Something Thoughtful

 

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.              

                      IT”S NOT ONLY HOLLYWOOD THAT MAKES BAD MOVIES

As some of you might already know, my father [long since deceased] was an academic, Professor in English Literature. But he was also very interested in film. He was important in setting up New Zealand’s Film Societies that allowed people to watch foreign films – that is, films in foreign languages. [Film Societies seem to have become fewer in the last few decades because foreign films are now readily available on many platforms.] However I do remember him saying to an audience “Just because a film has sub-titles does not mean it is a masterpiece.” The fact is, there are always people who believe that they are getting “culture” because they are seeing films from Italy, France, Sweden, Russia etc. This attitude was something I saw when I was a film-reviewer [for thirty years] and went to film festivals. I would hear people raving over a French farce, an Italian romance story, or a German crime story, when I found them to have the same sort of scenarios and cliches that one could find in Hollywood films or on TV [or Youtube]. The simple fact is that even foreign film-makers can create trashy movies too. Of course I hasten to add that most Film Festivals also present us with many excellent foreign films. But my father’s dictum stands.  “Just because a film has sub-titles does not mean it is a masterpiece.”

Why am I writing about this? Because currently I have been trotting off to the nearest art film-theatre to watch some foreign films.

Recently there was an Italian Film Festival. Because we had a limited time to go to the festival, we scanned the brochure to see what film looked likely to be the most engaging. We hit upon a film which seemed to be interesting, called Welcome to the South. It began quite amusingly, about a postman from (northern) Milan who was transferred to (southern) Naples, where he had to adjust to a culture very different from the one he knew. So far, so engaging. But alas, the movie eventually collapsed into a cutesy Hollywood-style man-just-happens-to-meet- dream-girl etc. romantic rubbish of the sort that one could see in any TV sitcom. Definitely not a masterpiece just because they were speaking Italian. I am sure that there were many good films in the Italian Film Festival, but alas, we had chosen the wrong film.

            At the time I am writing this, there is a French Film Festival showing in Auckland. Once again, we scanned a brochure looking for worthwhile films. This time, we had the leisure to book in for four films. And the first we saw proved to be outstandingly good. This was Le Fil [The Thread]. In a small town in the south of France, a man is accused of  murdering his wife. An ageing retired lawyer agrees act for the defence. At least half of the film is set in the courtroom and half in the lawyer for the defence searching for clues to what could have happened. There are no frills. The film goes at a leisurely pace, the style is almost minimalist, but it is gripping throughout. It raises all the questions about the ambiguities of the law, the extent to which hearsay has its role, prejudices being presented to the jury, the possibility that the accused is too simple-minded to defend himself, how defence and prosecution can misread the nature of the accused etc. No, this is not an ordinary whodunnit. It is an analysis of the whole legal system.  The film was directed by the seasoned actor Daniel Auteuil, who also played the leading role. And yes, you had to read sub-titles.

            Nowhere near the same greatness was another film in the French Film Festival, which I saw on my own. This was Saint-Ex, a very romanticised account of the early years of the aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery – when, in the early 1930s, he was flying bi-planes for a French postal company in Argentina. This involved flying these primitive machines around or over the Andes – very dangerous. The sequences of flying towards titanic mountains, dealing which planes conking out at high altitude, bracing for strong head-winds and snow, were all very frightening and spectacular. However I was aware that many of the ground-level sequences were pure fiction. Antoine de Saint-Exupery was undoubtedly a very brave man, but the film added romantic moments, a brave rescue that in fact did not happen, and characters who never existed. In other words it was like many other films that claim to be “historical” when in fact they are not. I’m nagging on like this because I have read most of the books Antoine de Saint-Exupery himself wrote, so I know a lot about his life and literature. [See on this blog my review of his Pilote de Guerre

So far, then, what have I dealt with? One dud film, one excellent film and one quite interesting but flawed film.  My wife and I have yet to see two more films that we have booked to see in the French Film Festival. And the dictum remains: “Just because a film has sub-titles does not mean it is a masterpiece.”

Snarky footnotes: For the record, the handsome young actor playing the role of Saint-Ex looked nothing like the real Saint-Ex…. And most Americans know Antoine de Saint-Exupery only because they’ve read or heard of his one and only children’s book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).

                                         The Film's version of Saint-Ex.

 

                                                           The Real Saint-Ex.