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.
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not to mention movie “remakes” of not even old films……
Hi Cletus- Surely you can’t be objecting to Batman Part 17 The Batmanning, Fresh Blood? It’s in development right now. Batman is played by Peter Dinklage this time, I think, and he’ll no doubt bring a whole new dimension to the Batman canon.
The book “Godfather” came out about 8th grade for me. Was passed around classmates for the torrid sex scene…….
I think one of the exceptions to the book rule would be the second version of “The Maltese Falcon” with Bogart, Lorre, Greenstreet, et al. The first movie (1931) was pretty bad, but the second one can be watched over and over again…the only weak link is the femme fatale played by Astor. It’s taken almost directly from Hammett’s book with the deletion of only a few scenes involving non-critical red herrings. Everybody plays their role really well, and Lorre steals every scene he’s in.
The book is pretty darned good, too, but once you’ve seen the movie you can’t read the book without seeing those characters in the roles that you’re reading. That’s a mark of a good flick, when the actors and their characters are perfectly matched.
Hi Blackwing- Thanks for reading and commenting.
I find the Bogart Maltese Falcon interesting for a lot of reasons, including some you mentioned. Before this movie, detectives were usually toffs like Poirot or Holmes or rich guys just fooling around like in Thin Man movies. Sam Spade was the first detective I remember that was as tough, or even tougher, than the criminals. It’s a blast to watch Spade rough up the Elisha Cook character, who thinks he’s a tough guy. Sam Spade gave birth to a million hard-boiled detectives.
I’m also with you on another aspect of the film. Mary Astor is the hot babe? Sheesh.
Perhaps the successor to motion pictures is already among us as the mini-series or telenovela. I’m midway through Netflix’s Fall of the House of Usher, which while a bit overblown, has a Network-worthy screed from the arch-villain expounding on “when life gives you lemons…”
DH and I have become addicted to Colin Baxter in television form. There have now been three series from the Morse collection. We turn to them frequently not because we are searching for the great denouement, but rather because it is comforting to hear the language of well-trained actors speaking in a beautiful version of the English language. These actors were not picked up at the local bar, but have spent years honing their stagecraft and it shows in every scene. The men’s voices are all of a closely related pitch (tenor) and the staccato is similar–it is soothing to hear dialogue often well above the 12th grade level!
Most of the time the actors are not using guns, just piecing together subtle clues. Of course, what better stage than Oxford and the surrounding areas?
I made the mistake of playing the above video for DH. A Swedish systems philosopher he is still clinging to the socialist economy ideal, but is a believer in what old Ned has to say!
Whoops! Sorry, I did not mean to say he was a believer in–just that he believes that is the way the world works! This good man of great ethics does not “believe in” this idea!
And then you have a situation like “LA Confidential” where they took the story apart and reassembelled it to make the screenplay. James Ellroy said he was amazed with what they’d done, because he didn’t think they could make a movie out of it. Shows what you can do when you’re faithful to the story, but not the book.