Political Modernism
Film Theory and Criticism
Nabila Marzuk Shanta

Subject - 518

Modernism

Modernistic literature is the expression of the modern era (1967-75). It tends to revolve around themes of individuality, the randomness of life, mistrust of government and religion and the disbelief in absolute truth.

Modernism

Influences of modern literature The three thinkers who influence the Modern Era and Modern literature the most are probably Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud. This is not to say that Modern authors were ardent evolutionists, or Marxists or even practitioners of Freudian psychology; rather, these thinkers simply fuelled and framed the perspectives and debates that formulated so much Modern art and literature. Today, Freud's specific theories are largely dismissed as unscientific. Still, these ideas had a profound influence on art and literature as much as on our common, daily perceptions/conceptions of existence and reality:

What is Modernism?

According to M.H.Abrams;

The term Modernism is widely used to

identify new and distinctive features in

the subjects, forms, concepts and style of

literature and other art in the early decades

of the present century.

The Background of Modernism:

Critics- society could not move forward in its present form.Progress of history and civilization was questioned.A series of movements..Prominent thinkers and precursors:

Nietzsche Marx Freud Darwin Frazer

The High Modernism:

1922

1880s 1950s

T.S. Eliot James Joyce Virginia Woolf

The social Background of Modernism:

The end of rural England.Intellectualism.Scientific revolution.The Invasion of Psychology.Marxist influence.

Trends(cont.)

Anti-realism.The Language of Everyday Life.The Humanitarian Spirit.The romantic Note.Symbolism.

Literary Criticism of Modern Period:

New discoveries in Psychology, anthropology, sociology, Economics have brought revolution in critical methods.Two dimensions in criticism.Critics- distinguished University Professors.After World War-l, traditional ideas of criticism were broken.Everything was sought to be explained in psychological terms.Strong opposition of biographical, historical, sociological, comparative approach of conventional criticism.

Prominent Critical Theories:

Semiotics.Linguistics in Literary Criticism.Russian Formalism.Objective Correlativity.New Criticism.Language of Paradox.Archetypal Criticism.

Sweet Movie
The Self- Critique of Political Modernism

Sweet Movie is a 1974 avant-garde art house comedy-drama film by the Yugoslavian director Duan Makavejev.The film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary. Director of photography is Pierre Lhomme.

Summary

There are four important interrelated but quite distinct points that shaped the basic trends of the post-1967 period of modern cinema in Europe. First, cinema has to reconstruct the concept of reality.Second, cinema can be used as a means of direct political action, and films should exercise a direct impact on social, political, or ideological debates. Third, cinematic narration is a form of direct auteurial and conceptual discourse. And fourth, the artist must create a self-contained ideological or mythological universe.This chapter, which examines the trends of the period of political modernism between 1965 and 1975, looks at counter-cinema and discusses political modernism in Teorema (1968), an Italian-language movie directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It also considers the use of folklore or mythology in a film's visual style of narrative and analyzes Yugoslav director Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie (1974).