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Cinema in France - It's oui to rom-coms and non to art house as cinéphiles die out

"Art house audiences are now in freefall. Le Monde has warned of a "catastrophe", independent producers and distributors are haemorrhaging funds and even highbrow cinema magazines are struggling."

I wonder to what degree, if any, this can be attributed to DVD consumption.

Exactly what I was thinking.... DVD (killing arthouse theatrical) and the internet (killing highbrow cinema magazines, and magazines in general).

Producers and filmmakers, unless they're stupid, should be coining it in more than ever from DVD -- even if they are losing theatrical revenue.

peerpee wrote:Producers and filmmakers, unless they're stupid, should be coining it in more than ever from DVD -- even if they are losing theatrical revenue.

Films, whether art-house or blockbusters usually take more in from DVD sales than theatrical revenues these days don't they?

I know I'm not helping with these figures either. When I go to the cinema (which is already many times fewer than the number of films I buy on DVD), I tend to watch more mainstream stuff because I feel they benefit more from big screens and impressive sound-systems. Not-to-mention, that is what my friends want to see more often than not.

Also, when something more arty gets a decent theatrical release (eg Cache or Volver) and I know I'm almost certainly going to pick it up on DVD a few months down the line, I'm less inclined to almost double that cost by seeing it in the cinema as well.

Yea ticket prices are a good point as well. Considering that I can buy a DVD for practically the same price (or even cheaper than) the price of 2 movie tickets for me & my girlfriend, it doesn't make much sense economically. I usually only go to the theater now for big blockbusters where it'd be fun to see on a big screen and I probably wouldn't want a DVD anyway, a few artier films that I really want to see right away, or something rare and unavailable playing in NYC.

I'm very wary of the 'art house dying' doomsaying, but some thoughts, at least as it pertains to America (I can't pretend to speak for England or France):

1) TV's influence is overrated in this regard. We had TV in the late 60s and early 70s, supposedly the high-point for arthouse attendance, at least in America, when, as the cliche goes "people lined up around the block for Rohmer and Antonioni." (I tend to think people taking this sort of thing as representational of some national receptiveness to 'art films' are confusing the behavior of young college-educated citydwellers with that of the country in general - I guarantee you most people in America in the late 60s would snooze their way through Claire's Knee, just as they would today).

2) What we didn't have back then was the Internet, which has democratized discourse on film in a way that can't be denied. In a world where a critic like Christopher Null has enough influence and renown that he can publish books of reviews, there's clearly a spot for a number of different perspectives on film, including the sort of gormless anti-intellectual rubbish you get on sites like Film Critic and Ain't It Cool News. Combine that to the consolidation of the newspaper industry, which has caused many papers to abandon their own critics in favor of nationally syndicated critics whose writing is designed to appeal to the broadest audience groups.

3) It's really not that bad, at least here. I've had multiple bosses who are titans of American film programming tell me independently that they think this is the greatest period ever for American cinephilia, and that the availability of DVD and TCM (at times an unbelievably generous font of termite art - did anyone else record yesterday's all-day marathon of early rock movies?) as well as the democratized discourse on the Internet provides an incredible resource for anyone with a demonstrable interest in film.

4) But yeah, in America people aren't going to see L'Enfant and Three Times, and they're confusing stuff like Little Miss Sunshine for 'indpendent cinema'. And the only foreign-language films they're going to are by Spanish-language directors who work in styles derived from popular genres (Almodovar from melodrama, Del Toro from horror and fantasy).

Is it because names like the Dardennes and Hou Hsiao-Hsien are not as well known? In part, it's the nature of the popular trends in world cinema, I'd say - filmmakers like Hou, Tarr, Weerasethakul, Jia, Dumont, Tsai, Denis, Reygadas, and even the Dardennes are probably more difficult, more unwilling to engage with popular audiences than nearly anything from the 1960s. (Even filmmakers who do have international fanbases of some size - Haneke, for example, or Wong, or the aforementioned Almodovar and Del Toro - operate within styles and conventions that are more appealing to mainstream audiences.) Compare the abovementioned filmmakers, who surely represent a crosssection of what we'd term current important figures in world cinema, to Fellini, Truffaut, (early) Godard, Rohmer, Bergman, Kurosawa, and the other filmmakers who were among the most acclaimed of their era. Yes, there were extremely difficult filmmakers back then too - Rivette and post-66 Godard come to mind - but there was also a sharp divide in terms of international popular regard, as well. Rivette never curried the sort of box office favor Truffaut did.

I think it's interesting to note that IFC Films is showcasing a lot of small, indie films through On-Demand on digital cable pretty close to when they are released in theaters (if not the same day).

I guess The Guardian's arts department really ran out of things to write about. This "death of cinema" cry has been happening ever since the advent of DVD.

The thing is arthouse films is now misnomer. Where in the '60s and '70s it was something special to have a film from France or Sweden or wherever come and play in your town. With no other way to see it, you had to see it then or forever hold your peace. Now, the definition of "arthouse" has changed drastically. It can be everything from an obtuse Dardennes brothers film to a "popular" martial arts flick. DVD and cable TV (now broadcasting in HD) gives cinephiles (who aren't dead - just any cursory look at the number of film sites out there very much gives creedence to their existence) access to deep libraries of films that they can check out.

Yes, the consolidation of theater chains, distribution and disregard for critics (which is affecting mainstream films as well) is a problem. But the flipside for that is that there is a tremendous avenue in DVD distribution to reach audiences. As options to turn your home into a home theater becomes cheaper and cheaper, filmmakers and arts writers are just going to have to get used to the fact that people are going to prefer staying in, and choosing what they want to watch. That the role of a film critic will no longer be a singular persuasive voice (which will probably end after Roger Ebert's thumb is retired) but just one of many that film fans will read before deciding what to watch.

Now, I personally love going to the movies. I'm blessed with theaters here that generally have a good selection of films (though a decent rep house in this town would do wonders) and I try to go as often as I can. I love sitting in darkened room, with a screen bigger than I'll ever have, and losing myself for a couple of hours. I don't think that magic will ever die out. Just as TV heralded cries that theater was going to die, DVD is causing preliminary "death of cinema" howls. I think there is a place for cinemas and people will never tire of going with a bunch of friends, their loved ones or themselves for that experience.

The bottom line is, great films will find an audience. The Guardian's article can be countered by the fact that Pan's Labyrinth - a subtitled, adult fantasy no less - has surprised the American box office by rocketing into the top ten for the past two weeks.

The bottom line is, great films will find an audience. The Guardian's article can be countered by the fact that Pan's Labyrinth - a subtitled, adult fantasy no less - has surprised the American box office by rocketing into the top ten for the past two weeks.

Not only that. Volver is playing at 8 theaters in Orlando. I've been living in this city for 10 years and I've never seen the same foreign film playing at more than one theater at the same time. Does that have anything to do with Penelope Cruz's Oscar nomination?

I do not know to what extent my experience as South African overlaps with those of cinephiles elsewhere.

However, since the advent of DVD, it has become the pattern with me to limit my excursions to the theatre to films that would benefit from the bigscreen surround sound experience and leave the rest for home viewing. Additional (dis)incentives are
1) inconsiderate audiences eg constant chattering, cellphone conversations (in the midst of the screening), intrusive sounds (and smells) of food being consumed, babies crying, constant traffic in & out of the theatre, the list goes on and on.
2) bad (or totally absent) projectionists with racking/framing problems prominent.
3) booming sound that leaves you with a headache afterwards.

Other than that, I can break and go to the toilet when I want.

Michael wrote:

The bottom line is, great films will find an audience. The Guardian's article can be countered by the fact that Pan's Labyrinth - a subtitled, adult fantasy no less - has surprised the American box office by rocketing into the top ten for the past two weeks.

Not only that. Volver is playing at 8 theaters in Orlando. I've been living in this city for 10 years and I've never seen the same foreign film playing at more than one theater at the same time. Does that have anything to do with Penelope Cruz's Oscar nomination?

Perhaps, but Volver has been on one screen in Montreal for 2 months now.

Also, another tidbit of info courtesy of Box Office Mojo. What film had the largest per screen average in North America last week? Why Bollywood's Salaam-E-Ishq of course.

Caligula wrote:I do not know to what extent my experience as South African overlaps with those of cinephiles elsewhere.

However, since the advent of DVD, it has become the pattern with me to limit my excursions to the theatre to films that would benefit from the bigscreen surround sound experience and leave the rest for home viewing. Additional (dis)incentives are
1) inconsiderate audiences eg constant chattering, cellphone conversations (in the midst of the screening), intrusive sounds (and smells) of food being consumed, babies crying, constant traffic in & out of the theatre, the list goes on and on.
2) bad (or totally absent) projectionists with racking/framing problems prominent.
3) booming sound that leaves you with a headache afterwards.

Other than that, I can break and go to the toilet when I want.

I think you've hit on one of the main reasons people are beginning to stay away from theaters. And if cinema owners want to lure filmgoers back, they are going to have to lower prices, get projectionists who know what they are doing and crack down on inconsiderate patrons.

There are some theaters in the United States that have "adults only" screenings as a way to keep those pesky teenagers out, but in my experience the "adults" - particularly the elderly - are the most inconsiderate movie patrons I've ever encountered.

Could this also have to do with current "art-house" films just not being as good as they were in the 1960s?

And Volver is popular since spanish films are the new pink.

I wonder to what degree, if any, this can be attributed to DVD consumption.

Partly maybe, but since that article is about the situation in France, sales of DVDs have slowed down in the past couple of years.
The situation is quite complex, with many more movies produced and shown in France than ever before, with less risks taken by producers (there is a great interview with Paulo Branco is the current issue of cahiers du cinéma on taht same subject), where producers do not want to take any risks, produce for TV channels and as a result make consensual made for TV movie. The Guardian article puts A Singer under art et essaie film, to me it is not, just a commercial product. Multiplexes are not interested in difficult films, other cinemas are showing mainstream films because they have to survive. Films have a shorter life span than ever before (a lot disappear after week 2, or even week 1), and maybe people are not so much interested in films than in the past.

I've been out of the arthouse cinema business for over a decade, but from 1989-95 I was a first-hand witness to declining audiences.

When I started at Hampstead's Everyman Cinema in 1989, there was surprisingly little competition for the kind of stuff we showed (which generally alternated between classic Hollywood and European/Japanese arthouse, with the occasional foray into more adventurous territory).

The only other rep cinema in our immediate patch was the Scala, and there was surprisingly little overlap in terms of programming - they tended to specialise in cult, exploitation and avant-garde material. The VHS market was growing, but largely restricted to mainstream English-language and exploitation films - subtitled films were still a rarity - and of course cable, satellite and digital TV wasn't an issue, and mainstream TV generally only showed one or two foreign-language titles per week at most.

But by the time I left, things had changed dramatically. Arthouse VHS was a large and growing market, and demonstrably ate into our audience - I remember comparing our box-office figures for Pedro Almodovar triple bills before and after his back catalogue was released on VHS in the early 1990s (and if you just wanted to see one film, a VHS tape generally cost less than the price of two tickets). The nearby Odeon Swiss Cottage doubled its screens from three to six, and a ten-screen multiplex sprang up from nowhere in the Finchley Road. This meant that big hits like Groundhog Day would run for months, and we couldn't touch them until they'd finished. In the past, we could generally play critically-acclaimed recent mainstream titles in rep just before their VHS release and do well enough to subsidise some of the loss-making stuff, but not any more.

And two other less obvious problems: the rent on the building significantly increased over this period, and Queen Mary and Westfield College campus relocated from Hampstead to East London, with a significant impact on the size of our student audience.

This was in the early-to-mid-1990s - so I can only imagine what impact DVDs must have had. Not least on quality expectations - while we could get away with 16mm dupes of Ingmar Bergman films in the past, that was because the only realistic alternative was VHS, but when set against a Criterion restoration there isn't much contest. Ironically, this is why I'm a firm advocate of HD projection in cinemas, because I think it's the most realistic way of ensuring the continuation of high-quality big-screen presentations - as the economics of maintaining 35mm materials to a similar standard increasingly make less and less sense.

(As a footnote, one thing I was extremely proud of was that we were able to run an adventurous repertory programme without a penny of subsidy from any source other than the box office. This is simply unimaginable today.)

Arn777 wrote:The Guardian article puts A Singer under art et essaie film, to me it is not, just a commercial product.

Similarly, there's very little to me that's challenging in any way about The Page Turner, which, as the coy title implies, is rather a Hitchcockian thriller set within the highbrow context of professional chamber musicians. A few decades ago and The Page Turner would have been fairly standard-issue (if well-executed) Hollywood-style product.

Antoine Doinel wrote:I think you've hit on one of the main reasons people are beginning to stay away from theaters. And if cinema owners want to lure filmgoers back, they are going to have to lower prices, get projectionists who know what they are doing and crack down on inconsiderate patrons.

We were generally pretty lucky in that our audiences primarily came for the films, and our projectionists generally knew what they were doing (they'd have to, given the wide range of prints they were expected to handle). Just about the only time we had to issue a blanket ban was when a McDonald's opened nearby and people would turn up at the cinema clutching an evil-smelling bag, expecting to be allowed to eat it in the auditorium, but we quickly put a stop to that.

I left before mobile phones became an issue, but I suspect these have been the bane of cinema managers' lives (especially those truly inconsiderate people who actually answer the damn things in the auditorium!)

As for lowering prices, we genuinely kept them as low as was realistically feasible - but at a time of dramatically rising rents and falling audiences, we were faced with two unappetising choices: (1) put up the prices, or (2) replace most of our programming with safe commercial hits, and decided that (1) was the lesser of two evils.

There was also (3) seek some kind of subsidy - but in six years of optimistically filling out grant application forms, I found out the hard way that we fell between just about every stool. (We nearly got a Europa Cinemas grant, but while we easily met the supposedly fundamental requirement of showing more than 50% European films, it turned out that we didn't show enough new titles!)

I live in a city of less than 200,000. The last time there was a subtitled movie playing in our mainstream theatres was probably Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We now have both Volver and Pan's Labrynth playing at the same time. Usually, we have to wait 2 to 4 months before getting foreign films at our local arthouse cinema.

That being said, there were two other people in the theatre with me Friday night for Volver.

Thanks for the insights Michael. I know that running a theater is probably way more complex than my arguments are making it out to be.

It's interesting that your cinema's audience declined so dramatically even though the variety and kinds of films stayed the same. In Montreal, Cinema Du Parc experienced the exact opposite problem. For years, Du Parc was the only adventurous arthouse and rep cinema in the city. With three screens, they had a healthy mix of current arthouse fare, cult films (with regular midnight screenings on Friday with Holy Mountain, Salo, The Beast among other films they managed to screen) and rep films (Leone and James Dean retrospectives, The Red Shoes etc).

The owners of course, wanted to see more money (even though Du Parc was doing quite healthy business wise as far as most people could see). To that end, they fired the programmers and began programming strictly mainstream "Oscar titles" or major studio arthouse films.

The tactic failed.

Du Parc wasn't located downtown, but in the student ghetto just off the hipster neighbourhood of the Plateau west of the city. Instead, the 22 screen AMC downtown, played the same films and even some titles that would interest their patrons that they weren't screening and killed them even though ticket prices were at least $5 more. Du Parc ended up closing within six months.

It has since reopened with a promise of more adventurous programming, but it's more of the same. Right now they are showing Letters From Iwo Jima, Volver, Babel and Pan's Labryinth all - with the exception of LFIJ - are screening elsewhere in town. The announced they would be screening Sony's Almodovar retrospective way back in September yet that hasn't materialized yet and no rep screenings are to be seen at all. Of course, the ticket prices have been raised again while the same crappy seats from years ago remain. I predict it will shut its doors by next Christmas.

MichaelB wrote:I've been out of the arthouse cinema business for over a decade, but from 1989-95 I was a first-hand witness to declining audiences.

Combing through attendance records from the same era from a theater I used to work for in New Hampshire, I found the same phenomenon. In the mid-to-late 80s, the theater would regularly post 500+ for one-night bookings of Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini. I know that when we played the Kurosawa series that Cowboy/Janus released in the early 00s, we averaged about 70 for one-night bookings. Sad.

That said, like your theater, we did one-night bookings of second-run titles of high quality recent releases, but we always did great business on them (being that our only real competition were two four-screen theaters, one of which only gets the absolute dross of the industry). We also relied on college business, but our college wasn't going anywhere.

Nothing beats going to a movie theatre--20 years ago.
I still go to films in the theatre at least once a week. I'm addicted to it. But it's also a major pain in the ass. Lifeless cineplexes, outrageous prices, 30 minutes--literally--of goddamn commercials and idiotic trailers, and most often a feature that's forgettable at best. Of course, this problem is worse here in NYC, where the prices are higher, and going to a film on a weekend requires buying advanced tickets and getting there an hour early, and where, shockingly, the old movie houses are pretty much non-existent. (We have many art-house theatres that show great films, but few of them are nice spaces, and most of them have fairly small screens).

I am sick to think that the theatre will not be the main forum for watching films, and may die out, but the theatres themselves play a large role in this transition. They could try to make the experience more pleasurable for the audience.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Thanks for the insights Michael. I know that running a theater is probably way more complex than my arguments are making it out to be.

I always used to laugh whenever I read the rumour - which has found its way into at least one book - that the Scala cinema closed entirely because of a single illicit screening of A Clockwork Orange! It's a great story, but almost entirely untrue: it's actually a miracle that it lasted into 1993 in the first place, and any one of a dozen possible factors could have delivered the killer blow.

It's interesting that your cinema's audience declined so dramatically even though the variety and kinds of films stayed the same.

That was partly the problem - in 1989, there were realistically only two or three venues that regularly showed, say, Eric Rohmer or Andrei Tarkovsky films outside their original releases, so they were reasonable money-spinners (Ingmar Bergman triple bills ranked alongside recent mainstream titles for the reliability of their income potential). But by 1995, they were all or mostly out on VHS, and now they're all out on DVD - and you can also get them on assorted cable, satellite and digital channels.

The other problem is that battered 35mm and 16mm prints (and in a frightening number of cases there was just one bookable print) aren't necessarily an attractive alternative to a well-mastered DVD. You'd have to be a really hardcore celluloid purist to assert that the 16mm print of The Seventh Seal with barely readable subtitles that we were forced to show (because there was no other viable option) was a superior viewing experience to Criterion's DVD, or even Tartan's.

The owners of course, wanted to see more money (even though Du Parc was doing quite healthy business wise as far as most people could see). To that end, they fired the programmers and began programming strictly mainstream "Oscar titles" or major studio arthouse films.

The tactic failed.

This was exactly the kind of thing we were trying to avoid - in fact, in 1994 we were faced with two suitors (either that or go under), one of which was a major arthouse cinema chain, the other a local businesswoman. We went with the second option, because at least this bought us a few more years to carry on operating in the way we found most congenial - though it was ultimately only staving off the inevitable.

The Everyman is still operating, but exclusively as an upmarket mainstream cinema: the double and triple bills of its glory days are long gone. In fact, the new owners completely gutted and rebuilt the place from the ground up in 1998-99 and I no longer recognise it - and in a way I'm quite pleased about this, as I prefer to have my memories, rather than the real-life image of the same auditorium being used for drastically inferior programming.

(Also, on a purely selfish basis, I couldn't have carried on much longer than I did. Even though I was effectively the number two, with a major input into programming, booking, marketing, managing the cinema during the day and any number of other things that needed doing, when I left my wages had just hit the dizzy heights of £5 per hour - or $10 at the current exchange rate, though it would have been more like $7.50 back then. Believe me, I wasn't in that business for the money - and there was no question of me being ripped off: I was on the board of directors by the end, with full access to the accounts!)

montgomery wrote:30 minutes--literally--of goddamn commercials and idiotic trailers, and most often a feature that's forgettable at best.

I thank God that this trend has not yet reached Canada. That's absurd, especially for studios trying to cram as many showings of their films as possible on screens. You would think they would be the first to rally against this.

When I went to see The Good Shepherd over the weekend, it was just four trailers and then the movie. That's unusual, but on a normal night, it's probably three commericals (at most), a few trailers and then the film. All told, seven minutes at the most.

In my view there is no substitute for film. Even on a smallish theater screen. I would rather watch a ratty 35mm print than a DVD any day.

That being said, one thing that MIGHT be the death knell for current art cinema is DV.

At the NYFF last year I would say that close to 50% of the "films" were shot in DV. And almost all of them were fuglish (exceptions: "Climates", which looked OK, albeit TVish, and INLAND EMPIRE, which benefitted from DV).

If auteurs like Otar Iosellani (sp) or whatever can't get financing to shoot in 35mm I don't see the point of paying to see their muddy washed out films in theaters.

Barmy wrote:In my view there is no substitute for film. Even on a smallish theater screen. I would rather watch a ratty 35mm print than a DVD any day.

I used to be a total celluloid purist, but not any more: I've seen far too many truly unwatchable prints over the years.

I remember the excitement when we arranged an ultra-rare screening of Clouzot's Le Corbeau, until I saw the print and realised why it had been so hard to see - it turned out to be a 16mm dupe of a dupe (honestly, Pixelvision would have looked better) with a soundtrack that was all but inaudible - and the subtitles were no great shakes either, in terms of both quality and legibility.

As for the much-vaunted experience of watching it with an audience... well, let's just say the film got a reaction, but it wasn't necessarily the one that Clouzot had in mind! In fact, we nearly scrapped the screening altogether when we saw the print, and ended up sticking a warning-cum-apology caveat emptor in the box-office window.

Trust me - absolutely no-one who isn't certifiably insane would have preferred that experience to watching Criterion's DVD!

Oh, and there was also the notorious print of Eisenstein's Strike, which I used to dread showing, because the only print in British distribution for many years was a 16mm dupe of a 35mm original. For the most part, it looked fine - apart from the English subtitles being printed out of rack in the opening reel.

The problem was that to the untrained eye, this looked like incompetent projection - whereas in fact the projectionist was aligning the bottom of the frame with millimetre-perfect precision to get as much of the subtitles visible as was possible! And every time we showed it, I had to hang around in the foyer for the first ten minutes to reassure the inevitable complainants that it would get better soon.

But it was either that or not show it at all - a decision I've had to take time and time again. (In fact, I've just had to make a similar decision regarding the DVD I'm currently producing...)

I think it's well-established that I'm certifiably insane.