Popular Cinemas of Europe: Studies of Texts, Contexts and Frameworks 9781628928860, 9780826455925
This book challenges the established conceptual and historical paradigm in Anglo-American film studies that perceives Eu
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English Pages [240] Year 2001
Polecaj historie
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Introduction
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this project begins at the last chapter of the book. b.it like Toto's experience in Nuouo Cinema Paradiso, my fascination with cinema has a clearly defined time and place of origin. It was in the open-air venues of Greece in the 1960s that I discovered the fun and (again like Toto) the "magic" of the movies and formed an understanding of what cinema is all about. And while the last chapter of this book describes in neutral, objective terms certain aspects of that experience, it necessarily fails to communicate the extent to which that particular understanding became (as childhood things usually become) the unquestionable norm and a completely naturalized definition of cinema. That definition included not only an interruptive viewing experience that this book explores but also a genuinely international menu of films, stars and genres: the comedies of Louis de Funts and of Ciccio and Izranco, spaghetti westerns and Greek melodramas, peplum and policier, but also Hollywood blockbusters, Godxilla and Mother India. My film universe was impure but hierarchized and one in which all these different kinds of cinema had a place. Obviously Hollywood was exceptionally polished, but Greek films were really much more enjoyable and closer to me, whereas European and "other" films had a glamour and style that was absent from both of the first two. The difference between art and popular/commercial films had not occurred to me yet: La dolce vita was just a film (a bit weird admittedly) with Mastroianni in it. But the present book is not an exercise in nostalgia that tries to recapture a lost plenitude that transcends cultural hegemonies and national borders, but an attempt to come to terms with the uncomfortable interface between the naturalized norm of my childhood and the discursive practices of Anglo-US film theory and criticism. Significant parts of my experience and understanding of cinema remained either outside the scope or firmly in the margins of the discourse within which I operated as a student and teacher of film studies in Britain. It is the frustration in that experience that motivates HE STORY OF