B movies, the French New Wave and Ed Wood, Jr

I've been watching some old American B movies from the '30s. And they are really terrible. There was a very inexpensive Roku channel I got. It shows nothing but public domain movies, and I'm not unhappy I got it, but these movies are just awful.

I thought I understood the French New Wave's fascination with B movies. They were very cheap and look pretty easy and they would have been interesting if directors had taken advantage if this and used them as a means of personal expression.

It was like Jim Jarmusch's explanation of his work. He said that they may not have been "virtuoso filmmakers", but they still had something to say.

Maybe B movies would be better with subtitles. Maybe if they were dubbed into French and subtitled in English they would be more interesting.

It always seemed like Luis Bunuel should have been the ideal of the French New Wave. He was a great auteur who worked in the manner of American B filmmakers.

Ed Wood

I guess I understand Ed Wood a little a better. His movies might have been barely passable as B movies in the 1930s, but he was making them in the '50s. It would be like someone making a passable '50s science fiction movie in the 1970s.

He grew up watching B movies before going off to war. No wonder he thought he could get away with making such bad movies.