Uncompromising... Bruno Dumont's Flandres
Queuing last Friday evening to see Drôle de Drame, a 1937 Marcel Carné's film, at the art-house cinema Le Champo, rue des écoles in Paris, little did I know that French cinéphiles are slowly but surely dying out. Actually, I had been lead to think the exact opposite: the theatre was packed with cinéphiles aged between seven (my nephew) and 95 (by the look of the frail lady behind me).
On Sunday, queuing again, this time at the Paris Action Christine art house cinema, to see Gaslight, a 1944 George Cukor film, I thought I'd never get in. I was lucky - I got the last seat at the front row. It didn't feel like we were all dying. Or perhaps we were dying of love for Ingrid Bergman, never so poignant and beautiful as in the arms of Charles Boyer.
If the French cinéphiles appear with time more discerning than before, choosing to reject far-too-pretentious Gallic films in favour of more entertaining, better-made and not-necessarily-less-intelligent films, it is not a sign of art-house death but of the audience's growing maturity and independence.
Independence? Absolument. French movie-buffs, having been had so many times by ridiculously arrogant film critics from the daily and specialised French press, have gradually stopped listening to them. Maturity? By deciding that they want to see entertaining yet meaningful stories, French audiences are compelling French screenwriters and directors to make more accessible and less pompous films. A very good thing for French cinema, which by the way, according to Unifrance figures, enjoyed a remarkable 2005 abroad: 73.6 million people in the world (outside of France) saw a French film in 2005 compared with 46.4 million in 2004.
For despite the pomposity which Michael White, if his recent blog is anything to go by, seems to think is French cinema's trademark, it still attracts a formidable audience across the globe. Why? Because it's rich, with many different genres and new voices. Thanks to the help of the 60-year-old Centre National de la Cinématographie, 69 first films and 34 second features were produced in 2005, out of the 240 French films produced that year. Diversity means that you'll have more chance to find real talent. Though, of course, it also means sifting through real rubbish. You can't have one without the other.
If art-house audience is in freefall, it's only a question of arithmetic: multiplexes now represent 50% of all theatres, compared with 10% a decade ago. However, in France, multiplexes also show art-house films. Taking Bruno Dumont as an example of art-house cinema that the French have supposedly learnt to despise is stretching the argument to its limit, as Dumont represents the most experimental and uncompromising side of auteur cinema. Shall we decree that British cinema and its audience in Britain are dead simply because the last Peter Greenaway film didn't even interest a British distributor? If anything, the 80, 000 tickets sold in France for Bruno Dumont's Flandres show an amazing curiosity and resilience from French cinéphiles.
In 2005, 329 art-house films were released in France compared with 225 in 1996. There are 216 film festivals throughout the year, and they are almost all audience-based; 3% of all films released are old films like the ones I saw last weekend, and the market share of Hollywood is "only" 45.8% (compared to about 90% in Britain). These all show a cultural diversity and a cinéphile tradition that is bursting with life.
