Making Room for Classic Movies

Way back in my film school days, I had an interaction with a favorite cousin whom I had not seen in some time. This opportunity to reconnect saw our first interaction since I had been accepted as a film student, and so he asked me what basically everyone asks me right after I tell them I’m studying film, “So, like what’s your favorite movie, then?”

    When approached with this question, at least by associates who are not necessarily film buffs, my default response is usually something I know has been on Netflix in the last year. (Though if I had to pick an answer ... maybe Silver Linings Playbook.) I think this time I said James Cameron’s Titanic. He then had a sort of illuminated reaction and followed up with, “I see, so you like … old movies.” 

My response to this was something in the vein of, “Well, yes, but NOOOO …” 

Steven Spielberg being a 29-year-old on the set of Jaws

    In academic circles, the demarcation between “classic Hollywood” and “new Hollywood” falls sometime in the 1970s. This is when the face of film underwent rapid changes with things like the disintegration of the Hays Code, the rise in auteur and indie filmmaking as an alternative to studio filmmaking with the concurrent rise of blockbusters, and the influx of film educated “movie brats” stepping behind the camera and reshaping the language of cinema. Titanic 1997, fantastic though it is, falls comfortably within the realm of “modern cinema.” 

I can’t really blame my cousin for this mix-up, though. It is becoming increasingly difficult for casual viewers to become literate with classic Hollywood. I remember even around the early days of my formal film studies, circa 2014, Netflix had a more healthy offering of classical films: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Charade, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Quiet Man, Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate, and From Here to Eternity, all films that I’ve adored. (You’ll notice I’ve spotlighted more than one of these films on my blog with their own essays.) But even then, I remember reading pieces from Bustle and the like about how little Netflix invested in the curation of classics, and how this would inevitably lead to their evaporation in the public discourse.

         Time has only aggravated this problem. Not a single one of those films are presently available on Netflix—they haven’t been for a while—and their reserve of “old films” has only shrunk in the years since. 

Don't Look Up (2021)

    As the streaming wars started eating into the reserves of films available for licensing, Netflix and its progeny have started diverting most of their efforts into competing for the most prestigious library of homegrown titles. (But we’ve already talked about that.) When you’re competing to be the most cutting edge, what incentive is there for holding on to the old stuff? The recent drama over Turner Classic Movies (TCM) being narrowly scooped out of the abyss reaffirms what film lovers have long known about cinema: the classics are on life support.

The Graduate (1967)

  The conversation around vanishing classics typically faults the younger generation for killing these films through their indifference to any film that doesn’t have copious CGI explosions. One of the points that gets driven by proponents of classic cinema is the idea that “all the special effects in the world can’t make-up for a shallow story.” In my experience, modern audiences are much more receptive to this idea than they’re commonly given credit for, but with little direction on where to seek for substance, most viewers just continue to hang around the bottom of the fishbowl and continue to hate it.   

The Last Command (1928)

    There is similar confusion on the side of the younger viewers who don’t necessarily understand why anyone would care about old movies anyways.  The image most people seem to have in their heads is Grandma Rose bemoaning the loss of the illusory “good old days.” In fact, the most active proponents of classical films are some of the most film literate people alive–and the most influential shapers of the modern film discourse.

  Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are some of the most vocal champions of preserving classical cinema, as seen with them not only offering TCM their services, but also their long history of advocating for things like film preservation. Said Paul Thomas Anderson at this year’s TCM Film Festival, “It’s the preservation of our work. But it’s also preserving our memories.” Film scholar, David Bordwell, had a similar idea when he said, "By studying how films were made and received, we discover how creators and audiences responded to their moment in history. By searching for social and cultural influences on films, we understand better the ways in which films bear the traces of the societies that made and consumed them."

The Quiet Man (1952)

    I want to address, and even help bridge, the distance that modern audiences tend to feel toward older cinema. Viewers these days aren't necessarily socialized in the art of interacting with films that fall prey to uncultured social politics or those that look like they came from the pre-Spielberg era of filmmaking, but these same viewers also underestimate the doors that open if they choose to become fluent in the language of classic cinema. Because a “modern classic” (if we shall deign to use such a term) like Titanic doesn’t just come from nothing. It comes from decades of storytellers honing their craft, and I don’t just mean hammering out the techniques required for filming a luxurious cruise liner sinking violently into the ocean. I mean putting into visual form the questions of life and love in a way that feels truthful to the human ability to yearn and imagine. Classic cinema is overflowing with this. 

         So here I am to say … everyone should make classic cinema a regular part of their film diet. Not just film students. Not just grandparents. Everyone. Hollywood classics have a place in the 21st century, and they will enrich your life. 

“It was a different time …” 

Psycho (1960)

        I want to start off with what is becoming the most popular reason for audiences avoiding old films. For many audiences, the concept of something being “classic” has become synonymous with being incompatible or even hostile toward modern sensitivities, especially as it pertains to marginalized communities.

    Classical Hollywood covers a time when many of the expectations we hold about ethical representation weren’t in place among those in positions of power, and this reflects in the content of these films. This is where you get things like gross racial caricatures or casual attitudes about sexual harassment. Queer representation, meanwhile, was non-existent, or else heavily coded and viciously condemned. Many modern audiences don’t know how to approach painful reminders of our past: they may have not considered how engaging with faulty texts can actually help advance discussions on equality.

    It needs to be first acknowledged that there is a gradient of offenses at work here. On the one end, you have things like the blunting of Eliza’s liberation in My Fair Lady, and on the other end you have things like onscreen depictions of Jesus Christ bestowing his blessing on the klansmen in Birth of a Nation. A range of infractions merits a variety of responses, more than we can really tally in this space.

Furthermore, these observations themselves aren’t anything new, even if they sometimes feel that way. We’ve known for a while that Mickey Rooney’s yellow-face bit in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was embarrassing, but it’s become increasingly common for modern viewers to reject this movie, and others like it, citing an ethical necessity to not give these films any more oxygen. I feel like the root of this impulse is a righteous one, at least when it’s not motivated by internet performativity, but this model is lacking a necessary nuance.

    Appreciating a film is not the same as endorsing everything it espouses. Humans are complex animals: we’re allowed to have complex relationships to things. You can admire or resonate with something while also taking issue with certain elements contained therein. In her piece on content warnings, Emily St. James, writer for Vox, shares her experience loving a film like The Silence of the Lambs as a transgender woman (for context, The Silence of the Lambs features a serial killer who kidnaps girls to make a suit out of their skin in what is widely considered one of the most demonizing representations of gender dysphoria):  

     “Silence of the Lambs gave me a framework to think about myself before I knew who I was in the way it treated Clarice Starling, a woman cast adrift in an ocean of men … It featured gorgeous and humane filmmaking from director Jonathan Demme and sumptuous cinematography that blended light with shadow from director of photography Tak Fujimoto. Also! Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, giving two great film performances! A terrific script! ‘American Girl’ by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!

“Silence of the Lambs is a perfect movie — except it’s also a movie that helped perpetuate one of the worst, most transphobic stereotypes of all. I can hold these two ideas in my head, but when it comes time to talk about the movie, especially on social media platforms, it’s far easier to simply dig in my heels and argue either ‘I love this movie!’ or ‘This movie is transphobic!’ without leaving room for nuance.

“There has to be a better way.”

Our best case study here is probably Gone with the Wind, which has become the poster child for these conversations these last few years especially. Adapted from the novel by Margaret Mitchell, the film famously follows southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara, as she fights for herself and her land over the span of several years, including the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. Seldom in the history of film have studios worked so hard to bring a book to life with such an eye for pristineness, and Selznick and MGM reaped immediate fruits for their efforts. In its day, Gone with the Wind achieved a kind of social rapture that is hard to comprehend in this landscape where there are multiple billion dollar hits a year, and it has enjoyed repeated cultural celebration across many re-releases over the decades. Whether we’re measuring from a film craft perspective or that of raw emotional storytelling, Gone with the Wind is simply a perfect film. 

It is also problematic to its foundation. 

    If you’re like me, you’re probably taken by the film’s overwhelming opulence, including the lavish costumes and set design as well as the lush vistas captured in beautiful widescreen–and this was back when it was a painstaking effort to film in technicolor. It also doesn’t hurt that the film is fantastically quotable, or that every member of the cast is a star player, or that Max Steiner’s score is one of the most powerful musical compositions put to film. Randomly start playing “Tara’s Theme” at any given moment, and I’m liable to start tearing up on the spot. 

Scarlett herself also demonstrates a rare sort of character autonomy and complexity rarely afforded to leading ladies. Where morally gray anti-heroes like Tony Soprano and Walter White are hailed as some of the most fascinating and sophisticated characters of all time, female characters today are still railed against if they are anything but these Virgin Mary pillars of righteousness. This makes the cunning and tenacious Scarlett all the more ahead of her time. She often acts selfishly to pursue her own agendas at the expense of all others. Yet she also reveals something about the human spirit that is indomitable. This makes us ache for her anytime her actions bring her to ruin and, more impressively, root for her happiness.

Scarlett’s story also held special meaning for audiences viewing it at the time of its release. America in 1939 was caught squarely between two periods of social turmoil with The Great Depression on one end and World War II just on the horizon. Gone with the Wind premiered to a country on its knees, and Scarlett’s iconic and impassioned “I’ll never be hungry again,” monologue at the end of Act I spoke to a people that felt disempowered and helpless. Even watching the scene today, Vivien Leigh’s reading invokes a reaction that can only be described as visceral.

As with most stories with mass appeal, there is some universality to Scarlett’s journey. She is trying to hold on in a world that is changing rapidly and violently. At the same time, Scarlett’s story emerges out of a very specific historical setting, the confederate south, and the film glorifies this time and place all while refusing to grapple with the implications of this entire empire being built on the backs of thousands of African-American slaves. John Ridley, screenwriter for 12 Years a Slave, wrote in a 2020 op-ed for The Los Angeles Times that the film, “romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the 'right' to own, sell and buy human beings.” (There are appendage issues here as well, including but not limited to the depiction of the film’s black characters as being grateful in their enslavement.) How do we talk about a film like this?

    For some personal context, my first real exposure to the film came during an English class when I was 13 (I wouldn’t view the film in its entirety until I was in college). Even here I knew that the confederates were in the moral wrong, but appreciating this story didn’t strike me as an endorsement of their values. I think I owe much of this to the fact that I grew up with an education that looked unflinchingly at American slavery. 

    My emotional response to the film was more rooted in the film’s sweeping melodrama, in Scarlett’s hurricane romance with the effortlessly charismatic Rhett Butler, in the way that Scarlett rises to the occasion to defy every expectation set on her. It hadn’t occurred to me then that watching this film would spawn any reverence for the confederacy. At that time, it didn’t feel so different from enjoying an epic set during other morally warped periods like Ancient Greece or Rome. (These days, I’d acknowledge some distinction. We aren’t exactly seeing widespread advocacy to reinstate gladiatorial fights in the Coliseum.) 

         Mind you, some part of my ease may have also been me buying into a commonly circulated belief at the time, that the issues of the Civil War were long in the ground, and that we no longer had to worry about confederate ideology impacting America. And as the gap of that narrative becomes more evident, we have to start asking ourselves the hard questions.

    The most common cases I hear made for still watching films like Gone with the Wind tend to center on the need to understand “how far we’ve come.” I agree with this, but I also don’t think that’s the end of it. Casting out the film for its racial politics also means casting out one of the earliest depictions of a powerful and complex female lead. It means casting out the pinnacle of early Hollywood filmmaking. It means casting out a country’s prayer for relief from a world wracked by social and economic turmoil.

    None of these qualities cancel out the movie's transgressions, by the by, they all exist alongside one another. What I'm getting at is that by burying films like this, we rob ourselves of the chance to practice discernment, to train ourselves in the art of taking the good of something while leaving behind the bad, nothing less than a superpower in a world this multi-faceted. Mindfully engaging with flawed texts helps exercise our hearts and minds to be proactive in how we internalize messages not just from other movies but from the world at large, and so it is in our collective best interest that we continue to engage with these films and leave them open to the full range of critical discussion.

Aspects of Gone with the Wind, and other films like it, are uncomfortable to watch–I don’t want to preclude the possibility that any viewer might decide that a film is too upsetting for them specifically. I’ll acknowledge here that there is media that I find troubling that I choose not to engage with. I’m also not saying films with problematic content should get an all-access pass just “BEcAUsE thEY’Re CLasSicS.” Blind spots and missteps should be pointed out, but good news, there has never been greater accessibility or openness to discussing films in their fullest context (e.g. the disclaimer by Jacqueline Stewart now preceding the film on MAX). As St. James further observes,

The King and I (1956)

“Loving a movie with problematic elements doesn’t mean you have to feel bad. It just means you might have something more to consider when you watch it. Yes, a defensive stance can be an understandable approach. But getting past that defensiveness to a broader empathy is necessary for these conversations.”

         Another reason why the line about classic films all being “outdated” hits me wrong is that it completely ignores the many classical films that challenged power structures and/or helped give voice to marginalized groups. Films like these are also part of film history.

    Around the same time as Gone With the Wind, Charlie Chaplin released The Great Dictator. This film not only skewered Adolf Hitler before America was involved in the war, it also preached the necessity of human kindness and dignity. While even in later films it became almost commonplace to showcase Nazis as villains without really grappling with their specific crimes, this film placed the persecution of the Jewish people front and center, forcing 1940s audiences to grapple with how a certain group was being systematically persecuted. There wasn’t really a precedent for what Chaplin was doing here. Even something like Alec Baldwin spoofing Donald Trump for an SNL skit just doesn’t land with nearly as much power as what Chaplin was doing 80 years ago.

Similarly, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, Sidney Poitier challenged long standing stereotypes of black men through basically his entire filmography. This phase of his career saw him starring in films that spoke explicitly to the racial conversations of the time (like The Defiant Ones, A Patch of Blue, or In the Heat of the Night) as well as films that existed largely or entirely outside of race (Lilies of the Field or The Slender Thread), which presented its own kind of rebellion.

    A film like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, arguably Poitier’s most famous contribution, obviously comes from a time when wider conversations about race were still clearly in their infancy, back when it was easier for many people to believe that we were just one Sunday dinner away from solving racism. But films like these helped break the ice and gave filmmakers an entry point for figuring out how to handle important subjects with responsibility and nuance. Moreover, many of these films also challenged the audience they sold themselves too. Interracial marriage was not legalized nationwide in the U.S. until after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner had wrapped production. The country wasn’t “ready” to see a black man and a white woman kiss onscreen, but that didn’t stop them from featuring it anyways. There's something there that is worth remarking upon, admiring, and even learning from.

On the Waterfront (1954)

         The idea that Classic Hollywood is out of touch with modern sensibilities, well, that covers a truth, but it’s still not a complete picture. Moreover, the conversation for fair representation is an ongoing one, and for those hoping to aid that dialogue, only an in-depth knowledge of events will advance this movement.

         The distance from Hollywood classics can feel vast not just because of their social-cultural context, but also because the mechanics of the medium itself have changed so much over the years. Old films just feel different.

“They Just Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To”

Modern Times (1936)

    Even though film as a medium is relatively young compared to other artforms like live theater, the semiotics of film language have changed drastically during its lifetime. Films made in 1953 were made with a largely different vocabulary than films made in 2023, in a way that goes beyond just special effects dramatically getting better in the last thirty years. Things like shot length, composition, and depth of focus have changed rapidly over the last century or so. Even the material with which we record film itself is fundamentally different. As a result, a film made from long ago can seem like it came from another planet. But this doesn’t mean modern audiences can’t learn to understand, or even delight in, these different approaches to filmmaking.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

    I spent a few semesters hosting labs for my program's introductory course, literally selling the idea of old films to kids fresh out of high school who had never seen a black and white movie before. The trepidation is often high at first, especially when they spend the first few weeks thinking you're trying to shame them for liking superhero movies, but young dogs can learn new tricks. Sometimes all it takes is proper context, but more often, the answer is just plain old exposure.

Part of understanding classical film is also understanding the origins of the medium itself, and the closest direct ancestor to film is probably live theater. You see the overlaps especially in those first several decades of cinema where films bore a much greater resemblance to a stage performance. The acting was more theatrical, the plot was more dialogue-driven. As cinema has had several decades to find its own style, its divergences from this other medium have grown more apparent.  

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

    This is where you get observations that performers in old movies “overact,” like their energy is spilling out of the frame. In reality, they’re just playing to the sensibilities of their time. Modern movie acting tends to favor the kind of performance that benefits from the close-up not available in live theater, but there’s something to the theatrical form of acting that feels more bold and more vulnerable.

    These flavors also tend to ebb and flow across time, and they even vary within modes of film–a good performance in a historical drama looks different from a good performance in a romantic comedy. Most viewers are already willing to accommodate many different modes of acting, and in order to appreciate the acting choices of today's star performers, you have to be able to contextualize one's acting choices in the fullest range of performance.

      Returning to our discussion on old films looking different, we need to first establish that it is always a fallacy to assume that films must choose between visual splendor and narrative tightness. Films have been an item of spectacle ever since the idea of moving pictures was introduced to the masses. Once upon a time, moving images of people walking and talking was the marvel. In this era of Tik Tok and YouTube, it can be easy to take for granted just what a marvel it is that we have the means to record people, place, and movement for posterity to see.

The Apartment (1960)

   Crisp dialogue and captivating drama weren't just added elements for these films, they were the things you went to the movies to experience, and the result is a library of masterful writing that isn't always prioritized in the modern landscape. Again, even in this age of computer-generated plentitude, it is a baseline threshold of criticism that spectacle is only meaningful if it rests on a bedrock of sound storytelling principles. And there is no better training ground for audiences and filmmakers alike to refine this palate than a range of films who proved their mettle on the merits of their sharp dialogue and the performers who brought them to life.

The Cranes are Flying (1957)

     By a similar token, most of the kinds of stories that lent themselves to spectacle as we define it today were out of reach for the earliest of filmmakers, but storytellers have been out to make visually splendid films for a long time. In lieu of computer-generated monsters, filmmakers gave greater attention to the composition of the shot. Ambience was their greatest weapon. You saw in these films a greater emphasis on leaving a strong visual impression through only the artful arrangement of light and shapes. Many of the most visually arresting films of all time don't have a single frame of CGI.

These films didn’t necessarily shy away from big-screen spectacle either, they just went about it in a different way. Old films went to great lengths to capture the majesty that nature freely offered, like the imposing rock formations of Bryce Canyon in The Searchers. You also saw films that celebrated the human ability to create pageantry by combining exhilarating camera work with human choreography in films like the 1930s musicals such as The Gold Diggers of 1933 or Footlight Parade. (Then you had movies like The Sound of Music which thought, "hey, I can do both!")

    When the story did call for special effects, filmmakers had to be all the more clever in how they achieved certain visual tricks. I still don’t totally understand how DeMile got the idea to film the parting of the red sea the way he did for The Ten Commandments. That sense of mystery is lost, or at least diminished, in a field where the solution to almost every visual roadblock is “CGI.”

Beauty and the Beast (1946) vs (2017)
Makeup & costuming vs CGI

    I don’t want to take away from all the effort that modern VFX artists put into contemporary blockbusters, but if we’re here to celebrate all the Herculean muscle that goes into making a film, then surely we can tip our hats to the artists of classic cinema who despite limited technologies pulled off some of the most impressive feats put to film. If you’re wondering how James Cameron ever felt emboldened to require his entire cast to learn how to perform long dramatic gymnastics underwater in mocap suits, it’s partly because James Cameron is a maniac, but he is only the latest in a long line of maniacs who have been pushing the boundaries of film ever since moving pictures were invented.

         The early silent comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton were notorious for featuring elaborate and outlandish comedic gags, and choreographing said feats was incredibly precise and even dangerous. 1923’s Safety Last, for example, features Harold Lloyd’s character free climbing up the face of the department store where he works as a promotional gimmick, in a sort of commentary on the idea of “climbing the corporate ladder.” This performance takes up the last twenty-ish minutes of the film, and it entails the main character pulling off a series of slapstick bits as he encounters various obstacles on the way up, and the final product lands in that thin overlap between intense and hilarious. 

    Lloyd was reportedly very protective of his filmmaking technique, but we can guess this stunt didn’t have a lot of green screen. Modern schematics point to the use of a façade set built on top of the roof of another building with the camera carefully placed to obscure the distance from the ground as well as Lloyd’s safety net, assuming he even had one. Or, he just decided to freeclimb up the building and hope for the best. Earlier stunts such as this required a lot more creativity with fewer resources, and the results can be pretty flooring, even from this side of Lord of the Rings.

Black and white is another visual facet of classic film that tends to read as distancing to the uninitiated viewer. Color photography became commonplace around the 1970s. In film, technicolor overtook black and white even earlier. As such, the format of black and white has accrued this reputation of being an outdated modality that we no longer need to bother with, cinematic training wheels as it were.

But when you really consider film in its totality, you see that black and white filming, like theatrical dialogue or performance, is just another way of telling a story, and there are cases where black and white can in fact offer more than color. It can give the filmmaker tools to underscore a theme, like in The Night of the Hunter, where the competing lights and darks on the screen give visual presence to the film’s thesis on the eternal conflict between good and evil. It can set a tone, as with most noir films of the '40s and '50s.

Captains Courageous (1937)

    Moreover, there’s something about reducing a person’s face to just light and dark without the distraction of color that really lays the human psyche at its barest. Canadian photojournalist Ted Grant famously said, “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!” 

Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru tells the story of one man’s search for meaning and purpose after a medical diagnosis gives him months to live. (Remember Kurosawa, we’ll circle back to him in the next section.) After deciding that his life as a cog in the machine of bureaucracy has left him empty, and after failing to find satisfaction through nights of indulgence and pleasure, Mr. Watanabe realizes that it is only through service that he will find fulfillment. This motivates him to spend his final weeks making good on a promise to turn a landfill into a playground for children.

        The film’s emotional centerpiece sees Mr. Watanabe gliding on a swing set in this park as the snow drifts all around him. We have seen this man effectively poisoned by a life in service of mundanity, and seeing him awash in pure white, finally finding peace as he discovers the healing power of true charity, feels celestial. Salvific. The audience knows that this is also the last night of his life, and so the scene carries with it the suggestion that Mr. Watanabe has finally found heaven. The power of this scene would have only been diluted if they had filmed it in color.

         Black and white filmmaking does occasionally cameo in the modern playing field. Both Roma and Belfast tell nostalgic stories representing the childhoods of their respective directors, and WandaVision had a couple of episodes filmed in black and white. But it’s not a tool that gets wide exposure in the modern playing field. And I lament this not just because this form of filmmaking has a long tradition of telling human stories, but also because it captures a side of storytelling that is uniquely beautiful.

The King of Kings (1927)

         I recently had a fellow film friend suggest that if some headstrong filmmaker had wanted to make Avatar in the 1930s, they could have done so. It would have looked very different, but creativity and imagination have always been a part of filmmaking. Great and exciting films are being made today, in and out of the blockbuster realm. We need not pit the old stuff and the new stuff against one another, and marveling at the accomplishments of what’s gone before doesn’t have to come at the expense of appreciating what’s happening now. In my experience, the exact opposite is true.

 

What Do We Owe The Classics?

Singin' in the Rain (1952), Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

        I’ve often heard it said that classical film is the cheapest film school there is. I believe this to be true, and it applies whether you are an aspiring artist hoping to make great films, or if you just want to better understand the medium as a participant in modern film discourse. In purely artistic terms, this literacy is what we stand to lose most if we as a society lose touch with cinema as an artform. Audiences need to know what good film looks like, and they need the largest library possible.  Artists master their craft by studying the greats before them, whether academically/ professionally or on their own time. So it has been with some of the best filmmakers of all time. (See: director Greta Gerwig listing off a few dozen classic films that informed her filmmaking vision for Barbie.)

    This age of fantastical big screen adventures can largely be traced back to Star Wars in 1977, but even the father of blockbusters had his own influences. George Lucas has acknowledged that much of Star Wars is inherited from his love of samurai epics by Akira Kurosawa. Of the film The Hidden Fortress, Lucas has said,

“As I was beginning to write the screenplay [for Star Wars] and put it together, I remembered The Hidden Fortress, and the one thing that I remembered was the fact that the story was told from the perspective of the two ‘lowest’ characters. I decided that would be a nice way to tell the “Star Wars” story—to take the two lowest characters and tell the story from their point of view, as Kurosawa did. In Star Wars’ case, that was the two droids.”

    There are additional parallels between Star Wars and The Hidden Fortress (as well as other Kurosawa pictures) that we can glean. Both films have a princess who must be escorted to safety with the rebellion, there’s a member of the old guard who must face off against an old friend turned rival, the jedi knights are clear descendants of the samurai, etc. Even the name “jedi” is believed to come from the term “jidaigeki,” the name of the genre of Japanese samurai films that Kurosawa specialized in.

         Where the internet has made a sport out of calling out how “X film is just a rip-off of Y film,” informed voices in the film conversation understand that all films share a bedrock foundation of storytelling principles. Themes, character types, even specific shots, these become rituals which lend a certain credibility to the emerging storytellers who care to study from their elders, and these touchstones are theirs to borrow, add to, or occasionally subvert. This is a phenomenon we discussed when we looked at how Disney animated musicals of the '90s were influenced by classical musicals, which have then gone on to influence the musicals of today. Learning to see the connective tissue between films is half of the fun of being a film critic. The wider your vocabulary, the more opportunities you have to see how many ways good films can rearrange the base DNA of storytelling.   

Three Bad Men (1926), The Wild Bunch (1969), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

     Even when a film is not paying overt homage to a specific classical text, understanding the field from which a contemporary film grows can add texture to one’s appreciation of the film. A “modern classic” like Guardians of the Galaxy inherits a cinematic legacy, and not just from films that provide context for who Thanos is or what an Infinity Stone does. The film is a Western set in space. (You actually see a lot more westerns these days set in space than in the wild west proper.) Many of the film’s narrative tentpoles—criminals living on the edge of the galaxy/frontier, breaking out of prison when they have to, stealing from bad guys who are even worse than them—were tested and molded through decades of films about rogue outlaws racing across the wild west.

         The conceit of most Westerns, at least those made from the 1950s on, was a sort straddling between the romanticizing and deconstructing of a certain kind of character that heavily informed the development of American mythology: the dangerous, lone figure brooding on the horizon who existed outside the moral confines drawn by a society that just couldn’t contain them--living embodiments of the complex moral code that emerges beyond the fences of civilized society. The degree to which this cowboy was valorized varies between Western, but these characters were almost always sympathetic and always interesting.

    We can see how this foundation informs something like Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter, Gamora, and company ride spaceships, not horses, and they shoot lasers, not bullets, but they are functionally outlaw heroes on the edge of the frontier, and their journey does represent the deconstruction of a certain kind of archetype. The standard Western usually concluded that though the cowboy hero carried a mythic gravitas, they did not know how to exist in the domesticated space of “the real world,” and it was their destiny to wander the wilderness forever, occasionally offering their services to “the real world,” but never participating in it themselves.

The Searchers (1956), Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 (2023)

    This makes Guardians of the Galaxy unique. It concludes that while the Guardians are disruptive agents in their ecosystem, there is still a place for them in civilized society. They can be not just tolerated, not just admired, but embraced. The Guardians get to home. Going in as a mint viewer, you can probably feel the significance of this story choice by virtue of framing, but seeing it within the context of the genre, it reads like the redemption of not just these players, but a whole spirit of characters who previously felt they had no place in the “real world.”

And as we discussed in our Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid essay, westerns occupy a very limited space in the modern landscape. The context for films like “Guardians” is buried almost entirely in the films of yesteryear. If you want that extra dimension of appreciation for the film, you have to be willing to engage with the past.

         Moreover, classic films establish traditions within genre and social conversations that still play out in films made today. The fundamentals of what makes a good romantic-comedy, for example, haven’t really changed. Classics like You Can’t Take it With You have helped develop foundational plotlines (e.g. overcoming divisions in social class, family expectations, etc.) that modern installments of the genre lean into. Elements like an all-Asian cast and John M. Chu’s lavish directing style are part of what gives Crazy Rich Asians its flavor, but the core of the film far transcends the space of 2018. 

More than what’s changed, classical film shows us what has stayed the same, what truths are universal across time and space. Succession actor, Brian Cox, recently shared his reaction to the possibility of losing TCM, citing the necessity of viewing our history on film: 

“For me, the history of cinema, the watching of it, and the way that TCM presents it are incredible resources because they really make me understand how far we’ve traveled. But also how far we haven’t traveled. You know, we’ve traveled technically, but in terms of the truth of acting, there are no more true players than Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn. And you see them together in what they create, so the cinema has always been vital to me. Absolutely vital.”

    For me, the film that most changed my life was It’s a Wonderful Life, which I saw for the first time in a Film History class as a high school sophomore. This isn’t an age at which one is normally sold classic cinema, but it is a time wherein you are really trying to decipher what kind of adult you are going to be and what kinds of dreams you are going to chase. The film starts with George Bailey at the precipice of what could be a lavish and adventurous life, but as he repeatedly lays his own hopes and ambitions aside all in the name of helping his fellow neighbor, he leaves a trail of good deeds that he can’t begin to appreciate in the moment. It takes an angelic time warp for George to step outside of himself and see his life clearly. A well-designed film can do the same thing for us.

         With the prospect of graduating high school and entering the real world only a few short years off for me at the time, I personally don’t think I could have asked for a better blueprint than the story of George Bailey. This film did more to guide my future than any of the high school counselors who didn’t know what to do with this kid who just wanted to watch old movies all day.  Yes, modern media can also offer life-affirming stories (I enjoyed Ted Lasso too), but there’s something special about getting to hold hands with the past and learn from those who came before. 

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

    Viewing old film reminds us that our time is not unique in the chase for a better life or a better world, and they offer unique tools to understanding questions that we’ve been asking for a lot longer than we might think. Decades before “toxic masculinity” became a buzzword, you had movies like The Bridge on the River Kwai deconstructing the shortsightedness and danger of the male ego. Long before social media or even the internet, A Face in the Crowd demonstrated how mass media can be weaponized to manipulate society for selfish and malicious purposes. And stories about the hollowness and brutality of the wealthy have been around at least since Citizen Kane, and probably even longer than that. Classical film grants us the gift of living outside of our singular viewpoint, and that’s a gift we can’t take for granted.

 

So What Do We Do?

It Happened One Night (1934)

         Something interesting that I’ve noticed in my pursuit of film literacy is that while trying to keep up to date with the more modern conversation always seems to leave me feeling stressed, diving into the considerably larger body of classical cinema always leaves me feeling rejuvenated. There’s a chance I might actually get around to watching Euphoria one of these days, but any satisfaction I feel finishing some hallmark of prestige television is always swallowed by a sense of helplessness. There will always be at least twelve more shows I need to get around to in order to be “caught up.” Meanwhile, the modern film-scape always makes more sense to me after taking in something from Billy Wilder or Elia Kazan. As currency and relevance become increasingly elusive things to hold onto, the evergreen quality of classic film only comes more into focus.

         Most of my classmates in that sophomore Film History class were simply looking for an easy art credit, but in hindsight, I owe a lot to this class for giving me a head start on what would eventually become my formal film studies. It was in this space that I also first saw films like Casablanca and Rear Window. In a landscape where everyone is surrounded by media, I’ve long wondered why we don’t prioritize film education with classes like this.

         It’s also telling that Spielberg, Scorsese, and Andersen are effectively performing their service to TCM for free, and this really spells out just how little demand there is for this. Again, most streaming services think themselves connoisseurs if they have two movies made before 1980 in their catalog at one time. I personally don’t take it for granted when Netflix does decide to feature films from classic Hollywood. This is another one of the reasons why MAX  is probably my favorite player in the streaming game. It’s one of the rare sites that actually features a robust library of classical films, and I take advantage of that in my viewing schedule. (For second place … maybe Prime Video?)

    As branches of the film library atrophy, the possibility of permanently losing these films looms large. There is historical precedent for this. Film preservation has only really been a priority the last few decades, and it follows ages of films disappearing as their hard copies were discarded or misplaced. The further you go back in film history, the drier the desert becomes. It has been estimated that somewhere between 70-90% of all films made from the silent era have been lost for good, and any potential impact they might have had on audiences or even budding filmmakers has been forever nullified. Even major presences in contemporary film education like The Passion of Joan of Arc and Metropolis (a profound influence on science-fiction cinema) were lost for most of their lifetime only to be rescued through sheer luck, and their existing prints are still missing pieces. Thousands of others won't be so fortunate. There is a concrete loss to the neglect of classic film, and that is what film critics are trying to prevent.

But film critics can’t fight this fight on their own. Spielberg and his band can’t fight this fight on their own. The larger audience needs to engage with films from the past, or we will lose them. And if you’re wondering why I’m the kind of writer who devotes several paragraphs of his rant on the stupid Beauty and the Beast remake to talk about James Stewart in Harvey, well, this is part of the reason.

    So if classical Hollywood is some undiscovered country for you, browse through the library one of these days and pick something that catches your interest. Maybe someone responds more to the John Ford style than the Frank Capra style, but there is something for everyone. Everyone. If something looks bizarre or untested, feel free to read up on it and see what the hype is all about. Ask your cousin who went to film school why everyone cares so much about Vertigo. (Please. They’re probably dying for the chance to validate their degree and probably don’t have any opportunities to do so in their day job as a direct care service worker.)

I have a growing list of films, including those from the classic era, to which I offer a whole array of exposition and explanation. Want to read about that time that Hollywood tricked the army into sponsoring an expose on military corruption? Check out my essay on From Here to Eternity. Or how about the way that Judy Garland gave WWII America the chance to process its own grief over its lost sense of innocence? I have an essay on Meet Me in St. Louis that looks at this in-depth.

         Humankind is remaking itself with every generation—every piece of art it throws out into the world—as we move closer to understanding what it truly means to be excellent, to be beautiful, to be virtuous. No other medium preserves time and visuals like film. This moment in time is just one bead on a thread that extends in both directions far longer than any of us can ever experience ourselves. Unless we live it through the bank of memory that is film.

        --The Professor

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)