References and Allusions in Movies

I should add that I'm not talking about simply fully *adapting* a novel for the screen (e.g. "Felicia's Journey", "Eyes Wide Shut", etc.)...

Done well it is breathtaking. Often allusions work as shortcuts in your brain for complex ideas,theories and emotions . Done poorly vomitus .

In the reviews in Sight and Sound they usually claim every film is simply a series of references (though mostly to other similar films), which is probably quite true and I have no real problem with that kind of referencing. Crass pastiche films like Scary Movie are usually quite annoying, especially when the joke is purely that they've reenacted a scene from another film. I think you've answers your own question about literary references usually being smug and unnecessary. My thoughts on references in general is that the never be a requirement. Maybe I'm just being ignorant, but not having read exactly the same books as the director should not exclude you from understanding the film. I can't think of any examples because, well, I haven't seen enough films, and I don't even remember much about them. I don't know why I keep posting to film threads.

Unfortunately, because some people have abused the priviledge, the entire practice is being banned, with offenders having to go door-to- door informing neighbours they live in the area. It's called the 'Coen law.'

Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader says somewhere, or maybe I like to think that he says, most Hollywood movies today are about other movies, or kinds of storytelling, and very rarely about anything resembling "life". This is especially true of most comedies, not just Scary Movie, but The Animal, Something About Mary, etc. Their spit-takes and setups rely on the audience's familiarity with movie cliches - a knowledge of movies that's subverted, often in ways that are themselves familiar.

Nah, films operate in a framework of other films and intertextuality, but are ultimately ABOUT something other than film. There are just complex networks of existant meaning which provide tools in that communicative act. Very often the film references another film as a shorthand. So a shot of a gun held a certain way, or et cet. can invoke a whole set of cultural associations which the film then doesn't need to bother to make explicit. Cf. Eisenstein's concept of Montage.

Tracer - is this point this dood makes supposed to be any different from noting the dramatic conventions in Greek comedy, or Elizabethan tragedy etc.?