Many art forms dip into the
self-referential. From songs about songs to paintings depicting the artist
painting that particular work, art is always willing to look at itself. Films
are no different. From the very earliest cinematic experiments, movies drew
inspiration from or indeed focused entirely on the filmmaking process. Even at
the turn of the last century, filmmakers were experimenting with the ideas of
putting film on film. The Big Swallow
is a 1901 surrealist short in which a man steps closer and closer to the camera
before swallowing it whole. Since then films have looked at the cameraman’s
craft (Man With a Movie Camera –
1929), the screenwriting process (Adaptation
– 2002), Sound Design (Berbarian Sound Studio - 2012) and in some movies, characters even come to recognise their own
fictional existence (Stranger than
Fiction – 2006). So without further ado, here is my list of Six of the Best… Films about Film.
1. Cinema Paradiso – 1988
Giuseppe Tornatore’s Italian
masterpiece features a middle aged film director returning to his small
Sicilian village for the first time in decades in order to attend the funeral
of his friend and mentor. The movie then takes us forward from the director’s
earliest years until adulthood through his love of the motion picture. I’ve
never seen adoration of cinema so beautifully and overtly displayed before and
the movie features clips of many famous and less so well known movies from the
silent era forwards. The local cinema becomes the beating heart of the town and
brings joy to many in the post war depression that hit the country hard. The
process of projection is lovingly demonstrated and the movie’s final scene is
perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen and contains some of the most
breathtaking images in all cinema history.
