Regarding a Few Comments
1. Regarding why Rico turns back the hands of the clock, I think I explained this in my study pictures: to make an alibi for the two who just robbed a store. The clerk will remember that they were in his restaurant at a time when the store was being robbed, so the two could not have committed the crime. (Of course, the clerk is bound to notice at a later time that the clock's time.)2. Regarding subtext: a subtext is called a subtext because it's under the regular text; so most people will not notice it. Clearly no studio would have allowed even the mention of homosexuality before the 1960s! But an educated viewer will pick up on "clues" in those films. For example, The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) has a very strong homosexual subtext, almost impossible to miss (even the first Frankenstein film (James Whale, 1931), has a homosexual subtext evident to any educated viewer. Yet nobody would have imagined a homosexual theme in these films. Certainly no studio would have released these films if it had noticed such a hint of homosexuality. Yet the Frankenstein director, James Whale, was a homosexual, though obviously not publicized at the time.
Another example, the relationship of the cowboy to the Indian in American Westerns of the 1950s is often read (by educated viewers), in its subtext, as a relationship between Afro-Americans and whites. But that issue would have been difficult to market in the 1950s. It was much easier to show the racial conflict disguised as a conflict, a hundred years before, between cowboys and Indians rather than a conflict, today, between whites and blacks.
One thing for sure: no good director directs a text; a good director directs a subtext. The director usually will explain this subtext to the actors, to help "motivate" the character. "See, you're a tough gangster. But underneath, you're attracted to this man. But you don't want to become aware of this. So you act twice as tough when you point a gun at him." Now the actor gets a feeling for his part better than if he simply picked up a gun and acted tough! Now he's acting the subtext.
Subtext is the basis of all character (therefore acting) motivation. One doesn't act the action, one acts the motivation. Why do I get up at this point in the play/movie? Why do I speak this line? A bad actor will do just as he's told or as it's written in the script; a good actor will need to know why in order to give a good performance.
Director, Alfred Hitchcock used to impatiently tell his actors, "Because it's in the script" or "Because you're getting paid to, that's why!" But of course no good actor can act for those reasons.
That's where the "richness" of a film comes from.
3. Regarding the so-called "growing progress of Hollywood movies," there's no such thing. There's no progress at all in the arts; though there may be changes in style.
Nobody would seriously argue that Shakespeare is "better" than the Greek tragedians; yet Shakespeare more realistically had many characters on stage at one time, while the Greek playwrights had two or at most three characters on stage at one time. On the other hand, Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, or Edward Albee (giants of 20th century American theatre), don't come even close to Shakespeare. There's progress in technology, but not in the arts.
Nobody would argue that an an old-fashioned typewriter is better than or equal to today's computer keyboard. But The Beatles are not "better" than Chuck Berry (I would definitely rank Berry higher than the Beatles); The Twilight Zone TV series (1959-64) is still considered the best program ever seen on television. Yet it's in black-and-white with few special effects, and those not very sophisticated.
Beethoven is not better than Mozart; today's films are certainly not better than the films of the 30s-50s, unless one enjoys video games. Today's show musicals (Lloyd-Webber's, Rent, Schonberg's, etc.) don't come close to the richness of melody and lyrics of the great Broadway show musicals of the 1930s-50s, such as those by Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Arlen, Bernstein, and many more.
A lot of fancy camera movement doesn't make a great film. It seems to me that Little Caesar is a better (and more interesting) film than American Gangster (with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe). In fact today's movies are, on average, about twenty minutes too long with too much editing and camera movement and too few pre-production values (good writing).
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