Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
The demise of the art film in the 1930s is often attributed to the advent of the sound picture, which escalated
production costs and fostered a conventional approach to
narrative and representation. Yet it has been suggested
that some strands of the cinema of the period do bear the
marks of art cinema in some respects. For instance, the
state-sponsored documentary film supervised by John
Grierson (1898–1972) has been proposed as Britain’s
art cinema, the drab though realist subject matter and
the often innovative form of the films differentiating
Michelangelo Antonioni. JOHN SPRINGER/CORBIS.
Art Cinema
SC HIRME R EN CYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 117them from the escapist Hollywood cinema that dominated British screens; similarly, it is argued that the
poetic realist films from the French cinema with their
gloomy narratives culminating in the death of the hero as
in Marcel Carne´’s (1909–1996) Quai des brumes (Port of
Shadows, 1938) and Le Jour se le `ve (Daybreak, 1939) offer
a different, more downbeat experience compared to the
American films with their characteristically optimistic
endings. Yet, these arguable instances apart, the renewal
of the art impulse in film did not occur in a significant
sense until the 1940s, with the key films once again
coming from European industries engaged in a postwar
rebuilding process. Italy played a major role with neorealist films, such as Roma citta` aperta (Open City, 1945)
by Roberto Rossellini (1906–1977) and Ladri di biciclette
(The Bicycle Thieves, 1948) by Vittoria de Sica (1902–
1974), and the success of such films in America paved the
way for the development of the specialized exhibition
venue—the art house, the ‘‘sure seater’’—in the large
cities and university towns.
There were a number of reasons for the increased
prospects for foreign films in the American market in the
late 1940s. These range from reduced production levels
at the Hollywood studios, which created gaps in the
market; concerted efforts by the British, Italian, and
French industries to distribute their films in the United
States; the move toward ‘‘runaway production’’ by
American companies, which gave the majors an investment stake in British, French, and Italian films; the
changing composition of the audience from a family
one increasingly catered to by television to one dominated by young people; and an interest in European
culture among the returning service personnel who had
spent some time in England, France, and Italy during the
war. It has also been suggested that the changing audience tastes consequent upon the demographic shift went
in the direction of films with mature, adult, serious
thematic concerns, qualities that were to be found in
the new European films.
One adult dimension of the foreign film, which
became an important marketing feature, was the liberal
approach to the representation of sexuality. This became
more marked with foreign films from outside of the ‘‘art’’
sector, such as Et Dieu . . . cre ´a la femme (And God
Created Woman, 1956) and the phenomenon of the actress
Brigitte Bardot (b. 1934), but prior to that even a serious
political narrative such as Rossellini’s Open City was
marketed in the United States with one eye on the hints
of lesbianism and drug use in the film. In this respect, the
art cinema was an important agent in the erosion of the
careful censorship of films in America. Indeed, a court
case involving a segment of the 1948 Italian film L’Amore
known as The Miracle, prompted the US Supreme Court
to issue a landmark judgement in 1952 that conferred
upon films the constitutional guarantees that already
protected freedom of speech and the free press. By the
early 1960s Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960), a classic art
film, had an American trailer that simply featured the
film’s sex scenes with a voice-over acclaiming the film as
‘‘a new experience in motion picture eroticism.’’
This period saw the formation of art cinema in its
most prominent connotation—the restricted sense—with
the directorial debuts of a number of the key directors
and the emergence of some of the key actors identified
with the art film. Robert Bresson (1901–1999), Luchino
Visconti (1906–1976), and Ingmar Bergman made their
first features in the 1940s, followed by Federico Fellini
(who had worked with Rossellini) and Michelangelo
Antonioni in the early 1950s. Later in the decade,
French directors including Alain Resnais (b. 1922),
Jean-Luc Godard, Franc¸ois Truffaut (1932–1984),
Claude Chabrol (b. 1930), and Eric Rohmer (b. 1920)
directed their first features and were collectively dubbed
the ‘‘Nouvelle Vague,’’ or New Wave. The definitive
‘‘art house’’ films created by these filmmakers include
Bergman’s Smultron sta¨llet (The Seventh Seal, 1957) and
Wild Strawberries (1957), Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli
(Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
(The Sweet Life, 1960) and 8½ (1963), and Antonioni’s
L’Avventura, La Notte (The Night, 1961), and L’Eclisse
(Eclipse, 1962). The key films from the French New
Wave included Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (Handsome
Serge, 1959), Godard’s A` bout de souffle (Breathless,
1960), Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima My
Love, 1959) and L’Anne ´e dernie `re a` Marienbad (Last Year
at Marienbad, 1961), and Truffaut’s Les Quatre cents
coups (The 400 Blows, 1959). Such films also produced
a galaxy of ‘‘art film stars’’ who were often closely associated with particular directors. Major examples include
the work of Liv Ullman (b. 1938), Ingrid Thulin
(1929–2004), Max Von Sydow (b. 1929), and Harriet
Andersson (b. 1932) with Bergman; Monica Vitti’s
(b. 1931) work with Antonioni; Giulietta Masina
(1921–1994) and Marcello Mastroianni’s (1924–1996)
work with Fellini; Jean-Pierre Le´aud’s (b. 1944) work
with Truffaut; Anna Karina’s (b. 1940) work with
Godard; and Ste´phane Audran’s (b. 1932) work with
Chabrol. Other stars of the art film not as closely linked
to particular directors include Catherine Deneuve
(b. 1943), Jeanne Moreau (b. 1928), Jean-Louis
Trintignant (b. 1930), Alain Delon (b. 1935), Dirk
Bogarde (1921–1999), and Terence Stamp (b. 1939).