors got the studios to put a lot of cash into a filmmaker's vision, some of which had diminishing returns. And so the story goes that the likes of Star Wars broke that. I guess Marvel is an update to this as well.

The discourse has sorta come down to an old auteur putting out a headline remark like 'Martin Scorcese thinks Marvel is shit' or that 'Spielberg doesn't think film should be shown on Netflix first' but cinema as a space and one of a number of entertainment is being reconfigured all the time, as time and technology passes. So that power they might've to bring people along isn't there anymore. Whether it was much a thing anyway is also a question.

For example, perhaps an auteur had her own version of the Iowa Writers' Workshop in her mind and what can be seen but not told but is first driven or inspired by language, or perhaps entirely outside of language.

Was a shaky camera at first from lack of funds and did it only later come to signify a story naturally and privately told? Or when does your glance wander and what do you perceive? (riffing horribly off the mention of cinematographers)

How did techniques specific to cinema come to be added to the techniques of writing?

Yes, the industry is important to consider and to return to.
http://www.dominicsmith.net/the_electric_hotel.php

Did the auteur movement signify a shift in opportunity and power from playwrights to screenwriters to directors?

Reading this again I'm not sure there was ever a time where the screenwriter had much power in Hollywood? Always quite low on the totem pole I think. Famous playwrights/writers getting their stuff adapted a different kettle of fish ofc.

Has a similar shift ever been thought possible from composers to conductors?

Except in the most industrial, regimented film industry situations, I'm sure that film directors have more control and leeway over their work than orchestra conductors.

the thing about influencers is that they deal in pictures (right now from what i can gather) and if anyone feared that language would disappear as a consequence, then fear no longer: i think by now everyone knows the limitations are obvious. but film and video communicate consequence and that still strikes me as a danger to surplace language. for artists and scientists i think one wants the greatest challenge in being clear when the meaning can be ambiguous.

communicate consequence and experience

perhaps silent film is so much followed because it was when film had to speak for itself and at first only gags or memes (sorry for retrospective use) were thought possible and remarkably it was possible and so the lurking possibilities of suggestion lingered in those who cared about the history

I want to see all of Jean-Louis Trintignant's films that I have not yet seen.

That guy was so good.

V nice piece on Eustace, May 68 and French Cinema (revived from the archives as the writer has passed away) (apart from a couple of bits that don't scan for me)

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mother-whore-dandy

New 4K restoration of The Mother and the Whore opens Cannes with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Françoise Lebrun in attendance:

https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actualites/eustache-les-yeux-neufs/?fbclid=IwAR0K8g-Z9Bt6TdEh3Aqlg4xgZQn31zDUg3KGgol14-KIfyURajRLGRsDPwk

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, May 19, 2022 9:36 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/flc-and-janus-films-welcome-you-to-the-dirty-stories-of-jean-eustache/

"The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache" (June-July 2023, then to tour to "select North American cities")

Looks fantastic!

https://jeaneustache.film/

A website for the touring retrospective. (No DC-area dates yet. I would expect this sort of thing to be parceled out between AFI Silver and the National Gallery of Art.)

Eustache restored, and at the BFI

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=jeaneustache&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=

Eustache at the National Gallery of Art (DC)

https://www.nga.gov/calendar/film-programs/jean-eustache.html

Missed this last month, but Time Out Paris apparently counted down the 100 best French films ever:

https://letterboxd.com/alexfung/list/time-out-paris-100-best-french-films-2023/

No sign of Amelie or The Intouchables anywhere, so well done!

Pretty good.

Far too much Truffaut; far too little Haneke xp

well Caché is on there

nice to see Air de Famille there too, always been a favourite of mine

Amour's in there too; I think 2 of 100 is more than enough Haneke

lol.
Un Air de Famille probably the best Jaoui/Bacri but there are so many good ones. Comme Une Image, or Le Goût Des Autres come to mind

Was there some contractual obligation for every film to have Depardieu in the 70s?

Of the lesser known films on this list, I saw Je t'aime je t'aime the other day, an excellent nouvelle vague / time travel mashup, if you like La Jetee you'd like this one

biggest wtf for me is Blue Is The Warmest Colour in the top50, thought we'd all agreed to memory hole that one

Amour's in there too; I think 2 of 100 is more than enough Haneke

― Dwigt Rortugal (Eric H.), Monday, 16 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Rather have more Haneke than half a dozen Truffaut films, which is what stood out for me.

Right, well one Truffaut (400 Blows) is also enough

"Je t'aime je t'aime"

Thought this was an inspired choice.

xp = yup, just that one.

Haneke can go dominate the 100 greatest austrian films list :)

Slightly surprising there is no Celine Sciamma (?)