Thus, national cinema becomes, on the one hand, a pseudo-oedipal drama around paternity and father-son relationships，，，

Yet he dismissed the suggestion that he might be threatened by Hollywood: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Living in the 20th century meant learning to be American.”

deleuze: from godard's 'old distinction of “action” and “reflection”', to 'the movement-image of classical cinema with the time-image of modern cinema'

“namely that of national cinemas and Hollywood not only as communicating vessels, but (to change the metaphor) existing in a space set up like a hall of mirrors, in which recognition, imaginary identity and mis-cognition enjoy equal status, creating value out of pure difference” ([Elsaesser, 1994, p. 47]

The European auteur cinema basically knows three kinds of heroes who are close cousins: Odysseus, Orpheus and Parzifal – in other words, quest heroes, wanderers who are often enough prepared to sacrifice a Eurydice on the way, before they reluctantly – return to Penelope, who in any case, is really their mother.

This is in sharp contrast to the American cinema which is a relentlessly, obsessively oedipal cinema, where the hero always engages the father, usually eliminates him, and eventually sleeps with his mother, though not before assuring himself that she is his best buddy. The only Oedipal hero in the European cinema, cut in this mold is perhaps Fritz Lang’s Siegfried – and he is felled and pierced by the paternal spear.
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