Influences of Foreign Cinemas on Hollywood

Most people think that Hollywood influences other world cinema. For the most part this is true. But trends are changing. There are several different movements of cinema that are influencing Hollywood. The trend is moving toward Hollywood being influenced more and more by outside cinema, and the one sided movement of ideas is slowly becoming more and more of a two way street. For one, more foreign films are being shown, more foreign actors are being used, and more foreign styles of filming being filmed.
The largest movie industry in the world is Bollywood. Bollywood produces more than twice the amount of films than Hollywood per year, around 1100, and it has many, many more viewers than Hollywood films. This quote is from Baz Luhrman, and it explains how Bollywood cinema directly influenced his film Moulin Rouge:
How did the idea for a lavish musical come about?
Catherine Martin (production designer and Luhrmann's wife) and I went to India to work on "Midsummer Night's Dream." We went out one night and there was a big poster up for a Bollywood movie. I said, "Let's go see that." We did - 2,000 audience members, high comedy, high tragedy, brother kills brother, [they] break out in some musical numbers, all jumbled up together in 4 hours of Hindi. We thought that was amazing. So our question was, "Could we create a cinematic form like that? Could a musical work?" A musical must be able to work in western culture again, and could it be comic-tragic? So then began this commitment of moving toward "Moulin Rouge." I decided I'd do "Romeo + Juliet" and then a musical film.
Moulin Rouge has many elements of a Bollywood film. It has the theme of a love story. It also has a tragic part to it. The narrative is told through music, rather than just being a song that is typical of western-style musicals. One other important element of playing a Bollywood film is that this is considered a true drama. There is no cynical or self-referential element to the exposition. Baz Luhrman explains:
It's much easier to find an actor today who plays like a pale photocopy of Marlon Brando - like "Gee, I'm suffering." But it is (difficult) to get a young actor to stand, look at the camera, and sing, "I love you" without a jot of cynicism - that is hard to find, and for me, that's Ewan McGregor's great achievement.
Priya Joshi, associate professor of English at Temple University, says, “We're a little more cynical. West Side Story' is kind of laughable by today's standards. ... But, for some reason, in India, that innocence is still acceptable.” Most of the films today have become more cynical and more removed from high tragedy and comedy. Think about it. When Hamlet dies in Shakespeare's play, he is playing a fully tragic part. The audience also must fully believe in the story for this type of film to work. That is why Lord of the Rings worked. Because the audience was fully drawn into the story, and they did not question it. That is also why Moulin Rouge worked.
Another huge influence on American horror cinema is Japanese Horror, or J-horror. Eli Roth, director of Hostel explains in an interview:
If classic 1970s American horror was the inspiration for CABIN FEVER, then Roth credits Asian and South Korean horror film making as the inspiration for HOSTEL. Yet Roth was relatively ignorant of young Asian masters like Hideo Nakata, Park Chan-Wook, and Takashi Miike until he attended world film festivals during the promotion of CABIN FEVER. "I was exposed to a whole new world of Asian cinema I never knew existed. I was stunned," says the director. "Their horror films are so much more creative, disturbing, and effective than anything I have seen coming out of America. I started watching as many Asian and South Korean films I could get my hands on."
One of the reasons that Japanese horror works so well is because it is fully scary and is not self-referential and does not make jokes about itself. It takes itself fully seriously so that the Audience can take it seriously too. Eli Roth, the director of Hostel explains:
Throughout the production process, Roth knew that HOSTEL would be a marked departure from CABIN FEVER. "I didn’t want to make another horror-comedy," reports the director. "I wanted HOSTEL to be a pure horror film – one that starts out fun, but gets darker and darker and never looks back or winks at the audience.”
Hostel is a truly scary movie. When was the last time you have seen a movie in theaters that is truly scary and not at all comedic. The idea of starting like a romantic comedy for Audition by Takashi Miike or starting like Eurotrip for Hostel is common to both movies. That is why they are so good, it is because they trick the audience. Also, another philosophy of J-horror is making the movie as gory and disgusting as possible. This definitely happens in Hostel and Audition.
J-horror is not always about gore and mutilation. Sometimes, the traditional Japanese ghost story is told to American audiences. The movie the Ring is actually heavily influenced by Japanese ghost storys, in fact is it a remake of the movie Ringu (1998). Hideo Nakata, the director of Ringu explains the difference between Western and Japanese horror:
The difference between Japanese horror and Western horror can be traced back to the difference in religious beliefs. When making horror films, the methods of describing the spiritual world and the expression of horror are totally different between Japan and the West. In a culture where the influence of monotheism such as Christianity is strong, the antinomy, or confrontation between the devil and God, becomes the fundamental conflict... On the other hand, a typical example of the Japanese horror thriller is the classic Ghost Story of Tokaido Yotsuya, a tale that has been performed as a kabuki play since the Edo period. In the story, a beautiful wife is violently poisoned to death by her husband. Harboring a deep-seated grudge against the man who caused her grisly demise, she becomes a ghost, reappearing before her husband with a terribly disfigured face to curse him.
Perhaps this kind of horror might not appear to be able to work in America, but The Ring was a very successful film.
Most people, when asked about Hong Kong cinema, will think of movies involving Bruce Lee karate chopping people, and the setting will be in the Qing dynasty. That is one particular style of film called Kung Fu, but there is another style of film called the Hong Kong crime drama. It usually involves the Triad importing drugs or kidnapping someone. Examples of these films are A Better Tomorrow (1986), City on Fire, and Prison on Fire (both 1987). These films were serious crime dramas. Quentin Tarentino, a director that has said many times that some of his greatest influences were from Hong Kong action cinema.
We can see that many cinemas have influence on our cinema. Hollywood is always looking for new trends in cinema, and that can sometimes be accomplished by looking beyond our borders. If Hollywood ignores other cinemas, then they risk losing viewers to overseas movie makers. Not all styles can be used, but some aspects of the overseas cinemas can be taken to use in American cinema.
HOSTEL