1950s: International Scene
Cinema grew quickly outside of the United States and Europe in the 1950s. Japan , India and Hong Kong became major production centres rivalling American and European industries in scale and output. There was growth in the distribution of international films and the work of distinctive directors or `auteurs' gained critical recognition. lngmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa were just some of the filmmakers who found favour at international film festivals, such as Cannes, and went on to win sizeable audiences, usually in the fast growing area of `art house' exhibition.
Argentina was punished for its neutrality in the Second World War by the United States who cut off the supply of film stock in wartime and helped Mexico to develop as a leading supplier of Spanish language films. During the 1950s South America generally modeled its films on popular Hollywood genres such as comedies, musicals, action films, and melodramas but each country made them their own: the cowboy became an Argentinian gaucho, singers and dancers were transposed from the Broadway stage to Rio's Carnival. Running somewhat counter to this trend Argentina achieved international recognition for a European-style art cinema which flourished in the cosmopolitan Buenos Aires . The work of director Torre Nilsson exemplified a prestige cinema that found favour with elite national and international audiences.
In Mexico the government developed a successful, populist cinema much of which was nationalised by the end of the decade. Working within the commercial but small budget parameters of Mexican cinema was the Spanish émigré Luis Buñuel. Buñuel had earlier collaborated with Salvador Dali on the controversial surrealist films `Un Chien Andalou' (1929) and `L’Age D'Or' (1930). Buñuel’s attacks on the Catholic church and his support for the Republic in the Civil War meant that he was unwelcome in Franco's Spain where many of his films were banned. `Los Olvidados' (1950) offers a brutal portrait of inner city poverty and delinquency. In one scene a limbless beggar is pulled from his cart by a gang of urchins who kick and roll the helpless man about in the street. The same gang also murder an innocent young boy and throw his body on a garbage dump. Bunuel's portrait of the underprivileged in this and other films lacked the softening liberal or humanist tendencies of the Italian realists. Nevertheless, he was equally vicious in his portrait of the bourgeoisie (`The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de Ia Cruz' 1955), fascism (`Evil Eden' 1956) and the church (Nazarin 1958).
Contempt for the church is also clear in the work of the Italian director Fedenco Fellini and the Swede, lngmar Bergman. For Fellini the Church is a hypocritical sham that plays on people's insecurities and fears. Gerald Mast argues that Fellini's films show a grotesque fascination with the excesses of the wealthy, but that he has nothing but bitterness and disgust for organised religion:
`The Church is the arch sensualist masquerading as spiritualist. In `La Strada', Fellini photographs a solemn Church procession with a neon sign, reading "Bar", prominently in the foreground; he further debases the religious spectacle by showing the tacky cardboard mounting on the backsides of the glowing pictures of the saints. In `La Dolce Vita', the Church supports the lies of hysterical children because the lies will produce a profit in lire and souls. But Fellini's most devastating blow at the Church is in `Nights of Cabiria'. A society of human unfortunates takes a desperate outing to a religious festival, where they are greeted by canned prayers on loudspeakers (prominently in the foreground of Fellini’s frame) and greedy vendors hawking sacred candles and secular candies.' (Mast 1971)
In `The Seventh Seal' (1956) the film that firmly established lngmar Bergman's international reputation the church is shown as a force for evil, more closely allied to the figure of Death who awaits Blok, a Knight returning from the crusades. Blok challenges Death to a game of chess, knowing that he can only delay the inevitable. In the delay, however, Blok discovers the joy of living, love, and mortal, sensual pleasures denied by the church. The church becomes associated with darkness, smoke, terror and superstition; and is contrasted to life which in Bergman's film is found in bright sunlight, and summed up in the image of friends eating strawberries outdoors together. Some critics suggest that `The Seventh Seal' has not worn well and that Bergman's symbolism is particularly grandiose and literary in this film. Bergman's work certainly became known for its `knotty, anguished obscurity - a favourite target for movie sceptics and satirists' (Alien 1979)
The value of life was also the theme of `Wild Strawberries' (1957) in which a professor (played by Victor Sjöström) travels to receive an honorary degree and realises on the journey that his relationships, in particular with his housemaid and son, have been appalling. The film's optimism lies in the professor's self-discovery and spiritual redemption when he offers love and generosity to those he had previously tyrannised. `The Magician' (1958) which completed Bergman's first trilogy was about a magic lanternist travelling to a town where he is held up by bureaucrats who sit in judgement on his performance. The film explored the relationship between life and art, a theme which Bergman would return to many times in later films.
In France three names are associated with the era before The New Wave: Max Ophuls, Robert Bresson and Jacques Tati. Robert Bresson, like Bergman, was concerned with spiritual themes - innocence and the experience of a corrupt world. Ophuls was an émigré from Nazi Germany which he left in 1933. The gracefully moving camera of `La Ronde' (1950) `Madame de..' (1953) and `Lola Montès' (1955) show his German studio heritage. Ophul's presentation of sexual desire and the lies people tell each other in these films seems typical of the pessimistic, exploratory mood that characterised so much of the best European cinema in this decade. Outside of England and the gentle Ealing comedies only Jacques Tati seemed to want his audiences to laugh. Tati has been compared to Max Linder and Chales Chaplin. He combined meticulously crafted satire, slapstick and character comedy. As Parkinson (1995) notes:
‘’Jour de Fête' (1948), `M. Hulot's Holiday' (1953), `Mon Oncle' (1958), `Playtime' (1967) and `Traffic' (1971) were all based on acute observation of human behaviour and an intelligent appreciation of the absurdities and inefficiencies of the modern world.'
The general gloom of Europe in the 1950s seemed even to penetrate the Wall. The Soviet Union and its satellites went through cycles of repression and relaxation in the arts which corresponded to the `freeze-thaw' relations with the west. Poland 's Andrzej Wajda is one of the most well known of the Eastern bloc directors. His trilogy `A Generation' (1954), `Kanal' (1957) and `Ashes and Diamonds' (1959) are regarded as three of the best films made in countries under strict Soviet control. `Ashes and Diamond's' made a non-Communist resistance fighter who assassinates a Communist official at the end of the war a rather glamorous figure. The background of bars, lost loves, romantic pessimism and sense of dislocation that is found in `Ashes and Diamonds' mirrored the atmosphere that pervaded the work of the leading West European directors.
Satyajit Ray was the first Indian director to gain widespread international recognition. His Apu trilogy `The Song of the Road' (1955), `The Unvanquished' (1956) and `The World of Apu (1959) traced the life of a poor Bengali boy showing how people learn and persevere in spite of tragedy and death. Ray's humanistic treatment of his theme and the use of non professional actors showed the influence of Italian Neorealism on his work. His understated style found more favour outside of India than at home where musicals and melodramas remained popular. Since the 1920s and 1930s Japan had a major film industry with several important artists working within it. It was not until 1951, however, and the screening of Akira Kurosawa's `Rashomon' at the Venice Film Festival that the West became aware of this tradition. `Rashomon' tells the story of the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife by three witnesses. Their accounts, which are filmed in quite different styles, also contradict each other. Some, or all of the witnesses are lying but Kurosawa does not resolve the ambiguities presented by the narrative. Kurosawa's use of flashback was far more daring than anything attempted in European and American cinema and his influence was an important one on the New Wave directors of the 1960s. Kurosawa's `The Seven Samurai' (1954) and ‘The Throne of Blood' (1957) established him as the master of the dramatic-panoramic style, and he was commonly described as ` Japan 's answer to John Ford'. In fact `The Seven Samurai' was faithfully remade as `The Magnificent Seven' and the increasingly graphic depiction of violence in Westerns in the 1960s was attributed, in part, to the influence of Japanese cinema. The success of Kurosawa drew the West's attention to other, more distinctively `Japanese' masters such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu.