METROPOLIS: FRITZ LANG’S MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERPIECE

Today I wanted to talk to you about an old film and to be old it is old since this year it will celebrate its 101 years. Well, as you read the title you already know that I am talking about Metropolis.

If you haven’t seen it yet or want to see it again, I’ll post it to you at the very end of this article.

It is a film which has left its mark on the cinema until today and yet even if today it is considered an absolute masterpiece, it was in its time a critical and commercial failure. In this article I will explain why.

From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer :

“Maria’s proposition that the heart should mediate between the hand and the brain could have been formulated by Goebbels as well. He too appealed to the heart for the purposes of his totalitarian propaganda.”

German cinema has had two great golden ages in its history. There was the New German cinema which goes from the 60s until the beginning of the 80s, but it was also entitled to a very prolific cinema during the 20s, that is to say under the Weimar Republic. Germany suffered a terrible defeat in the First World War, but its cinema was not greatly affected by the sanctions. On the contrary, it becomes one of the hubs of the seventh art.

And it was during this period that a new film was released, a founding work in the history of cinema. If today it is unanimous among critics and historians, Metropolis was a disaster both in terms of criticism and its profitability. The work has led to intense debates starting with its ideological message. Marxist film for some, fascist for others, what is it really?

FRITZ LANG

Fritz Lang is considered one of the most important directors of German and even world cinema. Born in 1890 in Vienna in Austria-Hungary, he went to Germany in 1910 to study art. It was after a stay in Paris that he decided to embark on the cinematographic adventure after having attended the screening of a film by Louis Feuillade.

His directing career really took off after the First World War. In 1919 his first film La Métisse was released. Will follow after a number of diverse and varied films from fantasy (The Three Lights) to espionage (Les Espions) through science fiction (La Femme sur la Lune). During this period, despite the defeat, Germany is one of the main artistic capitals of the European continent. Paradoxically, if Germany is severely sanctioned by the victors of the First World War, German cinema is very prolific under the Weimar Republic. It sees the birth of most of the most talented filmmakers and actors that the seventh art has known: Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Marlène Dietrich, Friedrich Murnau, Emil Jannings or even Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1926, Fritz Lang embarked on the production of what is considered one of the most important films of his career, Metropolis. To compete with Hollywood productions, the UFA had a gigantic 2,200 m2 set built in the Babelsberg studios in Potsdam for the filming of this science fiction film.

INSPIRED

It is difficult to know where it should be classified in the artistic movements of the time. Very often, we tend to link it to expressionism.

German expressionism, I had already spoken about it in two of my articles (here and there), is a movement which is characterized in particular by its very aesthetic use of shadow and light, exploration of themes such as madness, paranoia, anguish, double. Some of these characteristics are found in Metropolis. The theme of the double and the duality between good and evil is represented by the character of Maria and Rotwang’s Android, having taken on the features of a woman. There is also a very pronounced use of lighting and shadows, particularly in the chase scene between Maria and Rotwang in the city’s catacombs. But to label Lang’s work as expressionist would be going a bit too fast because he never accepted that such a label was imposed on him. Francis Courtade said of him:

“Lang has always denied having been an expressionist. We can understand it: a true creator does not like labels and on the other hand, Lang only made a film that can be fully qualified as expressionist. But expressionism, consciously or not, marked him”

In fact, Metropolis draws a little from three of the main artistic movements of the time: Expressionism, New Objectivity and Futurism.

The New Objectivity is characterized by a certain realism. The goal being essentially to socially denounce the living conditions of the working class, to criticize the bureaucracy and the political elite… It is difficult not to see the “Neue Sachlichkeit” character of Metropolis.

As for futurism, it is an artistic movement that appeared in Italy in 1909. The leader was called Filippo Marinetti. Futurists exalt technological progress and its triumph, industrialized cities, violence… There too, the influence is very clear. Metropolis is a film set in a futuristic city where technology is everywhere.

SYNOPSIS

Joh Fredersen, the master of Metropolis and Freder’s father, plots alongside Rotwang, a mad scientist, to stop the workers’ whims. He hopes to rely on Rotwang’s new creation, a robot. Joh asks the mad scientist to kidnap Maria so that his machine can take on his form and thus maintain his hold on the workers. Rotwang has other ideas in mind. Admittedly, he kidnaps the girl but will use his robot to cause a new revolution and overthrow Fredersen.

ANALYSIS

As we said, Fritz Lang drew a lot of inspiration from Futurism in the staging of Metropolis. It is true that we find the themes of machines and technological progress. But unlike the latter, the German director has a very different vision on this subject.

Let’s start at the beginning, we have a futuristic city. To make it work, you have to make the machines work. In this case, it requires a workforce, a proletariat, those whose only thing is their labor power. They are alienated by their work. What is the first scene where we see the proletarians in the film? They appear for the first time at the time of the relief, that is to say the change of team for the maintenance of the machines of the city.

Workers are an integral part of this vast machinery. They are one with her. When you see them for the first time, their gait is completely mechanical. These individuals are no longer living beings, they are cogs, objects. They are replaceable, when one of them falls ill, asphyxiated by the steam from the machines.

Technological progress would not have made it possible to improve the lot and the human condition. All life has disappeared in these human bodies. They now serve as food for their own instruments of work. The machines become deities serving body and soul their new masters. Workers are sacrificed in the manner of pagan rituals. These human beings are now machines, one with the rest of the architecture and these different mechanical components.

Conversely, the world of the wealthy is a real paradise. Technology has led to the improvement of the living comfort of part of the population, the ruling class of the city. As for the children, they have fun in the vast gardens alongside the young girls, play sports…

From the first scenes of the film, Fritz Lang builds an opposition, a duality between two worlds, something very usual in an expressionist cinema. When the world of the bourgeois lives in light and greenery, that of the proletarians is a world of darkness, catacombs and underground passages.

Lang raises the question of our relationship to modernity and technological progress. The word “Metropolis” can literally be translated as mother city. Its function would be to protect, to ensure the safety and comfort of its inhabitants. Is this really the case? We have seen that no. The workers are unhappy, alienated by the machines of the city. Worse still, the haves and the proletarians are unable to communicate with each other. The dictator Fredersen turns a blind eye to what the working populations are going through. Metropolis is a dead city. She is in agony. This so-called “technological progress” actually leads to the separation and isolation of social classes. How to fix it in this case? We see very clearly in the film an opposition between paganism and Christianity.

When Freder goes for the first time to the underworld of the city, the machines transform before his eyes into a terrible pagan deity, Moloch. Quoted in the Bible, Moloch was best known for his rites which consisted of sacrificing children in the fire. Rotwang too, although scholarly, is much more like some kind of wizard. Behind his robot, we can see a pentacle. He would therefore appeal to supernatural and occult forces. Of course, the most important being the legend of the Tower of Babel evoked by Maria in the middle of the film. Let’s take a closer look at this legend. The Tower of Babel was within the will of men to touch the sky. This technical prowess greatly displeased God who decided to scramble their language so that they could no longer understand each other. The parallel between Metropolis and the Tower of Babel finally becomes clear. Progress corrupts the hearts of men. It divides and leads to an impossibility to communicate. In the case of the legend of Babel, the incommunication is literal. Workers can no longer speak to each other because they speak several different languages. But in the case of Metropolis, the social classes of the city find it difficult to discuss and listen to each other. They speak the same language but find it difficult to understand each other. To build his futuristic city, Fritz Lang says he was inspired a lot by the city of New York where he said he felt a certain attraction but also a great fear.

What can such modernity bring? Is it an improvement, a progress or on the contrary to sow the seeds of a cataclysm? The city of Metropolis seems oddly dominated by pagan and occult powers which is quite paradoxical. Where technology and machines are usually attached to the idea of a society moving towards a better future, the society of the city has rather reverted to archaic beliefs and rites from the past. And this is opposed by Christianity. What Fritz Lang essentially criticizes is a society based on cold, calculating relationships without any emotional attachment. What the director is asking for is a return to more human relationships embodied in the film by Christian values. That the main female character is called Maria is not trivial since it refers to the Virgin Mary. Where she embodies innocence and purity, her robotic double, Rotwang’s man-machine, is much closer to a prostitute, a demoness, using her charisma and power of attraction to sow discord in the world. within the social classes of the city. She uses her feminine attributes to push the bourgeois to murder. Ditto for Freder Fredersen, although he comes from the ranks of the wealthy, his role in the film is very close to that of Christ, the one who will bring love, reconciliation and peace to Metropolis.

But what does all this mean? The city of Metropolis would allude to the industrial revolution. Although it is inspired by New York, it can equally symbolize the city of Berlin, one of the main industrial capitals of Europe. One would have thought that it would lead to an improvement in the comfort of life. But societies are not built on such foundations. While many consider human problems solved through progress. Rotwang did not understand this. He was convinced that it would solve all the problems but the end will prove him wrong on this point. The whole film is built on an opposition between the organic and the robotic, Christianity and the occult. We tend to forget what is essential in building social cohesion that technology can never provide. It forgets to take into account love, the sharing of common values, a spirit of cohesion and solidarity, a certain understanding despite the differences in social class. By wanting to rely too much on technology, we forget the most essential thing, what makes us human beings.

From everything I have written previously, one can ask the question of the political message behind Metropolis. Is it a Marxist work defending the class struggle? If I wrote this article, it is partly because of the video of Durendal on this same film. Raging about the success of the films Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019) and Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) which in his eyes insinuates a hateful vision of the rich, he decides to show what he thinks is a better reflection on the fight classes. What is it really ? Is Metropolis a Marxist film? Let’s take a closer look. The working masses revolt following the manipulations of the mad scientist Rotwang and his robot, the two antagonists of the work. This revolution leads to significant damage and deaths. The class struggle leads to flooding in the underground city where their children are safe. Freder and Maria, the two protagonists of the film, do not advocate the struggle and the uprising of crowds.

Instead, they propose to reconcile the two parties, the proletarian and bourgeois classes. The class struggle is therefore presented in a pejorative way in Metropolis. The message of the film is after all that the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart. This is about class collaboration, a political concept most often associated with fascist movements. The idea is quite simple. Fascists are nationalists in essence. They believe that nothing is above the interests of the nation. The class struggle, on the contrary, considers that the concept of nation is a chimera which denies the conflictuality and the balance of power within society. The Marxists finally turn out to be enemies of the fascists who can only lead to the weakening of the country or even its destruction. Faced with the division that can result from struggles between social classes, fascism offers an alternative. Instead of going through revolts, we propose a collaboration between the ruling classes and the ruled classes. This principle of organization of the company therefore implies the establishment of a cordial agreement, something to which Maria and Freder fully adhere.

Fritz Lang was not a very politicized person at that time, although he was probably a nationalist. The writing of the film was however entrusted to his wife, Thea von Harbou, very close to Nazi circles. She will join the NSDAP in 1934. Lang never accepted the morality of Metropolis:

“Personally, I don’t like the movie very much. We can no longer say today that the heart is the mediator between the hand and the brain. It’s wrong, the conclusion is wrong, I already didn’t accept it when I was making the film.

What is now considered his masterpiece will be a commercial oven. He will nevertheless attract the attention of the main National Socialist dignitaries, starting with Goebbels… and Hitler. He wanted to make Fritz Lang the official filmmaker of the Third Reich, something he refused. What we can in any case say on this subject is that the German filmmaker probably had a very limited political awareness, not knowing at that time what Nazism could constitute as a danger. So to come back to Durendal’s vlog, Metropolis is not an anti-fascist work. He will never read this article but I wanted to come back to it so that I could correct it.

One would think that the film does not fit into Fritz Lang’s themes because of its history. However, even if the filmmaker did not adhere to the ideology conveyed in Metropolis, the fact remains that he continues in the development of the themes that run through his filmography. We already find an expressionist influence in the field of lighting. We can also note a notable interest in architecture, Fritz Lang studied architecture, and knew how to have control over the models and sets of the film, which is far from negligible because of the importance of the city of Metropolis in the plot of the work. Significant work on the sets and models has been carried out on this point.

And finally, there are all the themes that run through his work. Lang’s stories are real tragedies. Tragedy is a genre of theater featuring characters struggling against their human passions and their destiny. Lang is convinced that an animality is present within man, of impulses that can lead to his destruction and of all civilization. The drive that most interests Fritz Lang is the death drive (but not only). Film writers are almost all influenced in one way or another by their own personal experience. If this impulse which tends towards death can bring to mind the horrors of the Great War and of the 20th century, Fritz Lang was very affected by the death of his first wife. At the time of the investigation, the police concluded that she had not committed suicide but that she had killed herself by accident. The circumstances are not very clear but it seems that she died following an argument with her husband when she discovered the affair he was having with his mistress at the time, Théa von Harbou.

Death, guilt, suicide and murder are at the heart of his works. Death is a major driving force in Lang’s stories. The characters in his films are very often driven by criminal and murderous impulses. M le Maudit begins with the murders of little girls by a horrible assassin. This tragic news item leads to the installation of an irrational fear, a paranoia of the inhabitants of the city where everyone suspects everyone and where we are ready to take justice into our own hands. In The Executioners Die Too, the film begins with the death of high-ranking Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. This political assassination provoked the anger of the German leaders taking the decision to execute a certain number of prisoners. Death leads to an outpouring of all human passions and madness, uncontrollable and irrational forces, which reminds us that we were at a time when psychoanalysis was very successful in intellectual circles. In the case of Metropolis, we discover that a female character is at the heart of an animosity between Joh and Rotwang. Both loved the same woman, Hel, who died giving birth to Freder, the city master’s son. The name of the mother is not insignificant. Hel was the goddess of Death and the Underworld in Norse mythology. But his premature death will plunge Rotwang into madness. Obsessed with the woman he loved, he will build a robot in her image. He will use his new creation to take revenge on Joh, to destroy Metropolis. His blindness can only lead to death and desolation.

But we find all other themes dear to the director, the manipulation of crowds by a superman but also the corruption and cynicism of political powers. Although he was not very politicized, Fritz Lang always had a certain view of the society of his time and therefore of the Weimar Republic. Very often, he evokes through his works the fragility of societies. One would have thought that civilization would have succeeded in domesticating human beings and thus preventing their animal part from taking over. For Lang, our society does not guarantee that our impulses can one day take over. In the worst, they can be used, instrumentalized by a superman. The best-known example in his filmography is the character of Doctor Mabuse. A mastermind of crime, his intention is to take control of Berlin by taking advantage of the inaction of the political elites to stop him. This diagram can also correspond to the figure of Rotwang. He uses his new creation, the man-machine to stir up human passions, his lowest impulses. Joh Fredersen does nothing against him because he is officially his ally, but the mad scientist is playing a double game and will destroy him in his dark designs.

The director and French film critic François Truffaut said of Fritz Lang’s cinema that his stories always plunged his characters into a moral solitude where the man led a struggle in a half-hostile, half-indifferent universe. Young Freder is also faced with this situation in Metropolis. He must face the indifference of his father as much as the destructive madness of the proletarian masses manipulated by Rotwang.

LEGACY

Despite its critical and commercial failure and its ideological content, Metropolis is today considered one of the greatest films of German and world cinema as well as a reference in the genre of science fiction.

Several works refer to, are inspired by or pay homage to Metropolis. We can cite Modern Times by Chaplin, The King and the Bird by Grimault, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, the Star Wars saga with the droid C-3PO and or the city-planet of Coruscant. Its prestige does not only extend to the world of cinema, the city of Gotham in Tim Burton’s Batman or Dark City by David Proyas.

For the sequel, Fritz Lang will receive a proposal from Goebbels to direct the cinema of the new Nazi regime. Hitler would have loved Metropolis and the Nibelungs. Although some historians doubt the veracity of this discussion, Lang will leave Germany after the rise to power of National Socialism to go to France and then to the United States where he will continue his career.

He would only return to Germany at the end of the 1950s to produce the diptych The Bengal Tiger/The Hindu Tomb as well as the third and final episode of the adventures of Doctor Mabuse.

Guys! take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

Cinema: The Witch, this mythical figure

Art by : https://www.artstation.com/kilart

Mona Chollet, Witches the Undefeated Power of Women.
“If you are a woman and you dare to look inside yourself, then you are a witch.”

The hooked nose, warts, incantations and potions… the witch has always fascinated and the cinema has portrayed her many times. From the cantankerous old queen of Snow White to the brave and valiant Hermione, her representation has evolved a lot in cinema as in history. She has long made children cry and unleashed the fury of men. Put aside, denigrated, burned, feared, it is the object of all fears but also the source of many fantasies.
But doesn’t the fear of the witch come simply from the fear of the feminine, in its power and its marginality?
Because indeed she appears to be strong, independent, single, sometimes old and childless, coming out of traditional beauty and the dictates imposed by patriarchal societies.

In its early days, cinema mainly filmed the witch as the main figure of fear and anguish. A true cliché of a storybook witch, she is then ugly and shown as monstrous: aged, wrinkled, crooked nose, malevolent and above all shown in opposition to the young, pretty and naive first. The classic The Wizard of Oz is the prime example, but Disney’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Sleeping Beauty really didn’t help boost its image.

In the 1960s, the witch was domesticated. She has a husband, a family, is a housewife, seeks love and validation. Her physique changes completely, she becomes cute, well-groomed and dressed, always at the forefront of fashion. Her happiness can only be linked to the well-being of her family and her husband. In short, the patriarchy has done its work! To give examples, Sam in the Bewitched series, Gil in Bell, Book and Candle or Morticia from The Adams Family come to mind.

Today the cinema appears very rich in terms of representations and has ceased to convey a single image. Gone are the old black hats and the broom, today they are sexy, go to school and fight with wizards, are scary, make people laugh, are sometimes evil. They are the fantasy of a whole generation, some dreaming of marrying Emma Watson or better of becoming Emma Watson.

For this article on this blog, I wanted to recommend two films that deal with the figure of the witch. Two styles, two directors and two different visions complementing each other rather well.

Suspiria – Dario Argento (1977)

I won’t go into the questionable and recent version of Luca Guadagnino here, simply because I have a lot of grievances about him despite an interesting treatment of the occult. Indeed he develops an approach centered on the power of magic and women, which differs from the version of Argento rather centered on the monstrous.
The Suspiria of 77 tends towards the fantastic and the giallo, a genre which appeared in Italy between the 60s and 70s and which mixes murder, sexuality, fantasy, thriller, detective film and fantasy. It is mainly recognized for its particular colors, with a strong use of red, blue and yellow. The scenes are often outrageous and baroque, even extremely kitsch. If you want to know more, I refer you to the filmography of Dario Argento but also of Fulci and Mario Bava.

Suspiria is therefore an extremely cult film that any cinephile fan of the genre must have seen. It is the first part of the Three Mothers Trilogy, preceding Inferno and The Third Mother. This trilogy is entirely devoted to the myth of the witch.
Suspiria tells the story of a young dancer making her debut in a German ballet school full of secrets. Given the theme of the chronicle it is not a spoiler to reveal that the founders and teachers engage in black magic. The witch is approached here from the angle of the macabre and the monstrous. They are real fairy tale villains, powerful but diabolical. The young dancers are filmed like children wanting to unravel the mysteries of this school and understand the issues. The school building, with its astonishing architecture reminiscent of art nouveau, is in itself a character in its own right. A veritable castle of stories from our childhood, it is a source of terror but above all of wonder, for the spectator as well as for the young dancers.

Dario Argento uses the baroque and the fantastic to underline the strangeness of the place and the events. He is helped by Goblin and his music which is certainly magnificent but very disturbing. Argento also declares “having tried with Suspiria to mix the world of the tales of Walt Disney and Grimm with the violence of The Exorcist”. For the photography, Luciano Tovoli accentuates the recognizable primary colors of the Giallo and delivers a work worthy of paintings, which accentuates the fantastic and hypnotic aspect of the film. He also draws inspiration from German Expressionist cinema in his use of symbolism.

The Witch – Robert Eggers (2015)

The Witch differs radically from the previous one in its approach as well as in its aesthetics. It comes across as more grounded in reality, colder, and really dwells on the folkloric portrayal of the witch.
The Witch is the directorial debut of horror film prodigy Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Lighthouse) who has been proving his talent ever since. It shows us a Puritan family of the 15th century (and still the word is weak, next to the Le Quesnois family are atheists) driven out of their community and having no other choice but to isolate themselves at the edge of a forest. They will gradually find themselves confronted with strange phenomena and lose their footing.

The strength of The Witch is that it is not a work that is necessarily scary, but a work about fear itself. The fear that will plague an entire family and push them to destroy each other. The real threat is not the prowling witch but the fanaticism of the characters. Fanaticism that will push the characters to return the violence towards the eldest personified by Anya Taylor Joy, a young girl with a strong character, and accuse her of all the evils. Since she is beautiful and desirable, she can only mate with the devil. It is not innocent that The Witch is carried by a strong female character and at the dawn of her entry into adolescence, a pivotal period where the body changes and can appear as monstrous or sexualized. The monstrous feminine is also an important theme in horror cinema, highlighted by what is called the “Coming Of Age”, a subgenre that deals with the passage from childhood to adulthood and the loss of a certain innocence as well as the enhancement of one’s own personality. Like Carrie, Thomasin questions imposed dictates, sees herself sexualized by the appearance of her period and must face the gaze of her bigoted entourage.

The film therefore highlights the witch “marginal woman” wishing to emancipate herself from religion and patriarchy, here very well represented by the character of the father. Rather than strictly condemning acts of witchcraft, Eggers first exposes the disturbing aspects before rejoicing and exalting its power in the conclusion. Black magic appears as the creation of oppression, whether through folklore or extreme religious depictions of family. In order to document himself and provide a faithful historical representation, Robert Eggers has carried out meticulous research using period texts such as Malleus Maleficarum, a reference in the fight against witchcraft.
Image the witch

Mona Chollet.
“The witch embodies the woman freed from all domination, from all limitations, she is an ideal towards which to strive, she shows the way”

Bis Repertita: Bis cinema

I really like cinema in general with a preference for science fiction and fantasy, but I haven’t talked too much about a type of cinema that I particularly like, Bis cinema.

Alright, but what is Bis cinema?

Let’s go back to four names that may come up often in the future if I want to be able to talk about these films:

Genre cinema

The B-series

The Z-series

The exploitation cinema

Genre cinema:

I’ve already talked about it here but to make it short, it’s all action movies, horror, erotic, kung fu… Anything out of the ordinary.

The B-series:

Basically, the B-series refers to the second film that was screened in double sessions in neighborhood cinemas, generally a short-lived genre film, the first film being generally more “normal” or more “classic”. Today, as neighborhood cinemas and double screenings have disappeared, the term B-series is used to designate a genre film shot on a low budget. The main characteristic of these works is to compensate for the lack of means, when they are good, to deploy treasures of ingenuity and an inventiveness which is lacking in a lot of series A. John Carpenter is one of the most famous directors of series B films.

The Z-series:

The Z-series is roughly the same as the B-series, often too ambitious for its means. Often bad, sometimes to the point of becoming funny, some of them can be touched by grace to the point of gradually reaching the status of cult work.

The exploitation cinema:

In exploitation cinema, there is also a question of very low-budget genre films, such as B series, but without any artistic pretension. Their only goal is to be profitable quickly by using what attracts the public the most, violence, sex or both at the same time. This type of film experienced its golden age in the 70s and some exploitation films were so crazy that they themselves created a new cinematographic subgenre which will then be taken up by other exploitation films. more WTF who will in turn create new sub genres etc…
Believe me, there are many, many!

Bis cinema:

Now that we see a little more clearly, let’s move on to my definition. Cinema Bis is therefore:

A genre film, series B, series Z or exploitation film with a low budget, popular or not (because there are also non Bis auteur films) which at the time of its release is found despised or ignored by critics, because of the film’s slightly crazy or apart aspect.

What characterizes Bis cinema above all is its inventiveness and its great diversity. What you have to understand is that the Bis is not just one genre, it’s a set of genres.

There is therefore a phenomenal amount of completely lit films from all over the planet, which only look like themselves and some of which still continue to inspire world cinema.

When did the Bis cinema appear?

Historically, it dates from the mid-1950s, at a time when the Hollywood system no longer worked properly and when viewers preferred to stay at home in front of their brand new televisions rather than go and lock themselves in dark rooms.

Faced with the cinemas which were gradually emptying, Hollywood legitimately began to panic and therefore left aside the B series to choose to bet mainly on the great films in color like “Lawrence of Arabia”, “The Bridge on the River Kwaï or “Benhur”. The problem with these spectacular films in natural settings being that they are very expensive to produce and for the sake of economy, it was therefore necessary to relocate filming to Europe, mainly to Italy, Great Britain and Spain.

Technicians from the old continent were therefore able to learn from their American counterparts and realize that there was a place in the field of series B and from there, everyone got into it, English, Italian, Germans, Spaniards and even French.

In the rest of the world:

However, cinema bis also sees the light of day in the USA with a man from independent cinema named Roger Corman. He alone will build an empire.

In Hong Kong, Shaw Brosers films are getting more and more talked about and are starting to cross borders.

In Japan, we exorcise via the cinemas the traumas due to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Mexico, genre cinema is developing more and more, particularly with the figure of El Santo

Conclusion:

In short, it’s a real universe that awaits you and that’s precisely what made me want to create a new series of articles called “Bis repetita” to make you discover or rediscover some of these completely crazy films, which hardly appear on television anymore and which, in my opinion, are much more interesting and inventive than the ¾ of the cinema releases.
It’s a daring cinema, badly brought up and sometimes extreme but which tries things and that’s the main thing.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

PS:

Ukraine is a country with its own history, culture and language. As much as any country, it deserves to keep its own identity and sovereignty.

I have not always (very rarely) agreed with the Ukrainian government but I give my full support to the Ukrainian people!

The near future, a distorting mirror

Paint from Liz Hume : https://www.artstation.com/lizhume

From Andy Cline’s Ready Player One to Judge Dread to Black Mirror and Pacific Rim, near future works are endless.
Close anticipation is not a genre, it is an approach.
Common point of the corpus: the stories must take place in the near future. Something to get excited about and also often fuel the nightmare machine.

What is sience-fiction?

Science fiction is inextricably linked with anticipation. It is about imagining possible developments in science and technology in order to explore possible future possibilities. In their time, the forerunners of Mary Shelley (Frenkenstein), HG WELLS (The Time Machine) and Jules Vernes (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) marveled at the advances of their time to build wonderful philosophical stories. or terrifying. These, among others, invented speculative fiction. Imagining the future, even on the basis of facts and cutting-edge documentation, is still science fiction. SF is written in the conditional, not in the future, and always feeds on the context in which it is born. And too bad if its projections fall short of reality or become obsolete, sometimes in just a few years. Because even when they claim to talk about something else, the works are full of the mindset, values and knowledge of their time, and of their author. It always speaks of the present, and has effects in the present.

The case of near future.

The genres of the imagination, including fantasy and SF, are therefore always situated in relation to the real, and the works of near future undoubtedly hide this even less than the others: their plots are close to their context and time. of creation – and close to us who receive them. For the British writer J.G. Ballard, the near future would be a means of talking about the “true future”, the one that we “see approaching”, as opposed to hypothetical elsewhere, in eras and galaxies far, very distant. On the contrary, from space opera or mythical fantasy, the near future does not open the door to escape, it immediately announces “in not very long” and implies “right here”. Ballard himself was adapted (Crash by David Cronenberg).

In the continuity of Ballard, many works – novels, films, comic series, games – have placed their plots in a futuristic universe, without necessarily exploring a supposed immediate future. Problem: all fiction implies a distancing from reality. Near future works consciously break this convention with the help of a distorting mirror. Everything is familiar and so different.

But why are these works often so terrifying?

Seeing the future negatively, is it for ease? Where has the reassuring cocoon of our daily comfort gone? Do we no longer have the right to dream, to imagine? This is a crucial question. Most of the near-anticipation works outbid the existing, adding a small dose of dark futurism, freewheeling technology, eerie androids, triumphant capitalism, and permanent cops. Just what it takes to smash the glass in our comfort zone. The reassuring daily life becomes deadly, your intelligent vacuum cleaner seeks to kill you, a spaceship is planning its worrying shadow over the city, even it is absolutely necessary to chip or get vaccinated so as not to fall on the cost of law and order. . (get vaccinated guys, this is important)
In the preface to his full short stories, Ballard cautioned against this trend:

“The future […] is a dangerous, heavily mined area that tends to turn around to bite your ankles when you take a step forward. “

Too late the damage is done.
Many works anchored in the near future stage an imperceptible and perpetual shift where each technology, each authoritarian drift, each change in lifestyle or degree of global warming, testifies to the fact that nothing will ever be the same again. Rather than the completely reconfigured worlds of the post-apocalypse, where everything was destroyed and then recast, this is about the cycles of life and death of civilizations. The collapse is not imminent, it is immanent. History is on the move. It happens continuously.
In the fluctuations of a pandemic, the British series Years and Years, or through the words of Chuck in Fight Club:

«This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time”

Paradoxically, it is also this perpetual end of the known world that allows all hopes and allows utopias to flourish, however diffuse they may be. Dark futures fuel the emergence of new horizons, new battles to be waged and new hopes to be nourished. Suddenly utopias exist mainly to legitimize the fights waged against them. In reality, the great battle of imaginations, ideas and values is fought deep inside each of us. The fight is brutal, merciless, it spares none of our received ideas, our intuitions and our usual thinking patterns. And test what we think we know as the disgust, fear or revolt that arises over fiction becomes able to inspire us and spur us to action. For example, the treatment of aliens in District 9 strikes us as despicable, because it inevitably reminds us of the plight of refugees around the world. What is terrifying about this distorting mirror is less the distortion it conjures up than the fact that we recognize ourselves in it.

Fear Street 1994

“Fear Street” is basically a series of books in the line of “Goosebumps” but more adult, at the same time we find the same author: R.L. Stine. “Fear Street 1994”, available on Netflix, is therefore an adaptation of those books, which I haven’t read, so it’s impossible for me to say if the story is a revival or if the screenplay is new.

I was expecting a somewhat crappy Goosebumps movie, but right off the bat you end up in a real slasher with blood staining, which was a pleasant surprise to me.
Of course the film is not free from flaws. Hello, the slightly irritating clichés related to the model he was inspired by. Was it really necessary to incorporate them here?

Otherwise, the feature film is frankly effective in its formula. We are clearly dealing with a tribute to the Slasher of the 90’s with “Scream”, “The Faculties” and “Friday” 13 (we have a Jason right now), all placed in 1994. No, but don’t lie to us, a slasher Nowadays, in the age of smartphones it’s still damn ridiculous …

It’s more of a pretty picture, the pace is steady, which gets carried away to never let go, until the last seconds and the supernatural aspect adds a little originality to the whole.
The characters are well put together, quite quickly by the way. Even if some have ultra cliché or stereotypical writing (which is a shame) this bunch of young people are doing admirably well.

Too bad the plot is simplified enough from the 1st part, and we discover the how and why even faster. That said, there will be other surprises that will come when we least expect them (except those who know the codes of any good Slasher by heart) and especially the set can be much more interesting than expected.

The ending made me want to see what happened next. Indeed, “Fear Street 1994” the first part of a trilogy including “Fear Street 1978” which will be released on July 9 and “Fear Street 1666” on the 16th. I like the idea of going back in time to the origins of evil. a lot. The mood should be really different. Hopefully, they will manage to keep artistic consistency and at least the same level of qualities.

In short, for me, it was a nice surprise. Failing not to renew the genre, this 1st part pays it a nice tribute (like the 1st Season of Stranger Things). Not to mention a 90’s soundtrack which makes me very happy (there is Iron Maiden, from there I was already conquered). For lovers of the genre, I think you will be in for a treat.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a nice movie to pass the time, alone or with friends.

Mortal Komnat 2021

After a quick spicy bolognese sauce, I embark on this long awaited Mortal Kombat new version and without, I reassure you, a cameo of the unbearable Christophe Lambert. Too busy looking for a role in a Tintin in Congo on the stage.

Between fatalities and action scenes as edgy as they are boosted, the Mortal Kombat reboot has rather convinced a bloodthirsty press. Since its first announcements, and especially its trailer and these famous first 7 minutes, the reboot of Mortal Kombat has given us a glimpse of the best and especially to hope for a faithful adaptation very trashouille. After all, director Simon McQuoid had promised an adaptation of video games true to its regressive aspect, offering the viewer what previous versions could never come close to, namely the famous ultra-graphic kills of the franchise: fatalities. But beyond making a gory uninhibited proposal, the filmmaker has visibly taken his subject seriously, displaying a note of noble intention. With its cast of true martial artists, reduced use of CGIs, and fluid, airy staging, Mortal Kombat looks like it taps into some edgy Asian action cinema, which we don’t mind. . The fatalities are as foul as you could hope … but it’s really the fight scenes that stand out from the rest. The amount of work that is directed in the choreographies and stunts is more than impressive. You can see that a bunch of martial artists are really doing these fights on screen, rather than dealing with quick editing or digital dubs. And that, well damn it feels good …

It’s definitely not a drama around nuanced characters, instead you get ninja-blooded boxers, Green Berets with robotic arms that beat up invisible lizards and flying demons for a bloody, flaschy reunion. . When not in a fight, the characters bicker and spit out pseudo-spiritual expressions until they have to prepare for the next fight. Mortal Kombat is not for the fancy palate, but for those who know what to expect, get over here! Special mention to the roles of Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Kang, Blade, and Kung-Lao, excellent! Uhhh, the final duel is just insane, watch out for peepers … I have played this fight hundreds of times via games on different consoles for ages …

However, we must note some faults, still recurring … The dialogues, a few unnecessary lengths, and an unbearable Kano, even if devastating! The Goro part, although bloody, is a bit boring. As for the syno, well it’s always the same thing, basic … But it’s Mortal Kombat, nothing more, nothing less … Except that the film becomes, finally, a respectful tribute to the game.

The werewolf and its representation in cinema

Attention SPOILERS! You can consult the list of films mentioned at the end of the article.

Out of almost 30 films seen, the number of films depicting male and / or female werewolves is almost similar. We often have the representation that a werewolf is a man, when it is not.
The werewolf represents marginality. But this transforming body also refers to that of the woman. We left for the analysis of the representation of the werewolf.

Summary:

The moon
The wolf and the human
The appearance of the werewolf
The werewolf, a shield against gender-based violence?
Love, elexir of the curse
Bestial sexuality
The wolf packs
Conclusion: the wolf is in you

A werewolf (or lycanthrope therefore), is a human being who transforms completely or not, into a wolf. It can transform unintentionally, (often on a full moon), or intentionally. So there is one version of the beast that dominates, and the other that endures.
The 1st written record of the werewolf myth dates from the 5th century. Suffice to say that the lycanthrope had time to know several stories.

Although the werewolf is considered a powerful, malignant beast, he is viewed negatively:

It is a punishment of Zeus on Lycaon (Greek king),
He is associated with murderers and child eaters. As for example Gilles Garnier in 1570. We will note here the link with the Big Bad Wolf,
To become a wolf is to be linked to the beast that kills cattle (which represents food and clothing),
There was a werewolf hunt like a witch hunt,
Feeling like a werewolf can be a symptom of a mental disorder.

1-The moon

It is the writer and politician Gervais de Tilbury who is behind the connection with the werewolf who transforms during a new moon (and not a full moon as it is now portrayed). He writes it in his Book of Wonders in the 12th century.

The moon is a satellite that has an important place in our beliefs, whether they are ancient or not.
Moreover, it is very present through everyday expressions: being in the moon, getting the moon, being badly mooned, even being beautiful as the moon …

It has several symbols:

Change. A lunar cycle goes through a different perception of the moon. We talk about new moon, 1st crescents, quarters, waxing gibbous moon, and once the full moon is reached, the cycle starts again in the other direction. A gradual transformation therefore.
To evoke a changing mental disorder, we speak of lunatic people.
Fertility. With his lunar cycle of 29 days, he is close to a menstrual cycle, usually around 28 days. It took no more for our Greek and Roman ancestors to associate the moon with the feminine (although there is no scientific evidence of a link between the 2). Thus, according to Aristotle, the full moon would facilitate the delivery.
The moon therefore has its Greek goddess, Selene, and Roman, Luna. Note that these goddesses are transformed into witches (obviously evil) on new moon nights, following a pact with the Devil.
The power of nature. It is for this reason that witches are said to keep their Sabbaths, this feast, during a full moon. A symbiosis between nature and gods / goddesses, in an isolated corner, which will allow the magic not to be disturbed.
It’s not surprising then that the moon is directly linked to the idea that the werewolf is a direct return of man, to nature.
These elements make it an undeniable reference to the feminine.

If we look at its more scientific side, it is not devoid of interest either. We can note:

Its link with the Earth. The moon is often associated with the sun when in reality its pair would be more with the Earth. Indeed, 4 billion years ago, the Earth and the moon were one, and it was after a collision with another planet that they were fractured. It is for this reason that rock compositions are found on the moon, which are similar to the Earth.
Thus, if we associate the moon with the transformation of man into a werewolf, we can see in it the fusion between the moon and the Earth. The latter obviously represents Men.
Its link with the sea. The moon is a source of reassuring light for sailors.
But above all, the combined forces of gravity of the moon and the sun, regulate the tides.

2-The wolf and the human

Before getting to the heart of the matter, it’s worth noting that the werewolf movie subgenre has a reputation for offering a lot of (very) bad movies. And I will not go against this received idea, which is rather true (even if we find some pearls).

What questioned me, however, is why? Because horror subgenres featuring more or less monstrous animals are common in genre cinema. And if everything is obviously not successful, that does not prevent us from having very good films ranging from Alien, via Cujo, The Thing or The Fly, which for some tackle a transformation of the human being.

It remains very complicated to represent the transformation of a human into an animal that is close and known to us. Especially since humans have little to do with a canine, morphologically speaking. It is therefore a tour de force to succeed in making a human body evolve into the body of a wolf. Especially if we have to represent the body which becomes human again. There is a bit of an absurd and funny side in the end. Like a disguise.

On the other hand, the link between man and wolf is very old. These are 2 species that quickly got along. They are social, work in packs, eat similar foods (which explains their clash over cattle, even though we know there are more dogs that kill them than wolves).
The wolf and the man are also attached to the notion of territory to defend, to mark it, to conquer it.

But we also know that Man became the first predator of the wolf in the Middle Ages, when their extermination really began. Clashes between inhabitants of mountainous regions and wolves are still raging today. The wolf has therefore been a protected species since 1990, which does not prevent some from killing them, exasperated.
The situation is worsening with global warming, which pushes humans and animals to live closer and closer.
Yet this cohabitation is ancestral; we just lost the habit of living in harmony with animals. A habit that we will surely have to resume.
The human being who must live in peace with wolves. In the same way that the werewolf materializes this challenge for humans to live in harmony with their wolf side.

Man is an animal like any other

With Man transformed into an (other) animal, werewolf films often question Man’s relationship to his animality. The way the bestial aspect takes over, and the consequences that affect his life.
As if we were starting from the principle that Man is not an animal, but a civilized being (even if we should define what we put behind the word civilized).
Indeed, we know that the genetic differences between apes and humans are minimal. In addition, it should be known that the man is the only one of his kind to strike and kill his companion.
So, there are now anthropologists, who tend to put men and animals on a similar level.

3-The appearance of the werewolf

Visually, the werewolf offers few variations. The main difference that can be noted between films, is the choice to show a gradual, partial or radical transformation.

Progressive female transformation

This is the first difference in treatment between male and female werewolves that can be noted.
In the vast majority of cases, we see a gradual transformation of women. That is, we see the character’s face evolve; but she keeps her human appearance.
When I say gradual transformation, I mean stages that you see for a shorter or longer time in the film. I ignore the gradual transformation that can occur just before the total transformation.

This is the case in the Ginger Snaps saga. We can also note a gradual and partial transformation in the magnificent Danish film When animals dream.
Gradually, Ginger and Marie’s face wrinkles, giving them a sharp and pointed appearance. The hair becomes lighter, and the eyes become sharper. Ditto in I Am Lisa.

Their faces are reminiscent of the painting by the German Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Two Women at the Street (1914).
In this painting, he represents two women who show their new independence with sensuality and confidence.
The angular lines, the vigorous hatching give an impression of a lively and violent movement. The sharp lines and masks of the faces refer to the primitivism that Kirchner greatly appreciates.
The independence that goes with their maturity is precisely what characterizes Ginger and Marie.

Note that this appearance also echoes a fairly common representation of the old witch.
Long, fair hair, long nails and sharp teeth, damaged skin, sometimes with unnatural eyes.
This refers to the witches present in the full moon myths mentioned above. As well as the Goddesses who are endowed with evil powers, also during a full moon.

In the broke but nevertheless partially interesting I Am Lisa, we do not see the total transformation of the heroine. You have to get to the end of the film to see a partial transformation. If the result is not shameful, we are moving away from an aesthetic linked to the wolf. We are more on a representation of demons.
So here we are more in the idea of evil powers (like the Greek and Roman Goddesses, which I mentioned above).

Wildling offers quite a few progressive transformation sequences, and besides her end state is quite close to human (she is rather halfway between a werewolf and a “wild” human being)
In contrast, the film dwells on the gradual effects of this transformation on her psyche, her relationship with the new world she is discovering.

We mainly see a gradual transformation of women, unlike men

Finally there is only in Wildling, and especially She Wolf of London (but when you know the ending you know why), in which the werewolf keeps a relatively human appearance.
Note that in the case of these 2 films, the protagonists fully accept their condition. In Wildling’s case, since she’s been deprived of her body for years, she takes advantage of it. In She Wolf of London, she very quickly suspects herself of having committed murders at night and decides to isolate herself. She therefore undergoes gaslighting throughout the film, while the threat is very real, even if she is wrong about her origin.

Progressive male transformation

As I said, there are rarely gradual transformations of male characters.

On the other hand, there are representations that I would say partial (that is to say that we do not see a wolf monster strictly speaking). In other words, man can always be distinguished through his transformation into a werewolf.
This is the case in Wolf, or The Curse of Werewolf, Werewolf of London (1935) or A werewolf boy. But their faces are never disfigured. They are especially hairier!
In addition, it has the consequence that one does not see any potential pain.

What are the consequences of these progressive transformations?

Representing these partial transformations assault the face (in the same way as in the representation of possession, it is the women who most often have damaged faces). What represents the very identity, is touched. These women are portrayed in a monstrous light, which can arouse a certain disgust.
Moreover, these gradual transformations are often painful, physically or mentally. The character has to adapt to this changing physique. What puts these female characters in a weak position, rather in the process of undergoing this transformation.

On the contrary, werewolf men, rarely knowing this intermediate stage, do not live this in between.
No complicated bodily situations to experience.
They are most often shown in the light of a complete transformation. This establishes their strength and power, and causes not disgust, but rather fear. And therefore represents a domination.

Note that this difference may seem trivial, yet there is research, notably by Pierre Ancet in his book Phenomenology of Monstrous Bodies which shows the opposite. He notes that we have a real repulsion towards deformed bodies close to human (and therefore our own relationship to the body), unlike plant nonsense or strange rocks. What is more, if a subject is perceived as monstrous, it is first of all because he is seen as such by others. We agree here with the importance of the notion of looking at women.

Moreover, it implies a notion of attraction for this body. Indeed, this strange body gives a lot of unusual things to see, so we experience a fascination (which women are often the object of in genre cinema).
But this attraction / repulsion duality means that we no longer see the other as a whole person. You can only see it through this deformity. Thus, we find here the notion of woman as object.

You see what I mean? This disfigurement of female characters has an emotional consequence, or a look at these characters, of which we are not necessarily aware. All the more so if we are used to seeing these progressive transformations mainly on a genre.
And above all, unlike the possession which takes its inspiration from the ways of discrediting women with hysteria, I see no reason for this difference in treatment. In the collective imagination, the werewolf is a man, so maybe we wanted to treat the female characters in a different way. Maybe you have some answers?

Complete transformation

In most films, we represent the werewolf (man or woman), without intermediate step, as in Wolf, Teddy, Trick Or Treat, Cursed, The werewolf of London, The werewolf of Paris, The good manners or even Howls.
This obviously does not prevent the classic tracks of transformation from being launched to the public: the senses increased tenfold, the appetite for meat, for sexuality …
Perfect equality of treatment, if I may say so.
Except that, the most impressive complete transformations and on which one insists, concern mainly the men. Even when the film features a male and female werewolf.

In The Company of Wolves, we are entitled to 2 striking scenes. The very graphic 1st, based on blood and skeleton, which reflects the brutality of a man who has become a beast, and who attacks his former companion.

The other more moving, with a more carnal aspect, which corresponds to the “subtext” of sexuality concerning Little Red Riding Hood.

However, a female character and the heroine transform at the end. Except … that it is suggested (we do not forget to put a naked one on the other hand). For one, she changes very discreetly in the dark, and the other she is discovered already metamorphosed.

Wolf offers 3 werewolf characters. The 2 male characters played by Jack Nicholson and James Spader are transformed. But not Michelle Pfeiffer, whose transformation is suggested via her beautiful evolving eyes.
In The Werewolf of London, Bad Moon we witness one (or more) transformation (s) in a frontal way.

Much like in Howling, the transformation of man is shown in an evolutionary way even though fast. It is interesting to note that the man is sublimated during his transformation through his sexual performance. As for her partner, she is back to the ground, without seeing the evolution of her face.
You will also notice that the man maintains a head quite close to his human condition, unlike the woman.

The end of the film mostly shows the heroine’s change of state through her eyes once again. And most importantly, when you quickly show her final state (before she gets killed, unlike male werewolves), she looks like a poodle …
This is undoubtedly to distinguish the protagonists from the antagonists. But that does not prevent representing it with a little more class all the same!

In Bad Moon, the werewolf is the unambiguous antagonist of this story, which aims to show the power of a single-parent family. To demonstrate this, the film shows the monstrosity of the character in his psychology (and his manipulation), and through his physique. So we see the werewolf in its entirety regularly in the film; which gradually increases the tension about the danger that threatens the mother.

We can forget the catastrophic representations of the complete transformations of Julie Delpy in An American Werewolf in Paris (3 writers for as much mediocrity is a lot) which are anecdotal.
Moreover, we can note that the staging thinks (a little) about the transformation of the male character, by trying to create a climax with the fountain where he hides just before appearing with a bang.

We dwell a little more on Judy Greer’s role in Cursed. The visual effects (already very ugly for the time) do not help, but above all the idea is to show the appearance of the physical monstrosity of the antagonist that the protagonists will have to face. Also, we see very little the antagonist in the film before. So the emotional impact is very different than if it had been Christina Ricci.

Even though the portrayal of women’s transformations in Trick Or Treat is excessively sexualized (I will come back to this later), there are a few interesting points that can be noted. You should know that at this time, they overturn the cliché of Little Red Riding Hood. They are the predatory wolves to be wary of. They shed their human skin, like a costume, which is a direct reference to the tale. It’s a way of shedding their appearance that makes them potential victims. The transformation is not quite complete, but it is coming very close. The case of this film is a bit special because it comes close to a narration of sketch films.

The bad western Blood Moon shows a complete live transformation I would like to say of a female character. The only interesting sequence in the film, where you can feel the body decompose, unfold. Unfortunately as no character is written in this film, this transformation brings nothing (the sequence even comes out of nowhere). Neither in the story, nor in the evolution of the character.

The only films where the complete transformation is portrayed frontally, which involves the willingness to show the final evolution of the character, is in Ginger Snaps 1 and 2 (written by women, I remind you!).

In general, either we put more emphasis on the staging, the complete transformation of a man, or it nourishes the character or the plot.

4-The werewolf, a shield against gender-based violence?

When the main character is female, the stakes are often linked to the idea of countering gender-based violence.

To return more specifically to the case of Marie in When Animals dream, the appearance of her real nature comes at the end of her adolescence (around 20 years old), unlike Ginger (her transformation comes at the time of her period). She is in search of her origins, and she understands that it is hereditary, her mother being struck by the same disease. Here the werewolf myth is used to survive male toxicity. Indeed, her mother found herself in a wheelchair; he was put out of action. She had killed men who had assaulted her. Yet she retains all her strength when it comes to defending her daughter who is in the hands of her father and the doctor.

From the first images, we know that what Marie will suffer first is the male gaze on her. She is half naked, at the doctor’s (the same one who will try to treat her despite his will).
Working in a male environment, she is hazed by men, immersed in a bath of fish waste. She is sexually assaulted by 2 colleagues.
Men not only pollute the environment of these women, but they also try to make them disappear because they are afraid of their rebellion.

This desire to deviate from traditional werewolf themes (total body transformation, animalization in the forest), passes through the decor. The action of When Animals Dream takes place in a small port town. No forest, trees or a full moon, here we are among fishes and fishermen, with no other perspective for the protagonists and antagonists. But as we have seen above, the moon is linked to the sea.

It is present in a subtle way. Elements that refer to the moon are placed in the same frame as Mary:

Round objects (satellite dish, decorative objects, a small mill that spins in the garden),
Round mirrors.

The moon, as we saw above is regularly associated with the feminine.
In my opinion, this supports the fact that Marie is surrounded by her status as a woman (and by the sea), which places her at the center of the animosity of the men in her village.
What I found particularly relevant in this beautiful film is that Mary, who has the status of an animal, is not portrayed as bad, evil. Unlike the men who are considered by the village as civilized beings (because they would try to protect the village from Mary and her mother).

This is also the observation that can be made in the exploitative erotic horror La lupa mannara, but with a very problematic point. Which shows that the same subject does not necessarily tell the same story …
The moon is constantly associated with the heroine (who by the way is not really a werewolf, but more like a vampire).
Thus, the montage regularly associates the moon with its face. In addition, car headlights are frequently used to remind people of the moon. I would even add that, in this specific case, the moon and the headlights are the symbols of the voyeuristic male gaze (especially of the director) on the heroine. Indeed, it only exists through its status as an object of desire and domination (the rape scene is also very representative of the stinking rape & revenge of exploitation cinema of the 70s).

But there is no shortage of sexist comments in Lupa Mannara. The heroine is portrayed as the evil witch (she is depicted as in the legends of witches dancing on the evening of a full moon, which I mentioned above). Indeed, it is staged in a communion with the forces of evil, or in nature with a cauldron.

She also becomes puritanical. A victim of rape in her youth, she has since hated sexuality. So she starts killing … women who are sexually active (she will not kill her sister, but will punish her by killing her husband and insulting him). And when she is raped again, she won’t use that same superhuman strength to defend herself. It is her new companion who will leave his skin there, wanting to save her. In addition, his life is ruled by his father. And despite everything she went through, she will die locked in an asylum.
The staging, which excessively sexualizes women, only lowers them to the status of a body. So yes, the aim of the film is to vulgarly attract the male customer. But it seemed important to me to point out how this type of work is still a problem.

If Wildling gets lost along the way, entangled in a Twilight-style vibe, Part 1 of the film is clever at portraying the heroine’s control of the body.
Anna is the survivor of a wolf hunt. She is picked up (and kidnapped) by a hunter who has no heart to kill her. But having a horror of the werewolf species, he drugs it dangerously to stop its period, and therefore its growth.
He therefore takes control of his body from his childhood, which he will try to take back at the end of the film. He tries to perform a cesarean on Anna, in order to recover (again) a child. We can see a subtext on incest and pedophilia, but also on the massacre of the Amerindian population.

The main stake for Anna in the meantime is to regain her body, her mobility, and of course to taste the joys of adolescence. A bodily and psychological change. Here again, his more “wild” state than a wolf, will allow him to defend himself against the sexual assault of a young person of his age (who will be represented by the way as a wolf).

The case of I Am Lisa is special. It is explicitly stated that the heroine is a lesbian, and she is assaulted by women, following the refusal of advances from one of them. Left for dead and bitten by wolves, she will take revenge, werewolf for her condition.
Here we find the classic patriarchal scheme, but executed by women. Lisa also helps women (her best friend, a teenage girl abandoned by her mother…).
If the film botches its subject too much, and that it can be perceived as lesbophobic (especially since it is directed and written by men), it has the merit of illustrating that patriarchal domination is not exercised. than by men. And that it can be quite internalized by women. Thus, it is a way of destroying the argument often used by men to justify sexism, namely that it is validated by women.

In A werewolf boy, it’s the werewolf isn’t the danger. He is the bulwark against misogyny. We can obviously see the inability of the heroine to defend herself, but to the extent that she comes to the aid of her werewolf lover in another way, I rather retain a form of equality between the 2.
It should be noted that unlike the very dark depictions of love in other films, the vision of love is sublimated here. Everything is overexposed, clear, yellow, happy, bright.

5-Love, elixir of the curse

Love is often a major issue in werewolf movies. We find him in The Curse of Werewolf, Wildling, Blood & Chocolate, An American werewolf in Paris, When Animals dream, A Werewolf Boy…

Indeed, it should be known that love is often brandished as an element of care, even a remedy, for the evil of the werewolf.
This is the case in The Curse of Werewolf and its reboot / remake Wolfman. The female character is incidental, it exists only through the hero, to serve the hero.
In The Curse of Werewolf, Christina (who is presented only as a character promised to marriage), wishes to live her freedom in love with Leon, the werewolf. We will not know anything more about his desires, his personality; it represents care.
In the same way that Gwen in Wolfman is first the wife of a werewolf who will eventually be killed, only to fall in love with her brother, also a werewolf. How, in times of mourning, did she discover feelings for the hero, Larry? Mystery. In any case, she is once again the only issue for the werewolf hero. I am thinking here of an editing problem, because we feel a character who undoubtedly had more visibility.

Love interest is sometimes central, and even defines the characters.
This is the case in Blood & Chocolate, where the half-human, half-wolf heroine waits for a man to come into her life to emancipate herself. In fact, the only time we will see her transformation is to defend her lover. He is also the only reason she will attack her fellow human beings.
A similar pattern takes place in An American Werewolf in Paris. Werewolf Serafine is saved from suicide by the hero Andy. Subsequently, she believes she has infected him, and the rule is that to ward off the curse, the contaminated must eat the heart of the werewolf who attacked him.
The symbolism is obvious, Andy, werewolf, must literally tear the heart of his sweetheart. Note that twice, Sérafine wishes to die (from her wounds, and by suicide). Twice, Andy will be the savior. However, instead of trying to save herself (or to exist apart from her stepfather, the toxic men around her and Andy), she will systematically seek to save her lover. Trying to pull him away, almost giving up his life there, even trying to relax him by putting his hands on her chest. Normal.

All of these examples refer strongly to what is called nurse syndrome.
For fear of not being loved, to heal an injury, or quite simply because the structural functioning of society is the responsibility of women to take care of others (family, husband, children, etc.), many women seek to cure an illness that gnaws at their companion. To the detriment of their own life, desires, needs.

The only example where love is the central subject of the film and which does not correspond to these observations, is the wonderful Good Manners. The 1st part evokes a love between 2 women (which is not the subject of the film). Part 2 shows a mother’s love for her child who is physically different from herself. If the film obviously evokes marginality, it is reminiscent of the problems encountered by mothers who have an adopted child who does not look like them. Black director Amandine Gay regularly evokes these differences which have very concrete consequences on a daily basis.

6-Bestial sexuality

The werewolf, a concrete manifestation of human animality, has to do with sexuality. Which I personally have always found quite funny, but I touched on the subject in the introduction, above.
You see me coming, so this is an opportunity to come back to the treatment of sexuality according to the gender of the protagonist!

So the female werewolf in Howling is only there to tempt the male.
In Trick n Treat, we are entitled to many close-ups of the breasts of the werewolf who transform. Big breasts, very standardized bodies, all added to the fantasies of the costumes… we are swimming in a rather ridiculous excessive sexualization.
Note that these 2 examples refer to the dimension of the evil witch, and their dances in the middle of nature, as I mentioned in the introduction on the symbols linked to the moon.

We regularly find the illustration of nurse syndrome

Julie Delpy devotes herself with all her body to relax the hero in An American Werewolf in Paris.
And obviously Ginger Snaps illustrates the discovery of the body and sexuality, while not sexualizing its heroine (unlike the other examples).
There is obviously the deplorable case of La lupa mannara, the problems of which I have already mentioned above.

There are also cases where the woman is sexualized through the male gaze. This is the case in Cursed. The heroine becomes sexually attractive to all men.
This is also the point that can be made in Cat People (although here it is a panther and not a wolf). She exudes such a strong attraction that a passer-by (yes it should be noted that there is still a passer-by!), Seems to love her (if we can call that love), to the point of wanting to marry her. (too) very quickly.
Moreover, this state in the heroine rather creates a fear of sexuality. With the help of unsubtle metaphorical images of the padlock and the key (Freud’s concept to symbolize penetration), we understand that she does not know how to manage both her physical state, but also the reactions that it creates on men (both her husband and her doctor). In fact, the first time she kills, it will be to defend herself from sexual assault.

In the comedy My mom is a werewolf, a mother is pushed back with mental strain, and neglected by her husband. This need for love on the part of her husband and children, leads her to give in to the advances of a werewolf. She will not be released from anything, because he actually wants to make her his wife. Besides that, her new state will provoke sexual desires towards her husband, who miraculously regains an interest in his wife. But her situation will become more complicated, torn between her husband and the werewolf. From being a woman trapped in her home, she will pass to a woman trapped between two men. Not to mention that she keeps the same classic injunctions on women (shaving your legs then becomes a real problem!). So yes this is an unpretentious comedy, but the trigger for the film which responds to the protagonist’s basic premise is supposedly depicting a shift, in the form of the werewolf. However, it is not.

Women werewolf wolves rarely hunt their prey unlike men

Men increase their power tenfold

On the contrary, this werewolf power allows men to be sexually active, powerful, and dominant.
This allows them to seduce women much younger than them (Wolf), gain popularity and / or seduce women (TeenWolf, Cursed, The Curse of Wolfman, A werewolf boy, The Wolfman, The Company of Wolves) .

The most egregious example is in Cursed. In this (bad) movie, a male and female character are transformed into werewolves (although we don’t see a final transformation). The way of experiencing the transformation is radically different.
The suffering heroine hides in the toilet. While his brother lets his new manhood explode, which will finally give him confidence.
The purpose of the film (treated superficially) is to show that (almost) all men are beasts, and therefore potentially dangerous. It’s interesting to note that the answer to that, is to place a female antagonist (who only kills women), who attacks the protagonist for the simple reason … that she stole her boyfriend. . Instead of a patriarchal systemic observation, we always prefer to attack women.

The example of Werewolf of London (1935) shows a scientist close to Frankenstein, who once became a werewolf, only attacks women. But women who commit a sin: to walk around alone at night, or to be the mistress of a husband. This is a projection he makes on his own wife, who bonds with an old friend because she is neglected by her own husband. Eventually he will attack them, to no avail. It is not good to have sex outside of marriage …

In Bad Moon, the hero sees his companion devoured by a werewolf in the midst of a sexual frenzy. He obviously becomes a werewolf afterwards and hunts. But forced to move away from where he lived, he found nothing better than to settle in the garden of his sister, a single mother. He is curiously deliberately endangering her (while warning her!). When she finds out the truth, she is insulted copiously against a backdrop of comments tinged with sexism. Thus, throughout the film, he maintains a power over her, threatening her living space.
Interestingly, I take this opportunity to note that the man is portrayed as the dangerous animal, through the eyes of the family dog. The dog’s point of view is also used regularly in the film, which helps to create real empathy with him, showing that he understands the situation. It’s rare enough in genre cinema to notice this.

The only example that seems to me to counteract these findings is the protagonist of Teddy. Rather, his transformation into a werewolf destroys what he had (his stammering interactions with the villagers, his girlfriend, his plans), and worsens his predicament. And if he writes Carrie-style vengeance, he spares the one that broke his heart.

Note that female werewolf rarely becomes predatory. Ginger in Ginger Snaps defends her territory more than she hunts, Marie in When Animals Dream retaliates, Lisa in I Am Lisa takes revenge on her abusers. In Cat People it’s about watching over husband and mistress, and in Company of Wolves she doesn’t get the chance to attack anyone.
It’s only in Cursed, where the antagonist hunts rivals.

Whereas in Bad Moon, Werewolf of London, The Curse of Werewolf, The Wolfman, Wolf, Blood Moon… men hunt with more or less reason in mind.

In either case, it is not good to be a werewolf, as the outcome will often be fatal. The concrete animal part of Man does not seem to have its place!

7-The packs of wolves

I’ve talked a lot about werewolves, those beasts that are a fusion of human and wolf to form yet another monster apart.
But there are also a few movies where if it’s about transformations, it’s not about werewolves. But wolves, quite simply.

This is the case with Blood & Chocolate, Wolfwalkers, Wolfen (although there is actually no question of transformation) or Twilight.
What these films have in common is the pack. The protagonist evolves in collectivity. Unlike the werewolf who is alone (except in Howls where the pack is quickly shown).

In Blood & Chocolate, humans transform at will, especially during a hunting party. A way to stay in tune with their second nature.
In Wolfwalkers, it is during their sleep that the 2 heroines transform. The staging makes strong reference to the Zelda video game, The Twilight Princess, with the scent traces clearly visible by the wolves.

It also brings about a significant change in appearance. The character is never a monster. He is still a creature that actually exists.
In addition, the transformation does not come through pain.
Finally, the power of the protagonists is not increased tenfold. They benefit from the characteristics of each state, whether they are humans or wolves.

In my opinion, this helps to quickly empathize with the characters. Whether in one state or another, these are familiar appearances. What’s more, the wolf is not the most terrifying animal. He looks a lot like the dog, man’s best friend.
What is more, these characters have the status of victims, exterminated by humans. They are not predators, which makes a big difference to the werewolf, which attacks more or less blindly and fiercely.
Finally, it gives a collective dimension, and reflects a systemic problem. There are many parallels with threatened populations.
It is a little used prism, which deserves more relevant works on the subject. Wolfen also explores this theme with intelligence, but it is not a question of werewolves or wolfwalkers, but of wolves outright.

8-Conclusion: the wolf is in you

We have seen that progressive and partial transformations are predominant in female characters. We focus much more on the pain of a transforming body and mind. The werewolf metaphor is therefore ideal for evoking adolescence or entering adulthood. It seems to me that this is consistent with the fact that women’s bodies change the most in a lifetime (adolescence, pregnancy, post-pregnancy body, menopause). It would therefore be interesting to use the werewolf to represent these crucial stages of life as well. And that would make it possible to portray older female characters.
It goes without saying that it would take more women at the helm for these stories to be seen on screen (whether writing, producing or directing). I note that there are only 2 female directors out of the 28 films I have seen for this article.

If sexuality has been used in many films, often to the detriment of the quality of the female characters, it would be interesting to explore it other than through the prism of punishment, frustration or manipulation. Sexuality (or non-sexuality) is a vast subject. Most of the movies are still based on a diagram of the mom (or the nurse) or the whore.

Finally, since the male characters see their manly power increased tenfold with the werewolf, it would be interesting to see films digging into Teddy’s example. Show the weaknesses of characters hidden under the appearance of a big strong man. Try to develop psychologies, instead of just showing a classic path that often leads to the same conclusion: death.

The figure of the werewolf will continue to fascinate me because I love the idea of showing that the human has no control over the transformation of his body. This lack of control is also found in the acts committed, which humans do not remember. This questions the degree of responsibility for our actions, our conscience.
And this way of visually linking man to animal is fascinating, all the more so now, with the animal condition which is more and more questioned and defended.

The werewolf movie has a bad reputation, but it offers a lot of possibilities for telling the human story. And I hope that new ideas will emerge through this prism.

Films seen / cited

An American Werewolf in London by John Landis,
An American werewolf in Paris by Anthony Waller,
When Animals Dream by Jonas Alexander Arnby,
The Curse of Werewolf by Terence Fisher,
Good Manners of Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra,
Ginger Snaps by John Fawcett,
Ginger Snaps 2 by Brett Sullivan,
Ginger Snaps 3 by Grant Harvey,
The Wolfman by Joe Johnston,
A Werewolf Boy by Jo Sung-Hee,
Wolf by Mike Nichols,
Blood & Chocolate by Katja von Garnier,
Wolfwalkers by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart
La Lupa mannara by Rino Di Silvestro
Teddy by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma,
The Company of Wolves of Neil Jordan,
Wildling by Fritz Bohm,
Trick Or Treat by Michael Dougherty,Eric Red’s Bad Moon,
She Wolf of London by Jean Yarbrough,
My mom is a werewolf by Michael Fischa
Cat people by Jacques Tourneur,
Cursed by Wes Craven,
Howling of Joe Dante,
I Am Lisa by Patrick Rea,
Blood moon by Jeremy Wooding,
Teen Wolf by Rod Daniel,
Werewolf of London (1935) by Stuart Walker
Wolfen by Michael Wadleigh

Cinematographic and literary genres

I’ve been talking about films for a while now, but I’ve never written an article about genres as such, because I wasn’t really paying attention until then. I was told that such and such a film was part of such and such a genre and I said “Okey”!
I don’t like to put artistic works in cases, but we must recognize that certain films or books respect codes which are specific to their genre, and we will see why.

Why classify films by genre?

There are two ways to approach the question of gender:

Either we have the film and then we have the genre:

The director thinks he wants to make a film and then it’s up to the theaters, the producers, see the spectators to give it a genre.

George Mélies, in directing “Voyage dans la Lune”, didn’t think he was going to make a sci-fi movie, for good reason the genre didn’t exist yet.

Either we have the genre first and then we have the movie:

The director will say to himself, I am going to make an action film (for example) and create his film based on the genre

But which came first the chicken or the egg? What is the relationship between the egg, the chicken and science fiction?

I am deeply convinced that in the first place there were films and the more they were, the more we could see similarities appear, first borrowed from other art forms, until the appearance of similarities which were specific to them.

In 1903, “The great train robbery” was released, a film where cowboys steal a train in the American West.
In 1914, “Squaw Man” was released, a film about an English officer who was to marry an Indian in the American West.
In 1916, “Hell’s Hinges” tells the story of a cowboy who falls in love with an outlaw in the American West

From there, the audience thought, “It would still be handy if we had a name for all of our films with cowboys and Indians in the American West!” “
As for the producers, they say to themselves: “I would like to make a film with cowboys and Indians in the American West, but I would like to bring something else to it”
And you get the need to name: The Western.
The label is for the public to say, “I’ll be fine watching a Western.” “, So that the cinema can say:” We offer you a Western. “, But above all so that the directors can say to themselves” I want to do a Western. “
Genre cinema was born.

The genre film is a film in which the genre is creative. It is a film that will take into account the codes of a genre, to exploit them, to divert them, to satisfy or deceive the expectations of the viewer. Because when we talk about gender in the cinema, we are talking about the spectator’s expectations.

But how are genres defined? Well, it’s something very vague and often the same movie can have several genres. To make this article I used several criteria.

How to define a genre?

For me there are 4 elements that define the genre of a film:

The tone of the film
The themes of the film
The scenario (by its structure or concerning certain elements only)
The target of the film

Some people use the format of the film, but for me, it’s a mistake.

When you see the animated film category on certain sites, it makes as much sense to me as black and white films or silent films or even cinema scope films. It doesn’t ring a bell about the movie you’re going to watch.
A genre that brings together under the same label:

“The Emoji Movie”, “Akira”, “Persepolis” and “The Lord of the Ring” (1978)
It’s a label that is useless.

Among its four elements, some will have practically binding conditions, established rules that cannot be broken, but these are often very broad rules.
In the family genre, the only essential element is related to the tone, it must be accessible and viewable to children without bothering parents. Yes, it is fuzzy and arbitrary!

Why are “Maleficent” from 2014 and “Night at the Museum” Home movies and not “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” from 2014 are not?

In the Crime genre we have an imperative that falls within the scenario. There has to be one or more crimes, or criminality, and this crime, these crimes, this criminality has to be a big issue in the scenario.

The viewer, when going to see a family or crime genre film, has other expectations, but these are optional. It reveals codes of the genre.

Watching a crime film, I think police, charismatic villain, dark film that happens mostly at night, where the characters are lonely and a little disillusioned.

When people talk to me about family films, I think colorful film, light tone and happy ending, creepy antagonist but just right, brave protagonists.

But when you watch “Home Alone” or “The Mask” you realize that his films fall under the Crime genre and do not have at all that atmosphere that I imagine.

Much like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” or “Coraline” doesn’t tick all the boxes I imagine when I am told a family movie, especially when it comes to the creepy antagonists but not too many!

But the four of them have in common that they respect The indispensable condition which allows them to belong to the family gender.

Finally last detail, the genres are obviously not waterproof. Nothing prevents a film from having a crime theme while including children in its audience:

Indeed a film can belong to several genres:
(Image coco de pixar) (genres: Fantasy, family, adventure, musical)

Ten of my favorite genres (not necessarily in order):

Small methodology point:

I use IMDB to provide me with a list of keywords to add them to a table to sort which appear the most and those that appear the least according to each genre.

Finally, I use Letterbox which organizes the films by genre while prioritizing the genres. Thus “Back to the Future” is classified first as a family film, then as an adventure film, then a comedy and finally as a science fiction film. So Back to the future will fit perfectly into the family genre but a little less than “Interstelllar” for science fiction or “The Big Lebowski” for comedy but still partly corresponds to it.
Finally not only will I tell you about 10 genres but in addition I will tell you about 5 subgenres for each of them.

I/ Historical Movies:

Expectations :

Tone: Serious
Theme: A historic event
Scenario: Depends on the event
Target: Rather adults

Most common keywords:

Based on true story
What happened in Epilogue
Politics
Based on real person
Epic
Husband Wife relationship
Based on book
Battle
Father Son relationship
World War II

Less common keywords:

Psychotronic film
Surprise ending
Cult film
Chase
Cell Phone
Supernatural Power
Kidnapping
Good versus Evil
Sequel
Falling from height

Description:

This is one of the easiest genres to catalog. The facts told must be based on real historical facts. The key word that comes up most often is “based on true history”, but the prerequisite is that it must be based on real historical facts.

In Robbert Eggers’s “The Witch,” is a historical film about colonists who were excommunicated in New England in the 1630s, to whom a whole lot of funny adventures happen. (A whole family dies in misery, resentment, fear and guilt.) But this story is totally fictional, these people never existed.

“Troy” is a historical film when we are not even sure that the Trojan War actually took place.

But his films take place in a context which is based on real historical facts. Conversely, being based on real events is not enough to make a film historic.

“The Social Network” is based on a true story, but is not a historical film. A historical film depicts a state of the world that is no longer today.

“A Beautiful Man”, is a biography of John Forbes Nash, is not tagged as a historical film as it is set between 1947 and 1994.

Whereas “Zero Dark Thirty” which tells the story of the hunt for Bin Laden is a historical film set between 2001 and 2011.
The difference is in the subject. “A Beautiful Man” might as well be set in another era. It is not the indirect portrait of a society, but only the story of a man.

Subgenres:

Biopic:

The Biopic may or may not belong to the historical genre. As the name suggests a biopic is a biography. The principle is simple, we tell the story of one or more people while more or less romanticizing their lives.

Peplum:

Docudrama:

A sub-genre that is close to documentary, while remaining a work of fiction.

War Movies:

War movies may not have the historical aspects of the conflicts in question, like Disney’s “Mulan” is a war movie without being a historical movie. Often war films are categorized as a genre in their own right.

Swashbuclers:

Genre responding to strict rules, his films must take place in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, in which a courageous character, almost always male (pity) rebels, sword in hand often against authority. There is often a damsel in distress to save, seduce and / or protect.