The end of 2022 offered three films about the world of cinema from big-name directors. His precocious DIY filmmaking in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Faver Man’, Damien his classic Hollywood behind-the-scenes in Chazelle’s ‘Babylon’, and even Sam Mendes’ cinema crew in ‘Empire of Light’ work and life. In these films, the story of cinematic greatness is the story of how sausages were made and served, or even how pigs were raised. There are many movies. These films spotlight personality, celebrate art, take a candid look at business, expose the off-camera conflicts that fuel and hinder production, and reveal the greedy power of filmmaking. commercial and emotional demands.
Some of these films are undisputed classics, such as Singing in the Rain and the first two versions of A Star Is Born. (1937 is rougher, and 1954 is Judy Garland’s biggest showcase.) Hollywood isn’t the only one to depict its own fault lines and idiosyncrasies. The world of cinema is very diversely portrayed in international and independent cinema. What is dramatized ranges from film appearances to gate crashes, from production to projection, from dreams and plans to fame and failure, from the growing passion of young moviegoers, from the tenuous glory of professionals to the achievements of great achievements. Up to the retrospective celebration and the dilapidation of the outcast. They depict the production of fiction, documentaries, animated films, retrospective films, student films, and even fictional films.
Films about cinema often lean into aesthetic radicalism because they retain their own way, their own identity, to the point of scrutiny. (Almost all films by Jean-Luc Godard count. sight and hearing Many of the great works are relatively recent, as the art of self-examination and the development of new forms for doing so is the product of decades of consistent, uncompromising cinematic progress. This list is a chronological compilation of my favorites from the genre.
Buster Keaton (right) in Sherlock Jr.Photo from Everett
“Sherlock Jr.”
1924 Buster Keaton
The silly sentimental tale of a projectionist who loses his fiancée to false accusations and dreams himself into a film of stunt-filled romantic heroism to find a solution to his problems is Keaton’s most eye-catching. It makes for some of the dazzlingly surreal and balletically harrowing… stunts. It also suggests that the hyperbolic action fantasy of popular cinema is merely a delusion of complacency.
1928, Joseph von Sternberg
Impostor Syndrome goes both ways. Some are driven downward from the heights of aristocracy to the everyday turmoil of show business. Sternberg’s drama, based on real events, depicts a post-revolutionary refugee Russian general who lands in Hollywood to work as a mere extra, where his art lives up to his life and finds itself inseparable from his not-so-distant glory. days.
1928, King Vidor
The eternal conflict between the art of Hollywood and the pie in the face is Vidor’s fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the aspiring actress’s dimpled road to stardom, and how she’s made her movie star. It is resolved with the appropriately stark and antic results seen in one’s real-life gallery. I would like to participate.
Anna Magnani in “Bellissima”.Photo from Everett
1951, Luchino Visconti
The despair that stage parents relentlessly drive stage children into is embodied in this massive satirical melodrama by Anna Magnani, the most spectacular dramatic figure of post-war Italian cinema.
1954, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Sometimes distance is needed for clarity, but this drama about a Spanish dancer discovered by a Hollywood director in decay in a rough-hewn nightclub is a testament to the American way of filmmaking and the studio business. presents a wonderful life that admires, facilitates, distorts, and sabotages. — for a sharp, stern perspective.
1962, Vincente Minnelli
Minnelli follows up on the 1952 Hollywood insider drama The Bad and the Beautiful by treating it as the work of the fictional characters in this Hollywood story. Set in Italy, during the filming of a studio film in Rome’s Cinecittà, on the edge of a commercial collapse, in the midst of a looming generational change and the accompanying shift in conventions. Minnelli was ahead of them by being responsive to the times.
1963, Pier Paolo Pasolini
The ignorant and pretentious director of a film depicting the crucifixion allows his cast to endure the scourge of reality, unsuspected and unconsidered amidst this bitter derision of the industry. With a deeply ironic touch, its director is played by Orson Welles.
1964 Vincent Minnelli
Hollywood’s rampant sexual harassment of women becomes poignant and comedic, televised in this hectic yet perceptive transgender fantasy of reincarnation and self-awareness.
“hero”
1966, Satyajit Ray
The grandeur and ephemerality of a famous young actor, his artistic ambitions and his personal compromises are revealed during the train ride through interviews with journalists and hauntings of his memories and dreams. During this fateful journey, the essence of cinema is examined in the light of the cultural politics of India and the history of the Indian film industry.
1982, Kathleen Collins
One of the first dramas by a black female director, this drama centers around a black philosophy professor being invited by one of her students to appear in his film. It also dramatizes Collins’ own relationship to the film’s overwhelming power, defining it as “equality.” Even though she was a non-professional actor, even playing non-verbal roles in student films, her life was changed by her exposure to the art of cinema.
Jimmy Woodard and Robert Townsend in The Hollywood Shuffle.Photo by Samuel Goldwyn Films/Everett
1987, Robert Townsend
This blistering satire on the few and often humiliating opportunities of black actors is also a paradoxical burst of enthusiasm for the power of popular cinema, comedy, but when black filmmakers are included to tell black stories, It’s also a very serious vision of what Hollywood could be. — and, in light of his own experience, expands on industry forms and genres.
1989, Yusef Shaheen
Chahine plays a director in another movie à clef. The film details a fictitious Egyptian filmmaker’s passion for a young actor who runs away from him and his subsequent efforts to make a “Hamlet” movie with another star. Along the way, the drama details the ups and downs of the filmmaker’s career (complete with musical sequences) and the economic and political crises of Egyptian cinema. The actual event that Chahine attended).
1990, Clint Eastwood
The boastful and self-defeating flirtatiousness of John Huston in the making of ‘The African Queen’ is based on the novel by Peter Vietel (screenwriter for uncredited Houston locations) . Eastwood is also happy and ironic to play the role of a filmmaker whose directorial ethic is the exact opposite of his own.
“Jaco de Nantes”
1991 Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda’s biopic of her husband Jacques Demy’s childhood and adolescence is perhaps the best film about her primal passion for cinema and her practical love of the craft. (It may also be the most closely watched film about DIY animation.) Varda turns a vigorous and elaborate drama (complete with the politics of the German occupation during World War II) into Demy’s own film. clip. voice-over commentary; Demy himself, who had been ill with her terminal illness during the production, appears in front of the camera to share his recollections, and Varda films him in her loving, tactile intimacy .
1991, Stanley Kwan
