Activity: Last 10 WeeksSpoonfeeding the audience
While watching La Dolce Vita last week, one thought was always in the corner of my mind: why are old movies so indecipherable? Has storytelling progressed, or have movie-goers become dumber? To give another example, I didn’t even know what to make of Kurosawa’s version of Gorky’s The Lower Depths. Mark and I attempted to watch it but we had to give up not far into the movie (he left before me hehe). Also on my list of weirdos/pioneers (take your pick): Stan Brakhage and Godfrey Reggio.
Perhaps the grammar of film has changed? Movie-making is not as mature an art as writing, after all. What was once understandable is obscure now.
Should films be easy to understand? From a commercial perspective, I think so considering how expensive films are. The very structure of film almost dictates it; the viewers are held captive in a cinema with no option of rewinding to comtemplate a challenging scene. Thus the basic story has to be understandable in the first viewing. Unlike a book, which you can reread at leisure, you have to pay to watch a movie twice—something that people do not do as a matter of course.
Digital technology has the potential to change the status quo by enabling producers to make movies for less, and thus take greater risks. Risks like alienating the audience or exploring niche subjects. This happens to some degree, but then what? They languish for lack of a distributor. Again, this is where technology may come to the rescue. If cinemas won’t show the films we want, we can stream them off the Internet. Not as satisfying as watching it in the cinema, but you can’t have it all, yet.
The dilemma with film is between treating it as an art and as a commercial product. Hollywood tries to do both, leaving more towards the latter. Their marketing gurus say it is more lucrative to make a few blockbusters than a lot of little projects so that is what they produce. The blockbusters can then subsidize riskier projects like those readers of this blog might enjoy.
Maybe it makes sense to churn out a potboiler before embarking on one’s magnum opus?
on June 14th, 2007 at 16:12 Quote
French films have continued to develop along their own paths, frequently literary or exhaustive explorations of the most tiny subjects, working like poetry.
This has little to do with the medium, much to do with the writer/director. Even more, it has to do with the viewer. A viewer watching an hour of daily television quickly becomes incapable of bringing as much to film as one who reads something of substance, daily, for that hour. Television is passive, reading is active. One builds fat, the other muscle.
on June 14th, 2007 at 16:14 Quote
French films have continued to develop along their own paths, frequently lexhaustive explorations of the most tiny subjects, working like poetry.
This has little to do with the medium.. it has mostly to do with the viewer. A viewer watching an hour of daily television becomes an intellectual eunoch, incapable of bringing as much to film as one who reads something of substance for that daily hour.
Television is passive, reading is active. One builds fat, the other muscle.
on June 14th, 2007 at 16:39 Quote
It is not always true that “television is passive, reading is active” (compare a documentary with an airport novel), but your contention has a substance of truth.
For some reason, television has devolved into what it is. Overly intellectual content is generally avoided; Sam Goldwyn (the G in MGM) said “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”
Before television existed, people in developed countries used to read books to pass time. Then television came along and offered people an alternative. One which did not require as much mental exertion. You can just sit back and let it entertain you. Who could resist?
I don’t know where you live but the situation in Boston is pretty good, to be honest. Whenever I take the public transportation, I always see people reading something, no matter how crowded it is, or whether they are standing up or sitting down.
If anything, today’s problem is one of information overload. People need to be able to access information as efficiently as possible. This is one of the virtues of film; it is very good at presenting a summary of a subject. If you want to go into the details, you can read a book.