Fantasy cinema

Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a pivotal entry in the history of the Hollywood fantasy genre. The astonishing commercial success the franchise managed to achieve has been well-documented. Yet, arguably even more significantly, New Line’s adaptations of Tolkien’s source novels also managed to achieve an unprecedented level of critical recognition for a genre routinely dismissed by critics and academics alike as escapist, infantilising nonsense that appeals only to adolescent boys. Like comparable entries in the science-fiction and horror genres such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Exorcist, the films demonstrated the potential of a genre by asking us, in the words of Peter Jackson himself, to “look past” the hobbits, the wizards and the trolls and see instead a story of philosophical, political and theological substance.
This chapter analyses the various formal strategies embedded with Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings that encourage, nee invite, such a reappraisal. Self-conscious in their desire to remove the films from the pejorative stigma associated with the fantasy genre, producers and writers Boyes, Jackson and Walsh adapted Tolkien’s novels in a manner that consistently highlight fantasy’s potential as a device capable of metaphorical, allegorical and figurative meaning. In terms of spectacle, the trilogy is marked by a desire to present “faux-history” rather than fantasy. The architecture and mythology of Middle-Earth are consistently made the object of the spectator’s visual pleasure, whilst the various eccentric collection of characters who dwell with such a world are instead normalised through a series of formal and stylistic strategies. This visual strategy of legitimising the impossibility of Middle-Earth through spectacle is matched by a consistent desire to “invoke” the gravitas of its own story through both the weight and scale of its visuals and the various soliloquies presented by its characters. Through such devices, the trilogy is marked by a consistent formal concern with making fantasy ‘matter’. It is not simply that The Lord of the Rings reminded us that fantasy exists. It proved to us that the genre can be treated every bit as seriously as any other popular form of filmmaking.

Resumen. El español Segundo de Chomón fue un profesional del cine en sus primeras décadas de existencia. Fue una mente muy avanzada para su época y artífice de numerosos procedimientos cinematográficos que, si bien hoy parecen obsoletos, resultaron revolucionarios en su momento. Su figura y sus logros estuvieron largo tiempo olvidados debido al gran anonimato de los primeros años del cine o a la pérdida de material cinematográfico a lo largo del tiempo, pero en las últimas décadas diversos historiadores del cine han revalorizado su legado. Así, hoy tenemos bastantes datos sobre su maestría en iluminación, fotografía o efectos visuales, y se le reconoce como uno de los padres del género fantástico y del cine de animación, devolviéndole al lugar que le corresponde y situándole a la altura de los grandes genios coetáneos, como Georges Méliès. Hoy en día conocemos bastantes datos sobre su actividad en Francia, Italia y España, en el seno de algunas de las primeras grandes productoras del cine, donde pudo colaborar con grandes cineastas y contribuir en las primeras superproducciones de la historia del cine. De hecho, sus revolucionarias técnicas generaron una gran influencia que sería recogida por maestros como David Wark Griffith.
Palabras clave. Cine e Historia, Historia del cine, cine mudo, técnica cinematográfica, efectos visuales, cine fantástico, cine de animación.

Abstract. Segundo de Chomón is a Spanish cinema figure of the early decades of Film History. He was far ahead of his time, and he was the inventor of several cinematographic procedures, which although today seem to be obsolete, in those early times were revolutionary. His name and his efforts were forgotten for a long time due to lack of a global discussion and also due to the gradual loss of his cinematographic material over the years. Nevertheless, some cinema historians have reassessed his legacy in the last decades. We have available today a great volume of data about his expertise on lighting, photography and special effects. Because the importance of his creations and discoveries he must be be recognised as one of the fathers of fantastic cinema and film animation, giving him the deserved place in Film History at same level as other great contemporary genius, like Georges Méliès. He developed an intense international activity in France, Italy and Spain, for some of the first great cinema production companies. There he collaborated with great film makers and directed the first blockbusters in the History of Cinema. To illustrate the influence of his work it is possible to mention the use of revolutionary techniques by great masters like David Wark Griffith.
Keywords. Cinema & History, Cinema History, silent film, cinematic techniques, special effects, fantastic cinema, animated film.

The essay aims to show the aesthetic and philosophical implications of the polarity between the animation of stone and the petrification of body through a journey inside fantasy cinema and horror movies. The examples offered by horror movies like "The Haunting" (Robert Wise), "Un angelo per Satana" (Camillo Mastrocinque), and "La Venere d'Ille" (Mario and Lamberto Bava) re-enact the mythical imagery of the animated statue as the intertwining of simulacrum and living body. Unlike these gothic models, two postmodern masterpieces, "After Hours" (Martin Scorsese) and "Dead Ringers" (David Cronenberg), evoke at the same time the ghost of contemporary sculpture and the cinema device as simulacra-producing machine.