24p Film Cinema: Dead

[August1991]

Quote

Martin Scorsese's Manhattan office, in a midtown building a few blocks northwest of the cordoned-off Trump Tower, may be the most concentrated bastion of reverence for cinema on the face of the earth.

There's a small screening room where Scorsese screens early cuts of his films and classic movies for his daughter and his friends. There's his personal library of thousands of films, some he taped himself decades ago. Film posters line the walls. Bookshelves are stuffed with film histories. And there are editing suites, including the one where Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker regularly toil with a monitor dedicated to the continuous, muted playing of Turner Classic Movies.

"It's a temple of worship, really," Schoonmaker said.

https://www.news-journal.com/news/2016/dec/22/director-martin-scorsese-laments-end-of-cinema/

 

Edited January 5, 2017 by Charles Anthony
fixed link

[kimmy]

On 1/2/2017 at 7:18 PM, August1991 said:

https://www.news-journal.com/news/2016/dec/22/director-martin-scorsese-laments-end-of-cinema/

 

I don't get it.

Quote

 

"Cinema is gone," Scorsese said. "The cinema I grew up with and that I'm making, it's gone."

"The theater will always be there for that communal experience, there's no doubt. But what kind of experience is it going to be?" he said. "Is it always going to be a theme-park movie? I sound like an old man, which I am. The big screen for us in the '50s, you go from Westerns to 'Lawrence of Arabia' to the special experience of '2001' in 1968. The experience of seeing 'Vertigo' and 'The Searchers' in VistaVision."

 

Cinema is dead because Scorsese doesn't like the kind of movies that make lots of money right now?

Quote

Scorsese pointed to the proliferation of images and the overreliance on superficial techniques as trends that have diminished the power of cinema to younger audiences. "It should matter to your life," he said. "Unfortunately the latest generations don't know that it mattered so much."

Cinema is dead because visual techniques have greatly advanced?

Cinema is dead because more people have access to the technology to make films now?

 -k

[Michael Hardner]

If you look at the movies people go to, a lot of genres seem to be getting squeezed out.  

I hear that romcoms are dying/dead.  What was the last 'When Harry met Sally ?'

[kimmy]

5 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

If you look at the movies people go to, a lot of genres seem to be getting squeezed out.  

I hear that romcoms are dying/dead.  What was the last 'When Harry met Sally ?'

I think the last "rom-com" I saw was "500 Days of Summer" a few years back.  I think crappy Katherine Heigl films may have singlehandedly killed off the genre.

Does one imagine that Scorsese is talking about the death of a particular genre? I don't think so. One of the quotes I clipped in my previous message seems to touch on that... he talks about the popularity of westerns in the 1950s... but westerns went out of vogue for a very long time, prior to their renaissance in the 1990s with Unforgiven and Tombstone and a few others. Then they went out of vogue again for another long stretch and came back again with the True Grit remake and several other recent films.

When was the last "When Harry Met Sally"?   Hey, when was the last "Ten Commandments" or "Cleopatra"?  Historical epics are pretty dead right now too.

Sooner or later people will get tired of super-heroes and zombies, and something else will rise up instead. Perhaps it will be tea-and-crumpets period dramas, perhaps it will be romantic comedies, perhaps it will be movies about monster-truck drivers. Who knows?

(Personally, I feel that the Nora Ephrom rom-coms that used to be hugely successful are even less realistic than movies about superheroes or zombies, but that's just my opinion.)

 -k

[Moonlight Graham]

All Scorsese has done is make films about Italians, or the ones not about Italians they star Italians because he's Italian.  Maybe he laments the lack of Italians in film?  Maybe they don't read comic books very much in his culture?

[DogOnPorch]

21 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:

All Scorsese has done is make films about Italians, or the ones not about Italians they star Italians because he's Italian.  Maybe he laments the lack of Italians in film?  Maybe they don't read comic books very much in his culture?

Similar to saying Mozart only made classical music.

[Michael Hardner]

3 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

All Scorsese has done is make films about Italians, or the ones not about Italians they star Italians because he's Italian.  Maybe he laments the lack of Italians in film?  Maybe they don't read comic books very much in his culture?

Wow.  You are missing some great Scorsese films.  After Hours, and Bringing Out The Dead come to mind.

[Michael Hardner]

6 hours ago, kimmy said:

Sooner or later people will get tired of super-heroes and zombies, and something else will rise up instead. Perhaps it will be tea-and-crumpets period dramas, perhaps it will be romantic comedies, perhaps it will be movies about monster-truck drivers. Who knows? 

My thoughts on this come from a detailed article I read, for which I don't have the source.  It focussed on the habits of the traditional movie-goer who pays the freight for Hollywood: the young person.  They are more interested in social media, and the kinds of movies you mention.  There isn't space for different genres.

Big changes in media consumption don't just happen, there's a cause.  Cinemascope, wide-screen epics like Cleopatra in the 60s were a reaction to television, and the echo from the failure of those pictures gave us Easy Rider and the new American cinema of the 1970s.  Demographics and competing media drive change.

[TimG]

13 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

If you look at the movies people go to, a lot of genres seem to be getting squeezed out.  

I hear that romcoms are dying/dead.  What was the last 'When Harry met Sally ?'

Movies need to appeal to the global market now. Rom-coms are too tied to a single culture. That is why they are dead/dying. I see TV as the medium for local content and movies as the medium for global content. 

[Michael Hardner]

Ha.  Now.  This was a fear in Hollywood when talkies came in, but ok.

 

Your theory sounds good but there should still be a market for local movies.  Quebec makes its own movies, why can't English Canada ?

[Michael Hardner]

To add to my somewhat rash statement that changes don't "just happen".  Clearly they do, and sometimes we don't know the cause other than 'people just got sick of this thing'.  McLuhan was bold enough to make statements as to why those things happen, but they weren't convincing.  MGM Musicals were great.  Then people got sick of them.  Anybody know why ?

[Michael Hardner]

http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/15803/when-and-why-did-the-decline-of-musicals-in-american-cinema-happen

 

This looks interesting as a source.  Of course, it blames TV but I will give it a look later.

[TimG]

4 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

Your theory sounds good but there should still be a market for local movies.  Quebec makes its own movies, why can't English Canada ?

They are in French so people accept the low budget offerings because that is all that is available. Any low budget English Canadian movie is going to be compared to Hollywood.

[Michael Hardner]

4 minutes ago, TimG said:

They are in French so people accept the low budget offerings because that is all that is available. Any low budget English Canadian movie is going to be compared to Hollywood.

Low budget does not mean 'bad'.  High budget usually does though.  Israel, Quebec and lots of small markets can support the arts.

America also makes great low budget films, better than Canada's in many cases.

[?Impact]

There have been many changes to cinema over the years. The two big one I see during Scorsese's career is the change from film to digital, and the change from the large downtown venue to the multiplex.

The movie going public is almost totally unaware of the change to digital, but for industry insiders it has had massive impact on the business. Distribution is almost entirely digital, even for the films that are shot on film. There were massive savings to be had both in terms of making the prints, and in insurance. There were also significant savings at the local theater, where projectionists essentially went the way of the dodo bird. There are quality differences to digital, but for the most part they are hard to discern. In the last 5 years or so over 80% of movies have been shot in digital as well. On a movie set today you will usually find an Arri Alexa or Red camera. Digital is not always better, but it does offer a lot of advantages and more important it is a lot cheaper. Only big name directors seem to be able to get the financing for film work these days, and a lot of the art of shooting and editing film is becoming lost.

The change from the large downtown cinema to the multiplex however is very visible to the public. It happened for the most part in the 60's & 70's and many people just can't relate to the old cinemas. It has been years since I have been in a cinema with an aisle down the center, low pitch floor, and a balcony. Today we have smaller auditoriums, with high rake (stadium style) seating, and of course many of them showing multiple films at the same location. You can thank, or curse, a Canadian for that innovation. Nat Taylor converted the old Elgin Theater in Ottawa to show 2 films on 2 screens, and then went on to start Cineplex Odeon with the once largest (18 screen) multiplex at he Eaton Center in Toronto. AMC copied this format and took it to new levels. Lets not forget the almost disappearance of the outdoor movie theater.

 

 

[The_Squid]

This is like lamenting sound because the actors in those silent movies were so much more expressive.

Old people ranting about how the world is shitty because it's not how they remember it ...   what a shocker!

[Michael Hardner]

Old people will complain about change.  It starts around 30 years of age as I have observed.  An old rave veteran with salt-and-pepper hair, putting on platform boots getting ready to go dancing with his still-young body.

There is no good or bad, there is just change.  The good happens over time.

[cybercoma]

Scorcese is off his rocker. One look at the acclaimed movies from the Oscars and Golden Globes will show you that he's way off base. He's just upset that those kinds of movies don't rake in cash like the big-budget blockbuster films, but even then, I have to wonder what he's smoking. Star Wars: A New Hope was in the 70s. The 80s were dominated by Lucas Film and Spielberg blockbusters. Before that you had classics like The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and other early science fiction. You had the horror classics throughout that era as well. To me, it sounds like he's lamenting a time when dramatic films would be the big draw. But really, was there ever such a time? I don't think the industry has changed the way he thinks it has and a key example would be the success of Quentin Tarantino. He's as much a scholar of film as Scorcese and his films bring in millions. Scorcese just comes off like an old man shouting at clouds here.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, The_Squid said:

This is like lamenting sound because the actors in those silent movies were so much more expressive.

Old people ranting about how the world is shitty because it's not how they remember it ...   what a shocker!

Yeah.  I was listening to the BBC World Service yesterday and there was an article about Humanoid Robots. I'm paraphrasing, but...

"imagine you have come home from work and you have had a hard day.  A humanoid robot would know how you fel..."  I threw up and sprained my wrist changing the channel at that point.

Just because I'm old doesn't mean the world isn't going to hell.