Top 5: Is The Color Film Big Hollywood’s Problem?
by John NolteMy original plan was to do a top five list of today’s actors under thirty-five with more personality than the ShamWow! guy, but you can only tap your chin so long.
To try and explain away the fact that the true movie star is fast becoming extinct, a few apologists over the years have tossed out the excuse that there’s no way today’s celebrities, er, uhm, actors can compete with their historical counterparts because color, unlike black and white, makes them too human and thus brings them down to earth. It would be foolish to completely dismiss that idea, but not as foolish as raising it before, oh, say, a lack of presence, talent, and most of all, class. Of course, if you’re determined to hold that position you must also believe that putting Ashton and the Jessica-of-the-day in a good noir film would change everything.
Well, here they are, ten of the most beautiful movie stars ever bestowed on us “brought down to earth” by color. You be the judge.
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For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) – Color, no color, if Ingrid Bergman asked me “where the noses go” I’d pass out from the vapors. It might have been producer David O. Selznick going for publicity, but he said Bergman’s skin was so perfect she didn’t need make-up for the camera. If you know anything different, keep it to yourself, I prefer the legend.
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Dodge City (1939) – Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn on screen together, especially in color, is about as beautiful a sight as you’ll ever see. Director Michael Curtiz (who helmed Flynn’s best films) stages this scene perfectly. He makes us wait for the close-ups, making those ten seconds after 1:27 really hit home. Now we’re all in love right along with our lead characters.
Believe it or not, there’s an even better close-up of de Havilland earlier in the film. One of the greatest ever, but it’s not on YouTube.
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The Quiet Man (1952) – Tell me again how John Wayne can’t act. No, really do, because I don’t believe for a second that he’s now so deeply in love with Maureen O’Hara she has the power to ruin him like Ava did Frank. And Maureen O’Hara in color? Completely ordinary.
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Rear Window (1954) – What was it about the Classic Hollywood in-and-out-of-focus close up that worked so well? Maybe it was Grace Kelly.
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Blood and Sand (1941) – The angel at 1:18 making you want to get to work on that time machine is Linda Darnell. Rita Hayworth is in the film, as well. The movie’s not very good, but the stars keep me coming back.
Even when “brought down to earth” in color.
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63 Comments
Furious D, you're speaking in such sweeping generalities that it's not even possible to prove or disprove what you're saying.
It might surprise you, but there are quite a lot of serious actors who put in a great deal of time and effort on projects that hardly put huge amounts of money in their pocket. Those "indie" films that this site so routinely derides, are generally shot for next to nothing, and whatever "stars" they get often work for scale just so the thing gets made. Do you think that back in the day you would have seen Bogart "slumming" in a film like Magnolia or Ghost World (two films where much of the cast worked for scale).
Statements like "modern celebrities consider themselves too important to work for an audience" seems to indicate that you don't really know anything about the movies, other than the political blinders with which you view them with.
PETE @ 1:45 pm
Spencer Tracy was a man, who made mistakes and had his flaws. However, I believe at the end of the day, he was a good man.
A great American actor, who I would take warts and all compared with some of the minimal talent-prima donnas who take up space on the silver screen today.
A correction to my previous post, his quote was, "know your lines and don't trip over the furniture"
Still,
Wahhhh, you right wingers are all blinded by your ideology. If you weren't so right wing, you'd see that my boy-crush on Ashton is about his great acting, not his political views. He's the greatest actor of all time. No one denies this!!
Listen to me! Why won't anyone listen to me! My opinions are fact! Why is no one listening to me!
I would love to see the shamwow guy as the next great super-hero. Who knows who he’s listening and talking to with that headset.
You know what I think it is, a lack of character and I don’t mean characters to play. There is a basic integrity and honesty to their acting that comes through. What was the Spencer Tracy line about looking into the camera and being honest?
A lot of these celebrity/actor types are such poseurs. I think it’s the reason that Madonna has never given a good acting performance. Everyone always points to EVITA, but EVITA is nothing but an extended music video where she has to strike an iconic figure, she does not have to act. She just has to, how does she put it “Strike a pose.” And with a lot of what is considered great acting today the technique shines through, so you don’t see a real character being created, you see the acting. That and they take themselves way too seriously, that is part of what Lola refers to as their immaturity, they are just so shallow.
Of all the actresses in those clips, not one makes me think she’s a slut. These days a young starlet will come along in a few non-sluttish roles, then think she must do something sleazy to ‘cleanse’ her image. Claire Danes and Anne Hathaway come to mind. It follows that the manly attribute which is Respect For Women, will not be there.
Have you seen the Shamwow! guys vegetable dicer commercial? It’s like the ‘Dark Knight’ of product-pimping commercial follow ups.
Tell me you made up that rationalization just to have a hook on which to hang a column. Please. I don’t want to think there are people anywhere who are this dumb, or who think you are, that they believe such a transparent attempt would actually go over for a second.
The “Dodge City” clip is just so yummy I need a spoon.
And the Duke in a wet shirt? DAAAYYYYUUUUUMMMMM!!
I can’t help it. These movies make me stupid; make me realize how, whenever my [crass euphemism for female parts] overrules my head, I don’t even care. Just like these characters.
If the Shamwow guy was selling quarts of my own feces, I would probably be in line to buy them.
CAROLINE @ 12:49 pm
I believe Spencer Tracy’s quote was, “Tell the truth and don’t trip over the furniture”.
Of which I’m reminded about something my first acting teacher, Charles Conrad, used to tell us, ‘the camera never lies, it only records truth’.
I’m in agreement with your observation about the actors, who graced the screen in ‘days gone by’. The great ones, were all men and women who seemed to have an ‘inner strength of character’. And while they may have had flaws in their personal lives, they seemed to find ways to conduct themselves with a touch of class while in public.
They had a style which seems sorely lacking in most performers today.
I believe part of the reason many people enjoy watching movies @ TCM is because so many of those movies and performances still hold up.
As evidenced in the clips John has provided. They are in fact ‘timeless’
I don’t know if we will ever again experience the greatness, the magic, of the actors and the performances in so many of those films…I can only hope for as much.
By the way, I love the photo of Monty Clift…thanks John.
So, back in the day actors were cast because of their innate movie star ability? Is THAT why Marilyn Monroe was in so many high profile pictures?
It’s funny that someone invoked Spencer Tracy and “character” in the same sentence. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Spencer Tracy abandoned his deaf wife for Hepburn and never even got around to divorcing her?
The old studio system aggressively hid the stars from being seen as anything less than ultra-clean patriots who had no faults at all. Obviously, the truth says otherwise.
By the way, no one has ever considered Madonna to be an actress, and Evita was an unwatchable joke. Easily the best performance by an actress in this year’s Oscar race is Melissa Leo, who won’t get the award because she’s not as good looking as Kate Winslet.
I think that it’s quite likely that the movie stars were movie stars because they weren’t real. They were make-believe.
I really don’t want to know that someone or other called his daughter a selfish pig or got drunk and made racist remarks to a cop, and I particularly don’t want to know that their politics are something I consider moronic. It ruins the fantasy.
I *don’t* want to know that my favorite sexy male star doesn’t like girls. It’s hard to build a fantasy when a person knows too much.
I would argue that movies today rely too much on special effects and not at all on acting. John Ford beautifully used scenery and you felt like you had something to look at that was real. Now, I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake – well, I do, but I’m not impressed. Actor’s egos are massive and they care so little about the consumer. This is apparant and that’s why I don’t bother to watch anything made after the mid 1960’s.
To me,
Being a great actor is not much different than being a monkey that performs. You don’t have to have much smarts except to be able to feel and read. In the end, you get paid for reading ok. A true actor can perform with out background music and get the same point across. Remove the melodramatic part of movies and most actors (even the ones we call great) will be extremely flat. They have no skill to get the lines out in a way that gives the audience the feel of the situation.
The actors that get my respect are the ones that can hold a real conversation outside of the script. And sadly there are very few that can do this. Just watch any TV talk show that interviews actors. Some can do well, and to me it show they have more to them than the acting gig. Many seem lost for words or in any way able to give real conversation (even when it’s about their own movie).
A strange concept I’ve been looking at is some of the actors that we call great in modern times are actually more like empty vessels. The can take on their character so well because they don’t have much personality to themselves. Actors with strong personality often don’t change from one role to the next.
There are no more stars like that because they no longer make films like that, color or black-and-white. Would Cary Grant have made Love Actually, a so-called “Christmas classic” which skirted an NC-17? It goes deeper than nudity, profanity and the Hays Code. Perhaps the government regulation represented by the Code also placed an artificially elevated value on dignity. But these days it’s hard to assign the stature of a Gary Cooper to even the most Cooper-like actor (Harrison Ford? Nah.) knowing that the next line they speak may debase the language or in the next scene they play they may strip themselves literally and figuratively. The removal of the Code also lowered production standards. I’d rather see the maker address the challenge of getting a few frames of Ava Gardner’s figure into Mogambo (Watch closely.) than see any part of Jessica Sarah Parker, clothed or unclothed, any day of the week. But that’s just me. And not even I would want to go back. So we’re left with a Cary Grantless, Ingred Bergman-free culture. You wait for the occasional bright spot and try to muddle through.
If you can, sit down and watch an “Old Classic” with a grandparant or person who first viewed the movie when it hit the big screen! I am lucky to be able to do this with my 87 year young Grandmother. To watch the expression on her face as she drifts back those many years to a time when the world at least seemed like a nicer place is truely something to behold. Men were men (good and bad) and Women were women (good and bad) In her words, people were more gracious and polite. They weren’t in such a hurry. It was important to behave well and treat others with respect. Most of all it was important to work hard and have something to show for it at the end of the day. Having fun was important too, but fun was different then. It was simply fun and didn’t require drugs, sex (well maybe a little) or rock and roll. People knew how to dance!
If you’ve ever noticed that older people seem grumpy, it’s partly because when the movie is over and they turn the channel, todays reality is just plain bizzar! Todays actors may share the same “Star” status as they did in the “good ole days,” but they lack the poise and grace and dignity and true talent that then, was required to acheive that “Star” status. They were more than just pretty faces in color or in B/W.
Oh, Jimmy, really, don’t try to throw that jive at me. If a modern day actor had abandoned his deaf wife and lived with another woman without bothering to even file for divorce, would you let THAT slide? Would you say that said actor had “made mistakes and had his flaws”?
People bag on the conservative tendency to wax nostalgic about a past that never actually existed specifically because of intellectual gymnastics just like Jimmy just did with Spencer Tracy.
Bill, if you actually believe that Love, Actually “skirted an NC-17″, then, no offense, you’re too stupid to live.
Why does Ashton Kutcher, an actor who barely works in movies these days, get namedropped every time you guys rant about “what’s wrong with actors today”?
My guess is that some of you clowns ranting about Matt Damon probably LOVED him in the Bourne films, and only recently discovered that you hated him all along around the same time he said what he did about Palin.
By the way, Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins could pull off Quint pretty effectively.
John Wayne was an underrated actor, but his “image” was in many ways a carefully crafted charade just like any other iconic actor back in the day (Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, and others). We built up a hyperidealized image of them because the old studio system wouldn’t allow the public to see their stars as human beings.
If some of you would take off your political blinders, you would see that we’re living in a rather interesting time when it comes to character actors. People like Clive Owen, William H. Macy, Chris Cooper, Steve Buscemi, Richard Jenkins, Paul Giamatti, Emile Hirsch and others have shown ability and range that could hang with old time Ford standbys like Ward Bond or Ben Johnson.
Of course, for every iconic TCM movie star that you guys rhapsodize about, there are about 1000 John Agars from Hollywood’s “golden age”.
My guess is that some of you clowns ranting about Matt Damon probably LOVED him in the Bourne films, and only recently discovered that you hated him all along around the same time he said what he did about Palin.
I don’t know why this is a criticism.
I REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW that Matt Damon is a moron.
(The Bourne films were okay, but took little from the books except the titles. Not that the books were great, but they actually had villains other than our own country and our own spies.)
Pete,
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Leo DiCaprio, and their ilk are frigging terrible actors. How’s about that?
I’ll take Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, and Humphrey Bogart over these children of nowadays.
Again with the Ashton Kutcher stuff. Seriously, guys, he really doesn’t make that many movies. Since when did he become your obsession. Or this belief that “lefty Hollywood” was falling in love with the Che film, you know, the film that had no actual studio distribution, is already on pay for view, and had no Oscar nominations?
Whatever, if you’re happy living in an echo chamber instead of cultivating the ability to have an actual intellectual conversation, good on you.
Pete,
You make a good point that there were many so-so actors then, and many good ones now. But if you think overall that the culture – and films – then were not significantly different (and better) in several moral dimensions… well, all I can say is that we have different standards.
Also, if you think it’s all just rose colored glasses and selective memory, and cover-up by the studios then, you should really talk to some elderly people. Watch, for example, a documentary featuring WWII-era individuals talk about what life was like then versus now.
Things really were different. It’s not just a political phenomenon or bias.
Breathtaking in color: Doris Day.
Yes PETE, but those actors are ugly! And everyone knows the unattractive actors are the real thespians of today!
Is it the actors or is it the roles?
Did I have a crush on Tom Seleck way back when, or on his Magnum PI character? Or his Quigley Down Under character?
Is it Hugh Jackman who is sexy or is it Wolverine and Van Helsing that make me all school-girlish?
Vin Diesel (That *is* a pseudonym created from Vehicle Identification Number, right? I’ve always been dying to ask someone who might know.) and Antonio Banderes have both played gritty and sexy parts *and* done kid’s movies (a man who knows what to do with a diaper… can’t beat that.)
And I’m still in love with Duncan McLeod. I don’t know if Adrian Paul is anyone I’d ever like and I DON’T CARE.
And yet we muddle through.
http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0001553.cfm
Yeah, Jeff, but I bet if you talked to people from the 1940’s who were, say, black, Japanese, gay, Mexican, or from any group of people that weren’t in the “majority”, they might paint a picture that is substantially less rosy picture than the common narrative. My mom, for instance, lived in utter squalor in rural Lousiana, and her parents were the most awful people who ever lived. The whole Ozzie and Harriet white picket fence image is just as carefully crafted as, say, Archibald Leach becoming Cary Grant.
That’s not to “bash America” or “blame America”, it’s the simple reality that some people’s memories of that age were greatly influenced by just what rung of society they were placed in.
As for the cultural content of movies, the seeming wholesomeness of 1940’s films was largely because of the Hays Code, and I personally think that Production Codes and de facto censorship of movies is Un-American.
Lola, Lola, Lola…if Ashton Kutcher is an example of what’s wrong with Hollywood, does that mean that Ted Haggard is an example of what’s wrong with gay-bashing conservatives? Cuts both ways, twat.
PETE @ 2:30 pm
I believe my intellectual gymnastics trumps your mental masturbation from the looks of your oh-so-brilliant posts.
I’ll take Spencer Tracy over Matt Damon any day of the week.
That jive enough for ya?
Can I throw out a slightly different take on the “before/after” actors and actresses? How much of the older generation of actors was influenced by the studio system? We always comment on how such and such an actor had such and such a screen personality, etc….wasn’t that to some extent created by the studio system, which fit certain actors and actresses into slots in each movie? Nowadays, any actor can make any film they wish, and unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, they never settle into a screen personality. Now there is still some “stereotyping” (a word I hate, but I can’t think of a kinder one) today, but in the old days you knew what you were getting when you saw certain actors in certain films. There were exceptions among lead actors/actresses, those that played a wide variety of lead roles (Muni, for one)….but what does everybody think about the role of the studio system in all this?
By the way, Bergman is my all-time favorite. Seeing her in Jekyll and Hyde just is too much…and I prefer to believe the legend also
Pete,
Points well made. America had many flaws that, thankfully, have been to a significant extent overcome. It’s interesting, though, that many Mexican, black, and even Japanese people I’ve talked to from that period have many of the same values to which I alluded, and many of the same concerns about the changes which have come about.
The point about the Hays code I think is weak. Even prior to its initiation, say through the mid-30s, there were many films portraying values that I think we are worse off today not emphasizing. A scoundrel, for example, was regarded as a scoundrel and a hero a hero. Today, it’s mostly all dissolved into a kind of gray mush in which most everyone in (serious) films is small, if not malignant.
I welcome the fact that society and films are now freer to talk about things which were hidden away then. But what is said by the prominent voices is not what I would say, and I think my views are better on the subject. Others may reasonably disagree.
For example, while it was a mediocre film, I applaud the film (the title escapes me) about a black Navy diver a few years ago with Cuba Gooding and Robert de Niro, even though I’m not overly fond of either actor. It clearly showed that de Niro’s character was a class-A prick and that Gooding’s was a real man, struggling against things he should never have had to struggle against. That film would never have been made by any mainstream company in 1945. (Though there were some good anti-racism films not much later.)
And, yes, Ozzie and Harriet had an air of unreality, even then. It’s nonetheless true that certain elements – wholesomeness, if you want to call it that – were not a mirage. To think otherwise is just as dogmatic and contrary to the historical facts as to believe that everything is bad today.
JEFF PERREN
The movie was ‘Men of Honor’ (2000)
Which I had the privilege, a few years later, of voice doubling Robert DeNiro for the TV version.
Thanks. My memory for old films is very good. Newer ones, not so much.
You say actors under the age of 35, I say there are damn few under the age of fifty. Particularly American actors.
“but what does everybody think about the role of the studio system in all this?”
It did play a significant part; but drill down a little more into what that means. In one aspect, the studios undertook a wide range of tutelage, a good investment with actors under contract for several years. But the key element is the values of the men in control.
Zanuck saw to it that good WWII films were made not only because he could count on the public seeing them, but because he personally believed in the virtue of the war effort. That point of view on the part is completely absent today, even though the public might well be large enough to see a good film about the Iraq war, for example.
Goldwyn made the kind of films he liked – many of them really good classics today – and that reflected not only his sense of drama, but his personal values.
Ditto, Selznick, Cohen, and even Louis B. Mayer to a large extent.
None of these men were saints as individuals by any stretch. But, if we’re to judge by the films they ok’d and shepherded, they were lightyears ahead of the faceless men and women in charge today.
There are fine actors today (though few with the personality of many of the great stars of the 40s and 50s); there are highly skilled directors and supremely talented writers. But the great producers of the period are gone from the scene.
In consequence, we see films that reflect the values of Spielberg rather than Zanuck, and we are poorer as a culture in consequence.
“That point of view on the part” … should read “That point of view on the part of producers”
The entire problem with you thesis is that the shamwow guy is not only amazing, but those things are german engineered. They sell themselves, or so I’ve been told.
Let’s face it – You’re going to spend $3,000 a month on paper towels anyway.
The ShamWow! guy is my Barack Obama because his sheer awesomeness tells me it’s all going to be okay. Cola spills? No problem. The camera guy will get it and 20 times its own weight is possible.
There’s nothing the ShamWow! can’t do and I know that because he told me so.
I watched one of my favorite all time John Wayne movies the other night for the first time in over ten years easy: “In Harm’s Way.” Patricia Neil totally ROCKS (It’s an inside joke, get it?) in that film, as do the rest of the cast.
It was from, like, 1965 or somewhere around there, AND IT WAS IN B&W! Seriously, I had forgotten. Really late for a B&W flick, but I absolutely loved it.
More movies ought to be B&W, IMO. It renders everything with a timeless patina that color just can’t.
It is so strange… your Big Hollywood posts are the only ones I ever feel like replying to.
I think this is because you should have been a student in my Film History class and all of these pedantic questions you have been posing would have been more than answered.
Yes, there is an aesthetic argument that stretches back to Natalie Kalmus and the fact that true Technicolor was tri colored black and white film stocks, giving us a much more abstract idea of “color” and therefore distancing oneself from the image in a more “artful” or “artificial” manner than today. I.e. this means that audiences more willingly “suspended disbelief” with older film stocks.
But again, your hypothesis doesn’t really come near the truth.
Do not forget, there were “morality clauses” for big name actors in Hollywood’s heyday.
The internet and tv have brought the personal lives of the stars down to a very intrusive and personal and pimple-picking grotesquery.
The change in the moral climate and the loss of privacy to the 24/7 newscycle is what has changed the nature of movie stars; NOT film stocks.
Though I appreciate your sincerity in attempting to figure it all out.
I actually know Vince Offer and gave him advice on a script once, about a surfer from Brooklyn. (I’m not making this up.) He is EXACTLY like that in person.
The color excuse doesn’t hold water in my opinion, especially when I remember all the comments made at Dirty Harry’s Place about The Good German. Technically, it (literally) had all the aspects of a 1940’s film noir, and yet this didn’t exactly wow you guys.
The only time color ever did a disservice to good films has been when black and white films are colorized. Even today, with the advances in colorization technology, it doesn’t make it better. I still prefer watching Miracle On 34th Street, Fort Apache, Way Out West and The Pride Of The Yankees in black and white, as they were intended.
I read that Hollywood produces about 450 films per year. Very few of these will be ‘classics’. The same can be said for film production from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. The difference is that the films we see on TV from that older era are the better ones…the majority of poor quality films are not seen today. So if you ‘cherry pick’ films from 3 decades it will seem that the industry was better back then.
Hey, you missed Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa and Pandora. No woman ever looked more delicious.
Here’s what the problem is.
Go back and watch all the films for the golden age of Hollywood.
How many of the important roles are played by people that don’t have YEARS of theatre acting behind them?
By the time most of the actors of that age appeared before motion picture cameras, they had spent years developing their acting talent.
Look at the great actors from the Golden Age – Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, etc. How many of them could be called ‘truly handsome men’?
They were GREAT actors. They had spent years perfecting their craft and were able to, depending on the what the film called for, able to create characters that were likeable or horrific. Their range was incredible.
In contrast, today Hollywood focuses much, MUCH more on physical appearance, and insists on casting films with people that come from modeling agencies first, not the theatre.
Instead of films starring say a 28 year old genuine actor who has been perfecting his craft on the stage and as a supporting cast member since he was 16, you end up with some 21 year old guy who’s only been acting for 2 or 3 years and got his start in a modeling agency based on his looks.
That’s how we went from Jimmy Stewart to Shia Lebeouf.
PETE – February 4th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Spencer Tracy abandoned his deaf wife for Hepburn”
Wow, Pete, with pure pleasure. Louise Tracy = not deaf. Never deaf. It was their son, John Tracy, who was deaf.
And a poster above was correct, according to a number of Tracy’s biographers, that it was Tracy’s Catholicism that likely stopped him from divorcing Louise for Loretta Young or Hepburn. It didn’t stop him from cheating. You were right about that.
Howeverrrr…there are a number of deaf people I know who would bristle at your implication that loss of hearing is a reason to hang onto a marriage.
AIM you pedant you. You reply to Nolte because as a writer he gives, engages rather than instructs. And you like it.
“So if you ‘cherry pick’ films from 3 decades it will seem that the industry was better back then.”
I’ve thought of this theory before, and it’s plausible at first blush. But consider:
1. What were the five nominees for Best Picture of 1939? Now compare to the Best Picture nominees for any year in the past 40 years.
2. There a good actors today. But is there anyone in the past 40 years who was/is in the same league with: Myrna Loy, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck…
3. Are there any producers working in the past 40 years in the same league as Selznick, Zanuck, Goldwyn, or even Hal Wallis? (All of whom made some terrible pictures.)
4. There are many skilled writers working today (mostly in TV). But is there an Ernest Lehman or Ben Hecht or…
5. It depends on what you mean by “good film,” of course, i.e. what your standards are. Films today are technically polished in a way that was literally impossible prior to 30 years ago, and getting better still. Yet, they’re written for cattle not individuals. They’re often produced to satisfy the anti-human impulses of self-indulgent Progressives. And, worst of all, they’re dull, dull, dull to anyone who doesn’t believe that Man is either a malignant insect or an empty buffoon.
Woof. Linda Darnell.
Not always a good angel, either.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037691/
Is Edward Norton under thirty five? ‘Cause he’s got personality, in my opinion. I also like Ryan Gosling. Neither compare to superstars like Stewart, Grant, Gable, or my childhood hero, Heston.
If you leave “class” off the list, I also like 70s badasses like Nicholson, DeNiro, and Pacino.
JOAN: “I can’t agree that there’s more emphasis on physical appearance today. I’ve never considered Robert DeNiro a dish, and my mother says Meryl Streep has a face like a pudding”
You’re using the term “today” a little loosely. They’ve been in the business for four decades now.
“Yes, there is an aesthetic argument that stretches back to Natalie Kalmus and the fact that true Technicolor was tri colored black and white film stocks, giving us a much more abstract idea of ‘color’ and therefore distancing oneself from the image in a more ‘artful’ or ‘artificial’ manner than today. I.e. this means that audiences more willingly ’suspended disbelief’ with older film stocks.”
It’s really more a matter of aesthetics than thechnology, in my opinion, which makes the Golden Age seem larger than life. Starting in the late sixties, with fare like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate,” the hip crowd began emulating European realism, making our movies downbeat and gritty, too. Naturalism took over everything.
To be considered serious among a certain crowd, it was no longer fashionable to reach for the stars like DeMille or Lean. Every director had to be a Godard; every actor a Brando. Bigger than life movies were labeled “popcorn” movies, unless proven otherwise. Surely, “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Close Encounters” were great movies. But none of them won Best Picture, no sir. Plus, we all pretty much know at heart they’re for kids, right?
And that’s how things remain. Computer graphics are a wonderful technological achievement, and however “fake” people complain of them looking, the shoddiest CG romp can take us places only dreamed of decades ago. I believe CG has at least as much otherworldliness as technicolor. That being said, there is a presumption of popcorniness for effects films. We can accept “Titanic” and “Lord of the Rings” as artistic achievements, but only after intense scrutiny. That is because of the gloomy 70s.
JEFF PERREN:
I like your perspective on this. I would add to Lehman and Hecht, one one my favorites, Paddy Chayefsky. A man who was not only a brilliant writer but was awarded the Purple Heart for service to our country in World War II.
I believe much of what made movies of yesteryear so special, is they were made by individuals who loved making movies. Producers, directors, writers, actors, coming together to create these memorable moments in time.
That’s why so many of them hold up so well today. Many of these actors along with their great talent, had a sense of style, they had class.
And the films?…the films have soul. Like an old Cole Porter tune, they are ‘timeless’…there for all eternity.
Lucky us.
Jimmy,
Thanks. I agree with you completely about Paddy Chayevksy, one of my all-time favorite writers. That man could do things with words I can only aspire to achieve. I mentioned him on another thread recently, but had a serious brain freeze at the moment I selected those examples.
Jon Hamm of Mad Men is 36 but hey. He is the sexiest actor working today for me. Of course, his show is set in the early ’60s so he is allowed to be a real man. (Alert: he has just appeared in “30 Rock” so this might take his edge off for me…)
Today’s men in general are as masculine as house cats. I say this to men and they can’t imagine why I say that. Look at all the adverts and sitcoms–Dad is a doofus, Mom is a genius and smug about it, too. Is it all the estrogen in our foods today?
The whole culture since the 60’s has been about hearing women roar. And roar. AND ROAR. I was in high school in the 60’s and even then thought the culture had gone to the spoiled brats with sheep mentality. “Question Authority!” Who is questioning the people who say, “Question Authority”?
WHERE is Ava Gardner? Look on the Internet and see how many pictures there are of her. With more all the time. People still want glamour and beauty, even if they have to go back 50 years to get it.
The character actors are great but I want to see MOVIE STARS. Even in the theater it was always stars who carried the business. They are the ones who bring in the people with the money in their hot little hands. They want charisma. And you know what? Having a brain and a personality with some individuality are part of what charisma IS. The old stars were compelling. That quality can be enhanced but it can’t be manufactured.
One exception: Josh Lucas. He could be a real Movie Star, if his career were properly handled.
By the way, Spencer Tracy’s wife was not deaf—their son John was. The man was an alcoholic, which usually is accompanied by less than stellar behavior. Wonderful actor though.
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Classic film still have their own place in film industry.
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