>BklynMagus wrote: Because they are enaging the film on a rudimentary level
and we are engaging it on a more complex level: they are seeing the movies
as Cary Grant vehicles. We are seeing them as Cary Grant vehicles as well
as films by Hawks and Capra, and maybe some other iterations as well. If
the only level they chose to work on is "Cary Grant vehicle" -- fine. But
that does not negate the fact that there is a more complex way of watching
those two movies.
> Jerry wrote: The non-expert judgment that these movies are Cary Grant
comedies is closer to the truth of things than the judgment that these
movies were made by Hawks or Capra.
BklynMagus wrote: Why is the non-expert judgement closer to the truth. Is
> the non-expert opinion of a lay person closer to the truth than that of a
> heart specialist regarding a cardiac event? The question is whether or not
> there is a discernible difference between a film directed by Hawks and one
> madeby Capra.
Dennis Claxton wrote: I'd say because movies are like pop music. They're mostly for fun and telling good stories. Like Douglas Sirk said, nothing ages faster than film.
> Jerry wrote: Again I don't think that these judgments are necessarily the
> final word, but I believe the "star system" of commodity production had more
> to do with the "feeling" of aesthetic distinction in classical Hollywood
> films than any single author.
>
> BklynMagus wrote: But how did the star system create Otto Preminger's
> camera movements? Or Ford's approach to framing and the horizon line? Or
> Hawks' way of handling actors and gesture?
....
> Jerry wrote: But marketing wouldn't matter at all if it was did not in
fact motivate,
change, feedback on how these movies were made.
>BklynMagus wrote: How did this marketing change the way Minnelli used the
crane shot? It is
there in his melodramas, his comedies and his musicals.
>No matter what studio Hawks worked for or the genre he was working in,
the camera was always in the same place. I can count on one hand the
number of canted angles that exist in his films.
> Jerry wrote: And again I must emphasize that I think it is empirically
true that the
"star system", and how it developed in Hollywood, and how it came to be
used, had more to do with how movies were made and the distinction of
those movies from each to each than anything to do with auteurs, directors,
or any individual category of artist.
>BklynMagus wrote: I know you believe this to be true, but I still do not
see how the star system
demanded the creation of Preminger's long takes or Ophuls tracking shots
(which he brought with him from Europe when he came to Hollywood).
Jerry: Well, this is certainly the crux of the discussion.
I had not realized that you were so wedded to the director as auteur view of movies. Though in your view, as has been expressed before by other critics, sometimes the auteur is the producer, sometimes the writer, sometimes a combination of all of these folks.
I must say sometimes the debate over the "auteur" view of movies reminds of debates about who wrote "The Odyssey". I propose that if we look at the "Homeric question" seriously we would see the same kind of tropes, ideological misleads, and critical mistakes that are repeated over and over since the 19th century. It is similar with the "Shakespeare question." And it occasionally the same question pops up in architecture, especially with the Pantheon. I think that these questions say more about our need for definite "origins" and "designers" of human works, say more about our myths of authorship, than they say anything about how a work of art was made or what makes it powerful or distinct.
So let me state it bluntly. Searching for directorial distinctness is not irrelevant, but it has only little to do with what is good or bad in most movies and little to do with what went into creating good movies. What allowed some directors to sell themselves to the factory system in Hollywood was simply their ability to be in someway distinct or at least not too big of a risk. For the most part directors were essentially about on the level of "character" actors or 'striptease artists.' As the song from "Gypsy" goes, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick".
"You can pull all the stops out Till they call the cops out Grind your behind till you're bend. But you gotta get a gimmick If you wanna get a hand."
The great directors got a gimmick and that gimmick may have been good or bad but it was essentially one part of the star system that sold the films and personalities to the various audiences (producers, advertisers, newspapers, etc.) and the mode of production that created the films.
You think that the crux of the question is why a Douglas Sirk movie is distinct from a Michael Curtiz movie or why Howard Hawks is distinct from everyone else. I think that the question should be what makes any individual film distinct and strong as a work of art from any other given movie. I think that the first question is helpful and helps us to answer the second question, but in the end the second question is better answered (for Classic Hollywood cinema) by looking at the various hierarchies of the star system and how the movies were made. I also have to say that similar ways of posing the question is also the best way for understanding the distinctness of art works also applies to Homeric poetry, Greek tragedy, Elizabethan drama, and most of architecture.
These questions also applies to the 19th century novel and to the Romantic poets, but in these cases we really do "know" who the individual authors are and thus, these exceptions tip the investigation of distinction and excellence to understanding these individual author. I think the mistake that the "auteur" critics make is to apply the very exceptional cases of "individualistic" poetry and fiction writing, exceptions in human history, and apply it to movie making.
Frankly, I can enjoy Max Ophuls' tracking shots in "The Reckless Moment" as much as anyone. And I can also enjoy stories of how some of these directors "stamped" their own personal styles onto movies as much as any other. But in general Ophuls tracking shots or Preminger's long takes are only small parts of the movie art, the smallest part, but not what matters in the end. It doesn't tell us or show us what make good movies good and a few movies great.
If I had the time I would take a very distinctive director such as Douglas Sirk or Nicholas Ray. I am willing to say that Sirk was a great director, and many other directors, were educated by him. But Sirk was a great director who made movies that were shmaltzy melodramas, simply because the studio system was falling apart under his feet and the star system was in disarray. "Written on the Wind" is a distinctive movie, and in it you can see Sirk, but what makes it a lousy movie, is because their was not yet anything to replace the old star system and its integration into a way of production. The same with "Imitation of Life". I think that what make these movies interesting now is that the only thing interesting about them was Sirk. Here, a good director was stuck with lousy material, mediocre actors who were artificial stars destined for bad television shows, and technical processes that were in transition mostly because of studio fears of television.
What made these movies bad was simply the decline of "the system" I previously described. What made these bad movies interesting was that a good director worked on them. And then a Truffaut or a Fassbinder comes along and rediscovers Sirk and all of a sudden we have an auteur. But no matter who we say "authored" the popular movies Sirk directed at the height of his Hollywood career, they were lousy movies.
My concern is "how" and "why" good movies get made and what makes them good. And during the period 1935-1960 the director was only an important part of the process, but not as important as say a playwrite in the theatre, and certainly not an author.
I could go through the directors that you have mentioned in detail, or just Sirk's high Hollywood films, but I think that we have to disagree on this. Frankly, because Hawks was a great director, or because he often placed his camera slightly above or below eye-level, and he did this consistently, does not make him an author. It just makes him another part of the Hollywood system. And yes, sometimes that system made great Cary Grant movies that happened to be directed by Howard Hawks and sometimes that system made good Howard Hawks' movies starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. It doesn't make Cary Grant, Howard Hawks or John Wayne auteurs in any case.
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