Classicism in film

Classicism in Film.

                I was once told that a classic was defined by the fact that it was something that had been around for more than one hundred years.  When I was born the film industry had only existed for over fifty years, talking pictures (pictures with sound) only twenty four. Now that I am sixty years old the industry has finally passed its centennial, and films such as The Great Train Robbery (1903) can truly be called classics in a more traditional sense.

                Culturally this is a novelty. In the 1890s the invention of the moving pictures was truly a new idea. Theater had been the only existing form of dramatic art ever since the ancient Greeks had first put on the plays of Sophocles, Euripedes and Aristophanes. The trouble with Theater is that the artistry of it can only survive in our memory. We only know that Edmund Kean, David Garrick, Edwin Booth and, before them, Richard Burbage, were great actors because someone wrote that they were. We only have written accounts of their performances to inform us of the tricks that they would use to capture the attention of their audiences.

                That all changed with the advent of film.

                Now, by way of moving picture, we could see how the divine Sarah Bernhardt could emote on stage-never mind that we couldn’t hear her. There it is, trapped on film seemingly forever for the ages. But even that, at one time, was transient. Sadly, the nitrate stock used for film at the time had a tendency to deteriorate over time.  When this was discovered nitrate stock was abandoned for superior technology, celluloid and then plastic, which lasted considerably longer.  Then movies went from black and white to color, and, whereas the former has a tendency to last a long time, color fades faster.  Three strip Technicolor, however, was a process that allowed for accurate restoration, and had a more permanent lasting image than other (and, unfortunately, subsequent) processes.  And that was the way things stood until the 1990s.

                The future of the art was drastically changed with the advent of television (and later, computer) technologies. We didn’t know it at the time (the 50s, when TV came into play), but these technological advances would prove to be the saviors of film, guaranteeing it a future well into the coming centuries possibly. Currently an old movie can have its images transferred to computer and with digital techniques restored to its former glory. We have seen the beauty of this with restorations of films such as Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz, King Kong and Casablanca.

                The fact that I can watch Orson Welles throw a temper tantrum in Citizen Kane in 2013 is mind boggling to me.  To see King Kong in the form that it was originally intended to be seen is a miracle of modern science.  By all rights these films should have faded away years ago, and in many cases almost did.  Instead, a technician can digitally scan a film and remove dirt that has been accumulated over the years.

                Think on it; what would we have lost? Can you imagine a world without Bogie looking into Ingrid Bergman’s eyes? Or how about losing the scene of the Dwarves crying over Snow White’s immobile form? Would you miss the visual image of Leonardo Di Caprio showing Kate Winslet how to really experience the movement of air around her at the bow of the Titanic, unaware of the coming tragedy that will end their short relationship?

                In 1925, via The Lost World, and 1993, in Jurassic Park, we were able to see before our very eyes how a dinosaur might actually look and act via the magic of special effects photography. In 1956 we could sit in a theater and watch as Michael Todd took us on a journey Around The World In Eighty Days, exposing us to sights and vistas we might never see otherwise as long as we live. In 2009 we were able to see, by way of Avatar, what an environment on an alien planet might be like. And in every film that we can save we will have records of performances, such as George C. Scott’s in 1970’s Patton and Vivian Leigh’s in 1939’s Gone With The Wind, that will truly stand the test of time; largely because we can see it right there on the screen of whatever device that we have to watch movies on.

                And the truly amazing thing is that we have the promise that we will be able to do this one hundred years from now, because the technology will allow it.