comment #1

J. Huff says ...

The box office for these kinds of pictures is going down because those of us old enough to appreciate foreign films tend not to go to theatres anyway. Who wants to hear the explosions from the film next door coming through the walls? Who wants bad projection and $5 popcorn? I'd be more impressed if he saw that none of these films were being rented on Netflix, either.

comment #2

MovieBob says ...

Complete, utter, unmitigated bullshit. "Foreign" films have NEVER been more marketable and visible in modern American filmgoing/watching as they are right now. This guy can't or WON'T see it because the stuff that's bearing this out isn't of the type that old-gaurd critic types think of when they think "foreign" (read: subtitled European 'character dramas.')

Check out the boxoffice for "Hero." Just watch the geek set turn out en-masse for "The Host." I sell DVDs for a living right now, and just this week alone I can tell you that the "foreign" hit "The Protector" has been flying off the shelves. Filmmakers like Takeshi Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura are often more popular in the U.S. than in their home countries.

comment #3

dobbsy says ...

Sorry, Moviebob, but the stats don't lie and Scott's absolutely right. At their peak of popularity in the late 60s, early 70s, subtitled cinema represented around 8% of all tickets sold. Today, that number is around .5%. Yep, that's half a point.

So only last week, I was posting that all the hype around Sundance was overblown, that the solipsistic, dysfunctional family movie had become a boring Sundance cliche and that dynamic foreign language cinema was way undercovered by the press because a) newspaper/mag editors assume their readers are idiots and b) the glitz, free chow, ad dollars and herd mentality meant even smart guys like Jeff Wells had to follow the money/hype, not the art.

So you get much ado about so-so filmmakers like Wes Anderson, the LMS duo, Mr. Squid Whale and no joy for the dozens of international filmmakers who film circles around them.

Now we have Richard Corliss and A.O. Scott making exactly the same points only days later.

If Dobbsy is wrong, he at least loves the company over here in Wrongville.

comment #4

Craig Kennedy says ...

That's funny Dobbsy because I was thinking of your exact post when I read this article.

Nothing against the movies that MovieBob is talking about, but they're a different animal than the foreign films you think of when you think of "Foreign Cinema". These new movies are more action dependent. They don't rely as much on characters or dialogue so subtitles aren't an issue. You see these movies despite the fact they're foreign and not because they're foreign.

Increasingly the studios seem to be making the same kind of movies because they're easily exported to non-English speaking countries. American movies are getting dumber and we can no longer count on foreign films to fill the quality void.

The only 2 foreign language films I saw in a theater in 2006 that were more than sparsely attended were Volver and Pan's Labyrinth. I don't count Babel because it had major American movies stars speaking English.

I could've fit the audiences for Gille's Wife, L'Intrus, L'Enfant, Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Lady Vengeance, Three Times, Clean, Cavite, Climates and Lives of Others into my living room. Even Tsotsi was less than half full and it had just won the Oscar.

comment #5

dobbsy says ...

CJ: Well, lest this sound like America land of the philistines, keep in mind that Europeans don't go to see foreign language films as a rule. They see the films from their home countries and US product and pretty much skip the rest. Of course there are exceptions and differing appetites, but surprisingly, for instance, the UK is a miserable market for foreign language film.

So, in that wonderful chicken and egg way of so many things in life, newspaper/mag/broadcast editors deem that all that gets covered are local stars and Hollywood stars and screw the rest. So nothing changes.

Which is why it's so important to NOT accept the meida overkill of Sundance and the cowardice of the assignment editors. Filmlovers need to realize they're getting access to only a small percentage of the dynamic filmmaking being created and being bombarded by hype straight from the Hollywood machine, indie or studio, same economic/caste system, just two flavors from the same bottle.

Not to say there are not terrific movies from Sundance and Hollywood. Just keep in mind all the talent that's MIA as a result of this system.

comment #6

Craig Kennedy says ...

That's an important point that audiences everywhere seem to be getting shallower and shallower. I think France has a long, proud history of supporting great cinema. I wonder what the situation is like there these days.

Ultimately the responsibility falls on audiences, whether they're American, British, French or whatever.

Part of the point of Scott's article was that great films are out there, but people aren't showing up for them. I'm sure you're right that a lot of great films aren't getting released, but that trend is just going to get worse if audiences don't turn out for the good films that are.