Here's (above) what they call an "Actor Demo Reel." YouTube is full of them. The Hank Harris example I used here is far better than most and yet it still disappoints on some level, (actually, the first example on the reel isn't so bad) and I was curious
to understand why.
The answer it seems to me is that Harris geared himself up to play the kind of "post-modern" roles that TV offers now. Post-modern man perceives himself as a statistic, a victim, a cork on the waves of social and psychological forces. That's so different than the way people perceived themselves in the golden age of fiction when it was believed that man possessed free will and was on the Earth to undergo a trial, and when people still believed in good and evil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhoaSrrA6YQ
But it also has to do with tapping into weird, supernatural forces. Harris is always believable and appealing in the parts he plays in the demo, but is that all there is? Didn't Margaret Hamilton transcend "believable and appealing" when she played the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz?" Wasn't Peter Lorre more than simply scary and convincing in "Stranger on the Third Floor?" How about Garbo in "Grand Hotel?" It seems to me that it's an actor's job to bring to the project a pre-existing character of great power and iconic significance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoyEHyB4MnQ&feature=related
Then there's technique. It seems to me that a good actor lays down a tone and a rhythm that other actors can bounce off of. Actors playing a scene are like musicians in a jazz combo. They're laboring to create sounds that combine into a beautiful, satisfying whole. In my opinion you can learn more about this from the great character and supporting actors than from the stars.
I admit that I don't know anything about dramatic acting. If I did I'd probably have a lot more respect for what Harris did in the demo.
NOTE: In order to publish this post I had to delete my two previous ones dealing with solo dancing and Jim's sense of film. I started this post before I began the others (then saved what I'd done as a draft) and now, when I try to publish it, it will only post beneath the others where it won't be seen. The only thing I could do was to delete the top posts. My deepest apologies to commenters on the two deleted posts.
Some actors theorize that Spencer Tracy looks more like a modern actor in old films because his technique was more contemporary than that of those who played alongside him. Certain light bulbs are just different.
ReplyDelete"I wanna drink some beans with you," he says.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if maybe in the olden days, when someone told a story, it was because they had a message they wanted to convey, and the story came from that. Just like an analogy comes from trying to explain something. Things have gravitated to where, the artist first feels the urge to tell a story and then tries to decide what the message should be. After coming to the conclusion that there is no truth they are certain of, they decide that as long as the work comes from something real within them then the message will emerge on its own.
ReplyDeleteI think in art today the value of being real is the most cherished of values. But in the olden days it was okay to have an opinion about the world and to put that in your art.
Maybe there's this push for working purely from your subjective experience because the world is hoping to find common ground among all the voices and come to a consensus about what the world is and what it should be. or something.
"The answer it seems to me is that Harris geared himself up to play the kind of 'post-modern' roles that TV offers now. Post-modern man perceives himself as a statistic, a victim, a cork on the waves of social and psychological forces. That's so different than the way people perceived themselves in the golden age of fiction when it was believed that man possessed free will and was on the Earth to undergo a trial, and when people still believed in good and evil."
ReplyDeleteNo offense, Eddie, but sometimes I think you're still living in the late sixties. Do you really think movies today don't believe in good and evil? That's all we get nowadays. Look at the proliferation of films based on comic books and old TV shows. There's no gray areas to flesh out the characters and make them more interesting -- like in the films of the late 60's and early 70's.
My favorite films of the 40's -- the thrillers that has been labeled "film noir" -- dealt with nihilism and existentialism. It was like the characters were trapped and had no hope. Sure there bad decisions had something to do with it, but they also had some bad breaks against them. Do the characters in those movies really have free will? Weren't they also "a cork on the waves of social and psychological forces." Didn't characters like those in Detour, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Criss Cross, Night and the City, etc., have shadings of gray, as opposed to simply being good or evil?
Mr.F, have you opened up the 'Post Options' bit on the blogger page thingy when you're writing and posting a post? It should allow you to change the date and time of a post, meaning you can order them however you'd like as blogger posts chronologically.
ReplyDeleteOr you may already know about that and it's possible blogger was just being weird.
Hunsecker: Ha! I thought of some of those objections myself, but qualifying everything I said would have made the article read like a legal document. I stand by what I said, but there are, as you said, significant exceptions.
ReplyDeleteAaron: I like that line about beans too!
Aaron: What you said about everybody looking for a new consensus was interesting. I wonder if that's true? It does seem like the generation that's out there now is looking for a story that'll explain them to themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe story that deeply moved the generation that's still in school, or is just emerging from school, is the Harry Potter saga. That's a good sign. It means, in my opinion, that the appalling negativity of the past few decades is winding down. This new generation craves adventure and is open to old traditions.
Bitter: THANK YOU!!!! So THAT'S it!? I'll look into "Post Options!"
ReplyDeleteI don't have much of an opinion on Harris' demo reel but I would like to say that I am absolutely fascinated by Peter Lorre's performance in that film.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen "Stranger on the Third Floor" but I think either you or John posted that same clip several months ago. I definitely want to rent it now. He's so spooky and unpredictable!
I agree with you. Sure today's actors can ACT I guess...they don't seem too fake or anything, but they don't do anything to impress me either. They merely do their jobs.
ReplyDeleteLike you said, they aren't "iconic". Modern characters won't stick with you, you won't fall in love with them, you won't hate them, and they won't haunt you. They merely serve their purpose to advance the plot. Probably because they're trying to act "realistic". I'd rather have a less "believable" character that can blow me away with charisma and talent, rather than a boring putz who acts like my neighbour.
By the way, the third example on that demo tape, the one with the "broken mirror" comment was AWFUL.
Daniel Day Lewis got the Oscar for Best Actor for 'There Will Be Blood' this year, and there was something old Hollywood about how he played his character.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I've always noticed is the pace of the dialog in older movies is much slower, the voices of the actors are clearer, and there's empty space where nothing is said in a round of dialog. I like that because it gives me time to look at the sets and character's expressions and sort of fall into the movie.
I can't watch modern dramatic television because the dialog is so irritatingly fast, and every character interrupts the others. It makes me anxious. I find myself anticipating the end credits so I can have time to think.
I absolutely adored that Peter Lorre bit. He's a wonderful actor, so eerie, I love it!
ReplyDeleteI guess you just gotta know where to look with movies nowadays, there are surely some gems out there, still. With great acting to boot.
The Coen brothers for example, they've made so many fantastic movies with VERY memorable characters that have just that little bit of extra spice.
I suggest you to watch Barton Fink. That movie gripped me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqh1cXu-vck
Amazing performances, Tony Shalhoub, John Turturro to name a few.
Romance And Cigarettes, another movie with very distinct characters that I love: James Gardolfini, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Susan Surandon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyg_bZSYMtQ
Jeremy Irons always blows me away no matter what he does.
Michel Gondry doesn't disappoint me either.
Grah I don't have any time now to look for examples (going to the movies, actually! haha) but I'll email you some... or post them in a comment here...
"Daniel Day Lewis got the Oscar for Best Actor for 'There Will Be Blood' this year, and there was something old Hollywood about how he played his character."
ReplyDeleteThat's because he was being John Huston
Kidding. ; )
"Hunsecker: Ha! I thought of some of those objections myself, but qualifying everything I said would have made the article read like a legal document. I stand by what I said, but there are, as you said, significant exceptions."
ReplyDeleteI don't think they are exceptions, but rather the rule. Movies today tell safe stories of good triumphing over simplistic evil, ala the Harry Potter films you mentioned. There are very little challenging films today.
Could you at least point out the movies with this so-called "appalling negativity" that you speak of? Personally, they sound more interesting than the Harry Potter films.
Hunsecker: Well, it's a question of time. It takes a lot more time to answer a question like that than it does to ask it. Just naming a few films wouldn't have helped; I'd have had to talk about why I listed the films I did, and that would have taken a long, long post to do.
ReplyDeleteI can think of a related subject that you might like if I could get YouTube-type clips to illustrate it. I'd need Elspeth Dudgeon's sequence in "Old Dark House," (only the English language version), and the eloquent drunk's scenes in "Nightmare Alley."
I don't at all understand how you came to your reaction from this guy's humble (albeit professional) demo.
ReplyDeleteIt's his reel of past work--what he's done that he was cast in. He can only be what he was cast as, no more or less. These parts aren't Shakespearean, they're mostly TV roles.
Clearly he has a physical look-a kind of nebbishy, pale, nervous quality, and casting directors and producers etc. inevitably cast based on what they've already seen, not on "potential": "well, Ryan, this work is fine, but--how's your King Lear?" You know that doesn't happen.
You cite Peter Lorre, who was certainly a genius-and he was unique. He was also unfortunately for him typecast as a weirdo based on his unusual face and voice, so he got a lot "creepy", "neurotic", "monstrous" roles.
That he made them into more than they deserved in many cases was a tribute to his intellect and talent, but--he hated a lot of those parts! You enjoy them now as do I, but he would have much rather been playing in something his friend Brecht wrote than a lot of the psychos he got-not matter how well he did them.
He was also, God love him, a notorious scene stealer which not everyone who worked with him appreciated(chiefly because he was so terminally bored with the parts).
This guy here on the other hand isn't being cast as anything like the far out characters Lorre played. if he tried to ham it up he'd be doing a disservice to the other actors and the material.
I think he's quite good, especially considering that he's at the mercy of the scripts. This is mainly TV--again, a not terribly collaborative medium where you work fast and do the job you are asked to do well. That said, he's not hacking it out. And to blame him for the supposedly "postmodern" characters he gets seems to me to assume the tail is wagging the dog.
How can he possibly bear responsibility for how "people perceive themselves" today vs. during the "golden age of fiction"? That's a hell of a burden for this poor working actor! One I hardly think is his problem to bear. More like the writer's problem, I guess.
I'm amazed how much you extrapolate from the materials you find! I find that plenty fascinating.
Have you ever thought of taking acting classes yourself, just for the fun & insight it would provide into the process? I'd think you'd have a blast at it.
Eddie:
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to make a broad claim that today's movies are "appallingly negative" (which is untrue) then you should provide some examples to illustrate your point. Most of the films in major release these days are appallingly optimistic and sugar-coated, with pop-psychological "feel good" messages tacked on. Every character overcomes some obstacle and triumphs over adversity. The end. Nothing is subversive or satiric anymore, with a notable few exceptions like Thank You for Smoking.
I've seen both Old Dark House (but I don't quite remember that film) and Nightmare Alley. Now, Nightmare Alley is my kind of movie! Dark, oppressive, lurid, tragic, full of flawed characters, with all the hope of humanity wrung out of it! A breathe of fresh air in today's overly wholesome crop of motion pictures.
"It seems to me that it's an actor's job to bring to the project a pre-existing character of great power and iconic significance."
ReplyDeleteEddie, I think I understand your point, and that Hunsecker is mostly just pointing out the imperfection of your language, though I see his point too.
Precision is a very unwieldy instrument, and the second you tire of it, someone will call you on your sloppiness. Maybe one time in ten am I willing to exert the effort necessary to say precisely what I mean. I come as close as I can in the time I am willing to commit, and rely on the reader or listener to "get it". They don't always.
Harrison Ford tells a story I hope I won't butcher too much, about some producer who was giving him crap about a lackluster walk-on early in his career:
PRODUCER: "Tony Curtis' first role was a bellboy! You took one look at the kid and you said, 'NOW THERE'S A STAR!'"
FORD: "I thought he was supposed to be a bellboy."
This brilliant quip is delivered with a smug one-up attitude, and it illustrates the problem.
If I want to see a real bellboy, I'll check into a hotel. At the movies, I want to see a movie bellboy. I want to see somebody more interesting and theatrical than what I can see in a real hotel.
That doesn't mean I want extras to start doing funny business, but it does mean that a movie is not real and that most of us don't go because of the realism --we go for the "carefully crafted artifice," as you once put it.
How much a scene is like it would be if it really happened is not a value to me, but it has become a cinematic value for some. There was a time during the golden age when it had almost no value at all.
In my opinion a scene should usually play the way it would if people were mostly all very interesting to observe. That way, it's more entertaining than what would really happen.
--But people rave about films like ORDINARY PEOPLE, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM or CRASH, presumably because psuedo-realistic depictions of depressing themes is uplifting for them, somehow. I have to admit that if I were producing such a picture, Hank would be on my list.
A director who wants only "realism" in scenes is aiming too low. It's something that got started as a reaction to the all-too-phony Hollywood aesthetic, but we have ventured too far in the opposite direction at times.
Jennifer Connelly is one actor who never ceases to suck all the life out of me. All she can play is a somber person. She does that as well as anybody, but, so what? So can I. When she is on screen, all I can think is, "why doesn't she take her clothes off?"
I bring her up because Hank seems also to be specializing in somber roles, and that is maybe the definition of post-modern roles. Somber characters were not a big part of the golden age. Movie characters were mostly to be emulated and admired for their flavorful personalities, not to be identified with for how much their pain is like our pain.
Not every actor can be iconic, though. They get that way by projecting a big enough personality in the first place to get vehicles created for them. They sometimes have more personality than range.
Hank is probably lucky he was born now. Had he been working in the thirties or forties with that face, he might've been type cast as the kid who says, "GOLLY!" and "JEEPERS!"
Everybody: Aaaargh1 I can tell you guys don't want me to move on without elaborating on this, which I'm reluctant to do. The subject is just too big. That's why books are useful. You can carry on a sustained argument in a book. Maybe one of these days I'll write it up as a pamphlet.
ReplyDeleteI thought his acting was thoroughly professional. So was the lighting, makeup, sound, sets, etc. It's TV & shit just doesn't get any shinier. What really sucked was the direction of the actors & especially the writing. Try it & see if you can make those lines sound like dialog, especially without the halts & stammers.
ReplyDeleteNo, something else is eating Eddie.
"Could you at least point out the movies with this so-called "appalling negativity" that you speak of? Personally, they sound more interesting than the Harry Potter films."
ReplyDeleteVirtually all of them have this certain quality, though I would describe it as a kind of adolescent fatalism rather than sombreness. Every character in movies today is a self conscious, pouting, clueless, pathetic, man-child (or woman-child); and those are the supposedly heroic characters. The villains act like sneering, pseudomysterious clowns, trying to squint their eyes a lot and pooch out there lips so they will look cool.
If Harry Potter is uninsteresting it's because it's a poor, by-the-numbers adaption of a poor, by-the-numbers, adolescent-minded book written by a woman who has no literary skill whatsoever; unless you consider the endless repetition of cliches both in syntax and plotting a great talent; and not because it makes use of Good versus Evil.
"...and when people still believed in good and evil."
ReplyDeleteIf people just believed in good & bad, I'd call that progress.
"How much a scene is like it would be if it really happened is not a value to me, but it has become a cinematic value for some. There was a time during the golden age when it had almost no value at all."
ReplyDeleteThat's not true. There were periods of realism in cinema before these recent years. In the 20's the movies started leaving behind the obvious staginess of the films of the teens, and started to shoot on location. They also dealt with more adult subjects -- The Crowd, Diary of a Lost Girl, Greed, Sunrise, etc. The acting style even changed from the melodramatic overacting of the early teens to a more naturalistic style -- think Janet Gaynor, Lillian Gish and Buster Keaton.
In the 30's and early 40's that stage-bound look came back in vogue because of the heavy sound equipment and the studio system. But in the immediate post war years neorealism came into vogue. Many thrillers and gangster films started shooting on location, with characters that had more shadings of gray, as opposed to being simplistic black and white, good and evil people -- Brute Force, Gun Crazy (with it's uninterrupted long shot of the bank robbery filmed on location), The Set-Up (shot in real time), The Naked City, The Third Man, etc.
These were the first examples of the "anti-heroes" that would be elaborated on in the late 60's and early 70's.
If anything, realism started to vanish from film in the 80's (Flashdance, Top Gun, Porky's, E.T., etc.) and continues today. Modern films are anything but realistic. They are stylized and over-the-top. The big named filmmakers nowadays are Jerry Bruckheimer, Roland Emmerich, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, etc., none of whom makes realistic pictures. (Excepting Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.) The recent top grossing pictures are mostly Animal House type comedies (From American Pie to Old School), or comic book, theme park ride (Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean), and video game adaptations.
Even the few dramatic films you mentioned, like Crash, are far from realistic -- though that would seem to be their goal. Crash is as fake, and full of baloney as The Transformers movie. Actually, it's a throwback to the "women's picture" of the 40's.
For realism in films today I would suggest American Gangster, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, No Country For Old Men, and maybe There Will Be Blood (though I feel that film is flawed).
"Virtually all of them have this certain quality, though I would describe it as a kind of adolescent fatalism rather than sombreness. Every character in movies today is a self conscious, pouting, clueless, pathetic, man-child (or woman-child); and those are the supposedly heroic characters. The villains act like sneering, pseudomysterious clowns, trying to squint their eyes a lot and pooch out there lips so they will look cool."
ReplyDeleteCould you name some of the titles of these movies that contain this "adolescent fatalism" in your complaint?
"That's not true. There were periods of realism in cinema before these recent years. In the 20's the movies started leaving behind the obvious staginess of the films of the teens, and started to shoot on location."
ReplyDeleteDo you mean to say that the 20s was then followed by an inferior period--the period now called the Golden Age of Hollywood; a period which, in my my estimation, fulfills its title nicely.
Your statement makes the implication that melodrama is childish while realism is mature--this certainly is not the case, as can be evidenced through the powerful use of melodrama throughout history: in music, in oratory, in writing. What silly authority dictates that a fictional story must be documentary-like?
"If anything, realism started to vanish from film in the 80's (Flashdance, Top Gun, Porky's, E.T., etc.)"
You're confusticating two different types of fantasy, one mature--that of the Golden Age-- and one immature--that of the modern commercial blockbuster. These are entirely unrelated. Those movies, with exception of the merely mediocre E.T., are bad. The Golden Age movies were good. Notice that the modern movies receiving critical praise, in most cases, aspire to realiism.
You also misattribute film noir as being idealogically related to the New Hollywood. Orson Welles, whose "The Third Man" you include among those influencing the movement, said in a 1970s interview said that James Cagney might be the the greatest actor of all time, a man whose performances could hardly be considered realistic. Consider also his appreciation for John Ford, who never strove to get realistic results from his actors.
J.J.: Watch this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoLCnxVwbJA&feature=related
Very interesting thoughts.
Hunsecker, admittedly I am being selective, but I believe I have selected the bulk of films from the early sound era. The ones you refer to do exist, and are not to be ignored.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would not call your recent examples "realism", I would call them shining examples of carefully crafted artifice --in a gritty, realistic vein. Like THE GODFATHER.
A soap opera or 2nd rate dramatic TV show is more "realism", in this context, because even when the characters do incredible things, they usually do them in as mundane and bland a fashion as real people might, and that is what I am referring to. I am talking about performances that feel like you are standing in line at the DMV, or talking to your aunt Hattie about Mabel's wart, because that's how "realistic" they are.
I think you are focused on subject matter and cinematic style, and I think you are right, but I think it's a slightly different topic.
I'm talking about a performance and dialog ideology - whether characters should be portrayed in the same scale as real life, or whether they should be larger or more colorful. As a general rule I think in most cases they should be at least a little larger, or else just about anybody with a little natural ability and no training can do it. Instead of something unique and special, it becomes something utilitarian. How can I can't become invested in Hank's portrayals, unless I believe he is speaking for me, as the poster boy for dweebs? I certainly can't admire his flair.
Why would I care about fake people having exchanges that I would not care about REAL people having?
I don't want to see that. When I see that, the only things left of possible interest could be the scenery, music, and plot points, and it's not enough.
It's almost the same question as whether cartoon characters should be highly exaggerated or not. But let's not do what we did on that topic.
I have spoken and i am drunk, therefore, I must be right.
"These were the first examples of the "anti-heroes" that would be elaborated on in the late 60's and early 70's."
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you say here, but would go even further: the war years too had a lot of pretty gritty "realism" and elements of noir before what's now seen as the official postwar malaise style really set in with a vengeance(in some films, by no means all), afterwards: "The Maltese Falcon", "Casablanca" and in fact many of Bogart's war performances have that noirish, anti-hero thing happening...it's even in some Hitchcock: "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Saboteur", for example.
Of course, JJ is correct; the demands of sound necessitated going back to square one for film starting around 1929 in a couple of crucial ways: the crudeness of sound recording in the early 30s, and the resulting lockdown of the previously fluid camera due to the demands of sound, until better technical solutions could be found. Actors for a time had to "project" in mostly static, wide shots in a way that some had little experience doing-and others, too much stage training and too little inches from a camera.
JJ named some great silent actors and films, and there were many, many more that equaled those for subtlety and incredible film direction, great delicacy and, yes, even "realism" in a sense. Sound did mean a step backwards.
As for the films of the past 25 or so years: to me it's the ascendence of the popcorn movie(not that there's anything wrong with that). Eddie thinks Harry Potter signals a "return" to heroes and right/wrong etc? I think that kind of fairy-tale approach dates at least 30 years back to "Star Wars". Nihilism? No way--this is the age of fun for fun's sake! Black/white, heroes/villains, archetypes all.
Ordinary People & Crash span at least 20 years in time; there've always been those soapers and always will be. Crash was FAR from a success(wasn't it booed at Cannes? And it made no money here); mainstream audiences don't give a damn about critics' choices.
Personally I am as happy with "Star Wars", Raider of the Lost Ark" and "Toy Story" as I am with "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas". Films are just stories, and one can hopefully pick and choose from any number of different offerings at any given time, like a buffet. But it does seem that the so-called "negative" films have definitely been much in the minority the last generation, not predominating.
Do you mean to say that the 20s was then followed by an inferior period--the period now called the Golden Age of Hollywood; a period which, in my my estimation, fulfills its title nicely.
ReplyDeletedume3,
That is not what I am saying at all. I was only suggesting that "realism" appeared in movies at earlier periods. It's not a modern invention. This seems to have been forgotten due to time and changes in technique that have taken place in the history of the movie business.
I like a lot of films from the golden era, too (I like genre pictures like gangster films and thrillers from the 30's and 40's). But let's not forget that all eras of cinema history have their good and bad qualities. The filmmakers had to deal with the Hays Code censorship in 1934, and the large studios taking over production in the early sound era because of the expensive recording equipment. A lot of the freedoms that film directors had in the 20's were curtailed, such as more adult subject matter for stories. The heavy sound equipment derailed a lot of inventiveness with cinematography that occurred in the past decade, making many early 30's films look stagey and set bound. It would take a long time until that inventiveness came back (like in Citizen Kane [1941]).
The golden age had their share of clunkers and pot boilers, too. It's just that with time, the cream has risen to the top and the bad movies have been forgotten. For instance, Jeanette MacDonald & Eddie Nelson musicals, miscast costumed dramas like The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), Dragon Seed (1944) and The Conqueror (1956, starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan!), religious epics (The Sign of the Cross [1932], The Silver Chalice [1954], Land of the Pharaohs [1955], Cleopatra [1963] to name a few), those Beach Party movies of the 50's, the films of Ed Wood, unintentional camp like Reefer Madness (1936), She (1935), One Million B.C. (1940), and The Terror of Tiny Town (1938).
Your statement makes the implication that melodrama is childish while realism is mature--this certainly is not the case, as can be evidenced through the powerful use of melodrama throughout history: in music, in oratory, in writing. What silly authority dictates that a fictional story must be documentary-like?
ReplyDeleteNothing of the sort. I enjoy melodramas like Mildred Pierce, and Hitchcock films, for example. I never said any film had to adhere to a documentary-like style. I was just clarifying that "realism" appeared in movies decades earlier than has usually been assumed on these blogs.
There are many good and bad films that encompass both styles you've mentioned. I wouldn't rate one above the other.
But, if you're saying that documentary style of filmmaking is somehow less powerful than a melodramatic one, I would disagree. There are many neorealistic films that are powerful: The Set-Up, Gun Crazy, The House on Telegraph Hill, He Walked by Night, The Bicycle Thief, A Night To Remember, In Cold Blood, The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Reservoir Dogs, Bullitt, Dog Day Afternoon, etc.
"If anything, realism started to vanish from film in the 80's (Flashdance, Top Gun, Porky's, E.T., etc.)"
ReplyDeleteYou're confusticating two different types of fantasy, one mature--that of the Golden Age-- and one immature--that of the modern commercial blockbuster. These are entirely unrelated...
You also misattribute film noir as being idealogically related to the New Hollywood. Orson Welles...said in a 1970s interview said that James Cagney might be the the greatest actor of all time, a man whose performances could hardly be considered realistic.
There are mature and immature films of both eras. If you'd like, I could have chosen films like 1984, Blue Velvet, Brazil, How To Get Ahead in Advertising, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Raging Bull, Zelig, Full Metal Jacket, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Elephant Man to represent the 80's. Those were mature films, too. Some of them were fantasies, while even the dramatic ones were more stylized and expressionistic rather than realistic or documentary like ( the exception being Zelig since it is parodying a documentary).
But that's rather irrelevant. My main point was that, for the most part, movies in the 80's veered away from realism and more nuanced characterizations, which had been the style in the films of the early 70's -- that is a fact.
Film noir IS attributable to the new Hollywood. Just look at the list of recent films that are similar to the style of the 40's and 50's film noir: The Grifters, The Player, Memento, L.A. Confidential, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Black Dahlia, Brick, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, Mulholland Drive, The Departed, No Country For Old Men, Reservoir Dogs, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
James Cagney was a great actor, but part of his appeal was that he had a bit of the gutter about him. In other words, he brought his gritty past with him and use it in the gangster roles he played. Michael Caine was influenced by Cagney and Bogart because he felt they played real people from the mean streets, not the typical overly theatrical way of acting that British actors had at the time. So in a way, Cagney WAS a realistic actor.
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteIt appears you beat me to the punch, in answering about the early sound period, and did a much more eloquent job of writing about it than I did. Kudos.
"I like a lot of films from the golden era, too (I like genre pictures like gangster films and thrillers from the 30's and 40's). But let's not forget that all eras of cinema history have their good and bad qualities. The filmmakers had to deal with the Hays Code censorship in 1934, and the large studios taking over production in the early sound era because of the expensive recording equipment."
ReplyDeleteI like the Hays Code. Imposed restraint and allusion.
"The heavy sound equipment derailed a lot of inventiveness with cinematography that occurred in the past decade, making many early 30's films look stagey and set bound."
Again, a good thing that made the movies look crisp. Now we have people swinging the camera around hither and thither without reason.
"It's just that with time, the cream has risen to the top and the bad movies have been forgotten."
I've seen many Golden Age movies, and let me tell you, I've enjoyed 95% of them. Movies since the late 60s, I can name about five I liked. The hit/miss ratio is clear.
"Those were mature films, too."
I disagree.
"Film noir IS attributable to the new Hollywood."
I think you mean that the other way around. Either way it's wrong.
"Just look at the list of recent films that are similar to the style of the 40's and 50's film noir"
Those movies are similar to noir in only the most superficial way--and most of the people involved in making the old noir movies would have been appauled at the level of overt violence in the movies you named. All this can be ignored however, simply because the movies you named aren't any good, regardless of what influenced them.
"James Cagney was a great actor, but part of his appeal was that he had a bit of the gutter about him. In other words, he brought his gritty past with him and use it in the gangster roles he played. Michael Caine was influenced by Cagney and Bogart because he felt they played real people from the mean streets, not the typical overly theatrical way of acting that British actors had at the time. So in a way, Cagney WAS a realistic actor."
He spoke as thought he was playing to an audience of thousands and made broad gestures. This constitutes the very "staginess" you rail against. Cagney also expressed dislike of method acting, another hallmark of the New Hollywood. And why do you name Michael Caine? What has he done? Alfie?
"Michael Caine? What has he done? Alfie?
ReplyDeleteSLEUTH, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, THE ITALIAN JOB, and ALFIE are some of my favorites. He's a very watchable screen presence, in my opinion. He is often better than the movie he's in. Such is the plight of a working actor with mouths to feed.
I read the Harry Potter books and was a fan as a teenager. While hardly literary classics (really, the whole magical world is open and these kids spend six books going to school?!), the books are really watered down in the movie adaptations. There's plenty of characters that are on the fence with some redeemable qualities, like the Malfoy family, who really are assholes, but serve the dark side out of fear. There's way too many contrivances in the series that it would take an essay to list them all.
ReplyDeleteBTW, J.J., "The Black Dahlia" may be the worst movie I ever saw in a theater. Right up there with "Airheads".
"Again, a good thing that made the movies look crisp. Now we have people swinging the camera around hither and thither without reason."
ReplyDeleteI get that you want to disagree and argue opinions about the early days of film but with all due respect-that statement is pure nonsense and simply not factual.
EVERYone involved, from the directors and studio heads/producers through the actors and down to the tech operators hated the early sound era and the locked-down camera's limitations.
It most certainly did NOT make movies look"crisp". there was no "upside" to the early days at all. Nothing but a lot of bad movies and technical headaches, resulting in a lot of stagey films. The ensuing bombs crashed a lot of careers that it probably shouldn't have, both in front of and behind the cameras.
Can you give any examples of what you're thinking of to back up your assertions? Can you watch a beautiful moving tracking shot such as those in "Sunrise" and say they weren't a million times better visually and artistically than a locked down, utterly static camera (static NOT for artistic reasons but ONLY because the movement of the camera was impossible with early sound-it was too large, too heavy and encased in a baffling "box")?
See, I like debating and everyone has his tastes. What is hard to abide is hoooooge generalization. Eddie does it; fair enough, it's his blog, Anyone who reads it regularly or knows him personally as I am happy to do knows he loves to theorize and extrapolate, hence the title of this blog. When I or another poster says "examples, please, Eddie" it's because it's part of the debate and so it's a shame imho that he just won't or hasn't the time to go further, but hey--he's got a life and if he doesn't care to write a longer response that's cool, too. But we can still ask. ; )
You are also generalizing and claiming assertions based on generalizations.
Seriously, I get weary of fast cutting--it's been hammered home over & over and over-probably the most overused and cited meme in movies is "MTV-style cutting"-and there's definitely loads of truth to it. I get REALLY tired of "swooping" shots when they are done for no apparent reason-at least in my opinion(see: "Beowulf"), so we agree there.
But to make a wild leap saying a locked down camera in 1930 was a good thing because it made the movies look "crisp" in 1930-34 or so-none of that awful circa 1990s "swooping" is just bizarre.
Does Hitchcock's moving camera bug you too? Michael Powell's?
Come on! There is NO correlation between excesses of the late 20th century styles in film and what followed from clunky, awkward, crude early equipment.
Sure, restrictions can result in ingenious solutions-if the director is ingenious. But you know what? Films WERE just as inventive BEFORE the Hays Code and BEFORE a heavy sound camera. There's ample proof of it.
Btw, Pre-code cinema was certainly racier but it wasn't pornographic--there was just as much "suggestiveness" and cleverness in play-again, IF the writer and/or director was clever.
For all those odd quotes you may have read from this or that director saying "following the Hays code was great! It made me be more inventive", blah blah--yeah, sure, maybe it did--but then they had NO choice in the matter, no other way to go. But believe me, that's a lot of backwards justifying and hindsight: Every writer and director with a brain and passion for film stories hated having to work under it at the time.
The audiences didn't really need it--they weren't babies-people didn't get oh-so-much-more sensitive or less sexual or dumber immediately following 1933.
It was just that the studios were scared pantsless by the threat of government restrictions and censorship (as I believe Britain had in their film industry), so they hired Will Hays and implemented their own.
Carry on. I'm just waiting for my laundry to come out of the dryer. ; )
"However, I would not call your recent examples "realism", I would call them shining examples of carefully crafted artifice --in a gritty, realistic vein. Like THE GODFATHER.
ReplyDeleteA soap opera or 2nd rate dramatic TV show is more "realism", in this context, because even when the characters do incredible things, they usually do them in as mundane and bland a fashion as real people might, and that is what I am referring to."
i.d.r.c.,
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to what you wrote, but I was sort of busy with the debate with dume3.
Anyway, I just wanted to state I understand what you are talking about with regards to dull acting. But I wouldn't call that realistic, either. Realism doesn't have to be dull! (Hitchcock once said movies were real life with the boring parts edited out.) There are lots of exciting characters in the real world. For instance, there are some really interesting and odd people at the DMV (the example you cited) and if a movie can't capture that, then it's not the fault of trying to be "realistic".
That actor Hank isn't playing normal, everyday mundane people, either. In the first clip, he's a nervous blackmailer; in the one from the film Pumpkin, he's a mentally retarded man; in the last one, I think, he's a pompous, yet vengeful, nerd. He's not the "floating cork" victim that Eddie describes in his post.
Usually, with regards to cinema, "realism" meant striving for a naturalism and believability not seen in more contrived pictures. Of course it's still "artifice", as all narrative film is. It's the style that sets it apart. Realism usually means more location shooting, as opposed to rear-projection shots or indoor sets, and more naturalistic acting. The stories usually feature a gritty social tableau (like The Godfather example you mentioned). Look at the Italian post war Neorealist films, for example.
BTW, J.J., "The Black Dahlia" may be the worst movie I ever saw in a theater. Right up there with "Airheads".
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
I hated it too, and I'm one of those people who's fascinated by the real crime. I was only using it as an example of what might be called neo-noir. Just because the film is an artistic failure doesn't mean that it doesn't belong in the "film noir" category. (There were plenty of noir films from the 40's and 50's that were poorly made examples, too.) There has been a trend in crime dramas today that harken back to the 40's, and this movie is definitely one of them.
I like the Hays Code. Imposed restraint and allusion.
ReplyDeleteSo you think censorship is a good thing? That's an odd statement to read on this blog, where the people here usually complain about such creative restrictions.
As Jenny stated, most of the artisans in the film business in the golden era chafed under the Hays Code rules. They often complained bitterly about it in interviews years later. Some of them tried to skirt the restrictions in anyway they could, often pushing the envelope in terms of taboo subject matter.
Have you ever seen the 1949 version of Gun Crazy? There is a scene in that movie that was forced on the filmmakers by the Hays Office. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and mars a well crafted film. It's the scene where John Dall asks Peggy Cummings, "Why do you have to kill people!? Why can't you let them LIVE!?!" It brings about unintentional laughter from audiences. As if audiences needed that type of obvious morality forced down their throats.
You may see the classic Hollywood films as wholesome and safe, but in their day many of them were controversial and caused outrage from morality groups. Certain people thought films like Frankenstein (1931) and The Maltese Falcon (1941) were sick and depraved, for example, and wanted them banned. (Obviously, they were in the minority, since those films proved to be box office successes.)
I would recommend reading "Pre-Code Hollywood" and "The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office 1934 to 1968" if you want to know about the history of the Hays Office censorship.
IDRC: SLEUTH, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, THE ITALIAN JOB, and ALFIE are some of my favorites. He's a very watchable screen presence, in my opinion. He is often better than the movie he's in. Such is the plight of a working actor with mouths to feed."
ReplyDeleteI did not mean to suggest he is a poor actor but he is hardly an iconic firgure whose invocation might expected when broadly discussing movies.
"While hardly literary classics (really, the whole magical world is open and these kids spend six books going to school?!), the books are really watered down in the movie adaptations."
To read Harry Potter instead of the copious amounts of much better young person's literature (i.e. the works of Lewis Carrol, Kenneth Grahame, Mark Twain), is plainly, a mistake. Harry Potter is void of any complex thinking in both its style or the cliched ideas it prensents.
"EVERYone involved, from the directors and studio heads/producers through the actors and down to the tech operators hated the early sound era and the locked-down camera's limitations.
It most certainly did NOT make movies look"crisp". there was no "upside" to the early days at all. Nothing but a lot of bad movies and technical headaches, resulting in a lot of stagey films."
If early sound movies were inferior it was because of the sound quality, not the visuals. By 1931-34 fine movies like Public Enemy, Grand Hotel (a movie Eddie referenced in his initial post), Duck Soup, It Happened One Night, and Red Dust were released. You make it seem as though there was an unending stream of bad movies at the beginning of the sound era when in fact there was merely short period of a few years in the late 20s, and then many big stars broke though and the Golden Age commenced. Again, I am confronted with "stagey" as a term of derogation. Why?
"The ensuing bombs crashed a lot of careers that it probably shouldn't have, both in front of and behind the cameras."
Certainly, but that is attributable to some actor's poor, undevloped elocution, and likewise the crews inexperience with sound recording.
"Can you give any examples of what you're thinking of to back up your assertions?"
Certainly, but let me preface by pointing out that while early sound camera systems were cumbersome, they were not immovable. Also, I don't mean to say that the camera should never move in any movie, but that it should move only as an occaisonal accent to a crisp held shot.
Now examples: In Citizen Kane, most of the scenes are long static shots, although some of you have suggested that this movie contains camera acrobatics, it includes only a few shots which might fall into that category; In the Lady Eve, the long shot where Stanwyck is toying with Fonda's hair; More recently, Ran contains not a single closeup and not a single tracking shot.
"Can you watch a beautiful moving tracking shot such as those in "Sunrise" and say they weren't a million times better visually and artistically than a locked down, utterly static camera"
Perhaps, but Sunrise is a largely static movie which uses motion as an accent, which I discusses about. Movies today use motion as the predominant and thereby reduce the impact it might attain if it was contasted with crisp shots.
"Does Hitchcock's moving camera bug you too? Michael Powell's?"
Again, those directors use motion as as ACCENT against static shots.
"Sure, restrictions can result in ingenious solutions-if the director is ingenious. But you know what? Films WERE just as inventive BEFORE the Hays Code and BEFORE a heavy sound camera. There's ample proof of it."
Silent and sound movies are difficult to compare and I didn't mean to encourage such a comparison.
"For all those odd quotes you may have read from this or that director saying "following the Hays code was great! It made me be more inventive", blah blah--yeah, sure, maybe it did--but then they had NO choice in the matter, no other way to go."
I think this quote speaks to this question with great wisdom: "When the light dove parts the air in free flight and feels the air’s resistance, it might come to think that it would do much better still in space devoid of air." — Immanuel Kant
"The audiences didn't really need it--they weren't babies-people didn't get oh-so-much-more sensitive or less sexual or dumber immediately following 1933."
Many members of the audience were indeed offended and their complaints, combined with the objections of religious groups incited the sudios to create the code.
"So you think censorship is a good thing?"
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the censor. I'm aware of the numerous cases where the plot and content of movies were changed, but in the majority of cases, I think these changes had a negligible effect.
"You may see the classic Hollywood films as wholesome and safe..."
Some of them.
I've seen many Golden Age movies, and let me tell you, I've enjoyed 95% of them. Movies since the late 60s, I can name about five I liked. The hit/miss ratio is clear.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how many golden age films you've seen, but like I stated before, the cream rises to the top. You've probably seen the "classics", not the failures that have fallen through the cracks and have been forgotten. Take a look at this website, how many of those old films have you actually seen? There was a lot of mediocrity back then, too. It's just that many of them are not available on DVD or VHS for us to evaluate today.
The movies of the late 60's and early 70's were groundbreaking in a lot of ways. (Bonnie and Clyde, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, etc.) There are just as many classics from that era as there is from the 30's through the 50's. Your entitled to your tastes, but you are obviously ignorant of a lot of film history. (No offense.) I don't understand people who summarily dismiss great work because they are close-minded about it, and prefer comforting myths of a long lost age.
"Those were mature films, too."
I disagree.
But you are wrong. The list of movies I provided were of adult and sophisticated films. Do you honestly think Michael Radford's version of 1984 is immature? Or that Zelig is somehow childish? At least explain your reasons.
Those movies are similar to noir in only the most superficial way--and most of the people involved in making the old noir movies would have been appauled at the level of overt violence in the movies you named. All this can be ignored however, simply because the movies you named aren't any good, regardless of what influenced them.
Again, you're wrong! They are also similar to noir based on substance. (The feelings of paranoia and nihilism, for instance.) The Grifters is based on an old Jim Thompson book, the same author who wrote the screenplay for Kubrick's The Killing (1956)! James Ellroy wrote L.A. Confidential based on real events in 1950's Los Angeles, not just on his favorite noir film Crime Wave (1954). The film version of L.A. Confidential doesn't stylistically imitate the old Hollywood noir films: it is shot in bright light as opposed to dark expressionistic lighting. Memento is an amazingly intricate film, and goes beyond other noir films that used amnesia as a plot gimmick, such as Somewhere in the Night or Black Angel (both 1946). The Player satirizes the paranoia and style of film noir. Reservoir Dogs is another intricate, layered crime film that is noir in substance, since stylistically it looks more like a 70's movie rather than one from the 40's. However, I would agree that The Black Dahlia is just a stylistic rip-off of old noir.
As for the violence, that is ludicrous! The old filmmakers would have chomped at the bit to go as far as modern filmmakers are allowed to. The old noir films were often criticized for being excessively violent and lurid in their day. The gangster films of the early 30's like Public Enemy and Scarface were controversial and accused of glamorizing criminals. It's one reason the Hays Gode got more restrictive in 1934. Post war Movies like Brute Force and The Big Heat really pushed the envelope in term of more graphic violence. (Gloria Graham gets a cup of hot coffee thrown in her face in The Big Heat, for example.)
Some of the neo-noir films today aren't even as violent as you think. The Player certainly isn't, or Memento. The most infamous scene in Reservoir Dogs -- where the undercover cop gets his ear cut off -- takes place off camera. The violence is only implied, which is sometimes stronger.
"Take a look at this website, how many of those old films have you actually seen?"
ReplyDeleteI've about half of them in their entirety or in part, and read about the vast majority, and if you make the tenuous assuption that I just happen viewed only the "cream" half, I should say the ratio wiill still be high.
"The movies of the late 60's and early 70's were groundbreaking in a lot of ways."
If you mean groundbreaking as in the beginning of a qualitative decline, then yes.
"Your entitled to your tastes"...
How did you come to that conclusion?
"...but you are obviously ignorant of a lot of film history."
How's that?
(Cagney) spoke as thought he was playing to an audience of thousands and made broad gestures. This constitutes the very "staginess" you rail against. Cagney also expressed dislike of method acting, another hallmark of the New Hollywood. And why do you name Michael Caine? What has he done? Alfie?
ReplyDeleteIn his day, actors like James Cagney and Barbera Stanwyck were considered naturalistic; they seemed like real people from the streets, not grand thespians from the theater. They spoke with gutteral New Yorker inflections. Today they may seem more theatrical, but they didn't back then. Compare them to the Barrymores of the same era.
(In that Orson Welles clip you linked to, didn't you find it ironic that Welles also raved about Gary Cooper? Cooper was anything but theatrical and stagey. He seemed almost too laconic and stiff. Yet Welles thought he was magic on screen.)
Cagney didn't dislike "method" acting because it didn't exist back then. He hated improvisation! He wanted his costars to stick to the script, not make up their own dialog. While some method actors did improvise too, that's not what method acting was about! The Method is when you use some experience from your past to play a certain scene, in order to bring truth and authenticity to it.
According to Jack Lemmon, when he asked Cagney the secret to acting Cagney replied, "Learn your lines... plant your feet... look the other actor in the eye... say the words... mean them". (emphasis added) The "mean them" part is the same philosophy that the method teaches.
As for Michael Caine, the reason I brought him up is because he was influenced by Cagney and Bogart. He was a cockney street kid and related to the characters that Cagney and Bogart played, as opposed to the type of roles British actors had. The English style of acting depended on tradition, from the theater.
"The Grifters is based on an old Jim Thompson book, the same author who wrote the screenplay for Kubrick's The Killing (1956)! James Ellroy wrote L.A. Confidential based on real events in 1950's Los Angeles, not just on his favorite noir film Crime Wave (1954)."
ReplyDeleteSimply because a movie is based on previoused work, it not not follow that that movie will have the essence of the original, which is the case here, I think.
"As for the violence, that is ludicrous! The old filmmakers would have chomped at the bit to go as far as modern filmmakers are allowed to."
You are underestimating the cultural differences between the Golden Age today. The major Golden Age directors would have never depicted the kind of overt violence or ludeness contained in the movies you have named, because it probably never would have occured to them as morally or artistically suitable.
I didn't mean to imply that Harry Potter was good reading (it is emphatically not). I'm just saying that they're better than the movies.
ReplyDeleteJ.J., I know you just lurrrve to argue, but dume3 is correct. The amount of genuine classics in the 'classical' era is overwhelming. What you're naming are just a few examples of "New Age" Hollywood. To say that there were as many classics in that era as the 30s through 50s is ludicrous at best. Maybe some that were just as good, but not nearly as many in number.
Like with the worst cartoons of the same era, even the worst movies of the 30s through 50s just offer more than the smegma that is the 80s through today.
"...There are lots of exciting characters in the real world..."
ReplyDeleteSure there are, and the unstated point is that they make better studies for film characters than typical people do. If there were not exciting or interesting characters in the real world, perhaps nobody would have ever had an idea for a story about a person; only stories about the situations people find themselves in, and you would not really care who the people in the story are, but you might still be idly curious about what happens to them.
There are loads of movies and TV shows like that, that use characters just to tell me who likes who, who is mad at who, who is the bad guy, who has personal problems, who wants to obtain something --that use characters merely to advance the plot; not to show me anything insightful or specific about humanity, or even to have basic appeal. I'd rather read the outline.
Of course I don't mean characters all need to be appealing; they can be unappealing --like Margaret O'Brien, but even while being unappealing, she had appeal. You want to watch her do what she does.
Movies should be about interesting people. They needn't be grandiose, but most average, normal, realistically-scaled or entirely non-stylized characters are interesting only when a piano falls on them; not when they are talking. The situation may have your interest, but not the character.
You can put an interesting character in a mundane situation. You can watch him eat a sandwich and he will make it interesting. Think you could watch Hank eat a sandwich? Please don't ask me for a list of great sandwich eating scenes. There probably are very few. It was just an expression, used to make a point --like, "floating cork."
Sure, you may find a colorful character at the DMV or any other place, and that would be interesting. But, what typically occurs on any given day at the DMV would probably not be, so why go out of your way to contradict what I am fairly sure you understand?
Movies and movie characters should be about what does not typically occur, even in mundane circumstances. That is what interests me in the real world; the unusual or outstanding. What aspect of Hank would you say is either unusual or outstanding, from a performance point of view? Remember it's a demo reel, supposedly showing highlights.
"He's not the "floating cork" victim that Eddie describes in his post."
I guess that depends on how exact you need a person to be before conceding the essence of his point. Even allowing for your descriptions of Hank's roles, "floating cork" does not seem out of line to me. He's not a hero, a go-getter, a problem-solver, a force of nature, and seems generally more passive than proactive. Now, you could take that to mean that I think weak characters are off-limits, but no. It means I think even weak characters need watchability, and I fail to see Hank's. I just feel bored. In his defense, making a weak character watchable is no easy feat.
In a casual conversation I get more out of trying to understand what people mean than by picking apart the letter of what they say. What they say is often inadequate, or imprecise. To overcome that, you almost have to draft a legal document instead of having a short conversation. It can be a nearly impenetrable barrier for people on different wavelengths.
Hank may not be playing normal, mundane characters, if you insist, but he sure plays them like normal, mundane people.
"Usually, with regards to cinema, "realism" meant striving for a naturalism and believability not seen in more contrived pictures.
Yes. The problem is trying to do double or triple duty with descriptors that may lack sufficient precision in the first place.
Edward G. Robinson appears very natural on film, but I don't know any people who gesticulate like he does, not even Italians. So is he realistic? More so than many before him, but not really. A more vivid example would be Gleason's Ralph Kramden. Very natural, very believable, but he is not like anybody I know. There may even be a sense in which you would say he is realistic, but that realism would not be found in the character's scale. The same is true of Cagney. Natural, yes, believable, yes, but definitely larger than real life.
That's why you have to try to define what you mean right now when you say such things. They have not much meaning outside of a well-defined context.
...but like I stated before, the cream rises to the top.
For sure it does, and apparently no lesson has been learned, because they are still producing film and television that is as easy or easier to forget as the worst of the golden age, and it's probably fair to say it's a larger proportion of junk. How much cream is there to rise from the last 15-20 years?
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL doesn't seem like noir to me. It's just set in the noir period, and it's about cops and crime and corruption.
And MEMENTO sucks. So does Guy Pearce. He looked competent in L.A. CONFIDENTAL because he was playing a stiff prick; apparently no stretch.
I did not mean to suggest (Michael Caine) is a poor actor but he is hardly an iconic firgure whose invocation might expected when broadly discussing movies.
ReplyDeleteLots of great actors from the golden age aren't iconic figures, either: Robert Ryan, Richard Basehart, Dan Duryea, Joseph Cotton, Alec Guiness, for example. Should they be brushed aside like Caine when discussing movies?
There are also many iconic stars that are mediocre actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Charlton Heston, etc.
Caine is a top notch actor that was in some great films, and he was adept at both comedy and drama. I guess that's not good enough for some people.
If early sound movies were inferior it was because of the sound quality, not the visuals. By 1931-34 fine movies like Public Enemy, Grand Hotel (a movie Eddie referenced in his initial post), Duck Soup, It Happened One Night, and Red Dust were released. You make it seem as though there was an unending stream of bad movies at the beginning of the sound era when in fact there was merely short period of a few years in the late 20s, and then many big stars broke though and the Golden Age commenced.
The films you mentioned are the exceptions. I like Public Enemy and Duck Soup. However, look at The Cocoanuts, the first Marx Bros. comedy. It feels like one is watching a stage play; most of the shots are long and static, like a bad TV show or a throwback to the early days of silent film. You may think it's great, but myself and many others find it dull. It's the poor visuals that make the film boring, not the sound quality.
Compare the inventive silent comedy of Buster Keaton to the talkies he got stuck making at MGM, like What, No Beer? or Speak Easily. I prefer the former.
Signing a contract with MGM proved to be the worst thing for Keaton. MGM assumed that talking pictures should have nothing but constant dialog, and not sight gags. Therefore, Keaton wasn't allowed to do the type of brilliant slapstick he was known for. It was MGM's bone-headed decision that ruined Keaton's career, not the sound of Keaton's voice -- which was just fine.
Charlie Chaplin avoided that pitfall by remaining independent, and he shot his 30's film silent, only dubbing in sound later. That way he still had the freedom to move his camera like he did in the 20's.
Again, I am confronted with "stagey" as a term of derogation. Why?
"Stagey" is dull, flat and unimaginative. Those early Marx Bros. films are only interesting because the Marx Bros. are interesting. The stories aren't told in an expressive way. That would have to wait until the 40's.
Certainly, but let me preface by pointing out that while early sound camera systems were cumbersome, they were not immovable. Also, I don't mean to say that the camera should never move in any movie, but that it should move only as an occaisonal accent to a crisp held shot.
ReplyDeleteAll films have static shots, even the modern ones with all the whirligig camera moves that you decry. The overuse of moving camera is a recent phenomenon -- mostly because of the use of CGI give them easy opportunity to do so. Those films are in the minority, though.
Moving the camera is not just an "accent" for a static shot. The movement of a camera has a reason, and should be used as a part of the film language -- in order to tell the story in the best way possible. (A moving camera also gives a feeling of dimensionality to the flat movie screen.) The static, stagey early talkie pictures you admire are mostly dialog based stories, told without flair. The Marx Bros. films work, despite the mundane camera work, because the Marx Bros. are funny, and their comedy is mostly dialog based. (Their first film was based on a stage play.)
Now examples: In Citizen Kane, most of the scenes are long static shots, although some of you have suggested that this movie contains camera acrobatics, it includes only a few shots which might fall into that category
Citizen Kane was derided by some because Orson Welles, as the director, chose not to shoot it in the "invisible" style that most Hollywood productions espoused. (Wherein the audience wasn't supposed to be made aware of the camera. Welles was accused of showing off.) He moved his camera far more than in those stage-bound early 30's films.
You need to rewatch the movie. It is filled with camera movements, both big and subtle. (Especially when a new character is introduced.) Here are just a few to refresh your memory...
* The first shot of the film is 3 tracking shots up chain link fences.
* The camera goes through the neon sign on the roof in the nightclub scenes into the skylight, it continues down towards the ex-Mrs. Kane. The camera move is repeated when the reporter revisits Mrs. Kane.
* There's a large camera movement from the statue of Walter Thatcher in his memorial through the large atrium into the room with the manuscript; the camera continues across the written manuscript page, it dissolves to another camera move from the child Kane playing in the snow out through the window of his cabin. In fact the whole scene of the child Kane meeting Thatcher is filled with camera movement. The montage of Kane growing up with Thatcher is filled with pans and dolly shots.
* The camera tracks down from the Enquirer sign to Kane and Jeb in the carriage in front of the building.
* The camera dollies into the photograph of the Chronicle newspaper staff, it becomes the real men in Kane's hall. It follows Kane as he crosses in front of the staff of men.
* During the breakfast scenes with Kane and his first wife, the camera dollies into and out of the scene.
* The camera dollies into the furnace towards the burning sled at films end.
There are also hand held camera tracking shots in the faux newsreel in the beginning.
Plus his camera compositions, even when "static" were more expressive than that of the typical early 30's movie. Even in those still shots, characters move from the background to the foreground or cross through the mise-en-scene. That doesn't happen much in the early 30's films. Characters tend to stay in one place, probably to be close to the hidden microphone.
Many members of the audience were indeed offended and their complaints, combined with the objections of religious groups incited the sudios to create the code.
ReplyDeleteIt was only a vocal minority of people that were offended enough to bring about the Hays Code. The films that raised their ire were very popular with the general public -- such as the gangster films I mentioned earlier, and comedies like those that starred Mae West.
In fact, the code ruined the comedy of West, and turned Betty Boop from a sexy flirt into a dull house frau.
Opps --I meant Margaret Hamilton
ReplyDeleteSimply because a movie is based on previoused work, it not not follow that that movie will have the essence of the original, which is the case here, I think.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean "based on previous work"? do you mean just like the many golden age Hollywood films that were based on even older novels? Frankestein (1931) was based on a book from 1817, for instance. Do you hate that movie? 'Cause it certainly departs from the "essence" of Mary Shelley's novel.
Have you read the book The Grifters? If not, how would you know if the film version doesn't have the same "essence" as the novel? It seems you are condemning the movie based on the fact that it wasn't made more than 40 years ago.
You are underestimating the cultural differences between the Golden Age today. The major Golden Age directors would have never depicted the kind of overt violence or ludeness contained in the movies you have named, because it probably never would have occured to them as morally or artistically suitable.
You are forgetting that I already told you that many of those golden age films were deemed to be controversial in their day. Film was still a young medium, and though the images in those early gangster and horror films may seem safe today, they were quite powerful in their own time. Imagine an audience who had never seen such violence depicted in any medium before (except maybe in Shakespearean plays) suddenly watching The Public Enemy for the first time. It must have been quiet shocking and exciting. (In fact, the majority of the classic films involve gunplay of some sort.)
The violence and "lewdness" you allude to in movies today didn't happen overnight. It was built upon from the gains made and fought for during the classic era. In order to shock people, the envelope had to be pushed a little further each time. It was a gradual progression but it did take place, despite the best efforts of the Hays Code to stop it.
Scarface was finished in 1930 but delayed release until 1932 because of problems with the censors. The movie was considered to be too violent and brutal in it's day. From there it's a straight line to such violent films as Brute Force, The Killers, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, Night of the Living Dead, The Godfather, etc.
You're wrong if you think that the directors from the golden age wouldn't have made more explicit films if they were allowed to. The directors that survive past the studio system did make more violent and sexually explicit films in the 70's and 80's. Look at Hitchcock's Frenzy, or John Huston's Prizzi's Honor.
J.J., I know you just lurrrve to argue, but dume3 is correct. The amount of genuine classics in the 'classical' era is overwhelming. What you're naming are just a few examples of "New Age" Hollywood. To say that there were as many classics in that era as the 30s through 50s is ludicrous at best. Maybe some that were just as good, but not nearly as many in number.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" (ahem),
Fifty years from now certain films from our era will stand the test of time and be considered classics by a whole new group of people.
If you've ever read reviews or essays about movies written in the 30's or 40's, then you know that the old films we love today were considered mostly lurid, vulgar trash back then. Sophisticated, adult novels were sanitized and infantilized when adapted into films. (MAD had a funny satire on this discrepancy in the 50's, titled "Book! Movie!")
You're right that there were more numerous films made in the 30's and 40's -- theaters had double bills back then. With those odds, there's bound to be more "classics."
It's been tougher on filmmakers since the collapse of the studio system, no doubt. That system allowed filmmakers to learn their craft. The down side of the studios were their rigidness in the face of new ideas, and many old films -- while they have a professionalism about them -- were nothing more that time-fillers.
You say I only mentioned a few examples of "new age Hollywood" in my previous posts, but that's only because I didn't want to take up too much space. I could have listed even more great movies post golden age. Such as: American Graffiti, Bananas, Bedazzled (1967), Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Conformist, The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, Duel, Eraserhead, The Hospital, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Godfather II, Jaws, Klute, The Long Goodbye, Marathon Man, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Nashville, Network, Panic in Needle Park, Rosemary's Baby, Sleeper, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Take the Money and Run, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Young Frankenstein.
"In his day, actors like James Cagney and Barbera Stanwyck were considered naturalistic; they seemed like real people from the streets, not grand thespians from the theater."
ReplyDeleteTheir acting is extremely theatrical especially in dramtic roles. They are constantly wisecracking and making calculated gestures. Perhaps, this is not much the case when they played comedy--in that case they just read the lines, but this is different from today's attempts at replicating the average person.
"In that Orson Welles clip you linked to, didn't you find it ironic that Welles also raved about Gary Cooper? Cooper was anything but theatrical and stagey. He seemed almost too laconic and stiff."
Indeed, and that acting style would never be accepted today. He just read the lines, that's it.
"Cagney didn't dislike "method" acting because it didn't exist back then."
Cagney did come in contact with method acting and he didn't like it, or the results it produced. He thought that a good actor could simply say the lines and entertain, without preparation.
"All films have static shots, even the modern ones with all the whirligig camera moves that you decry."
There are many movies which have almost none, and those few static shots are held for an instant before camera begins moving again. At least 75% percent of a movie should be held in a static shot, and not rapidly changing static shots, but ones that are held for at least 20 seconds.
"Moving the camera is not just an "accent" for a static shot."
Not in today's movies.
The movement of a camera has a reason, and should be used as a part of the film language -- in order to tell the story in the best way possible."
Using them as an occaisonal accent is the best way possible.
"The static, stagey early talkie pictures you admire are mostly dialog based stories, told without flair."
Moving a camera is not flair--it is an act which should be avoided except when necessary or to give visual variety against predominating held shots.
"Citizen Kane was derided by some because Orson Welles, as the director, chose not to shoot it in the "invisible" style that most Hollywood productions espoused."
It was derided by Hearst because it made fun of him and he suppressed it. While the movie won only one Oscar for best screenplay, was it was nominated for another eight.
"He moved his camera far more than in those stage-bound early 30's films."
And about 90% less than today's movies. I'm aware of the instances you name.
"even when "static" were more expressive than that of the typical early 30's movie."
Did I not say they were carefully chosen?
"Even in those still shots, characters move from the background to the foreground or cross through the mise-en-scene."
Exactly, in a held shots, which is how the majority of the movie takes place.
"Lots of great actors from the golden age aren't iconic figures, either: Robert Ryan, Richard Basehart, Dan Duryea, Joseph Cotton, Alec Guiness, for example. Should they be brushed aside like Caine when discussing movies?"
ReplyDeleteAlec Guinnes is, but who's counting? There aren't ANY iconic actors today who can compare with those of the golden age in either appeal or fame. The likes of Bogart, Garbo, Davis, Barrymore, Cagney, Grant--there aren't any stars on that level today.
"...Charlton Heston..."
I like Charlton Heston.
"The films you mentioned are the exceptions."
I could named a hundred more exceptions if you like, though I would rather avoid that tedious task.
"Charlie Chaplin avoided that pitfall by remaining independent, and he shot his 30's film silent, only dubbing in sound later."
He avoided that pitfall by being rich.
""Stagey" is dull, flat and unimaginative."
Staging should predominately be static and precise so that it does not intrude upon what it depicts. Restraint should be exercised.
"Of course I don't mean characters all need to be appealing; they can be unappealing --like Margaret O'Brien, but even while being unappealing, she had appeal."
ReplyDeleteExactly.
"You can put an interesting character in a mundane situation. You can watch him eat a sandwich and he will make it interesting."
Yes. Simply watching an actor like James Cagney walk across the room was interesting.
"Hank may not be playing normal, mundane characters, if you insist, but he sure plays them like normal, mundane people."
Agreed.
"Edward G. Robinson appears very natural on film, but I don't know any people who gesticulate like he does, not even Italians."
Exactly, he exaggerates and thereby makes the character much more interesting.
"How much cream is there to rise from the last 15-20 years?"
Not much, I'd say.
"It was only a vocal minority of people that were offended enough to bring about the Hays Code. The films that raised their ire were very popular with the general public -- such as the gangster films I mentioned earlier, and comedies like those that starred Mae West."
ReplyDeleteAs good as the early gansters movies were, I find the slightly later ones like Angels With Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, and White Heat, and Key Largo to be superior. So one can see that the code hardly precipitated a decline in that genre.
I hope you're following this, Eddie. Fifty comments! I know your time is precious but this is great stuff here in your thread.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea who Hunsecker is but how I love it when he posts.
You others too. ; )
So...where are you, Eddie? Did B. come home yet? How much pizza have you consumed lately? Are you filming? What's new?
Oh-and you've no idea how utterly smug I am that you can't imagine life without your iMac(or at least the iSight camera on the iMac).
"Fifty years from now certain films from our era will stand the test of time and be considered classics by a whole new group of people."
ReplyDeleteYes, people with poor taste exist in every era.
"If you've ever read reviews or essays about movies written in the 30's or 40's, then you know that the old films we love today were considered mostly lurid, vulgar trash back then."
I'm quite certain you don't know what movies I like. I have read old movie reviews.
"You're right that there were more numerous films made in the 30's and 40's -- theaters had double bills back then. With those odds, there's bound to be more "classics."
Do you understand the definition of a ratio? That is, the proportion of good films to bad was greatly skewed in favor the good in the Golden Age. The number of movies made is entirely irrelavent.
"I could have listed even more great movies post golden age. Such as: American Graffiti, Bananas, Bedazzled (1967), Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Conformist, The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, Duel, Eraserhead, The Hospital, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Godfather II, Jaws, Klute, The Long Goodbye, Marathon Man, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Nashville, Network, Panic in Needle Park, Rosemary's Baby, Sleeper, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Take the Money and Run, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Young Frankenstein."
Jaws is mediocre. I don't like any of the others.
"Frankestein (1931) was based on a book from 1817, for instance. Do you hate that movie? 'Cause it certainly departs from the "essence" of Mary Shelley's novel."
Mary Shelley's book is not good to begin with, though her husband was a superior poet. I think it's an mediocre movie but the sequel is better.
"Have you read the book The Grifters?"
No. I was addressing those modern movies which claim to have been inspired by the best noir movies of the past and yet lack their appeal. I didn't intend to address that anecdote specifically.
"You are forgetting that I already told you that many of those golden age films were deemed to be controversial in their day."
Yes, I know that. What of it?
"In fact, the majority of the classic films involve gunplay of some sort."
What? Ridicluous. There are reams of fantastic romances, musicals, and dramas which involve nothing of the kind.
"It was built upon from the gains made and fought for during the classic era."
Having the ability to make horrible displays of lewdness and violence is not any gain at all.
"Scarface was finished in 1930 but delayed release until 1932 because of problems with the censors."
It was finished in late 1931.
"You're wrong if you think that the directors from the golden age wouldn't have made more explicit films if they were allowed to."
More explicit and explicit are two different things. Maybe they would showed a girl belly button ina dancing costume but that we be the full exent of it.
"Look at Hitchcock's Frenzy, or John Huston's Prizzi's Honor."
Yes, two of the worst movies they ever made.
Hello again J.J.,
ReplyDeleteThe mammoth list you made is a good example of decent films being made in the late 60s and 1970s, something no one was disputing. I don't really consider a lot of them 'New Age' type of filmmaking though (the Python and Brooks stuff certainly isn't). A few of them I don't even like ("The Deer Hunter" especially), and "Bedazzled" was more fun than great (which is an accomplishment in today's cinema).
Some golden-age films may be time fillers, but to suggest that those time-fillers are in any way shape or form on the same level as today's time-fillers is asinine.
You also should clarify your Marx Brothers statement, as it reads like you're saying the 1940s Marx Brothers movies were more interesting than the 1930s ones, something I KNOW you don't think.
Also, I don't see the relevance of contemporary reviewers finding our favorite classic films trashy. It's interesting, but it doesn't prove anything.
ReplyDeleteA lot of critics say that people are drawn to the era of movies from the time they grew up in. My existence belies that, since I have absolutely NO desire to be drawn to the shitstain that is 80s through 90s 'entertainment'. Of course, had I grown up in the 50s...
OK, something I wasn't disputing.
ReplyDeleteJenny: I've been following it. I read everything. I'm amazed at how film literate people here are.
ReplyDeleteI still stand by my original points, but the argument's broadened to include the Hayes Office and whether old films were better than new ones.
I do believe in some type of moral restraint for mass market movies and TV (not for books), but I admit that some of my favorite film scenes would have been impossible if the censor had his way. There must be a middle ground where common sense prevails.
In a general way I like old black and white films better but there's some pretty good modern ones, eg., Kill Bill #1 and Matrix #1. Older films were more often about people you could admire.
My real enthusiasm for film these days is for what I've been learning by doing them. I'm amazed at how much you can learn with just an isight or a cheap snapshot camera.
Film is a weird, weird, weird medium that must have been invented by creatures on another planet. A lot of what I said about the artists Derain and Egon Schiel applies to film. I've learned one really big lesson that I can apply to animation and there's more on the way, I know. I'll blog about it one of these days.
(T)he unstated point is that they make better studies for film characters than typical people do. If there were not exciting or interesting characters in the real world, perhaps nobody would have ever had an idea for a story about a person...
ReplyDeleteI guess I was confused by your use of the word "realism", which has specific connotations in regard to film (hell, there’s even an entire cinematic movement named after it). You meant typical or banal. Well, even non-realistic films can be typical and dull. There are plenty of musicals that are mundane, with dull characters and flat acting in them, for example.
Even allowing for your descriptions of Hank's roles, "floating cork" does not seem out of line to me. He's not a hero, a go-getter...and seems generally more passive than proactive.
Hank only seems to be playing a passive victim in one role, that of the retarded man in Pumpkin. Since I haven’t seen any of his movies I can’t tell you if he’s passive in them or not. How do you know he’s not a go-getter or problem solver in them? (Wouldn’t a blackmailer -- the role he’s playing in the first clip -- be considered a “go-getter”?)
If you think he isn’t a good actor, fair enough. But why assume that he’s playing a dreaded mundane passive victim in every role he’s in?
Sure, you may find a colorful character at the DMV or any other place, and that would be interesting. But, what typically occurs on any given day at the DMV would probably not be...
Everyone here is condemning the movies of today but no one gives any examples to back up their theories. What movies are only about typical, mundane people or dull situations? Certainly not the tiring majority of comic book movies, the torture-heavy horror films, or the comedies about the outrageous behavior of flatulent male adolescent slobs. (Romantic comedies are pretty bland, though. I’ll give you that.)
There are loads of movies and TV shows like that...that use characters merely to advance the plot; not to show me anything insightful or specific about humanity...
There are also plenty of golden age films with those problems, too. Recently a lot of old film noir has been released on DVD. I been renting many of them on video. While some of the movies are great, many others are weak, absurd, dull, run-of the-mill, etc.
Movies should be about interesting people. They needn't be grandiose, but most average, normal, realistically-scaled or entirely non-stylized characters are interesting only when a piano falls on them...
I never said movies should be about dull people. We were only discussing the merits of style -- “realism” or theatricality.
I agree that the irony is that it takes a certain amount of exaggeration and artifice in order to create a “realistic” or believable character or film. (D. W. Griffith was criticized for using white actors in blackface in Birth of a Nation because it looked unrealistic -- never mind that it was also racist. What people accepted on the stage looked false on the screen.)
The movie Goodfellas is based on a true story. It's set in the real world, yet it's exciting because it shows us a dangerous side of the world we're not privy to. Would you say it’s realistic? I would. It never seems artificial or phony; the acting isn’t stagey or overly theatrical.
Even mundane situations can be used in films for contrast. In The Godfather, for instance, what makes one of the murders so amusing is the mundane task of getting the cannoli after the hit. The Sopranos does this all the time: contrasting the typical with the extraordinary.
they are still producing film and television that is as easy or easier to forget as the worst of the golden age, and it's probably fair to say it's a larger proportion of junk. How much cream is there to rise from the last 15-20 years?
15 or 20 years is still too early for us to understand which films of our times will become classics. Many of the golden age films we love today were not that popular in their day. Certain films that are considered classics bombed in their initial theatrical run: The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, It’s a Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane (although that was pulled from distribution for various political reasons), Duck Soup, etc. Others that were popular in their day are now forgotten. (Anyone remember Deanna Durbin?)
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL doesn't seem like noir to me. It's just set in the noir period, and it's about cops and crime and corruption. And MEMENTO sucks. So does Guy Pearce. He looked competent in L.A. CONFIDENTAL because he was playing a stiff prick; apparently no stretch.
You people constantly complain that they don’t make movies like they used to, yet when a modern movie comes around that is similar to those of the old days, you still cry and moan! Unbelievable!
It doesn’t matter what you think of L.A. Confidential. If Call Northside 777 and House of Bamboo can be considered noir, then L.A. Confidential should be too. (And it is, by many of the authors of books on film noir. Go argue with them.)
Memento is an excellent, complex, daring movie; it’s also just plain fun. Guy Pearce is a good actor. Look at how different his role was in Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert from his others, yet he pulls it off. In Memento he plays a characters who seems like a sympathetic victim but is actually a self-delusional victimizer.
For stiff acting, you have such golden age actors as Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Gary Cooper, John Hodiak, Sterling Hayden, and John Gavin, to name but a few.
"For stiff acting, you have such golden age actors as Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Gary Cooper, John Hodiak, Sterling Hayden, and John Gavin, to name but a few."
ReplyDeleteThat's one doozy of a comment, there, JJ--I loved it, all of it--perfect. I wish you'd script my thoughts like that for me.
But this list! I know where you're coming from, painful as it is to admit it-but at least cut poor Coop some slack-hell, he looks positively natural whenever he smiles and laughs as he did every so often--say, in "Deeds"...but yeah, there probably hasn't been a more charismatic, attractive actor with a more wooden, stiff delivery of dialogue than Cooper, ever. He could act perfectly well with his physical grace and ability, as well as his eyes, though. I'm defending him even though it took me years after seeing him first in "Morrocco" and then "High Noon"-bookends of his career- and wondering "what in the hell?!" re: his unbelievably mechanical way of speaking.
And Peck! At least he had a great sense of humor...yes, he's stentorian for sure but he still had a great intelligence, even if his vocal range is less than broad (a very beautiful voice, but a limited range).
Eh, just had to put my two cents in. Glad you're still here enjoying this Eddie. ; )
Their acting is extremely theatrical especially in dramtic roles. They are constantly wisecracking and making calculated gestures.
ReplyDeleteUh, wisecracking isn't necessarily "theatrical". People make wiseacre comments in real life, too. Cagney never made "calculated" gestures. You must be thinking of Claude Rains, who had a mechanical system for acting -- counting out the beats in his head for each action so he could replicate it exactly for each take.
Indeed, and that acting style would never be accepted today. (Cooper) just read the lines, that's it.
Cooper didn't just "read the lines." The camera picked up on the subtly in his acting. That was Welles's point! The camera doesn't lie, and small gestures seem big on the silver screen.
Cagney did come in contact with method acting and he didn't like it, or the results it produced. He thought that a good actor could simply say the lines and entertain, without preparation.
When did Cagney come into contact with method actors? They didn't start showing up until the 50's, and Cagney didn't work with actors like Brando or Dean.
I'll say it again, it was improvisation Cagney didn't like!! He got mad at Leo Gorcy for improvising a line in Angels With Dirty Faces. I don't think the world would consider Gorcy to be a method actor!
And Cagney did more than just read the lines! He told Jack Lemmon that when you say the line, you should "feel them." In other words, bring some believability and honesty to them.
There are many movies which have almost none, and those few static shots are held for an instant before camera begins moving again.
Riiiight. Which movies? Name them.
At least 75% percent of a movie should be held in a static shot, and not rapidly changing static shots, but ones that are held for at least 20 seconds.
WHAT!? Now you have a formula for the amount of still shots in a film!? 75% !? That's patently ridiculous!! Is this a joke? Hey, why not make the movie great and have 100% static shots!!
I wish the film directors of the golden age could read your comment. I'd like to hear their gales of laughter.
Using (camera moves) as an occaisonal accent is the best way possible.
Moving a camera is not flair--it is an act which should be avoided except when necessary or to give visual variety against predominating held shots.
Absolute hogwash! Camera movement is an important part of cinematography. It is not an "accent" to static shots. No cinematographer would agree with you. If you like the dull mise-en-scene of the early thirties, more luck to you. But that's only your personal preference, not good photography. If you want to see an example of good camera work watch the silent film The Last Laugh. Or watch the documentary Visions of Light, where actual, real cinematographers explain their craft.
(Citizen Kane) was derided by Hearst because it made fun of him and he suppressed it. While the movie won only one Oscar for best screenplay, was it was nominated for another eight.
That's not what I was talking about. Welles was derided by some of his peers and critics for making Kane too visually stunning. They thought the director's hand was too visible and that he was showing off. Welles was unfortunately ahead of his time and many people resented it.
about 90% less than today's movies.
Another percentage!? That's a ridiculous number you pulled out of...thin air. What is it based on? Outside of your delusions, that is?
Exactly, in a held shots, which is how the majority of the movie takes place.
The camera moves a lot in Citizen Kane. Outside of the big movements I listed, there are many, many subtle camera moves. I watched the movie last night and was amazed at how much movement there was for such an old film. Since you like percentage points, I'd guess that at least 60% of the film has some sort of camera move in it.
Did I not say they were carefully chosen?
You did not say. The static shots in Kane are not "stagey", like those of the early 30's. I thought it was worth pointing out the differences.
The early 30's films are filmed at eye level, with the camera pointing straight ahead, like it was shot on a stage. Kane departs from that typical set-up radically.
"You meant typical or banal. Well, even non-realistic films can be typical and dull. There are plenty of musicals that are mundane, with dull characters and flat acting in them, for example."
ReplyDeleteWhy single out musicals? Name any recent movie and chances are it will fit that description.
"Everyone here is condemning the movies of today but no one gives any examples to back up their theories."
The examples are so ubiquitous it would be without purpose to point them out.
"There are also plenty of golden age films with those problems, too."
"Recently a lot of old film noir has been released on DVD. I been renting many of them on video. While some of the movies are great, many others are weak, absurd, dull, run-of the-mill, etc."
That's because outside of about 10 great noir pictures, half of which star Bogart, there isn't much more in that genre woth seeing, or at least not worth calling a good movie. It was primarily B-movie territory, not the realm of the big studios.
"The movie Goodfellas is based on a true story. It's set in the real world, yet it's exciting because it shows us a dangerous side of the world we're not privy to. Would you say it’s realistic? I would. It never seems artificial or phony; the acting isn’t stagey or overly theatrical."
And the end result is poor.
"15 or 20 years is still too early for us to understand which films of our times will become classics. Many of the golden age films we love today were not that popular in their day."
That was true to only in a select few cases, perhaps it was because there was such a plethora of good movies, not all of them could receive the public's full attention.
"...bombed in their initial theatrical run:
"The Wizard of Oz..."
The Wizard of Oz made a small profit.
"...Pinocchio..."
Hardly a bomb, and would have been a smash had it been made with an average budget.
"Citizen Kane (although that was pulled from distribution for various political reasons)"
Citizen Kane broke even.
"...Duck Soup..."
Was the 6th highest grossing movie of 1933. So much for that completely irrelavent list of "bombs".
"Anyone remember Deanna Durbin?"
Yes, I do.
"You people constantly complain that they don’t make movies like they used to, yet when a modern movie comes around that is similar to those of the old days, you still cry and moan! Unbelievable!"
It isn't similar, and I would recognize it if it was.
"It doesn’t matter what you think of L.A. Confidential. If Call Northside 777 and House of Bamboo can be considered noir, then L.A. Confidential should be too. (And it is, by many of the authors of books on film noir. Go argue with them.)"
No serious critic would call that movie a true noir. Noir is as much a time period as a genre.
Alec Guinnes is, but who's counting?
ReplyDeleteAlec Guinnes, though a great actor, is certainly not iconic, or even a big star. He's only really well known for Star Wars, and maybe Bridge on the River Kwai. Most people are unaware of the great Ealing comedies he was in.
There aren't ANY iconic actors today who can compare with those of the golden age in either appeal or fame. The likes of Bogart, Garbo, Davis, Barrymore, Cagney, Grant--there aren't any stars on that level today.
These type of broad generalizations always seem close-minded to me. Obviously you're not a fan of modern movies, but there are iconic stars of every generation and every era of film -- regardless of whether you personally like them or not.
You also forget that for every big star that is remembered today, there are several that have fallen by the wayside. For every Marilyn Monroe there was a Mamie Van Doren.
I like Charlton Heston.
Figures. He was a terrible actor who emoted through his gritted teeth. So you like terrible actors, as long as they're from the past?
(Chaplin) avoided that pitfall by being rich.
That's a glib, facile statement. Keaton was also rich when he signed his contract with MGM. So was Harold Lloyd when he started to make his talking pictures. While money might have helped, that wasn't what saved Chaplin, but the fact that he kept his independence and fought against a then popular trend.
As good as the early gansters movies were, I find the slightly later ones like Angels With Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, and White Heat, and Key Largo to be superior. So one can see that the code hardly precipitated a decline in that genre.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about that? White Heat and Key Largo were made in the post war years when the Code restrictions were slackened. Cagney in White Heat is an unredeemable psychopath, similar to the way he was in the pre-Code The Public Enemy. That wouldn't have been allowed in the early days of the Code. He's more sympathetic in Angels With Dirty Faces, helping out the poor street urchins in his neighborhood. His gun isn't even loaded in his fight with the cops. He also fakes being a coward so that the poor Dead End Kids will reject their hero worship of him, and grow up on the straight and narrow. The same thing happened to Edward G. Robinson. He was more vicious in Little Caesar. In his later 30's gangster films he is usually the good guy, or a comical, harmless gangster -- like in A Slight Case of Murder. The tough, gritty gangster film became cornball!
Look at the movies before and after the Code got teeth in 1934 and you'll see a big difference. Mae West was far more suggestive in her early pre-Code movies. She's far tamer in her later 30's films. The Marx Bros. were amoral in their earlier Paramount Pictures, later, at MGM, they help out the bland romantic couples solve their dilemmas. A movie like Red-Headed Woman (where Jean Harlow sleeps her way to the top, and goes unpunished for it) would never have been made after the Code. The social "message" pictures, like I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, stopped being produced, and more preachy, overly moralistic, and "safe" pictures were made. Until the war.
"People make wiseacre comments in real life, too. Cagney never made "calculated" gestures."
ReplyDeleteWarner brothers wisecracking is exagerrated far beyond realism, and Cagney's hitching of the trousers movements were indeed calculated. Cooper's performances would never be accepted today.
"When did Cagney come into contact with method actors? They didn't start showing up until the 50's, and Cagney didn't work with actors like Brando or Dean."
Method acting was around long before that, and while Cagney may not havecome in contact with them specifically, he certainly would have known other proponents.
"Riiiight. Which movies? Name them."
The Bourne series, Gosford Park, etc.
"Camera movement is an important part of cinematography."
Not necessarily.
"It is not an "accent" to static shots."
Not anymore.
"No cinematographer would agree with you."
Certainly not any modern one.
"That's not what I was talking about. Welles was derided by some of his peers and critics for making Kane too visually stunning."
What of it?
"The camera moves a lot in Citizen Kane."
Hardly at all compared to today's movies.
"The early 30's films are filmed at eye level, with the camera pointing straight ahead, like it was shot on a stage. Kane departs from that typical set-up radically."
Yes, what of it? It bears not comparison to the unplanned cinematography of modern movies. I do not object simple pan every half minute or slight zoom, or occaisonal interesting introductory shot--this is on an entirely different level than the New hollywood style. In Citizen Kane camera is indeed static for vast majority of time.
"Alec Guinnes, though a great actor, is certainly not iconic, or even a big star. He's only really well known for Star Wars, and maybe Bridge on the River Kwai..."
And Oliver Twist, and Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago. Sir Alec Guinness was a star in America and big star in Britain--not on the level of a Bogart or Grant certainly, but something of an icon nontheless.
"Obviously you're not a fan of modern movies, but there are iconic stars of every generation and every era of film."
Big stars of the kind I mentioned? Certainly not--they simply do not exist anymore.
"Figures. He was a terrible actor who emoted through his gritted teeth. So you like terrible actors, as long as they're from the past?"
The Ten Commandments, Touch of Evil, Ben-Hur: A rather nice resume.
"Keaton was also rich when he signed his contract with MGM. So was Harold Lloyd when he started to make his talking pictures. While money might have helped, that wasn't what saved Chaplin, but the fact that he kept his independence and fought against a then popular trend."
He wasn't nearly as rich as Chaplin, and if he didn't like making MGM style movies he shouldn't have signed a contract with a studio known for a type of movie in which he was not interested. His big budget slapstick movies barely broke even, so one can't blame MGM for putting him into the movies they did (which made good money).
"Are you sure about that? White Heat and Key Largo were made in the post war years when the Code restrictions were slackened."
Code restrictions weren't substantially slanckend until years later.
"Look at the movies before and after the Code got teeth in 1934 and you'll see a big difference."
I have. There's a slight change, but nothing pre-code could compare to today's luridness.
I have to call J.J.'s bluff. I read a list of his favorite movies (from barely a year ago), and it included 1968's Planet of the Apes. So how terrible of an actor could Heston have been? I love Touch of Evil as well, which he was really great in.
ReplyDeleteJenny,
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I actually like Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper and Sterling Hayden. I guess they had that indefinable "presence" the camera loves so much -- it's just that they were, uh, somewhat limited in their range.
I just thought it fair that if one is going to berate modern actors for the crime of "stiffness", then the old guard should get the same treatment.
The mammoth list you made is a good example of decent films being made in the late 60s and 1970s, something no one was disputing. I don't really consider a lot of them 'New Age' type of filmmaking though (the Python and Brooks stuff certainly isn't). A few of them I don't even like ("The Deer Hunter" especially), and "Bedazzled" was more fun than great (which is an accomplishment in today's cinema).
ReplyDeleteThanks, but some people ARE disputing that decent films were made in the 60's and 70's. Haven't you been reading the comments here?
"More fun than great" is faint praise that could be applied to many, many films past and present. Most filmmakers would give their eye teeth to have an audience think their film was a lot of fun.
I guess I was confused. What did you mean by "new age" films?
I have to call J.J.'s bluff. I read a list of his favorite movies (from barely a year ago), and it included 1968's Planet of the Apes. So how terrible of an actor could Heston have been? I love Touch of Evil as well, which he was really great in.
ReplyDeleteI like Planet of the Apes despite Heston, not because of him. He's a flaw in the movie I'm willing to forgive, since the rest of it is so good. The same goes for Touch of Evil. (He's laughable as a Mexican, though. Almost destroys the film.)
Why single out musicals?
ReplyDeleteBecause they're banal and mundane, and no one likes them.
The examples are so ubiquitous it would be without purpose to point them out.
And yet you can't name any.
That's because outside of about 10 great noir pictures, half of which star Bogart, there isn't much more in that genre woth seeing, or at least not worth calling a good movie. It was primarily B-movie territory, not the realm of the big studios.
What a minute! Are you actually suggesting that there were films from the sacred, blessed golden age of Hollywood that WEREN'T GOOD!?!? BLASPHEMER!! Leave this garden at once!!
A lot of B pictures are fondly remembered today, because they were more gritty and honest -- a rarity with the Hay Code restrictions. There were also far more than 10 good noir pictures. (And many of them were even A pictures, from big studios like MGM, RKO, Warners, and Fox.)
I'm quite certain you don't know what movies I like.
I used "we" as a figure of speech, meaning all of us who love old movies, not just you and I. I don't really care (i.d.r.c.??) what movies you like.
Do you understand the definition of a ratio? That is, the proportion of good films to bad was greatly skewed in favor the good in the Golden Age. The number of movies made is entirely irrelavent.
By your own admission you claim to have only seen half of the golden age films "in their entirety or in part". It's more likely that you've only seen about a quarter of the films of the golden age, so how would you know anything about the ratio of good to bad films in that bygone era?
There were many, many mediocre and bad films in that era, too. Let's not try to sugar coat it by rationalizing that it was a better crop of crap than today's junk. Bad is bad. Just the majority of films from the "poverty row" studios, like Monogram, is overwhelming. They churned out films like sausage. (And "poverty row" is still part of the golden age, like it or not.)
And the end result is poor.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you know about the quality of a movie like Goodfellas? It's too "lurid" for your sensitive palate. How are you able to effectively judge the merits of it's filmmaking?
The Wizard of Oz made a small profit.
Pinocchio...Hardly a bomb, and would have been a smash had it been made with an average budget.
Citizen Kane broke even.
Duck Soup...Was the 6th highest grossing movie of 1933. So much for that completely irrelavent list of "bombs".
Duck Soup was considered a disappointment by Paramount Pictures. It didn't perform as well as earlier Marx Bros. movies. If it had, then the Marx Bros. would have used that film as a template for their future endeavors, instead of the A Night at the Opera, which was a hit for them.
Citizen Kane did not make a profit! That ended up hurting Orson Welles's career. Maybe you consider that to be successful, but most golden age Hollywood moguls would have disagreed with you. The movie wasn't seen again in the U.S. until a revival in the late 50's.
Disney wrote off a million dollar loss on Pinocchio. Along with the failure of Fantasia, it put Disney Studios in a precarious situation.
The Wizard of Oz cost $2.8 million and grossed $3 Million. A disappointing return for MGM.
But, in your analysis of the minutia of their box office returns, you seemed to have overlooked the larger point: that these films in their own time were NOT considered to be the great classics we think of them today. Sorry, but that is the fact.
"Anyone remember Deanna Durbin?"
Yes, I do.
Well, that makes one. It must get pretty lonely at your Deanna Durbin Fan Club meetings. To the larger public, including most fans of old movies, she is a non-entity.
No serious critic would call (L.A. Confidential) a true noir. Noir is as much a time period as a genre.
1. They already have.
2. Film Noir is not a genre, it's a style.
This seemingly innocuous little topic has really taken off.
ReplyDeleteSince I haven’t seen any of his movies I can’t tell you if he’s passive in them or not. How do you know he’s not a go-getter or problem solver in them?
My opinion is based only on what I was shown. We either consider it representative, or we have nothing to discuss. I assume he chose the best stuff he has on film. Maybe he's better than this stuff. Maybe they keep telling him to tone it down. On the other hand, I don't believe Jennifer Connelly is any better than what I've seen her do, but I have seen her do more.
In any case the result is the same. I'm bored. I'm not indicting Hank, so much as talking about what I don't want to see on film. Hank has a place in the dramatic world. It seems to me to be on the Lifetime Channel is all I'm saying. People who like those kinds of stories will be well-served by him.
(Wouldn’t a blackmailer -- the role he’s playing in the first clip-- be considered a “go-getter”?)
I think of the "little man", in THE BIG SLEEP, as Bogart called Elisha Cook Jr., and I answer, "No".
In E.C, Jr. you have perhaps the most watchable dweeb in film history. Here and in THE KILLING, he shows us that even a perennial loser can dream big.
If you think he isn’t a good actor, fair enough. But why assume that he’s playing a dreaded mundane passive victim in every role he’s in?
I don't know if he is a good actor, but for me to call him one I'd need to see something I didn't. I'd have to ask by what logic he left his lively, forceful, dynamic, engaging, or upbeat portrayals out of his demo reel.
I think he is competent. Competent means he can walk and talk and hit a mark and act like some kind of a credible person in front of the camera, under pressure. Not everyone can do that, but that's what I would call the utilitarian level of acting. I can do it, and I'm not particularly impressed with myself.
There is another level above that kind of basic competence, that has to do more with cinematic presence, physicality, and stylization, and I don't believe he has reached it. Some people are blessed with not
having to work too hard to learn how to project that kind of presence and energy, but I suspect Hank would have his work cut out for him.
There are a lot of projects that call for bland, whitebread people, and he may even have a more lucrative career going after such roles. I'm just talking about why those roles don't interest me.
What movies are only about typical, mundane people or dull situations?
This is Hank, so we have to include TV, and if we do, the kinds of things I am talking about should become more obvious. It's hard to name them because I forget about them, and try not to see them in the first place.
Your next question might be, "If you avoid them, how can you know what they are like?" I use a pain avoidance system based on the recognition of red flags. But I know for a fact that they exist, because whenever I leave my wife alone with the remote, that's what's on when I get back.
Here's another way of looking at it. Let's take a genre I hate. Women's pictures, as they were called in the day. Think of something with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. I'm pretty sure I saw them together at least once. Even in a dead boring "oh, darling, I love you" picture, you can still just watch the hell out of them. Or take THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE. As much as I hate that, I consider it vastly more watchable than whatever the modern equivalent might be, or what a current remake would undoubtedly look like.
What is relevant to me is that I have to go back to the 30's 40's, or 50's to find what I like most about movies and movie characters. In more modern movies I think it is most often those creators who are most influenced by and attentive to that period who make the best stuff now. I think the list of modern auteurs who "carry the torch", so to speak, is a short one.
I'm not really into this for the "they don't make 'em like they used to" aspect. I just think that the majority of times, they make 'em like they shouldn't.
I think there is insufficient modern interest in understanding and utilizing whatever made the old characters so watchable. Part of it is dialog, part of it is presence. Part of it is attention to character. Cagney made movies with stories as lame as TOP GUN, but at least they had Cagney in them. I don't think I can say anything any more definitive about something so subjective.
The movie Goodfellas is based on a true story. It's set in the real world, yet it's exciting because it shows us a dangerous side of the world we're not privy to.
GOODFELLAS would be at least something like cream, but there is a lot of it I can skip past, having already seen it. And Scorcese would certainly belong on the short list of modern auteurs.
15 or 20 years is still too early for us to understand which films of our times will become classics.
Only if you care about popular consensus, which is meaningless to me. I already know how few recent films I want to see again. The ones I need to see all of again are even fewer. Thank God for chapter search. As for films before my time it only has to do with what I have the most opportunity to see.
I remember Deanna Durbin. Her best film was NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, but not necessarily because she was in it. Who would be her modern equivalent? Britney? Jessica Simpson? Hanna Montana? I'd rather watch Deanna, not that I really want to.
You people constantly complain that they don’t make movies like they used to, yet when a modern movie comes around that is similar to those of the old days, you still cry and moan! Unbelievable!
Well, I like it, I just think it fell a little short, if it was aiming squarely at noir. The lighting you mentioned could be one reason. Noir is atmosphere as much as subject, maybe more. I think it was noir-ish. It would be hard to find a better example of a 40's detective/crime throwback (maybe CHINATOWN), but THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE had much more noir atmosphere that L.A. CONFIDENTIAL.
Memento is an excellent, complex, daring movie; it’s also just plain fun. Guy Pearce is a good actor.
My biggest problem with it was not the film, it was the "star." I didn't see PRISCILLA. I saw him in MEMENTO and TIME MACHINE. I don't think he carried either of them. I would love to be happily surprised that he's really great in something. That goes for Hank and Jennifer Connely, too. There's nothing I like more than liking something.
For stiff acting, you have such golden age actors as Gregory Peck,Charlton Heston, Gary Cooper, John Hodiak, Sterling Hayden, and John Gavin, to name but a few.
I don't really know those Johns, I may have seen them in something, but the rest of them I'm sure have something far more watchable than Guy Pearce. In the pure projection of manliness, they eat him for breakfast. John Wayne might be classic Hollywood's most drab projection of manliness. I'm guessing Heston was the model for Calculon on FUTURAMA.
I'm gonna bow out now, but I admire your film nollige. I'll look for some films you mentioned. Always on the lookout for a good one I missed. I'll keep reading if there are more posts.
Crap! That was Gloria Jean in NEVER GIVE, etc..., Not Deanna Durbin. I guess I don't remember her that well.
ReplyDelete"I just thought it fair that if one is going to berate modern actors for the crime of "stiffness..."
ReplyDeleteI never did any such thing.
"Because they're banal and mundane, and no one likes them."
A few people at AFI and Sight and Sound like Singin' in the Rain. Wizard of Oz has a few proponents. Sound of Music was one of the biggest hits of the 60s and won 5 Oscars, if I recall rightly. The Astraire and Rogers musicals saved RKO from collapse. The Band Wagon has a few fans. Then there's Seven Brides for Seven, Brothers, On the Town, Mary Poppins, 42nd Street, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Meet Me in St. Louis...My Fair Lady won eight Oscars (Including best picture), An American in Paris won 6 (including best picture), and Bing Crosby was the biggest box-office star of the early 40s with movies like Going My Way and Holiday Inn. These facts are quite curious considering nobody likes musicals.
"A lot of B pictures are fondly remembered today, because they were more gritty and honest -- a rarity with the Hay Code restrictions."
The Golden Age of Hollywood refers to the big studio system, of which most B pictures were not a part.
"By your own admission you claim to have only seen half of the golden age films "in their entirety or in part"."
Considering the thousands upon thousands of movies one must have seen in order claim viewing ever Golden Age movie, that is quite an unrealistic task for all but the most single-minded person. However, I have seen far more than most, and my viewing constitues a fair sampling upon which I may make a fair estimated of the quality of the movies as a whole.
"Citizen Kane did not make a profit!"
Apparently, "breaking even" is also a term unknown to you.
"Disney wrote off a million dollar loss on Pinocchio. Along with the failure of Fantasia, it put Disney Studios in a precarious situation."
They didn't fail in the sense of a true critical bomb, but they were so expensive they had little chance of covering their cost. Of course, both movies have turned a profit through rerelease, likewise with Wizard, which got great reviews. Of course, this matter of whether or not certain movies have always been popular is irrelavent to the matter of which era had better movies.
"That these films in their own time were NOT considered to be the great classics we think of them today."
This is entirely irrelavent but I will address it one final time: Most of the movies you named recieved mixed reviews, while the Wizard of OZ had great reviews.
"They already have."
Eddie Muller is certainly not a serious critic.
Because they're banal and mundane, and no one likes them.
ReplyDeleteThroughout this whole thread, all you've done is peck to pieces every sweeping generalization that you don't agree with. Yet you make one right here.
I'm not going to tear this one apart, but I love many, many musicals, just as I love many, many noir (and noir-ish) pictures.
It's unwise to make sweeping generalizations about any genre, because for every bullseye there's a dozen misfires. And every genre has its fans. It's clear that this isn't a debate but a fourth grade pissing match.
"You are forgetting that I already told you that many of those golden age films were deemed to be controversial in their day."
ReplyDeleteYes, I know that. What of it?
You still miss the point. Had you lived back in the golden age of Hollywood, YOU would have been one of those crusaders calling for the censorship of the movies -- since you are easily offended by the "horrible displays of lewdness and violence." Your own beloved old chestnuts were considered guilty of the same thing in their day by moralizing crusaders.To wit:
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)
"...probably the greatest inducement to nightmare that has yet been screened... It's impossible to believe there are a majority of picturegoers who prefer this revolting sort of a tale on the screen." --Variety, September 9, 1925
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939)
"The Music Hall is the last place in the world where we should expect to find a freak show, but The Hunchback of Notre Dame is that and little more... Take Warning!... The film is almost unrelievedly brutal and without the saving grace of unreality which makes Frankenstein's horrors a little comic." --Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, January 1, 1940
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)
"There is just enough of the reality of Warsaw burning and the persecution of the Poles -- and Lubitsch goes out of his way to include a solemn moment of two of commentary -- to make the farcical high spirits of the rest seem an offense against taste and the film itself an artistic blunder." --London Times, April 30, 1942
THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
"...the whole thing comes off a poisonous picture lasting a few minutes shy of two hours..." --Bosley Crowther, New York Times, April 24, 1946
ADAM'S RIB (1949)
"Where the principals are concerned, the humor is often crudely risque..." --Jane Lockhart, Rotarian, February, 1950
WHITE HEAT (1949)
"White Heat follows the new style in cinema violence...As usual, the moral that crime doesn't pay is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that it is made to look attractively exciting...made me wonder if Hollywood's bloodbaths may not be infectious on prolonged contact." --Robert Hatch, New Republic, September 26, 1949
THE BIG HEAT (1953)
"The present vogue for sadism and violence reaches some kind of apex in The Big Heat, a truly gruesome crime thriller..." --Robert Kass, Catholic World, October 1953
BABY DOLL (1956)
"In defending his production and direction of this culturally worthless and socially debasing film, Elia Kazan said he believes it depicts reality...Baby Doll is not realism. It is merely a literary trick, whereby the more complicated and degenerate kinds of smut are covered over with pseudo social significance... Whatever power Baby Doll may possess derives from no technique other than the technique of exciting audiences to wonder what depravity is coming next." -- H. H., Films in Review, January 1957
THE SEARCHERS (1956)
"The Searchers, a John Ford desert spectacular in prismatic Vista-Vision, is long on brutality and short on logic or responsible behavior... The Searchers is a picture for sadists in very beautiful country." --Robert Hatch, Nation, June 23, 1956
THE BLOB (1958)
"The real horror is that these pictures, with their bestialities, their sadism, their lust for blood, and their primitive level of conception and execution should find their greatest acceptance among the young. It is sad enough as a commentary on our youth, but even more so on the standards of our motion-picture industry." --Arthur Knight, Saturday Review, October 18, 1958
SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
"The basic gag of this picture is female impersonation, one of the standbys of old-fashioned burlesque. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are the impersonators, and thought they do not make like fairies, Wilder does let the action, and some of the dialogue, run along lines that titillate sex perverts... For much of Some Like it Hot is in very blue taste. There's no excuse -- not even the hoary one of entertaining the lowest common denominator." -- Ellen Fitzpatrick, Films in Review, April 1959
PSYCHO (1960)
"I think the film is a reflection of a most unpleasant mind, a mean, sly, sadistic little mind... All in all, a nasty little film." --Dwight Macdonald, Esquire, October 1960
"...the director gets so far out that his chief sources of inspiration appear to have been Krafft-Ebing and the Marquis de Sade... Hitchcock seems to have been more interested in shocking his audience with the bloodiest bathtub murder in screen history, and in photographing Janet Leigh in various stages of undress, than in observing the ordinary rules of good film construction." --Moira Walsh, America, July 9, 1960
(Excerpts from "The Critics Were Wrong" by Sillick & McCormick)
"You're wrong if you think that the directors from the golden age wouldn't have made more explicit films if they were allowed to."
More explicit and explicit are two different things. Maybe they would showed a girl belly button ina dancing costume but that we be the full exent of it.
Back then showing a "belly button" WAS explicit. Plus, it wasn't just a belly button they showed years ago. The Outlaw, for example was held back from release because the Hays Office thought that Jane Russell's ample cleavage was too prominent, and demanded the scene be edited.
Also, it was the behavior, the lascivious double entendres, and even the types of bodies (Jane Russell, Jane Mansfield) of certain female characters in films that raised the ire of the prudish.
"Look at Hitchcock's Frenzy, or John Huston's Prizzi's Honor."
Yes, two of the worst movies they ever made.
You dodged the point. You said that the golden age directors would never have made films with more explicit sex and violence had they the chance to do so, yet the films above prove you wrong. Your opinion of the movies is irrelevant to that point.
I don't really know those Johns, I may have seen them in something...
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in the Night -- John Hodiak
Psycho -- John Gavin
I generally agree with those contemporary reviews.
ReplyDeleteWarner brothers wisecracking is exagerrated far beyond realism, and Cagney's hitching of the trousers movements were indeed calculated. Cooper's performances would never be accepted today.
ReplyDeleteIf it were "beyond realism" it would seem too bizarre. One has to exaggerate somewhat just to seem real and believable on film. Go too far and an actor will look like a mugging ham. Cagney never mugged. He seemed natural and authentic.
What do you mean when you say Cagney's movements were "calculated"? That seems like a derogatory description of his acting style, like it was mechanical. All actors rehearse their actions, based on the script and directions, but that doesn't mean it's all calculated.
Gary Cooper was subtle (maybe a little too subtle) and would certainly be accepted today. Your claim goes against everything you've said previously about modern actors. You say they don't exaggerate, now you say they aren't stoic and subtle.
Method acting was around long before that, and while Cagney may not havecome in contact with them specifically, he certainly would have known other proponents.
Method acting didn't reach Hollywood until the 50's. Cagney didn't understand method actors like Brando because he thought they went too far, but Cagney used techniques in his own acting that were analgous to "The Method" -- drawing on past experiences, for example. His biggest pet peeve, according to his peers, was when actors improvised lines and didn't stick to the script.
This is now the 3rd time we've had this same argument. If you're going to make this claim for a fourth time, at least provide a quote from Cagney or an anecdote to prove it.
The Bourne series, Gosford Park, etc.
After nearly 100 posts of complaining about modern cinematography and you could only come up with two examples?
I don't recall the camera constantly moving in Gosford Park. I haven't seen the movie in some time, but I recall plenty of static shots in that film, too.
The camera in the Bourne movies (at least in the last one) is handheld so it is shaky, but it is not constantly moving. You made it seem like it was always dollying or panning around, which isn't the case.
Why condemn all modern cinematography for the stylistic choice in the Bourne movies? The majority of modern pictures aren't shot with handheld camera.
"The camera moves a lot in Citizen Kane."
Hardly at all compared to today's movies.
WRONG!! In some modern movies the camera moves even less than in Citizen Kane. (George Lucas usually keeps his camera locked down and static, for instance.)
You keep claiming that the majority of shots in Kane are static or still, but that's not true. Don't make me count the number of camera moves in that movie, 'cause I'll do it, post the results here and prove you wrong.
Sir Alec Guinness was a star in America and big star in Britain--not on the level of a Bogart or Grant certainly, but something of an icon nontheless.
ReplyDeleteYour grasping at straws. I love Alex Guinness's films too, but he was never considered a big star in America, or "iconic."
The Ten Commandments, Touch of Evil, Ben-Hur: A rather nice resume.
The only good movie in that bunch is Touch of Evil, and Heston was comically miscast in that film. The 20's version of Ben Hur is far superior to the 50's schlocker. In general, the religious epics of the 50's are some of the worst movies ever made. Bloated and campy.
He wasn't nearly as rich as Chaplin, and if he didn't like making MGM style movies he shouldn't have signed a contract with a studio known for a type of movie in which he was not interested. His big budget slapstick movies barely broke even, so one can't blame MGM for putting him into the movies they did (which made good money).
You're avoiding the original argument: that Keaton's silent films were better than his talkies. This was to show that the early talkie period was awkward and stage bound, while the films of the 20's were expressive with fluid camera. I provided you with link to examples of both periods and asked which do you prefer? Instead of answering that question you chose to deflect it.
But, to answer you're statement, I can only think of two pictures of Keaton's that went over budget (and through no fault of his own) and thus only broke even at the box office: Steamboat Bill Jr., and The General. Most of Keaton's shorts and features were successful.
The early Keaton talkies may have been financially rewarding for MGM but they are artistically bankrupt. If you're going to keep spreading the myth that golden age films are the best, then you have to address these horrible, soulless products and how they fit within that. Personally I feel these movies are far worse than anything made today, if only for the sad fact that one can literally see a genius being slowly smothered in them.
I never did any such thing.
ReplyDeleteI never accused you of saying it. That was a response to something i.d.r.c wrote about Guy Pearce.
The Golden Age of Hollywood refers to the big studio system, of which most B pictures were not a part.
That's nonsense. Of course the B pictures were a part of the "golden age". The big studios like Warner Bros., MGM, RKO, Paramount and Fox all turned out B pictures for their double bills. By your logic, we'd have to purge a lot of classics from the list, especially the horror films of Val Lewton and the majority of films considered Film Noir.
This is entirely irrelavent but I will address it one final time: Most of the movies you named recieved mixed reviews, while the Wizard of OZ had great reviews.
I wasn't talking about the reception by the critics, though as you stated most of them were lukewarm towards some of these now classics. Rather, I was referring to how audiences at the time felt towards those films. The classic films I mentioned had tepid responses from audiences. It wasn't until much later that these films developed their beloved status.
Considering the thousands upon thousands of movies one must have seen in order claim viewing ever Golden Age movie, that is quite an unrealistic task for all but the most single-minded person. However, I have seen far more than most, and my viewing constitues a fair sampling upon which I may make a fair estimated of the quality of the movies as a whole.
That's my point, there are so many golden age films -- most forgotten -- that we tend to get a lopsided view of this past based solely on the films that were strong enough to survive. If you did see all of the films from that era you'd more than likely be just as dismissive of them as you are of the past 40 years of cinema.
"Citizen Kane did not make a profit!"
Apparently, "breaking even" is also a term unknown to you.
If a film breaks even, then IT DIDN'T MAKE A PROFIT. Stop trying to sugarcoat it. Kane got it's reputation as a great film decades after it was initially released. It was forgotten all during the 40's. That's the fact, why can't you accept it? I'll say it again 'cause it bears repeating, many of the classic films you love were not appreciated in their day. Years form now, the films you don't care for will be considered classics, too. Deal with it.
Of course, this matter of whether or not certain movies have always been popular is irrelavent to the matter of which era had better movies.
You know as well as I do that it's impossible to answer that question objectively. What constitute a great movie is highly subjective. For instance, I believe you romanticize the past and, through the distorted amber glow you're peering through, that era's films -- many of which were simply product ground out by an indifferent studio system -- appear superior to the films post golden age.
Eddie Muller is certainly not a serious critic.
He's written books on the subject of film noir, so I trust his opinion on the status of L.A. Confidential over your own.
Who is Hunsecker? Do I know him?
ReplyDeleteHunsecker, do you know me? In, as they say on the internets, Real Life?
Jenny: Good question! I don't know if you know Hunsecker or not. You might. I shouldn't reveal real names in print.
ReplyDeleteBoy, there's an eerie silence from Hunsecker. I hope __'s joke letter didn't make him mad.
Oh, I wouldn't want you to give away anyone's identity for anything, Eddie, no fear. I just wondered. I used to think it was Mike, but that was a long time ago and of course Mike has his own account now. It's seemingly not a couple of other people I thought, either.
ReplyDeleteBut if you aren't sure whether I know him I probably don't. Ah well. The important thing is-I enjoy their writing.
That's a kind of crude friendly jibe from a friend. Perhaps you should email ol' JJ privately and tell him who it is-make all pax. And the dialogue was going along so well, too. Darn.
Hunsecker: I deleted the joke post that __ sent. The joke was in bad taste and I apologize for putting it up. At the time I thought it was so over the top that I was certain you'd know it was a gag, and almost as certain that you'd guess who wrote it. My mistake. I'll be more careful next time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful comments!
Boy, there's an eerie silence from Hunsecker. I hope __'s joke letter didn't make him mad.
ReplyDeleteI don't get the reference. What joke letter? C'mon, let me in on the joke.
If there's been an eerie silence from me it's because I had to take a break away from the computer and get some rest.
Hunsecker, do you know me? In, as they say on the internets, Real Life?
Hi Jenny,
No, we've never met. I'm also not Mike F, if that's who you were referring to. I've also gotten into arguments with Mike on occasion. So if he were I that would have meant he argued with himself, which is a sure sign of insanity.
Eddie,
ReplyDeleteI didn't see any joke letter. Are you saying someone dared to ridicule ME!? I WILL DESTROY THEM!!
Hunsecker: You're back! And you didn't even see the offending comment!? Good! All's well that ends well!
ReplyDeleteI think Jenny wanted to send you an email. You don't have any contact information on your blog profile.