A History of Cinema

by Piero Scaruffi

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TM, ®, Copyright © 2011 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents


English translation in progress...
For now check the Pages on Filmmakers and a Quick Summary of the history of cinema up to the 1970s.

Indice Generale


Q1:
Cinema d'Appendice
Cinema Romantico
Realismo liberale
Naturalismo
Espressionismo
Q2:
Hollywood (USA)
Cinema Surrealista (France)
Futurismo (Soviet Union)
Q3:
Nuova Oggettivita' (Germany)
Cinema comico
Mitteleuropa
Q4:
Melodramma
Horror
Musical
Gangster
Q5:
Realismo poetico
Realismo sociale
Q6:
Western
Commedia
Documentario
Star System
Q7:
Shimnu Geki
Esistenzialismo
Neorealismo
Q8:
India
Surrealismo spagnolo
Q9:
Black Humour
Esistenzialismo scandinavo
Q10:
Commedia all' italiana
Q11:
Disgelo
Q12:
Esistenzialismo storico
Q13:
Nouvelle Vague
Q14:
Free cinema
Q15:
Sensismo
Neue Cinema
Q16:
Nova vlna
Cinema Ungherese
Cinema dei Balcani
Q17:
Cinema Polacco
Cinema Iberico
Cinema Scandinavo
Q18:
America Latina
Australia
Q19:
Widescreen Cinema
Animazione
Musical
Melodramma Sociale
Commedia
Q20:
Western
Q21:
Cinema del Crimine
Q22:
Bellico
Neorealismo democratico
Film Noir
Scuola di New York
Q23:
New American Cinema (Avantgarde)
Q24:
Cinema del Terrore
Q25:
America Latina
Q26:
Hollywood in the 1970s
Cinema d' appendice (1)

Cinema romantico (film storico, kolossal) (1)

Realismo liberale (1)

Naturalismo (1)

Espressionismo (1)

Hollywood (2)

Cinema surrealista (2)

Futurismo (2)

Nuova Oggettivita' (3)

Cinema comico (3)

Mitteleuropa (3)

Melodramma (4)

Horror (4)

Musical (4)

Gangster (4)

Realismo poetico (5)

Realismo sociale (5)

Commedia (5)

Western (6)

Documentario (6)

Star System (6)

Shimnu Geki (7)

Esistenzialismo (7)

Neorealismo (8)

India (8)

Surrealismo spagnolo (8)

Black Humour (9)

Esistenzialismo scandinavo (9)

Commedia all' italiana (10)

Disgelo (11)

Esistenzialismo storico (11-12)

Nouvelle Vague (13)

New cinema (14)

Sensismo (15)

Neue Cinema (15)

Nova vlna (16)

Cinema ungherese (16)

Cinema dei Balcani (16)

Cinema polacco (17)

Cinema Iberico (17)

Cinema Scandinavo (17)

America Latina (18)

Australia (18)

Animazione (19)

Musical (19)

Melodramma (19)

Commedia

Western (20)

Cinema del Crimine (21)

Neorealismo Democratico (22)

Film Noir

New York School

New American Cinema

Lost Generation

Science Fiction

New Horror Cinema

Latin America


War movies of the 1970s and 1980s: Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and Ted Kotcheff's First Blood (1982), the first film of the "Rambo" franchise, Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), all three set in the Vietnam War, Roger Spottiswoode's Under Fire (1983) and Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986), both set in the Sandinista revolution of Nicaragua, Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields (1984), set in Cambodia during the brutal rule of the communist Khmer Rouge regime,

The State of Cinema in 2022

Godard once said: “The dream of Hollywood is to make one film, and it's television that makes it, but it is distributed everywhere”. That’s precisely what happened in the 21st century. Hollywood started making the same movie over and over again (car chase, love story, super-hero) often through an endless series of sequels. What movies were lacking in imagination they compensated with effects. Ironically, the flood of new titles via the new medium of “streaming”, the sheer abundance of choice, had nullified art. The audience didn’t rebel. Instead it slowly but steadily got numb to the utter un-originality of the movies, even addicted to predictability in the plot. By the 2020s, the number of people capable of understanding a nuanced, complex, sophisticated film plummeted, and so it had become a vicious circle: the studios were making utterly pointless movies for an audience that demanded precisely that kind of movie, the exact same one, over and over again. The youngest in that audience had been raised on YouTube videos (and soon on even shorter TikTok videos). No surprise that many of the youngest valued videogames more than movies: there was a lot more complexity in videogames than in Hollywood movies. The more competent critics were accused of being out-of-touch with most moviegoers, and pretentious at best. This ended up favoring a new generation of critics who were equally unpretentious and incompetent. People hated the critics who were trying to warn people about the dangers of watching only inanity. People hated the critics who didn’t share their opinions, as if the role of the critic was merely to repeat what people posted on social media and on rating websites, i.e. blindly praise the most publicized and better distributed films, typically the blockbuster films, obviously a much easier job than watching 100s of films from all over the world.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2011 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.


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