Part One: The Dying Industry
By Meseret Haddis
In this three-part examination, I will look at cinema as an industry and as an art form. In part one, I will examine the dying industry; in part two, I will examine the rebirth of the industry; in part three, I will examine how to sustain it.
Cinema as a Definition
When examining something, it’s important to be clear about what’s under examination. Here, when I refer to “cinema,” I am thinking specifically of two kinds: an economic cinema and an artist’s cinema.
By economic cinema I mean the financial aspects involved in making a movie (production costs, distribution, etc.), separate from artistic and creative decisions. Commercial cinema is a main product of an economic cinema; producing films that are created to make money. It’s something that has stayed since the golden era of Hollywood. When you have films funded by big studios, you’re expecting something that generates a big return. Big stars (like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, etc.) worked specifically for certain studios, and they would draw money for those studios by making picture after picture. Today, the intentions of studio films are the same, except that it costs more money to make them. The formula seems to be that putting more money into a film will get more money out of it.
By artist’s cinema, I mean the creative and artistic aspects of filmmaking (subject matter, methods, etc). Artist’s cinema doesn’t necessarily mean the films don’t make money; it simply means that money isn’t the main goal. Here, the goal is in trying to express a feeling, story, or image in a way that transcends money. Each kind of reformation in cinema (and in other art forms) changed the world and how we looked at it, but never planned to do so. You can’t look at Paul Thomas Anderson’s films without thinking about Scorsese or Altman (or then at Kurosawa and Fellini). Artistic cinema is a bond that can’t be defined by weekend sales, but by its cultural and psychological impact.
Can cinema die (and should it)?
When people say that cinema is dying, they are only partially right. Economic cinema, one that lives on profit, can wane and flutter, but because cinema is also an art form, neither (economic or artistic) can die. Economic cinema will always cross the line of profitable and not profitable; and at the moment, it’s not making money. This assessment isn’t difficult to make when our economy is dying; furthermore, when you look at other art forms, the death of an economic medium isn’t always bad. Sometimes it forces artists to focus on the art and not the spectacle that comes in creating it or presenting it. In some cases, it’s actually needed. In the 1980s, for instance, a stand-up comedy boom happened in the United States. Practically anyone who wanted to become a stand-up comic soon became one, since the demand for them on television grew. But, at the end of the 1980s and following into the next decade, the frenzy died down. What didn’t die was stand-up comedy; the people who wanted to be stand-up comedians stuck through the bad period, while the people who wanted their fifteen minutes got it and were never heard from again.
An economic cinema needs to go through the same process. You know you have a problem when films like Synecdoche, New York and Che can’t find distributors by the time they leave Cannes. As the economy fails, so does its art (economically). When life is good, art is great (think Renaissance literature, art, philosophy, architecture, science, etc.). When people have money and are content with their lives art can flourish, creating a necessary supply to an earnest demand. When life isn’t great, a period’s art either flounders or is transcendent. Shakespeare was born in a time of economic unrest in England, where the gap between the rich and poor was growing. That’s why it’s not surprising when people say his plays can pander to the rich in the balcony and to the poor in front of the stage. There was a need for it.
An artistic cinema sometimes needs to go through the same process. Of course, an artistic cinema can’t die, but it can go through stages that force a rebirth. Each new wave (French, American, German, Czech, and so on) began when filmmakers (and critics alike) needed to not only put their stamp on the medium, but to redefine it for their generation, their ideas, and their culture.
Are there no quality films?
It’s not that there aren’t any good films; rather, the way films are being made is changing so significantly that it’s becoming more difficult to produce good work. The big news at last year’s Oscars was that foreign backers financed a majority of the Best Picture candidates. When someone gives you money, they control what you make. Remember: distribution dictates production. And when a film like Che leaves Cannes without a distributor, not only is the industry effected (i.e. the crumbling of the specialty divisions Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures), but the filmmakers are, as well. One could say that Che was finally purchased solely because of the Soderbergh/Benicio brand.
In artistic cinema, money should never effect how a film is created. However, with the commoditization of art films, business and art are now even more inseparable. So the choices we will be left with are these:
Big budget blockbuster movies (some good, some not, but you’ll be able to see it at any theater in the country). Or: Low budget movies (again some good, some not, but will be regulated to New York and L.A. for limited engagements).
When it gets harder for Joe Shmoe to see a film like Synecdoche, New York in Kansas City, or Seattle, or Minneapolis, that’s the death of cinema. It shouldn’t be a question of whether or not we think Joe Shmoe might be interested in a film like Kaufman’s, because it isn’t our place to decide what his interests may be. Henri Langlois, the late co-founder of the famed Cinémathèque Française in Paris, took all films into his museum. He said, “One must save everything and buy everything. Never assume you know what’s of value.” I believe the same goes for showing films. How will you ever know the impact a film can have on you if you’ve never see it?
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