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Scorsese Clarifies his Marvel Stance...via Hitchcock (and Psycho)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
7 replies | jump to latest

The pickings are so slim for clickbait internet arguments about "film" these days that I realize Marty Scorsese(with his more angry accomplice Coppola) have stirred a long-awaited humdinger of a duel: "Cinema vs the Marvel Movies."

Its a losing proposition. I do love how the makers of the Marvel movies speak well of Scorsese, then say "yes Marvel movies ARE cinema" ...and then make sure to remind Scorsese and us that these movies mostly make a billion dollars. (What they leave out is how EASY it is to make a billion with worldwide distribution of lousy movies in the 21st Century. Hey, maybe a REAL worldwide blockbuster should make...6 billion?)

Anyway, I think Marty is canny about this: he's stoking the fire, but very respectably. Why not keep the debate up. I'm sure it will HELP, not hurt, The Irishman(however it makes its money.)

I think his newest article is in the NYT. I read it, can't link it. He makes some overall arguments about cinema(and praises the talents of the PEOPLE who make Marvel movies, and says "maybe I would have wanted to make one myself if I were younger."

But eventually he moves on to Hitchcock as HIS generation's Marvel movie man.

Oh, maybe. Let's go on.

Scorsese says things(I'm paraphrasing from memory) like "Hitchcock was pretty much his own franchise," and "we waited expectantly for every Hitchcock picture and were excited to watch it."(I'd like to point out that Marty likes Topaz -- but then, so do I, warts and all.)

Then Marty reaches Strangers on a Train and notes that it CLIMAXES on an amusement park thrill ride(the carousel.) And he talks of how he saw Psycho "at midnight on the first day it was out, a night I will never forget."

Let's stop at that one for a moment. I, too, had a few "nights I'll never forget" with favorite movies. Mine with Psycho was 1979 in a college screening -- full house, everybody screaming -- but alas, I KNEW every shock that was coming. Imagine if I did NOT. That's what 1960 got.

My "first time big scream nights" (and days) were Wait Until Dark and Jaws. I don't recall much screaming at The Exorcist at all, and as I think I've said before, Alien really only got a big scream when Skerritt got it -- but I still remember that night.

But I digress, and I suppose that Scorsese was saying that Hitchcock was his Marvel movie maker, and he can extrapolate that to today.

It doesn't QUITE hold water for me, because as a Hitchcock buff, I learned after awhile that Hitchcock made as many suspense DRAMAS(The Paradine Case, I Confess, The Wrong Man, Marnie) as "thriller dillers." Hitch really only occasionally made Marvel movies.

You know who DID make Marvel movies? Ray Harryhausen(with Bernard Herrmann on a lot of them.) Big monster movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts(the best one.) And then those kid fans grew up and greenlighted MORE Harryhausen in the 70's(The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) and right up to 1981(Clash of the Titans.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I daresay that more than Hitchcock, the SciFi and monster films of the 60's are probably the precursors to Marvel: Forbidden Plant, Them, The Thing, When Worlds Collide.

Meanwhile, back at Hitchcock.

It can be a fun exercise -- using his American films only -- to separate out Hitchcock's best ACTION movies. This cuts out Rebecca and Notorious, and doesn't include his "best" films(though it has some of them.) Try this:

Foreign Correspondent
Saboteur
Strangers on a Train
The Man Who Knew Too Much '56
NORTH BY NORTHWEST(the biggest of them all)
The Birds
Torn Curtain(bus chase, ballet riot)
Family Plot(runaway car)

Its not many.

In fact, I like to point out that Strangers on a Train(with its berserk carousel) and NXNW(with its crop duster and Rushmore climax) were almost made "tongue in cheek" by Hitchocck..on purpose to generate box office bucks he KNEW he could command.. but he really would rather be making Notorious, I Confess, The Wrong Man, and Marnie(which has a LITTLE action with the runaway horse.)

Strangers on a Train followed a menopausal slump from Notorious through Stage Fright(even thought there are some masterpieces in that run). NXNW followed the grim tragic tales of The Wrong Man and Vertigo. Time to make some moolah!

But what of:

Rear Window
Psycho
Frenzy

Well, those have action of a different sort. The final fight and fall in Rear Window is exciting montage,as are the two murders in Psycho(the staircase one is like a "murder action sequence.") Frenzy, too, has a montage murder(strangulation) and a weird sequence "on the highway" so it is "almost" an action movie, at times. Torn Curtain has some action, but also yet another brutal , well edited murder -- franchise?

Still, I think we know what Scorsese was trying to say about Hitchcock. Whether action packed(NXNW) or not(Notorious); whether shocking(Psycho) or not(The Trouble With Harry)...EVERY Hitchcock picture was special, he had his own "universe"

The HCU?

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Here's the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html

Scorsese's big conclusion is:
"The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema."

where 'cinema' is film-making with at least some aspirations to art, some engagement with the medium's history, some streak of individual directorial expression, some genuine exploratoriness or unexpectedness or riskiness ('revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger'). Scorsese shifts his ground a *lot* but we all kind of get what he's gesturing at, including as he does a list of contemporary, positive cases for cinema:

"Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson... When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded."

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Compare Scorsese's attempt to divide movies into 'worldwide audiovisual entertainments' and 'cinema pieces' with Jon Brion's attempt to divide popular music into 'songs' on the one hand and 'performance pieces' on the other:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_RsLDMeRj4

Brion fears that song-writing and our ability to perceive it is in decline much as Scorsese fears that cinema and people's taste for it is fading away. Critics of both men deny that useful (not to mention non-snobby and un-selfserving) lines can be drawn in either case.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema."

where 'cinema' is film-making with at least some aspirations to art, some engagement with the medium's history, some streak of individual directorial expression, some genuine exploratoriness or unexpectedness or riskiness ('revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger').

---

Scorsese shifts his ground a *lot* but we all kind of get what he's gesturing at,

---

I suppose its like that Supreme Court justice famously saying "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it."

X number of us of a certain age KNOW the the Marvel universe(and in a somewhat lesser way, the DC universe) have fundamentally changed the movie industry both in terms of what is made and in terms of what invididual Marvel movies ARE in the watching(pretty much the same thing over and over and given over to CGI overload.)

And(maybe) this: even if only three Marvel movies are released a year, one of them can take over 10 screens of 14 screen movie theater, and they can play for so long that there is no room for other movies to appear.

Movies used to play for a few weeks, replaced by new ones few weeks later, replaced by new ones a few weeks later. I think the sheer NUMBER of movies made in the US declined from something like 400 a year to 200 a year over the decades from the 40's(Hitchcock himself spoke to this decline of output in the 70's; frankly it allowed Frenzy especially and Family Plot to stand out and get noticed in their years.)

Way back in 1982, the late screenwriter William Goldman offered up a list of movies from 1962 versus 1982, and found what he called "comic book movies"(like Star Trek II and ET and The Road Warrior) where once The Miracle Worker, To Kill a Mockingbird, and David and Lisa had played in '62. But of course, by then, Lucas/Spielberg had created the template which continues through Marvel.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But wait: in certain ways, the "Marvel template" was in evidence all the way back in the 50's.

I like to note that Warner Brothers had some of its biggest hits of the 50's with House of Wax(3-D horror); The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms(Godzilla before Godzilla) and Them!(Giant ants told like desert film noir.) I think Jack Warner was almost EMBARRASSED that these were his biggest hits in years of "serious entertainment" but...they were driven by kids and teenagers and horror seekers and...

...it took about 30 years for these movies to BECOME the big A movies of a year(as the 80's remakes of The Thing and The Fly and The Blob attest.)

Hitchcock finally and famously dabbled in "event horror" with Psycho and The Birds, and made huge profits. But then (embarrassed, maybe, by their success?) it was off to the dramas of Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz..and self-ordained decline.

So I guess my point in here somewhere is that whatever Scorsese sees wrong with the Marvel movies, something LIKE the Marvel movies have always been with us, just in different forms. (Swanstep rightly named Mad, Mad, World as a "Marvel movie" of sorts back in the 60s.)

I would also add that I suppose my OP was meant to show us that SCORSESE picked Hitchcock as a phenomenon of sorts, one from his own childhood and one who is still influential as all get out (you can't much find Capra, Ford, and Wiilder in the Marvel movies, but you can find Hitchcock -- Guardians of the Galaxy 2 has an intentional homage to the NXNW crop duster, for instance.)

Though The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is my favorite movie of 1953, and Them is just below Rear Window as my favorite of 1954(sorry, On the Waterfront), I must admit that Hitchcock somehow put the big hooks in at a whole other level: I loved his thrillers as thrillers, but I SENSED the great cinema within them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Plus Hitchcock's overall octopu- like showmanship in the 60's(my childhood) can't be discounted. The movies. The TV series. Adult books of short stories like "Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV." Children big books of short stories like "Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies" and "Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful" (each of which I got on separate Xmas mornings.) His "hip gruesome Hardy Boys" series -- "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators"(which would start out each time with Hitchcock himself giving the boys a case from his office desk, thus did I first picture myself IN Hitchcock's office as I'd later be with Joe Stefano's and Ernest Lehman's talks of writing for him in Hitchcock's real office.) And the "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine" on the magazine rack in every grocery store I visited.

Hitchcock was EVERYWHERE , man! (Even a record album I DON'T own.)

And I suppose that this aspect of the Hitchcock career, too, DID make him a franchise, and DID create a Universe.

Which I indeed like better than the Marvel universe. All those DIFFERENT stories, even if some of them share scenes and plots with others. 53 times. Amazing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Brion fears that song-writing and our ability to perceive it is in decline much as Scorsese fears that cinema and people's taste for it is fading away. Critics of both men deny that useful (not to mention non-snobby and un-selfserving) lines can be drawn in either case.

--

I get "both sides" on both topics.

To avoid "snobbery"(which I CAN'T have, with movies, because I simply don't see a lot of "cinema") I'll say that I understand, personally, that Marvel is where its at for the key demographic today, and Rap/hip hop seems to be where it is for that same demographic in music. I understand that I literally aged past the cohort for which this entertainment has been made.

However, one feeling I have about popular songs is that a person of a certain 20-something age in the 1970's could like folk rock in the 70s (James Taylor, The Eagles, Jackson Browne); the Beatles from the 60s, and Sinatra from the 50's..what they had in common was traditional melodies and harmonies that are pretty much gone today. Not to mention the rather elegant and witty LYRICS of the Cole Porter/Johnny Mercer eras. Gone. ( I listen to a fair amount of rap in the car with my young relatives; I can't say the lyrics are top notch.)
I would note that a fair amount of this music was "white music," and that's fading in diverse times. But certainly black influences in American music were there from the 30s on, with heavy R and B and Rock and Roll presence in the 50's and 60's(Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, etc...)

There can be no doubt that a certain craftsmanship in movies and songs IS disappearing, and will be gone. But new generations will like what they like.

And thanks to Sirrius radio and streaming and DVDs and Spotify, etc -- the rest of us can live in the past til we die.