I don't consider myself "old" but I have come to the point where I think I can say that "things aren't what they used to be" or "In my day this or that was so much better than it was now". Sometimes I feel this way when watching movies that are way before my time. When I watch certain films they create a certain displaced nostalghia for things I never lived or things never seen. I felt this way a few weeks ago while watching Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success.
A noirish inspired film that deals with a columnist's desire to break up the relationship between his sister and a jazz musician. The columnist (Lancaster) hires a press agent (Curtis) to smear the reputation of his sister's love. It is a simple plot accompanied by excellent acting by Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. As I watched I kept thinking to myself "Could a movie with such a simple plot be made today?" I concluded that it's definitely possible but not likely. Nowadays we are bombarded with convoluted plots and over-the top special effects that lack the simplicity of their predecessors. This is the case not only with Hollywood cinema but also with so-called Art Cinema that praises ambiguity in plot and form. Of course there are examples of taking a simple plot and action and creating something special, but these are few and far between. Can anybody think of any? I certainly struggle to think of any.
Should we expect more from movies today? I believe so. And if we continue being presented with these types of movies then we need to look back and experience cinema when it was at its most simple and at its best.
4 comments:
A really cool aspect of the film is how the characters associate the smoking of tobacco and marijuana with the dark and shady characters. I remember writing that in a film review for Dr. Stallings's noir class. This was a really good film and the quality of the acting was top notch. I was thinking about this the other day. It seems like we don't have many good actors any more. It's almost as if we prefer to see De Niro do his thing, or or see some hot girl deliver her lines terribly as long as we can look at her (I'm thinking of Anne Hathaway and Charlise Theron here, feel free to counter me if you disagree).
I guess the same phenomenon existed before (Re: Bogart and early Bacall) but somehow there is a different feel to those older films. I don't feel like I'm being pandered to when I watch them but that I am being told a really good story. Or maybe that it's just that older films we still know of are among the best of the era while the crap has been forgotten.
As for good actors I agree with you. I can count on one hand those who I think are really good (and half of them are spanish-speaking -Antonio Bardem and Ricardo Darin come to mind). Of course when the movies are spectacles and brands the acting becomes less important. I'm interested in seeing how Nolan incorporates Anne Hathaway (a little nervous about that one).
Yeah, I agree. Katie Holmes was a pretty neutral influence on the Dark Knight. Maggie Gyllenhaal was a much stronger presence, but Nolan didn't let that alter the feel of the film at all. I wonder if the film would have felt a bit different if it were Katie Holmes again. But their character is dead. If Nolan can get a non-Anne Hathaway version of Anne Hathaway to present herself in the third film, it will say a lot about him as a director. He did pretty good with Leo in Inception. But there were still moments when I felt like I was watching Leo and not Cobb. For me Leo's best performance to date has been The Departed. Other rolls were good, but his Leo-ness (overly self conscious acting) always has bled through. In The Departed he convinced me. End of rant.
So I didn't look closely at the title at first and I thought it said "The Sweet Smell of Sauces," and I thought to myself, Huh, that sounds interesting, a cooking show...
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