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European Culture, National Cinema, the Auteur and Hollywood “TheonlythingthenationsofEuropehaveincommonisAmerica” JohnNaughton,TheObserver “LivinginthethcenturymeanslearningtobeAmerican” DusanMakavejev Europe: The Double Perspective From these two quotations one might derive a somewhat fanciful proposition. Whatif–attheendofthethcentury–EuropehadbeendiscoveredbyAmer- icarather than America being “discovered”by theEuropeans attheend of the th century? Counterfactual as this may seem, in a sense this is exactly what did happen, because with Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, GertrudStein,Josephine Baker and somanyotherUS American writers, musi- cians, and artists exiling themselves temporarily or permanently in “Europe,” theygaveanametosomethingthatbeforewasFrance,Britain,Germany,Spain, orItaly. So,thereisadoubleperspectiveonEuropetoday:Onefromwithout(mainly American), where diversity of geography, language, culture tends to be sub- sumed under a single notion, itself layered with connotations of history, art- works, the monuments of civilization and the sites of high culture, but also of foodandwine,oftourismandthelifestyleofleisure(dolcefarniente,luxe,calme et volupté). The other perspective is the one from within (often, at least until a few years ago, synonymous with Western Europe, the Common Market countries): the struggle to overcome difference, to grow together, to harmonize, to toleratediversitywhilerecognizinginthecommonpastthepossiblepromiseof a common “destiny.” There is a sense that with the foundation, consolidation andgradualenlargementoftheEuropeanUnion,thesedefinitions,evenintheir double perspective,are no longer either adequate or particularly useful.Hence the importance of once more thematizing European culture, European cinema, andEuropeanidentityattheturnofthemillennium,whichinviewofUSworld 36 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood hegemony, globalization, and the end of the bipolar world model, may well cometobeseenastheonly“European”millenniumofworldhistory. Thecinema,whichcelebratesitscentenary,isbothaFrench(Lumiere)andan American (Edison) invention. A hundred years later, these two countries – as theGATTaccords(ordiscords)haveshown–arestilllockedinastruggleasto thedefinitionofcinema–aculturalgoodandnationalheritageoracommodity that should be freely traded and open to competition. That France should take theleadinthisispartlyduetothefactthatitisalsotheonlyEuropeancountry stilltopossesssomethinglikeanationalfilmindustryandafilmculture. National Cinema Ithasoftenbeenremarkedthatinordertotalkabouta“nationalcinema”atall, one always tries to conjure up a certain coherence, in the first instance, that of theNation.Inthisrespect,itisquiteclearlyanotionwithalotofhistoricaland even more so, ideological ballast. A nation, especially when used in a context that suggests cultural identity, must repress differences of class, gender, race, religion, and history in order to assert its coherence, and is thus another name for internal colonization. Nationhood and national identity are not given, but gained,notinherited,butpaidfor.Theyexistinafieldofforceofinclusionand exclusion,aswellasresistanceandappropriation. Nationalcinemaalsofunctionslargelybymoreorlessappropriateanalogy.If we take the economic definition, it is like the “gross national product” or the “nationaldebt.”Butitisalsolikethe“nationalrailwaysystem”orthe“national monuments”: in the first instance a descriptive or taxonomical category. With the last analogy, however, another meaning comes into view. Like the national opera company, or the national ballet, national cinema usually means that it is orwantstobealsoaninstitution(officially,oratleastsemi-officially),enjoying state patronage and, when defined as culture, often receiving substantial state support. Thus it implies an economic relationship, and indeed, historically, the cinemasofEuropehavebeenpartoftheirnations’politicaleconomyeversince themiddleoftheFirst World War,when themovingpictures’propagandava- lue was first seen in action. Since then, governmental measures, encompassing taxationandtariffs,censorshipandcityordinanceshavelegalizedbutalsolegit- imized the public sphere that is national cinema, making both the concept and thestate’srelationtoitoscillatebetweenanindustrialandaculturaldefinition. Thatthisdefinitionhascomeunderpressuresincethesisevident:thedis- mantlingofwelfarestates,privatization,deregulationandthetransformationof the media and communication networks under commercial and market princi- EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 37 ples have been the single most important factors that have put the idea of a nationalcinemaincrisis. The International Market Whatcouldbesaidtobethelowestcommondenominator,thedefaultvaluesof national cinema? It may mean nothing more historically precise or metaphysi- cally profound than the economic conditions under which filmmakers in a given country try to work. It functions as part of an industry required to turn a profit, as artisans selling individually crafted objects in a volatile market, or as artists,sponsoredbythestateanditsculturalinstitutions,representingacultur- alvision. However,whenlookedatasanindustry,thecinemaisnotanational,butan internationalbusiness,inwhich,asithappens,differentnationsdonotcompete onthesameterms.Forinstance,theonlycinemawhichforlongstretchesofits historyhasbeenabletooperateprofitablyasanationalone–theAmericancin- ema – is not usually referred to as a national cinema at all, but has become synonymouswiththe international filmbusiness,ifnotwith“the cinema”tout court.Itsuggeststhat“nationalcinema”isactuallynotdescriptive,butthesub- ordinatetermwithinabinarypairwhosedominantandreferredpoint(whether repressedorimplied)isalwaysHollywood.Ifthis international film business draws attention to the economic realities of film production in competition fortheworld’sspectators,the term“national cinema” may disguise another binarism: an auteur cinema as sketched above can be more viru- lently opposed to its own national cinema commercial film industry than it is to Hollywood films.Suchwasthecasewiththenouvellevagueor the second generation of New German filmmakers: the “politique des auteurs” of Truffaut, Rohmer and Chabrol, or Wim Wenders’ and Fassbinder’s cinephilia were based on a decided preference of Hollywood over their own national WimWenders cinema. The paradox arises because national cinema presupposes a perspective that takes the point of view of production – the filmmakers’, the film industry’s – whenpromotingorsellingfilmsatinternationalfestivals.Whatisgenerallynot included in the meaning are the preferences of audiences, and therefore, the 38 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood “nationality” of a country’s film culture. A moment’s reflection shows that no onewhogoestothecinemahasa“national”filmculture;orrather,everyone’s nationalfilmcultureasopposedtoanationalcinemaisbothmulti-nationaland cross-generic:high-profileHollywoodblock-busters,filmsonreleaseintheart- cinemas around town, star vehicles and films d’auteur. For a country’s film culture, national provenance is important in much the same way as the label stitched on my sweater or trainers: I show my brand loyaltyand advertise my taste. The situation is altogether different if we were considering television, wherethereisindeedsomethinglikea“nationalaudience,”justasthereis“national television.” But precisely to the degree that one is talking about a “national cinema,” one is not talking about audiences, but filmmakers: a fact that runstheriskofleavingonewithaone-sided,ifnotesotericpointofview. For in the international film business, the idea of national cinema has a very contradictory status: While Hollywood product dominates most countries’ domestic markets, as well as leading internationally, each national cinema is both national and international, though in different areas of its sphere of influence. Nationally, it participates in the popular or literary culture at large (the New German Cinema’s predilection for filmed literature, the intellectual cult status of French directors such as Bresson, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer; the acceptance ofFellini,Antonioni,orFrancescoRosiasItaly’ssacredmonsters). Internation- ally,nationalcinemasusedtohaveagenericfunctioninthewaythataFrench, Swedish or Italian film conveyeda set of expectations for the general audience whichweremirrorimagestothoseofHollywoodgenres.Italiancinemausedto mean big busts and bare thighs – and this in films that the more high-brow critics thought of as the glories of Neo-Realism: Rome Open City, Ossessione, Riso Amaro. As the ubiquitous Guilio Andreotti recommended, when he was Italy’s movie czar in the late s: Meno stracci, pui gambe (less rags, more legs). From the perspectiveof Hollywood, on the other hand, it makes little difference whether one is talking about the Indian cinema or the Dutch cinema, the French cinema or the Chilean cinema: none is a serious competitor for Ameri- ca’s domestic output, but each national cinema is a “market” for American films,withHollywoodpracticesandnormshavingmajorconsequencesforthe national production sector. In most countries this has led to different forms of protectionism,bringingintoplaystateinterventionandgovernmentlegislation, but usually to very little avail, especially since the different national cinemas, however equal they may seem before Hollywood, are of course emphatically unequal among themselves, and locked into yet another form of competition witheachotherwhentheyentertheEuropeanmarket. Yetparadoxically,anationalcinemaispreciselysomethingwhichreliesforits existenceonanationalexhibitionsectoratleastasmuchasitdoesonanational EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 39 productionsector;withoutHollywood,nonationalexhibitionsector;withouta national exhibition sector, i.e., cinemas, whether privately run or state-subsi- dized prepared to show independent releases, you cannot have a national cinema.Thisisatruththatsomenationalcinemasdiscoveredtotheircost:untilan American major had put money into distributing a Wenders or a Herzog film world-wide,theirfilmscouldnotbeseenbyGermanaudiences.Inasense,they had to become Hollywood (or at least Miramax or Buena Vista), before they couldreturnhometoEuropeasrepresentativesoftheirnationalcinema. Colonization, Self-Colonization and Significant Others What could in the s, be at stake in renewing a debate about national cinema?Ifthestruggleover“realism”(thesocialandpoliticalstakesin“represen- tation,”whetherindividualorcollective,ortheimportanceofdocumentationas recordandreference)hasmovedtotelevision,thenitistherethatthe“national” (in the sense I defined it above as exclusion and inclusion, appropriation and consensus) is now being negotiated. As a consequence, the “national cinemas” task may well be to set themselves off even more decisively from their realist traditions, and engage the Americans at their own level: weightlifting onto the screensthemythologiesoftwo-and-a-halfthousandyearsofEuropeanciviliza- tion, bringing to the surface the collective unconscious of individual nations at particularpointsintheirhistory(whichiswhatoneof thepioneers ofthestudyofnationalcinema,Siegfried Kracauer, in From Caligari to Hitler, was claiming that theWeimarcinemadidforGermanyintheperiodbe- tween the world wars), or giving expression to the more delicate pressure points of communal life in times of transition, crisis and renewal (as the new waves from neo-realism to the New German Cinema weredoingfromthelatestotheearlys). In Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road, perhaps the finestoffilmsfromthestomeditate abouta“na- KingsoftheRoad tionalcinema,”oneoftheprotagonists,contemplating thebarbed-wirefencethenstillseparatingEastandWest,half-jokingly,half-re- gretfully agrees that “The Yanks have colonized our sub-conscious.” We can take this perhaps by now over-used phrase in two directions: we can turn it around and say, yes, the national, even in Europe, has become a “colonial” term. Onlya state that can admit to and make room for the multi-cultural, the multi-layered within its own hybridities can henceforth claim to be a nation, 40 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood and therefore only films that are prepared to explore hybridities, in-between states, the self-in-the-other can be in the running for a national cinema. This mayfinallygiveachancetothosefilmmakingnationsatthemarginsofcultures by which they feel colonized. For instance, the Australian and New Zealand cinema,whichintheshas,withCrocodileDundeeontheonehand,and AnAngelatMyTableorThePianoontheother,quitesuccessfullyportrayed thecomicandthepoignantsidesofitsangstascolonized(cinema)cultures. The second thought that occurs, when hearing that “The Yanks have colonized our unconscious” is the example of directors like Wenders himself, who was only identified in his own country as a filmmaker with typically German subjectsafterhehadbeenrecognizedbyhis“Americanfriends.”Butitisnotall on the side of the colonizers. If one takes, for instance, Black Cinema in the US in the figure of the filmmaker Spike Lee, or even Italo-American directors like Francis Ford Coppola, one might well be tempted to regard their emphasis on ethnicityasanewnationalcinemainsidetheinternationalcinema.However,as Spike Lee has remarked: “If Hollywood has a color problem, it’s neither white nor black nor yellow, it’s green – the color of the dollar.” What he presumably alsomeantbythisjibeisthatthechancesofblacksmakingfilmsinHollywood dependneitherontheircolor,northeirtalent,norevenonthesizeoftheblack audience:Hollywood’shugebudgetshavemadeitsodependentonitsexports that for the first time in its history, it can no longer amortize its films on the home market. Yet in its export markets (the largest of which are Great Britain, Italy,France,Germany,alongwithJapan,AustraliaandCanada)audiencesare apparentlyveryresistanttonon-whiteheroes.Thus,Hollywoodhasitselfbeen “colonized” by its “European” or “national” audiences, except that Holly- wood’s dependency on its exports is a fact not exploited by those audiences to put pressure on Hollywood, since they have in common nothing except that theyareHollywood’sexportmarkets. On the face of it, then, national cinema can no longer be thought of in the traditional terms, but only in the context of these place-shifts and time-shifts, theculturalpalimpseststhatconnecttheever-expanding,constantlyself-differ- entiatingfieldofmediarepresentationswhichisthecontemporaryeverydayof movies, television, advertising. In this situation, national cinema becomes a doubly displaced category. It is at best a retrospective effect, so to speak, one thatonlyposteritycanconfer,asitsiftsthroughthenation’sactiveandpassive imagebank,hopingtodiscovertheshapeofitssuperegooritsid.Butnational cinema is also a displaced category, insofar as this is a shape, whether mon- strous, pleasing or only mildly disfigured, that can only be recognized from without.Thelabelnationalcinemahastobeconferredonfilmsbyothers,either byothernationalor“international”audiences, orbynationalaudiences,butat anotherpointintime.Definedbyothercritics,byotheraudiences,thesemirror EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 41 images are tokens of a national or personal identity only if this other is, as the phrasegoes,a“significantother.”Giventhemutualdependenciesjustsketched, Europe (standing in the field of cinema metonymically for European film festi- valsandthecriticalortheoreticaldiscoursestheseproduce)isasmuchasignifi- cant otherforHollywoodor Asia,as theUnitedStates isa significant otherfor Europeanaudiences. Two European Cinemas: Art-House vs. Genre Cinema, Art-House as Genre Cinema? InthecaseoftheFrenchfilmindustry,thefactremainsthatintheperiodofthe nouvellevagueofthes,foreveryTruffautandGodard,Francehadtomake aBorsalino(athrillerwithAlainDelon),orinthes,co-produceaFrench Connection (with Gene Hackman and directed by William Friedkin), and in thes,foreveryJacquesRivettemakingLaBelleNoiseuse,andeveryEric RohmermakingLeRayonVert,therehadtobeaClaudeBerrimakingaJean deFloretteoraJeanPaulRappenaumakingaCyranodeBergerac. Some European artcinema directorshaveunderstood this position of Holly- woodandoftheirownpopularcinemaasthe“significantother”quitewell.In fact,onecanalmostdivideEuropean nationalcinemasbetweenthosewhichin the overt discourse deny it, only to let it in through the back door (such as the Italiancinemainthesands,orthefirstwaveoftheNewGermanCin- ema in the s), and those who acknowledge it, by trying to define themselves around it. The directors of the nouvelle vague in the early s, who de- veloped 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 cinema is dead” at the scriptwriter team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, and directors like René Clément, Claude Autant- LaraandJeanDelannois. In the case of the New German directors of the second wave, they appro- priated and acknowledged Hollywood in an even more intimate form: they “adopted”someofthekeydirectorsaselectivefatherfigures:DouglasSirkwas adopted by Rainer W. Fassbinder, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray by Wim Wenders.ThetwistbeingthatsomeoftheseAmericandirectorswereofcourse originallyGermandirectorswhohadgoneintoexile,andNickRaywasadirec- tor who had self-exiled himself from the studio system in the s. Thus, na- tionalcinemabecomes,ontheonehand,apseudo-oedipaldramaaroundpater- nity and father-son relationships, and on the other, a matter of exile, self-exile 42 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood and return. All this acknowledges that a sense of identity for many European filmdirectorssincetheshasonlybeenpossiblebysomehowre-articulating the debt to Hollywood and the American cinema, by recognizing themselves withinthehistoryofthiscinema,andidentifyingwithitslegacy,ifonlyinorder to rebel against it, as did Jean-Luc Godard since the s and Wim Wenders sincethelates. Some among the generation of European directors of the s, on the other hand,neitherrepressthepresenceofHollywood,norfeelfilialpietytowardsit. Theyplaywithit,quoteit,useit,imitateit–inshort,theyuseitastheirsecond nature,alongsideallkindsofotherreferencesandstyles.Theyknowthatimage andidentityareaslipperypair,traversingandcriss-crossinginrathercomplex ways geographical territory, linguistic boundaries, history, subjectivity, plea- suresrememberedandlongingsanticipated.Andthereisagoodhistoricalrea- son for it, which is also important for our idea of national cinema. For as men- tionedabove,nationalcinemadoesnotonlyrefertoanation’sfilmproduction, italsomustincludewhatnationalaudiencessee.BesidesaEuropeancountry’s artandauteur cinema,therearethecommercialproductions,andthereisHol- lywood,occupyinginmostEuropeancountriesthelion’sshareoftheboxoffice. Finally, one needs to add another player, the avant-garde cinema whose filmmakers, however, have almost always refused the label national cinema, be- causetheysawthemselvesasbothinternationalandanti-Hollywood. Pictures of Europe Behindthequestionaboutthefateofthecinemaintheslurksanotherone, debatedforalmostaslongasthecinemahasexisted,airedafresheveryyearat the film festivals of Cannes, Venice or Berlin, at FELIX award ceremonies and MEDIA initiatives: the future of the European cinema vis-à-vis Hollywood (whether viewed across France’s passionate attachment to its cinematic patri- mony,ormoredispassionately,acrosstheuneven,butnonethelesstwo-way“ta- lenttransfer”). In , a Channel Four program called “Pictures of Europe” neatly as- sembledallthestandardarguments,voicedwithvaryingdegreesofpessimism, by David Puttnam and Richard Attenborough, Bertrand Tavernier and Paul Verhoeven,FernandoReyandDirkBogarde,AgnèsVarda,WimWenders,and IstvanSzabo.OneoftheleastsentimentalwasDusanMakavejev,whohasprob- ablymorereasonthanmosttobewaryoftheideaofnationalcinema,butwho alsoneedstobelieveintheinternationalauteurcinemamorethanothers.Yethe dismissed the suggestion that he might be threatened by Hollywood: “If you EuropeanCulture,NationalCinema,theAuteurandHollywood 43 can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Living in the th century meant learning to be American.” On the other hand, Tavernier (whose knowledge about and love of the American cinema is probably second to none, noted the followinginhisdiaryforFebruaryabouttheCésarAwardsofthatyear: One grotesque and distressing moment comes when Sylvester Stallone is given an honoraryCésarbyasarcasticRomanPolanski.Afewdayspreviously,JackLanghad, inadiscouraginglyidioticgesture,madehimKnightofArtsandLetters,evengoing so far as to assert that the name Rambo had been chosen in honor of Rimbaud (Arthur)….Theheightofirony:I’dbewillingtobetthatthepeoplewhomadethese ludicrousawardshavenottheslightestfamiliaritywiththeonlyinterestingfilmthat Stallonehasdirected,thecuriousParadiseAlley. Tavernier’s final, typically cinéphile remark reminds us that in academic film studies, the Europe-Hollywood-Europe question mediated across the nouvelle vague’s love of the Hollywood film maudit is almost like the founding myth of thedisciplineitself.European(French)director-criticsdiscriminatingamongthe vast studio output, according to very European criteria, by creating a canon of Hollywoodmasterpieces eagerlyadoptedinturnbyAmericancriticsandfilm- makersalike.ButtherelationbetweenEuropeandHollywoodcanalsobemade (and has been made) as a hard-nosed economic case, for instance, in Thomas Guback’s chapter in Tino Balio’s The American Film Industry, or in Kristin Thompson’s fascinatingly detailed Exporting Entertainment, and most recently, inIanJarvie’sHollywood’sOverseasCampaign.Thepost-historyoftherela- tion was also probed in , at twoUCLA- and BFI-sponsored conferences in London and Los Angeles, while the formal case of how to make the distinction has been debated among scholars of “early cinema” such as Noel Burch and Barry Salt around the opposition “deep staging and slow cutting” (Europe) versus “shallow staging and fast cutting” (Hollywood), and it has been argued as a difference of storytelling by, among others, David Bordwell inhisinfluentialNarrationandtheFictionFilm,wherecharacter-centeredcausal- ity,question-and-answerlogic,problemsolvingroutines,deadlinestructuresof the plot, and a mutual cueing system of word, sound and image are seen as typical for Hollywood films, against the European cinema’s more de-centered plots, indirect and psychological motivation and “parametric” forms of narra- tion. Interestinglyenough,even inthetelevision programjustmentioned,thefor- mal-stylistic opposition Europe versus Hollywood, art cinema versus classical narrative recurs, but now in the terms in which it has been echoed ever since the s from the point of view of Hollywood, which has always complained that European pictures have no credible stars and central protagonists, or in their editing are much too slow for American audiences’ tastes. This point is 44 EuropeanCinema:FacetoFacewithHollywood taken up by many of the European directors and actors who have worked in bothindustries:PaulVerhoevenandJeanJacquesAnnaudseeAmericanspeed as positive qualities, as do J.J. Beneix, Krzysztof Zanussi, Luc Besson. David Puttnam and Pedro Almodóvar are more even-handed, while Fernando Rey and Dirk Bogardeprefer the slowerdeliveryof dialogueandthe less hectic ac- tionoftheEuropeancinema,asdo–notsurprisingly–WimWendersandBer- trandTavernier.Amongtheactors,itisLivUllmannwhoeloquentlyspeaksout against Hollywood forms of action, violence and the externalization of motive andemotion. PaulSchrader,ontheotherhand,whohasprobablythoughtasdeeplyabout styleinEuropeancinemaasanyone,arguedthattheconflictbetweenEurope and Hollywood boiled down to a fundamentally different attitude toward the world, from which comes a different kind of cinema: “American movies are basedontheassumptionthatlifepresentsyouwithproblems,whileEuropean films are based on the conviction that life confronts you with dilemmas – and while problems are something you solve, dilemmas cannot be solved, they’re merelyprobed.”Schrader’sdistinctionputsanumberofpertinentfeaturesina nutshell. His statement might even serve as a basis for teasing out some of the formal and theoretical implications. For instance, his assessment is not that far removedfromtheviewofGillesDeleuze,whoinhisBergson-inspiredstudyof the cinema proposes a more dynamic, and self-differentiating version of Jean- Luc Godard’s old distinction between “action” and “reflection” (the opening linesofLePeititSoldat),contrastinginsteadthemovement-imageofclassical cinemawiththetime-imageofmoderncinema. TothesedifferenttaxonomiesoftheHollywood/Europedivideonecanreply thattheproblem-solvingmodelofHollywoodcinemaisnotintendedtocharac- terize a filmmaker’s personal belief. It does, however, function largely as the norm that underlies the expectations of both kinds of audiences, American as wellasEuropean, when it comes to cinema-going as astory-tellingexperience. Hollywood mainstream or “classical” films are the dominant because they are made (“tailored” was the term already used by King Vidor in the late s) around increasingly global audiences, while non-Hollywood cinemas have to findtheiraudiencesatthemarginsofthemainstream(theso-called“art-house” audiences), for they cannot even rely on the loyalty of their respective “national” audiences. There is another point, a cliché perhaps, but for that very reason, in need of being stated: European filmmakers are said to express themselves,ratherthanaddressanaudience.Idonotthinkthatthisisinfactthecase(I havearguedagainstitatlengthinabookonNewGermanCinema).Forinstance, ifbyfollowingSchrader,oneassumesthattheEuropeanartcinemamerelysets its audiences different kinds of tasks, such as inferring the characters’ motiva- tions (as in Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence), reconstructing a complex time