Waning One-Time Art House Titans

[MichaelB]

The most striking example of this weirdness IMO is Black and White in Color winning the Foreign Language Oscar over Seven Beauties, which was also nominated in the Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay categories. And since that was the only time Italy ever submitted any of Wertmüller's work, none of her films ever won the foreign-language Oscar even though she was probably one of the hottest things going in the seventies U.S. arthouse scene.

You were quite right to say "the U.S. arthouse scene", because although her major films were released in the UK they had much less impact and, as far as I can see, no particular repertory life to speak of thereafter. And I don't think anything got released after the 1970s.

But, conversely, we discovered Krzysztof Kieślowski in 1981 with the belated and much-acclaimed release of Camera Buff, whereas I don't think he made any real impact outside specialist Polish circles in the US until Dekalog nearly a decade later. Which I suspect has contributed to the hugely erroneous impression that he's "middlebrow"; most people simply hadn't seen the pre-1987 Polish films, which are anything but.

And that in turn has reminded me of the way that Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight was marketed as a thoroughly mainstream, star-driven commercial film in Holland, a subtitled, Oscar-nominated arthouse film in the US... and dubbed soft porn in the UK!

[thirtyframesasecond]

But that beat Cyrano de Bergerac, Ju Dou and The Nasty Girl.

Especially surprising since Cyrano had an ATL nom for Depardieu and a few other noms, and actually won an Oscar for the costumes

The most striking example of this weirdness IMO is Black and White in Color winning the Foreign Language Oscar over Seven Beauties, which was also nominated in the Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay categories. And since that was the only time Italy ever submitted any of Wertmüller's work, none of her films ever won the foreign-language Oscar even though she was probably one of the hottest things going in the seventies U.S. arthouse scene. It's not entirely the same situation, but there was also City of God failing to land even a nomination for the foreign-language award the year before it got four nods in the general categories.

I don't know how far back this goes, but until the 2014 Oscars members could only vote in the foreign-language category by proving they'd seen all five nominees in a theater; the only other category with this rule was Documentary Feature, which has a similar reputation for oddball picks (and ditched the rule a year earlier). The result is that the winners in these categories were determined by a few hundred ballots while most other categories got thousands. (This isn't even getting into the nomination processes, which had and have their own issues.) Starting with next year's Oscars the requirement to see all nominees will be applied to all categories, but without the requirement for theatrical attendance. In practice the rule is basically unenforceable, but then that would be the case even with a theatrical screening requirement, since voters could just buy tickets and skip the actual screenings.

I've not seen it but Jean Jacques Annaud actually had a pretty decent career as a filmmaker.

[knives]

It’s a good enough film. HVE released it on DVD back in the day.

[Farley Flavors]

...and note the "Now On Video" bar at the bottom; I think this was released near-simultaneously in cinemas and on video, which was very unusual at the time.

Palace Pictures - i.e. Steve Woolley's outfit, which also ran the Scala Cinema - was behind it.

So Palace were responsible for UK theatrical distribution as well as the video release? I remember Palace releasing The Evil Dead on video a few weeks after the January 1983 UK premiere, to the ire of the traditional distributors. Didn't realise they had previous on that front.

[beamish14]

Especially surprising since Cyrano had an ATL nom for Depardieu and a few other noms, and actually won an Oscar for the costumes

The most striking example of this weirdness IMO is Black and White in Color winning the Foreign Language Oscar over Seven Beauties, which was also nominated in the Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay categories. And since that was the only time Italy ever submitted any of Wertmüller's work, none of her films ever won the foreign-language Oscar even though she was probably one of the hottest things going in the seventies U.S. arthouse scene. It's not entirely the same situation, but there was also City of God failing to land even a nomination for the foreign-language award the year before it got four nods in the general categories.

I don't know how far back this goes, but until the 2014 Oscars members could only vote in the foreign-language category by proving they'd seen all five nominees in a theater; the only other category with this rule was Documentary Feature, which has a similar reputation for oddball picks (and ditched the rule a year earlier). The result is that the winners in these categories were determined by a few hundred ballots while most other categories got thousands. (This isn't even getting into the nomination processes, which had and have their own issues.) Starting with next year's Oscars the requirement to see all nominees will be applied to all categories, but without the requirement for theatrical attendance. In practice the rule is basically unenforceable, but then that would be the case even with a theatrical screening requirement, since voters could just buy tickets and skip the actual screenings.

I've not seen it but Jean Jacques Annaud actually had a pretty decent career as a filmmaker.

Annaud’s The Bear holds a special place in my heart as the first live action feature I ever saw in a theatre. I’m moving to British Columbia next year, so maybe it planted the seed in my mind

[Altair]

I'm currently re-reading Pauline Kael's collections of criticism, and one of the stray pleasures is coming across the sacred cows of the 1950s who have now fallen into obscurity (both justifiably or not): Robert Flaherty, Marcel Carné, René Clair, Jean Vigo, René Clément, Bernhard Wicki...

[Saturnome]

I have a thing for authors who used to be a thing back in the early days of criticism.
Vsevolod Pudovkin is surely among them, he even made the top 10 in the 1958 World Fair Film Poll.

Or really I like any mention of forgotten films. I have this Cahiers du Cinéma from 1959 and in a biography of Georges Franju there's a paragraph that goes "while Franju was doing such and such, these movies were made" that namedrop a bunch of obvious well known classics 1930s films from Chaplin, Lang, Pabst, Lubitsch and somehow there's Victor Trivias' Niemandsland and Nikolai Ekk's Road to Life.

[domino harvey]

Nikolai Ekk's Road to Life.

Featured in Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema. Cahiers in general were huge proponents of Soviet cinema, so it may or may not have been well known at the time of that writing.

Reminds me, re: this thread, of the once popular worldwide Soviet film that vanished instantly from the canon, the Lady With the Dog

[domino harvey]

René Clair

One interesting “canon classic” I keep running into in books of the sixties is Clair’s Un chapeau de paille d'Italie / the Italian Straw Hat, a movie no one talks about anymore whatsoever

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The most striking example of this weirdness IMO is Black and White in Color winning the Foreign Language Oscar over Seven Beauties, which was also nominated in the Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay categories. And since that was the only time Italy ever submitted any of Wertmüller's work, none of her films ever won the foreign-language Oscar even though she was probably one of the hottest things going in the seventies U.S. arthouse scene.

You were quite right to say "the U.S. arthouse scene", because although her major films were released in the UK they had much less impact and, as far as I can see, no particular repertory life to speak of thereafter. And I don't think anything got released after the 1970s.

Intresting that Wertmüller was such a minor presence in the UK, since one of her numerous all-but-forgotten post-Seven Beauties films was a co-production with Lew Grade (Blood Feud). I don't know how she's fared on the U.S. repertory scene outside the recent Kino Lorber reissues that got a decent amount of play, but she had enough of an at least residual following to land U.S. distribution for her post-'70s films... up until Crystal and Ash, which never got released here despite being an English-language production shot mainly in New York with Faye Dunaway, Rutger Hauer, and Nastassja Kinski. After that I think only Ciao, Professore! managed a U.S. release, courtesy of Miramax who actually gave it a decent push. But until the late '70s she was big enough in the U.S. to get a four-picture deal with WB (which was canceled after the first picture) and to be portrayed twice by Laraine Newman on Saturday Night Live. (Also, a correction to my previous post: Italy also put Summer Night up for the Oscars, but that was well after Wertmüller's heyday and it didn't get nominated.)

I've not seen it but Jean Jacques Annaud actually had a pretty decent career as a filmmaker.

I wasn't so much nominating Annaud for the title of the thread—for one thing I'd say very little of his work was "arthouse," at least in the U.S.—just putting forward another case of a film losing the foreign-language Oscar despite scoring multiple nominations in the general categories.

This inspired me to check out Annaud's autobiography to see what he has to say about the Oscar upset. He implies that the producer of Black and White in Color sought to keep Annaud under wraps in the U.S., claiming he was told not to attend the ceremony "because people think you're Black." The award was actually a double upset because it also beat Cousin, Cousine, which had been a major arthouse hit; Annaud writes that its producer filed a complaint to have the Oscar for Black and White in Color revoked on the grounds that voters had been improperly influenced, and adds that said producer (the head of Gaumont) ended up co-producing his next film Hothead. He also says (as confirmed by Ebert's contemporary review) that 1977 was the first year of the requirement to watch all five nominees before voting in the foreign-language category—since Black and White in Color wasn't actually released in the U.S. until after the ceremony, this meant prospective voters would've been effectively unable to see it outside of special member screenings. Eventually Miramax and other crafty distributors/producers would deliberately limit the exposure of certain Oscar hopefuls to ensure a smaller and more manipulable voter pool.

[domino harvey]

Cousin Cousine is a great example for this thread too. I hated it when I watched it a few years back and do not understand its one-time popularity whatsoever, but it was hugely popular at the time and had an (unwarranted) ATL nom for Best Actress

[Saturnome]

Nikolai Ekk's Road to Life.

Featured in Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema. Cahiers in general were huge proponents of Soviet cinema, so it may or may not have been well known at the time of that writing.

After stumbling upon it's title, I've read a bit and learned that Road to Life was a success across Europe and was shown in the USA in 1932, with "captions" (subtitles I guess, not common in 1932) and a filmed introduction by John Dewey. It got great reviews and won a National Board of Review award. American enthusiasm for soviet films that started with Potemkine waned down right after this I think though.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I'm currently re-reading Pauline Kael's collections of criticism, and one of the stray pleasures is coming across the sacred cows of the 1950s who have now fallen into obscurity (both justifiably or not): Robert Flaherty, Marcel Carné, René Clair, Jean Vigo, René Clément, Bernhard Wicki...

I suppose the Nouvelle Vague is most people's "go-to" for French cinema, but Carné, Clair and Vigo have a terrific body of work - shame if others ignore it.

[MichaelB]

Carné and Vigo were regular repertory staples in London three decades ago - so much so that I haven't seen Les Enfants du Paradis to this day because it turned up so often on the big screen that I assumed another screening would be along in a few weeks' time. Clair much less so - I recall screening Sous les toits de Paris at least once, but I don't remember much else.

(As ever, this was based on availability rather than cinema programmers' personal taste.)

[colinr0380]

Annaud is an interesting case study. The last film I remember getting any attention in the UK at all was that 2004 lion cub film Two Brothers, and even then it was rather minor (but did receive television play). Black Gold did get a minor physical media release in the UK, but only on DVD, years into the Blu-ray era. It does make me wonder if some of the fading was to do with the 'international style' of his films, with actors working in English language films whatever the settings, which may go back to the issues surrounding ideas of dubbing discussed earlier. I presume a lot of Annaud's films fell on the side of the issue where it would not particularly matter about doing authentic subtitled dialogue when you could just get big name actors and do it all in English with a bit of an accent knowing that the film would be dubbed in most other territories anyway. While I like the films very much I seem to remember both The Name of the Rose and Enemy At The Gates being taken to task for those aspects (though that did mean that we got the gloriously incongruous sight & sound of Bob Hoskins as Nikita Khruschev! Which was only slightly less weird than his Noriega!). In a way it felt more believable when he dealt with more animal subjects where dialogue was at its minimal and the nature photography took over such as Quest For Fire, The Bear and even the best parts of Two Brothers (and, say, the mountaineering scenes of Seven Years In Tibet; or the lengthy dialogue-free tense sniper sections of Enemy At The Gates).

So it was interesting to see from his imdb that he has done a 2015 film in China dealing with Mongolian themes, Wolf Totem (2015 being quite a different time in China from recent years that would have allowed such subjects to be tackled, or even a filmmaker who had previously made a Tibetan themed film in the late 90s to have even gone to China to be allowed to do such a thing), and even a 2022 film about the Notre Dame fire! Neither of those films had even come near to my radar until just searching them up.

Cousin Cousine is a great example for this thread too. I hated it when I watched it a few years back and do not understand its one-time popularity whatsoever, but it was hugely popular at the time and had an (unwarranted) ATL nom for Best Actress

Plus that Ted Danson starring remake Cousins, which was presumably trying to repeat the 'Ted Danson in a remake of a French film' lightning in a bottle of Three Men and a Baby from a couple of years beforehand.

[beamish14]

Like Carol Ballard, animal-themed films basically became Annaud’s stock in trade. When I saw Ballard speak earlier this year, he seemed a bit bitter over not being given the opportunity to tackle other types of fare

[colinr0380]

I think Roselynne only received a dubbed release in Britain.

What I booked and played was definitely in French. I also don't recall being offered a choice, which suggests that it was only available in French - and a quick check of the relevant Monthly Film Bulletin (December 1989) confirms that it was subtitled.

That said, it might conceivably have been dubbed on video, since this was just before subtitled VHS releases really took off.

Just saw this and Roselyne and the Lions definitely received subtitled screenings on Channel 4 in October 1997 and repeated in March 1998, which is where I saw the film. That may have been the last flurry of Beineix on UK television as Channel 4 did a "Crème de la Crème" season of French films (introduced by Antoine de Caunes during his "Eurotrash" phase naturally!) in the Summer of 1998 which showed the director's cut version of Betty Blue. Though the BBC did show Diva in 1999 and 2001 as well.

[Zot!]

The Dogma films other than Idiots and Celebration had a pretty quick expiry. I'm also a fan of John Duigan, and other than Sirens (probably due to prurient interest) he's pretty much disappeared. Ditto for Erick Zonca, and don't hear too much about Hector Babenco either, and was surprised that Criterion buried a thing with cult appeal like Pixote in a "World Cinema" compilation box. But his Hollywood successes (and failure) don't get brought up too much either.

[beamish14]

The Dogma films other than Idiots and Celebration had a pretty quick expiry. I'm also a fan of John Duigan, and other than Sirens (probably due to prurient interest) he's pretty much disappeared. Ditto for Erick Zonca, and don't hear too much about Hector Babenco either, and was surprised that Criterion buried a thing with cult appeal like Pixote in a "World Cinema" compilation box.

Babenco jumped quickly into 2 relatively big-budget studio prestige films, Ironweed and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, both of which cost at least $20 million USD to produce and grossed under $2 million at the American box office

[beamish14]

Bruno Barreto is another prime candidate for this thread. 2 Oscar nominations, and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands was wildly successful, but he’s toggled between Brazilian films and Hollywood garbage

[hearthesilence]

Do Merchant/Ivory films count? They were mainstays of the Oscars for about a decade - even though they always had their detractors, mainstream newspaper critics (Siskel & Ebert) generally liked them and their films were probably among the highest grossing arthouse bookings out there. Things eventually went south and the films dried up after Merchant's death as well as Ivory's advancing age. (Reports of Merchant's ruthless practices towards anyone "below-the-line" may have hurt their reputation too.) I can't count myself as a fan, but I have a soft spot for Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, probably the finest film Newman and Woodward acted in together, though there were very few of those.

Not "art house," but Oliver Stone was concurrently a staple at the Oscars too and feted as if he was one of the great Hollywood auteurs of the '80s and '90s, but I couldn't disagree more with that assessment. There may be one or two films that would hold up as good (but not great) films to me, but otherwise I remain bewildered by the lavish praise he once got.

[The Curious Sofa]

I'd argue if anything the stock of Merchant-Ivory has risen. While their most successful films were popular at the Oscars and BAFTAs (especially for their acting) and with more mainstream critics, many critics derided them for their faithful literary adaptations being merely decorative and uncinematic. This was especially noticable in rhe UK, where it was felt their films were overly fussy 'costume pictures' and peddling British stereotypes. But over recent years I noticed a critical reevaluation, as can be seen in the documentary about them from a couple of years ago. I too was a bit of a snob about them, but have revisited some of their films and gained a now appreciation for them, especially the E.M. Foster adaptations and Remains of the Day.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The later Merchant-Ivory output wasn't all that successful but some of their earlier films still seem to do quite well on the U.S. revival circuit—A Room with a View just screened here and another venue is showing Maurice later this month. The Drafthouse chain even showed Howards End a few years ago as part of their "Afternoon Tea" series.

[beamish14]

The later Merchant-Ivory output wasn't all that successful but some of their earlier films still seem to do quite well on the U.S. revival circuit—A Room with a View just screened here and another venue is showing Maurice later this month. The Drafthouse chain even showed Howards End a few years ago as part of their "Afternoon Tea" series.

Le Divorce was an outlier which did well, but the company is apparently still being sued by Anthony Hopkins and others for non-payment for films like The City of Your Final Destination

Howard’s End and Remains of the Day got a number of 70mm revival screenings at the American Cinematheque

[hearthesilence]

I have to disagree with Remains of the Day, which I actually kind of liked when I saw it as a kid, but I revisited it many years later and thought it was wildly uneven. Hopkins is excellent, much of the cast is fine, but what it was trying to say in terms of political history felt clumsily executed with no new insight. I wish I did like it more because it is handsomely mounted in terms of production design and costumes - presumably all genuine articles loaned to the production or rented for a pittance - and besides the cast it does have a fine score, but in some ways that just made it all the more disappointing that the rest of the film wasn't better.

I'm also bewildered how the company can have so many problems with everyone it's worked with. I can't remember if it was an obit or some other article, but one of the trade papers published something on Merchant some years back after he was dead and the comments section filled up with production personnel who blasted him for failing to pay anyone (or paying far less than promised) and generally treating them like garbage. It was pretty shocking and sadly details that have emerged since then haven't contradicted anything.