Page 216 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 216
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
Modernist movements of the 1960s and 1970s addressed the theme of
identity in an ideologically subversive manner. Among many definitions
of ideology, we are choosing here a very minimalist one, which joins a rep-
resentation of reality and a system of domination. This subsequently means
that a subject (person, citizen, man, woman, etc.) is defined within an or-
der, which includes economy and morality, culture and education, poli-
tics and media, sports and traffic, language and religion and many more
such conceptual pairs or oppositions. As the period of post-war prosperi-
ty on the both sides of the iron curtain opened a space for a new self-defi-
nition of younger generations, a great number of the European films of the
period addressed the position of individual in a society in a manner, which
uncovered the illusory stability of the world. These films addressed the so-
called alienation, they opened a view on social inequalities and poverty in
a world supposedly without poverty, and they contributed to the decentred
ideas of order in a manner that ironically paralleled the absurdist theatre.
All these messages and meanings wouldn’t be observable without inventive
approach of film-makers, who worked a lot on the aesthetic and commu-
nicative 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 authorship, which, as we all know, followed from the nou-
velle 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 cinema. No matter how the perception and definition of l’auter
changed later, a degree of a specific understanding of the role and autono-
my of the film director survived until now.
There are some typical topics, which can be found in the European
cinema. The motive of youngsters, who were delinquent or alienated or
lost, is probably the clearest presentation of problems of identity as the cen-
tral element in the modernist period in Europe. Truffaut, starting with his
400 Blows (Les Quatre cent coups – 1959), contributed a whole series on a
character, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, whom he named Antoine Doinel.
Truffaut signalled the traumatic aspect of this character by pointing out
the historical and social context: “A short time after the war there was a
fresh upsurge of the juvenile delinquency. Juvenile prisons were full. I had
known very well what I showed in my film” (Truffaut, 2004: p. 26). The en-
vironment of the socialist societies proved not to be at all that different as
soon as some film directors started to work on themes of so called daily life,
214
Modernist movements of the 1960s and 1970s addressed the theme of
identity in an ideologically subversive manner. Among many definitions
of ideology, we are choosing here a very minimalist one, which joins a rep-
resentation of reality and a system of domination. This subsequently means
that a subject (person, citizen, man, woman, etc.) is defined within an or-
der, which includes economy and morality, culture and education, poli-
tics and media, sports and traffic, language and religion and many more
such conceptual pairs or oppositions. As the period of post-war prosperi-
ty on the both sides of the iron curtain opened a space for a new self-defi-
nition of younger generations, a great number of the European films of the
period addressed the position of individual in a society in a manner, which
uncovered the illusory stability of the world. These films addressed the so-
called alienation, they opened a view on social inequalities and poverty in
a world supposedly without poverty, and they contributed to the decentred
ideas of order in a manner that ironically paralleled the absurdist theatre.
All these messages and meanings wouldn’t be observable without inventive
approach of film-makers, who worked a lot on the aesthetic and commu-
nicative 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 authorship, which, as we all know, followed from the nou-
velle 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 cinema. No matter how the perception and definition of l’auter
changed later, a degree of a specific understanding of the role and autono-
my of the film director survived until now.
There are some typical topics, which can be found in the European
cinema. The motive of youngsters, who were delinquent or alienated or
lost, is probably the clearest presentation of problems of identity as the cen-
tral element in the modernist period in Europe. Truffaut, starting with his
400 Blows (Les Quatre cent coups – 1959), contributed a whole series on a
character, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, whom he named Antoine Doinel.
Truffaut signalled the traumatic aspect of this character by pointing out
the historical and social context: “A short time after the war there was a
fresh upsurge of the juvenile delinquency. Juvenile prisons were full. I had
known very well what I showed in my film” (Truffaut, 2004: p. 26). The en-
vironment of the socialist societies proved not to be at all that different as
soon as some film directors started to work on themes of so called daily life,
214
