I think you're right, film critiques and cinephiles alike have indeed been rambling about "The Death of Cinema" for almost five decades now, yet films will most likely carry on being shown in theatres for a good while still.
But I think cinephilia and the idea of Cinema as a collective experience, a shared space were people from different horizons can experience works of art -high and low, both popular and more high brow- together, where they can be confronted to sometimes disturbing and challenging ideas or world-views, and then discuss them together and critically think about them, is dying. Cinema as an opening onto the world is dying. A lot of people now prefer to watch their “contents” online, chosen from an endless list of films, specially selected by an algorithm to appeal to their taste and match their viewing history. How many Budd Boetticher, Frank Borzage, Ivan Passer, Frank Perry, Robert Aldrich, Antonioni, Bogdanovich, Charles Burnett, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Larry Cohen, Claude Chabrol, Carl Dreyer, Francesco Rossi, Douglas Sirk, Robert Siodmak (etc.) films crop up in your Netflix’s suggestion-of-films-to-watch list if you don’t specifically search for them?
I'm not horrified that films such as the MCU and DCU generic fares are being made and shown in theatres; they -or their equivalent- (bland films made by suits with no other ambition than turning a buck) have always been made. I'm just horrified that so many people these days watch them and seem to be satisfied with what they propose, how poorly they are directed, and how little they have to say about anything. I guess we have the Cinema we deserve, so the onus is on us audience as well, but all eras are definitely not equal as far as artistic vitality and creativity goes (and not just only as a matter of Cinema).
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MichaelJPollock (651)
4 years ago
(continued)
“Cinema begins were the scenario ends” said J.B. Thoret.
There is very little “cinema” to be found in many films that are shown in theatre these days. We’re surrounded by more and more “images”, and yet find less and less “shots” (i.e. composed, lit, blocked and edited with the intent of visually conveying meaning –not necessarily in synch with the meaning conveyed through the dialogues or acting featured in that shot, by the way). Just like the vast majority of TV series, these films are about nothing more than their scenario. They are about stories and characters, all indeed part of the make-up of Cinema, but Cinema is about something more: it is about an experience that has to do with contemplation, the representation of time, and space (e.g. “Time-image” as opposed to mere “Movement-image”, as Delleuze put it).
Paul Schrader said that he thought cinephilia would slowly become like classical music: it will always be there, but it will become niche. Only a handful of enthusiasts will be "film or cinema literate", and have the tools and codes to critically analyse and understand films on a level deeper than the mere surface. The vast majority of people will merely "consume" contents, flux and images, and won't be able to (or even feel the need to) understand and decode them, or critically think about what they mean, how they produce meaning, and how they relate to the world and the history of the medium.
Likewise, film critique and film review have for a large part devolved into mere “opinion” and “trivia” (not that there’s anything wrong with these –as long as they don’t try to pass for something they’re not), usually devoid from knowledge of film history, film language or any argumentative logic. As Truffaut used to say: “everybody has two jobs these days: their day-job and film-critique”.
I guess these are the multiple ways in which one could think of Cinema as "dying".
Now "moving-images"? Well, I guess they'll stick around for a while...
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I think you're right, film critiques and cinephiles alike have indeed been rambling about "The Death of Cinema" for almost five decades now, yet films will most likely carry on being shown in theatres for a good while still.
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I think so. This current emergency tells the tale: the studios DO NOT WANT to show their big summer blockbusters "only on pay TV." They know that movie theaters and audiences are part of the equation -- to earn money(their goal) and as a shared experience.
Now, the NATURE of movies in theaters has changed a lot. A lot of the dramas and indiefilms of yesteryear have gravitated to cable and streaming channels. Some of the best writers have gone to TV(The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Deadwood). And critics are more inclined to review those shows in depth than, say, Wonder Woman.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
But I think cinephilia and the idea of Cinema as a collective experience, a shared space were people from different horizons can experience works of art -high and low, both popular and more high brow- together, where they can be confronted to sometimes disturbing and challenging ideas or world-views, and then discuss them together and critically think about them, is dying.
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Yes. To that extent, an era is gone.
Just at the "entertainment" level, I am happy in my later years to have fond memories of seeing Wait Until Dark and Jaws(and, in revival, Psycho) with full house audiences screaming away(oddly, I don't remember screams at The Exorcist.) And memories of audiences laughing so hard during Woody Allen's Sleeper or National Lampoon's Animal House that you couldn't hear the lines.
And -- perhaps with the most risk of personal embarrassment -- the memory of being in theaters where you could hear the collective sniffles and choked-back sobs(including my own) that a tearjerker like ET or Terms of Endearment could generate. As "Exorcist" director William Friedkin said: "Audiences come to movies for one of three reasons: to laugh, to cry, or to scream."
But there is something to be said for the shared experience of an audience seeing something as dramatic as Network or Cuckoo's Nest or Dog Day Afternoon(to name three of the 70's best) as a shared experience, too. All of those movies had laugh moments and "applause" moments, but there was also the shared humanity of "taking in the ideas and savoring the characters."
I recall one night seeing "The Usual Suspects" with my date and afterwards retiring to the café next door for dinner and to discuss the film. As we talked, the couple next to us joined in with their own theories about the story(and its end) and suddenly...we were as one(or four.)
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Cinema as an opening onto the world is dying. A lot of people now prefer to watch their “contents” online, chosen from an endless list of films, specially selected by an algorithm to appeal to their taste and match their viewing history. How many Budd Boetticher, Frank Borzage, Ivan Passer, Frank Perry, Robert Aldrich, Antonioni, Bogdanovich, Charles Burnett, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Larry Cohen, Claude Chabrol, Carl Dreyer, Francesco Rossi, Douglas Sirk, Robert Siodmak (etc.) films crop up in your Netflix’s suggestion-of-films-to-watch list if you don’t specifically search for them?
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You know, that paragraph makes the case that "movies are better than ever" -- but perhaps we are talking more of movies from the past. As long as salvageable negatives have been kept somewhere, almost 100 years of international movies (with maybe a meaty emphasis on 1930-1970) are there for the watching on streaming and cable(or special order DVDs) by new generations whose tastes may be better served by the past then by the present. Not to mention those of us who grew up on those movies and want to "go back."
I have referred elsewhere to a book I bought as a teenager in 1970 called "Interviews With Directors" and by reading it start to finish, I became acquainted with the NAMES of Bergman, Kurosawa and Fellini even if I couldn't view their films at the time(not available to me.) Well, now they are.
I would also say that it looks like the whole tradition of "books about film directors" is rather falling apart. We certainly have enough of them to write about modernly, but I guess all the articles are moving to the internet. Not many books about them out there.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I'm not horrified that films such as the MCU and DCU generic fares are being made and shown in theatres; they -or their equivalent- (bland films made by suits with no other ambition than turning a buck) have always been made.
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Yes. You could say that the antecedents to the MCU/DCU films go back to the disaster movies of the 70's or the cop buddy movies of the 80's: money was to be made.
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I'm just horrified that so many people these days watch them and seem to be satisfied with what they propose, how poorly they are directed, and how little they have to say about anything. I guess we have the Cinema we deserve, so the onus is on us audience as well, but all eras are definitely not equal as far as artistic vitality and creativity goes (and not just only as a matter of Cinema).
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Well, it evolved here. "How little they have to say about anything" is perhaps the key point, here. I've actually seen a lot of the MCU/DCU films and I watch them rather as I watched Eastwood and Bronson and Schwarzenegger back in the day: well made entertainment, nothing more , nothing less.
That said, I know that movies serve the young, and if I WERE young, I'd probably be much more connected to DCU/MCU films. I bow in that direction. For me, hell, it was The Omega Man and Westworld(1973.) MUCH cheaper versions of the same kind of entertainment.
To me, the real betrayal of the final two Avengers films was asking the audience to feel sorrow for the deaths of characters who never really died. Most of them came back to life one film later, and I can't trust the "deaths" of those who didn't. (Hell one of them already has a sequel coming.) Fictional or not, there was a "weight" to the death of Janet Leigh in Psycho(horror division) or of a key character in Terms of Endearment(drama division) that was meaningful even if fictional. Not so in the MCU.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
There is very little “cinema” to be found in many films that are shown in theatre these days. We’re surrounded by more and more “images”, and yet find less and less “shots” (i.e. composed, lit, blocked and edited with the intent of visually conveying meaning –not necessarily in synch with the meaning conveyed through the dialogues or acting featured in that shot, by the way).
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I think it was David Mamet who wrote: "The movies began in the early 20th Century as a light show spectacle for the masses...and seem to be returning to their roots."
There is something to be said about composition, montage, lighting being done to "tell the real story of a film" that seems to be getting lost these days.
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Just like the vast majority of TV series, these films are about nothing more than their scenario.
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Yes. So many of these boards seem to linger on the plausibility of plot points and storylines. Fair enough, and worth talking for talk but..movies at least used to be doing thing more than just telling a story. That said...the greatest movies have a great story to tell.
I've been watching a lot of "streaming TV series these days" and they do seem to take the soap opera as their inspiration. Stories "end" but then new stories start again -- those characters who don't die simply continue the story long past the ending..and into a new story. If a story never ends...its not much of a story, is it?
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
They are about stories and characters, all indeed part of the make-up of Cinema, but Cinema is about something more: it is about an experience that has to do with contemplation, the representation of time, and space (e.g. “Time-image” as opposed to mere “Movement-image”, as Delleuze put it).
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Time and space are a BIG part of "the movies." I can get age-centric and say "and you only know that when you are older, looking back at the memories of seeing movies in your youth," BUT...that time experience is part of when you see the movie the first time, too. Who I was, and how I felt, WHEN I saw those movies decades ago was important THEN. Time then, time now.
But I will forever love what James Stewart said of movies: They are "pieces of time." And to watch a movie today from 1960 or 1970 or 1980 is to view a "piece of time forever preserved." Or to ride a time machine. Isn't it interesting to go back and see Jack Nicholson when he was young and thin and sexually powerful? Or when we were?
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