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New French Extremity
New French Extremity describes a range of French films made at the turn of the 21st century that were considered extreme or transgressive. Films of the New French Extremity are characterized by graphic depictions of violence, especially sexual violence, and explicit sexual imagery.
The term 'new French extremity' was first coined by critic James Quandt in 2004 in a deeply critical piece complaining about the violent turn that French filmmaking appeared to have taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While few people have taken Quandt's pronouncements about new extreme films seriously[citation needed], his article has become the first reference for talking about these films: "Bava as much as Bataille, Salò no less than Sade seem the determinants of a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement." Today, most critics and scholars use Quandt's claims as a starting point for how not to talk about new extreme films, with his work having assumed something of a 'straw man' status. He has been criticised as having a dismissive tone, a reductive amalgamation of a wide variety of quite different films, a nostalgia for the old transgressive films, and unhelpful conflation of films marked by an arthouse style with new French horror, a series of generically-marked horror films.
Since then, substantial work done on these films has produced a variety of overlapping terms to describe the films mentioned above and others like them: 'New European Extremism', 'extreme cinema', 'extreme art cinema', 'new extremism', as well as a 'cinéma du corps', the 'unwatchable', and 'transgressive art films'. The trend is acknowledged to extend beyond the borders of France to Europe, and in some cases further afield, even as French filmmakers dominate any list of new extreme films.
In general, 'extreme' refers both to the kinds of acts depicted in the films, and the manner in which they are depicted. Acts that frequently occur in new extreme films, which are considered extreme, include visible sex (sometimes called unsimulated sex), sexual and sexualised violence, and graphic images of violence. (Torture is not a feature of new extreme films, being more common in horror films, especially spectacle horror.) According to Oliver Kenny, visibility, proximity, and duration are the key defining stylistic aspects to the presentation of these acts: they are shown in proximate and visible detail, often in lengthy scenes or in long take. Certain scholars, such as Frey and Kenny, have also explored the contemporary use of the word 'extreme' in much greater detail.
The 'new' in 'new extreme' suggests that these films constitute a new wave, that develops upon a series of 'old' extreme films. While films were rarely described as 'extreme' prior to the 2000s, the 'old' films in question here are mostly violent, politically engaged, films from the 1960s and 1970s. The most commonly cited films as 'older' comparisons to 'new' extreme cinema are Weekend and Salò.
Sex and violence have long been a part of art and literary history so there is a wealth of writing that may or may not have had an influence on contemporary cinema. Some of the most commonly discussed literary and artistic reference points for scholars and critics looking at extreme cinema include Marquis de Sade and his many sexual, violent, and sexually violent novels, Gustave Courbet and his painting L'Origine du monde, Antonin Artaud’s writing about the Theatre of Cruelty, and Georges Bataille's work on erotism and transgression. More recently, a trend towards graphic depictions of sex and violence in literature, sometimes under the moniker contemporary extreme has been associated with writers such as Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Michel Houellebecq, Marie Darrieussecq, Richard Morgiève, Alina Reyes, and others.
In a cinematic context, it is an established practice to mix supposedly 'low-brow' forms of popular expression with 'high-brow' filmmaking, notably by including sexual and violent imagery in arthouse films. Art cinema has long been seen as drawing its aesthetics and narrative tropes from forms of eroticism and depictions of the body that transgress mainstream rules such as those of Hollywood. Indeed many now-canonic French and Italian art films of the 1960s and 1970s were marketed together with exploitation films in the USA because their graphic depiction of nudity was considered to exclude them from the status of art film.
There is a huge range of experimental filmmaking from Europe and elsewhere that has influenced new extreme films (most notably explored by Tim Palmer). Specifically in terms of sexual and violent imagery, 20th-century films that are often considered as precursors to contemporary extreme cinema include Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel & Dalí 1929), Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini 1975), The Virgin Spring (Bergman 1960), Belle de Jour (Buñuel 1967), Weekend (Godard, 1967), Straw Dogs (Peckinpah, 1971), The Mother and the Whore (Eustache, 1973), Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980), Possession (Żuławski, 1981), and A Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983). Tim Palmer also suggests other precursors such as Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage 1959), Christmas on Earth (Rubin 1963), Flaming Creatures (Smith 1963), and Fuses (Schneeman 1967).
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New French Extremity
New French Extremity describes a range of French films made at the turn of the 21st century that were considered extreme or transgressive. Films of the New French Extremity are characterized by graphic depictions of violence, especially sexual violence, and explicit sexual imagery.
The term 'new French extremity' was first coined by critic James Quandt in 2004 in a deeply critical piece complaining about the violent turn that French filmmaking appeared to have taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While few people have taken Quandt's pronouncements about new extreme films seriously[citation needed], his article has become the first reference for talking about these films: "Bava as much as Bataille, Salò no less than Sade seem the determinants of a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement." Today, most critics and scholars use Quandt's claims as a starting point for how not to talk about new extreme films, with his work having assumed something of a 'straw man' status. He has been criticised as having a dismissive tone, a reductive amalgamation of a wide variety of quite different films, a nostalgia for the old transgressive films, and unhelpful conflation of films marked by an arthouse style with new French horror, a series of generically-marked horror films.
Since then, substantial work done on these films has produced a variety of overlapping terms to describe the films mentioned above and others like them: 'New European Extremism', 'extreme cinema', 'extreme art cinema', 'new extremism', as well as a 'cinéma du corps', the 'unwatchable', and 'transgressive art films'. The trend is acknowledged to extend beyond the borders of France to Europe, and in some cases further afield, even as French filmmakers dominate any list of new extreme films.
In general, 'extreme' refers both to the kinds of acts depicted in the films, and the manner in which they are depicted. Acts that frequently occur in new extreme films, which are considered extreme, include visible sex (sometimes called unsimulated sex), sexual and sexualised violence, and graphic images of violence. (Torture is not a feature of new extreme films, being more common in horror films, especially spectacle horror.) According to Oliver Kenny, visibility, proximity, and duration are the key defining stylistic aspects to the presentation of these acts: they are shown in proximate and visible detail, often in lengthy scenes or in long take. Certain scholars, such as Frey and Kenny, have also explored the contemporary use of the word 'extreme' in much greater detail.
The 'new' in 'new extreme' suggests that these films constitute a new wave, that develops upon a series of 'old' extreme films. While films were rarely described as 'extreme' prior to the 2000s, the 'old' films in question here are mostly violent, politically engaged, films from the 1960s and 1970s. The most commonly cited films as 'older' comparisons to 'new' extreme cinema are Weekend and Salò.
Sex and violence have long been a part of art and literary history so there is a wealth of writing that may or may not have had an influence on contemporary cinema. Some of the most commonly discussed literary and artistic reference points for scholars and critics looking at extreme cinema include Marquis de Sade and his many sexual, violent, and sexually violent novels, Gustave Courbet and his painting L'Origine du monde, Antonin Artaud’s writing about the Theatre of Cruelty, and Georges Bataille's work on erotism and transgression. More recently, a trend towards graphic depictions of sex and violence in literature, sometimes under the moniker contemporary extreme has been associated with writers such as Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Michel Houellebecq, Marie Darrieussecq, Richard Morgiève, Alina Reyes, and others.
In a cinematic context, it is an established practice to mix supposedly 'low-brow' forms of popular expression with 'high-brow' filmmaking, notably by including sexual and violent imagery in arthouse films. Art cinema has long been seen as drawing its aesthetics and narrative tropes from forms of eroticism and depictions of the body that transgress mainstream rules such as those of Hollywood. Indeed many now-canonic French and Italian art films of the 1960s and 1970s were marketed together with exploitation films in the USA because their graphic depiction of nudity was considered to exclude them from the status of art film.
There is a huge range of experimental filmmaking from Europe and elsewhere that has influenced new extreme films (most notably explored by Tim Palmer). Specifically in terms of sexual and violent imagery, 20th-century films that are often considered as precursors to contemporary extreme cinema include Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel & Dalí 1929), Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini 1975), The Virgin Spring (Bergman 1960), Belle de Jour (Buñuel 1967), Weekend (Godard, 1967), Straw Dogs (Peckinpah, 1971), The Mother and the Whore (Eustache, 1973), Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980), Possession (Żuławski, 1981), and A Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983). Tim Palmer also suggests other precursors such as Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage 1959), Christmas on Earth (Rubin 1963), Flaming Creatures (Smith 1963), and Fuses (Schneeman 1967).