LEWTONESQUE: Biased Observer Watches Fantastic Film: My 'Want To See' List

This list will be updated as I discover films I think I'd like to have a look at. Click a title to be taken to its appearance in the blog (which will invariably be in the Round Up for its year).

Biased Critical Terminology

Fantastique: a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror and fantasy. We'll be spelling it with a 'c' instead of 'que' so as not to look any goofier than we already do, but the Fantastic is generally what we will be looking for here, and the hoity-toitier it is the better we like it. Expect to see Jean Ray mentioned wherever we can figure out how to shoehorn him in.

Auteur: 1950s-era auteur theory, associated with the French New Wave and the critics who wrote for Cahiers Du Cinema, holds that the films of a good director (or, at any rate, an interesting one) reflect their personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of the films in question being made as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinctive enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference. Another good place for this to occur is in the making of low budget films and films made outside the studio system. We're particularly fond of films that subvert genre to the nefarious purpose of a writer or director with a bone to pick.

Semiotics: Biased Observer keeps looking this word up, but finds that the definition slides out of his memory like his brain was made of Teflon, and it will therefore not be used except in this sidebar. That was it just now.

Mise en Scene: has been called film criticism's 'grand undefined term'. That means that everyone who uses it presumably has some idea of what they mean by it, but anyone who reads it has to guess, which makes it a pretty sloppy word for anyone to employ who actually wants to be understood. But it makes you sound like an intellectual, so I'll try to fit it in every three sentences or so.

Good Kill: term used by splatter and slasher film fans to describe a particularly wet or inventive murder or, on occasion, other mode of buying it. While we don't have a problem with gore effects in general, we don't particularly care for films that are distinguished entirely by their catalogue of good kills, and that's not what we're after here, though a good exploding sheep a la Bad Taste is a joy forever, make no mistake.

Lewtonensque: This term is going to crop up over and over here. Val Lewton was a producer, not a director, though the term auteur suits his output perfectly, as his personality is ground into every film his name was attached to, particularly the B horror films he left a lucrative career by David O. Selznick's side to make for a pittance at RKO. His early films in particular are firmly grounded in the urban present (of the 1940's) and are models of restraint as they depict the fantastic intruding into modern life, and not a pitchfork wielding villager anywhere to be seen.

Cronenbergesque: A positive descriptor. Clinical, chilly, and intellectual are all terms characteristically used to describe David Cronenberg, but 'humane', 'humanist' and 'a fantastic interview' apply equally well. Canada's answer to J.G. Ballard, on whose behalf the term 'body horror' was coined, though I dunno by whom.

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