Two European Cinematographs: Art-House vs. Genre Cinematograph, Art-House as Genre Cinematograph?

In the case of the French movie industry, the fact remains that in the period of the nouvelle vague of the 1960s, for every Truffaut and Godard, France had to make a BORSALINO (a thriller with Alain Delon), or in the 1970s, co-produce a FRENCH CONNECTION (with Gene Hackman and directed by William Friedkin), and in the 1980s, for every Jacques Rivette making LA BELLE NOISEUSE, and every Eric Rohmer making LE RAYON VERT, there had to be a Claude Berri making a JEAN DE FLORETTE or a Jean Paul Rappenau making a CYRANO DE BERGERAC.

Some European art cinematograph directors have understood this position of Hollywood and of their own popular cinematograph as the "significant other" quite well. In fact, one can almost divide European national cinematographs between those which in the overt discourse deny it, only to let it in through the back door (such as the Italian cinematograph in the 1950s and 1960s, or the first wave of the New German Cinematograph in the 1960s), and those who acknowledge it, by trying to define themselves around it. The directors of the nouvelle vague in the early 1960s, who developed 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 directors with, shouting "Papa's cinematograph is dead" at the scriptwriter team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, and directors like Rene Clement, Claude Autant-Lara and Jean Delannois.

In the case of the New German directors of the second wave, they appropriated and acknowledged Hollywood in an even more intimate form: they "adopted" some of the key directors as elective father figures: Douglas Sirk was adopted by Rainer W. Fassbinder, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray by Wim Wenders. The twist being that some of these American directors were of course originally German directors who had gone into exile, and Nick Ray was a director who had self-exiled himself from the studio system in the 1960s. Thus, national cinematograph becomes, on the one hand, a pseudo-oedipal drama around paternity and father-son relationships, and on the other, a matter of exile, self-exile and return. All this acknowledges that a sense of identity for many European movie directors from the time that the 1960s has only been possible by somehow re-articulating the debt to Hollywood and the American cinematograph, by recognizing themselves within the history of this cinematograph, and identifying with its legacy, if only in order to rebel against it, as did Jean-Luc Godard from the time that the 1970s and Wim Wenders from the time that the late 1980s.

Some among the generation of European directors of the 1990s, on the other hand, neither repress the presence of Hollywood, nor feel filial piety towards it. They play with it, quote it, use it, imitate it - in short, they use it as their second nature, alongside all kinds of other references and styles. They know that image and identity are a slippery pair, traversing and criss-crossing in rather complex ways geographical territory, linguistic boundaries, history, subjectivity, pleasures remembered and longings anticipated. And there is a good historical motive for it, which is also important for our idea of national cinematograph. For as mentioned above, national cinematograph does not only refer to a nation's movie production, it also must include what national audiences see. Besides a European country's art and auteur cinematograph, there are the commercial productions, and there is Hollywood, occupying in most European countries the lion's share of the box office. Finally, one needs to add another player, the avant-garde cinematograph whose moviemakers, nevertheless, have almost always refused the label national cinematograph, because they saw themselves as both international and anti-Hollywood.