118-495: Irréversible ( French: [iʁevɛʁsibl] ) is a 2002 French art thriller film written and directed by Gaspar Noé . Starring Monica Bellucci , Vincent Cassel , Albert Dupontel , the plot depicts the events of a tragic night in Paris as two men attempt to avenge the brutal rape and beating of the woman they love. The film is made up of a title sequence followed by 13 segments made to look like long takes. Each of these segments
236-482: A "loosening of the chain of cause and effect". Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the film. The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has
354-637: A French one." Noé suffered a near fatal brain hemorrhage in early 2020, which partly inspired the plot of his film Vortex . Besides being a filmmaker, he is an occasional photographer. In 2013, Noé shot the cover art for American singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira 's debut album Night Time, My Time . Other celebrities, such as Agnès b. , Todd Solondz or Stacy Martin were shot by Gaspar Noé, as well as several models for erotic magazines. Many of Noé's films were polarizing or controversial with viewers due to their inclusion of graphic scenes of violence and sexual violence. I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Enter
472-747: A Time in America . Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical and ethical issues like Andrzej Wajda 's Man of Iron (1981), a critique of the Polish communist government, which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival . Another Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski , made The Decalogue for television in 1988, a film series that explores ethical issues and moral puzzles. Two of these films were released theatrically as A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing . In 1989, Woody Allen made, in
590-440: A cameo, Irréversible . All of Noé's feature films are shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie . The music for Irréversible was composed by Thomas Bangalter . The latter also sent Gaspar Noé a unreleased song he made circa 1995 for Climax. The song was named Sangria in reference to the movie. In collaboration with Saint Laurent , he directed films Lux Æterna and Saint Laurent - Summer of ‘21. Noé stated in
708-456: A complex examination of a failed marriage that dealt with issues such as anomie and sterility; Eclipse (1962), about a young woman who is unable to form a solid relationship with her boyfriend because of his materialistic nature; Red Desert (1964), his first colour film, which deals with the need to adapt to the modern world; and Blowup (1966), his first English-language film, which examines issues of perception and reality as it follows
826-451: A complex relationship of three individuals through innovative screenwriting, editing, and camera techniques. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni helped revolutionize filmmaking with such films as L'Avventura (1960), influential for its landscape photography and framing techniques, follows the disappearance of a young upper-class woman during a boating trip, and the subsequent search by her lover and her best friend; La Notte (1961),
944-551: A critically acclaimed 1994 art film, "largely a cerebral experience" that one enjoys "because of what you know about film". That said, some art films may widen their appeal by offering certain elements of more familiar genres such as documentary or biography . For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews; discussion of the film by arts columnists, commentators, and bloggers; and word-of-mouth promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to
1062-420: A cultural elite that can help steer them towards films that are more thoughtful and of a higher quality. To bridge the disconnect between popular taste and high culture, these film critics are expected to explain unfamiliar concepts and make them appealing to cultivate a more discerning movie-going public. For example, a film critic can help the audience—through their reviews—think seriously about films by providing
1180-532: A family with a lack of faith, but with a son who believes that he is Jesus Christ and convinced that he is capable of performing miracles; Federico Fellini 's Nights of Cabiria (1957), which deals with a prostitute's failed attempts to find love, her suffering and rejection; Wild Strawberries (1957), by Ingmar Bergman, whose narrative concerns an elderly medical doctor, who is also a professor, whose nightmares lead him to re-evaluate his life; and The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut, whose main character
1298-458: A film is considered to be an art film based on artistic status in the same way film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets ( blockbuster films or B-movies ) or their star performers ( Adam Sandler films). There are scholars who point out that mass market films such as those produced in Hollywood appeal to a less discerning audience. This group then turns to film critics as
SECTION 10
#17328554641781416-475: A flexible montage of time and space. The cinema pur movement was influenced by German "absolute" filmmakers such as Hans Richter , Walter Ruttmann and Viking Eggeling . Richter falsely claimed that his 1921 film Rhythmus 21 was the first abstract film ever created. In fact, he was preceded by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 (as reported in
1534-582: A leading figure of the French New Wave, would continue to make innovative films throughout the decade, proposing a whole new style of film-making. Following the success of Breathless , Godard made two more very influential films, Contempt in 1963, which it shown his view on studio filmmaking system, beautiful long take, and film within film, and Pierrot le fou in 1965, which it is a mash of mash of crime and romance films with and his anti Hollywood style. Jules et Jim , by François Truffaut, deconstructed
1652-458: A leisurely pace, and long periods of silence. The film is also notable for its use of long shots and overhead shots to create a sense of distance between the audience and the characters. Zhang Yimou 's early 1990s works such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and To Live (1994) explore human emotions through poignant narratives. To Live won
1770-459: A main protagonist murders a girl in the end. In 1992, Rebels of the Neon God , first feature film of Tsai Ming-liang , second generation of Taiwanese New Wave, it has his unique style of filmmaking like alienation, slow movement of actor (his recurring cast, Lee Kang-sheng ), slow-paced, and a few dialogues. Daryush Shokof's film Seven Servants (1996) is an original high art cinema piece about
1888-456: A major influence. He is the business partner of filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović . Noé is a dual national of Argentina and Italy, having obtained an Italian passport through lineage, though he does not consider himself Italian. "I have never lived in Italy, I don't speak Italian," he said in an interview. "If I hadn't had an Italian passport to travel all over the world, I would have applied for
2006-526: A man who strives to "unite" the world's races until his last breath. One year after Seven Servants , Abbas Kiarostami 's film Taste of Cherry (1997), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, tells a similar tale with a different twist; both films are about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. Seven Servants was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes,
2124-416: A middle-class woman amidst the social and economic issues that Britain faced at the time. In the 1950s, some of the well-known films with artistic sensibilities include La Strada (1954), a film about a young woman who is forced to go to work for a cruel and inhumane circus performer to support her family, and eventually comes to terms with her situation; Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955), centering on
2242-400: A place where these critics can experience culture and an artistic atmosphere where they can draw insights and material. The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films:
2360-419: A rape and murder. In 1952, Kurosawa directed Ikiru , a film about a Tokyo bureaucrat struggling to find a meaning for his life. Tokyo Story (1953), by Yasujirō Ozu , explores social changes of the era by telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find the children are too self-absorbed to spend much time with them. Seven Samurai (1954), by Kurosawa, tells
2478-445: A sense of social realism ; an emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director; and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholars David Bordwell and Barry Keith Grant describe art cinema as "a film genre , with its own distinct conventions". Art film producers usually present their films at special theaters ( repertory cinemas or, in
SECTION 20
#17328554641782596-456: A serial killer. Lost Highway (1997), from the same director as Blue Velvet , is a psychological thriller that explores fantasy worlds, bizarre time-space transformations, and mental breakdowns using surreal imagery. Other directors in the 1990s explored philosophical issues and themes such as identity, chance, death, and existentialism. Gus Van Sant 's My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Wong Kar-wai 's Chungking Express (1994) explored
2714-470: A series of vignettes that range from idyllic pastoral country landscapes to horrific visions of tormented demons and a blighted post-nuclear war landscape. The Coen Brothers ' Barton Fink (1991), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival , features various literary allusions in an enigmatic story about a writer who encounters a range of bizarre characters, including an alcoholic, abusive novelist and
2832-658: A serious, non-commercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental films . In some cases, critics disagree over whether a film is mainstream or not. For example, while some critics called Gus Van Sant 's My Own Private Idaho (1991) an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality", The Washington Post called it an ambitious mainstream film. Some films on this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially made films, produced by mainstream studios, that nevertheless bear
2950-413: A single take and lasting nearly ten minutes in total, with some critics comparing it to pornography because of its length and the use of a static camera, as well as considering the film as a whole to be deeply homophobic for its hellish portrayal of a gay S&M club. On the other hand, it was also frequently praised for its brutal portrayal of the horrors of rape, and its implicit challenge to viewers of
3068-590: A sister named Paula. He lived in New York City until age five, after which point his family returned to Argentina. In 1976, they emigrated to France to escape the military dictatorship occurring in Argentina at the time . Noé graduated from École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière in France in 1982. His first feature filmmaking credits were as an assistant director to Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas on Tangos,
3186-471: A small portion of mainstream audiences to become financially viable. The forerunners of art films include Italian silent film L'Inferno (1911), D. W. Griffith 's Intolerance (1916) and the works of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein , who influenced the development of European cinema movements for decades. Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925) was a revolutionary propaganda film he used to test his theories of using film editing to produce
3304-419: A state of nausea and anxiety in the audience, as it is not immediately perceptible to the spectator, but enough to evoke a physical response. Quoting Noé, "You can't hear them, but they make you shiver. In a good cinema with a good audio system, the sound can scare you much more than what's happening on the screen." This technique, called Sensurround , involves the intentional use of a sub-audible sound to enhance
3422-411: A story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpretation of the film's message. Art films often "bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and the authorial approach of
3540-464: A treatment of sexual behavior as violent rather than mutually intimate, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair. Noé often directly addresses the audience in confrontational ways, most notably in I Stand Alone , when an intertitle warns the audience that they have 30 seconds to leave the cinema before the final violent climax. In a different way, this can be seen in Irreversible , in which
3658-479: A young couple, wake up together and discuss their relationship, as well as an upcoming party, while in the nude. Alex reveals she had a dream of herself standing in a red tunnel that breaks in two, before taking a pregnancy test that reveals a positive result. On a public train, Pierre, Alex's ex who is also invited to the party, constantly bickers with Alex over his inability to satisfy her during their relationship, while Marcus expresses disinterest in their squabble. At
Irréversible - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-420: A young photographer's attempt to discover whether he had photographed a murder. Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began the 1960s with chamber pieces such as Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), which deal with such themes as emotional isolation and a lack of communication. His films from the second half of the decade, such as Persona (1966), Shame (1968), and A Passion (1969), deal with
3894-449: Is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", and containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content". Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films". These qualities can include (among other elements)
4012-650: Is a bridge between his previous Italian neorealist style and his later surrealist style. In 1963, Fellini made 8½ , an exploration of creative, marital and spiritual difficulties, filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo . The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad by director Alain Resnais examines perception and reality, using grand tracking shots that became widely influential. Robert Bresson 's Au hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967) are notable for their naturalistic, elliptical style. Spanish director Luis Buñuel also contributed heavily to
4130-604: Is a young man trying to come of age despite abuse from his parents, schoolteachers, and society, this film is the first big step in the French New Wave and for cinema, it showed that films can be made with little money, amateur actors, and a small crew. In Poland, the Khrushchev Thaw permitted some relaxation of the regime's cultural policies, and productions such as A Generation , Kanal , Ashes and Diamonds , Lotna (1954–1959), all directed by Andrzej Wajda , showed
4248-571: Is either a continuous shot or a series of shots digitally composited to resemble a continuous shot. The story is told in reverse order , with each scene taking place chronologically before the one that precedes it. Theatrically released in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, Irréversible competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and won the Bronze Horse at
4366-413: Is not]... a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman 's The Seventh Seal or Persona ". Paglia states that young people from the 2000s do not "have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in", an approach which gave "luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or
4484-412: Is then tied together with fast pacing, a musical soundtrack to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing. In contrast, Bordwell states that "the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism and authorial expressiveness". Art films deviate from the mainstream "classical" norms of film making in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with
4602-655: Is told in a poetic narrative style, full of symbolic scenes with philosophical meanings. In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui 's The Cow (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema . Puppeteer Jim Henson had an arthouse success with his 1965 Oscar-nominated non- Muppet short Time Piece . In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs, and Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci 's taboo-breaking, sexually-explicit and controversial film. At
4720-415: The 1982 Cannes Film Festival , can be considered the beginning of contemporary animation. The characters' masks erase all human personality and give the impression of total control over the "matter" of the image and its optical composition, using distorted areas, obscure visions, metamorphoses, and synthetic objects. In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien 's A City of Sadness became the first Taiwanese film awarded
4838-440: The Cannes Film Festival . In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released the surprise arthouse hit Koyaanisqatsi ; a film without dialogue, which emphasizes cinematography (consisting primarily of slow motion and time-lapse cinematography of cities and natural landscapes, which results in a visual tone poem ) and philosophical ideology about technology and the environment. Another approach used by directors in
Irréversible - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-741: The Futurist Manifesto of Cinema ), as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann, who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film. The first British "art cinema" was temporarily opened at the Palais de Luxe in London in 1929 by Elsie Cohen . She went on to establish a permanent location at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street in 1931. Arthouse cinemas that specialized in
5074-814: The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . The film shows the history of Taiwan through one family, and marks another step of the Taiwanese New Wave, which tends to depict realistic, down-to-earth life in both urban and rural Taiwan. In the 1990s, directors took inspiration from the success of David Lynch 's Blue Velvet (1986) and Peter Greenaway 's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) and created films with bizarre alternative worlds and elements of surrealism. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) depicted his imaginative reveries in
5192-491: The New French Extremity movement. In 2019, Irreversible: Straight Cut premiered at the Venice Film Festival , an alternate and remastered edit of the film presented in chronological order. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 90% approval rating with an average rating of 6.80/10 out of 10 critics. Irréversible won the top award, the Bronze Horse for best film, at the 2002 Stockholm International Film Festival . It
5310-520: The Polish Film School style. In India , there was an art-film movement in Bengali cinema known as " Parallel Cinema " or "Indian New Wave". This was an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema. It was known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream commercial cinema and began around
5428-610: The Sony Pictures Classics division of Sony Pictures Entertainment , and the Paramount Vantage division of Paramount . Film critics have debated whether films from these divisions can be considered "independent films", given they have financial backing from major studios. In 2007, Professor Camille Paglia argued in her article "Art movies: R.I.P." that "[a]side from Francis Ford Coppola 's Godfather series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, ...[there
5546-540: The Stockholm International Film Festival . Critical reception was mixed, with praise towards the performances and Noé's direction, but criticism towards its graphic portrayal of violence and rape. American film critic Roger Ebert called Irréversible "a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable". A version of the film told in chronological order, Irreversible: Straight Cut ( French : Irréversible – Inversion intégrale ),
5664-468: The "metaphoric concrete jungle" of modern Hong Kong. Todd Haynes explored the life of a suburban housewife and her eventual death from toxic materials in the 1995 critical success, Safe . In 1991, another important film of Edward Yang , a Taiwanese New Wave director, A Brighter Summer Day is portrayal of one normal teenager life that evacuated from China to Taiwan which affacted by political situation, school situation, and family situation that make
5782-635: The 10-minute long single-take rape sequence has frequently been read as an assault on viewers, as well as a depiction of an assault on the female character. Gaspar Noé and Lucile Hadžihalilović have repeatedly collaborated with each other on film projects. In the early 1990s, Noé co-founded the production company Les Cinémas de la Zone with Hadžihalilović. Noé operated the camera and was the cinematographer for two short films directed by Hadžihalilović: La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996) and Good Boys Use Condoms (1998). Similarly, Hadžihalilović produced and edited Carne (1991), edited Seul contre tous (1998) and
5900-413: The 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into "entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a film society and imported films they thought were "artistic achievements", such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of
6018-488: The 1960s, "art film" became a euphemism in the U.S. for racy Italian and French B-movies . By the 1970s, the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) . In the U.S., the term "art film" may refer to films by modern American artists, including Andy Warhol with his 1969 film Blue Movie , but is sometimes used very loosely to refer to
SECTION 50
#17328554641786136-486: The 1980s was to create bizarre, surreal alternative worlds. Martin Scorsese 's After Hours (1985) is a comedy-thriller that depicts a man's baffling adventures in a surreal nighttime world of chance encounters with mysterious characters. David Lynch 's Blue Velvet (1986), a film noir -style thriller-mystery filled with symbolism and metaphors about polarized worlds and inhabited by distorted characters who are hidden in
6254-635: The Bailiff (1954), which tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery; in addition to dealing with serious themes such as the loss of freedom, the film features beautiful images and long, complicated shots. The 1960s was an important period in art film, with the release of a number of groundbreaking films giving rise to the European art cinema. Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle ( Breathless ) (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work. Godard,
6372-524: The Exile of Gardel (1986) and Sur (1988). His work has been strongly associated with a collection of films often described as new extreme films . Highlighting their challenging sexual and violent bodily imagery, Tim Palmer has described them as part of a cinéma du corps (cinema of the body), and a cinema of 'brutal intimacy' because of its attenuated use of narrative, generally assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material,
6490-532: The Game (1939) is a comedy of manners that transcends the conventions of its genre by creating a biting and tragic satire of French upper-class society in the years before WWII; a poll of critics from Sight & Sound ranked it as the fourth greatest film ever, placing it behind Vertigo , Citizen Kane and Tokyo Story . Some of these early, artistically oriented films were financed by wealthy individuals rather than film companies, particularly in cases where
6608-470: The Grand Jury Prize. Gaspar No%C3%A9 Gaspar Noé ( Spanish: [gasˈpaɾ noˈe] , French: [ɡaspaʁ nɔ.e] ; born 27 December 1963) is an Argentine filmmaker, who lives and worked primarily in France. He is one of the primary exponents of New French Extremity , with his most notable works including the feature films I Stand Alone (1998), Irréversible (2002), Enter
6726-414: The Hollywood movies of the seventies... [and so], art film, which was never just a matter of European cinema, increasingly became an actual world cinema—albeit one that struggled to gain wide recognition". Corman notes that, "Hollywood itself has expanded, radically, its aesthetic range... because the range of subjects at hand has expanded to include the very conditions of image-making, of movie production, of
6844-457: The Influence , which features an eccentric housewife slowly descending into madness. Also in the 1970s, Radley Metzger directed several adult art films, such as Barbara Broadcast (1977), which presented a surrealistic "Buñellian" atmosphere, and The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady ), which
6962-712: The Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American film going public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films", and they went to the newly created art-film theaters to see "alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces". Films shown in these art cinemas included "British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics". Films such as Rossellini's Open City and Mackendrick's Tight Little Island ( Whisky Galore! ), Bicycle Thieves and The Red Shoes were shown to substantial U.S. audiences. In
7080-465: The September 2012 edition of Sight & Sound magazine that seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven changed his life, without which experience he would never have become a director. A poster for the film features notably in a scene towards the end of Irreversible . Many of his movies feature all kind of film posters, which reflects his collection and passion for them. He's believed to be
7198-459: The U.S., art-house cinemas) and at film festivals . The term art film is much more widely used in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia, compared to mainland Europe , where the terms auteur films and national cinema (e.g. German national cinema) are used instead. Since they are aimed at small, niche-market audiences, art films rarely acquire the financial backing that would permit
SECTION 60
#17328554641787316-549: The U.S., which shares many of the same stylistic traits. Companies such as Miramax Films distributed independent films that were deemed commercially viable. When major motion-picture studios noted the niche appeal of independent films, they created special divisions dedicated to non-mainstream fare, such as the Fox Searchlight Pictures division of Twentieth Century Fox , the Focus Features division of Universal ,
7434-529: The United States on 7 March 2003 through Lions Gate Films . It grossed $ 792,200 from theatrical screenings. Irreversible: Straight Cut ( French : Irréversible – Inversion intégrale ) first screened at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival after Noe decided to give this version of the film a wider release instead of relegating it to a home release special feature. It was released in Los Angeles and New York City on 10 February 2023. Critical response to
7552-409: The United States. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris , an internationally controversial erotic art film, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. In Soviet Armenia , Sergei Parajanov 's The Color of Pomegranates , in which Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays five different characters,
7670-526: The Universum Film A.G. (UFA) studios in Germany". Cinéma pur , a French avant-garde film movement in the 1920s and 1930s, also influenced the development of the idea of art film. The cinema pur film movement included several notable Dada artists. The Dadaists used film to transcend narrative storytelling conventions, bourgeois traditions, and conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space by creating
7788-502: The Void (2009), Love (2015), Climax (2018), Lux Æterna (2019), and Vortex (2021). Noé's father is artist and writer Luis Felipe Noé . Noé was born on 27 December 1963 in Buenos Aires , Argentina. His father Luis Felipe Noé , is a notable Italian artist, writer, and intellectual. His father is of Italian descent , while his mother Nora Murphy is of Irish descent. He has
7906-413: The Void , We Fuck Alone, Love and Climax were all considered controversial for their challenging sexual and violent imagery. Irreversible was hugely divisive amongst critics with journals such as Sight and Sound (UK) and Positif (France) allowing critics to openly voice their disagreements about the film. It caused substantial outrage in many countries for its central scene of rape, filmed in
8024-415: The art of film with shocking, surrealist satires such as Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962). Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky 's film Andrei Rublev (1966) is a portrait of the medieval Russian icon painter of the same name. The film is also about artistic freedom and the possibility and necessity of making art for, and in the face of, a repressive authority. A cut version of
8142-449: The broad range of films shown in repertory theaters or "art house cinemas". With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock film, a 1970s experimental underground film, a European auteur film, a U.S. "independent" film, and even a mainstream foreign-language film (with subtitles) might all fall under the rubric of "art house films". By the 1980s and 1990s, the term "art film" became conflated with "independent film" in
8260-420: The cab driver doesn't know where Rectum is, Marcus attacks the driver, stealing his vehicle. The two end up finding Rectum, with Pierre reluctantly following behind Marcus. Leading the charge, Marcus proceeds to get into a fight with a man he suspects of being Le Ténia, who ends up breaking his arm before attempting to rape him. Pierre comes to his rescue and beats the man to death with a nearby fire extinguisher as
8378-424: The chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape". According to director, producer, and distributor Roger Corman , the "1950s and 1960s was the time of the art film's greatest influence. After that, the influence waned. Hollywood absorbed the lessons of the European films and incorporated those lessons into their films." Corman states that "viewers could see something of the essence of the European art cinema in
8496-435: The content of the film was controversial or unlikely to attract an audience. In the late 1940s, UK director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes (1948), a film about ballet, which stood out from mainstream-genre films of the era. In 1945, David Lean directed Brief Encounter , an adaptation of Noël Coward 's play Still Life , which observes a passionate love affair between an upper-class man and
8614-411: The culprit. They use an ID left at the scene by the prostitute to locate her. Marcus verbally assaults Concha, the prostitute, and threatens to cut her face open in order to gather that the rapist's name is Le Ténia ("the tapeworm ") and that he frequents a gay BDSM club called Rectum. The men are chased off by other prostitutes; Marcus and Pierre jump into a taxi cab and speed off into the night. When
8732-499: The director is the "author" of his films, with a personal signature visible from film to film. The French New Wave movement continued into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the term "art film" began to be much more widely used in the United States than in Europe. In the U.S., the term is often defined very broadly to include foreign-language (non-English) "auteur" films, independent films , experimental films , documentaries and short films. In
8850-405: The director. An art cinema film often refuses to provide a "readily answered conclusion", instead putting to the cinema viewer the task of thinking about "how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?" Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a [film] genre, with its own distinct conventions". Film theorist Robert Stam also argues that "art film" is a film genre. He claims that
8968-551: The escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas , the gritty, harsh realism of his film Raging Bull . In this film, actor Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Ridley Scott 's Blade Runner (1982) could also be seen as a science fiction art film, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Blade Runner explores themes of existentialism , or what it means to be human. A box-office failure,
9086-637: The film became popular on the arthouse circuit as a cult oddity after the release of a "director's cut" became successful via VHS home video. In the middle of the decade, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa used realism to portray the brutal, bloody violence of Japanese samurai warfare of the 16th century in Ran (1985). Ran followed the plot of King Lear , in which an elderly king is betrayed by his children. Sergio Leone also contrasted brutal violence with emotional substance in his epic tale of mobster life in Once Upon
9204-426: The film was divided, with some critics panning the film and others considering it one of the year's best. The film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 126 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes , with an average rating of 6.10/10. The website's critics' consensus states: "Though well-filmed, Irréversible feels gratuitous in its extreme violence." The film received three votes in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of
9322-457: The film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival , where it won the FIPRESCI prize. At the end of the decade, Stanley Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) wowed audiences with its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and unusual visual imagery. In 1969, Andy Warhol released Blue Movie , the first adult art film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in
9440-442: The gay club", as a means of showing "I didn't feel superior to gay people". Irréversible has been associated with a series of films defined as the cinéma du corps ("cinema of the body"), which according to Palmer includes: an attenuated use of narrative, assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair. Irréversible has also been associated with
9558-475: The greatest emotional response from an audience. The international critical renown that Eisenstein garnered from this film enabled him to direct October as part of a grand 10th anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. He later directed The General Line in 1929. The film by Alexander Dovzhenko Earth (1930), filmed under the influence of Eisenstein, is defined by some critics as
9676-403: The greatest films and in 2016 was listed by critic Andreas Borcholte as one of the ten best films since 2000. Audience reactions to both the rape scene and the murder scene have ranged from appreciation of their artistic merits to leaving the theater in disgust. Newsweek 's David Ansen stated that "If outraged viewers (mostly women) at the Cannes Film Festival are any indication, this will be
9794-1105: The hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films on this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics, or because they introduced an innovative narrative or film-making technique. In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers did not set out to make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer 's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'Or (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein 's famed and influential masterpiece Battleship Potemkin . The U.S. film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world rich with symbolism and imagery. Jean Renoir 's film The Rules of
9912-466: The idea of film as an artifice. The intellectual and visually expressive films of Tadeusz Konwicki , such as All Souls' Day ( Zaduszki , 1961) and Salto (1962), inspired discussions about war and raised existential questions on behalf of their everyman protagonists. Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) depicts a succession of nights and dawns in Rome as witnessed by a cynical journalist, this film
10030-414: The infamous nine-minute-long rape scene, portrayed in a single, unbroken shot. Noé said he had no idea how long the rape scene was going to last, as this was determined by Monica Bellucci , who essentially directed the scene, and Jo Prestia, who played her assailant. Noé stated in interviews that during the production of the film he used cocaine in order to help him carry the large cameras needed to capture
10148-604: The large production budgets associated with widely released blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, one that typically uses lesser-known film actors or even amateur actors, and modest sets to make films that focus much more on developing ideas, exploring new narrative techniques, and attempting new film-making conventions. Such films contrast sharply with mainstream blockbuster films, which are usually geared more towards linear storytelling and mainstream entertainment. Film critic Roger Ebert called Chungking Express ,
10266-468: The late 1950s, French filmmakers began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema , a style that critics called the French New Wave . Although never a formally organized movement, New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm , and their films are an example of European art cinema . Many also engaged in their work with
10384-471: The mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "causally related events taking place in space and time", with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot of mainstream films is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, [and] deadline plot structures". The film
10502-458: The man's companion, the actual rapist, watches in amusement. Marcus is carried out of Rectum on a stretcher while Pierre is arrested by police. Meanwhile, in a nearby small apartment, a man named the Butcher, the lead character of I Stand Alone , tells a friend that he was arrested for raping his daughter before dismissing the commotion going on outside. Director Gaspar Noé has a cameo as one of
10620-419: The mid-to-late 1940s, such as Open City (1945), Paisa (1946), and Bicycle Thieves (1948) can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement". In the late 1940s, the U.S. public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major U.S. cities and college towns. After
10738-463: The most walked-out-of movie of 2003." In the same review, Ansen suggested that the film displayed "an adolescent pride in its own ugliness". American film critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three stars out of a possible four. Ebert declared many viewers would find the film unwatchable due to the graphic violence, but he also proposed the film's structure makes it inherently moral rather than an exploitation film : "By placing
10856-410: The new and prismatic media-mediated experience of modernity. There's a new audience that has learned about art films at the video store." Corman states that "there is currently the possibility of a rebirth" of American art film. Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice", which contrasts art films with
10974-399: The occupying Nazi government's deportation of French Jews to concentration camps during World War II. Another critically praised art film from this era, Wim Wenders 's road movie Paris, Texas (1984), also won the Palme d'Or. Kieślowski was not the only director to transcend the distinction between the cinema and television. Ingmar Bergman made Fanny and Alexander (1982), which
11092-453: The owner of one of the three known copies of the rarest poster for M (1931 film) . Since Irréversible , he's kept working with French film poster designer Laurent Lufroy for all his feature films: Lufroy even appears in Love (as a policeman), Climax (as a dog-handler) and Lux Æterna (using a torch). Noé also cites the 1983 Austrian serial killer film, Angst , by Gerald Kargl , as
11210-543: The party, Marcus gets drunk and takes cocaine, much to Alex's displeasure. She leaves the party, asking Pierre to look after Marcus. Alex descends into a red pedestrian underpass on her way back to the train when she notices a transgender prostitute getting attacked by a man. He immediately turns his attention to Alex, anally raping her before savagely beating her into unconsciousness. After Marcus and Pierre discover Alex being taken away by paramedics, they encounter street criminals Mourad and Layde, who offer to help them find
11328-523: The patrons in the Rectum. Irréversible was originally titled as Danger . Gaspar Noé first found financing for the new title after he pitched the story to be told in reverse, in order to capitalize on the popularity of Christopher Nolan 's film Memento (2000). Irréversible was shot using a widescreen lightweight Minima Super16 mm camera. The film consists of about a dozen apparently unbroken shots melded together from hundreds of shots. This included
11446-459: The pinnacle of art cinema. Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators, such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (who made L'Age d'Or in 1930), and by the French playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau , whose 1932 avant-garde film The Blood of a Poet uses oneiric images throughout, including spinning wire models of a human head and rotating double-sided masks. In
11564-552: The presentation of art films emerged on the east coast of the United States towards the end of the 1920s. Such cinemas were widespread in both the USA and Europe. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood films could be divided into the artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like John Ford 's The Informer (1935) and Eugene O'Neill 's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and the money-making "popular-genre films" such as gangster thrillers. William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from
11682-470: The rotating shots in the film. Computer-generated imagery was used in post-production for the penis in the rape scene. Another example is the scene where Pierre beats a man's face and crushes his skull with a fire extinguisher. CGI was used to augment the results, as initial footage using a conventional latex dummy proved unconvincing. During the first thirty minutes of its running time, the film uses an extremely low-frequency sound of 27 Hz to create
11800-411: The same time as French and Japanese New Wave . The most influential filmmakers involved in this movement were Satyajit Ray , Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak . Some of the most internationally acclaimed films made in the period were The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), a trio of films that tell the story of a poor country boy's growth to adulthood, and Satyajit Ray 's Distant Thunder (1973), which tells
11918-585: The same time, other directors made more introspective films, such as Andrei Tarkovsky 's meditative science fiction film Solaris (1972), supposedly intended as a Soviet riposte to 2001 . In 1975 and 1979 respectively, Tarkovsky directed two other films, which garnered critical acclaim overseas: Mirror and Stalker . Terrence Malick , who directed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), shared many traits with Tarkovsky, such as his long, lingering shots of natural beauty, evocative imagery, and poetic narrative style. Another feature of 1970s art films
12036-562: The seamy underworld of a small town, became surprisingly successful considering its highly disturbing subject matter. Peter Greenaway 's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) is a fantasy/ black comedy about cannibalism and extreme violence with an intellectual theme: a critique of "elite culture" in Thatcherian Britain. According to Raphaël Bassan , in his article " The Angel : Un météore dans le ciel de l'animation", Patrick Bokanowski 's The Angel , shown at
12154-422: The social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Claude Chabrol , and Jacques Rivette , began as critics for the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma . Auteur theory holds that
12272-431: The spectator's experience of a movie, in this case, deliberately making them uncomfortable (although this would only be experienced in a cinema setting as most home speakers would not emit such low frequencies). The film premiered in France on 22 May 2002 through Mars Distribution. It competed at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival . It was released in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2003 through Metro Tartan Distribution, and
12390-499: The story of a farmer during a famine in Bengal . Other acclaimed Bengali filmmakers involved in this movement include Rituparno Ghosh , Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose . Japanese filmmakers produced a number of films that broke with convention. Akira Kurosawa 's Rashomon (1950), the first Japanese film to be widely screened in the West, depicts four witnesses' contradictory accounts of
12508-618: The story of a farming village that hires seven master-less samurais to combat bandits. Fires on the Plain (1959), by Kon Ichikawa , explores the Japanese experience in World War II by depicting a sick Japanese soldier struggling to stay alive. Ugetsu (1953), by Kenji Mizoguchi , is a ghost story set in the late 16th century, which tells the story of peasants whose village is in the path of an advancing army. A year later, Mizoguchi directed Sansho
12626-553: The terms of analysis of these art films. Adopting an artistic framework of film analysis and review, these film critics provide viewers with a different way to appreciate what they are watching. So when controversial themes are explored, the public will not immediately dismiss or attack the movie where they are informed by critics of the film's value such as how it depicts realism. Here, art theaters or art houses that exhibit art films are seen as "sites of cultural enlightenment" that draw critics and intellectual audiences alike. It serves as
12744-426: The theme of identity. The former is an independent road movie/buddy film about two young street hustlers, which explores the theme of the search for home and identity. It was called a "high-water mark in '90s independent film", a "stark, poetic rumination", and an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality". Chungking Express explores themes of identity, disconnection, loneliness, and isolation in
12862-425: The themes that A Clockwork Orange explored: an alienated population living in a violent, decaying society. The gritty violence and seething rage of Scorsese's film contrasts other films released in the same period, such as David Lynch 's dreamlike, surreal and industrial black and white classic Eraserhead (1977). In 1974, John Cassavetes offered a sharp commentary on American blue-collar life in A Woman Under
12980-486: The ugliness at the beginning, Gaspar Noe forces us to think seriously about the sexual violence involved." Film critic David Edelstein argued " Irréversible might be the most homophobic movie ever made." Noé's depiction of gay criminal Le Tenia raping the female lead, Alex, remains the film's most controversial image. In his defense, Noé stated, "I'm not homophobic", noting "I also appear in Irréversible , masturbating at
13098-518: The words of New York Times critic Vincent Canby , his most "securely serious and funny film to date", Crimes and Misdemeanors , which involves multiple stories of people who are trying to find moral and spiritual simplicity while facing dire issues and thoughts surrounding the choices they make. French director Louis Malle chose another moral path to explore with the dramatization of his real-life childhood experiences in Au revoir les enfants , which depicts
13216-476: Was banned by Soviet authorities, unavailable in the West for a long period, and praised by critic Mikhail Vartanov as "revolutionary"; and in the early 1980s, Les Cahiers du Cinéma placed the film in its top 10 list. In 1967, in Soviet Georgia , influential Georgian film director Tengiz Abuladze directed Vedreba (Entreaty), which was based on the motifs of Vaja-Pshavela 's literary works, where story
13334-608: Was considered, according to award-winning author Toni Bentley , to be the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn , an era in modern American culture that was inaugurated by the release of Andy Warhol's Blue Movie (1969) and featured the phenomenon of " porno chic " in which adult erotic films began to obtain wide release, were publicly discussed by celebrities (such as Johnny Carson and Bob Hope ) and taken seriously by film critics (such as Roger Ebert ). In 1980, director Martin Scorsese gave audiences, who had become used to
13452-488: Was credited as a writer on Enter the Void (2009). The creative collaboration is made clear in the comparable stylistic choices across these early films, most clearly the credit sequences and the marketing designs. In 2025, Noé will appear in Hadžihalilović's fourth feature film, The Ice Tower . Three of his films feature the character of a nameless butcher played by Philippe Nahon : Carne , I Stand Alone and, in
13570-613: Was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Award by the Film Critics Circle of Australia. It was voted Best Foreign Language Film by the San Diego Film Critics Society, tied with The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares) . Art film An art film , art cinema , or arthouse film is typically an independent film , aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience . It
13688-468: Was released in 2020. "Time destroys everything" ( French : "Le temps détruit tout" ). The film's main message which appears at the end of the original cut when the movie transitions to a strobe effect . "Time reveals everything" ( French : "Le temps révèle tout" ). In the Straight Cut , this message—which still appears at the end of the film—differs from the original. Alex and Marcus,
13806-482: Was shown on television in an extended five-hour version. In the United Kingdom, Channel 4 , a new television channel, financed, in whole or in part, many films released theatrically through its Film 4 subsidiary. Wim Wenders offered another approach to life from a spiritual standpoint in his 1987 film Wings of Desire , a depiction of a "fallen angel" who lives among men, which won the Best Director Award at
13924-538: Was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery; which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in German New Wave director Werner Herzog 's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), and in cult films such as Alejandro Jodorowsky 's psychedelic The Holy Mountain (1973) about a thief and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island . The film Taxi Driver (1976), by Martin Scorsese , continues
#177822