From: francis@ircam.fr (Joseph Francis)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe
Subject: Film? Re: (French Kulcha) Re: CNN Reports...
Date: 16 Apr 92 11:02:47 GMT
Organization: IRCAM, Paris (France)

In article <74135@netnews.upenn.edu> jmv@grip.cis.upenn.edu (Jean-Marc Vezien) writes:
>
>Joseph, you say:
>>They French film industry has over a long time been gradually absorbed
>>and altered by French Television for the purposes of Television (i.e.
>>to inhibit competition) - a result has been the simultaneous (and
...
>Desole, Joseph, I definitly can't agree with this statement.
>French TV (Especially Canal +) fund French cinema, that's true, but the quality 
>does NOT decrease because of that ! 

I have mixed feelings about French cinema. On the one hand, the
productions are themselves usually laughable: one only has to sit
through one bad post-synching to realize that for some reason, there
is virtually no technical craftsmanship present in almost all French
productions one has seen for the past 10 years. On the second hand,
one wonders how many Marcel Pangol books remain in his Ouvre to be
filmed. It is though the Nouvelle Vague never occurred: reminisence as
a style more becomes Great Britain, the british who "look forward to
the past" (Merchant-Ivory, say). Certainly American Film is in a
decadent stage: does the world really need to have distributed "Spies
Like Us" or "Porkys III"?  A country which produced Malle, Bresson,
Godard, Renoir ..., foists Italian co-productions of "La Cage Aux
Folles III" abroad and adulates the triumph of press over ability in
the form of Gerard Depardieu (who, if anyone in the US saw "Green
Card", seems to have been less adept at acting, granted in a foreign
language, than a former model with limited skill). I shouldn't start
on Depardieu, though one wonders what producers thought when
envisioning a US blockbuster starring him, Sigourney Weaver, and Dr.
Ruth Westheimer in a love-triangle (guffaws in the background). I saw
little different between "Manon des Sources" and late-nite "blue"
television, except, perhaps, the television had sparkling commercials.
In fact, what much French Film seems to look like is... bad television
commercials. I have mixed feelings.

Canal+ is "French Television" the way Showtime is "American
Television": it is a pay-television service which can afford to
produce itself (The way, say, Tri-Star in the US creates HBO film). I
speak of "ordinary" channels and their product: quality is a relative
thing. I suppose I would rather see a "Night At the Paris Spectacles"
more than watching a German Oompah-Band extravaganza, or Italian
comedy skits reminiscent of high school talent night. Lets be
realistic. "Santa Barbara" has disappeared from American television,
yet it lives a second life in France because it is /eaten up/; no one
is foisting it upon them.

>French TV, as many others, rely on American production simply because it's cheaper to buy garbage than to
>produce high-quality films.

French visual ideas may often be better; Commercials in France are
superb; it is the French production which is pathetic, the "garbage"
you allude to; 1) horrible sound (post-synching; balancing;
distortion; haven't they figured out not to use hand held microphones
30 years out of date?) 2) lighting (the routine lighting imbalances in
French Video produce so many bizarre effects that the the superior
broadcast medium (SECAM to NTSC) is negated) 3) SECAM itself isn't
that hot anyway; PAL makes it look noisy, which it is 4) Even with
American "Garbage" they don't have the wherewithal to subtitle rather
than Dub. They don't "rely" on American production because it is
"cheap" (which it isn't); there is a market, and products are bought
and sold. American television is extremely popular worldwide.

> If "La cinq" closed, it's mostly because of its failed attempt to "fill the gaps"
> with all kind of low-quality american series. French public wants a little more than than, fortunatly.

You are claiming the failure of La Cinq on the poor quality of
American programming (the mind boggles). If true, it shows how
pathetic the French Television industry is. If false, it shows how
fragile the French Television industry is. Lets pick one and stick
with it.

>French Cinema may have financing problems, I agree, but stop comparing the average American comedy with what
>you call "serious" (what's boring for you is interesting for me. He oui !) French films.

The craftsmanship in a typical American Drama -say "Postcards from the
Edge" is so much better than a typical French Drama, -say "Les Amants
du Pont Neuf", (Perhaps it it better to compare "Driving Miss Daisy"
with "La Gloire de Mon Pere", or "Dances With Wolves" with "Cyrano de
Bergerac") it is more useful to compare the French film with American
film from the 70's, which then (in the 70's) strangely the French film
was much better than the equivalent American product. It all seems to
have gotten frozen along the way somewhere. I suppose you are one of
the people who liked "Le Grand Bleu" (what's interesting to you is
teeth-chatteringly boring to me? Did anyone actually see "588 Rue
Paradis?")

One thing I find encouraging (oddly) is MTV. European MTV has now
thrown off the shackles of (truly dismal) American programming
(designed for 12-year-olds), and it give a tremendous number of
younger directors the chance to produce film (designed for
17-25-year-olds), granted 5-10 minutes at a time, but that is where
one learns how to actually put together a production (which is, as
direction goes, greatly a matter of organization) and
low-budget/high-budget isn't the issue, it is the quality of the
expression, the development of technique which is stressed; how to
make a high-craft production with limited means.  Through this
channel, and its elaboration, though the music is routinely English, I
think there could be a renovation of the industry with new blood who
can eventually "craft" productions on a larger scale; the current
group don't seem to have mastered anything at all.

>> "MacDonalds" - hamburgers are French cuisine 
>you must be kidding...

If you think "American food" appeared ex nihilio (some has: polynesian
cookery is a total fabrication...) then it isn't worth discussing.

>>Pommes-Frites are more Belgian, though I would hasten to point out
>>that "Belgium" is a synthetic country made up of (rather warring)
>>Flemish and French-speaking peoples;
>
>I take this as a first-order insult towards one of the most beautiful place on earth.
>If you really want some historical references, potatoes come from South America....big deal.

His Royal Highness of Belgium isn't King of Belgium, he is king of the
Belgian Peoples; the north, "Flemish", the south, "French". Bruges,
Antwerp, Brussels... Belgium: quite lovely, yes. But a country like
"France", no. It could be called a buffer zone between the Flemish
north and the French south; minor civil disputes simmer to this day.
One reminds onesself that modern European states, Germany, Austria,
Italy, Switzerland... are fairly new. When did Germany unite? Italy?
What about the relative independence still of Swiss Cantons? Did we
forget about the Austrian/Hungarian empire?

>>But then one reminds onesself that French cuisine was derived from Italian cuisine,
>>I believe in the 17th century.
>
>you're partly right, Italian cookers who were fed up of
>spaghettis brought some interesting recipes at the French Royal court.

I believe it was more like the French Royal court imported Italian
Cooks to liven-up banal food; Northern Italian cuisine (the import)
wasn't based particularly on "spaghettis" anyway (wheat flours), it is
based on corn. I've always suspected the resentment of French
cuisine's "roots" in Italian cookery were a source of the continuing
lack of Michelin rating any Italian restaurant four-star.

-- 
| Le Jojo: Fresh 'n' Clean, speaking out to the way you want to live
| today; American - All American; doing, a bit so, and even more so.
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