International Film 1990s
Though the U.S. only produces 10% of the world’s films each year (India still makes more than any other country), Hollywood blockbusters claim 65% of film revenues. (85% of market in Europe). This is partially due to the idea that the U.S. provides capital for new theaters worldwide–providing more exhibition sites for U.S. product.
However, for extremely large projects studios in different countries may combine to produce “international co-productions” (aka “euro-puddings”)—first begun in the late 1960s—which allow studios to take greater chances for presumably greater financial rewards for the participating countries.
British Cinema
Context: If you recall—as in prior decades—European cinema in the 1980s was polarized between the ‘Masterpiece Theater’ offerings by companies like “Merchant Ivory,” and the grittier ‘kitchen sink’ Social Realism offered in films like Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa.
Tax incentives resulted in increasing investment in British film by American producers– from 104 mill in 1989 to 741 million in 1996. As an example, the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) grossed $244 million worldwide becoming the biggest hit British film in history…and it launched Hugh Grant to global fame. This was followed by other romantic films Sliding Doors, Notting Hill (with Julia Roberts in 1999). Enchanted April (1992) and The Wings of the Dove (1997).
Both ‘styles’ of British cinema also persisted…in addition to Merchant Ivory’s ‘masterpiece’ offerings —Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), and Sense and Sensibility (1995), actor-director Kenneth Branagh launched a series of vibrant Shakespearean adaptations beginning with Henry V (1989), followed by Much Ado About Nothing (1993), a very faithful a 4 ½ hour version of Hamlet (1996) and the less successful Love’s Labor’s Lost (2000).
WATCH: trailer for Hamlet
Hamlet Ghost scene:
One of the bigger hits of the decade was the very ‘kitchen-sink’ The Full Monty which made $200 mill on $3.5 mill prod cost.
WATCH: trailer for The Full Monty
The story concerns six unemployed steel workers who find work by stripping in front of 400 cheering women. Though a comedy, the film deals with substantial issues of disenfranchised men involved with more successful women—suggesting a possible switch in gender roles.
One could argue that director Mike Leigh is—to some extent—the ‘James Ivory of the kitchen sink’ specializing in a series of films about working- and middle-class life in modern England including High Hopes (1988), Naked (1993), Career Girls (1997), Vera Drake (2004).
His biggest hit Secrets & Lies (1996), won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film tells the story an extended family of characters and the ‘secrets and lies’ which seem to keep their lives ‘together’ but are simultaneously threatening to tear them apart.
WATCH: Secrets & Lies Trailer
Mother meets daughter clip
https://youtu.be/44Y5xK9nTsQ
(Leigh’s method is especially interesting: his actors improvise on roles for months before they agree on finished screenplays.)
Other new kitchen sink directors included Danny Boyle and Andrew Macdonald responsible for Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996) —who later won multiple awards including Best Director and Best Picture for Slumdog Millionaire.
Canadian Cinema
Beyond the horror films of David Cronenberg (They Came from Within, Scanners, and The Brood), few Canadian films were exported.
WATCH: trailer for Scanners
While Atom Egoyan had gained some traction in critics’ circles due to films such as Exotica (1994) about an obsessed patron at a strip club.
WATCH: trailer for Exotica
It was his The Sweet Hereafter (1997) that brought him international attention. The story of a school bus accident that destroyed a small Canadian town, the story focuses on the parents and other survivors being courted by a lawyer struggling to rally them into a class action suit.
WATCH: trailer for The Sweet Hereafter
One of Egoyan’s characteristic themes is alienation within families and communities. The interactions of his characters also tend to be mediated through technology, bureaucracy, or other power structures. (And…almost invariably, he explores some sort of aberrant sexuality.) Egoyan’s films often follow non-linear plot structures, in which events are placed out of sequence to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information.