Popular European Cinema in the Light of Jean-Francois Richets Films - Essay Example

Importance of Auteur in Popular European Cinema in the Light of Jean-Francois Richet’s Films Introduction Auteur is the French word for Author. In the film industry, it usually denotes a director who dominates the filmmaking process so much that he gains more acclaim as the auteur or author of the motion picture. In the Auteur theory of filmmaking, the director is the main person responsible for the creation of a motion picture, and it shows the director’s own distinctive style. One of the most notable auteurs in film history would be Alfred Hitchcock with his own style of diving into every aspect of production so that they would be able to capture just how he imagined the film to be. He has some level of expertise in camera work both black and white and colored, and he knows about production. He uses his versatile knowledge to thoroughly instruct the crew as to what he wants the film to be like (Auteur Theory, 2012a; Ryan, n.d.). In this paper, the writer would explore the importance of auteur in popular European cinema in light of famous director Jean-Francois Richet’s two notable film works: L’instinct de mort (Killer Instinct) and Assault on Precinct 13. Concept of Auteur Auteurism has been the primary focus of film practice, theory, and historiography since the 1950s. Auteurism is important in that it shaped the understanding of many film cultures around the world. Auteur theory was one of the founding stones of the French cinematic movement known as nouvelle vague, or New Wave. According to this theory, the director should be considered the author of the film because the way the story is presented through blocking, camera angles, camera work, lighting, and editing is more important than the actual story when it comes to admiring the film’s characteristics. Using auteur theory, the audience can interpret the film in a different way (Corrigan, 2011; Moran & Engel, 1999; Auteur Theory, 2012b). An auteur director is another kind of persona that affects how the film is viewed. People know who the director is and expect a certain pattern to emerge based on that director’s previous films. This is quite similar to an actor’s signature look or mannerism, but is not seen on screen, but it can be seen through careful analysis of the movie. To scrutinize a movie using auteur analysis, there must be an auteur structure at hand. Using this auteur structure to analyze the film gives the movie another dimension of interpretation such as underlying messages and themes the director may have placed in the making of the movie under what is actually seen on screen. Even without this auteur structure, movies benefit from having an auteur attached to their titles because when people see that name, they will remember the great movies attributed to that director, which could generate interest and expectations for the movie. For example, when someone says he’s watching a ‘Spielberg’ movie, people would think of great science fiction and a great epic journey. When someone says ‘Tim Burton,’ you can’t help but remember the dark scenery and the eccentric characters that usually feature in his movies. People think of these and can’t help but expect more of the same, and creates a buzz about the new movie (Anon., 2008; Miller, 2008; Phillips, 2007). Who is Jean-Francois Richet Jean-Francois Richet is a French screenwriter, director, and producer. His debut film was Etat des lieux in 1995. This film won a Prix Tournage award in 1996. His next film was Ma 6-T va crack-er in 1997. In 2005, Richet made a remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13. His latest work tackles the life story of Jacques Mesrine in a two-part movie released in 2008 as L’instinct de mort (Killer Instinct) and L’Ennemi Public No. 1 (Public Enemy No. 1). Both these films won him a Cesar Award for Best Director in 2009 (IMDb, n.d.). Killer Instinct L’instinct de mort or Mesrine: Killer Instinct is the first part of the biographical duology that is about the life of Jacques Mesrine, the notorious French gangster who killed numerous people, robbed a lot of people of their money, escaped from prison numerous times, and committed many crimes in the 60’s and 70’s. He was shot dead in 1979 after 20 years of crime. The first part of his biographical duology first showed a clip when he and his associate were ambushed and shot at while in the car. It then shows Mesrine during his time as a soldier in the war against Algeria. It chronicles his beginnings as a gangster, up to his incarceration, his escape, and his killing a police officer. The main character is played by Vincent Cassel, and his performance was great as he was able to convey the arrogance and the ruthlessness of the actual man. Richet’s direction of the film focused greatly on Cassel, giving him face time in the movie 90% of the time. His camera work was mostly short static camera shots with some panning shots and one scene during Mesrine’s incarceration when he had the camera tumble while showing the main character naked, crouched in a corner during solitary confinement. The editing done to the movie was fast-paced and most scenes were cut short. In some scenes, the cuts were so abrupt that there seemed to be little or no transition to some shots. The timeline was quite ambiguous in that it seemed that the movie was actually a compilation of scenes in the interesting life of Jacques Mesrine. One point he would be whoring out, followed by a scene of a bank robbery a year later. Overall, the movie had a fast pace, with a few confusing spots in between that focused on the main character as intensely as it should be considering it was a biographical film (Mesrine: Killer Instinct, 2008; Ebert, 2010; Fuller, 2010). Considering how it was executed, we can see that Richet was trying to show both sides of the man from this daring and reckless rogue, to the ruthless, cold-blooded killer; from the man who loves his children, to the womanizer; from the crook, to the honourable gangster that is Jacques Mesrine. That being said, the way the movie was done was all about the main character, Mesrine. All the other characters had very little focus. Usually, they come in for a scene wherein they are introduced, then after a few more scenes together, they either get killed or are in a place outside the life of the main character. For example, Guido had a good introduction as a mob boss that could outsmart Mesrine from the beginning, also showing some scenes wherein they had a good working relationship, and suddenly, here comes the scene when he and his companions get shot at a bar they usually frequented. This seems peculiar since most scenes involved Mesrine in some way, while this one was in no way connected to him except to add to the story that ‘at some point, Guido and his friends died and were out of Mesrine’s life’. Also, in the earlier part of the movie, Mesrine showed great affection towards his children, even attempting to quit his life of crime, yet, after leaving them with his parents, there was no more mention of them and not even a slight indication that Mesrine remembered that he had children. Perhaps the character with the least justice done is the ‘Bonnie’ to his ‘Clyde,’ Jeanne. They had an interesting meeting at the bar, and then it went fast forward to working together, robbing a bank together, and then getting caught with them soaking up the press at the airport. After their incarceration, Mesrine escaped while Jeanne finished her 5-year sentence without ever showing what happened to her aside from some text explaining what happened after Mesrine killed the policemen. For such an interesting person in the life of Jacques Mesrine, she should have been given a larger role in the story. Jean-Paul Mercier, his last accomplice in the movie also had a hollow feel to him. Their meeting during construction work was quite random and fantastic that both criminals would just happen to meet and hit it off during a smoke break. After that, a series of bank robberies, imprisonment, and escape together, plus the gunfight during their assault of the prison were apparently enough for the movie, as even his end was written off at the end of the movie without having shown how it happened. Though it is understandable that they were working with limited resources and time, this writer believes they could have done better to flesh out some of the characters. The way they were portrayed made them out as expendable extras to the life of Jacques Mesrine. Assault on Precinct 13 Another film by Jean-Francois Richet is the 2005 remake of Assault on Precinct 13, which starred Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne. It is a modernization of a movie directed by John Carpenter in 1976 which featured policemen and criminals working together to defend against a siege on a secluded police station. The original movie was a low-budget film that was still able to grasp the audience’s attention. The remake by Richet boasted a much better budget with stars Laurence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke in the picture, but turned it into a film which “lurches from bursts of gunfire to stretches of tiresome exposition” (Scott, 2005). The main problem with the movie is that unlike Carpenter’s take in the 70’s which caught the attention of an era of social unease with an ambiguous definition of good vs bad, Richet’s version seems commonplace to the current era of action movies. The direction of the movie retains Richet’s fast pace and his tendency to focus on the main characters while leaving the other characters very little. This focus on the main character may have worked for Mesrine, considering it is a biographical film, but it did not pan out as effectively in Assault on Precinct 13 (Assault on Precinct 13, 2005). Discussion Auteur theory shows its importance to cinema in the way it generates interest from the viewers. The movie is transformed from being just another shoot-em-up mobster movie to a series of peeks at an interesting man’s interesting life, keeping the audience from deciding whether he is good or bad. By attaching the auteur name of Richet, the audience then gets to expect more of Richet’s work from his previous movies while at the same time, keeping them in suspense as to HOW he would do this movie differently. Auteur theory benefits cinema by increasing the interest in a movie even before the audience hears about it. You might hear some people tell other people that they should watch a certain movie about a certain director and even without giving away the plot or the story, the listener would then think of the director mentioned and think back to that director’s previous movies, and how they went. From this information, the new movie becomes more interesting, and more people would line up to watch it just to see more of a celebrated director’s moviemaking magic. This writer guesses that Auteur theory’s contribution to film aside from putting a label to the work to help it sell would be how it inspires directors or auteurs to take responsibility for the whole film to unify the efforts of the team into one vision (Evans, 1999) Of course, the only flaw to this is that Auteur theory works to the benefit of true Auteurs who have made great movies in the past. A single director’s auteur structure cannot be made with only one or two movies, but can be seen over time through careful analysis and comparison of his filmography. Whether it’s Hitchcock’s mastery of thrill, or Tim Burton’s fondness for dark outcasts as main characters, these things set them apart from the rest, and in a business that thrives on unique ideas, it can only be a good thing (Auteur theory, 2012b). References Anonymous, 2008. Auteur Theory in Film Criticism. [Online] (Updated 28 May 2008) Available at: http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A22928772 [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Assault on Precinct 13, 2005. [Film] Directed by Jean-Francois Richet. USA: Rogue Pictures. Auteur theory. 2012a. The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Available at: http://www.questia.com/library/communication/media-studies/film/auteur-theory [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Auteur theory. 2012b. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/44609/auteur-theory [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Corrigan, T., 2011. Auteurism. [Online] (Updated 2012) Available at: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791286/obo-9780199791286-0009.xml [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Ebert, R., 2010. Mesrine: Killer Instinct. Chicago Sun Times, [internet] 25 August. Available at: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100825/REVIEWS/100829991/1023 [Accessed 27 October 2012]. Evans, P., 1999. Spanish Cinema: The auteurist tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Fuller, T., 2010. Jean-Francois Richet’s ‘Mesrine’ is a killer two-part film. The Examiner, [internet] 11 September. Available at: http://www.examiner.com/article/jean-fran-ois-richet-s-mesrine-is-a-killer-two-part-film [Accessed 27 October 2012]. IMDb, n.d. Jean-Francois Richet. [Online] (Updated 2012) Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0724938/ [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Mesrine: Killer Instinct, 2008. [Film] Directed by Jean-Francois RIchet. France: Music Box Films. Miller, B., 2008. The work of interpretation: A theoretical defence of film theory and criticism. Kinema, [Online] Available at: http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/article.php?id=209&feature#ViewNotes_18 [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Moran, M. & Engel, L., 1999. The problem with Auteurism. [Online] (Updated 2012) Available at: http://personal.markmoran.net/Writing/Film%20Intro%20-%20Final%20Paper.html [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Phillips, P., 2007. Genre, star and auteur critical approaches applied to Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York. [Online] (Updated 2012) Available at: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415409285/resources/genrestar.pdf [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Ryan, S., n.d. Auteur Theory. [Online] (Updated 2012) Available at: http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/screen/auteur%20theory.htm [Accessed 28 October 2012]. Scott, A. O., 2005. O.K., Guys, Just What Side of the Law Are You On? New York Times, [internet] 19 January. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/movies/19assa.html [Accessed 28 October 2012]. . Read More