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Cinema Paradiso and the rise of the postcard-arthouse movie | Cinema Paradiso and the rise of the postcard-arthouse movie |
(4 months later) | |
From the start, Cinema Paradiso carries itself like one of the classics its adorable scamp gazes at, open-mouthed, from the projection room. It has an adorable scamp, for starters – and plenty besides: the timeless Sicilian locations, the Felliniesque social carnival, the thunderbolt love affair, humanism lashed about as freely as olive oil. Giuseppe Tornatore's film is a cosy passeggiata down a celluloid Möbius strip looping art into life. When it arrived in the US in February 1990 – all gilded sequences and grand themes – it seemed like the distillation of the idea of classic foreign cinema. | From the start, Cinema Paradiso carries itself like one of the classics its adorable scamp gazes at, open-mouthed, from the projection room. It has an adorable scamp, for starters – and plenty besides: the timeless Sicilian locations, the Felliniesque social carnival, the thunderbolt love affair, humanism lashed about as freely as olive oil. Giuseppe Tornatore's film is a cosy passeggiata down a celluloid Möbius strip looping art into life. When it arrived in the US in February 1990 – all gilded sequences and grand themes – it seemed like the distillation of the idea of classic foreign cinema. |
The two-hour cut – simplifying the characterisation, amplifying the air of easy prestige – won the 1989 foreign-language film Oscar, and took $12m at the US box office (it's still the 18th most successful foreign-language film in America). With the five other foreign-language Oscars bagged by Miramax before 2000, it signalled the rise of the glossy, streamlined foreign-language film – bottled classics with a life-affirming tang and a little twist of another culture. Call it postcard arthouse. Foreign films would increasingly need this smart, corporate-friendly makeover to gain access to the mainstream, and global audiences. | The two-hour cut – simplifying the characterisation, amplifying the air of easy prestige – won the 1989 foreign-language film Oscar, and took $12m at the US box office (it's still the 18th most successful foreign-language film in America). With the five other foreign-language Oscars bagged by Miramax before 2000, it signalled the rise of the glossy, streamlined foreign-language film – bottled classics with a life-affirming tang and a little twist of another culture. Call it postcard arthouse. Foreign films would increasingly need this smart, corporate-friendly makeover to gain access to the mainstream, and global audiences. |
Postcard arthouse became a Miramax signature line, from Paradiso to Like Water for Chocolate to Amélie. The Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, were the masters at shrewdly repackaging foreign films for US audiences. The 1990s also saw bigger players move in for the kill: Sony Pictures Classics and Focus Features (later sucked into Universal) were formed in 1992, Fox Searchlight two years later. Headhunting potential crossovers, and increasingly producing them too, was an attempt to shift the limits of where arthouse ended and mainstream began. Post-Oscar triumph, Paradiso was pushed wide on to more than 100 screens; unheard of for a "specialist" film at the time. On the back of its Cannes triumph, it outgrossed Tim Burton's Batman for several weeks in France. | Postcard arthouse became a Miramax signature line, from Paradiso to Like Water for Chocolate to Amélie. The Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, were the masters at shrewdly repackaging foreign films for US audiences. The 1990s also saw bigger players move in for the kill: Sony Pictures Classics and Focus Features (later sucked into Universal) were formed in 1992, Fox Searchlight two years later. Headhunting potential crossovers, and increasingly producing them too, was an attempt to shift the limits of where arthouse ended and mainstream began. Post-Oscar triumph, Paradiso was pushed wide on to more than 100 screens; unheard of for a "specialist" film at the time. On the back of its Cannes triumph, it outgrossed Tim Burton's Batman for several weeks in France. |
This corporate scrum filled the gap left by the collapse of Orion Pictures, which had dominated foreign-film distribution in the US in the 1980s with a string of successes including Ran, Jean de Florette, Wings of Desire, Babette's Feast and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The company pulled in some respectable hauls (including $8m for Cyrano de Bergerac), and had started to experiment with strategies designed to circumvent the US market's foreign-language phobia and tap into unlikely converts: for example, marketing for Pedro Almodóvar's Women that played down the fact that Spain's most promising young director made his films in Spanish. | This corporate scrum filled the gap left by the collapse of Orion Pictures, which had dominated foreign-film distribution in the US in the 1980s with a string of successes including Ran, Jean de Florette, Wings of Desire, Babette's Feast and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The company pulled in some respectable hauls (including $8m for Cyrano de Bergerac), and had started to experiment with strategies designed to circumvent the US market's foreign-language phobia and tap into unlikely converts: for example, marketing for Pedro Almodóvar's Women that played down the fact that Spain's most promising young director made his films in Spanish. |
But the post-Paradiso scramble for foreign-language cinema saw across-the-board imposition of corporate thinking. The Weinsteins' infamously ruthless edits were the blunt tool used to straighten out kinks for the US market. But increasingly it was ensured in advance that postcard arthouse was franked for delivery abroad: with handsome production values; marketable knowns, such as stars or genre; a life-affirming or sentimental slant. Most of the big imports in the US since the early 1990s, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (still the No 1 foreign-language film) to The Orphanage to The Lives of Others ticked most of those boxes. | But the post-Paradiso scramble for foreign-language cinema saw across-the-board imposition of corporate thinking. The Weinsteins' infamously ruthless edits were the blunt tool used to straighten out kinks for the US market. But increasingly it was ensured in advance that postcard arthouse was franked for delivery abroad: with handsome production values; marketable knowns, such as stars or genre; a life-affirming or sentimental slant. Most of the big imports in the US since the early 1990s, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (still the No 1 foreign-language film) to The Orphanage to The Lives of Others ticked most of those boxes. |
You're probably familiar with most of those, but it's debatable how much clout the strategy actually had inside the US, with an audience whose preferences remain strongly insular. Foreign-film consumption continued to dwindle, from a high of 10% of the market in the 1960s, to 7% in the mid-80s, to 0.75% in 2010. (By contrast, in the UK, foreign-language films took 2.4% of box office in 2012.) Top-rankers unleashing the full marketing cavalry, such as Crouching Tiger and Life Is Beautiful, were able to pull in once-unthinkable grosses that took them into studio-picture territory. But the McMiramaxing (to quote Peter Biskind) of the foreign-language market arguably narrowed tastes and reduced scope for discoveries. The average foreign film struggles to break beyond $5m now: the days when a minor distributor could push an outsider such as La Dolce Vita to $19m or I Am Curious (Yellow) to $20m (which, adjusted for inflation, would place those two films at the top of the foreign-language top 10) are gone. | You're probably familiar with most of those, but it's debatable how much clout the strategy actually had inside the US, with an audience whose preferences remain strongly insular. Foreign-film consumption continued to dwindle, from a high of 10% of the market in the 1960s, to 7% in the mid-80s, to 0.75% in 2010. (By contrast, in the UK, foreign-language films took 2.4% of box office in 2012.) Top-rankers unleashing the full marketing cavalry, such as Crouching Tiger and Life Is Beautiful, were able to pull in once-unthinkable grosses that took them into studio-picture territory. But the McMiramaxing (to quote Peter Biskind) of the foreign-language market arguably narrowed tastes and reduced scope for discoveries. The average foreign film struggles to break beyond $5m now: the days when a minor distributor could push an outsider such as La Dolce Vita to $19m or I Am Curious (Yellow) to $20m (which, adjusted for inflation, would place those two films at the top of the foreign-language top 10) are gone. |
The rise of postcard arthouse had far greater ramifications abroad. It encouraged more film-makers outside the US to frame their stories commercially in the hope of cracking open the global mainstream. The Hollywoodisation of foreign-language films helped disseminate the rulebook of pop cinema worldwide. Countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Russia and South Korea – whose postwar industries had either withered, or been state-directed to the point of strangulation – began, with the help of the flood of globalised private cash, producing their own accessible films that could fight for multiplex space and bigger audiences. | The rise of postcard arthouse had far greater ramifications abroad. It encouraged more film-makers outside the US to frame their stories commercially in the hope of cracking open the global mainstream. The Hollywoodisation of foreign-language films helped disseminate the rulebook of pop cinema worldwide. Countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Russia and South Korea – whose postwar industries had either withered, or been state-directed to the point of strangulation – began, with the help of the flood of globalised private cash, producing their own accessible films that could fight for multiplex space and bigger audiences. |
Some of it was co-produced by the US studios. Some of them were vacuum-packed for the Americans to pick up – angling for the elevated box office, Oscars push, fast-track to global attention, the whole circus. But an equal number – from Amores Perros ($20m worldwide) to Night Watch ($33m) to The Host ($89m) – thrived perfectly well on their own terms, eventually allowing postcard arthouse to evolve. | Some of it was co-produced by the US studios. Some of them were vacuum-packed for the Americans to pick up – angling for the elevated box office, Oscars push, fast-track to global attention, the whole circus. But an equal number – from Amores Perros ($20m worldwide) to Night Watch ($33m) to The Host ($89m) – thrived perfectly well on their own terms, eventually allowing postcard arthouse to evolve. |
By 2002, when Cinema Paradiso went on re-release in the US, global audiences were pursuing a chicken through the streets of a Rio favela in the opening scenes of City of God: it was clear the foreign-language export pic was straying somewhere more authentic, gritty and unpredictable, inhabiting the local perspective more closely. In 2008, 19 years after Cinema Paradiso won the Grand Prix at Cannes, Matteo Garrone's frazzled Gomorrah took the same award; ironically closer in subject and sensibility to Il Camorrista, the gritty debut with which Tornatore had preceded his trip down the corsia di memoria. | By 2002, when Cinema Paradiso went on re-release in the US, global audiences were pursuing a chicken through the streets of a Rio favela in the opening scenes of City of God: it was clear the foreign-language export pic was straying somewhere more authentic, gritty and unpredictable, inhabiting the local perspective more closely. In 2008, 19 years after Cinema Paradiso won the Grand Prix at Cannes, Matteo Garrone's frazzled Gomorrah took the same award; ironically closer in subject and sensibility to Il Camorrista, the gritty debut with which Tornatore had preceded his trip down the corsia di memoria. |
His breakthrough had to go to the US to find true love, but like on the screen, the consequences ended up coming home. Mainstream and specialist cinema pulled closer; Hollywood and world cinema tightened their embrace. Cinema Paradiso gave postcard arthouse its early allure, because it had very pretty handwriting indeed. | His breakthrough had to go to the US to find true love, but like on the screen, the consequences ended up coming home. Mainstream and specialist cinema pulled closer; Hollywood and world cinema tightened their embrace. Cinema Paradiso gave postcard arthouse its early allure, because it had very pretty handwriting indeed. |
• Cinema Paradiso is released on 13 December and will be available in the Guardian Screening Room. Cinema Paradiso: 25th Anniversary Remastered Edition is released on Blu-ray on 16 December. | • Cinema Paradiso is released on 13 December and will be available in the Guardian Screening Room. Cinema Paradiso: 25th Anniversary Remastered Edition is released on Blu-ray on 16 December. |
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