Genre

Documentaries

Experimental and Animation

Fictional

Hollywood

Art

For want of a better term, "interpretation" may be used to describe the type of motion picture in which a play, a ballet, an opera, or some other work of another art form is kept virtually intact and recorded by the camera and microphone. Adaptations of novels or plays re-create the work in motion-picture form, but interpretations merely give the performance a wider audience. The English director Tony Richardson's version of Hamlet (1970) is an example of such a filmed record of a theatrical performance. Most motion pictures of operas and ballets may be classed as interpretations. Public and cable television have become obvious sponsors and disseminators of this type of film, although some interpretations, including Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni (1979), and numerous films of rock concerts continue to thrive in theatrical distribution.

At one time the recording of an already established work of art was deemed "uncinematic" and thought to be a doubtful use of the medium. Such arguments were made as early as 1911 in response to the French Film d'Art company, which photographed high-class stage plays. Recently, however, imaginative and innovative cinematic techniques have been employed to record operas, ballets, and stage plays. The complexity of the resulting hybrid works, such as Arnold Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron as filmed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (1975), have made the validity of the early generalizations questionable. Important filmmakers, including Robert Altman in the UnitedStates, Eric Rohmer in France, and Carlos Saura in Spain, have turned to the filming of works of other art forms as ways to open up the motion picture to new types of experiences.

The motion-picture recording of the acknowledged artistic successes of other movie raises the important issue of the artistic stature of the cinema. As early as 1920 an audience of film connoisseurs could be identified in Europe. Ever since that time it has been possible to divide the cinema audience of any nation into a mass audience that seeks entertainment and a smaller group that is consciously concerned with artistic values in the motion picture. The films that appeal to these two groups, however, vary from one nation to another and from one period to another. The Hollywood comedies of the 1920s by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and others, for example, were originally popular entertainment, but they were later taken up by the art film audience. The comedies of Jerry Lewis received little serious critical attention in their native United States but a great deal in France. The low-budget thrillers of directors who were adopted by auteur critics met a similar experience. The distinction between popular entertainment and high art seems indisputable in most instances, but confusions of fashion and conflicts in artistic standards resulting from experiment and change make it difficult to generalize about them.

Although there may be disagreements over what constitutes cinematic art, certain institutions have developed that foster the art of film. In the United States after World War II, "art houses" catered to sophisticated audiences in large cities, screening primarily European films, such as those directed by Fellini, Bergman, Buñuel, and Antonioni. The distribution of 16-millimetre films to museums and college campuses sparked interest in avant-garde films as well. In one sense art films represent a genre; the audience that seeks them out has precise expectations which producers have been known to exploit. In 1951 Daiei films of Japan, for example, expressly aimed to conquer the export market by winning awards at international festivals. The company, which generally produced cheap domestic genre motion pictures, reserved a portion of its budget to make lavish historical spectacles, such as Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953), that would appeal to the art audience outside of Japan. The art film usually cannot be characterized in advance, however; it does not follow prescribed conventions but prides and sells itself on its uniqueness or distinctiveness.