American cinema

American cinema

American cinema

Asia, the continent where the film production is still important, did not give us, with the exception of Qiu Ju a Chinese woman, Zhang Yimou (Golden Lion in Venice, and whose previous film Wives and concubines remained several months in the poster), the real subject of satisfaction. The imperial eunuch, of the Chinese Tian Zhuang Zhuang (the author of a wonderful and poetic Horse Thief ), returns to an academism of another age to narrate a slice of history. Despite obvious narrative qualities, Five Girls and a Rope, Taiwanese Yeh Hung Wei, does not have the strength and mastery of the films of his compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien.

The Iranian Abbas Kiarostami wins, with And life goes on, many supporters in France and Europe. His style, a very subtle blend of documentary and fiction, fascinates moviegoers. The year 1992 is also the year when the greatest Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, died, whose last film, Agantuk, is again a reflection on the themes dear to the author: the opposition between modernism and tradition, the crumbling family values, the search for a new humanism ...

One of the most striking phenomena of the year is the (rather disordered) output of some productions from the East (mainly Russian-Polish, with the exception of the Romanian film Lucian Pintilie's Oak ). Thus the last representatives of perestroika ( the Day of the eclipse , of the Russian Alexander Sokourov, 1988, and the escape of the cinema Freedom of the Polish Wojciech Marczewski, 1990), heavy and allegorical products, and the new co-production with the France: An Independent Life , by Vitali Kanevski (CEI), Luna Park , Pavel Lounguine (IEC), virulent films about the USSR of yesterday and Russia today, but which extend the themes already addressed by these filmmakers in their previous films ( opera prima ).

Complexity of the American case

The protectionist measures mentioned at the beginning of the text can not, alas, substitute for the quality of the films. With the exception of the Stolen Children of the Italian Gianni Amelio, British works Edward II (Derek Jarman) and Back to Howards End (James Ivory), Roman Polanski's Fune moons (flying the Franco-British flag) and the the surprising Divine Comedy by Portuguese veteran Manoel de Oliveira, tapes produced by established filmmakers and extending their respective themes, we have not seen the emergence of new European designers. Except for Arnaud Desplechin and the Belgian trio of It's near you.

On the other hand, and probably because of the large scale of the distribution, the American cinema did not distinguish itself only by its box-office prowess, besides very relative: at the end of the year, only two films of the States United States, Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven) and Fatal Weapon 3 (Richard Donner), are ahead of Jean-Jacques Annaud's Lover .

David Cronenberg (of Canadian origin), with the Naked Lunch , and Steven Soderbergh, with Kafka , find a fair cinematic translation to the world of writers (William Burroughs for the first and the author of the Trial for the second) which they trap both life and work, even betraying the one and the other for the benefit of a certain artistic relevance. But there's also Kafka's signature in Shadows and Fog, one of Woody Allen's most pessimistic films.

Other confirmed authors such as David Lynch ( Twin Peaks ), Martin Scorsese (the Nerfs life), Clint Eastwood (Ruthless), Robert Altman ( The Player ) continue a reflection (not always rightly understood) on the state of American mythologies From the Westernist era to the present day, the concepts of violence, family and entertainment are well placed in perspective.

After the "authorized vision" of things, we note, as every year, from the New Continent, films with socio-political content that often reach their target. Oliver Stone's JFK presents a very complete (albeit sometimes subjective) record of the Kennedy case and plunders the American conscience in depth. The actor Tim Robbins made this year's sensation in Cannes with his first film Bob Roberts, a fiction film, filmed as a report, about the election campaign of a far-right folksong singer who is running for the Senate. This imaginary politician, but who is a patchwork of characters actually existing, causes deep discomfort among the spectators.