When Foreign Films Were Really Foreign
When I started studying film I was at the University of Oregon. I took a class that was an introduction to Foreign Films. We watched Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, and a lot of others. Most of the films I couldn’t stand. I did’t get them. They were too weird. Not for me.
I was probably twenty and not the most worldly fellow at that time. I grew up on westerns and war movies. It was all about Hollywood movies. Starting in my mid-teens films like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Wild Bunch among others came out. I fell right into those. I loved them. We were starting to see different kinds of films coming out and as much as I liked them I was still a sucker for some of the “old school” films.
One of the real changes for me was seeing Once Upon A Time In The West. An Italian “spaghetti western” (a term I didn’t hear until years later). The main characters all spoke english so I didn’t have to read sub-titles. I probably didn’t even know what sub-titles were back then. I am trying to remember the first film I saw with sub-titles and I’m drawing a blank, until that class at the U of O.
I have seen it multiple times since then in theaters, where it deserves to be seen.
I was not a complete moron as I remember liking some of the films they showed. Specifically, Bergman’s, The Seventh Seal, and Wild Strawberries. Jean Renoir’s, The Rules Of The Game, and Le Grand Illusion. And of course, Fritz Lang’s, Metropolis and M.
When I got to USC’s film school, in one of our first classes we had to talk about our influences and the type of films we want to make. Most of the students were graduate students, I was one of the few undergraduates. They are all talking about their love of foreign films, they all said they wanted to make artistic films. I felt so totally out of place. When they got to me I just said something like, “I want to make Hollywood films. Those are the films that influenced me.”
That first semester, whenever I would show one of my films, one of the instructors never gave me much of a critique. He would usually say something about how I just wanted to make Hollywood films and wrote me off. So many times I wondered what the hell I was doing there? I felt like I didn’t belong. I wasn’t smart enough to be there.
As part of our education we had to watch a lot of films, both Hollywood studio and foreign films. There I was watching foreign films again and learning about the filmmakers and what was happening in their countries during the times they were making films. Suddenly, I had context. That’s when those films started making sense. I started enjoying some of the films. There were still some I couldn’t stand, or possibly understand. I’m looking at you Fellini, Bergman, and Godard. But I found a lot of filmmakers I really got into, including the early Russian filmmakers, especially Eisenstein. I still love his work today.
While I was watching these films, I was also learning from them. Not just about filmmaking, but history, politics, geography, and about various cultures. My world was opening up. Foreign films were about something. People, emotion, and places. Very often it was people making what appeared to be small decisions, that were huge, even life changing for them.
I did not realize at the time, the effect these films had, and continue to have on me.
Lately, I have been re-visiting a lot of the foreign films I watched when I was younger. So many of them are just as good and powerful as I remember. The 400 Blows, Bicycle Thieves, Rashomon, Wages of Fear, and Balthazar have held up really well. It was a joy to watch them again. Unlike some films that I watched and loved as a kid. Sure, some are still good, others I’m embarrassed that I used to like.
As I said earlier, there were some foreign films I didn’t like and have not revisited. Who really wants to go back and watch a film you didn’t like the first time. I’m finally going back to some of those and giving them another chance.
One film I truly loathed was Fellini’s, La Strada. I didn’t like anything about it. I remember being not just bored, but actually irritated by the actors. I hated everything about this film and the more people told me it was brilliant, the more I hated it on principal. Very mature on my part I know.
So I watched it again over the weekend. I saw so much this time that I was oblivious to the first time I saw it. I understood the emotions, the motivations, and the short comings of the characters. It’s a wonderful film.
I could write a lot about La Strada, but it would be better if you seek it out and watch it yourself. It is available on Kanopy.
I realize I am older, hopefully wiser, and definitely more well-travelled. I have been out in the world and experienced so much more than that young kid who grew up in Portland did. I believe that travel is a huge part of the person I have become. I still have a hunger to learn more about different places and people, and that hunger comes from reading and watching films, especially foreign films. It all seems so exotic compared to American films. Hell, even Canadian films are so much more exotic than American films.
I continue watching films from my youth, both foreign and domestic, not so that I can re-live my youth. I always say, “I mine the past for my work, but I choose not to live there.” I am continuing to learn and hopefully get better at both my craft, and my art. I think it’s important to re-visit and to re-assess the things that influenced you when you were younger. We have all changed hopefully, and for me, I hope I am continuing to evolve as an artist.
So what am I planning on doing next weekend? Watching more foreign films.
Are there any foreign films that you didn’t like when you first watched them and changed your mind when you re-visited them?
FACTS THAT MAY ONLY INTEREST ME
Did you know that the can opener was invented 50 years after the can? That could have been a bigger problem than it was, apparently.
I am working on a short story that takes place in 1932 and I wrote a scene where a bunch of kids are sitting around a campfire eating. I wanted them to be eating beans (no, not as an homage to Blazing Saddles) so I started wondering when cans for food were actually invented. Would they be eating out of cans? I looked it up and found this...
“An English merchant named Peter Durand patented the use of tin-coated metal containers instead of glass jars, in 1810. These early cans were harder to break during transportation. The use of metal in the containers protected food when it was transported over long distances and stored in rough conditions. These benefits were incredibly helpful for long naval voyages and military campaigns. However, one downside of the early cans was that they were thick and difficult to open. In fact, the can opener was not invented until 1858, nearly fifty years after the first tin cans appeared. Before that, people often used hammers, chisels, or knives to open them.”
So next time you’re struggling with a “child proof” cap on anything, just grab a hammer and a chisel and open the damn thing! Stop complaining.
And this...
Over at Beyond Your Imagination, my buddy Chris Martin of @gettingworktowork has posted one of our earlier podcasts, Creative Recklessness & Reinvention, where we discuss two music documentaries, Zappa (2020) and The Sparks Brothers (2021). These are two of my favorite documentaries of the last several years. If you have not seen these films check out our podcast and then stream them, they are available somewhere out in the vast Internet Wasteland. The link is below. Enjoy.
https://byi.show/creative-recklessness-reinvention-with-kelley-baker/
As usual, Thank You for reading, subscribing, and supporting my writing and filmmaking.
Remember, if you don’t like what I’m writing these days then unsubscribe. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
This is a story I wrote that combines what I know about one of my Grandfathers and my Step Grandfather. I never met my Grandfather and only met my Step Grandfather once when I was very young. I don’t remember him. My Uncles told me stories about both of them. They were both characters and no strangers to loss. It sure sounded like they both had interesting lives. I combined what I knew, and took a few liberties with their lives and came up with this story about a dying old man and the conversation he has with his stepson. Personally, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written.
This story appears in my collection, Dennis Barton Is A Bastard And Other Stories. This is just a few pages of the story.
If you like the story you can head over to my website (www.angryfilmmaker.com) and pick up a copy of the book. I would appreciate it.
Don’t let the bastards get to you!
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Check out my books, as well as my films, and Angry Filmmaker merchandise on my site. www.angryfilmmaker.com
