Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
8/22/2016 8:01:12 AM
Subject:
The film industry now and then
I was reading reviews of the new remake of Ben-Hur, and they made me think of what's wrong with today's film industry.
I don't put much stock in reviews. That's not the issue. I do put stock in what they say unconsciously or between the lines. The thing that leaps out at me in these Ben-Hur screeds is that the people in charge of that movie didn't understand their source material and didn't even want to. They wanted to make an edgy, effects-driven, value-denuded ongoing explosion that might have some kind of accidental social half-life. In short, they wanted to be cool and throw a lot of money around, but beyond that they had no idea what they wanted.
The 1959 version of Ben-Hur seems big and campy today, but you can't help being affected by its undercurrent of spirituality. It's not only epic. It's noble. It's bigger than you are, but it assumes that you understand why it's big. It respects you.
Movies and TV of the 2000s throw darts at a board, hoping to hit some mysterious popularity target. They're always seeking that ineffable something that made certain '90s movies giant hits (Die Hard is an example). They also want to be taken seriously by "critics." In the process, they've lost control of the fact that real critics no longer exist and that the way to make a hit is to make a good movie. A good movie is intentional. It has a plan and a feel and a theme. Everything answers to these three things in a top-down discipline. Die Hard was popular because every scene was true to the muscular bullet-train look and feel John McTiernan wanted. Not one part of it deviated from this plan for the sake of some edgy cool toss-in someone thought of at the last minute. It's popcorn action fluff, but it's good at what it does, and that's why it's popular to this day.
I was watching some things on Turner Classic Movies recently, and I tried to figure out why classics like Casablanca and The Little Foxes are great. If you pay careful attention to Casablanca, you'll see that Michel Curtiz understood that Ilsa Laszlo is the center of everything. All events hinge on her. To this end, Curtiz used lighting and close-ups with deliberate skill. Notice in the market scene that Ilsa is wearing a strange circular sun hat. This is so that her eyes are shadowed in certain moments and in certain ways that reflect her inner struggle.
In The Little Foxes, Bette Davis's dominance is emphasized by her position at the tops of stairways. The camera is always looking up to accentuate her power. But it also looks down to reflect her point of view.
This is film-making that respects its audience and maintains a consistent characterization and worldview. William Wyler knows this in The Little Foxes and he knows it in Ben-Hur. In the latter movie, the pacing is very slow but you don't think about it -- not, at least, until you get to the chariot scene. Then you understand that Wyler wants to stress the gargantuan sweep of the Roman Empire even in intimate scenes with no crowds. The chariot race is scary because Rome allows it to happen -- Rome is bigger than the characters. But even during the race, the characters' conflict dominates everything.
This kind of thinking is totally lost on today's film producers and directors. They simply aren't smart enough or disciplined enough to make it happen.
I won't even go into The Big Country with Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons (another Wyler movie). I'll save this for another post. In the meantime, please watch some old movies.
