European Cinema

Film critics have classified European cinema as a division of high art rather than the more widely known classification of Hollywood. From this it has been subdivided into two categories: European art cinema and studies of national films.

European art cinema materialized from avant-garde films during the 1920s. It focuses on aesthetic innovation, social interests, and human outlook. All these things add “originality and personal vision”(Vincendeau 440) which distinguish European and Hollywood cinema. A few techniques the market implemented to their films to give them a sense of originality were to use “loose, ambiguous narratives, characters in search of meaning rather that action, overt directorial expression, and heightened sense of realism, and a slower pace”(Vincendeau 441) This has created some problems with European cinema, most notably the implementation that American cinema is the norm.

The national classification of European cinema stems from its use by foreign-language departments in the United States. This gives it a secondary role. Also the limited availability of subtitled film and “small-scale, fragmented, and disorganized”(Vincendeau 442) European production system causes their cinema to be thought of as less influential than America’s Hollywood.

Even though numerous great films are produced in Europe and maybe even distributed abroad, a great majority are lost from being analyzed by the masses as a result of the issues discussed above.

Joel Revis

Vincendeau, Ginette. “Issues in European cinema.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1998. 440-448. Print.