The cinema is Max Castle! At least, according to the pompous French scholar Victor Saint-Cyr in Theodore Roszak's spooky-satirical 1991 novel "Flicker," which I'm now in the middle of reading. (I didn't know when I started it, but Darren Aronovsky is reportedly working on a film version -- something that's now announced on the trade paperback cover.) Saint-Cyr proclaims that the fictitious Castle, obscure maker of seriously unclean sexploitation and horror films, "alone of all directors grasped the essential phenomenology of film. In the entire history of motion pictures, only he and Lefebvre have understood the technology so profoundly."
In one of the funniest chapters so far, Saint-Cyr pronounces himself the founder of a new film theory he calls Neurosemiology, which in essence posits that it's all about the flicker. The medium of cinema itself, alternating patterns of light and shadow, is a powerful form of mass hypnosis that alters the brain, quite independent of the images we think we see on the screen. One of Sant-Cyr's students, "a bushy-haired, tautly nerved young man" named Julien, "who smoked incessantly while he spoke and never once raised his eyes," offers an elucidation of the theory:
He seemed to be saying that in capitalist society there is an inherent tendency for the attention span of each successive generation to diminish as the experience of alienation increases, with the proletarian nervous system leading the way toward mental disintegration. New film and musical forms were pulverizing all content into tinier, more purely sensational fragments. Nothing with greater complexity than advertising copy could be understood even by privileged bourgeois youth. In movies intended for adolescent audiences, directors would soon be limiting each shot to a five-second duration at longest and then cutting back from there. [...]Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... "Speed Racer"! (And "Top Gun," for that matter, which was released five years before "Flicker" was published, and which made Ed Wood's movies look like masterpieces of classical storytelling continuity.)At the current rate of accelerating perceptual shrinkage, Julien predicted that th adolescent generation of the year 2000 would have no attention span whatsoever, hence no capacity to absorb any message longer than a single cinematic flash frame in duration. Even one-line gags and slapstick comedy would be incomprehensible to them. If, for example, they were shown a classic pie-throwing scene from the early silent films, they wouldn't be able to recall, when the pie hit the face, where it had come from.
Yes, it's an elaborate version of the jokes (and serious arguments) people have been making ever since the birth of MTV -- or, perhaps, since the opening shootout in Sam Peckinpah's now-40-year-old "The Wild Bunch." But look at Peckinpah's film now: Its astonishing grace and fluidity, the masterful eye for orchestrating chaos and isolating electrifying details in what could have been just a blur of motion, are more striking than ever. And, as you can see from the Average Shot Length database at Cinemetrics, many popular films of the 21st century already average under five seconds per shot: "The Departed" (3.2 seconds), "Dreamgirls" (2.5 seconds), "Casino Royale" (3.4 seconds), "Sweeney Todd" (4 seconds). On the other hand, some films have notably longer ASLs: "The Darjeeling Limited" (8.2 seconds), "There Will Be Blood" (13.5 seconds), "Paranoid Park" (16.5 seconds).
Fortunately, there's still plenty of time to study Neurosemiology, if you speak French....
That sounds like a fascinating little novel. It's odd; I was just thinking about this the other day, when a good friend of mine declared SPEED RACER the best movie he'd ever seen. My immediate thought was that the Wachowskis somehow hypnotized him into not seeing how awful ("blech!" awful) the movie really is. It's faux-technicolor vomit. Pretty, but vomit nonetheless.
Thinking about ASLs, I always get rather miffed and go watch a Woody Allen film to make myself feel better. Maybe Matt Groening and his gang on FUTURAMA weren't so far off when they invented the most popular show of the future: HYPNOTOAD. I foresee it happening.
I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it, both for its nods to actual film history and for its creation of a unnervingly plausible alternate film history. I don't know if Aronofsky still plans to make this movie, but he might be one of the few directors who could really do justice to Max Castle's films. (Fincher would be another.) Either way, I wonder if they could possibly the match the versions we direct as we read the descriptions in the novel.
What movie ISN'T Aronofsky supposed to be working on? Batman, Ronin, Watchmen...IMDB usually seems to have him attached to 4 or 5 projects...I just checked, and now it's only 3, but doesn't include "Flicker"!
This is another variation of my frustrated-Aronofsky-fan rant. I appreciate your patience.
I was just watching several scenes from The Wild Bunch the other day (I do that often. Once I've seen a film multiple times I find myself revisiting scenes as often as revisiting the whole movie) and noticed how methodical the opening sequence was. The tension is built in slow burns rather than sudden jolts.
And Peckinpah understood how to illuminate character quickly. When Holden bumps into the woman the first reaction of he and Borgnine looks like, "Damn you, I'll kill you for that," then they keep their cool and help her out.
The problem I find with fast edits is that the length of the movie doesn't shorten. In fact, the Armageddens and Speed Racers seem to be getting longer, with both well over two hours. If the attention span is getting shorter, why aren't the movies? It would seem logical to shorten the film as well (also good business sense because of more showings per day but Hollywood may not have much business sense) and yet it doesn't happen. So many character driven, richly written films, from No Country for Old Men (122 minutes) and almost everything Woody Allen has ever done, to Cutter's Way (105 minutes) and freakin' Citizen Kane (119 minutes) manage to tell the whole damn story in under or around two hours but Bruce Willis and company planting nuclear bombs on an asteroid takes two and a half hours?!!?? Why?
I don't understand Hollywood purposely targeted a short-attention-span youth oriented audience and then not giving them a film they can get in and out of quickly and as a result make more money.
But maybe Flicker and the old show Max Headroom were right: It's all about mind control and the longer they can keep them in the theater the better.
Oh, so that explains the existence of "Domino," then...
Jim, I'm in the middle of this one right now too, and though I'm making my way through it at a snail's pace, I'm so enjoying it that I almost don't want to go any faster because I don't want it to end.
Spoilers ahead:
I've just now come to the funeral of Castle's cinematographer, and the burning of what the narrator believes to be all of Castle's films used to light the cremation fire. It's a great relief, of course, when he finds out that the cinematographer's wife has switched out the Castle films for all of the old films of her starring as Sheena-esque serial heroine. But then she tells him that she also threw in some other stuff, including a print of something called Greed...
We have to compare notes on this when you finish, and if I ever do!
Let us not forget the pacing of Jean-Luc Godard “Breathless” with its “jump cuts” which my film professor once compared to MTV editing. But we now know that this wasn’t on purpose, but since the film needed to be shortened they decided to trim scenes down, including ones with dialogue. But unlike “Speed Racer” and “Armageddon” (or any Michael Bay film in my opinion), this was and still is a superior film to those because it was innovative at the time and its mise-en-scène worked with it. I could be wrong, but it seems nowadays, other films are just duplicating this style and having everyone thinking it’s original.
I hardly think the inability to track the random, meaningless chaos of a pie fight means the Kids These Days all have ADD. I bet those same kids could tell you exactly who shot who in No Country for Old Men. A serious study on the subject would put a well paced, classic kung fu movie next to The Bourne Ultimatum and ask teenagers which was more entertaining.
There's a single take in Tony Jaa's Thai action movie The Protector that lasts about ten minutes, and it's very popular on youtube. I don't think we can blame the viewers, I think people would be watching better, more well paced movies if there were more directors who would create such films and still keep the entertainment value in mind.
As evidence that today's audience can still enjoy well paced editing and clearly directed action scenes that serves the story and not the other way around: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I suspect it will have a longer DVD shelf life than Saw II, as well.
Shorter shot length equals ADD. Fracturing of classically-defined screen space means cinema itself is decaying. People don't appreciate storytelling anymore. I know you're just trying to get a discussion going, Jim, and your tongue is firmly in your cheek, but so many of your colleagues address this same issue straightforwardly, often in a rueful, "these kids today" tone, that I'd rather not entertain such thoughts even in jest.
Cinematic language is evolving. It has always evolved. Peckinpah's style seemed shocking once; now it's clarity incarnate. "Star Wars" was once considered the epitome of fractured, jumpy, impatient, pseudo-storytelling; compare it to "Transformers" or "Speed Racer" and it's practically an Ozu film. Art is always absorbing what came before and trying to build on it, splinter it or just customize it; art, all art, abhors classicism for its own sake, as well it should. If we're all paying tribute to the masters -- slavishly analyzing, replicating and homage-ing -- the art form dies.
Tony Scott will be honored with a Museum of Modern Art retrospective within my lifetime, I am sure. And when it happens, my grandkids will purchase their tickets telepathically, charge the batteries on their jet packs, and ask, "Gramps, is it true you saw Domino in a theater? Did you know then that it was the Citizen Kane of the 21st century? ... And by the way...what was a theater?"
Today's snot-nosed Philistines are tomorrow's depressed, gray-haired classicists.
Matt: Yes, the Neurosemiology theory that tickled me so much in "Flicker" is indeed satirical, and so is this post. But the satire, I think, cuts both ways -- a poke at the "sky is falling" hysteria of the "depressed, gray-haired classicists" and an acknowledgment of what might be called ADD aesthetics.
Just because something is "new," or popular, doesn't mean it's furthering or nourishing the medium. Tony Scott will get a MOMA retrospective -- I have no doubt -- but nothing in the world is going to make "Domino" the "Citizen Kane" of the 21st Century, or "Top Gun" a better film than it was in 1986 or than it is right now. (BTW, I caught part of it on cable recently -- it has not aged well.)
It's one thing to criticize something just because it's "new," but I'm not interested in making predictions about how future generations will judge Tony Scott or Herbert Ross or Michael Bay or the Wachowskis. I don't really care. I can only stick up for the standards I have right now. Peckinpah and "Star Wars" haven't changed. They still hold up. And Tony Scott still doesn't. Lina Wertmuller was once considered cutting-edge by some, too. I remember it. I just never understood, from watching her movies in the 1970s, why they supposedly mattered.
Meanwhile, if somebody wants to make an argument for how something in "Top Gun" or "Transformers" or "Speed Racer" is contributing something valuable to the growth and evolution of the art of film, I'm skeptical but certainly receptive.
George Carlin got there long before we did: "In New Hampshire, the license plates read, 'Live Free, or die!'...Idaho's license plates read, 'Famous Potatoes'. I guess those are the extremes in thought. It would seem to me that somewhere between 'Live Free or Die' and 'Famous Potatoes', the truth lies."
"Meanwhile, if somebody wants to make an argument for how something in "Top Gun" or "Transformers" or "Speed Racer" is contributing something valuable to the growth and evolution of the art of film, I'm skeptical but certainly receptive."
I'll give it a shot.
Speed Racer seemed to be innovative to me. It was the most "assembled" film I've ever seen, a true physical as well as temporal collage. I thought it was a fascinating attempt at blending mediums (live-action film with japanese animated television) that came at the problem of adaptation in a new way (both creatively and technologically). There's nothing new under the sun, but I think Speed Racer manages to push forward the current line of cinematic speed and excess. That makes it a valuable experience, not really any deeper than Star Wars but just as visually inventive and entertaining.
Who are you to say something's not art because it's faster and because each piece of it is smaller and simpler? I submit that as that trend continues, so does the trend of making the overall film much more complex. A Kurosawa film, say, might be a painting, something you can see and understand as a whole; SR is like that same painting broken up into pieces, spray-painted bright colors, and mixed around. The experience of trying to fit these pieces back together into a coherent whole--of viewing character events and emotions through many fractured perspectives--can be very exciting and edifying, and certainly artistic.
After all, consider Citizen Kane, which, like Speed Racer, utilized striking compositions, new techniques and technology, entirely constructed spaces (the opening shots of Xanadu, for instance), multiple (even conflicting) perspectives, and chronological shuffling to tell a story about an ambiguous protagonist seeking emotional validation. Now there's a post-modern movie.
(Top Gun still sucks, though.)
I was delighted to read this (spotting the cover of the book on the main page of Roger's website drew me here). "Flicker" is my 2nd favorite book of all time (following only "Handling Sin" by Michael Malone). I cannot tell you how many times I have read "Flicker". What a fascinating story, brilliantly told and extremely entertaining. I love it when something this great -- yet obscure -- is given a mention in the media so that perhaps more people will be drawn to read and enjoy it.
I recently saw "The Wild Bunch" for the 2nd time. Was duly impressed, much moreso than the 1st time, many years ago. Indisuptably a masterpiece.
I agree with Emerson that some things will hold up in time and some things won't. Although I think Mean Streets is a great movie I do think its reputation will decline because it came from your usual can of seventies movies. However I do think Scorsese's Goodfellas and Raging Bull will continue to hold up.I agree with the concept that if a movie was praised to the skies it has nowhere to go but down(Pulp Fiction,Nashville) but if a film was panned or received mixed reviews it has nowhere to go but up(Blade Runner,Apocalypse Now). I predict decades from now that Tarentino's work will go down but Scorsese's very good recent films(The Aviator,Gangs of New York) will be seen as classics.
Emerson doubts that Transformers and Speed Racer will become classics but Ferris Bueller's Day Off was seen as mediocre when it first came out but today it seems to me that it is some kind of a masterpiece but that's just me.
I don't think we can blame the viewers, I think people would be watching better, more well paced movies if there were more directors who would create such films and still keep the entertainment value in mind.
I think you're right, Gman, but to a degree. When you say well-paced, do you mean longer ASLs or a movie that moves well from scene to scene?
I just saw "The Visitor" last night, and even though the ASLs seemed longer--which is refreshing in comparison to most of the movies playing at the theater lately--the movie wasn't any better than an average quick-cut action film. That's another thing that's been annoying me lately: I try to escape from the "10,000 B.C."s in the multiplex by going to see small films like "The Visitor," and it still sucks, just on a different level.
I have little to add to this discussion other than the fact that "Flicker" is my absolute, all-time favorite novel and I can't imagine anyone with even a passing interest in cinema history/theory/mythology/etc. not thoroughly enjoying it.
A few things.
How short a shot is doesn't mean a film is well made or not. It doesn't mean that because the average length is 3.2 seconds there's no story. Great directors like Scorcese will use techniques like this to his advantage. After all this cutting around, when a shot stays stagnant on a character there's a true dramatic force created by suddenly choosing not to cut away. The opposite can be said for "TWBB", when Anderson starts cutting fast it's in opposition to the rest of the film and creates something dramatically interesting.
The three movies you mention can only be dicussed by what the directors are attempting to do. Scott and Bay don't understand the concept of dramtic effect. Doesn't matter what Criterion thinks. Their movies are full of mashpoato-like visuals. Cameras that move unnecissarily. Cuts that mean nothing more than trying to get to the next shot as quickly as possible. Watch "Transformers" and you get the feeling Bay doesn't even know when to use a close-up as opposed to a long shot for dramatic effect - especially during the action sequences that he's supposed to be known for.
But the Wachowskis I feel are searching - exploring ways to visually represent what's happening on screen. The fight in the iced over mountains had incredible energy and humor. Continuity? A sense of space? "Speed Racer" is a high budget experiment. We'll see if they ever perfect what could potentially be aa new style. I talk a lot more about it in my own review of "Speed Racer." It might be that they never figure it out, but that the next person inspired by what they're trying to do does. Chaplin and Keaton perfected what came before them. The Wachowskis are trying to perfect what Bay and Scott are attempting but can't pull off. The first "Matrix" film jumped the action flic forward by leaps and bounds. Anyway...thinking out loud. I could be waaaay off.
I was able to follow "Speed Racer", but my brain was programmed by video games at an early age. A movie that was literally built to move quickly, it was the slow parts of "Speed Racer" that didn't hold up.
Next -- the flickering of the light. We're talking about film. The way the camera creates images by allowing bits of light through. Unfortunately this theory doesn't hold for HD. Which could be why, while watching HD films I always seem a little distracted by the too clean quality of the image. The light no longer flickers, it spills onto the screen...no shutters. All digital. And you can feel it while watching. The texture isn't the same. So this clever hypnosis thing might soon be just as outdated as "Top Gun".
I also predict that in decades to come that we will see a good deal of Coen Brothers films on Sight and Sound polls.
Nothing to add, except that the great Norwegian film "Reprise" seemed to have a short ASL (it moved like a mix of "Jules And Jim" and "Trainspotting") and, also, I love that someone here mentioned "Cutter's Way" for no reason other than that it's a great, nearly unknown, film.
I'm 50 years old and never play video games, but I agree with Phillip that it's the slower paced scenes in Speed Racer that really don't work. The faster scenes often lack spatial coherence, but I never felt that I was missing anything (or maybe the spatial coherence was there but my aging brain couldn't register it?).
There's also a mini-trend of super-long one-take sequences, but even when they're well-executed they seem to exist mostly to show off technique or technology (Children of Men, Atonement). I love that clip from The Protector (haven't seen the whole film) because the major special effect there is Tony Jaa. While I'm sure new camera technology made the shot "easier" to get, it's still a triumph of fight choreography and camera operation.
Bruce Willis and company planting nuclear bombs on an asteroid takes two and a half hours?!!?? Why?
Jonathan: the purpose of the fast cuts in a picture like Armageddon isn't to make it move forward. On the contrary, it's to fit in as much extracurricular material as possible to disguise the fact that there's no story beyond what you described. It's editing to put things in, not out.
Another good comparison would be the King Kong pictures that got longer and more bloated with each remake, the big guy having to fight for screen time in his own movie with the subplots and human dramas shoehorned in.
Sam Erickson:
I agree that at least a couple Coen movies will make a Sight and Sound list (Fargo and No Country For Old Men are easy choices; Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing are possibly others) but Pulp Fiction has been such a hugely influential movie I don't think Tarantino will be forgotten any time soon (go to any store that sells posters and you'll probably find a couple Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs posters right alongside all the other currently popular titles). The only thing that hurts QT is over-exposure (Miserlou no longer has such a great impact as in Pulp; Battle Without Honor or Humanity (from the walking scene in Kill Bill) is now being used in commercials for Kung Fu Panda). But then again, it takes him so long to make anything these days(and he's coming off his first pseudo-flop)that audiences should be more than ready for whatever (Inglorious Bastards, or something else in the interim) he does next.
I'm not fond of MTV style editing but I don't think it is entirely dispensable. Case in point: Natural Born Killers. The film took 11 months to edit, some of which were used to get the movie an R rating, but much of which was surely spent giving the film its ferocious tempo. Oliver Stone uses so many cuts (estimated at 2,500 to 3,000) it would probably be a nightmare (or at least a time consuming chore) to calculate its average shot length, but the cuts are not random and senseless like in most music videos.
Stone shot using 18 different film formats and then wove them into a visual fabric. The result is blunt and over the top but it works(notice how the use of each kind of format is balanced against the next). The viewer has a very good idea what it's like to be inside Mickey and Mallory's heads.
And the film has other curiosities. Even while it is blunt and bold, it is subtle and sneaky. It manages to develop both Jack Scagnetti and Wayne Gale while simultaneously using them to satirize the types for which they stand. It has a message and it hammers it home one crazed scene after another. The quick cuts give it an energy that a lot of long takes would have sapped. Without the cuts, Stone might as well be a politician giving a speech on CSPAN; the film would be about as interesting.
That is all not to say a calmer movie about a cross country kiling spree cannot be made. Badlands is quiet and poetic and deliberate in its pacing (leisurely, by comparison) and is based on the Starkweather/Fugate spree that also apparently inspired Natural Born Killers. It would not have been nominated for any MTV Movie Awards. Natural Born Killers, on the other hand, was nominated for two such awards but won neither of them. It wasn't nominated for Best Movie.
I'm glad dtto1984 agrees with me about about coen brothers films being on Sight and Sound polls in the future and I think Blood Simple will be one of them but I don't think The Big Lebowski(which I enjoyed even though I didn't think it's story made much sense)will be one of them.As for Tarentino's work If it will make dto1984 feel better I do think Reservoir Dogs(which is my favorite Tarentino film) will do far better in reputation than Pulp Fiction but I do believe that Tarentino does have a hot streek that has yet to be end because there has not been one film that he wrote and directed since that been inpressive or Satisfying but on the other hand he might be too good, too soon and I more respond to the style of his films than the content.
The worst things that I ever saw Tarentino be a part of was what he did during the period where he was beginning to become famous where he would act(I heard Destiny turns on the Radio was a Turkey) in movies instead of making them because in Dusk til Dawn I think that they could have gotten a better actor to play Tarentino's part making the team of Seth and Richard Gecko seem like more dangerous foes and I don't Tarentino wasn't all that good in his roles in Grindhouse but Honestly I don't think people go to a movie like Grindhouse for great acting.However,I don't mind if Tarentino gives himself small roles like the one he gave himself in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs because he his being a small character and is being one the screen for a very small amount of time that if he does a bad job with his performance it won't matter because his character is not important one.
Btw Jim, in regard to The Wild Bunch, one of the things Peckinpah does that's interesting by is that he inserts moments of slow motion while allowing the soundtrack to resume at normal speed. Most slow motion moments in todays films either drown out the sound with music and/or distort the sound effects accordingly with the image. Pauline Kael described the dramatic effect of Peckinpah's slow motion inserts as remembering something in hindsight while seeing it for the first time.
The Big Lebowski has its own Star Wars style fan convention where fans dress like characters and get together at a bowling alley.
Also, can we stop taking cheap shots at Tarantino already? Whenever his name comes up, I feel like I'm hearing a bunch of hipsters telling me "I liked Nirvana back when they were cool, now they're a buncha sellouts."
I do agree with dto1984 that Pulp Fiction and Tarentino's films still have yet to go down in influence and popularity I'm just saying that I think it reputation as it being considered one of the greatest movies ever made.As for The Wild Bunch I haven't seen it.(I'm sorry to say)
In response to G-Man I'm not attacking Tarentino I'm just giving predictions as too whether or not his films will hold up in the future and don't worry I'm done talking about him.As for Top Gun, I saw it and it was garbage and I think it is certainly dated especially with the film's theme song.I don't think Tony Scott will be seen as a great director in the future(though I think his brother Ridley will)but I do think think his two best movies Crimson Tide and True Romance(written by Tarentino) will become cult classics.I think Natural Born Killers should invite multiple viewings (even though Stone's style can leave one nausiated) because within the chaos there is symbolism,pathos and pot shots at society and I did think Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr were wonderfully cartoonish in there roles.If people want to attack me for my comments then they are welcome I'm just giving my opinion just how everbody is giving theirs.
I wish that people would agree to disagree with me on this blog and not attack me and if a group of people gang up on me and attack me it puts me in a position where it would be beneath me to respond to you and unfair and I'm being condemmed for using my freedom of speech.Keep in mind with blogs people post comments they don't attack other people.Sorry if I seemed like I was attacking Tarentino I do value his work a good deal.
I love it when something this great -- yet obscure -- is given a mention in the media so that perhaps more people will be drawn to read and enjoy it.
Well, then, you'll be glad with what I have to say. I just wanted to note that this post prompted me to seek out a copy of Flicker. I'm just over a hundred pages (they've just started having Max Castle retrospectives at the cinema) and so far I'm really enjoying the book.