Modern Times

I think movies became an art form. They passed through a foundational and developmental period of trial and error  to make something serious out of what started as twenty cops soundlessly falling off the running boards of a police car while chasing a tramp.

There were people that saw the possibility of art in it right away, of course. Charlie Chaplin thought film could be art, and tried to make it so before it could even speak. Others made simple entertainments, a canned version of vaudeville, and were content. It’s not ignoble. People need simple entertainment, too. But it ain’t art.

Mixed in to this desire to make serious art through a camera, came a desire to add social commentary. It came pretty early on, as well. Metropolis and Modern Times are two examples, although the former is only amusing in a camp way, where Chaplin got the mix of humor and social observation just right.

Stage plays were the playground of social commentary. Writers had been writing social commentary into everything from fiction to pamphlet screeds forever and a day, but people reacted completely differently to the spoken word, acted out in front of them. Hollywood tried to import all sorts of stage writers from New York, and London, to tart up their entertainments with something resembling seriousness, or at least wit. Most attempts as screenwriting by “serious” writers failed miserably. Most of their work never even made it to the screen Everyone from F.Scott Fitzgerald to P.G. Wodehouse gave it a go and went home empty handed.

For the most part, good movies are made from bad books. Have you ever read The Godfather? It’s an intellectual dumpster fire. The reverse isn’t always the case, but profound books have a tendency to rely on the prose for mental imagery too heavily to be filmed effectively. And introducing lots of action into stage plays that are written to be yelled by a few people in a little cockpit usually looks forced.

Everyone in Hollywood takes themselves very, very seriously at this point, but I think the movies as a true art form is in the rear-view mirror. Exactly how many comic book movies can you watch? But for a while, with everyone pulling in the same direction, Hollywood produced some astonishing stuff. And there’s really no way to listen to Ned Beatty’s speech in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network and come away with anything less than astonishment.

Some people nail it. And nail it to the church door, too.