Patrick Ciccone wrote:

>
> my point was ... that the approach used in describing and analyzing
> the director's
> contribution changed. If all that groundwork was already laid pre-
> politique,


1) I am not aware of "the approach" either before or after www2. What
is "the approach"?

2) Which approaches do you feel changed? Which approaches do you feel
were not being exercised, even embryonically, at earlier dates?

3) The policies in treating directors were virtually identical in La
Revue du Cinéma in 1930 as in Cahiers du Cinéma 1950s. True, the word
"politique" was seldom used, but it was seldom used in Cahiers in the
1950s either. It has mostly been the privileged domain of those who
write diatribes against what they call, derisively, "auteurism."
Anyhow, my point is that the packaging got updated but the policies
were much the same.

In addition, there was much more cinema worthy of being taken account
of. Keep in mind that most of Europe had been deprived of American
films since the mid or late 30s (with a few exceptions) and that in the
postwar period, about ten years worth of Hollywood productions started
flooding the European markets. This gave people a perspective and quantity.

Also, early movies were marketed in the US as cheap fun for the popular
classes, a kind of virtual reality. In Europe they were marketed as
upscale art for the middle classes, a kind of representation. This
distinction holds today. Fun assumes an authorless product, thus
directors are still not listed in TV Guide or newspapers (or even on
AMC's web site), whereas in Europe it's been automatic since I don't
know when. But in the serious coverage of movies in the US, and in
industry journals, the director was always preceived as the center of
the show -- if that person took command. The distinction was realised
that there were films that were "studio" products and other than were
fundamentally individual. The French in the 50s made a similar
distinction between "auteurs" and "metteurs-en-scène" some of whom
weren't auteurs.

> would the careers of Ford or Lang or other directors
> famous in the 1930s but whose later works were deemed unworthy of
> their earlier artistry need to have been resurrected as major artists
> with an evolving career? Maybe something was lost in America between
> the 1930s and the 1960s.
>
There is always someone who will deem x superior or inferior to y.
There is seldom a consensus about these things. Part of the reason
Lang got dumped on is that in the 1960s it was Gospel that Hollywood
movies were shit and European movies were personal art; therefore,
Q.E.D., when Lang left Germany and came to Hollywood he left art and
made shit. Same thesis was expounded for years about von Sternberg --
Der blaue Engel versus the tinsel stuff Dietrich did at Paramount.

Ford's work in the late 1930s was deemed superior to his work in the
early 1930s. Lindsay Anderson suggested some of his postwar work was
superior to his prewar work. Cahiers championed Lang's work in the 50s
over his German films. They ignored Ford, pretty much, even panned The
Searchers in two lines; but when 7 Women came along Ford was God.

There's also the problem that you couldn't see pre-Code films in the US
until Turner bought MGM, because the films were either taken out of
circulation entirely or had scenes chopped out. The case of Fox was
different: we're still waiting, which is the difference between Turner
and Murdock, but one employee in the early 70s managed to get a lot of
stuff out of the vaults, and this was the first time in forty years that
anyone had been able to see Ford's 1928-34 pictures. People writing the
official film histories in the 1950s and 1960s had a terrible time,
because it was impossible to see anything.