Film make car go 'boom', me go see film
"What happened to the movies?" asks Commentary Magazine. Apparently, screenwriters and Hollywood hacks all agree: "America has elected to make films for its bluntest section of society and in ways that flatter them."
What's more, modern audiences "brought up on cartoons, comic books, television, and Nintendo games, is much more interested in spectacle than story, in car crashes than catharsis."
I have to disagree slightly with this hypothesis. Movies haven't descended into providing cheap spectacle, it's what they've always been about!
The earliest surviving motion picture features a man sneezing for comedic effect. In the 1890s, most films featured slices of daily life - people filing into factories, policemen going about their work. In other words, the voyeuristic pleasures of Big Brother were as attractive then as they are now.
What else was popular? Footage of trains hurtling towards the audience - causing people to faint, panic or run out of the theatre. And, of course, sex. From "peep show" cabinets on Victorian piers, to films of scantily-clad chamber maids in early cinemas.
Cineastes will always decry the general public's "bad taste", but there are still great films being made. If you avoid The Island this weekend, you could go to see Crash, Shake Hands With The Devil, or (if you can find it) DiG!Nonetheless, the Commentary Magazine article is well worth reading - in particular for the anecdote about how Dustin Hoffman can get a 1920s hotel room rebuilt.
Labels: film
posted by mrdiscopop at 11:51 AM
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