Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithalwen
… and when I lived in France I went to the cinema several times a week so I am not, as I am sure it may appear here, just anti-film.
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Personally, my tastes often change, so at one time I am very interested in a particular kind of music, and then suddenly loose almost all interest. The same goes for kinds of books, drama and films.
And, as I get older, I find less and less in any field that really grabs me. But it seems to me to be a mistake to think that my own tastes indicate that an artistic genre is failing.
The essay says:
Films such as El Cid, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, all starring that great block of wood, Charlton Heston, had at least this virtue; they weren’t made cynically.
These were films that at the time were much blamed by many critics for being made cynically. And looking at them now, they appear to me to be horribly cynical efforts.
Take the story of Moses and throw in a beginning with lots of gratuitous sex and include lots of the most violent parts of the later story.
Ben-Hur was also lots of violence followed by a religious miracle. And don’t include anything in either that might offend most of the religious right. Make it totally innocuous and emphasize the special effects.
The high points of both films were the special effects scenes. Alan Massie appears to me to be remembering a time when he was less critical of films rather than proving that films are getting worse.
The statement “… and other such comic book stuff, aimed at an audience with the mental age of a backward teenager and the concentration span of a gnat” is ridiculously exaggerated. Just thinking about it disproves it.
One very expensive blockbuster this summer was
John Carter which seemed to be designed by someone who thought that the main thing was special effects and that the story need not be paced to make sense. It bombed horribly.