Film Culture (1957)

EAE I. INTRODUCTORY NOTES—GILBERT SELDES The multiple-interview presented here begins with shrewd questions which elicit interesting opinions and judgments. You cannot extract either a new aesthetic of the movies or a solid prophecy as to their future from the interviews, but a few things do come out. First is the thoughtful, but not panicky, worry all of the movie-makers have about the art and the industry. This should make no one unhappy because well-grounded worry is the beginning of good planning. Some fifteen years ago when I began asking studio executives what they planned to do when television arrived, the general reply was a laugh and ten years ago the prevalent attitude was “television is pictures and we know how to make pictures, so they'll have to come to us.” Today, as these interviews indicate, everyone in the movies knows that a new habit of movie-going must be created which cannot ever be again the old -automatic habit. The movies began to fall off long before TV came in—the beginning came when people stopped saying “let’s go to the movies” and began to say “let’s go to ” a specific picture. Today it is something else—you have to make people want to see a picture in spite of the enormous accessibility of free entertainment. This means the movie with its own in-built attraction, and the attraction has to be pretty special, different for each movie. I don’t know what quality or qualities will do the trick—I am only sure the trick will not work over and over again. The cycle and the imitative production are both ineffective now. Aesthetic questions do come up. At the moment there is the difficulty of adapting the basic techniques (of shooting and of cutting) to the new shape of the screen and to the materials which this new shape makes available. We haven’t solved even the problem: how does the size-shape of the screen affect the duration of a shot? The kind of story material which shows off best on the big screen happens to be the safest for films to use: anything that’s history can be dressed up and, as we've found out, anything that’s geography. But among the things which reduced movie-going before TV really got into its stride, the routine plot, the cautious treatment were important factors. At present, Hollywood has unloaded onto television hundreds of the very pictures which destroyed the box-office. But this will help Hollywood only if the new pictures it makes have some freshness in every department. — This, in one way or another, every one of the speakers notes as a prime desideratum. I have a suggestion to make. Let the members of the Academy appoint each year a production team with complete freedom to choose a story, old or new, for filming. Let the production be experimental also. And let a different studio each year pay for the picture. In some cases, the picture might turn in a profit. If not, it would be only one picture, once every four or five years, to finance. In the meantime, everything learned And part of the benefit would be in the production of at least one picture a year against which outside critics through the production would benefit the entire industry. IMPACT.<OF TELEVISION. ON: MOTION PICTURES could not hurl the charge of commercialism. In the course of five or ten years, Hollywood would have a respectable number of extraordinary pictures behind it. But of course this is too simple. I expect nothing to come of my proposal. Il. INTERVIEWS—GIDEON BACHMANN (The following interviews are based on an inquiry by Gideon Bachmann over radio station WFUV-FM, in New York. The interviewer's questions are italicized.) FRED ZINNEMANN The economic influence of television on the entire structure of the motion picture industry is obvious. What do you feel the motion picture industry should do in order to maintain its position? Make good pictures. And do you think that since television has come more good pictures are being made than before? I find that very hard to answer because it’s hard to keep track of statistics. I think a certain amount of good films are being made. We cant reasonably expect more than a certain number of good ones because there's not that much good material around. lt would interest us to know whether you feel this development in the industry has increased the availability of talent—especially of writers for films? I think there have been a great many excellent young actors who first appeared on television. But with a few notable exceptions like Chayefsky and two of three others, I don’t think a great many good writers have come out of television into films. What is your reaction to the type of audience that goes to see a film today as compared with the type of audience that motion pictures used to have before television? Do you feel that there is a shift in emphasis there? I feel that there is a definite change in what the audience wants. In the old days, as you may remember, there used to be such a thing as habit—the American audience was in the habit of going to pictures. Usually the whole family would go once or twice a week—it was a family custom. This seems to have disappeared now, and it is quite obvious that most people going to a picture do so not out of habit, but because they've heard it’s interesting.