I was reading a book today by a film critic and came across this quote:
“Not every movie has to matter; generally we go hoping just to be relaxed refreshed. But because most of the time we come out slugged and depressed, I think we care far more now about the reach for something. We’ve simply spent too much time at movies made by people who didn’t really enjoy themselves and who didn’t respect themselves or us, and we rarely enjoy ourselves at their movies anymore. They’re big catered affairs, and we’re humiliated to be among the guests. I look at the list of movies playing, and most of them I genuinely just can’t face, because the odds are so strong that they’re going to be the same old insulting failed entertainment, and, even though I may have had more of a bellyful than most people, i’m sure this isn’t just my own reaction. Practically everybody I know feels the same way.”
Pauline Kael
For Keeps 30 Years at the Movies
The book is collection of her work over the years and that specific quote was from Deeper Into Movies published in 1973. I know many readers here weren’t even born in ’73, and though I was I wasn’t even a teenager and hadn’t seen that many movies. It’s interesting that 40 years after that era she is writing about (the ’70s is one of the golden eras of the movies).
I think it’s the same old story in that over time the bad movies of the times are forgotten and the great ones shine. I remember people complaining about movies of the ’80s and then the ’90s, but again there was some great films made in those decades.
And I imagine in 30 or 40 years they will be complaining about quality of the films of the day and recalling the early movies of the first part of this century.
Is there a shortage of great films? Of course. But the bottom line is great and lasting movies are like great and lasting musicians, athletes and anything else—there isn’t an abundance in any generation. If there was then nothing would stand out as great.
Sidenote: A few paragraphs after the above quote Kael takes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to task for just being a rip off of Bonnie and Clyde. (She writes of the film that is now considered a classic, “It’s a facetious Western, and everybody in it talks comical. The director, George Roy Hill, doesn’t have a style for it.“)
[…] I was reading a book today by a film critic and came across this quote: “Not every movie has to matter; generally we go hoping just to be relaxed refreshed. But because most of the time we come out slugged and depressed, I think we care far more now about the reach for something. We’ve […] Original Source… […]