Page 165 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 165
identity in a notion of the eastern and western european cinema
meanings wouldn’t be observable without inventive approach of film-mak-
ers, who worked a lot on the aesthetic and communicative form of films,
which means that they were exploring possibilities for new ways of visual
narration and new ways of operating the look of a camera. In the midst of
this the European cinema of the time gave way to a new definition of au-
thorship, which, as we all know, followed from the nouvelle vague, but it
can be argued that it was embraced all over Europe – both in the Western
and the Eastern Europe – and at least in the independent American cine-
ma. No matter how the perception and definition of l’auter changed later, a
degree of a specific understanding of the role and autonomy of the film di-
rector survived until now.
We should not underestimate another important aspect, which con-
cerns the personality of an author, namely the element of his personal in-
vestment into a film narrative. Michelangelo Antonioni pointed out as ear-
ly as in 1958: “It is evident that an autobiographical part always exists in
a film” (Antonioni, 2003: p. 9). Roughly, in 1960a and 1970s, which could
be apprehended now as a golden era of the European cinema, modernism
strongly affected the film view on identity in the context of the post-war
history. As the field of a possible research, comparing and deconstructing
the period in question is very large, I shall try to make my point only by in-
dicating few examples, which illustrate a very interesting step towards a
modernist visualisation of identity in cinema. As it all happened, the focus
on identity in the European cinema of the period in the work of the most
outstanding and innovative film authors was the individual lost or “alien-
ated” in a society. Of course, one could say that this was nothing so very
special, since most feature films one way or the other “tell” some story, in
which individual character inevitably has a role. Still, I think, that we can
determine some decisive attributes, which were built into the modernist
cinematic construction of individual characters, and that precisely the in-
completeness of these characters’ shattered identity was the distinguishing
element. With a certain reservations, we could establish a few quite com-
mon features of characters. They were mainly urban individuals, and their
universal attributes (as men and women), with some notable exceptions,
were much more emphasised than their specific cultural determination. As
a rule, these characters were disoriented due to a traumatic past experienc-
es, which is revealed through their search for identity without a definitive
idea of their objective and/or purpose. These searches usually failed or end-
ed in unsatisfying compromises or in open-ended films, which suggest-
163
meanings wouldn’t be observable without inventive approach of film-mak-
ers, who worked a lot on the aesthetic and communicative form of films,
which means that they were exploring possibilities for new ways of visual
narration and new ways of operating the look of a camera. In the midst of
this the European cinema of the time gave way to a new definition of au-
thorship, which, as we all know, followed from the nouvelle vague, but it
can be argued that it was embraced all over Europe – both in the Western
and the Eastern Europe – and at least in the independent American cine-
ma. No matter how the perception and definition of l’auter changed later, a
degree of a specific understanding of the role and autonomy of the film di-
rector survived until now.
We should not underestimate another important aspect, which con-
cerns the personality of an author, namely the element of his personal in-
vestment into a film narrative. Michelangelo Antonioni pointed out as ear-
ly as in 1958: “It is evident that an autobiographical part always exists in
a film” (Antonioni, 2003: p. 9). Roughly, in 1960a and 1970s, which could
be apprehended now as a golden era of the European cinema, modernism
strongly affected the film view on identity in the context of the post-war
history. As the field of a possible research, comparing and deconstructing
the period in question is very large, I shall try to make my point only by in-
dicating few examples, which illustrate a very interesting step towards a
modernist visualisation of identity in cinema. As it all happened, the focus
on identity in the European cinema of the period in the work of the most
outstanding and innovative film authors was the individual lost or “alien-
ated” in a society. Of course, one could say that this was nothing so very
special, since most feature films one way or the other “tell” some story, in
which individual character inevitably has a role. Still, I think, that we can
determine some decisive attributes, which were built into the modernist
cinematic construction of individual characters, and that precisely the in-
completeness of these characters’ shattered identity was the distinguishing
element. With a certain reservations, we could establish a few quite com-
mon features of characters. They were mainly urban individuals, and their
universal attributes (as men and women), with some notable exceptions,
were much more emphasised than their specific cultural determination. As
a rule, these characters were disoriented due to a traumatic past experienc-
es, which is revealed through their search for identity without a definitive
idea of their objective and/or purpose. These searches usually failed or end-
ed in unsatisfying compromises or in open-ended films, which suggest-
163
