Film Culture (1957)

How do people find out about the good films? There’s apparently some kind of peculiar osmosis that makes people want to go to see a certain picture. Sometimes for no apparent reason whatsoever a picture is a big hit, sometimes without special advertising of any sort. I think Marty was a very good example of that. It just happened. It was a very electric thing. There were no great stars in it—it was a very unassuming picture, and yet everybody went to see it. BORIS KAUFMAN Big capital investments accompanied the birth of television, unlike the movies whose beginnings were small and where there was, first, a period of experimentation. How do you think this fact has influenced the development of television as an art? Perhaps it is this factor which makes it impossible for television as a medium to develop. It has to play safe because much more money is involved. The movie industry—before it became an industry—had a big period of trial and error which was possible because there was less pressure and the main purpose was not to turn effort into money but to try to develop the medium itself. Even at the price of a partial failure, attempts were made in every picture to go a little step forward, which is the most important thing to do in any art. Which period are you speaking about? Well, mainly the period of the avantgarde, before sound came in. As a matter of fact, to establish the parallel with the present time, I could cite the invasion of sound. As soon as it appeared, it became possible to make an attraction out of minor efforts in the medium. The sheer fact of sound was enough to evoke in the public a new curiosity; they didn’t pay any attention to the merits of the movie itself and were satisfied just by hearing the voice or the song. It was a novelty, and novelty was never a substitute for the real thing. What do you consider the basic characteristics of motion pictures which make them different from television? Cinema is a visual art. As soon as you try to be literary or theatrical or anything else, you immediately admit that the subject can’t be treated with the methods inherent in the medium. Or else, maybe you’re not able to do it. Personally, I wouldn’t like to operate in any other medium. Well, television is a visual medium, too. What are the basic differences? 4 What impresses me in television is its simultaneous and immediate reporting of the facts, happening some place and related to the spectator at once, without even interpretation—other than just exposing the facts as they are. I think this is much more convincing than to try to produce a play or a musical or a motion picture type of entertainment on television. You mean television should refrain from doing dramatic material ? No, but it should try to develop its own material and its own methods. On the other hand, it’s true that all visual arts influence each other, but I think it’s a mistake to borrow each other’s means and methods. There’s a tendency, for instance, to blindly adapt a television success and make a movie out of it. Most of the time it’s a failure—for the precise reason that it’s always better to start from original material and shape it into adequate form within the means of a certain medium. Did you feel handicapped working on Patterns by the fact that it had previously been televised? I saw a kinescope of the production, and some people might have been affected by it—but I tried my best to make a fresh approach. The story was adapted to movie purposes, but in itself was potent. Some compromises were made, though, and, as always, they reduced the value of the picture. I don’t know if this was due to the fact that it had previously been done on television, or not. Every medium should manage to keep alive within its own means—otherwise you get a meaningless mixture . . . I don’t mean to be rigid; pure cinema probably doesn’t exist. Or maybe it never existed; maybe it was just an amusement, but it was enough to keep a great number of people working enthusiastically. STANLEY KRAMER What do you consider the changes in Hollywood's attitude to television over the past 10 years? Television has had a major influence on motion pictures from the very beginning. So great an influence that it even represented a complete change of attitude periodically on the part of the motion picture industry. For example, when television first reared what was then referred to as its ugly head, the motion picture moguls chose to believe that it did not exist at all, that it was some kind of bad dream that might pass off into the night. Like sound in 1928. That’s right, but it didn’t. And then, of course, when television took greater root, the attitude of the motion picture industry was that somehow it would have to be fought rather than embraced. So they fought it by every means at their disposal, by refusing their stars permission to go on television programs, etc. etc. Naturally, television not only survived this, but went on to greater heights and today the great so-called wedding has taken place. It’s more than a wedding, because I don’t know which is the bride and which is the groom, from my-. own viewpoint. I feel very, very strongly that in tele