Are modern films, like Knocked Up, rubbish?
Once again an old fart has bemoaned the pitiful state of Hollywood. This time, it's not a hack like myself or Joe Queenan, but 69-year-old director Ridley Scott. He declared, at the Venice Film Festival: "I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50, now it's 3% good, 97% stupid. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line."
Of course, the usual reaction to these remarks from much younger directors, critics and bloggers is to accuse those who voice them of being nostalgic. But anyone with any knowledge of film history will be able to state certain objective facts that have nothing to do with the person's age. Let's take Hollywood, since it was the subject of Scott's concern. Perhaps 50% good and 50% stupid is putting the positive side a bit high, but when I was growing up one could at least count on films by Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Orson Welles, Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann, Howard Hawks, John Ford, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray to counteract the dross. Could one come up with a comparable list of mainstream Hollywood directors today?
And with non-English language cinema, there were greater eras than today. It is not nostalgic to say that German and Russian cinema were at their peaks in the 1920s. It is a fact. It is not nostalgic to state that Italian cinema is now in the doldrums after having three great periods: the silent era, neo-realism and the 1960s. It is a fact. I'm old enough and was unhigh enough to remember the 1960s.
It is probably difficult for younger filmgoers to imagine the impact that films like Breathless, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, La Dolce Vita and L'Avventura had on us, the first audiences. Just as I can't really imagine how it felt to be among those who first saw The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat station (1895) or The Battleship Potemkin (1925) or Napoleon (1927) or King Kong (1933) or Citizen Kane (1941). Even I was too young to have seen them on their first showing.
But each era has its masterpieces, and it is always a privilege to be among the first audiences to recognise them as such. However, I wonder if those filmgoers who grew up with cinema in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, will be able to cite as many great films as those of earlier eras. How many films today have the "wow factor"? I admit there have been a number of films in this century that have renewed my faith in cinema. To name the first few that come to mind: Russian Ark, Platform, Ten, L'Humanite, Syndromes and a Century, Colossal Youth, Eloge de l'Amour and Sicilia.
Of course, a list like this is philistine bait and accusations of elitism begin to fly. That is the problem of trying to write about cinema as an art form. I envy those critics who write about literature, classical music, theatre, architecture or the visual arts because they don't have to "address the bottom line".
Incidentally, critics who do write about those art forms are very likely to agree with me. Fings really ain't wot they used to be.
