Waning One-Time Art House Titans

[Zot!]

I don't think this is a minority opinion in a home video forum, but for me film as a capture (and even post-production) format is much more expressive than a presentation format. I am absolutely fine with a digital out for any film. That said, I have been really let down with the image quality in some of the multiplex DCP projections lately, and they looked dark and digitally-garish in color to me. Will be curious if its just my eyes that are going, and look forward to my screening of the new PTA film to compare.

[pistolwink]

Over on the 35mm Forum, many members who were a part of university cinema societies have said that they cut ties with New Yorker Films due to the atrocious quality of the prints they would distribute

Can confirm. I recall some examples where a print was so damaged and/or faded that it was unscreenable, and a note to that effect would be sent to New Yorker. But they would continue renting out the same print for years. Their print of Story of the Last Chrysanthemums comes to mind.

[MichaelB]

Same in the UK, but the sad fact is that a tiny handful of repertory bookings simply aren't going to recoup the cost of a new 35mm print (which thirty years ago was in the low four figures). So the same prints would do the rounds for years until they fell apart, after which they often weren't replaced.

And to give you an example of how rarely some films were booked, Empire magazine claimed in the mid-1990s that Barry Lyndon was as impossible to see as A Clockwork Orange and speculated as to whether it had similarly been withdrawn. So I rang my contact at Warner Bros, who said "no, it's been continuously bookable since 1975, but you're the only cinema that's booked it in years."

So we booked it again, told Empire that we'd let the first ten people clutching a copy of the magazine in for free, they duly announced it... and only two or three took us up on the offer.

(The same guy told me how startled he was when ABBA The Movie suddenly got loads of bookings in the 1990s - because between 1978 and then nobody had played it at all!)

[colinr0380]

The Antipodean effect of Muriel's Wedding/Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? Which would be nicely fitting given that ABBA The Movie is set around their Australian tour!

[hearthesilence]

They definitely had a sudden revival then - ABBA Gold was released in the '90s and it soon became a tremendous blockbuster. (I'm still a bit of an agnostic - I wholly recognize their influence on music I enjoy from Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army" to Madonna's "Hung Up"'s "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" sample - but the only ABBA record I've come to love is "Knowing Me, Knowing You.")

[Beloved Aunt]

Rene Clair

[Maltic]

For the Danish boomer generation art/rep house crowd, I would say the following used to be bigger (or less small): Bo Widerberg, Costa-Gavras (esp. Z), Dusan Makavajev, Yılmaz Güney (esp. Yol), Gianni Amelio.

Relatively speaking, of course, I'm not saying they all had equal stature by any stretch.

Regarding Annaud, The Name of the Rose is among the films which the Danish Film Institute's Cinemateket will still program endlessly, by popular demand, alongside Jaws, Le Grand Bleu, My Neighbor Totoro, Wild at Heart, Wings of Desire, Cinema Paradiso, Smoke, Fish Tank, Thelma & Louise, Bycicle Thieves, Taxi Driver, Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Singing in the Rain.

[Maltic]

I doubt David Lean was ever 'art house'.

No, this ties in with the point that I made earlier about how 100% mainstream commercial films made in one country somehow magically become "arthouse" films in another. David Lean was always entirely a creature of the mainstream British film industry - his 1940s films are the exact equivalent of Hollywood dramas on similar themes.

You might say they're examples of what some have called the Hollywood British film (like Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Mrs. Miniver) - except they're actually British...

[Zot!]

I have not heard anything concerning Fatih Akın or Tom Tykwer in ages...despite Tykwer tying his wagon to the still popular Wachowskis. I don't think I've even heard of this Tom Hanks movie he apparently made.

[domino harvey]

I saw it (presumably you mean A Hologram for the King and not Cloud Atlas) but wouldn’t have remembered it at all unless prompted like this

[The Curious Sofa]

I have not heard anything concerning Fatih Akın or Tom Tykwer in ages...despite Tykwer tying his wagon to the still popular Wachowskis. I don't think I've even heard of this Tom Hanks movie he apparently made.

Fatih Akın has Amrum coming out next month in Germany. It was well received in Cannes, so maybe it will get an international release. Both are filmmakers who never managed to follow up their one big hit with anything that equalled it in terms of critical success.

[domino harvey]

Dusan Makavajev

This is a good one even for non-Danes. I’m not sure how many people even register the name despite Criterion having released five of his most well regarded films (and upgrading none of them, though I imagine Sweet Movie isn’t high on the list in our current climate), but I’ve been reading a lot of film criticism journals from the late 60s and he was a more major figure than he seems to be these days. Maybe one day we’ll at least get WR on Blu from someone if not Criterion

[Zot!]

I have not heard anything concerning Fatih Akın or Tom Tykwer in ages...despite Tykwer tying his wagon to the still popular Wachowskis. I don't think I've even heard of this Tom Hanks movie he apparently made.

Fatih Akın has Amrum coming out next month in Germany. It was well received in Cannes, so maybe it will get an international release.

Cool, I'd like to catch up, I liked Head On, and felt like his more mature follow ups perhaps even improved beyond that. Outside of Germany, I think Head On had a moment....and then crickets.

I saw it (presumably you mean A Hologram for the King and not Cloud Atlas) but wouldn’t have remembered it at all unless prompted like this

That's the one, I forgot Hanks was even in Cloud Atlas.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Cool, I'd like to catch up, I liked Head On, and felt like his more mature follow ups perhaps even improved beyond that. Outside of Germany, I think Head On had a moment....and then crickets.

I think The Edge of Heaven and In the Fade did pretty well internationally. In the Fade actually won a Golden Globe, for whatever that's worth. Here in the U.S. his films usually get picked up by Strand (even The Golden Glove which was, uh, not enthusiastically received), but Kino Lorber will release Amrum.

[colinr0380]

Dusan Makavajev

This is a good one even for non-Danes. I’m not sure how many people even register the name despite Criterion having released five of his most well regarded films (and upgrading none of them, though I imagine Sweet Movie isn’t high on the list in our current climate), but I’ve been reading a lot of film criticism journals from the late 60s and he was a more major figure than he seems to be these days. Maybe one day we’ll at least get WR on Blu from someone if not Criterion

Sweet Movie (NSFW) is also still currently banned in the UK, although it is an interesting censorship case since there are so many different forms of contentious material, and it appears that the issues causing it to be banned seem to have moved from the Otto Muehl, Viennese Actionism commune stuff, and more towards the boat captain seducing underage children.

[DeprongMori]

I have not heard anything concerning Fatih Akın or Tom Tykwer in ages...despite Tykwer tying his wagon to the still popular Wachowskis. I don't think I've even heard of this Tom Hanks movie he apparently made.

Tom Tykwer has been engaged in delivering five seasons of the highly popular German television series Babylon Berlin between 2017 to 2025.

[JSC]

Although he has directed some films more recently, Jean Pierre Jeunet (and by extension Marc Caro) doesn't seem
to have the same kind of international impact that he once had (at least from what I've observed).

[pianocrash]

Although he has directed some films more recently, Jean Pierre Jeunet (and by extension Marc Caro) doesn't seem
to have the same kind of international impact that he once had (at least from what I've observed).

There was a Netflix feature most recently, but after A Very Long Engagement, I believe that was about it for the greater American market, sadly (and Miramax, FWIW). Their trajectory afterward sort of mirrors the later Tim Burton projects (high whimsy, but even lower stakes), but I would hope, more interesting (French!).

Sweet Movie has (had?) a BD forthcoming from le chat qui fume this fall, though I also remember a German label (Camera Obscura) was supposed to release a 4K in 2023 that, sadly, never materialized. Thinking about how buying my last sealed VHS of the Facets edition on Amazon pre-CC brings back memories, but perhaps the lull in upgrade is an onus that the material itself is putting on another era of others desperate to see it at all (mostly 4K hogs, but whatever). When Fun City released The Coca Cola Kid BD, I was ready for wave of Makavejev, but then...crickets.

Tom Tykwer has been engaged in delivering five seasons of the highly popular German television series Babylon Berlin between 2017 to 2025.

Thank you for this - I had no idea he was even involved!

[The Curious Sofa]

Spoiler

Cool, I'd like to catch up, I liked Head On, and felt like his more mature follow ups perhaps even improved beyond that. Outside of Germany, I think Head On had a moment....and then crickets.

Spoiler

I think The Edge of Heaven and

In the Fade did pretty well internationally. In the Fade actually won a Golden Globe, for whatever that's worth.

Spoiler

Here in the U.S. his films usually get picked up by Strand (even The Golden Glove which was, uh, not enthusiastically received), but Kino Lorber will release Amrum.

Not much as far as I'm concerned. Overwrought and melodramatic, it had all the subtlety of a sledge hammer, but then that's typical of much of contemporary German cinema.

[Never Cursed]

What a delight this thread was to read thru!

I saw someone on another website suggest that a decent way to check for the quality being discussed was to go on Letterboxd, look over the directors that contributed to the 2000s mass-anthology movies (Lumière and Company, Chacun son cinema, Venezia Reloaded). If a director's "most popular" films are one or multiple of those (in other words, their most popular movie on the site is not as popular as something usually watched to achieve Coen Brothers/Spike Lee/David Lynch completionism), there's a good chance this might have happened to them. Doing this, I can see a mixture of filmmakers who definitely experienced this kind of arc for political or personal reasons (Amos Gitai) alongside those who have suffered for a long time from a complete lack of English-friendly distribution (how is City of Pirates completely inaccessible for anyone who doesn't have access to backchannels? what are we doing here?).

Also: Emir Kusturica is a prime example of this. I assumed he would be somewhere in those compilation movies, but I think he was actually away making his own anthologies (including one starring himself and Monica Belluci!)

[Maltic]

Good point.

BTW, I made a list of Movies That Annoyingly Show Up All the Time When You Browse Letterboxd Because of Multiple Directors or Huge Cast, and those were some of the top ranked ones, along with How the West Was Won.

Luckily, they've stopped listing actors from archival footage in collage documentaries like And the Oscar Goes To...and The Kid Stays in the Picture, but Stanwyck & co. are still in the cast list for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid...

[Never Cursed]

BTW, I made a list of Movies That Annoyingly Show Up All the Time When You Browse Letterboxd Because of Multiple Directors or Huge Cast, and those were some of the top ranked ones, along with How the West Was Won.

Can you link the list?

[domino harvey]

Good point.

BTW, I made a list of Movies That Annoyingly Show Up All the Time When You Browse Letterboxd Because of Multiple Directors or Huge Cast, and those were some of the top ranked ones, along with How the West Was Won.

Luckily, they've stopped listing actors from archival footage in collage documentaries like And the Oscar Goes To...and The Kid Stays in the Picture, but Stanwyck & co. are still in the cast list for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid...

Reminds me of the hundreds of postings for Hitler as an actor due to all the documentaries that have footage of him

[Maltic]

I had privated the list and I'm not gonna bother my countless followers with it by publishing, but it goes like this (ranked by annoyance factor at the time I compiled it):

1 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid 1982
2 To Each His Own Cinema 2007
3 How the West Was Won 1962
4 Lumière & Company 1995
5 Venice 70: Future Reloaded 2013
6 And the Oscar Goes To… 2014
7 The Kid Stays in the Picture 2002
8 The Longest Day 1962
9 Paris Je T’aime 2006
10 Six in Paris 1965
11 New York Stories 1989
12 That’s Entertainment! 1974
13 One Hundred and One Nights 1995
14 Around the World in Eighty Days 1956
15 All the Invisible Children 2005
16 Far from Vietnam 1967
17 Visions of Eight 1973
18 Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter 1990

[domino harvey]

I don’t get the list to be honest because a lot of these are valid entries in a filmography