Confusion about B movies

Students,
    There seems to be confusion about my discussion of B movies.
    B movies were a Hollywood invention based on the caste system of the classical Hollywood studio system.
    B films were intended as "filler" in the double feature program. The budgets were much cheaper than for A (feature) films.
    B stars rarely escaped the caste system of the B film. (John Wayne may be the most famous exception, since he labored in B Westerns for about ten years before he escaped the caste system with Stagecoach (directed by John Ford).
    In Europe, without the strong studio system of Hollywood, films are more an issue of money rather than caste (or class). There are more or less expensive films, but not the same caste system. Ingmar Bergman's films of the 1950s probably cost less than Hollywood B films, but nobody would call them B films. They're called "art films."
    Shoot the Piano Player is not a B film, though it's budget was very small. What I said was that Truffaut (and most French critics of that era) admired Hollywood B films and thought many were superior to the A ("prestige") films, such as adaptations of classic novels (Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights).
    There's no doubt Shoot the Piano Player was intended as a homage to the Hollywood B films that Truffaut and his colleagues admired but which Americans dismissed as trash. But that doesn't make it a B film. Rather it's a low-budget "art" film and received with respect by American audiences as such.
    An art film is a special genre defined by its puzzling style and content, its unique form of promotion and exhibition, and with less focus on entertainment than on significance. For example, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's films were commonly shown in art houses in major US cities, promoted (in the press) as puzzling masterworks, and enjoyed for their artistic meaning and significance, not as entertainment. During intermission one was more likely to drink espresso coffee than to munch popcorn. And one didn't discuss the stars of the movie, but its symbolism.
    To sum up: Shoot the Piano Player is not a B movie. I never said it was. My focus during that lecture hour was on the "auteur theory," which valued the director's personality more than the budget or stars of a film and found more of a director's personality in Hollywood B films than in its A films.
    Because B films cost much less than Hollywood A films, directors were more independent (producers didn't interfere in B films since less money was at risk) and could focus on cinematic style instead of the star. Thus low-key lighting developed out of B film noir and horror films (Frankenstein, Dracula) because there were no stars one had to use a high key light on to show off their beauty and no producers who were romancing B film stars and insisting on their close-ups in the film.
    The content of B films was also more bizarre (as in film noir, sci-fi, and horror films) since the B film was just "filler" for the complete A-feature program.
     In the same way, the Bugs Bunny (and other Warners') cartoons were filler for the A-feature. So the cartoon director could do more interesting things cinematically than the director on the live-action A feature. Indeed, many Bugs Bunny cartoons have greater artistic status today than some A films they were originally packaged with!

---