Je suis un obsessionnel. Désolé. Donc,
what am I to do? Am I foolish to be so anxious and preoccupied with the thought
of Trump being once again elected to the presidency of the United States, and
for the Labour Party of United Kingdom failing to achieve a majority in
Government, despite indications by the polls.
I note the various newspapers continue
to have sections of their daily publications devoted to other matters (culture,
lifestyle, travel, sport and several other headings) beside news and opinion. These
categories have as many column inches devoted to them as any other. So, clearly most of the readership is quite
happy to look beyond the front pages, assuming these pages do reflect the
political concerns of the moment. The BBC News does flash up some of the
newspapers’ front pages from time to time and there are tabloids that headline
gossip and supposedly sensational headlines involving what some people consider
‘celebrities’.
There are also a number of other
distractions on BBC iPlayer, such as An unflinching look at Picasso’s legacy
and Dame Judi Dench explores the countryside. There is as well the
BBC Proms with music in all sorts of guises, e.g. Fantasy Film Music, Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons, Bollywood, Beethoven’s Ninth, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Tchaikovsky
and Prokofiev, Northern Soul, and the list goes on. Displacement activity abounds
on the smallish screen, with Prime, Netflix, Disney etc. and there is BBC
Sounds and a variety of radio stations from around the world on the internet,
such as KPFK in Los Angeles and NPR (National Public Radio). The airways are
full of activity. There is an infinite variety of stuff to see, read and hear.
Despite all that I cannot rid my mind
of anxiety over what might happen in 2024. Apart from the 24th July
to the 11th August, just over two weeks of the Paris Olympics, there
will be two very significant general elections, one of which is fixed for the 5th
November. It is also Guy Fawkes Day in the UK. Is it an omen that the United
States elections should fall on the day of a failed treasonous conspiracy 419
years in the past? Will the Capitol go up in smoke and yet again be invaded?
Will there be a new government in the United Kingdom by then? What will be the
way of the world?
I cannot help but think should the Labour Party fail to form a new government in 2024, the likelihood of Trump
being once again elected president of the United States is probable.. The
possible effects of what little influence a left of centre government in the
United Kingdom might have on the American electorate could make a difference,
given that European States seem to be leaning towards the right. Any change in
that trend would be some sort of catalyst towards a more civilised approach to
government. I say this despite the current malevolent retrograde rhetoric
coming from Suella Braverman to American electors. This is a woman who dreams
of razor wire fencing and exiles to Rwanda. But I digress. I must get back to
other matters.
I noted in the New Yorker an article
by the film critic Richard Brody, What to see in the New York Film
Festival’s First Week. In it, he
speaks of a short film put together by Fabrice Aragno, who was Jean-Luc Godard’s
last assistant:
Jean-Luc Godard died in September, 2022, at the age
of ninety-one. In his last years, he was working on an adaptation of the 1937
novel “False Passports,” by the French writer Charles Plisnier, and conveyed
his work materials—storyboard-like collages, a bit of live-action footage, and
audio clips—to his assistant, Fabrice Aragno, with explicit instructions for
their editing. The result is the nineteen-minute film “Trailer of a Film that Will Never
Exist: Phony Wars”
(Oct. 2-4), which plays like a distillation and an elucidation of Godard’s
last decades of work.
Richard Brody is the author of the
book “Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard” and is apparently
currently working on a book about the lasting influence of the French New Wave.
I have only read this one article by
Mr Brody and I’m sure he knows a lot about Cinema, Godard in particular, but I
have a slight problem with The French New Wave. In my view there is no such
thing as The French New Wave. It should be referred to as the European Film
Renaissance. There is no doubt that French Cinema contributed a great deal to
the quality and artistry of world film, but there were a number of other film
makers in Europe who made significant contributions. On top of which there were films made in 1960
in the United States which were of significance, if only at the box office.
It more or less took off in about 1959 with Les 400 Coups, but Room at the Top was released prior to that, as was Tiger Bay, and
Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. There was Hiroshima Mon prior to
that, as was Tiger Bay, and Billy Wilder’s Some like it hot. There
was Black Orpheus, but also I’m All
Right Jack, Look Back in Anger. and Our Man in Havana. In 1960, in
Britain there was The Angry Silence, The League of Gentlemen, Peeping Tom,
Sons and Lovers, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
The Italian cinema was of significant
influence. We have: Michelangelo Antonioni with La Notte and L’Eclisse,
Il Deserto Rosso and Blow Up; Federico Fellini with 8½, Juliet of the Spirits, Amarcord. Fellini was already making a mark in
the 50’s with I Vitelloni and La Strada; Vittorio de Sica’s Two Women and even earlier
films such as The Bicycle Thief.
So it was not just the French cinema of the sixties,
great as it was, that has a lasting influence. Cinema in Europe was dealing with
a great many issues with great style and artistry. A great number of movies
have been made across the world and many countries have in effect, influenced
each other. Indeed, the Japanese influence on Italian/American film has been
enormous, particularly so far as popularity at the box office is concerned.
Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo), Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) and The Outrage (Rashomon) are instances
in point.
In effect there is no one particular influence on the
making of motion pictures. The art of telling stories is varied and there are
great filmmakers in all parts of the world.
It is only a matter of melding sound and images. I say that as if it’s
the easiest thing in the world, but it is far more difficult to do than one can
imagine. It starts with show and tell. Early silent cinema was a sequence of
moving images with the occasional cue card of text describing a scene and
depicting speech to clarify a narrative. Most of the ‘dialogue’ was in the
acting. As Norma Desmond so ably points out, “We didn’t need
dialogue. We had faces”. Images were
accompanied by music, usually from a pianist behind or beside the screen.
Certain musical themes became associated with specific sequences in the
film. The movement of the story line was
carefully constructing by the editing. How the sequences of images came
together was of supreme importance in order to convey the story and give it the
necessary emotive quality and meaning.
The acting was initially over-dramatic to get across the subtext of the
images. Gradually a better understanding of just how telling an image could be
when it is blown up and viewed in closeup or just simply showing the subject. A
simple look could be more powerful than a more dramatic gesture. Acting for the
camera became a technique all its own.
With sound, came the written text.
Dialogue was now taking over, and the manner in which speech was delivered of
course had some effect on the style of acting. There was also the matter of
underscoring the images on the screen with music or other sound effects. In any
event with music that heightened or emphasised the action of the film. Certain
phrases and tones continued to be associated with particular emotions and
activities. As a result the films from 1929 through to 1935 were very heavy
with dialogue and as the writing improved so the character of a particular
character was more specifically revealed.
Think of the witty savvy sidekicks of many a hero or heroine. Think of actors such as Eric Rhodes, Edward
Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Helen Broderick, Franklin Pangborn, Alan Mowbray, Eugene Pallette and
many others. From the moment they appeared on screen, their very ‘character
acting’ impressed and gave meaning.
Gradually dialogue and image became
more in tune with each other. Each assisted the other and verbal explanations
became reduced. The blend of dialogue/image became more expressive and nuanced,
and as a consequence better film-making. So too with the use of music and
sound. Film music became a subject of its own, as did the quality of the sound
and effects in general. The period of this development from 1920 to 1950 is an
extraordinary period for the studios in Hollywood as they attracted wonderful
actors, writer, musicians and technicians of all sorts. The better directors innovated and learned
more and more about orchestrating a film and the requirements of production.
As part of this learning process the
work rate was phenomenal. Alan Mowbray’s credits alone indicate the output. 8
films in 1931, 14 films in 1932, 8 films in 1933, 9 films in 1934, 6 in 1935,
11 in 1936, 10 in 1937. That’s 66 films in 6 years. Between 1939 and 1944 Eric
Blore was involved in 35 films. Bette
Davis was involved in 43 films in 8 years between 1931 and 1939. By the time she made All About Eve, considered
a comeback, she had been in 65 films in the 19 years she had been acting in
motion pictures.
Billy Wilder had written 50 films
prior to making Sunset Boulevard in 1950, had directed 8 films Including, Five
Graves to Cairo, Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, He had won two Oscars,
one for writing and one for directing all before 1950, including in 1946 at the
Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize of the Festival for The Lost Weekend.
William Wellman had made 16 silent
pictures in the six years before he made a sound film, Chinatown Night in 1929
and followed that up with 34 films over the next ten years, including an Oscar
for A Star is Born made in 1937. This was the first time this story was
dramatized on film. It stared Janet Gaynor and Frederick March, with writing
credits going to Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell and Robert Carson. There is a
Wikipedia entry under Dorothy Parker which reads as follows:
In 1932, Parker met Alan Campbell, an
actor hoping to become a screenwriter. They married two years later in Raton,
New Mexico. Campbell's mixed parentage was the reverse of Parker's: he had a
German-Jewish mother and a Scottish father. She learned that he was bisexual
and later proclaimed in public that he was "queer as a billy goat".
The pair moved to Hollywood and signed ten-week contracts with Paramount
Pictures, with Campbell (also expected to act) earning $250 per week and Parker
earning $1,000 per week. They would eventually earn $2,000 and sometimes more
than $5,000 per week as freelancers for various studios. She and Campbell
"[received] writing credit for over 15 films between 1934 and 1941"
One should note that in 1934 $1,000 was worth, in today’s
value just under $23,000 a week, and her higher earnings would have been
equivalent today of over $110,000 a week.
So it’s not surprising that a lot of talent drifted over
to Hollywood, with those kinds of salaries being given out. At the same time
however, great films were being made, despite the craziness. By the 1940’s a number of superlative films
had been produced. Indeed, in that decade alone were some of the most favoured (British
and American) films:
1940: Fantasia, The Grapes of Wrath. Rebecca,
His Girl Friday, The Great Dictator, The Philadelphia Story.
1941: Sullivan’s
Travels, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, Citizen
Kane
1942: The
Magnificent Ambersons, Casablanca
1944: Arsenic
and Old Lace, To Have and Have Not, Meet Me in St. Louis, Double
Indemnity
1945: Mildred
Pierce, Spellbound
1946: The
Stranger, Gilda, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Notorious,
It’s A Wonderful Life, Gaslight.
1947: Black
Narcissus, Miracle on 34th Street, Out of the Past.
1948: Letter
from an Unknown Woman, Rope, Key Largo, Red River, The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1949: Adam’s
Rib, All the King’s Men, White Heat, The Third Man
There were a few standout films being made elsewhere. In
1943 Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath and Henri-George Clouzot’s Le Corbeau
were made. Also In France, Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)
and Cocteau’s La Belle et Le Bête (1946). In Italy Vittorio De Sica made
The Bicycle Thief (1948) and in Japan Kurosawa produced Drunken Angel
(1948) and Stray Dog (1949).
There are of course accomplished films in every decade.
The 1930’s had produced some equally outstanding films: M 1931, Frankenstein
1931, King Kong 1931, City Lights 1931, Duck Soup 1933, It
Happened One Night 1934, The Lady Vanishes 1938, and in 1939 alone, Gone
With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and
Stagecoach (which Orson Wells watched over and over before making Citizen
Kane). These were the learning years
with sound and the variety of character and style is impressive.
From its creation as a process in the 19th
Century and the skilful development by the likes of the Lumière brothers and
Georges Méliès, to present day A/I and digital technology, film had taken hold
around the world and nothing will stop it. I would guess the output of film is
much greater than it had been in the 1930s and 40s, and the quality is equal to
the best of that early era. We are only 6 years away from the centenary anniversary
of sound film and the technological changes are astronomical. One could, and
some probably already have, make a feature film just using a smart phone. All
it takes is the doing.
My list of films, by the way, is taken from a consensus
of films as listed on an internet site. I have seen them all, which is why I
have included them. Some of you may think my choices are rubbish and may have
an entirely different list. Indeed, I do not know if any ‘young’ people, say
between 20 and 30 years of age, who would even deign to watch a film in black
and white, with scenes that are longer than 30 seconds. In my observation young people are more attuned to film language because they have been weaned on moving image. One can see babies attempting to swipe
pictures in books, believing that that is how one moves on. Every image is a
touch screen. Why should it be otherwise?
So one’s relationship with film and the memories of the
magic of cinema is a very personal matter. I can easily watch certain films
over and over again without any problem, such as Casablanca, The
Maltese Falcon, All About Eve, The Big Sleep, Now Voyager.
There are many films post 1950 which I have omitted that would come within that
category, such as 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia and 1967’s In the Heat of
the Night. In addition there are a number of Ealing Studio comedies,
Kind, Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951)
and The Ladykillers (1955), The Green Man (1956), to name a few.
I would add the 1952 film of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being
Earnest with its memorable cast.
There are some films which are seasonal and are broadcast
on television every year in December, such as The Wizard of Oz, It’s
a Wonderful Life, The Bishops Wife (1947), and A Christmas Carol (1951).
For me it has to be the version with the inimitable Alastair Sim.
As you can see, I have not mentioned directors. The
French nouvelle vague and the ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ crowd have this thing about the ‘auteur theory’.
For me, there are just good directors and they are most of the time good
orchestrators in the making of a motion picture. They get the right team
together and manage to get them all to perform at their best. This will usually
result in a good film. Not always, but 99% of the time. Hitchcock, Curtiz, Capra,
Wilder, Wellman, Lean, Jewison, Mackendrick, Renoir, Goddard, Truffaut, Cacoyannis,
Costa-Gavras, Wajda, Almodóvar, Bondarchuk and many others have managed to put
together some very good collaborators, the best boys, camera operators,
stylists, designers, sound technicians, drivers, focus pullers, script continuity,
makeup. I will just paste on the crew credits for Lawrence of Arabia as listed
on IMDB. It’s an example of what it takes.
But remember there may be kids out there just doing it with a smart phone.
Music
by
Cinematography by
Editing by
Casting By
Production Design
by
Art Direction by
Set Decoration by
Costume Design by
Makeup
Department
Production
Management
Second Unit Director
or Assistant Director
Art Department
Sound Department
Special Effects by
Stunts
Camera and Electrical Department
Costume and Wardrobe
Department
Editorial
Department
Location
Management
Music Department
Script and Continuity Department
Transportation
Department
Additional Crew
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