PER FARE UN BEL FILM

Per fare un bel film bisogna innanzitutto fare un film, Il che significa ideare: situazioni e drammi che possono capitare a tutti, personaggi credibili, dialoghi non banali, spiegazioni al minimo, e benvenute le svolte o le sorprese prima della fine.

CULTURA CONSUMISTICA

CULTURA CONSUMISTICA

Breve e crudele, MM poggia le dita sulla tastiera come Glenn Gould: dal basso. Dal film esige la resa narrativa e commerciale.

CULTURA SUSSIDIATA

CULTURA SUSSIDIATA

Leggevo che da noi il cinema si becca dalla politica un sussidio di circa 200 milioni di euro. Sono soldi che per lo più vanno a produttori, registi e attori. In Francia e GB è anche superiore, d'accordo.

Ma da noi l’industria del settore è molto più piccola, di conseguenza in Italia, per ogni euro di investimento in produzioni cinematografiche, oltre 50 centesimi vengono dallo stato; in Francia e Gran Bretagna, circa 30 centesimi.

Si tratta di un contributo straordinario, siamo quasi al livello di ippica e lirica. Probabilmente è il cinema più sussidiato al mondo.

Io sinceramente non capisco bene il motivo di questa condizione, il mondo del cinema in fondo sposta pochi voti. Forse perché i cinematografari sono tutti concentrati a roma. Forse al ministro di turno piace solcare il red carpet sapendo di essere il dominus, oppure sogna di essere il fulcro di una grande riscossa culturale del paese. Forse il cinema deve la sua fortuna alla loquacità di chi lo incarna, i monumenti italiani, noti in tutto il mondo e che si stanno sbriciolando, invece non parlano. Un'ipotesi più plausibile è che la gente, politici compresi, non ha tempo di occuparsi della faccenda e i beneficiati cavalcano questa inerzia guardandosi bene dal sollevare la questione. Io stesso me ne occupo qui ma sento di aver speso già troppe energie, mi sono già stufato dell'argomento e non vedo l'ora di passare ad altro.

Comunque sia non è vero che con la cultura sussidiata non si mangia, si mangia eccome, in genere mangiano i ricchi facendosi fare la spesa dai poveri (IRAP e IVA sono le fonti di finanziamento del cinema), con lo stato nei panni che più gli si attagliano, quelli del Robin Hood alla rovescia.

HL 4.2 Lo stato come Robin Hood al contrario: togliere ai poveri per dare ai ricchi

4.2 Lo stato come Robin Hood al contrario: togliere ai poveri per dare ai ricchi
Note:42@@@@@@@@@@@@

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4.2.1 Il cinema: una lobby alla conquista di politici superficiali o conniventi
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da noi l’industria del settore è molto più piccola: di conseguenza in Italia, per ogni euro di investimento in produzioni cinematografiche, oltre 50 centesimi (una percentuale di sussidio straordinaria) vengono dallo stato; in Francia e Gran Bretagna, circa 30 centesimi.
Note:IL MITO CHE IL CINEMA ALTRUI SIA PIÙ STATALISTA....VERO X GLI INVESTIMENTI COMPLESSIVI MA...

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probabile che l’Italia sia il paese al mondo con il più alto tasso di sussidio
Note:RECORD

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ci sono tante forme di cultura, e nessuna, con l’eccezione della lirica, è sussidiata quanto il cinema.
Note:ALTRO RECORD

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Anche da un punto di vista sociale, sono soldi spesi male:
Note:VA AI PRODUTTORI E AGLI ATTORI E AI REGISTI

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i monumenti italiani, noti in tutto il mondo e che si stanno sbriciolando, non parlano;
Note:MA XCHÈ IL CINEMA CONTA TANTO PESANDO COSÍ POCO ELETTORALMENTE?

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tutti concentrati a Roma.
Note:CINEMATOGRAFARI

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essere associato alla “rinascita” della cultura italiana;
Note:IL SOGNO DI OGNI MINISTRO

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solcare il red carpet del Festival di Venezia con la consapevolezza di essere il dominus
Note:IL PIACERE SOTTILE DI OGNI POLITICO

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il cinema è un’industria, “crea occupazione”, ha “un indotto”.
Note:L IDEA PIÙ SCIOCCA

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vale per qualsiasi altro settore:
Note:DATE I SOLDI A ME...E VEDRETE CHE INDOTTO CHE VI CREO....

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Se dovessimo sussidiare ogni settore dell’economia per il 50 per cento del suo prodotto,
Note:NN SCHERZIAMO

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il cinema italiano attrae una frazione irrisoria di investimenti esteri,
Note:ALTRA DIFESA DEI SUSSIDI...ATTRAE INVESTIMENTI DALL ESTERO

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una questione di inerzia e pigrizia mentali, noncuranza, amore del quieto vivere e mancanza di organizzazione.
Note:MA XCHÈ NN SI FA NULA NONOSTANTE LA CONSAPEVOLEZZA...COMPIACENZA TOLLERANZA...TIRARE A CAMPARE

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Nessun giornale obiettò, perché in Italia qualsiasi spesa che abbia come etichetta la parola “cultura” diventa automaticamente sacrosanta
Note:ANZI...I FONDI RADDOPPIARONO

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il triplo dei sussidi per euro prodotto rispetto a paesi già altamente sussidiati,
Note:E COSÌ ECCO QUANTO RICEVE OGGI IL CINEMA

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Il Fondo per lo sviluppo degli investimenti nel cinema sarà alimentato da una percentuale del 12 per cento del gettito Ires e Iva
Note:AL DANNO SI AGGIUNGE LA BEFFA

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il Consiglio superiore per il cinema e l’audiovisivo.
Note:NN POTEVANO MANCARE NUOVE POLTRONE

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4.2.2 L’ippica: mai arrendersi all’evidenza (con i soldi degli altri)
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non è facile entusiasmare dei ragazzi a un evento in cui dieci cavalli tirano un carretto per un minuto,
Note:C È UNA RAGIONE SE È IN DECLINO

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Eppure, ogni anno lo stato spende 200 milioni per sussidiare l’ippica,
Note:ENTITÀ

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l’ippica è uno sport di élite.
Note:A CHI VANNO?

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l’ippica, come la caccia, ha una lobby politica e parlamentare sproporzionata
Note:I MOTIVI SECONDO MOLTI...IMPOSSIBILE SONO IN POCHI....È L INERZIA CHE LI PRIVILEGIA

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il solito moltiplicatore
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l’unica cosa che può moltiplicare sono le perdite.
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sono i soldi delle scommesse ippiche che tornano all’ippica”.
Note:L ARGOMENTO SPECIFICO

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Quando gli inglesi scommettono se i principi Kate e William avranno un terzo figlio il prossimo anno, i proventi vanno ai bookmaker, non alla casa reale.
Note:ANALOGIA

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la mancanza di informazioni, la pigrizia intellettuale e la pura e semplice superficialità.
Note:LE CAUSE DELLO SCANDALO

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4.2.3 L’editoria e i giornali: comprare il consenso
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200 milioni.
Note:ENTITÀ DEL SOSSISIO

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non troverete mai sui maggiori giornali articoli di critica alle Poste italiane).
Note:SUSSIDI ALLE SPESE POSTALI

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28 milioni per pagare, chissà perché, le bollette telefoniche dei giornali;
Note:STRANI SUSSIDI

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una norma che consente ai giornali e agli editori di dichiarare un numero di resi ben superiore a quelli effettivi;
Note:EVASIONE LEGALIZZATA DELL IVA

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Il decreto legge 66 dell’aprile 2014 (quello degli 80 euro) aveva previsto l’eliminazione dell’obbligo di pubblicare certe sentenze e certi avvisi di gara sui giornali,
Note:LA NORMA CONTRO CUI LA LOBBY HA COMBATTUTO ASPRAMENTE...VINCENDO...CENTO MILIONI DI INCASSI

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i giornalisti hanno una certa influenza, al di là del voto che esercitano;
Note:LA POTENZA DELLA LOBBY

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un peccato di omissione più che di commissione:
Note:MA ANCHE QUI

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4.2.4 I 500 euro ai diciottenni: il dilettantismo della politica
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va a tutti nella stessa misura, indipendentemente dalle condizioni economiche.
Note:UNA PESSIMA CARATTERISTICA

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di fatto un sussidio per gli spettacoli dal vivo (leggi: concerti a pagamento in stadi e discoteche) e, se saranno consentiti, per i tablet.
Note:ALTRO CHE ULTURA...

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regalare 275 milioni a questi due settori
Note:DI FATTO

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la disoccupazione giovanile
Note:PROBLEMI BEN PIÙ PRESSANTE...ALTRO CHE CULTURA

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la mancanza di strutture di aggregazione,
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il degrado delle periferie;
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la tossicodipendenza
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l’abbandono scolastico; le gang.
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Non è, credo, un regalo elettorale, bensì il prodotto di un approccio garibaldino alla politica di bilancio, della mancanza di una visione globale della spesa pubblica,
MOTIVAZIONI DELL ERRORE

SAGGIO La mafia va al cine

Why (Low) Life Imitates Art - Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate by Diego Gambetta

Il connubio tra criminalità organizzata e cinema è stretto e di lunga data. Perché?

Per rispondere, cominciamo con una storia triste ambientata in Giappone. Alla mafia non dispiacque un film che la dipingeva in una luce satirica... ecco come reagì…

... On a mild Friday night in May 1992 at about 8.45 p.m. three young men dressed in black approached Japanese film director Juzo Itami as he was parking his car near his apartment in Tokyo. Two held him down while the third pulled out a knife and slashed his face and neck. “They cut very slowly; they took their time,” Itami later said. They left him bleeding on the sidewalk and sped off in a black car. A few days before, Minbo no Onna (translated as either “Mob Woman” or “The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion”) had opened to rave reviews in Japan. In the film yakuza gangsters are depicted “as crude bullies who are outsmarted and eventually beaten by a female lawyer.” “The lawyer is played by Itami's wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, who stars in all his movies,” including Tampopo, the cult film for which Itami is best known in the West. In Mob Woman, a young yakuza member stabs the lawyer in an attack that soon “was imitated in real life.”...

Da sempre yazuka e cinema conducono una vita parallela...

... Tolerated by Japanese society and enjoying a near-legal status, yakuza once were also the pampered darlings of the Japanese B-movie industry. Yakuza films became a genre in their own right in postwar Japan. They were mostly low budget—each film was shot and packaged in less than a month—and yet they became so popular that around 1974 studios were producing a stunning hundred of these films a year...

I gusti della mafia: adora la difesa del debole e nutre una certa nostalgia per il passato e il bel tempo andato… 

... Like cowboys, these outlaws define their own code of morality, and help the weak and the oppressed, but unlike cowboy movies Yakuza films do not contain the essential theme of social mobility but rather stress the immutability of the social order, and they are driven, like many other Japanese films, by nostalgia for a preindustrial past...

Diciamo che le storie dei samurai e il teatro kabuki forniscono canovacci ottimali.

Lunghi silenzio e messaggi in codice farciscono i film sulla Yazuka...

... “Yakuza films are litanies of private argot, subtle body language, obscure codes, elaborate rites, iconographic costumes and tattoos.”

Lo zoccolo duro dei film sulla Yazuka sono i criminali stessi...

... Buruma writes that “real mobsters in Japan are among the greatest fans of this cinematic genre, often imitating the style of movie yakuza”...

C'è il piacere estetico ma c'è anche l’aspetto funzionale: per la mafia è importante che venga pubblicizzata la sua crudeltà (visto che non puo’ farlo direttamente ingaggiando un’agenzia)…

... Movies that make mobsters look vicious are actually good publicity, not just because all publicity is good but because they advertise mobsters' threatening image, which is their greatest asset...

La mafia è scocciata solo se il cattivo non è professionale, non certo quando il cattivo è cattivo...

... Itami's film is unique in displaying mobsters' faults in their own professional terms. What they worry about is not being thought of as bad, quite the opposite. They resent being seen to be bad at being bad...

E in questo senso gli interessi dei produttori  sono in armonia con quelli criminali: il cattivo imbranato puo’ andar bene per una pellicola ma il soggetto non regge a lungo, non offre molti spunti narrativi.

C'è il caso satirico di Roberta Torre (Tano da morire). La mafia non se la prese, ma c'erano dei motivi: si perculava anche l'antimafia, era tutto un mondo sopra le righe...

... Roberta Torre's farcical musical (Tano to Die For), a parody of Sicilian mafiosi, which came out in 1998 in Italy, is the only other film I know of that might similarly have offended its models... Yet nothing happened to Roberta Torre. It may have helped that her film also makes fun of the antimafia people, or that the production company, according to Salvatore Zanca and Marcello Fava, two mafiosi who turned state's evidence, paid 15,000 euros to the boss of La Vucciria, a Palermo neighborhood, to be able to shoot without problems...

***

A Hong Kong si paga il capo-rione per girare certi film...

... In order to shoot in peace and enjoy the collaboration of the locals, for example, crews in various parts of the world have been asked by mobsters to pay up or else face the consequences. Chu Yiu Kong documents this practice extensively in Hong Kong, which spread when outdoor filming became more common in the 1980s, exposing the industry more to extortion...

Salvatore Giuliano chiese i diritti a Rosi...

... Tullio Kezich, a veteran Italian film critic—who worked with Francesco Rosi on the set of Salvatore Giuliano in 1961 in Sicily—said that the crew came under pressure from locals as well as from jailed mobsters working through their lawyers. The message was, “You are taking pictures of my windows and you must pay me, or else I'll lean out of the window and ruin your take.”...

Ma sono gli stessi registi che chiedono protezione prima ancora di iniziare le riprese...

... Crews in Sicily eventually learned to move first and ask for “protection” without waiting to be prompted. British director Anthony Waller, when filming Mute Witness in 1993 in Moscow, said: “we were told by our Russian co-producers that we had to pay offthree different mafia groups to allow us to shoot in peace. They were quoting prices more expensive than Hollywood...

Si crea una sorta di parassitismo reciproco.

Rourke vantava la sua amicizia con Gotti...

... Dressed in an off-white double-breasted suit and wearing a ponytail, Mickey Rourke went to the late John Gotti's trial in New York together with Anthony Quinn in a show of solidarity with the Gambino family boss. Rourke said that he and “Mr. Gotti were friends. I do roles that are urban-type roles, and he knows about them,” Mr. Rourke said. “He's very intelligent, he's very generous with his time.”...

Alcuni mafiosi, specie in Giappone, hanno prodotto dei film ma una vera commistione affaristica tra i due settori (criminalità e mafia) non è mai avvenuta...

... There are, however, few cases of mobsters turning into producers. Toei, the studio that shot hundreds of yakuza movies, “owed much of its success to its general producer, Kouji Shundo,” who was an expert in the matter, being himself an ex-yakuza.24 He is an exception though... There is a peculiar incompetence among mobsters, which I discussed in chapter 2, and the smart ones let the professionals do the work. The main business of a well-functioning mafia is protection, and when it engages in other activities that do need protection, it does so by what economists call “vertical integration” rather than by taking over the business altogether...

Ecco i prerequisiti per attrarre il business criminale…

... Peter Reuter and I showed that the sectors that attract (or often ask for) mobsters' protection have certain features in common—firms are small, there are low entry costs, they are unionized, they have lots of unskilled labor, and they need low technology.27 B movie making is work of this kind...

Certi B-movie sono appetibili.

***

Molto spesso la sceneggiatura si ispira a storie vere della criminalità…

... Scriptwriters have ransacked the underworld for stories. Nick Pileggi, who wrote Wiseguys and Casino, both made into films by Martin Scorsese, is one of the most successful examples. Mike Newell, who directed Donnie Brasco, based the movie on the experience of FBI agent Joseph Pistone, who as we know infiltrated the New York mafia in the late 1970s. Other scriptwriters have drawn on fragments of mobsters' lives rather than on entire stories. Sicilian mafioso Cesare Manzella traveled through the United States hidden in a large cargo crate. The same trick was used in Il Mafioso, where comic actor Alberto Sordi is shipped to the United States to commit a murder as payment for the protection he received from the mafia in the past.29 Mario Puzo, who scripted the most famous mafia movie of all, The Godfather, “read his way through a mountain of Senate hearings about the mafia, garnering a mass of authentic details to use in the story of the Corleone family.”...

I mafiosi diventano consulenti ricercati.

Mafiosi veri che discutono di mafiosi finti...

... During a criminal investigation in the late 1990s, the FBI tapped the phones of some New Jersey mafiosi. A large part of their conversation was taken up with discussing on whom the characters in The Sopranos television show were based...

Mafiosi finti che frequentano mafiosi veri...

... The crew of The Godfather and its actors happily communed with the “boys.” James Caan was seen in the company of Carmine “The Snake” Persico so often that the FBI thought he was part of that crew...

Mafiosi critici cinematografici...

... Meyer Lansky, a longtime Jewish associate of Italian American mafiosi, telephoned Lee Strasberg, the actor who played “him” in the Godfather: “He said, ‘you did good.’”But he also added, somewhat more ominously: “Now, why couldn't you have made me more sympathetic? After all, I am a grandfather.”...

Locali  punto di ritrovo dei due mondi...

... A whole demimonde has grown around the industry of mob movies, and nowhere more so than in New York. There is an Italian-American hangout, Rao's in East Harlem, where “a network of would-be wise guys, celebrities, prosecutors and crime reporters” meet and “form a kind of pseudo-commission ruling on the mob's narrative mythology.”...

Rocco Musacchia: il link...

... Liz Hurley, the British actress who produced Mickey Blue Eyes, “lavishes praise on Musacchia, whom she refers to as the link between the likes of Al Pacino, Johnny Depp and Barry Levinson and the kind of men who could be on F.B.I. surveillance lists.”...

Eppure, pochi attori diventano criminali, nonostante la contiguità l'osmosi è problematica: il salto è troppo radicale...

... There are a “tiny” number of men with a criminal past “who are getting parts as wise guys in mob-themed movies and television shows because of the tough-guy demeanors they have cultivated since they were kids.”40 Bobby “Blue” Martana is one example. He “moonlighted as a bodyguard to Robert de Niro's Al Capone in the Untouchables, then returned to his day job”—described as “busting heads across Brooklyn and Staten Island for the Gambino family.”41 Other mobsters appeared as extras in the crowd scenes in The Godfather in Little Italy. But they tend to be small-time crooks who in most cases have given up crime. Joe Bonanno took acting classes in his youth,42 but there is no record of serious actors becoming mobsters.43 Besotted by the mob, Frank Sinatra loved to congregate with and sing for such mobsters as Lucky Luciano and Sam Giancana...

Ancora: pochi gangster diventano attori...

... And there is no record of mobsters becoming actors, with one exception, which is found, once again, in Japan. Noboru Ando, once the boss of a Tokyo crime family, the Andogumi, became an actor after the fall of his gang...

Eppure tutti i mafiosi sono un po’ attori naturali...

... “All yakuza have to be actors to survive”46—but the act they perform requires them never to reveal that it is one. They gain much from their fearsome reputation, and the more they can advertise it by a sheer display of menace and self-assurance rather than by actual acts of violence, the better it is for them...

Il mafioso è attore naturale ma non ama il set: teme di essere visto come impostore, e questo lo blocca...

... So while mobsters may be attracted by actors' ability to scare and impress the public while being fakes, and while they like being seen in the company of celebrities, the last thing they want is to be seen as impostors...

***

Film sulla mafia e mafia si imitano a vicenda. Si imitano a cominciare dai nomi…

… As the Nigerian government combed the world in pursuit of more than $4bn (£2.76bn) that disappeared under the rule of General Sani Abacha, one trail led to Switzerland where the late dictator's sons had opened a series of bank accounts. To the investigators' surprise, they found many of the Swiss accounts used one of two code names—Kaiser for those opened by Ibrahim Abacha and Soze for his brother Mohammed…. Keyser Soze was the name of a shadowy Turkish Mafia leader in The Usual Suspects, the 1995 film starring Kevin Spacey…

Ma si imitano anche nelle pratiche…

… “Toto’ Di Cristina had just finished reading The Godfather”—said Antonino Calderone—”and he had the idea of doing like in the book…. They disguised themselves as doctors and killed [Candido Ciuni, a hotel manager] in his [hospital] bed.”…

Le Brigate Rosse presero spesso spunto dai “poliziotteschi” tanto cari a Tarantino…

… Mario Moretti, one of the leaders of the Red Brigades, an Italian terrorist group, said that when they started to rob banks to finance their activities they followed “the same technique we saw in films.”…

Suicidarsi per proteggere i parenti: una pratica ispirata dai film…

… In The Godfather, a mafioso who is about to testify against the Corleone family takes his life to make sure his relatives will not suffer from his behavior. Suicide is rare among mafiosi. Yet Antonino Gioé, arrested in connection with the killing of Judge Giovanni Falcone, did exactly that…

Robert Altman sulla responsabilità del cinema nell’attentato del 9/11…

… The late director Robert Altman suggested the grandest and most tragic example of this dynamic. He believed that a Hollywood genre he calls the “comedy of apocalypse” may have been a contributory factor in the staging of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: “The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies. Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they'd seen it in a movie. How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies? I just believe we created this atmosphere and taught them how to do it.”…

I criminali al cinema sono anche una miniera di argomenti retorici da cui spesso i mafiosi attingono nei processi…

… Movies also help to expand one's armory of arguments. Frankie Locasio was John Gotti's codefendant and was convicted of murder and racketeering. At the trial his son Salvatore was “one of a sleek-suited crew who populate[d] the public benches. ‘This is America!’ shouted Mr. Locasio after the judge dismissed one of his father's lawyers. ‘Haven't they ever heard of the Bill of Rights? Tell them to go over there and read it.’ In 1959, when Rod Steiger played Al Capone, he used the same line.”…

***

Per la mala il cinema ha una funzione fondamentale di coordinamento. E’ lo spazio pubblico del criminale, ovvero di colui a cui è negato ogni spazio pubblico…

… While criminals need conventional signals to communicate with each other and with the outside world, they are also hard put to agree on what these signals are and how to establish them credibly. They lack a coordinating and standardizing authority, and have to operate in secrecy. They cannot for instance devise a company jingle and make it known to everyone without getting caught. Movies can accidentally offer some solutions to those problems. What they offer is “common knowledge,” the foundation of coordination in the absence of a central authority: coordination occurs when everyone knows that everyone else knows that s means k or that people like us always do j….

Nel cinema è possibile produrre e veicolare significati senza rispondere di affiliazione al crimine…

… The soundtrack acts as an icon that gives a clear meaning without constituting evidence of affiliation…

Un esempio: il guardaroba del gangster…

… William Everson, a film historian, argues that gangster lore was invented in a 1912 silent film called Musketeers of Pig Alley, in which all the protagonists wear suits and hats, and that Al Capone and the Chicago mob adopted the movie tradition…

Non che senza i film i mezzi manchino, ma il cinema è una grande arma in più…

… Without movies we would still have gangsters. We did have them. But without films, mobsters would need different sources for their conventional signals….

Il problema della mafia russa: l’assenza di una tradizione cinematografica.

Come si rimediò? Attingendo alla filmografia sulla mafia italiana…

… Knowing how to behave has been a serious headache for the many new gangs that have sprouted in Russia since 1989. They have no history, no agreed-upon codes, and they plunder anything that plausibly can be plundered. Russian mobsters are said to mimic “the clothing and swagger of American gangsters in 1930's movies.”… Others in Russia have looked to Sicily, as mediated by fiction, as a source of inspiration…

I film servono anche ad educare le nuove generazioni criminali: la mafia non puo’ aprire una scuola…

… The effectiveness of movies is particularly relevant for transmitting conventional codes to younger generations. Newcomers and would-be mobsters cannot easily learn how a mobster is supposed to behave. Movies help not just to create but to spread the codes of behavior. “Young gangsters or triad members,” Chu Yiu Kong wrote, “like to watch gang movies to learn how to behave as a triad. It should be noted that triad membership is a criminal offence in Hong Kong and the gang movie is one of the major sources for youngsters to learn how to behave to be a triad.”…

Come devo vestirmi? Guarda i film dei gangster…

… Rakesh Kurana told me that a friend of his “went to work on a college internship for an investment bank in New York. When he asked what he should wear at the office he was told to go watch the movie Wall Street.”…

In fondo era così anche nel XIX secolo…

… In his biography of Kipling, “David Gilmour makes a similar point about Kipling's ‘Departmental Ditties' and ‘Barrack-Room Ballads’; they taught the British soldiers in India to talk and act like Danny Deever and Tommy Atkins.”…

Anche nel medioevo…

… “The Medieval European aristocrats, from the 13th century on, emulated the actions they admired in books….

Sappiamo bene come i pirati sfruttassero la libera stampa.

Il cinema ha un ruolo importante per tutte quelle professioni che hanno a che fare con i segreti…

… Le Carré said that young spies have looked at his books as a source on which to tailor their demeanor and vocabulary…

Due condizioni valorizzano certi film agli occhi di certe professioni 1) la segretezza e 2) la necessità di un codice per comunicare in modo criptato…

… Two conditions jointly foster the generation of conventional codes through fiction. First, there must be a value in having commonly shared and stable conventions. Next, there must be obstacles to creating and spreading them by means of an overarching authoritative forum—because of a need for secrecy, perhaps, or because of poor means of communication or coordination (both certainly problems for medieval knights)…

Il mondo del crimine gira proprio intorno alla segretezza e ai codici criptati. E’ naturale che tra crimine organizzato e cinema si realizzi il matrimonio perfetto.

***

I film sono anche una pubblicità per la mafia, che non si puo’ affidare ad un’agenzia.

… Mobsters benefit from and revel in the publicity they vicariously get from movies about them…

Spesso, addirittura, il prodotto viene confezionato dopo la pubblicità anziché prima…

… an additional reason to do as they see done in the movies. To inform their own audience that they are those whom the movie really talks about—that guy on the screen is me!…

Lucky Luciano investì nel cinema…

… In the 1950s Lucky Luciano returned to Lercara Friddi, his hometown in Sicily. His contribution to local culture was to provide financial backing for the opening of the first cinema in the village. The first film showed there was Little Caesar, a gangster classic with Edward G. Robin son….

Il Padrino è per la mafia quel che Marilyn Monroe è stata per Chanel n. 5…

… The absolute winner of the contest to supply the best free mafia advertising is undoubtedly The Godfather. That film had for the mafia the same effect that Marilyn Monroe's famous quip about her nocturnal dress had for boosting sales of Chanel no. 5…

Il Padrino ha ispirato intere carriere. L’esempio di Gravano…

… Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, John Gotti's lieutenant, whose testimony was crucial in sending his former boss to jail, saw The Godfather in 1972, and later acknowledged that “[Puzo] influenced the life, absolutely.” “I would use lines in real life like ‘I'm gonna make an offer you can't refuse,’ and I always tell people, just like from ‘The Godfather,’ ‘If you have an enemy, that enemy becomes my enemy.’”…

E quello di Milito…

… Louie watched it like six thousand times. It was like a searchlight had lit up on something he had always believed in but never seen the proof before…. All our friends were watching it…the guys who came to the house were all acting like Godfather actors, kissing and hugging even more than they did before and coming out with lines from the movie…. Louie and Frank [de Cicco] watched it in the den and Frankie came upstairs looking like he's just seen God…Louie thought it was close to reality, but I didn't. Back then I laughed at all that, like it was a farce….

Il Padrino “legittima”…

… The “advertising” persuaded the mobsters first of all of the value of their deeds; it boosted their sense of their own legitimacy…

Accuse ai film che rendono il crimine glamour…

… John Abbott, director general of the British National Criminal Intelligence Service, has openly blamed films, such as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, both by director Guy Ritchie, for glamorizing and thus encouraging organized crime…

L’identificazione del criminale nei film e la sua autentica commozione. Il caso Gravano…

… Gravano said: Remember that scene when Michael [Corleone] goes to whack that drug dealer and the police captain?…Remember how Michael couldn't hear anything as he's walking up on them? Remember how his eyes went glassy, and there was just the noise of the train in the background, and how he couldn't hear them talk? That's just like I felt when I killed Joe Colucci…

L’universalità del Padrino…

… The Godfather transfixed not just the Italian American mobsters or their Sicilian cousins. Denizens of the underworld loved it in Hong Kong, in Japan, and in Russia—for all of whom the film was even less realistic. According to Nikolai Modestov, the mobsters of Sergei Frolov's Balashikha gang could recite parts of the Godfather films by heart.89 It was a truly global movie,…

Padrino contro Donnie Brasco nell’immaginario criminale…

… In 1999, discussing the movie with Jeffrey Goldberg, Steven Kaplan, allegedly John Gotti Jr.’s bodyguard, revealed how much the film is valued by its models to this day: One evening earlier this month, while debating the strengths of various mob movies, Kaplan lavishly praised “The Godfather.” I [Goldberg] countered that “The Godfather,” while hugely entertaining, kept alive destructive myths, and suggested “Donnie Brasco” as a compelling depiction of hard-luck mob life. It is for this reason that “Donnie Brasco” is not popular in certain circles. Kaplan's eyes grew beady, and he said, very slowly, in a manner meant to preclude further dissent, “The Godfather” is a better movie…

Mito e leggenda prevalgono sul realismo. Il realismo eccessivo non piace ai criminali.

Donnie Brasco è troppo realistico per realizzare una buona pubblicità, manca l’aspetto glamour…

… Donnie Brasco is arguably one of the best mob movies ever made on the subject (it took a British director who went to public school to portray effectively this society of men, their weaknesses and quirks, the mutual intimidation, the paranoia, the subjugation, the displays of power). But precisely because of its realism, because it portrays a case in which mobsters were conned by an astute undercover agent, it is unpopular with gangsters. Advertising is not supposed to dwell on shortcomings…

Goodfellas: film su mafiosi che vivono come se fossero in un film sui mafiosi. Troppo cerebrale…

… Goodfellas, by Pileggi and Scorsese, is a much more realistic movie also, which, as film critic Jim Shepard said, is “littered with the corpses of guys who thought they were in a movie called The Godfather”…

Il via libera dei boss alla serie dei Soprano…

… According to James Gandolfini, the actor who played Tony Soprano, the series was closely monitored by mobsters, who did not hesitate to pass their verdicts on the show and let the actors know if their behavior did not ring true…

L'imperialismo culturale di Hollywood

Molti lo temono, molti lo auspicano, tutti lo constatano: è l’imperialismo di Hollywood nel mondo del cinema.

Chi studia la globalizzazione delle culture fa giocoforza del cinema un caso privilegiato, i costi dell’opera e le poderose economie di scala mettono la settima arte sempre a rischio di monopolio…

… In no other cultural area is America’s export prowess so strong. Movies are very expensive to make, and in a given year there are far fewer films released than books, CDs, or paintings. These conditions appear to favor dominant producers at the expense of niche markets…

Ma anche a rischio “concentrazione”…

… Moviemaking also is prone to geographic clustering. Many cultural innovations and breakthroughs are spatially concentrated. If a good Italian Renaissance painter was not born in Florence, Venice, or Rome, he usually found it worthwhile to move to one of those locales…

Ecco allora che si crea un epicentro da cui si detta legge al mondo (del cinema): Hollywood. Un caso di “imperialismo culturale” che vede gli americani nelle vesti dei padroni e i poveri europei in quella degli sfruttati…

… European movies, in particular, have failed to penetrate global markets and also have lost ground at home…

Vediamo meglio quali sono stati i mali che hanno ucciso – o azzoppato – il cinema europeo. Bè, sono tanti…

… television, excess subsidies, demographics, language, the size of the American market, and Hollywood’s more entrepreneurial environment….

Gli USA, poi, hanno un vantaggio evidente: il vasto mercato interno…

… The United States has at least one natural advantage in movie-making—it has the largest single home-market for cinema in dollar terms (although total attendance is higher in India)….

Ma non si tratta di un vantaggio decisivo, in fondo l’hanno sempre avuto, mentre le fette di mercato europee sono crollate solo in epoca relativamente recente…

… The United States, for instance, has been a large country for a long time, but only recently have European movies held such a low share of their home markets. In the mid-1960s, American films accounted for 35 percent of box office revenues in continental Europe; today the figure ranges between 80 to 90 percent…

Poi, a Hollywood ci si occupa solo di un certo tipo di cinema, non puo’ essere la causa di tutti i mali…

… Furthermore, only certain kinds of cinema cluster in Hollywood. In a typical year the Western European nations make more movies than America does. In numeric terms most of the world’s movies come from Asia, not from the United States… The Hollywood advantage is concentrated in one very particular kind of moviemaking: films that are entertaining, highly visible, and have broad global appeal…

Gli europei investono poco nei loro film poiché esportano poco. Ma perché, al contrario, Hollywood esporta tanto, al punto che la Francia ha deciso politiche protezionistiche?…

… As recently as 1985, French movies outgrossed the Hollywood product in their home market. Since that time, Hollywood’s ability to capture so much of French film revenue (often up to 80 percent) has come largely because French revenues have declined, not because Hollywood revenues have risen so much…

Gli anni ‘70 hanno segnato un punto di svolta…

… The turning point in this dynamic appears to have started in the 1970s. Before the 1970s, most national European cinemas still experienced a significant degree of export success, whatever problems the industry as a whole had…

Probabilmente, nella crisi del cinema europeo, la televisione ha giocato un ruolo preminente rispetto alla produzione a stelle e strisce. La cosa sè avvalorata dal timing…

… In Germany, 800 million movie tickets were bought in 1956, but only 180 million were bought in 1962. At the same time, the number of television sets rose from 700,000 to 7.2 million. In the U.K., cinematic attendance fell from 292 million in 1967 to 73 million in 1986. In France, movie attendance dropped from 450 million in 1956 to 122 million in 1988…

La crisi “da televisione” avrebbe fatto il vuoto e Hollywood ci si sarebbe infilata.

Hollywood sarebbe diventata più forte proprio quando l’Europa era più vulnerabile.

La crisi da TV aveva colto gli USA nel decennio precedente, ma Hollywood reagì alla grande rintuzzando l’attacco. Come?…

… Hollywood responded actively to this challenge. Starting as early as the 1950s, American moviemakers responded to television by making high-stakes, risky investments in marketing, glamour, and special effects. In the 1960s American directors found greater latitude to experiment with sex and violence; this trend was formalized with the abandonment of the Hays Code in 1966. By the 1970s, Hollywood movies had become significantly more exciting to mass audiences than they had been a decade before. Jaws and Star Wars were emblematic of this new era…

Anche la demografia contribuì ad affossare l’Europa. I vecchi non amano uscire la sera, nemmeno per andare al cine…

… In most countries, individuals older than thirty-five no longer go to movies in significant numbers, preferring instead to watch television. Moviegoing is the province of the young. Most European countries suffer twice here. First, they have older populations than does the United States. Second, the traditional “art house” styles of European film are better suited to old audiences than to young ones…

D’altronde, il modello di business era diverso: gli USA puntarono sul noleggio delle cassette, l’Europa sui diritti TV.  Ora, fare film per la TV rende il prodotto meno esportabile. La qualità degli effetti, per esempio, è scarsa visto che la TV non li valorizza…

… Glitzy special effects are rare. We find these same features in made-for-TV films in the United States. A few of these films are excellent (such as Steven Spielberg’s early Duel), but most are undistinguished and boring, despite the immense talent in Hollywood… The home video market, more prominent in the United States, is more competitive and demanding than television, and imposes greater discipline on the moviemaker…

Collegato al ruolo della TV è quello dei sussidi.

Le TV stesse, a cui spesso i cineasti vendono i loro film, sono possedute da governi, ovvero da soggetti poco inclini alle leggi del mercato. Clienti del genere sono più interessati a vincoli sui contenuti che a catturare pubblico…

… Typically the stations face domestic-content restrictions, must spend a certain percentage of revenue on domestic films, must operate a film production subsidiary, or they willfully overpay for films for political reasons. The end result is overpayment for broadcast rights—the most important subsidy that many European moviemakers receive. Audience levels are typically no more than one or two million at the television level, even in the larger countries such as France—too small to justify the sums paid to moviemakers for television rights on economic grounds….

Ma ci sono molte altre forme di sussidio, tutte parimenti perniciose…

… European films receive many other forms of subsidy. In France, for instance, direct subsidies are available from the national government, regional governments, European subsidy bodies (such as Eur-images) and coproduction subsidies through other national governments. Often French producers need only put up 15 percent of the budget of their films to receive subsidies. French producers also receive “Sofica” tax shelters (estimated worth of more than 5 percent of total budgets), automatic box office aid from the government (estimated at 7.7 percent of total budget), a discretionary subsidy called avance sur recettes, which takes the form of an interest-free loan (estimated at over 5 percent of total budget), and subsidies for the promotion of French films abroad…

Possiamo concludere che in Europa il 70% dei costi di un film viene sussidiato. Come si puo’ pretendere che un settore del genere esporti? Molti film vengono fatti per un pubblico ristretto, a volte ristretto ai colleghi del cineasta…

… Subsidies encourage producers to serve domestic demand and the wishes of politicians and cinematic bureaucrats, rather than produce movies for international export. Many films will be made, even when they have little chance of turning a profit in stand-alone terms…

La stessa formazione degli attori rispecchia questo stato di cose…

… The training of cinematic talent in the United States and Europe reflects these differences. American film schools are like business schools in many regards. European film schools have become more like humanities programs, emphasizing semiotics, critical theory, and contemporary left-wing philosophies…

Per far carriera in Europa le connessioni politiche contano almeno quanto il talento…

… The European directors that survive tend to be established and to have longstanding political connections…

Non è così ovunque: il cinema di Hong Kong è gestito su basi commerciali, ha avuto molto successo e oggi puo’ permettersi anche produzioni con un contenuto artistico elevato…

… The Hong Kong film industry has experienced export success from the 1970s onward, mostly throughout Southeast Asia. At its peak it released more films per year than any Western country, and as an exporter it was second only to the United States. Furthermore, Hong Kong cinema arose in a market that was dominated by Hollywood up through the late 1960s… At first Hong Kong movies focused on the martial arts, but they subsequently branched out to include police movies, romance, comedy, horror, and ghost stories, among other genres. The best of these movies, such as John Woo’s The Killer, or Hardboiled, are acclaimed as high art… David Bordwell, in his recent Planet Hong Kong, claimed, “Since the 1970s it has been arguably the world’s most energetic, imaginative popular cinema.” Hong Kong movies are made on a commercial basis and have received no government assistance…

Anche quello indiano…

… By numerous measures, such as attendance or number of films released, the Indian movie industry is the largest and the most successful in the world. Indian movies are frequently criticized for their generic nature or sappy plots, but in terms of music, cinematography, and use of color, they are often quite beautiful and even pathbreaking compared to Western productions…

Difficile perorare la tesi dell’ “imperialismo culturale americano” quando solo l’ Europa vive un periodo di stanca…

… But by most common critical standards, cinematic creativity has risen in Taiwan, China, Iran, South Korea, the Philippines, Latin America, and many parts of Africa, among other locales. Even within Europe, the creative decline is restricted to a few of the larger nations, such as France and Italy. Danish cinema is more influential and more successful today than in times past, and arguably the same is true for Spanish cinema as well. Mexican and Argentinean film-makers are enjoying a resurgence…

***

Facciamo un po’ di storia e vediamo come il passaggio dal muto al sonoro cambiò le carte in tavola.

I costi fissi aumentarono e a soffrirne furono soprattutto le piccole produzioni…

… At the time of the transition, equipping the theaters with sound and making movies with sound were costly. To recoup these costs, theaters sought out high-quality, high-expenditure productions for large audiences. The small, cheap, quick film became less profitable, given the suddenly higher fixed costs of production and presentation… More generally, the higher the fixed costs of production, the greater the importance of drawing a large audience and the greater the importance of demand forecasting and marketing. Today costly special effects and expensive celebrity stars drive the push for blockbusters in similar fashion, and favor Hollywood production as well…

Inoltre, l’inglese si impose come lingua franca, il che rendeva necessarie traduzioni, doppiaggi e sottotitoli. Il dominio europeo all’epoca del muto cominciò a sfumare, e così le sue esportazioni…

… The talkies, by introducing issues of translation, boosted the dominant world language of English and thus benefited Hollywood… During the silent era, in contrast, European films enjoyed an even footing in the export market, as language was not an issue… Dubbed or subtitled movies have a difficult time in the United States to this day, whereas most other audiences accept them with few complaints. In Germany, the individuals who dub the German-language voices of prominent American actors and actresses can become celebrities in their own right, if their manner of speech is sufficiently memorable…

Non a caso in questo periodo fiorì il cinema inglese…

… The move to sound, and the rise of English as an export standard, provided a strong boost to the movie exports of Great Britain. While the U.K… James Bond movies… David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge over River Kwai…

L’omogeneizzazione del linguaggio non è una caratteristica occidentale. Anche il mondo arabo ha mille dialetti, ma ad imporsi fu l’egiziano. Non parliamo poi della miriade di linguaggi parlati in India, si impose l’ hindi di Bombay…

… In essence, talkies made it easier for non-Hollywood producers to capture part of their home markets, but made it harder for them to export abroad…

Sta di fatto che l’esaltazione del linguaggio portò ad una certa localizzazione del prodotto: certe sfumature della lingua sono percepibili solo ai locali. In questa fase l’Europa non esporta ma consuma molti suoi prodotti.

Prendiamo il caso della Francia…

… French film production doubled between 1928 to 1938, and French movies commanded over half of their domestic market throughout the 1930s… In comparison, in 1925, at the height of the silent era, American exports accounted for 70 percent of the French market…

Un’ altra novità del sonoro fu l’introduzione della colonna sonora.

Anche qui: il pubblico ama la musica della sua terra. Per esempio, all’epoca del muto gli USA andavano forte in India, poi il prodotto locale si impose.

Facciamo l’esempio del cinema argentino…

… Music provided a similar protective role in Argentina, where hundreds of musical comedies were made in the early years of sound. The Argentinean Carlos Gardel, more of a tango singer than an actor, became the hottest Latin cinematic star of this era…

Ma perché gran parte del cinema si concentrò successivamente su Hollywood?

Facciamo un’analogia che fa comprendere meglio il fenomeno…

… There is more trade and mobility across the United States of America than across the disparate countries of Western Europe. This trade causes the economic profiles of the American states to diverge. In economic terms, the countries of Western Europe are more likely to resemble each other than are the American states. Most of the American states have no steel industry, no automobile industry, and no wheat industry…

Laddove la mobilità e il commercio sono facili, le concentrazioni si intensificano. In era di globalizzazione è normale che emergano centri come Hollywood.

Così come la concentrazione di noccioline si concentra in Georgia, la produzione di film si concentra ad Hollywood. Anche la Silicon Valley rappresenta un fenomeno simile.

… clustering eases the finding, lining up, and evaluating of the movie’s critical assets, such as stars, directors, and screenplays. These tasks are still done in Hollywood rather than in Vancouver or Sydney, regardless of where the movie is filmed…

Si noti che la realizzazione fisica dei film resta decentrata. Ad Hollywood si concentrano altre funzioni, soprattutto la valutazione sulla commerciabilità di un progetto…

… In Hollywood, studios scrutinize projects intensely and refuse to finance projects that do not have a good chance of commercial success… Hollywood is a cluster, in part, for the same reasons that New York and London are clustered banking centers. In both cases talents for large-scale project evaluation gravitate towards a single geographic area….When European directors want to make popular movies, they now go to Hollywood, as we have seen with Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Jean-Jacques Annaud, among many others…

Eventi esterni possono far slittare la concentrazione da un luogo all’altro. Nel caso del cinema fu la I guerra mondiale a traslare il fulcro da Parigi a Hollywood.

Ma concentrazione non significa monopolio. I distributori, per esempio, non vedono una prevalenza di americani…

… Yet all the primary distributors in Europe are owned by European media groups and regulated by European governments. When the Cineplex Odeon movie theater chain in the United States was Canadian-owned, and for a while jointly Canadian- and British-owned, it made little difference on the screen…

Altri accusano Hollywood di dumping: si guadagna sul mercato locale per invadere poi le altre nazioni con il proprio prodotto sotto-costo.

L’accusa non sta in piedi poiché una politica del genere potrebbe giustificare i bassi prezzi del noleggio, ma il fatto che laddove si proiettano film americani i cinema siano pieni, significa che piacciono… Qui non ci sono politiche di prezzo: chi va a vedere un film hollywoodiano non paga meno, anzi…

… If the critics are correct that Hollywood’s fundamental advantage is on the cost side for film rentals, we should observe relatively empty theaters for American films in Europe…

Insomma, c’è una reale rispondenza al gusto dei consumatori, non una diffusione basata su trucchi commerciali.

Lo stesso, poi, dovrebbe valere per altri media, come mai non è così?…

… Similar points apply to many media industries, such as when Canadians claim that America dump television shows or magazines at very low cost, since the producers are already making a profit in the U.S. market. But again, we typically do not observe American products preferred for their cheapness, we observe them preferred for their superiority in entertaining the audience…

Se a volte i prezzi fatti all’Europa sono bassi questo è perché molte TV europee sono concentrate nelle mani dei governi che, in condizioni di monopsonio, strappano prezzi bassi. E’ il monopsonio dei governi, non il monopolio di H. ad abbassare certe tariffe…

… Hollywood TV programs or movie rights have been sold cheaply in Europe, it is because European TV stations have held a strong bargaining position (a “monopsony,” in economic language)…. Without monopsony, the price of movie rights would be bid up to reflect the potential popularity of the movie…

Da notare che gli USA hanno molti più problemi ad esportare la loro televisione, nonostante che la produzione televisiva sia ingente…

… Note that America has had much less success in exporting its television programs than its movies, despite having the largest domestic television market in the world… Dallas was a failure in Brazil and Japan….

Come mai con la TV il dumping dovrebbe miracolosamente sparire? Forse non è il fattore essenziale per spiegare certi fenomeni.

C’è chi accusa Hollywood di esportare la cultura americana, e c’è poi chi l’accusa di creare una cultura artificiale e omologata. Due accuse in contraddizione tra loro…

… Some are unhappy with the global spread of the American ethos of commercialism and individualism. Other complaints focus on the strong global-market position of a relatively universal cultural product, rather than local products based on national or particularist inspirations…

Il fatto è che H. è cosmopolita, non sembra molto interessata alla cultura americana…

… Many of the leading Hollywood directors are non-Americans by birth, including Ridley Scott (British) and James Cameron (Canadian), who were among the hottest Hollywood directors circa 2001. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlie Chaplin, and Jim Carrey have been among the leading non-American U.S. stars. Most of the major studios are now foreign owned. A typical production will have Sony, a Japanese company…

I film di grande successo sono anche generici. Sono film di azione, evitano i dialoghi sottili. Si ricercano delle formule universali in grado di penetrare tutte le culture. Anche i film non americani di grande successo ci appaiono così…

… Non-American movies, when they pursue foreign markets, must strive for universality as well. The Jackie Chan Hong Kong movie Rumble in the Bronx was marketed in the United States with success… The most successful Canadian cultural export is the Harlequin romance novel… The Harlequin romance does not reflect a specifically Canadian perspective, whatever that designation might mean, but rather targets a broad circle of female readers…

I cosiddetti valori americani sono l’eroismo, l’individualismo e la romantica realizzazione di sé. Non sono poi così “americani” come si pensa. Il loro adattamento è abbastanza facile.

Un parallelo potrebbe essere fatto con il cibo che gli americani esportano (es. McDonald)…

… Consider food markets. Many Third World citizens like to eat at McDonald’s, not just because the food tastes good to them, but also because McDonald’s is a visible symbol of the West and the United States. When they walk through the doors of a McDonald’s, they are entering a different world. The McDonald’s corporation, knowing this, designs its Third World interiors to reflect the glamour of Western commerce, much as a shopping mall would. McDonald’s shapes its product to meet global demands, but builds on the American roots of the core concept…

Il prodotto finale è qualcosa di sintetico, non “americano doc”…

… American cinema, like American cuisine, has been a synthetic, polyglot product from the beginning. Hollywood was developed largely by foreigners—Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe—and was geared towards entertaining American urban audiences, which were drawn from around the world… Hollywood’s global-market position is a Faustian bargain. Achieving global dominance requires a sacrifice of a culture’s initial perspective to the demands of world consumers. American culture is being exported, but for the most part it is not Amish quilts and Herman Melville…

Quando i riferimenti alla cultura americana sono più espliciti, il mercato internazionale risponde meno…

… Jurassic Park, a movie about dinosaurs, was a huge hit abroad, but Forrest Gump, which makes constant reference to American history and national culture, made most of its money at home…

***

Il commercio non spinge solo all’omologazione ma anche alla diversità, vuole prodotti sempre differenti in grado di saturare le nicchie.

Prendiamo i film a micro-budget di cui l’Europa va fiera: ebbene, gli Stati Uniti ne producono di più…

… “Microbudget” films are far more common in the United States than in Europe. A microbudget film is one made by a previously amateur director on a minuscule budget, typically less than $100,000. Among the best-known microfilms are Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, and The Blair Witch Project…

Un ruolo lo giocano anche le infrastrutture…

… A healthy commercial base is needed to support an infrastructure of theaters, production companies, film schools, and marketing institutions. Independent or innovative filmmakers benefit from this infrastructure just as the major studios do…

Cio’ che vende sostiene  indirettamente anche cio’ che vende meno.

Ma la fucina dei “ribelli” fa gola anche ai “venditori”…

… The major studios typically seek to buy out and “corrupt” the independent filmmakers, and in this sense the two cinematic worlds are always at war with each other. But in a larger sense they are complements… In addition to the Coen brothers and Spike Lee, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, David Lynch, Sam Raimi, John Sayles, and Jim Jarmusch all first made their names with micro-budget films. The directors of The Blair Witch Project were courted for a Hollywood sequel, which earned them millions, despite its low quality…

Anche tra H. e la qualità europea c’è una reciproca attrazione…

… Notable European directors such as Godard, Bertolucci, Truffaut, Besson, and Pasolini found their start with microbudget films, but the overall commercial weakness of European cinema is making those kinds of opportunities harder to find and exploit… European movie-makers pursue different markets and produce different kinds of creativity…

E quando un film europeo ha molto successo, guarda caso, assomiglia al tipico film di H., evidentemente certe formule, molto semplicemente, piacciono…

… The non-Hollywood productions that have success abroad, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral or Like Water for Chocolate, often have many of the flaws that plague mainstream Hollywood releases: saccharine, cliched characters or an unrealistically happy ending. European pictures from the silent era, which had a greater chance of export success, were more like the American movies… The Hong Kong movie Dr. Lamb was a success in the Hong Kong market of the 1990s. The movie was explicitly patterned after Silence of the Lambs, a U.S. and global hit in 1992…

***

E nel futuro, cosa ci aspetta?

Oggi il cinema europeo sembra aver capito la lezione: meno sussidi e maggiore apertura al pubblico. I segni sono incoraggianti…

… In the short run, laissez-faire would likely lead to a greater Hollywood presence in European cinema. But in the long run, European moviemakers would be induced to make a more commercially appealing product, and not necessarily at the expense of artistic quality…

Competere con H è possibile visti anche i compensi stratosferici che H paga alle sue star, in questo senso è svantaggiata…

… Hollywood holds a potentially vulnerable market position, given how much it spends on celebrity salaries and marketing…

L’esempio italiano del dopo guerra spiega bene come produzioni relativamente piccole possano avere un successo internazionale…

… In 1973, Hollywood held only 23 percent of the Italian market, and large numbers of high-quality Italian movies were commercially viable. Hollywood had dominated the Italian market after the Second World War, but Italian movie-makers fought back, in part using the techniques they learned from studying Hollywood releases… These years show that the strong presence of Hollywood in world markets does not mean an end to European moviemaking…

La qualità non è inarrivabile in assenza di sussidi, anzi…

… Truffaut, Fellini, Visconti, Bergman, and others were fundamentally money-making endeavors, aimed at the competitive marketplace, despite the involvement of government at various levels…

L’epoca d’oro del cinema francese si realizzò in assenza di sussidi…

… Going back earlier, the 1930s in particular were a “golden age” for French cinema; the best-known French films of this era include L’Atalante (Jean Vigo), Le Jour se lève (Marcel Carné), La Chienne, The Grand Illusion, and The Rules of the Game (all by Jean Renoir)….

Ironia della sorte, in quel periodo gli americani accusavano i francesi di “imperialismo culturale” :-) …

… American filmmakers charged the French with cultural imperialism and asked Washington for trade protection. It was commonly charged that European movies encouraged lax morals and corrupted American culture. The French responded by noting the openness of their cinematic markets and asking America to compete on equal terms…

Ma il cinema contemporaneo oggi fiorisce soprattutto in Asia: si affida al mercato internazionale e mescola molto bene creatività e commercialità. Sempre la stessa ricetta.