I just ran across a slide show retrospective on Nicholas Ray at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/17/movies/20090717-RAY_5.html
I don't know why, maybe because I love Robert Ryan and always liked Ida Lupino, but this still hit me right between my Paul-Newman-like blue eyes. It feels like a combination of Ansel Adams, Edward Hopper, Alfred Hitchcock with a soupcon of John Huston thrown in. In short, very tough to beat.
Today, of course, you have film majors who have never seen "Citizen Kane." You have art directors who disparage Helmut Krone because he is old. You have copywriters who haven't read every DDB VW ad and everything McCabe ever wrote. These are the people who strut around agencies pontificating while producing mindless sensational crap. Maybe that's good enough for today's world.
It's not good enough for mine.
what you need today is 140 words, diggit and an ability to make everybody around you think everything you say is inventive. That's cool dude.
ReplyDeleteGeorge,
ReplyDeleteThat's a great still. I agree, very Hitchcock. Reminds me of North by Northwest.
And I'd have said more Tony Curtis than Paul Newman, but I'm looking at an awfully tiny photog, LOL.
The world needs more folks who soak up the vast experiences that brought us all to the place we're in, rather than accepting "now" at its shallow face value. Without that you can't create depth, in whatever medium. SO true.
Regards,
Kelly
Oh, Geo... I love those old movies, too--Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of my favourites--but not all of today's movies are as vapid and meaningless. Lots of film students are clueless, but a choice few are pretty clued in to what makes a good movie.
ReplyDeleteI think, in a lot of ways, it's the audience that's changed.