This is the attitude I hate above all others. No, I do do not think that older movies are one iota more creative than modern movies because of the code.
That’s as simplistic and lacking in nuance as it gets. I’ll take the sexuality of modern movies like Out of Sight over Hays Code cigarette smoking any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
I disagree. I think The Exorcist could definitely be made today. It wouldn’t get a huge release if it were slapped with the NC-17 rating, but then again I’ve seen pretty bad stuff recently. I swear I’ve even recently seen a crucifix penetration scene in a modern movie, but I can’t back that up. What I can definitively say is that I just last week saw a movie with a stripper scene where the stripper inserted a lollipop into her vagina, and it was shown. I did recently see The Girlfriend Experience, but I’m pretty sure (though not positive) it wasn’t in that particular trainwreck. I think it was a more mainstream movie.
After a quick googling, it appears that movie is The Center of the World, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker. The lollipop stripper was played by porn star Alicia Klass. It’s from 2001, but I happened to DVR it on cable last week. (Big fan of the two leads.)
If you’re trying to say that modern movies never include abortions, you’re wrong. Maybe not in light fluffy comedies like Knocked Up or Juno, for obvious reasons, but they do appear in dramas. Here’s a quick list of some recent titles:Greenberg
Revolutionary Road
Derailed*
21 Grams
Code 46
11:14
Solaris
The Anniversary Party
The Cider House Rules
I really like Out of Sight but I also like movies like To Have and Have Not. The chemistry between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart equals anything on screen between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.
What I don’t like is having every point hammered home as if I’m incapable of thinking for myself. IMHO, you see that more today than you do in older films. YMMV but for me what is behind the closed door is always more interesting than the opening of the door.
From a mainstream studio with a wide release and huge advertising campaign? I just don’t think so.
There’s a big difference between a crucifix and a lollipop.
But beyond that, do you really think a movie is creative because it happens to cross an artificially imposed barrier?
Is The Center of the World better than something made in the forties or fifties simply because you see someone getting off with a piece of candy?
There are many more Jennifer Lopez’s than there are Lauren Becalls.
What I don’t like is being sheltered from the humanity of the characters like I’m some kind of fragile simpleton. You see this in all older movies, but very few modern ones. At least the ones for grownups.
It’s similar to television. I guess you’d rather watch Leave it to Beaver and Gunsmoke than Deadwood, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Justified. Here’s the thing, though: you’re allowed to make sanitized shows and movies today. Back then you weren’t allowed to make grownup movies for grownups.
Now you’re attacking anybody who appreciates older films as a prude. There were quite a few grownup movies made back then. In fact, some of their major critics here complain that the old ones are a bit too slow; that is, not obvious enough.
And we weren’t talking about TV. For every Deadwood, we’ve got half a dozen stupid sitcoms trying to be hip by letting kids use “bad” words.
Seriously? While the abandonment of the Hays Code and the studio system led to a revolution in “personal” filmmaking in the late 'Sixties and 'Seventies, the Code itself caused writers and directors to be very creative in slipping in subtle references to prohibited subjects, sometimes with fantastic effect on clever double entendres and symbolism. Instead of explicitly demonstrating for the audience, it caused viewers to have to think and interpret what they saw, increasing the depth of the medium. Films made during the Hays Code era are also emblematic of the time, and so serve as cultural signposts and then changing mores. Just because the mordant fear of Communist insurgency in the 'Sixties is no longer relevant doesn’t make the trifecta of Frankenheimer’s “Trilogy of Paranoia” (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, and Seconds) any less effective, although you need to understand the context in which they were made and the barely veiled references to real people (i.e. Senator Iselin standing in for Joseph McCarthy, General Scott for General Edwin Walker ) to gain the full impact. The staircase exchange between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity is one of the greatest single scenes in film-noir, all the more so for the way they dance around the fact that they want to jump into bed and rub their bits together, and the subsequent scene where she recruits him to help kill her husband is even better.
Of those, I would argue that only Momento, Silence of the Lambs , Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Saving Private Ryan, and Pulp Fiction can be considered in any way groundbreaking or enduring, and only three of those five have really been seen by a wide audience. (I personally find Pulp Fiction highly derivative and less interesting than Reservoir Dogs, but there is no question that it had a significant impact upon independent film in the 'Nineties. I personally find Saving Private Ryan to be a blatantly manipulative and, following the opening Omaha Beach landing scene, artless and uninteresting film, but I recognize that I’m in the minority.)
While I don’t hate Casablanca (and in fact find it pretty entertaining for the dialogue and minor characters*) there is just nothing about the film that justifies the high regard it is held by so many, much of which seems to be a sort of cultural meme. The plot clearly makes little sense (unless you apply a more self-serving motivation to Ilsa and Mamet-esque manipulation) and while it is competently filmed there is nothing groundbreaking in the cinematography or storytelling. It was an entirely ordinary studio film, timed in release to coincide with the Allied landings in French North Africa, with some pretty ham-fisted symbolism and flat acting by the main characters. I find it hard to believe that Victor Lazlo is the charismatic leader of a unified European Resistance, or that the movement will collapse without him, nor it is imperative that he get to America via Casablanca. And Ilsa’s lack of conviction about anything other than shacking up with the most promising meal-ticket on the scene is, frankly, kind of a hard motive to get behind. The most amusing thing about the film is Captain Renault’s barely concealed pining for Rick, and the ending where they run off together to Brazzaville to begin “a beautiful friendship”, which is basically a big “fuck you” to the Hays office on the half of the homosexual contingent in Hollywood.
Have you seen the dreck in theaters today? There are good years and bad years, but even on a good year >95% of the films are disposable crap that will be relegated to the bargain bin at Target ninety days after release. And some of the best films–even ones that should be popular to a wide audience–don’t get sufficient advertising and distribution. Everyone to whom I’ve recommended the Shane Black noir-satire Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has loved it; never mind it was distributed to about 20 cinemas in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago and had an advertising campaign that was analogous to the US invasion of Grenada.
It is definitely the case that many older films have a different sensibility–more focus on dialogue, less on naturalistic acting–but that in and of itself doesn’t make a film good or bad. Ultimately, the worthiness of a film is in how much you enjoy it, or what it inspires within you, but like literature, some works are readily accessible and some require a lot of prerequisite knowledge and experience before their appeal becomes clear.
Stranger
Roger Ebert has pointed out that Casablanca is not a movie about lost love, but about rediscovered idealism. The hard-bitten, cynical isolationists (both Rick and Renault) come to realize that it is time to get back into the fight. THAT is what gave this wartime movie its resonance and power.
See this is what I don’t understand. Both approaches have produced some great, great movies. Why you would draw a line rather than enjoy both is beyond me. You’re limiting your experience to, what, 15% of the total cinema “library”?
One way to tell a story is to get into the grit and grime and smear it all on the screen. Don’t forget, I’m a fan of everything from ***Showgirls ***to A l’interieur to Antichrist, so obviously I have absolutely no objection to the, uh, *clinical *approach to filmmaking. But just like there are different approaches to poetry and painting, there are different approaches to filmmaking. Films that treat such subject metaphorically or indirectly are not, objectively, worse, as you and others insist. They’re different. And in the hands of a great artist, they’re great art. That single superficial consideration aside, it boils down to characterization and storytelling. There’s simply no question, even subjectively, that it is not the case the artists who are best at those aspects have been working only for the last few decades. So you can open yourself up to a century+ of great art, some of which deals with certain subject matters directly, some metaphorically, or you can limit your experience by eliminating from your “queue” all of the great works of art made by the great storytellers of *most *of the history of film
And the acting world is certainly better off for that.
And I disagree. It’s all there. You might miss it. That doesn’t mean other people do.
Comparing Leave it to Beaver with the shows you mentioned is comparing apples to oranges. One is a comedy and the others are dramas.
That said, it’s a show not without its charms as is the Sopranos (haven’t seen Deadwood or Breaking Bad). Not to mention the language on the show was far more risque than anything you’ll find on the programs you’ve mentioned.
Q: What’s the dirtiest thing ever said on television?
A: Ward, you were a little rough on the beaver last night.
Yes, you absolutely were. You’re just not capable of seeing it. There’s a big difference.
Look, people like different things. What’s cup of tea isn’t necesarily someone else’s but your argument has no validity. All the elements of present day movies are in pre-1970 films, it’s just not as blatant as you might find today. In no way, however, does that make an older movie better than new movie or vice versa. IMHO, there’s a lot more to entertaining someone than that.
I used sex scenes (and the lack thereof in older movies, as an example) but seriously, do you really need to see some skin in order to think something is for grown-ups? I’m certainly no prude but that attitude strikes me as remarkably juvenile.
To use one of your examples, I love Requiem for a Dream. I think it’s brilliant but I don’t think it’s brilliant because of the dildo scene at the end. By no means do I think it’s a gratuitous inclusion but if it wasn’t there, that movie would still be terrific. In contrast, with or without the clitoris scene, Antichrist, IMHO, would still be pretty tedious (sorry lissener).
I also thought Saving Private Ryan (save for the Normandy scenes) was hokey and cartoonish. I’d take Stalag 17 or the Great Escape or Mister Roberts over it any day of the week. So, really it’s more about people having differing tastes rather than an anti-censorship crusade that exists only in your mind.
The plot criticisms I’ve seen that focus on Ilsa’s motives and Rick’s behavior seem to miss the mark as well. Seen with the understanding that the movie’s not about the relationships between the major characters but about serving higher ideals, the characters can be more properly understood:
Ilsa isn’t self-serving so much as she’s weak and somewhat idolatrous. She finds and falls in love with a larger than life hero figure in Victor until he’s captured, imprisoned and presumed killed by the Nazis. Then she attaches to another strong, iconoclastic figure, Rick, who has his own history of noble causes (fighting the nationalists/fascists in Spain). Although their relationship is firmly established by the time they need to evacuate Paris, when Victor contacts her she returns to her first, best hero, leaving Rick “kicked in the gut” as he reads her hastily written note on the train pulling out of Paris. In the end, Ilsa decides Victor’s importance to the resistance is more important than her own happiness and offers to stay with Rick in return for a letter of transit for Victor.
Rick isn’t “fascinated” or “infatuated” by Ilsa; he’s been betrayed by her and reacts with pain and anger when she shows up in Casablanca. Although he may find Victor Laszlo admirable, his impulse is to punish Ilsa, and then to reclaim what is “his” by accepting her entreaty for a quid pro quo. In the end, his disgust with his own carefully established neutrality towards injustice gets the better of him.
All of this is concisely set up in the movie. There may be problems with the script (a fast-and-loose historical reference from Renault, the improbability of Laszo’s role as resistance leader and his one-dimensional characterization, etc.), but those problems don’t include taut exposition or unexplained motivations.
As noted, this was a wartime movie released early in America’s WWII involvement, and has some of the cliches one might expect. If it had been made and released in the 50’s or later, it probably wouldn’t have resonated so well and wouldn’t have developed the stellar regard it enjoys. But even if popular opinion is somewhat inflated, the movie holds up exceedingly well.
I don’t think Casablanca was an epochal achievement in film. (No Citizen Kane, certainly.) But many of us love it for the minor things.
I like the fact that the refugees from the Nazis were often played by real refugees from the Nazis. (Even “Major Strasser” had left Germany after marrying a Jewish woman.) How many of us have memorized the snarking of Rick & that scamp Reynault? Sidney Greenstreet & Peter Lorre sleazed across the screen with the best of them. And Ingrid Bergman was so beautiful that it hurts to watch her.
Thanks for posting that - it’s been a while since I last watched it.
Did you notice that the band struck up La Marseillaise at just the right instant to put it into perfect counterpoint to the Nazi song? Improbable, but a nice touch.
And then, of course, the famous line: “I’m shocked - shocked! - to find that there is gambling going on here” “Your winnings, sir” “Oh, thank you very much. Everybody out!”
Exactly. Casablanca wasn’t a love story with a wartime setting. It was a political movie telling people why they should go out and fight the Germans. A lot of modern viewers forget that the movie was made in 1942 and what that means. Nazis weren’t just movie villains back then - they were a current event.
Leave Her to Heaven*** is a deeply flawed movie. But it’s one I can watch any day; I preordered it on Amazon when it FINALLY became available on disc, and I’ve made lots of friends watch it. For all the holes in the very thin plot, the emotional intensity can be overwhelming, and I honestly don’t know of a femme fatale in all of moviedom who beats Ellen Berent for evil–for understandable, human evil grown out of self-hatred and jealousy.But even more than that, it’s an extremely rare example of a Technicolor film noir. I’m sure there are more, but I can’t think of any just now. Gorgeous, just breathtaking. Between the cinematography and the convincingness of the pure human evil, plotholes be damned.
