Greenaway's Influence on Other Filmmakers

Although I have no idea if director Michel Gondry likes Peter Greenaway, I can imagine that he is influenced by him. Gondy's films are like puzzles and often reflect the beautiful, bizarre visual style that makes the viewer excited. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a good example of incorporating a self-reflexive narrative yet still being emotional and funny to the viewer. Its creativity is too hard to ignore and Gondry's cinematic style; his editing, shots, stills, lighting, sound, portrays a rather unique philosophy that cinema is in fact ALIVE.

Here is a trailer for it:

A Little More Emotion

One of the things I don't like about Greenaway's films are that they lack emotion at times. He hates sentimentality and the typical love stories in cinema. Although I agree it becomes a little trite, there still needs to be some emotional connection. It doesn't have to always be corny or cheesy. I'm not talking about Titanic or the English Patient. Someone who has Greenaway's iconoclasm yet who incorporates some level of emotion is Godard, a director from the French New Wave. His film, Breathless is the love story of a thug and a American girl in Paris. Although this movie is from 1959, it breaks all of the rules of cinema in terms of plot, dialog, editing, music. Yet there is still a love story that is conveyed in a very unconventional way. Here is a great interview with Godard.

More Self-Reflexivity

One of my favorite filmmakers is Woody Allen. Although he is very different than Greenaway, in this film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, he plays with the idea of self-reflexivity. This story is very funny and sweet but still deals with metaphor, like Greenaway does with his movies.

What if the Cinema isn't Completely Dead?

David Lynch is a good example of someone who continues to reinvent the cinema with each film he makes. Blue Velvet epitomizes Lynch's techniques as a true avant-garde artist telling a story, only in a very bizarre way. His visual style is beautiful like Greenaway, and he deals with metaphor in a way of letting the audience know they are only watching a film. It's self-reflexive approach is what Greenaway is aiming at. Here is a link to the Blue Velvet site.

"The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (Post 2)

Theme (Post 1)

The title of this blog is taken from British filmmaker Peter Greenaway who has established himself as an avant-garde director for the past thirty years. His label, "Cinema is Dead" is a philosophy Greenaway has had throughout his career intending to break away from the traditional way of film making. Greenaway started off as a painter and after art school began creating short films of his own that centered around a self-reflexive approach that included an interest in style and form. He wants to create a cinema of ideas stripped away from the typical psychodrama, Hollywood often portrays. Greenaway uses the same elements applied to painting (scenic composition, natural nudity, symbol and metaphor). His alternative to a straightforward narrative is using a postmodern/post-structuralist approach. The purpose of this blog is to explore Greenaway's notion of filmmaking and his ideas on how we can perhaps reinvent the cinema.
Click here to see a list of Greenaway's films.

"Miranda" from Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" (Post 3)

Michael Nyman composed the music to Peter Greenaway's most popular films and the music is just as important as the film itself. Greenaway uses the soundtrack as a way of enhancing the cinematic experience. The musical themes in the film are ways of enjoying the beautiful images on the screen and also to depict variations on a theme (either an architect in Belly of an Architect, male sexual fantasies in 8 1/2 women, or systems of classifications such as numbering and the alphabet in Drowning by Numbers and A Zed and Two Noughts). Variations on a theme is something usually found in music (at least going back to classical music) and is interesting when applied to film. Greenaway establishes certain scenes and applies music and goes back to that scene often later in the film and expands on it either with color-coding imagery or lighting, or its character depiction. We see a lot of minimalist elements, as in music, where repetition plays a part in the total experience of the work.
Click here to find out more about Michael Nyman.
Click here to see a short preview of Prospero's Books with Michael Nyman's score to it.

"The Seventh Seal" (1957) (Post 5)

"Last Year at Marienbad" (Post 4)

"Last Year at Marienbad" is a film made in 1961 by Alain Resnais. Greenaway believes this film to be the very first one to explore new ways of telling a story with it use of repetition and formal symbolism. The story is very basic, a man tries to convince a woman that they had an affair last year at the same place they are at now. It's really one of the first postmodern films due to its nonlinear approach and its lack of space and time. The viewer has no idea whether the man is telling the truth or not, and it's not important because we are inside this film and lost and trying to come to conclusions that may be different every time. This film is different every time I watch it and raises more questions than answers. The plot isn't important. The beautiful images and abstract music and dream-like flow expresses an entirely new way of watching movies, at least for me. The characters in the film are representations of our thoughts and feelings. I couldn't find any video for this film so I uploaded stills instead. Click here to read an analysis of the film by Thomas Beltzer.