Satyajit Ray’s work is a discard among major part of India (leaving Bengal aside – Ray’s Home and may be 5% of cinephiles and moviemakers), but I was amazed at the extent and knowledge people outside India had about his work.
Bresson and Tarkovksy are relatively obscure in their home countries (France and Russia, respectively), but have broad and solid, albeit limited, followings elsewhere.
Kurosawa had a tough time finding finacing for his later films Kagamusha was financed with foriegn money (lucas and Coppola helped him out there) and was much more appreciated abroad than in his native japan. Although i don’t know if that has changed and if this post of mine has any relevance… :S
Ken Loach’s films are generally treated respectfully in his native Britain, but they rarely get wide releases and sometimes (most recently It’s A Free World…) they go straight to TV. By contrast, they’ve been top ten hits in several European countries, and sometimes really surprising titles – Land and Freedom was clearly going to do well in Spain (as the first heavyweight film about the Spanish Civil War, and mostly in Spanish to boot), but The Navigators (a film about the utterly parochial subject of British rail privatisation that went straight to TV in the UK) was a hit in France!
I’d say Jan Svankmajer was significantly better known in Britain in the 1980s than in Czechoslovakia – it’s only after the Velvet Revolution that he really started to build a reputation in his native country. Even now, you can’t buy any of his short films on DVD over there, whereas you can get a complete box set in Britain.
I’m guessing Walerian Borowczyk was bigger in France than his native Poland, if only because most of his features were banned there until relatively recently – though most of the films were French rather than Polish.
Slightly more tangentially, Tarkovsky and Kieslowski’s reputations were well established in Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s respectively, but they didn’t take off in the US until much later. Conversely, Pedro Almodovar was the other way round – his films didn’t play in Britain until the late 1980s, and it wasn’t until the early 1990s that his entire back catalogue was in circulation. Similarly, Lina Wertmuller never really made much impact in Britain, although I understand she was a huge arthouse name in the US.
Ademption
A DOG OF FLANDERS (Patrasche: a Dog of Flanders, Made in Japan) attempts to explain how a generation of Japanese love a “classic French” book that was heretofore unknown in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The book was virtually unknown outside Japan, despite its European provenance.
Can you think of other films or books that are ignored by their home country, but garner iconic status in elsewhere?
My only other example is DINNER FOR ONE. A dark comedy short made, and then forgotten, in Britain. In Germany, it is required (pre) party viewing on New Year’s Eve. The short is played several time on different channels throughout the evening.
DINNER FOR ONE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1v4BYV-YvA