Talking about films on self-conscious films, I am reminded of one movie by
Woody Allen, "Annie Hall". There is this very self-conscious scene where
Woody Allen's character who is interested in bringing his love-interest,
then literally Allen's love interest in real-life too(Diane Lane), to the
movies. Right in front of him, there was this critic who was literally
spouting off all the jargon used in film theory to criticise and laud a film
before his friend, and Woody Allen's character just put up an expression of
impatience and disgust as he complained to Diane Lane's character how that
critic was "pontificating" in his eyes.
It is a very self-conscious moment, insofar as one can tell. Woody Allen,
being himself a former student of New York University's Tisch School of the
Arts and a dropout, had his fair share of sarcasms about film school and
wanted to include that spoof of the technical obsessions of film schools in
the US in his films. There is also that similiar spoof in "Deconstructing
Harry", where Harry Block turns to his former high school which kicked him
out to receive an award now that he is a famous writer(mostly of trashy
B-grade novels of sex and orgasms), but of course, that is a different
twist, and is no longer a self-conscious remark on film anymore.
An interesting book on this issue is "Self-Reflexivity in Film and
Literature" by Robert Stam, which, although very much auteur-based, is a
good exposition on this self-conscious move in modern cinema of the early
period of auteurism in French and European cinema(and then secondarily some
US films).
Kevin
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