Global Cinema, Genres, Modes and Identities by David Martin

GRAPHIQUES
09.Book Reviews_CJFS_21.1_reviews 12-05-12 6:23 PM Page 134
BO O K R EVI EWS • CO M PTES R E N D U S
SCOTLAND: GLOBAL CINEMA, GENRES, MODES AND IDENTITIES
By David Martin-Jones
Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2010, 254 pp
Reviewed by David Hutchison
The last thirty years have seen a substantial change in cinema in Scotland. We
cannot really talk about a Scottish cinema industry, but of course some Canadian
commentators are not quite convinced that there is a proper Canadian cinema
industry either. However, there is no doubt that more films are being made in
Scotland than in previous years. As in Canada, a fair number are local productions,
although, again as with Canada, Scotland also serves as the location for productions which are not remotely Scottish in theme or content. In the autumn of 2011,
for example, Glasgow stood in for Philadelphia in a Brad Pitt film, World War Z.
We have yet to produce directors who achieve the international success of
James Cameron or David Cronenberg, but Bill Forsyth demonstrated that it is
possible to move on from very modest beginnings. He went from That Sinking
Feeling (1979), which was shot on a shoestring, to a film like Local Hero (1983),
which had a mainly Scottish setting but was financed by Goldcrest at a cost of
£2.5m, and had Burt Lancaster in a starring role. Forsyth’s subsequent career in
Hollywood includes the underrated Housekeeping (1987), and the very badly
received Being Human (1994), but it would be wrong to minimize the journey he
made. Others, such as Lynne Ramsay, have followed in his wake. Nor is Sean
Connery the only Scottish actor to become an international star, any more than
Donald Sutherland is the only Canadian actor to do so. Ewan McGregor, Brian
Cox and Kelly McDonald, to take three recent examples, have established solid
reputations beyond Scotland.
As Canadian filmmaking has expanded in recent decades, despite the distribution difficulties it faces, so has the number of books which analyze it. David
Martin-Jones, in the introduction to the volume under review here, argues that
there has been a shortage of similar books in Scotland (a smart strategy if you
want to justify your own book!) and he has a point. He is at pains to emphasize
the importance of Duncan Petrie’s two volumes, Screening Scotland (2000) and
Contemporary Scottish Fictions (2004), but it is a little surprising that he does not
mention David Bruce’s idiosyncratic but very perceptive Scotland the Movie
(1996), or even Forsyth Hardy’s Scotland in Film (1990), although both are listed
in the bibliography. For Martin-Jones the starting point of serious discussion
about film in and about Scotland is the 1982 multi-authored Scotch Reels, which
argued that film and television representations have been dominated by three
discourses: Tartanry, Kailyard and Clydesidism. Within the discourse of Tartanry,
Scotland is represented by the Highlands as a landscape of grandeur and beauty,
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peopled by noble savages. Kailyard constructs Scotland as a country of small villages, by contrast inhabited by parochial and narrow-minded folk. Both of these
discourses are essentially backward looking and nostalgic, whereas the third,
Clydesidism, which constructs an industrial masculine Scotland, can be viewed as
progressive. The basic argument of Scotch Reels was that there needed to be new
ways of representing and constructing Scotland onscreen if film and television
were ever to engage with the full complexity of Scottish life, past and present.
For a long time in academic circles the Scotch Reels approach dominated,
although there were dissenting voices, not least those who pointed out that the
critics involved had studiously ignored the autobiographical films Bill Douglas
made in the 1970s. These remarkable texts cannot be properly discussed within the
Scotch Reels framework. As for filmmakers themselves, only one or two engaged
in the debate; most were much more interested in finding money for their next
pictures. More recently, there has been a general acknowledgement that there has
been, and there is most certainly now a much wider range of representations/
constructions available. Shallow Grave (1995) and Hallam Foe (2007) are two obvious
examples, and even a film like Rob Roy (1995), which might at first glance appear
to be pure Tartanry, is a lot more complicated than that.
Martin-Jones’s approach sidesteps the discourses debate to a significant
degree. He makes it clear that he is interested in “the range of filmmaking in
Scotland” in the last two decades, and in “exploring the different identities on
offer in the various fantasy Scotlands created by filmmakers from around the
world”. That word “fantasy” is somewhat problematic, for not all of the films
Martin-Jones discusses can be regarded as being any such thing in the normal
sense of the term.
Each of his chapters examines one of ten genres: comedy (very under appreciated, he argues), the road movie, Bollywood, the [Loch Ness] monster movie,
horror, costume drama, gangster, social realist melodrama, female friendship and art
cinema. The obvious consequence of this approach is that the reader who is familiar with Scottish films which have been targeted at the international cinema market, and with Duncan Petrie’s books, will discover a range of work (s)he did not
know existed. A case in point are the Bollywood films which have used Scotland
for location shooting, and low budget horror films are also examined, alongside
more familiar fare. Martin-Jones casts his net very wide and performs a valuable
service in expanding the reader’s knowledge of the sheer range of what is being
made in and about Scotland, and about the contributions of these movies to the
construction of filmic identities, Scottish and not remotely Scottish.
Martin-Jones’s chapter on art film skilfully explores the tensions between
being recognizably Scottish and being acceptable internationally on the festival
circuit, prizes gained which can be invaluable in securing distribution deals. He
contrasts Red Road (2006), Andrea Arnold’s debut feature, with David Mackenzie’s
Young Adam (2003), and argues that the former succeeded better by suppressing
its Scottish background, while the latter was too heavily rooted in its native
milieu to make much impression abroad.
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One difficulty Martin-Jones faces, common to all books about non-mainstream cinema, is the accessibility of the films being discussed. It is a problem
which a number of books on Canadian cinema share. If a critic wishes to move
beyond general arguments about the nature of a country’s filmmaking into
detailed analysis of particular texts, then there is a danger that the reader is
forced to take what is being said on trust, and may even become disengaged. So,
it would have been helpful if there had been information as to where the films
discussed at length might be (legally) accessed.
Lately Scotland has been going through a period of constitutional turbulence. Devolved parliaments were established in both Wales and Scotland in
1999, the Scottish one with rather more powers than the Welsh. It was anticipated that a consequence of the proportional electoral system would be that no
party would ever win an outright majority. And so it proved for the first three
parliaments: two Labour/Liberal administrations were succeeded by a minority
Scottish National Party. But in the 2011 election the SNP succeeded in beating the
system and was returned with an absolute majority. Its manifesto promised a referendum on whether Scotland should become an independent country. However,
even before the Holyrood parliament was established in Edinburgh, Scotland
enjoyed substantial administrative devolution in education and cultural policy.
The Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen both pre-date devolution, but subsequently the second Holyrood Lab/Lib administration decided to amalgamate
the two bodies as Creative Scotland, which finally came into existence in 2010
under the minority SNP administration. It’s as if the Canada Council were to be
amalgamated with the NFB and Telefilm Canada, and that analogy indicates that
this has not been an easy marriage, for the modus operandi of an organization
which distributes grants is bound to be different from one which also acts as a
screen locations promoter and a co-investor in film production. However Creative
Scotland’s chief executive constantly talks of the “investments” which his organization makes and studiously eschews the word “subsidy.” Creative Scotland
has around £3m per year to invest in films—not a huge sum—and is actively
seeking partners who will significantly augment this fund.
For the SNP government culture has been a critical area, to which it has
devoted considerable attention: for example, it set up the Scottish Broadcasting
Commission, which in its final report in 2008 called for a new Scottish digital
channel, something the nationalist administration is very much in favour of, provided the bill is not presented to Holyrood. Whether Scotland becomes an independent country or not, there is every likelihood that cultural policy will be
geared substantially to presenting Scotland to the world, and film will be central
to that endeavour. For obvious economic reasons, securing a share of the locations
market will also remain important. The situation skilfully described and analyzed
in Scotland: Global Cinema will continue to develop; the arguments about the
legitimacy of the various constructions and representations of Scotland onscreen
will also continue and, in all likelihood, become more acrimonious, particularly
if the tension between industry and art becomes much sharper in these straitened
times. David Cameron recently called for the production of more British films
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designed to be commercially successful. How long will it be before a Scottish
minister issues a similar call?
Glasgow Caledonian University
LE CINÉMA À L’ÉPREUVE DE LA COMMUNAUTÉ ; LE CINÉMA FRANCOPHONE
DE L’OFFICE NATIONAL DU FILM 1960-1985
Par Marion Froger
Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2009, 185 pp
Compte-rendu de Gwenn Scheppler
En règle générale, les études cinématographiques, lorsqu’elles sont publiées, se
focalisent sur l’esthétique ou le style d’un auteur, d’une école, sur des problématiques historiques spécifiques à un corpus de films, comme les « cinémas nationaux »,
ou encore sur des approches théoriques et méthodologiques du cinéma en tant
que média, art, ou langage. La sociologie du cinéma est largement minoritaire
dans ces études comme dans les publications, et bien souvent, les ouvrages traitant
de sociologie au cinéma émanent de la sociologie elle-même. Traitant le cinéma
comme un objet parmi d’autres de l’activité humaine, il leur manque souvent
une compréhension théorique ou esthétique des films, des démarches créatrices
des cinéastes, une réflexion au fond sur le cinéma en tant que tel.
Marion Froger est avant tout une spécialiste du cinéma et de ses médiations
culturelles, artistiques et sociales, et son approche du cinéma au Canada tranche
avec ce que l’on a pu lire en général, dans un contexte francophone cependant.
En posant la question de la communauté au cinéma de l’Office national du film
du Canada, en se plaçant dans une perspective où se rejoignent esthétique, histoire culturelle et politique, sociologie et anthropologie, elle pose un jalon crucial
dans une approche croisée du cinéma et de l’histoire socioculturelle québécoise,
qui ne pourra plus être ignoré et qui constitue d’ores et déjà une référence. Ce
n’est certes pas un hasard si l’auteure s’est vue récompensée du « Prix du Canada
en sciences sociales » en 2011 pour cet ouvrage. Ce livre est donc essentiel pour
comprendre, dans un regard croisé très fécond, l’évolution esthétique et structurelle du film documentaire au Québec entre 1960 et 1990, dans son interaction
avec le contexte socioculturel québécois et canadien.
Il faut dire d’abord que l’approche conceptuelle et méthodologique de Marion
Froger est des plus ambitieuses (et solides), tant elle embrasse des champs larges.
Elle est inspirée dans sa première partie par Bourdieu et Nancy (« Institutions
sociales et communautés ») ; la deuxième partie s’inspire d’Odin, Jost, Zumthor,
Bolter et Grusin (« Pratiques, Dispositifs et sémiotique ») et la troisième de
Deleuze, Garneau, Perrault et Derrida (« L’esthétique et l’épreuve de la communauté »). Mais ce qui fait la force de ce livre c’est justement la façon dont ces
champs nombreux et habituellement séparés sont articulés entre eux et éclairent
avec brio le cinéma documentaire du Québec des années 1960 aux années 1990.
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