What makes great cinema?
Catch this three-way conversation
Bill Yates, Suzanne Murphy and John Hufstader gather in the auditorium
with students to get their thumbs up or thumbs down on the latest
movies.
John Hufstader, associate
professor of communications, teaches the Movies in America class.
He produced and edited a 60-minute film, “Small Steps, Great Strides:
Fifty Years on the Lake,” a history of Saint Joseph’s
College on Sebago Lake.
Suzanne Murphy, Coordinator of Continuing Education in the Division
of Graduate & Professional Studies, is the co-host of Big Talk,
a live public affairs program on WMPG. She is a longtime movie fan.
Bill Yates, a former broadcaster and now associate professor
and chair of the communications department, teaches Movies in America
on campus. He narrated “Small Steps, Great Strides: Fifty Years
on the Lake.”
What makes great cinema?
BY: If you can engage a person … then
it’s great film.
I think of “Titanic,” which I think is a great film.
The critics just pretty much savaged it. But it’s a great film,
because you are engaged. “Schindler’s List” is
a very different movie, but you’re engaged … you know
the story of the Holocaust, but here’s a presentation of it
that engages you.
What makes people engaged?
SM: I am very story- and character-oriented.
I want to see and hear great, well-written scripts. And I’m
interested in the quality of the acting. Even though film is a visual
medium, the visuals are second-place to me. I appreciate the editing
and camera work on some level, but if the acting is great and the
writing is good, that’s generally what draws me in.
JH: My idea of a good movie is one that connects a person with everybody
else. It could be you relating to a character on the screen or you
relating to what’s happening in the world on the screen. But
it’s sort of that ‘I’m part of this whole big picture.’ ….
It’s when a film makes that connection that things get really,
really, interesting … and the writing, acting, and visuals
all come into play. And when it’s done really well, you don’t
even think about it … you’re in the concentration camp
or you’re standing on the deck of the Titanic, or you’re
riding in a taxi cab with Robert DeNiro.
One of the things that I really like about film is getting a hundred
or so strangers in a dark room all watching the same screen. I love
when we teach the film classes: we stand in front of the class and
look at everybody looking at the movie. It’s fascinating ....
Everyone is experiencing the same emotion at the same time, and that’s
powerful filmmaking.
SM: When it’s good, you don’t notice it .… I
think that the production values of the film are important, because
you shouldn’t be distracted by them. Then again I’ve
seen some independent films where they didn’t have enough money
but had good production values …. The lighting stinks, the
film stock is bad, but it’s a good movie. They had no money
to make “Half Nelson,” let’s face it. But man!
Talk about performances and story and connecting. Wow.
BY: My all-time-worst movie is “Battlefield Earth,” which
is all special effects. Huge budget and it’s terrible. It’s
got great production values, but the story is terrible….With
a good story line, you put up with less-than-perfect effects and
production values. “Titanic” had special effects that
support the story and didn’t overpower it. So what you see
is believable. It’s not robots shooting each other.
SM: I think there’s a difference between great cinema and
good. If we’re going to talk great, it’s about getting
through to real human truths. Just like any great art. Just like
great literature or great painting. It’s something really profound.
I think there are levels when you go to the movies. Like some things
are just good, which makes for great popcorn-eating movies. But then
there’s great cinema, which is a whole other level. Then, you
don’t buy popcorn.
Popcorn is the stupidest thing you could possibly sell in a movie
theater. I don’t understand, because it’s noisy and ridiculous.
I don’t get it.
SM: To me what makes a film great is when all the factors work.
So you have the great camera work, editing, writing and acting.
To me, in a great film, every scene works.
What films have that flow?
SM: I would say Hitchcock. Pretty much
every scene in a Hitchcock movie is there for a reason and works. “Notorious” is
one of my favorite films, with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. Ingrid
Bergman is fantastic and the plot is really tense. It’s a
post-World War II film, and it’s great.
What else makes a great movie?
SM: I like unpredictability. And that’s
hard to find in an American movie sometimes. I don’t really
want to know exactly where everything is going. But I don’t
mean a suspense thriller. I mean unpredictability in the scene and
the story .… I really
enjoy being challenged by the film.
BY: What about Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven?” Was
he a hero? Was he the bad guy? Well, he’s both. For American
audiences, that’s often confusing. Like in old television westerns,
the good guys are in white hats and the bad guys are shifty and wear
black.
JH: I think people might be getting a little sappier. There will
always be the “Spider Man” movies, but I think about
something like “Crash.” That was a fantastic film. It
blew me away. That was unpredictable.
SM: I thought it was totally predictable, and I was not impressed.
I didn’t care about the characters. I was very
disappointed.
JH: But the score was incredible.
Have you seen any great films in the last year?
SM: One of the last
movies I said that about was “Mystic River.” When
that movie ended, I was just like ‘Oh, my God. Everything worked
in this movie.’ And that was straightforward filmmaking. No
special effects and hardly any fancy camera angles .... I was very
impressed. Clint Eastwood seems to be turning out a lot of great
work in his late years .…
He wrote the score for “Mystic River,” “Million
Dollar Baby,” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.” There’s
the most recent movie that I thought was pretty amazing. “Letters
from Iwo Jima” and “Flags of our Fathers.” One
story told from the American side and one told from the
Japanese side.
What parts of filmmaking are underrated?
SM: The editing. People
don’t quite realize how critical that
is to the timing and the pacing.
BY: People can see costumes. And sound, they can hear. And the visuals
they can see. But they don’t see the editing. They see the
aftereffects, how fast the movie moves …. But they don’t
see the process.
SM: I think that people don’t pick up on pacing ….
A lot of movies kind of just sag about 45 minutes into the movie.
And that’s all editing …. Some people come out of a
movie and they think. “Oh, I didn’t like that too much.” That’s
all probably because the pacing was off. And so they were bored.
How will the Top Ten list change in years to come?
BY: When I teach
the movies course, I use “Citizen Kane.” And
on almost every list, it is arguably the best film ever made ....
Most students don’t like it because the pacing is so slow and
the development is so slow. I think … younger people are used
to video, MTV, instant, quick analyses. So they can pick up a plot
in a story line in 10 or 20 seconds.
In an old silent movies with the soundtrack, the orchestra leads
you into the film .... It’s light and frilly and then heavy
and menacing. It tells you in advance what to expect ....
SM: Audiences have gotten more sophisticated in that they don’t
need that anymore.
BY: Fifty years ago it took four or five minutes of exposition to
get people clued in .… I think the (Top Ten) list is going
to change, and that may be one of the reasons that some of the traditional
classics will be gone ... because perceptions have changed. They
now expect quicker, faster.
JH: When you have a standard scene, it’s basically three seconds.
But the general rule is you put the shot up there until the audience
gets it. And when they get the shot, that’s when you change
it. That’s what makes a good editor.
SM: I love a good slow film. Because it’s not about exposition,
it’s about sitting with the moment that has just happened.
It’s like being saturated in the moment. You watch someone’s
face change. I love that kind of film, but I think that’s an
acquired taste. I’m not sure I would’ve loved that when
I was 20.
Can anyone make a movie
these days?
BY: What I think is cool about technology is that now
with a $2,000 camcorder and a $2,000 laptop and $1,000 worth of
software … you
can produce an image that is visually Spielberg’s equal. You
still have problems with the story and the content value. But if
you put it online, you’re an independent producer and you’ve
kind of bypassed the traditional route of getting a distributor,
having prints made and all that stuff.
But with documentaries especially, it’s now kind of wide open
and cool. It democratizes movies. Conceivably, if you’ve got
some thing to say and make it short enough to put it on YouTube,
and if a buzz builds, people will start watching until there’s
total distribution of it. You probably don’t make any money
doing it that way though.
JH: Those $200 camcorders that you can get at Wal-Mart now do have
the same quality as standard definition broadcast television. What
used to be a $100,000 studio camera is now a $200 throwaway. You
can go out and buy a high-definition camcorder for $500 or $600.
BY: Because of the Web, you may hear more voices .... The system
was so set up. Guys with multi-million dollar budgets talked to multi-million
dollar producers. But this is like a spot for new voices to be heard.
JH: I feel like eventually, when there’s so much out there,
so many things that so many people have seen, there will be no real
thread that pulls people together.
SM: But I would welcome the proliferation of other voices, myself.
You look around at the theaters and they’re all offering the
same 10 movies. I mean, where are all of these other voices? The
system promotes a fair amount of schlock.
BY: I see that too. If you go to Amazon.com, after a couple visits
they have a profile of what you like. So that’s what they suggest.
And news services will also do that with this kind of push technology.
So the danger is that your world gets smaller because they’re
feeding you things that you like. And you’ve got to be wise
enough to say ‘No, I’m going to go surf over here’ or
just enter as a visitor without a profile and kind of just shop around.
SM: Netflix does the same thing and I just think, ‘You don’t
know what I like. Don’t tell me what I like.’
Could we make a Top Ten list?
SM: I just think there’s so much
great film and it depends on what mood you’re in and what day
it is.
JH: I think the American Film Institute just re-did their top 100
films of all time. That’s a good list to start from. It had “Citizen
Kane,” “The Godfather,” “Star Wars” .…With “Citizen
Kane” everything just came together. Photography was outrageous,
the sound, the acting, the story, the time that it was released.
It just came together.
BY: A couple years ago I had a student that had access to Indian
films. And those are great films! Of course they’re all Hindi
and in different languages, but they’re very basic .… They
are just real great fun, and you’ll just never see them here
because we don’t translate them.
SM: Americans are a tough crowd. No one wants to read subtitles.
Everybody in every country wants to make movies. It’s a real
human urge. And everybody wants to hear a story. People will scrape
the money together if they want to make a film. If there are no films
coming out of a country, it’s because people are oppressed.
JH: In my Politics and Media class, I always talk about Peter Gabriel’s
organization called Witness, which is basically distributing camcorders
to all these populations that are oppressed. They go out and film
stuff and put it up on the Web, these documentaries .…. It’s
fantastic. Film is going to more and more people who can do it quickly
and distribute it universally. And it doesn’t involve money,
studios or distribution channels.
Do you think people go to the movies to be transported?
SM: Yeah,
I do. That’s why I like film in the theaters. I mean
I’ll watch things at home on DVD and that’s okay. But
I like to go to a big screen with loud sound and nobody talking,
thank you very much. (In regards to people talking) I feel like saying “Don’t
you want to give yourself up to the movie? Don’t you understand
what movies are about?” It’s like they think they’re
in their living room.
JH: Which is a whole different thing. Now we’re going big-screen
TVs, high-definition, and we have to think of what that is going
to do to the movie industry. I think we are going to wind up leaning
more toward the big grandiose special-effect kind of movies in the
theaters, where the effects are more profound … as opposed
to the character-driven and plot-driven movies. That’s my prediction.
BY: Lucas and Spielberg are saying they won’t do any more
movies unless they are in 3-D. And we’re not talking about
the traditional weird glasses. This is new technology. Apparently
whatever you put on looks like regular glasses. But it’s a
true digital 3-D experience. They’re saying … only theaters
initially will be quick with this technology. So you can probably
rent the movie and watch it on your screen at home, but if you want
the true reception of it, you’ll need to go to the theater.
I think as time goes on there will be newer technologies that will
keep the theater experience going… there’ll be something
to keep it living. I mean, I hope.
• www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/movies.aspx
• www.imdb.com
• www.nytimes.com
(movie reviews on Fridays)
