Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950-1980 »

András Bálint Kovács is associate professor in the Institute for Art Theory and Media Research at ELTE University in Budapest.

Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs like Antonioni, Fellini, and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works, Screening Modernism is the first comprehensive study of European art cinema’s postwar heyday.

Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, András Bálint Kovács’s encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovács begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema.

Exploring not only modernism’s origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars, Screening Modernism ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part One: What Is the Modern?
1 THEORIZING MODERNISM Modern Modernism Avant-garde Cinema and Modernism: The First Encounter The Institution of the Art Film Modernist Art Cinema and the Avant-Garde

2 THEORIES OF THE CLASSICAL/MODERN DISTINCTION IN CINEMA Style Analysts Evolutionists Modern Cinema and Deleuze Modernism as an Unfinished Project Part Two: The Forms of Modernism

3 MODERN ART CINEMA: STYLE OR MOVEMENT?

4 NARRATION IN MODERN CINEMA Classical versus Modernist Art Films The Alienation of the Abstract Individual Who Is “the Individual” in Modern Cinema?
The Role of Chance Open-Ended Narrative Narrative Trajectory Patterns: Linear, Circular, Spiral

5 GENRE IN MODERN CINEMA Melodrama and Modernism Excursus: Sartre and the Philosophy of Nothingness A Modern Melodrama: Antonioni’s Eclipse (1962)
Other Genres and Recurrent Plot Elements Investigation Wandering/Travel The Mental Journey Closed-Situation Drama Satire/Genre Parody The Film Essay

6 PATTERNS OF MODERN STYLES Primary Formation: Continuity and Discontinuity Radical Continuity Imaginary Time in Last Year at Marienbad
Radical Discontinuity The Fragmented Form according to Godard Serial Form

7 STYLES AND FORMS OF MODERNISM Minimalist Forms The Bresson Form Abstract Subjectivity and the “Model”
Bresson and His Followers Analytical Minimalism: The Antonioni Form Psychic Landscape?
Continuity Antonioni and His Followers Expressive Minimalism

8 NATURALIST FORMS Post-neorealism Cinéma Vérité
The “New Wave” Style

9 ORNAMENTAL FORMS

10 THEATRICAL FORMS

11 MODERN CINEMA TRENDS The Family Tree of Modern Cinema Part Three: Appearance and Propagation of Modernism (1949–1958)

12 CRITICAL REFLEXIVITY OR THE BIRTH OF THE AUTEUR The Birth of the Auteur Historical Forms of Reflexivity The Emergence of Critical Reflexivity: Bergman’s Prison
Reflexivity and Abstraction: Modern Cinema and the Nouveau Roman

13 THE RETURN OF THE THEATRICAL Abstract Drama

14 THE DESTABILIZATION OF THE FABULA: NEOREALISM AND MODERNISM Voice-Over Narration The Dissolution of Classical Narrative: Film Noir and Modernism Fabula Alternatives: Hitchcock Alternative Subjective Narration: Rashomon

15 AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CLASSICAL FORM The End of Neorealism Modernism in Story of a Love Affair: Neorealism Meets Film Noir Rosselini: The “Neorealist Miracle”
Part Four: The Short Story of Modern Cinema (1959–1975)

16 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1959–1961
Neorealism: The Reference Eastern Europe: From Socialist Realism toward Neorealism Heroism versus Modernism Jerzy Kawalerowicz: The First Modern Polish Auteur The Year 1959
Forms of Romantic Modernism Genre and Narration in the Early Years Sound and Image Background and Foreground From Hiroshima to Marienbad: Modernism and the Cinema of the Elite The Production System of the “New Cinema”

17 ESTABLISHED MODERNISM, 1962–1966
Western Europe around 1962
The Key Film of 1962: Fellini’s 8 ½
Central Europe Czechoslovak Grotesque Realism The “Central European Experience”
Jancsó and the Ornamental Style Summary

18 THE YEAR 1966
The Loneliness of the Auteur

19 POLITICAL MODERNISM, 1967–1975
The Year 1968
Conceptual Modernism: The Auteur’s New World Reconstructing Reality Counter-Cinema: Narration as a Direct Auteurial Discourse The Film as a Means of Direct Political Action Parabolic Discourse
Teorema
The Auteur’s Private Mythology The Self-Critique of Political Modernism: Sweet Movie Summary

20 “THE DEATH OF THE AUTEUR”
The Last of Modernism: Mirror
Mirror and Serial Structure The Disappearance of Nothingness

Appendix: A Chronology of Modern Film
Bibliography
Index