majikstl wrote: "Interesting thought. There was a big revival of interest in old films during the late 1960s and early 1970. Bogart, the Marx Bros., W.C. Fields and others were rediscovered, as well as many of the great directors. This can be seen in the emergence of a whole generation of filmmakers -- Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Coppola, etc., who were raised on old movies, thanks largely to them being reran on television. Film studies became a growing college field and critics like Ebert and Kael became household names."
Ironically, the rise of the "film school" generation of directors drew attention away from the older films and the European filmmakers like Bergman and Fellni whose reputations remained very high throughout the 1960s. Directors like Bogdanovich, Scorsese and others borrowed heavily from older Hollywood films, and from the foreign films, and created much more accessible, easily digestible works which had short term box office benefits but, in the long term, drew attention away from those other films.
The rise of critics like Kael, Sarris, Simon, Macdonald and others was indeed another important hallmark of this period. Incidentally, while Ebert had been reviewing films since 1967, he really didn't become a major figure until the late 70s/early 80s, when he championed "entertainment" films like "Jaws" and "Star Wars" that Kael and company had little time for. That was the great, radical shift that marked the end of the "film culture" in the US.
majikstl wrote: "Ironically, with the growth of cable and video, the reverence directed at old classic film has diminished. I think they are so readily available that we simply take them for granted any more. You really had to go out of your way to see old movies at that time. You either had to hope they would play in revivial houses or be shown by film societies, or if you had to stay up and catch them on the late, late show. A new movie might take years before it ever appeared on television and the network premiere of a movie could be a major cultural event. And if you came across a film that you had never seen or maybe never even heard of, it could be special, because you didn't know when or if you'd ever get a chance to see it again. As such, you'd sit and absorb the movie. Now, movies are so readily available that seeing one isn't that big of a deal. Don't catch it at the theatre -- wait for the DVD or cable. A movie that might have only been shown twice a year on the a local station's late show, now might be show 20 or 30 times a week on cable channel. Plus, you can own a movie for less than it costs to see it on the big screen. It's like too much of a good thing, it loses its thrill value. Plus, we are so saturated with media 200 channels, video games, iPods, etc., that movies get lost in the mix."
I've said that if this film was made today, Woody's character would be a music aficionado. That seems to be where there is more serious study, although even music is getting increasingly buried in a kind of postmodern shuffle thanks to the iPod and mix CDs.
The depiction of the revival theatre in this film represents a lost tradition. Unfortunately, except for a few exceptions in the biggest cities, the revival theatre is pretty much dead. Even those that survive are forced to show increasingly banal, run-of-the-mill fare to appeal to wider audiences.
You're absolutely right that few audiences really sit and "absorb" the movie anymore. That's why they're all too frequently played as background noise rather than closely examined. It's also why good dialog, intricate characterizations, and attention to the quality of the filmmaking have all but disappeared.
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