Concepts of New Waves in Writing the Histories of European or World Cinema - Essay Example

The proliferation of new waves on the international art house and film festive circuits is one of the few cinematic phenomena from the past half century with a global reach that rivals the geographic range and ambition of Hollywood. The new wave generation is considered to be an aesthetic adventure and the emergence of new talents. This crop of film directors that infiltrated world cinema between 1958 and 1964, managed to write and direct hundreds of films. Never before had the film industry being infiltrated by many new filmmakers without them having worked their way slowly and faithfully up the studio production ranks. As if that was not enough, these young directors had the burning desire of shaking up the film world by narrating a stunning array of unconventional stories told in bold new styles (Tweedie 2013). Most of the stories were aimed at young audience; hence, they featured contemporary issues such as sexy themes about seduction and betrayal. However, the new wave generation did not just arise out of the blues. This movement was a social phenomenon which came to be as a result of a wide range of influences and causes. The outcome of this scenario is perhaps the richest and most exhilarating period in the history of world cinema. The genesis of the new waves generation can be traced back to France where Claude Chabrol premiered four feature films in Paris. At a time when the French press was full of accounts of a new wave in the world cinema, Chabrol was considered as the central agent of change. In fact, Paris theatres were regarded as the new wave’s testing ground before it could take off to other European countries. Furthermore, Chabrol is considered as one, who represented the novelty, euphoria, and success of the new wave (Jobs 2007). Today, Chabrol is recognized as the first film director of the new waves generation. However, Chabrol directed a string of poorly received films and lost his independent production company even though he was among the chosen few who had a promising beginning. The sudden fall of Chabrol created a state of confusion over his long-term significance and is part of the reason why his career is so fascinating. In the long run, Chabrol’s economic practices did go a long way in providing a new blueprint for filmmakers in the new waves generation. One of the most important mechanisms behind the rise of the new waves generation was largely due to the post-Second World War cultural context. Perhaps this is the reason why the new wave generation became such an exemplary movement for cinema studies. In addition, this generation can attest its success to the study of film history as opposed to any other film movement. It comes with a comprehensive knowledge of film history as well as film technique and storytelling. The main reason why the concepts new wave generations have and continue to be used is because unlike other seasoned directors who knew many films from the past, this generation did not shy away from watching hundreds of movies whether good or bad. This form of aggressiveness helped the eventual new wave filmmakers to see movies from another dimension, and that experience marked their subsequent experiments in film practice. Nevertheless, it cannot go without saying that other than the hunger for passion exhibited by this generation of filmmakers, there were larger cultural factors that helped to generate a new wave cinema. The new wave generation emerged as one arm of the visual culture of accelerated transformation, and they accompany a sequence of youth, urban, and consumer revolutions whose universe of reference points and comparisons inevitably extends beyond national frontiers. This generation situates cinematic and cultural experience in a more expansive context as opposed to how traditional-nation based histories usually explore. Beginning with the emergence of French new wave in theatres across the globe, a series of new waves and cinemas incited an explosion and a revolution of world cinema. This was a revolution devoted to the representation of the real and the modern. The revolutionary concept behind the new wave generation was that novelty can replace received wisdom as the source of authority in the arts, that cinema can be harnessed to the transformative energy of youth. By doing this, it could derive its conceptual and aesthetic dynamism from the turmoil of global modernity rather than the stability of a local tradition. The logic of the new waves generations is a depiction of globalization from the frontiers of an emerging world market in images. In spite of the limited economic resources, new waves generation films always bear the stain of their locality. Furthermore, they are relegated to the circuit and the domain of world cinema. The concepts of the new waves generations came in the form of films. How could one distinguish a new wave film from someone else’s movie that was not within this generational bracket? New wave films and/or concepts were recognized for the reason that their innovative stories, styles and production practices were against the rules of world cinema. During this period of time, there was a widely held perception across the globe that world cinema was losing its vitality. Even those films that were once considered as commercially successful, they were dismissed by critics and referred to as tradition of quality (Badley et al. 2006). For example, the tendency to disregard the pre-war period in Polish cinema and discuss only its post-war achievements is reflected by the new wave generation which was popularly known as the Third Polish Cinema. This term was coined by some polish critics who wanted to make it known that there was an imminent generational change taking place in Polish cinema. For this group of critics, this new generation was made up of filmmakers born and bred in post-war Poland, whose introduction to politics was not as a result of the war and its aftermath, but rather the events of the Polish October. The concepts of this new generation were not driven by history and politics. Instead, reality and philosophical reflections on culture were their guiding principles. Their concepts were preoccupied with reality, suspicious and sceptical about national romantic tradition, and interested in improving world cinema (Haltof 2002). Filmmakers in the previous generations were considered to be excessive, serious, naive, expressionist, and baroque. The new waves generation were described as those with a tendency to mystification and caricature. The concepts of this generation not only introduced the new language of cinema, but also complicated the one-dimensional world-view that had for long being used to define world cinema. After the Polish war, the new waves generation called for a different aesthetic hierarchy that relied on the multifaceted significance of the work of art. For this reason, they created personal films that are unique in the context of Polish cinema, and opted to employ the services of characters with personal as opposed to political problems, moral dilemmas as opposed to disputes about history, and new generational experiences portrayed in a refreshing style. (Stone 2012). While writing the histories of European countries in the form of films, there are instances that the film and/or cinema refuse to flow. However, in the age of new waves generation, such films circulate on a transnational scale and films that foreground their locality achieve a worldwide following even if their distribution has never rivalled the domain of Hollywood. The new waves were not an isolated cinematic break with tradition but a sign of more profound changes in European societies. The rise of the new waves was as a result of the changing demographics of the European cultures, a decline in agriculture, strong urbanization, and a more traditional, patriarchal society that was characterized by new norms and lifestyles. Beneath these developments, there was a steady growth in globalization within the society, culture and communication that would have a great impact on the social and cultural agenda (Galt & Schoonover 2010). . The new waves generation in Britain occasionally assumed the more definitive and self-conscious shape of artistic movements while at the same time issuing manifestos as they developed a sense of group identity. This generation came with new and revitalized concepts that provided an alternative to the dominance of the largely adored American product often referred to as the classical Hollywood film. For those who wanted new concepts to write about the histories of Europe or world cinema, the new waves generation became an important part of the international art cinema. Before the advent of the new waves generation, the film industry was characterized by modernist approaches to the medium that had little use for star glamour and repetitious genres. The new waves generation of directors and producers provided the world cinema with a flow of financially successful and productions that had being critically acclaimed (Neupert 2007). These productions provided a glimpse of the native culture, home-grown talent, and regularly acclaimed global notice. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects that are important in helping one to understand the whole concept of the British new wave in filmmaking. These aspects are more or less similar to those of the French new wave. The French new wave was as a result of a relentlessly youth-oriented culture that was against the values and tastes of the previous generation. Because this period was characterized by rapid cultural change, the French films produced and directed by the new waves generation achieved popularity in spite of their minimal production values. However, this instant success of the new waves generation was considered as an assault on the French commercial practice, and directors and producers of new wave films found their work treated with disrespect. In order to earn dominance in the world cinema, French new wave filmmakers who were in their late twenties and early thirties had a desire to put something of their youth, energy and love for the medium in their films. The British new waves generation was not left behind either. Whereas the French new wave was part of a larger cultural shift, a cinematic movement was taking shape in Britain. However, there was a conceptual difference between these two different new waves generation. On one hand, the conceptual framework of the French new wave had its connections to literary innovations. On the other hand, the conceptual framework of the British new wave had from the onset more substantial literary roots. The outcome that eventually was referred to as the British new wave could be understood, if only in part, as an extension of the changes in subject matter, style, and theme. The new wave cinema that transpired in the 1960s is often as a result of intensified national policies for culture. As a result, cultural policy was part and parcel of the modern welfare policy. In France, the revival of the film industry was the idea of young directors who came up with novel ways to finance and shoot their films. They often did this in direct defiance of commercial and narrative norms. This is the time period where social, economic, technological, and cinematic factors helped to generate one of the most creative moments in film history. Analyzing the brand of new wave filmmaking involves a constant modification of story and style with a variety of end results. The postulation of the new waves generation as being markedly different, permeated European history and its conceptual framework was adopted by the public. Since its concepts were fresh, new wave became a term of common usage and it was affiliated with anything that had to do with the youth or that which involved young people. This fixation with the new waves generation and/or the post-war generation had picked up on an existing preoccupation with young people, carrying it further, while also providing the generation with an appellation that contributed to the public fascination of all things that were considered new (Lewis 1998). In this regard, the new wave cinema has always being regarded as a phenomenon generated by the young people who came of age after the end of the Second World War and imagined themselves not as inheritors of age-old national traditions, but as pioneers in a modern and increasingly cosmopolitan world. Generally, many of the new waves generation films and TV programmes that were used in writing the history of Europe and world cinema belong to the classics of European culture. The eventual surge of films came to dominate the new wave phenomenon such that instead of the phrase referring to a generation, the 1960s new wave meant movies. These films progressed along with the changes of narrative theory in spite of the fact that they were produced during the era of auteur criticism. The new waves generation was an amalgamation of creativity and intellectual prowess, whose films took the world by a storm. The studies of the new waves remain excessively focused on the directors, producers, and other authors of the films and inadequately attentive to the nuances of its critics. For the new waves, the process of making a film involved weaving the abstractions of the imagination together with the resistant objects and spaces of the time. The key new waves films are themselves exercises in the orchestration of bodies and objects in space, and the scenery of new wave film is as much a product of the times as the gift of any individual artist or a legion of filmmakers. In the long run, the persistence of this idea of world cinema through decades of new waves suggests that the unfinished modern era in world and film history has not yet vanished from the scene. References Badley, L, Palmer, RB & Schneider, SJ, 2006. Traditions in World Cinema, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey. Galt, R & Schoonover, K, 2010. Globe Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, Oxford University Press, New York. Haltof, M, 2002. Polish National Cinema, Berghahn Books, USA. Jobs, R, 2007. Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After the Second World War. Stanford University Press, California. Lewis, J, 1998. The New American Cinema, Duke University, North Carolina. Neupert, R, 2007, A History of the New Wave Cinema, University of Winsconsin Press, Wisconsin. Stone, D. 2012. The Oxford Handbook of Post-war European History, Oxford University Press, New York. Tweedie, J 2013. The Age Of New Waves: Art Cinema and the Staging of Globalization, Oxford University Press, New York. Read More