CHANGING CULTURES IN EUROPE

Lecturer: Kris Vanheuckelom.

The “European migration tradition” - recalls the growth.

Mobility - the most important stone in European project. Move freely across borders, physical
movement or communication networks.
Cultural studies approach to movies: identity, mobility, territoriality but also as a film student.

Maps
- Regine Europa - representation of Europa. Monarch. Map. Euro-centric. Related to
the wholy mother. Doesn’t have the label “Europa” in it. Feudal, pre-modern. No
borders.
- In the XIX century, states are formed = map with colours, barriers. Modern.
Territorialisation of space, linearisation of borders, “borders” but no barriers”.

Peregrinación académica, por religión, por comercio, diplomacía.

Grand Tour - luxure (tourism). Guys were sent on a tour, young upper-class men. It
popularized.

1914-1945: the birth of the foreigner

- state regulation, bilateral agreements.
- equal treatment within the borders of the state, unequal treatment at the borders of
the state.

1945-1975: geopolitical and economic instrumentalisation of migration

1975 to present: politicization and globalization of migration.
- growing political salience of migration.
- deterritorialization, locality and global cultural flows, scapes.
- vacillation of borders, not clear, beyond and within state territories. Barriers in the
country of origin (monitorean gente que se quiere ir, le piden a las aerolineas que lo
hagan) so the barrier is in the country of origin and not necessary in the country of
destination.
- irregularisation of migration.

Europudding - film produced by different European nations, considered to be lacking in

coherence, individuality or authenticity.
Lumiere, Melies, Cahier du Cinema.

1 chapter of the book he wrote - representation of migration in european cinema in the world
period.

TONI - JEAN RENOIR

Why is unusual?

“Polish Entertainers and Entertaining Polishness: Staging Expatriates in Interwar

Cinema (1918–1939).”
Inter-war period.
Some countries started to import a quota. Restrictive measures. To limit the immigration.
Chinese exclusion act 1882, until 1940s. They didn’t let them enter the USA.
France is going in a migration transition. 1921-1931 doubled the number of immigrants.
Paris and Berlin main centres of the Russian immigration.

Interwar cinema and the birth of the foreigner

- cross-border mobility of film personnel (actor moving to make films, directors) -
economic/political
- unmarked and decontextualized portrayals of expatriate characters
- conventionalized and stereotype-laden depictions of foreigners
- exaggerated gestures, melodrama, comic mode.
1930s - many russian-related films in France. Post-revolutionary Russian immigrants.
Nostalgia for the Russia regime. Russomania
MLV (multiple language version film) - films made in 3 languages: french, german, english.
Ex. ARIANE.
Elvire Popescu - well known russian actress. uper-class, spoke well languages.
Ex. Ma Cousine de Varsovie. She was the female representation. Extravagant, east-
european foreigner. No information about the historical past of this characters, don’t really
know their reality.
Ex. Ils etaient neuf celibataires. By Sacha Guitry. 9 foreigner women who will be expulsed
froom the country. Main character tries to arrange fake-marriages in order not to get them
spelled.

Jean Renoir
2 most well known films: La Grande Illusion - La Régle du jeu.

Distinctly French film output in the 1930s

Poetic Realism
- naturalistic drive: focus on urban tenement life and the marginal world of the working
class quartier (mainly in Paris)
- pessimistic worldview: combining the pleasures of community life with fatal climaxes
(murder, suicide)
- aestheticization of film form: atmospheric exterior scenes at “moody” locations (wet
streets, persistent fog, grimy bars) - try to show more of the reality.
- use of inside studio decors and outside location footage.

Film textual analysis

- narrative layer: story and characters.
- theatrical layer: mise-en-scéne
- cinematic layer: camerawork and montage.
- sound: intra and extradiegetic
- and the film’s engagement with genre conventions

TONI
- medium shot mostly, not close-ups.
- timespan of 3 years: multiple jumps in time and changes of state.
- circular structure.
 - between melodrama (scene of woman telling Toni she loves her and doesn’t want
him to leave her) (scene where Josefa shots her husband) and tragedy.
- error of judgment: warnings ignored. Important the character of the friend who
anticipates, French character, warns.
- the chorus comments, gives general reflexion.
- panning shot and diegetic music. Music is diegetic.
- Marcel Pagnol: idealizing the provence in “open-air theatre”.
- “a true story”: authentic immediacy. First the movie, then a novel was made.
“Novelization” - very actual aspect.
- unknown local actors and extras. color-blind casting (only one black man that nobody
notices as one). African-american immigrant that Renoir decided to include.
- “nature knows full well how to mix races” mid 1930s. Double interethnic marriage, but
there’s no idealization. They are both a failure.
- ingroup and outsiders: don’t steal our women (cultural and social divide). Those
characters are well dressed, fashion. Clothes of TOni makes him look like a poor
farmer, related to Italy.
- languages and accents designating ethnic and social differences.
- international and internal mobility portrayed.
- politics in Argentina that invited immigrats.
- woman part of the livestock, with animals, house. Like furniture.
- arranged marriage. rape.
- figures of animality.
- Albert as the embodiment of the immigrant´s struggle with modernity. “you pretend to
have modern ideas and i’m exploted”
- bound by traditional pre-modern codes: latin obsessed with their honour.
- dehumanizing modernity: division of labour and alienation.
people like ants, makes them feel like reduced in a bigger environment.
- labour exploitation (at the farm and the quarry).
- toni killed by a protectionist landowner (protects his hands and his women).

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN MIGRATION CINEMA

- victimization (lack of agency) - compassion
- criminalization (criminal agency) - fear
- kitschification (premodern agency) - nostalgia
- various combinations (between idealization and demonization)
- humanization (virtues and vices).

27.3
1950 geopolitical changes
- decolonization
- cold war US + SU
- 1950s british cinema: male-dominated (and “exclusive”) war films
J. LEE THOMPSON (1914-2002) TIGER BAY
Made mostly genre filmes.
In the 50s: images of female containment in a period of masculine hegemony. Ex. the weak
and the wicked; blonde sinner; woman in a dressing room.
Female characters: models of femininity in Tiger Bay.
Genre: suspense. Will the murder be discovered and he arrested?
Conventions of the thriller genre:
- antagonist wears dark or black clothing
- blood and violence
- dark colour palette
- guns, knives, weapons
- criminal being redeemed.
- balance broken? when the woman is killed.
- protagonist immoral or outsider, anti-hero but usually has good intentions.

Prologue: arrival sequence (leading to crime passionnel)

Middle part: hunt for the witness, for the murderer
Epilogue: reunited on the boat, murderer redeemed
Time frame of 2 days: wedding day and honeymoon.

Road couple.
London orphan as an outsider.
Substitute local fathers? All of the male characters, but aren’t successful at doing so.
Substute familial roles: father/brother/partner played by the ethnic outsider.
Phallic connotation: Billi wants the gun, envy for not having a pennis WTF.
Free adaptation of Rodolphe et le revolver.
Women inside and outside. Woman are in the house, without mobility. Billi is the only female
character who goes outside.
Billi showed behind bars - trapped.
Billi doesn’t follow the genre roles.

No presence of this context in the movie:

Absence of the Cold War context (“defection” films): One, Two, Three - Break in the circle -
The looking glass war. American film showing the superiority of capitalism or African people
going to the soviet union scaping racism.

The European Woman in early post-war British Cinema - Geraghty 1999.

Combines sexual experience with a tragic knowledge of the war.
Is not the central protagonist of the story.
The difference of European culture is represented through the figure of the woman: her
ambiguities and dilemmas represent those of Europe and Britain’s relations with Europe.
The woman that gets murdered: “I rather be back in that bloody camp than have this year
again”. Labour/gulag/nazi/dp/pow/resettlement camps.
The muddy ground of Europe: suspicion of the “chaotic” continent.
1947: the first mass migration legislative act issued by the parliament of the uk
1948: a handbook for european voluntary workers.
Polish woman: rejecting penelope’s role.
1948: postcolonial migration context. They gave their colonizados the right to go to their
“mother country” = Britain. Legally entatled to get jobs there.
1962: they put restrictions to migrants.
Black characters in early postwar British cinema: Pool of London (1st interracial couple).
FIRST SHORT FILMS REALIZED BY BLACK FILMMAKERS: ten bob in winter (reckord
1963), jemima and johnny (nkagane 1966). They are in Toledo.