The 1970s, Cinema Culture and Midnight Movies

This week in class we talked about midnight movies. We also watch a film called “Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream”. This was a 2005 documentary film written and directed by Stuart Samuels based on his book. It was distributed by Starz Encore Entertainment. The film chronicles the period  in which six low-budget films shown at midnight transformed the ways films are made and watched. Each sections of the documentary went into details about all those films. Some I thought were interesting but others, I didn’t. I did not like any of the gruesome things that were being shown. Things like that, I can not look at.  This documentary also shown films that gained notoriety and a huge cult following thanks to midnight showings. The film was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

I was not in class to watch the screening this week but the class voted on watching Rocky Horror Picture. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a 1975 musical horror comedy film by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was written by someone who was a member of the cast. The production is a parody tribute to the science fiction and horror B movies of the 1930s through to the early 1960’s. The budget was  $1.4 million and $140.2 million. The story is about a young engaged couple whose car broke down in the rain near a castle where they found a telephone for help. The castle was occupied by strangers wearing costumes of some sort celebrating an annual convention. They found out the person that owns the house was a mad scientist who was actually an alien transvestite who creates a living muscle man in is laboratory. The couple was seduced separately by the mad scientist and was eventually released by the servants who take control.

From the chapter that we were assigned to read this week, from “An Introduction to World Cinema”, it talks about the American Auteurs: Allen, Altman and Coppola. Auteur is a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie. The film industry is a production of more than just history or a story. Many people come together to create a masterpiece film.  A key person in this process is the director. The director is said to input their own auteur style through their pieces and hard work. Many agree that films are actually more of a “director’s autobiography” than anything else.  Filmmakers like Woody Allen, Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock are said to be high examples of this. For example, Woody Allen puts a little bit of his own comedic personality in each artwork he creates. A personal vendetta he said to struggle with is romantic setbacks which he likes to portray in many of his films as well. Film making takes an army of people to make, but ideas and mind of the background story comes from the heart of the director.