Of the three pictures I review for MSN Movies this week, I liked the engaging-but-problematic Silver Linings Playbook best, the ridiculous Breaking Dawn 2 better than Anna Karenina, and the jaw-dropping Anna Karenina not at all. Funny how these things work out sometimes.
I’ll wait for some comments to accrue before I elaborate on my suspicion that Jennifer Lawrence, undeniable extraordinary talent that she is, is getting at least one or two obvious crotch votes from certain online presences. Ew.
Are these the same sort of online presences who might take to assaulting kitchen appliances when they read your Anna K. review?
Yes. And here they are in action!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIrd4172Czw
I am a fan of her acting ability, I do think she’s pretty, and I admire her for taking a stand (for now) against Hollywood’s usual weight standard for actresses. However, I have to admit, I was more than a little disturbed by that recent NY Times interview she gave where she expressed disdain at the idea of watching a black-and-white expletive deleted silent movie. As I wrote on a friend’s Facebook page, I’m trying to write that off as a folly of youth, “trying” being the operative word. That said, given how much I liked the book, I still want to see SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.
As for ANNA KARENINA, is it at least better than the Bernard Rose version from 15 years ago? Because that looked beautiful, but was awful otherwise, except for Alfred Molina.
Yes, lipranzer, that quote – ugh. (For a second I imagined the whole “Sunrise” fight starting up again online.) But yes, folly of youth. Let’s hope.
And Glenn, good insights here. “Anna Karenina” struck me the same way, although I thought the most outrageous thing was hidden away in the production notes, where Joe Wright said that Tom Stoppard had written the script it as a straight screenplay. The idea of doing it instead as sort of a filmed stage play was completely Wright’s.
Because, of course, what does Tom Stoppard know about stage plays, or what medium a story works best in? Sometimes you just need someone like Joe Wright to step in and TELL him.
I’ve never really cared for Joe Wright, but A.O. Scott’s review had an interesting and opposite take on the use of a stage that has certainly piqued my interests.
Also, I just want to see two hours of Keira Knightley’s cheekbones.
>However, I have to admit, I was more than a little disturbed by that recent NY Times interview she gave where she expressed disdain at the idea of watching a black-and-white expletive deleted silent movie.
Eh, she’s 22, and she’s an actress, not a director. Maybe in time her tastes will evolve, or maybe not, and I’m not sure in either case it will impact what she is capable of doing onscreen.
For most ‘normal’ people, watching silent movies is an experience that is completely off the table in terms of desirability. Oh the humanity, etc., but that’s how it is, and I wonder if that fact is a factor in why such a noise was made about ‘The Artist’ (a film I liked well enough when I saw it, but which I can barely remember a year later).
I’m with you for the most part, Gordon. The really irritating thing about the interview wasn’t so much Lawrence’s comment as the way Melena Ryzik waved it around to signal the actress’s lack of “pretention.”
I have to say I’m actually more shell-shocked that A.O. Scott fell for that crock “Karenina.” What’s happening to our world?
Wright’s direction crushes Anna long before the train rolls over her.
Give me Garbo any day!!!!
Dear Glenn:
“… ripens to a level of what can only be termed You Must Be High Camp.”
Bless you.
Now if the late Harold Pinter had written the script:
Karenin: Vronsky? Adultery?
Pause
Anna: Yes. Vronsky. (Pause). Divorce?
Pause
Karenin: No.
Silence.
Anna (calling to servant): Bring me a train schedule.
lipranzer – the Bernard Rose version was cut down from 2 hours 20 to 1 hour 50 by the producers, if I remember correctly. Not exactly a defence, I know, but Rose is a more interesting (and better) director than that film suggests…
David N – Oh, I agree about Rose, being someone who passionately defends the merits of IMMORTAL BELOVED against any and all comers (and regret never seeing IVANSXTC, as it sounded very good). But while I acknowledge a longer cut of his ANNA KARENINA might have worked more than what was released, I don’t know if it could overcome one part that was miscast (I have liked Mia Kirshner in other projects, particularly EXOTICA, but she’s out of place in a period piece), one performance that seemed to be channeling another (Sean Bean, whom I normally like, played Vronsky as if he was still playing his bad guy character in GOLDENEYE), and most of all, an actress whose charms elude me in the lead role (and lest you think it’s merely because she’s uncomfortable in English-speaking roles, I haven’t thought much of Sophie Marceau in her French-speaking roles either).
Re. Bernard Rose’s Anna K., he sez: “Yeah, that was just totally re-cut. I don’t just mean shortened a bit … In ways that I won’t bore you with, it kind of subverts what the book is actually trying to say and do. I think it’s pretty awful, actually” (http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue5/bernardrose.html). I like the dude. He’s done some pretty interesting work.
The AV Club just chose that Lawrence quote as an example of an example of “appalling celebrity behavior,” right there with Charlie Sheen and Chris Brown. I think we should let her have her taste, and it will change or it won’t, and the world will keep right on turning either way.
Hey, when I was 20 I thought ‘Akira’ was a masterpiece.
I actually read Lawrence’s quote as explicitly being about The Artist, more a blow against award-winning prestige than a specific period of filmmaking. If she’d been in the mood a year ago, I suspect she’d have defended Rob Schneider films against “slow-moving freaking boring [unprintable word] English royalty dramas.”
Doesn’t make the charge better or worse, but it does sort of reframe the issue. If I’m right, of course, and I’ve got nothing to support this but general goodwill toward the actress.
“Chouga,” directed by Darezhan Omirbayev is a tremendous recent version of Anna Karenina that sadly seems to have fallen off the radar. Fantastic film.
“For most ‘normal’ people, watching silent movies is an experience that is completely off the table in terms of desirability.”
Which is kind of funny when you think about it. Eighty-five years ago, i.e. within the lifetime of people still living not back in like caveman times, watching silent movies was not only considered tolerable but highly desirable. Yes, to a certain extent is was “for lack of other options” (I remember Pauline Kael’s claim that audiences welcomed talkies eagerly as a relief from silent melodramatics) but that can be exaggerated. Point is, what is so inherently awful about watching something that lacks color and sound, i.e. the attributes of “real life”? Cartoons are not very realistic either, but people seem to tolerate things too.
Is it a learned behavior? Is it inherent, at least if given the choice between something in color/with sound and something not? I mean we all just take it for granted, of course only a handful of us can appreciate the challenges of silent cinema etc etc but when you stop and think about it…why???
Sorry, that’s all I’ve got haha. Maybe someone else has answers. But yeah, she is hot. The preview for this movie made it look like “just-another-quirky-indie” though. And frankly, I’d rather watch a black-and-white fucking silent movie than another one of those…
I admit the quote gave me pause, but I did think she was probably referring specifically to THE ARTIST. In fact, I’d wager that THE ARTIST represents the sum total of the young’un’s experience with “black-and-white, freaking boring—expletive deleted—silent movie(s),” so, grain of salt. If she did mean to tarnish all such films with one brush, it is indeed regrettable, but as others have noted, we have to cut callow youth some slack, ’cause we’ve all been there and have regrets about some aspects of our nascent opinions.
I also cut her slack for being an otherwise delightful interviewee, extremely talented, and, yes, downright luscious. A fellow Kentuckian, too.
But sure, if some commenter here had said the exact same thing, I’d be all indignant.
Re; B. Rose:
I bought a copy of Ivansxtc from Amazon UK a few years ago. It is a very upsetting movie, but for reasons I can’t quite articulate.
B. Rose’s Kruetzer Sonata is his best movie.
Re; B. Rose:
Candyman is a long forgotten genre exercise, but it was a gem of a flick.
Could we send Lawrence some Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd DVDs? That might open her eyes. I’ve found that comedy is often the best on-ramp to an appreciation of silent film.
When I was 14 or 15, I was ordering silent Super 8 movies from Blackhawk Films (mostly comedy shorts), but I understand that not everybody is a movie buff at a young age – or at any age. That’s life.
Joel,
You have asked a very large question and I can’t begin to get round all sides of it, but let me come at it from a couple of angles.
1. Silent movies, like foreign movies, obviously carry some of that ‘cultural vegetables’ baggage (sorry!), that sense of being more homework than pleasure. I don’t know why so many people associate old texts with homework, except that maybe they first encounter old texts AS homework, and therefore along come associations of obligation vs. pleasure, deadlines, stern teachers, and so on. Plus old texts often have idioms that are different than what we grow up with, therefore taking that extra bit of effort to unpack. Plus in most social contexts, your buddies aren’t imbibing old texts (except, again, as homework, as The Thing To Be Avoided/Procrastinated), so you lose that whole incentive of having topics for water-cooler (or campus-quad?) conversation which IMO strongly incentivizes us in our consumption of culture.
2. Unlike many old texts – say, a novel by Dickens, a play by Shakespeare, or a symphony by Mozart – silent movies have the additional burden of being seen by some as essentially ‘incomplete’ – as artifacts of a time before all of the pieces of cinema were properly in place. Certain elements in the art form even draw attention to this supposed ‘incompleteness’ – the silent lipflap, most obviously. Even a non-classical-music aficionado can still (I hope) be dragged to Disney Hall and have a chance of having their hair blown back by the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, or by the Ride of the Valkyries, or whatever. They will have a total experience that will seem complete unto itself. But a silent is always signalling the technical parameters of its medium which, in hindsight, can look like shortcomings. (I think, incidentally, this is partly why silent comedy tends to hold up for many audiences better than silent melodrama, because the action and stunts and sight gags of a Chaplin or a Keaton render dialogue completely superfluous anyway.)
…continued
3. There is this idea among some people, in particular a friend with whom I constantly debate on the point, that art forms tend always to trend upward because the number and quality of tools in the toolbox keep improving. It *is* true that today’s lenses are better, that audio recording is far better than in Bogart’s day, that Protools and non-linear editing open up new possibities in picture and sound cutting, that steadicams and pogocams and CGI and mo-cap allow images to be created which could not have been created in 1922 or 1952. Where I part ways with the subsequent aesthetic chauvinism is that I feel forced to distinguish *the available tools* from the *capacity* of a single creative mind (or collective of creative minds) to make use of those tools. Having more tools, after all, gives you more options, and having more options can just confuse you. J.S. Bach didn’t have electric guitars, saxophones, or stereo panning, but he did fine with what he had because the available tools were more than enough to sustain and challenge a mature creative imagination (he was, incidentally, in his day a gearhead’s gearhead). My friend might counter with something like: “Okay, not all artists make better art with today’s tools, but the point is that they *could*,” to which I can only respond, “when they do, let me know.”
4. Silent acting is such an animal unto itself, but modern audiences may be inclined to project modern standards backward onto it. Of course, modern acting wouldn’t have worked in the silent days, precisely because the actors in those times did not have voices to work with and had to rely on other things. My understanding of silent acting is at best crude – Denby, I think, wrote a wonderful piece about it last year in the New Yorker – but I think one must at a minimum shed the modern fetish for ‘realism’ in acting in order to appreciate what those actors were doing. To the minds of some, acting is bad precisely insofar as it departs from ‘realism’, and so those poor silent stars haven’t a chance. Again, Chaplin and Keaton and their ilk probably fare better than most; they are not asked to play melodrama (usually), and Chaplin is an expert mime and we still somewhat understand mime today, whereas Keaton’s stone-faced demeanor is a long way from anything that could be deemed mugging.
Let me finally say that I had the good fortune to attend the screening/lecture at the DGA a year or so ago of the restored color ‘Voyage A La Lune’ hosted by the wonderful Serge Bromberg, and that the screening illustrated for me the importance of context and environment. Gently guided back in time by Bromberg’s skilled MC’ing, watching a series of silent shorts (including a couple that Melies ‘accidentally’ shot stereoscopically, what a treat!), we were quietly immersed in a place where the intervening 100 years had seemed not to happen at all. Suddenly these films seemed, again, fresh, absorbing, and high-tech. Such contextualization, done as expertly as it was here, is priceless, and I wish everyone who decries ‘boring fucking silent movies’ could be shown something similar.
I’ve met people in Lawrence’s age group (the early 20s) who won’t even watch TALKIES if they’re in black and white. Expecting them to watch silent films may be asking a lot.
It may have been easier for my generation, because I was a teenager in the ’70s, when local TV stations showed movies from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s every day. So black and white wasn’t alien to me. There was also a program of MGM silents on public television circa ’74 that got me interested in that form. And reading Walter Kerr’s “The Silent Clowns” made me want to see every movie discussed in that book.
There was a nostalgia boom and a general interest in old movies in the ’70s, which coincided with my teen years. (I remember “Animal Crackers,” from 1930, getting a major re-release and even playing small towns.) I don’t think that has existed for subsequent generations.
Yeah I think it’s winnowed down to just a few key flicks (Casablanca, Wizard of Oz, It’s A Wonderful Life, maybe Miracle on 34th Street) – although even that is coming from my own memory of TV broadcasts in the 1980s.
Well, local stations generally stopped showing old movies in the ’80s, and left that to cable “super stations,” and then to TCM and AMC (when it was a classic movie channel). So if your parents didn’t subscribe to cable, or if those channels weren’t available in your area, you were out of luck. You weren’t likely to develop an early appreciation of classic films.
Boy, you all really are picking over what was a throwaway comment by a young actress aren’t you? Thank god she didn’t say foreign movies.
This smacks of an older kid condescending to his young brother about how, one day, he’ll appreciate the musical complexity of Yes when he grows out of his stupid love of Katy Perry.
Though I agree generally with the point about youngsters and old movies.
Wait, it’s condescending to express regret at someone else’s condescension? Intentionally or not, she dismissed an entire era of filmmaking, possibly without seeing even one example of it. In the New York Times no less. Even though I’d forgive her (all night long), I see no problem with calling her out on it.
The condescension is that if only she saw this film, that film, then surely her eyes would be opened. Ever considered that maybe she has seen a few silent films and just doesn’t like them?
Admittedly her quote was rather sweeping, but that doesn’t automatically equal total ignorance. I’m not all that keen on silent flicks either and I’ve seen a lot. People are allowed not to like things you know.
“Wait, it’s condescending to express regret at someone else’s condescension? Intentionally or not, she dismissed an entire era of filmmaking”
Well, sure. But her job is to be an actress, not to be a cinephile. Watching many movies that cinephiles appreciate would likely give her assistance in her job, but silent movies pretty much aren’t among those movies.
It’s always worth remembering just how foreign an art form silent movies can be when first encountered.
I’ve enjoyed reading Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean I want to read a freaking boring m*therf*cking Chaucer book.
Foreign art forms are generally only tackled out of desire or necessity. I have neither for Chaucer. She has neither for silent film. Works for both of us.
(Now, if she’s an actress and she never wants to watch B&W movies, then she’s a stupid actress.)
But generally, I thought your comment upthread made the most sense. It works for her, but it’d be strange to come from a commenter on a cinephile blog…
Dismissing an entire art form IS sweeping, and it DOES amount to ignorance.
But she’s only 22, so it doesn’t bother me that much. If she’s saying the same thing at 32, I’ll be more critical of her.
> If she’s saying the same thing at 32, I’ll be more critical of her.
In my experience most non-cinephiles still don’t like silent movies at 32, or at 42.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the ‘if only they could be exposed to it properly…’ sentiment, though. I evangelize for the art I love, whether it be Chaplin or Chopin. I see nothing condescending in this: merely an enthusiastic desire to spread the good word, so to speak. You just have to know when you’re beaten and not be too annoying about it. Wherein I probably fail, sometimes.
LondonLee: Nothing in my comment suggests that I think people are NOT allowed to dislike things. It’s just that there’s also nothing wrong with disagreeing with them and expressing regret that they might be missing out on something. And of course I realize that her dislike might be based on actually seeing some silent films. We’re all responding to a single line in an interview, and some extrapolation is necessary to discuss it. I mean, I used the word “possibly,” for crying out loud.
When I was 22, I would not sit through a subtitled foreign-language film. (“Seven Samurai” literally put me to sleep the first time I tried to watch it.) At 32, I couldn’t get enough of them. Some people’s tastes and attitudes do change. There’s hope for Jennifer!
Hmm, “a freaking boring m*therf*cking Chaucer book” seems to me a hell of a lot WORSE than Jennifer Lawrence on silent movies.
http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-white-shadow-1924
Maybe we should stop arguing and just watch this rescued early Hitchcock credit, thanks to the third “For the Love of Film” blogathon. See the Self-Styled Siren’s blog for more info.
Wow, great, great responses, Gordon. I agree with most of this so I don’t have too much to add. Except that I think contextualization is indeed huge (again tipping my hand that, after all, I do think it’s a “learned behavior,” as is appreciation I suppose). Certainly with books – while my parents weren’t stereotypical intellectuals or anything, they always had tons of books lying around, would read to me as a kid etc – so by the time classics were assigned as reading in school I was already interested in them independently.
The same is even more true of movies. I developed my interest in them very early – by chance I suppose (a kind of cosmic coincidence of monster movie books from the school library, trips to the local movie theater for the likes of Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop, and awe at my cousin’s imposing video collection which ranged from Platoon to Turner & Hooch). I was led in daisy-chain like fashion, through books, video stores, and the like, from new blockbusters to classic Hollywood movies to foreign art films by the time I’d graduated high school. I did, somewhat unfortunately, attend film school (albeit more production-oriented than film studies) but by then I’d basically had my Classic Canon 101. If I’d had to imbibe that, the way some of my peers did, in a classroom environment I might not have “gotten it” either. Even as it was, I spent most of my college years passionately devoted to music instead, only returning to full-throated cinephilia when I’d graduated and it was no longer “educational.”
I like the evangelical approach too. I’ve often thought it would be fun to have a screening of classic films every week, preferably among older viewers with a curiosity about film history but not much experience with it. Maybe asking the gathering to select a film each week based on clips from the films (that was how I ended up wanting to see so many movies, by seeing a clip and getting a hunger; people love to knock the 90s AFI lists but they were really good for this). And then discussions afterward.
I generally avoid talking movies at all with people in my personal and/or professional lives, keeping my passion to myself. Which kind of frustrates me but also seems practical (when people parrot conventional wisdom on classics or foreign films I often want to bang my head against the wall; so it’s as much for my sake as theirs). I only really know other cinephiles online, with a few exceptions. Yet theoretically I believe in cinema – all cinema – as a popular medium and hate the idea of niche-ification. So I suppose I should put my money, or my time/effort anyway, where my mouth is.
Of course there’s also the consideration that most of my jobs these days seem to involve sales of some capacity, either watered-down or hard, and I tend to be somewhat pushy. So maybe I need to give that side of my personality a break when it comes to my private life, haha…
“Hmm, “a freaking boring m*therf*cking Chaucer book” seems to me a hell of a lot WORSE than Jennifer Lawrence on silent movies.”
It’s really the same thing. I’d be putting a lot more boring work into reading Chaucer than the enjoyment/edification I’d be getting out of it.
That was the equation for me at 22, and it’s the equation for me at ≥32.
Although I’m a reasonably big “phile” of literature, with pretty good positive exposure to post-Shakespeare English literature, reading Chaucer for me is encountering an art form that doesn’t ‘play’ for me natively because of the language difficulties.
It’s pretty much the same for silents, (with the noted Chaplin / Keaton exceptions).
Now, I learned to ‘read’ silents films because I had both the desire and the necessity to do so, and ever since, I enjoy them greatly. But I have neither the desire nor the necessity to learn to ‘read’ earlier forms of English literature like Chaucer. What’s wrong with that?
Life is short, and the list of non-native art forms to educate oneself in are long!
And as stated upthread, I don’t see Jennifer Lawrence as having a pressing professional necessity to learn to ‘read’ silent movies, and she obviously doesn’t have the desire. Same thing, and what’s wrong with that?
“but by then I’d basically had my Classic Canon 101. If I’d had to imbibe that, the way some of my peers did, in a classroom environment I might not have “gotten it” either. Even as it was, I spent most of my college years passionately devoted to music instead, only returning to full-throated cinephilia when I’d graduated and it was no longer “educational.”
I initially absorbed a good amount of the post-1929 cinema canon outside the classroom, as you did.
But I really got my FULL Classic Canon either directly out of the classroom, or out of ideas of books to read that came first or second hand out of the classroom.
And the classroom really was helpful in fully integrating pre-1929 cinema into my native cinema experience. I really can’t emphasize enough just how alien silents can seem to the newbie. 1930’s Hollywood can be ‘read’ natively by a modern newbie. Bergman or Bresson can be ‘read’ natively by a modern newbie. But silents, (excepting the physical comedies), really are alien for newbies.
Yeah, I would agree with whoever said first that the best introductions to silent films are Chaplin and Keaton. With all this talk of what reeled us in, I’m realizing I’m not really sure what/how I was introduced to silents. Looking back, it must have come much later than the rest of my introduction to classics, yet I don’t remember a “now-I’m-watching-silent-cinema” conscious moment. I guess it was Chaplin’s Gold Rush, followed not too long after by either Battleship Potemkin or Intolerance.
It’s odd that I can’t better remember my first silent, because I feel like I can better remember my first adult (at least, non-little kid movie) – which was Twins, incidentally, if that counts. I can remember my first “R” – Alien. Not sure exactly what the first B&W was, but I remember watching the Spencer Tracy Dr. Jekyll pretty young (not sure if it was younger than Kong though). And I remember seeing at least parts of a few foreign films, although it wasn’t really till I was a teenager and saw either Seventh Seal or 400 Blows that I really jumped into foreign “art” cinema. But I can’t remember the experience of watching a first silent.
Anyway, out of curiosity, when you write “out of ideas of books to read that came first or second hand out of the classroom” do you mean you were introduced to them in that context, or that they were actually written by academics or in an academic context?
“yet I don’t remember a “now-I’m-watching-silent-cinema” conscious moment”
As a pup, I was gently and correctly introduced to silents by an older influence. I was emotionally set up for the experience, intellectually hinted for the experience, taken to a nice cinema with a tinted print of Wings. And it was good fun. I remember that.
But it still took many years after, until college daze when I had my REAL cinema immersion, before silents became a native art form for me.
“Anyway, out of curiosity, when you write “out of ideas of books to read that came first or second hand out of the classroom” do you mean you were introduced to them in that context, or that they were actually written by academics or in an academic context?”
Like I say, college daze. Taking film viewing & production courses. Hanging out with others taking courses in the same fields. Lots of academic books, non-academic books, screenings, videotapes, and cameras floating around the collective peer group.
You know, although I can’t remember an intro-to-dilemma breakthrough, I did have an sort of Silenus-epiphany much later, when I attended a Murnau double feature at the Anthology Film Archives (Faust, which I hadn’t seen yet, followed by The Last Laugh), and realized to my horror when I arrived that the organist wasn’t sitting in for the matinée and it was going to be COMPLETELY and LITERALLY silent. I debated not getting tickets but eventually bit the bullet and settled in for what turned out to be one of the most mesmerizing cinematic experiences I ever had. It depends on my mood, but more often than not I prefer to watch silent films with the score turned off since that occasion.
>Maybe asking the gathering to select a film each week based on clips from the films (that was how I ended up wanting to see so many movies, by seeing a clip and getting a hunger; people love to knock the 90s AFI lists but they were really good for this). And then discussions afterward.
Clips can indeed whet the appetite. I remember seeing a segment from ‘Strangers on a Train’ referenced, I think, in ‘Throw Momma From The Train,’ and instantly finding myself more interested in seeing the Hitchcock original than the modern paraphrase. Something about those stark black and white images just seemed so pure and perfect. Similarly, I first saw the clip of Washizu’s death in ‘Throne of Blood’ during an Oscar montage honoring Kurosawa, and was so dazzled by it that I determined to find that movie one way or another. It took a while for me to figure out which film it was actually in. (I remember describing it to my older brother, and him thinking it might be ‘Ran,’ but I knew he must be wrong as ‘Ran’ was in color…)
Just wanna say that Akira is awesome, even if it’s a bit of a mess at the end.
Petey wrote: “And as stated upthread, I don’t see Jennifer Lawrence as having a pressing professional necessity to learn to ‘read’ silent movies, and she obviously doesn’t have the desire. Same thing, and what’s wrong with that?”
Absolutely nothing. The only thing that’s sort of “wrong” is that she seems to be dismissing the entirety of silent cinema (and possibly B&W cinema, to boot) based on what we assume is limited exposure to it. Again, the quote doesn’t specify how much exposure she’s had to the subject at hand, but at her age it’s unlikely that she’s made a concerted effort to appreciate the form. If that’s the case, we don’t have any obligation to respect her opinion. We just acknowledge that she has it, and has the right to have it.
Bottom line: Don’t expect to be given a pass for every uninformed opinion that comes out of your mouth. This also works for older people dismissing whatever’s new. (When Sinatra famously dissed rock-n-roll in the 50s, I’ll bet not even one teenager thought, “Gee, maybe this over-40 a‑hole is right and my enthusiasm is misplaced!”)
But Jennifer, if you’re reading this, I want to reiterate that I don’t consider your opinion of silent films to be a “dealbreaker,” if you know what I mean.
Interesting to see so many bring up her age here – for whatever reason, I would’ve thought many SCR readers (presumably classic, or even fucking silent, film buffs) were not so much older.
Joel: I don’t know about the median age of SCR readers, but surely the number of silent film fans of ANY age isn’t huge. And of course older cinephiles are at least a BIT more likely to have sampled a fair number of silents, simply because they’ve made more trips around the sun. I don’t know how Jennifer Lawrence has filled her 22 years, but from her comments it doesn’t seem far-fetched to guess that watching silent films has not been a huge priority for her.
“When Sinatra famously dissed rock-n-roll in the 50s, I’ll bet not even one teenager thought, “Gee, maybe this over-40 a‑hole is right and my enthusiasm is misplaced!”
The difference is that rock-n-roll, at least in the ’50s and ’60s, was part of youth culture, so no one would pay attention to a middle-aged man’s opinions about it. He wasn’t the audience for Elvis and the rest.
But movies aren’t a medium for teenagers – at least they weren’t until the recent past. Over the last decade, I’ve noticed a lot of defensiveness on the part of people who haven’t seen many old movies, or who have seen a handful and don’t like them.
Whereas, when I was a teen in the ’70s and would read William K. Everson or Leonard Maltin (or even Forrest J. Ackerman) writing enthusiastically about old black-and-white movies I hadn’t seen, I would say, “Wow, I want to see that!” I didn’t say: “What do those old farts know?” Which seems to be the current attitude among too many people.
george: I was also a teen in the 70s, but I must say, I was never in a peer group that gave a damn about any movie more than a few years old. I had one buddy who was into silent comedies and singing cowboy Westerns, and a couple of guys who loved the Universal horror stuff, but I never really met anyone who shared my interest in classic Hollywood and foreign language cinema. Undoubtedly, the fact that I grew up in small Kentucky town of fewer than 30,000 people might have had something to do with it. True, I didn’t often hear “What do those old farts know?” There was just a general lack of interest. Who cares about some old movie when there’s a hot new movie, or the big game, or the dance, or a concert, etc.
jbryant: I grew up in a Tennessee town that had MAYBE 30,000 people, but not much more. If I wanted to see anything other than the latest hits on a big screen, I had to drive to Memphis (where I saw “Citizen Kane” for the first time).
None of my friends were into any “obscure” movies, either. Thanks to TV showings, they knew the Universal horror flicks, some of the Bogart and Flynn movies, and W.C. Fields. the Marx Brothers and Abbott & Costello. None of them liked silents – or foreign films, other than Hammer horror.
I don’t know where my interest in delving into movie history came from. Must have come from the books I read, because nobody around me knew (or cared) who Josef von Sternberg was. The 1973 PBS documentary, “The Men Who Made the Movies,” was another big influence.
“Bottom line: Don’t expect to be given a pass for every uninformed opinion that comes out of your mouth.”
But I simply don’t see a lack of desire for me to to learn to read Chaucer or Jennifer Lawrence to learn to ‘read’ silent movies as being an ‘uninformed opinion’.
Again, life is short, and the list of non-native art forms to educate oneself in is long!
One can make reasonably informed opinions on where to spend one’s time. I’ve got pretty good knowledge of traditional Japanese tea ceremony because I chose to spend time learning it. I could’ve spent that time learning to read Chaucer, Beowulf, or the vernacular poetry of the Venerable Bede. But, instead, I chose to spend my time elsewhere. Assuming you never bothered to learn Japanese tea ceremony in some depth, I don’t consider your decision to be uninformed, nor would I find your refusal to be nudged into spending time going though a full-scale traditional Japanese tea ceremony to be uninformed, as you’d likely spend several hours being unrewarded and pretty damn bored. And importantly, I wouldn’t think you were ‘dismissing’ the form by your decisions.
“The only thing that’s sort of “wrong” is that she seems to be dismissing the entirety of silent cinema … based on what we assume is limited exposure to it.”
But she’s just saying that she thinks she’d find the experience of watching a home video copy of a silent she’s been told to watch to be boring. And given her limited exposure to the non-native art form, and her lack of a desire to learn the non-native art form, she’s very likely correct.
She’s really not ‘dismissing the entirety of silent cinema’. She’s just saying she doesn’t want to be bothered. And those really aren’t the same two things. (Likewise, I don’t DISMISS Chaucer or Beowulf as being rewarding literature experiences for those with the background to read them, or the desire to learn to read them. I just don’t want to read them myself, as I would find them unrewarding and boring.)
“(and possibly B&W cinema, to boot)”
I’m not sure how you can infer THAT from her quote. Again, again, I’ll assert that (excepting certain physical comedies) silent features are a non-native art form qualitatively different from post-1929 movies for the modern audience. Many cinephiles like us seem to have extreme trouble with that notion, as we can see from this comment thread…
Petey, despite my English degree, I guess I really suck at communicating my thoughts. I never meant to imply that Lawrence’s lack of interest in silent cinema was a terrible thing. I fully realize the difficulties it presents for modern audiences, and it would be naïve of me to think that the average modern young person would naturally embrace it. But Lawrence didn’t say “I don’t know much about silent cinema, but I have no interest in it.” She said, “I like making movies, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch a black-and-white, freaking boring [unprintable word] silent movie.” That sounds like an opinion based on some degree of experience. I’m assuming that experience is minimal, yet it seems to have been enough to cause her to characterize the entire form in a negative way.
It’s true that if I decide not to learn about the Japanese tea ceremony, that decision is not uninformed. But I never said a word about uninformed decisions. I said Lawrence presented an uniformed opinion. I assume if I went on record somewhere that the Japanese tea ceremony is a boring waste of time, even though all I knew about it was a paragraph I’d read in an encyclopedia, you would have no problem calling that an uninformed opinion, even if you respected my decision to take no further interest in the subject.
Joel Bocko wrote – “Interesting to see so many bring up her age here – for whatever reason, I would’ve thought many SCR readers (presumably classic, or even fucking silent, film buffs) were not so much older.”
I’m 26 and I only know one person older than 40 who watches or has even seen a single silent film. My parents haven’t, my aunts and uncles haven’t, my grandparents (born at the end of and just after the silent era) didn’t watch them, none of the extended family has. So I find it more than a little annoying to keep hearing the “youngins” argument.
It also irks me to see silent films discussed in “alien” terms. Yes, there’s that one BIG difference but it’s actually fairly superficial. Most silents are like those dull generic Garbo films in the late 20s, films that are essentially just like any average talkie. You’re literally just substituting audible talking for intertitles. It’s really not a big difference (and with concern to acting too; most silent acting is just like talkie acting – if it looks different, it’s usually due to the film speed, natural speed or not.)
We should spend more time emphasizing how truly similar they are to any sound film rather than continuing to make them the “other.”
jbryant, I think our (minor) disagreement has to do with how we are parsing the Lawrence quote.
If you were to say, “I don’t want to sit through a boring three hour Japanese tea ceremony”, I would NOT infer that you were saying “Japanese tea ceremony is a boring waste of time”.
You would be saying you think (likely correctly) that it would be a boring experience for you, not saying that you were universally dismissing the whole art form as a boring waste of time.
So when I closely parse her quote, I reach different conclusions than you do when you parse her quote.
Just wanted to note that on the handful of occasions that I’ve shown my 14-year-old niece some Buster Keaton shorts (as well as Sherlock, Jr.), she seemed to enjoy them greatly. Now, that doesn’t mean she’d sit through The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, but it’s something.
Carry on.
Petey: I suppose one way you could parse her quote would be something like “I don’t want to watch a black-and-white freaking boring silent movie–I only like the ones that are tinted and not boring.” 🙂
But seriously, I seem to be unable to infer anything from her quote other than a broad diss of silent cinema. Her phrasing and choice of words would be completely different if she had any respect for silents, or were simply admitting a lack of interest. It also looks like a diss of black-and-white; otherwise, why even mention it?
I agree that the “young’uns” argument is a bit of a non-starter. The only silent film fans under 50 that I know are film students or cinephiles in general. I do know young people who have enjoyed the few silent comedies they’ve seen, but they haven’t gone out and become experts or anything.
I keep going on about this whole thing because it represents something that annoys me about human nature–the vocal, confident dismissal of something one actually knows very little about. We’ve all encountered it, usually among those who have heard half a minute of an opera, or two country songs, or five hip hop hits and instantly become certain that they now have sufficient evidence to consign an entire genre of something to the dust bin of history. This is often accompanied by something like, “Anyone who likes this stuff is tone-deaf or a moron.”
You almost never hear anyone say, “You know, I’ve only seen a couple of silent films, and I found them hard to get into. There are probably some great ones, but I’m too occupied with my other interests to go looking for them.” I could hang with that.
Many mainstream films of the silent period seem boring and until recently many classics had the misfortune of looking shabby in whatever media they were available. I don’t go along with the belief that only comedies like Chaplin and Keaton are accessible for the uninitiated. The sound films of Ozu and Dryer have the reputation for being dry and difficult but their silent films THE PARSON’S WIFE and I WAS BORN BUT.. are very funny and contemporary in pacing. If I were introducing silent film to a freshman class Tod Browning’s THE UNKNOWN is as perverse and creepy about love and deformity as anything made today.
Personally an actress discounting silent movies doesn’t bother me as much as a professional film critic being proud of the fact of not having seen essential films. You want someone who has a broad knowledge of the arts but in this day and age of Netflix, DVR and DVD there is no fucking excuse of not having seen EVERYTHING.
The only thing I see as condescending here is the notion that actors, alone of all artists in all disciplines, need know nothing about the history of what they are doing.
Siren: I remember seeing Drew Barrymore on Letterman once, and if memory serves, she admitted she had seen few (if any) films made by her famous grandfather, uncle and aunt. Granted, she was still very young at the time, and I assume her recent appearances on TCM’s Essentials with Robert Osborne mean she has probably remedied that by now.
But this flabbergasted me at the time. I can’t imagine knowing that members of my family were acting icons, but having no interest in seeing their rather easily accessible films.
Jbryant, yeah, I think Barrymore would be the first to say she has learned a lot since then, so there’s hope for Lawrence. I do think that saying you haven’t seen a lot of old movies is different from airily implying that they’d be a waste of your time, as Lawrence did. The latter is just crass.
But I understand our genial host’s reluctance to beat up on a young actress; they get a lot of slams about all kinds of things and there’s no need to keep piling on. I liked Glenn’s sly suggestion on Twitter that if she goes up for a part in a Scorsese movie her attitude could change overnight. I just wanted to make it clear that unless you think acting is somehow a less serious pursuit, it’s no better to hear that sort of thing from an actor than from a director, cinematographer, composer etc.
And for what it’s worth I am eager to see Silver Linings, if only because Three Kings was so good I live in hope that Russell’s future will bring others to equal it.
While acting is certainly not a less serious pursuit than behind-the-camera tasks, it’s a very different skill set. Film actors (especially modern film actors) are primarily charged with being present and transparent for the camera, and that rewards people who have strong and unambiguous immediate reactions over people who like to reserve judgement until they know more. It’s hard to be a great, or even a good director without some knowledge of cinema history (even your average Hollywood hack has a few favorites). But as many neorealist films have shown, you can be a great on-screen performer without so much as *seeing* any movies.
I remember an article from several years ago – I think it was by Richard Schickel – which pointed out that most people in the movie industry are not film buffs, or experts on movie history.
The article observed that people who really know movie history, like Spielberg and Scorsese, are as rare in the industry as they are among “civilians.”
In my first post in this thread, I cut J‑Law lots of slack over her quote, mostly because it raises more questions than it answers (how many silents has she actually seen, if any? Did she approach them with serious interest, or as a lark? What’s black-and-white got to do with it? Is her comment on the level, or just a throwaway attempt to sound witty or (gag) ‘relatable’?).
This is starting to remind me a bit of Michael Stipe’s famous remarks about The Beatles being “elevator music” and having no influence on him. He later clarified that he meant when he was a kid he was into the Monkees, the Archies and the Banana Splits, having missed the British invasion and being too young to appreciate the influence the Beatles had on the music he liked. Maybe Lawrence will eventually pop up and say “Eh, I was just ragging on The Artist and got a little carried away.”
Fuzzy’s point is well-taken: Lawrence has become a fine actress without ever having a lesson.
Main thing I’m learning from all this: Damn, I’m glad all the nonsense I spouted when I was 22 wasn’t on the record and printed in the New York Times.
I’ll third Fuzzy’s point.
“I remember an article from several years ago – I think it was by Richard Schickel – which pointed out that most people in the movie industry are not film buffs”
If you exclude actors, suits, and Teamsters, I think this is largely incorrect.
You generally don’t become an editor or cinematographer, let alone a director, without coming out of a cinephile background…
The article was on the occasion of an AFI list of the “100 best movies,” voted on by film industry professionals, which included very few pre-1950 movies. This led to speculation that ignorance of film history had spread to the people who make movies.
>The only thing I see as condescending here is the notion that actors, alone of all artists in all disciplines, need know nothing about the history of what they are doing.
There’s a difference between being ignorant of a style of acting common in movies some 90 years ago, and ‘knowing nothing’ about the history of acting. I’d recommend anyone see silent films, and it’s possible in certain circumstances that Lawrence could learn something useful from watching Louise Brooks or Mary Pickford or Max Schreck, but if she ‘only’ limited herself to studying Streep/De Niro/Brando/Diane Keaton/etc. I imagine she’d do fine. She already does fine. Haing S. Ngor and the little kid in The Bicycle Thief did fine too. I think there are many roads to good acting, and in some cases it’s largely a matter of unselfconsciously ‘being,’ as long as the camera approves. (Though I’m sure Lawrence brings a lot more craft to it than just that.)
My viewing tastes were also formed by Walter Kerr’s “The Silent Clowns” when I was in early high school. Speaking of which, maybe one of the requirements of getting into SAG would be having to take a mandatory class in Film History. Nothing too strenuous, just a few hours of classes on a couple of weekends, like drivers ed.
I jest, I discovered the Kerr book in jr. high.