by Sam Juliano
Who is the greatest genius the cinema has ever produced? This is not a question one can answer without considerable second-guessing, and one must first define the meaning of the word genius as it applies to the cinema. Does it mean the most influential artist, the must diverse, or the most intellectually challenging? Might it apply to the one who visited the most genres with equal success, like a Hawks or an Anthony Mann? Or perhaps the artist who combined best combined writing or directing like a Bergman or Bunuel? Avante garde and expressionist fans might well annoint Godard in this category. Or yet others might opt for an iconic composer, cinematographer or thespian. Perhaps the greatest genius is one that combined many talents. Or perhaps a producer like Disney, Selznick or Lewton might be under consideration. Maybe a dancer like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, or a multi-talented performer like Judy Garland? For engineering the single most astounding performance in cinema history, perhaps Rene Falconetti can be posed. Determinations will as always take in the unaccountable factor of personal taste.
In any case I am asking the readers here at WitD to name their candidate in the designated category of ‘The Greatest Genius the Cinema Has Produced.” Only one to a customer, though everyone is entitled to list a Top Ten, if they so choose. But in explaining your decision, only talk about your #1 choice.
To crown my own winner, I will borrow here from my own report last year at a Film Forum Festival:
“He is in my carefully considered opinion the greatest versatile genius the cinema has ever produced, and on a list of my favorites may well rank as my top choice, (depending on what day of the week I am asked the question. Ingmar Bergman is the one who seems to alternate with him, but both Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson and even Carl Dreyer are with them at the pinnacle) No film artist has engaged me as thoroughly, no comic has made me laugh as much, no humanist has brought more tears, no technical genius -not even Keaton- has caused me to marvel just how much acrobatic brilliance can come from a single person. He was the consumate genius, writing and directing his films, serving as the main star, and to boot, writing his own music, some of which includes some of the finest compositions of the century. Michael Jackson’s favorite ‘song’ of all time is “Smile” from Modern Times, and the overwhelming poignancy of the music he wrote for the final flower girl scene in City Lights (his greatest film across the board) is the perfect embodiment of theme expressed in music. His physical agility, his astute understanding of the human condition, and his uncanny sense of timing all are part of this Shakespeare of film, the single man who set the standard that has not subsequently been equalled. If by now the name of Charles Spencer Chaplin has not been figured, well then the reader is from another planet.”
–from “The Multi-Faceted Genius of Charles Chaplin, Wonders in the Dark, 8/16/10
https://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/the-multi-faceted-genius-of-charles-chaplin/
My Top Ten:
1.) Charles Chaplin
2.) Ingmar Bergman
3.) Yashijiro Ozu
4.) Orson Welles
5.) Bernard Herrmann
6.) Robert Bresson
7.) Sir Lawrence Olivier
8.) Buster Keaton
9.) Carl Theodor Dreyer
10.) Walt Disney
I wanted to get a woman in, but just missed with Katherine Hepburn and Judy Garland, and I was pained to say nothing particularly of Murnau, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Powell & Pressburger, De Sica, Fellini, Renoir, S. Ray, Bunuel, Lang, Mizoguchi, Ford, Lubitsch, Toland, Cardiff, Ophuls, Steiner, James Cagney, and and those Japanese divas among others.
So again, who is your #1 film genius of all-time and why? Remember, it can be a director, producer, actor, actress, writer, composer, set designer, technician or any combination of all crafts. Please talk a bit about your top choice and list a top ten if you wish.
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 
Sam, I’ll try to be objective about this, even if objectivity compels me to be unoriginal at the top. These aren’t necessarily my favorites in any given category, but I include innovation and historical significance in the definition of genius, and so…
1.Chaplin. I still like Keaton better as a performer and for his sensibility, but Chaplin’s versatility and drive to control as much of production as possible set the standard almost one century ago for everyone else.
2. Erich von Stroheim. Another history-making triple-threat, and he probably would have written his own music if given a chance.
3. Fritz Lang
4. Akira Kurosawa
5. Orson Welles
6. Abel Gance
7. Federico Fellini
8. Busby Berkeley
9. Jacques Tati
10. Ray Harryhausen
Damn! Somebody mentioned Harryhausen before I did!
It seems altogether appropriate that the exceedingly brilliant Samuel Wilson should launch the discussion here! And the reminder that Von Stroheim should be near the top is perhaps the most embrassing error in my presentation. I may even go into wordpress and change my list to accomodate him later tonight. Berkeley and Harryhausen are most interesting picks, as is Jacques Tati.
But having Chaplin on top is music to me. Glad you went the “unoriginal” route with him!
If anyone puts Walt Disney at #1 I’d ask nicely that you then post your address so I can come to your home or apartment and open hand slap you. LOL! Just kidding, this is a blast, I’ll think about it a bit and post a list (with a small blurb to the ones near the top like samuel and sam have done), but right now my list is topped by Jean-Luc Godard, and I don’t think I’ll change.
actually I don’t need the time, my nine after JL Godard (in no particular order):
B. Wilder, N. Oshima, N. Ray, T. Malick, B. Keaton, R. Bresson, A. Bazin, the movie HUD, the organism that happened when H. Pinter and J. Losey got together, Charlotte Rampling in NIGHT PORTER (that then gave us the ‘She/Female’ character in ANTICHRIST).
Sort of surprisingly, I could name another 20 before I’d even think about I. Bergman.
damn it, I forgot Fassbinder and Rohmer.
Jamie, I love Fassbinder to death, but I wouldn’t say he appraoches the definition of this category to the point where he would challenge some of these triple or quadruple-threat geniuses.
The big, BIG omission is Von Stroheim, as Samuel points out. For me that was a huge error, though Chaplin still is #1.
Fassbinder was a writer, director, and theater guy. Plus, his pace alone is too be supremely respected. Besides, it only takes a shared sensibility for art to approach and embrace us. Maybe von Stronheim ‘did more’ (whatever that means) but he didn’t make scathing emotional marxist diatribes like Fassbinder. In fact, no one did. This isn’t the place for objectivity.
Jamie, it wasn’t watching The Third Generation alone that did it for me, though it was great stuff, but what I knew about Fassbinder and his furious output — that’s where I’m trying to be “objective,” though lack of experience on my part relegates RWF to a lower tier for now.
“Maybe von Stronheim ‘did more’ (whatever that means) but he didn’t make scathing emotional marxist diatribes like Fassbinder…”
Yeah, Jamie, and then? Ha!!!!!!!
Jamie, objectively speaking I’d put Fassbinder in a top 20 even though I’ve only seen one of his movies, and Godard would be there too, since I’ve seen more of his. Von gets props from me not only for the writing and directing but for molding his star image into (arguably) cinema’s first charismatic villain or antihero.
Oh yeah, there’s no problem with putting von Stronheim in, as your appraisal to him is subjective. Which is all I’m really asking for.
What’s the one Fassbinder that did it for ya?
1– Lang. Even to this day, he’s the escapist-entertainer to beat. Yeah, I might enjoy the work created by those who followed in his wake more, but the fact that you can sit down and enjoy any of his silent or early-sound epics and watch them just for sake of their own fun and nothing more is the biggest compliment you can give any director from posterity.
2– Godard. My reasons for appreciating his work are similar. Even when he experiments, even when he plays way outside the boundaries of what’s considered mainstream for the arthouse set, even when he seems to be going out of his goddamn way to alienate his audience (and doing a good job of it, apparently), he can still be acres of fun to watch.
3– Kurosawa. Lang is the master of suspense, and Godard the master of experimentation, but Akira is still the master of white-knuckle action. He takes the lessons he learns from watching the classics of Ford and applies them to the medieval backdrop of his own country, coming up with some of the most exciting fights, chases and epic war scenes the movies have ever produced. Yeah, it’s kinda sad how he’s usually the only Japanese director anybody’s ever heard of, but that don’t mean he ain’t worth hearing about.
4– Harryhausen. Man, I’m pissed somebody named him before I got a chance to, but it goes to show how important and instrumental he is. Of all the fantasists out there, there’s something marvelous and human about the way he was able to breathe such tremendous life, personality and pathos into his little stop-motion creations. From his work as an animator on “King Kong” to his time as a supervisor on so many classic adventure flicks from the 50’s into the 80’s, he’s one of the few special-effects gurus who can stand as good an advertisement to see a movie as the director themself.
5– Lucas. I don’t think I need to repeat myself here, do I? Moving on…
6– Goldman. If you were to ask me who I wish was more active as a screenwriter nowadays, I’d probably say him. All of his screenplays are tight, economical, but never stingy. There’s a playful quality to his writing that provides just enough seeds for a director and cast to pick up and play with in surprising ways. His work has probably waxed and waned over the years, but still– why not him?
7– Miyazaki. If you were to ask me who my favorite anime director is in general, I’d probably say Hideaki Anno, but he’s worked much more in television than theatrical features. After him, I’d put Oshii and Kon, for the breadth of their visions, the playful ways they dip(ped) in and out of the mainstream and avant-garde and offer(ed) challenging, mature subject matters in a form traditionally dominated by children’s fairy-tales. But still, the founder of Studio Ghibli is still the master of all the tools offered in animation for the big-screen, and consistently produces classic material well into his old age. Once Godard passes, I don’t think it’d be exagerrating too much to call him the greatest living filmmaker (a little, yes, but deservedly so).
8– Fuller. If for no other reason than he shot a goddamn gun instead of yelling “Action!” when he directed.
9– Bogey. The living embodiment of masculine emotions. The greatest male performer, a guy who was able to make crying over a woman seem the manliest of things that any self respecting carrier of YX chromosomes could do. Here was a tough guy, the kind of fedora-wearing hood you wouldn’t want to meet in an alleyway, but one who had not only a sense of wit but something of a soul, as well. You could look up to him and hold him as a role-model in ways that all the macho cowboys and roughnecks that followed him never managed to copy. He had a face only a gargoyle’s mother could love, he was often the smartest person in the room, and that only made his characters all the more lonely and heartbroken. And yet, he somehow managed to make it seem all the more Romantic with a capital R. If he could take it, so could the rest of us.
10– Hughes. The poet laureate of the American cinematic adolescence.
Lucas is a genius. He’s found a way to make Himalayan quantities of cash out of very little indeed. He’s the equivalent of a medieval alchemist, turning base metals into gold.
But John Hughes, FFS, if he’s a genius, then I’m Stephen Hawking.
yeah Hughes is a joke right Clark? I don’t even think he made the best High School movies. I mean pretty in pink next to REBEL WITHOUT A CASE or CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (and countless others) it’s just a joke.
Hughes is fun, but it’s for his adult comedies ala PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, and UNCLE BUCK. But even those are great works of art.
Jamie– at least I didn’t put Disney up there.
Awesome presentation by Bob Clark. I expected some of these, though Lang at the absolute top was a pleasant surprise. I agree that Harryhausen makes for an excellent choice.
An impossible but irresistible task! But since Chaplin came to my mind even before reading your choices, Sam, I think we’re safe on #1. Despite having been an actor, I lean toward multitaskers, especially those involved in committing the original thought to page. And somehow the word “tortured” seems often to wiggle its way into the mix:
Charles Chaplin
. . . and in alphabetical order:
Ingmar Bergman
Marlon Brando
Federico Fellini
Stanley Kubrick
Charles Laughton
Vivien Leigh
Peter Sellers
Preston Sturges
Orson Welles
Pierre: Your acting background shows here, but in a good sense, as too often the director is favored. Laughton is a great choice, but so is Brando and Sellers. I appaud you on naming Chaplin at the top, and love every one of those directorial icons you continue with.
Leigh is a terrific choice to head up the female contribution, though something told me you would go with Judy Garland first. But again, no argument! Great list!!!!!
Its difficult for me to decide on one name as far as the greatest genius in the history of motion pictures go, so I’ll name two.
1. Charlie Chaplin – There’s no doubt he was and remains the greatest versatile genius, and not just the best screen comedian. He acted, directed, composed, wrote screenplay, and he was a genius in each of those activities. This guy could make us laugh at the most disturbing of aspects like unrequited love, poverty, unemployment, etc. And some of his gags stay in one’s mind even after years of watching them.
2. Satyajit Ray – Ray would come a close second only because he never tried his hands in acting. But behind the camera he seemed to be everywhere – direction, screenplay, background score, music & lyrics (for the 2 musicals that he made), even poster design. Some of his films were even adapted from his own novels & short stories (he was a prolific writer of novels & short stories). And since he was also a brilliant graphic artist, his storyboards too were exceptionally detailed.
There have been so many geniuses in this artform called cinema, so I’ll just name a few of them here:
Woody Allen – He has made some of the most irreverent films – funny, bitter, thought-provoking, warm, all at once. And his writing, direction & acting are all impossible to imitate.
Stanley Kubrick – Rarely has a filmmaker made films in so many diverse genres, that too without hardly any disappointments. And boy, she sure worked in his own terms,
Jean-Luc Godard & Francois Truffaut – though they took divergent routes with time, but with their groundbreaking debut films they gave massive body blows to the very act of filmmaking.
Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese – enough said.
Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-Wai & Park Chan-Wook – two of the most irreverent, path-breaking directors of modern times.
Rituparno Ghosh – one of my favourite contemporary filmmakers, he can bring to screen the most subtle of emotional nuances to screen. And he doesn’t just direct, like a true auteur, he writes screenplay, often from his own stories, and even made a terrific debut as an actor last year.
Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Toshiro Mifune, Soumitra Chatterjee – they’d rank among the greatest actors of all time. Yes, some of them might have been part of forgettable films from time to time, but that would be mere blemishes as they’ve also been parts of some of the greatest movies ever made.
And, despite all these name above, there are so many more that I haven’t mentioned here. Its really fascinating to think that cinema, despite being one of the youngest of all artfoms, has managed to produce so many genius in its short lifespan of around a century.
Shubhajit: My apologies for accidentally missing this magisterial submission when I ented my last series of responses. I applaud the Chaplin placement of course, and S. Ray is a wonderful proposition too. All your other choices and validations are marvelous!
It’s Laurence Olivier, you always make that typo LOL. And the cinema didn’t really produce him, the theatre did (hence I don’t mention Hepburn below), but I see where you’re coming from. And if it’s SIR Larry, it should be SIR Charlie.
As for the choice, yes, the no 1 is right. But Von Stroheim, Yoshida, Renoir, Sturges, Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Kieslowski, Murnau, Laughton, Buñuel, Syberberg, Kubrick, de Mille (not purely cinematic genius in his case) and Groucho Marx should be there, too.
De Mille is one I erred on, but the colassal error was unearthed by Samuel Wilson, when inexplicably I somehow forgot Von Stroheim, who would (and will) make my Top 5.
Yoshida, Renoir, Murnau, Kubrick and Bunuel belong there too, but they won’t all fit.
Olivier was a colassal genius in the CINEMA as well as theatre. His choice is warranted.
It’s an interesting category…. I think, though, saying “genius” implies both a degree of invention and originality, and at least some level of intellectual articulation of what is being done… so – if I were answering, I think I would say Sergei Eisenstein – for being both one of the inventors of film artistry and theory, and for being able to articulate his approach to film (art, form, theory), in very good critical works…
Eisenstein is a terrific choice Weepingsam (love that name! Ha!) and your reasoning is quite sound!
Thanks for stopping by too! I’ll check your own place out tonight and will add you to our sidebar blogroll!
1. Godard (no surprise there, right?)
2. Rivette (shocked no one else mentioned him yet)
Those 2 names represent the absolute pinnacle of cinema for me: visually stunning, experimental, intellectually and thematically dense.
The rest are in no particular order: Hawks, Rohmer, Hitchcock, Renoir, Bergman, Kubrick, Brakhage, Resnais, Fassbinder, Assayas, Denis, Herzog, Lewton, Ozu, Wong
Yes, was tempted to include Rivette, but of course does the genius for cinema have to purely directing movies? What about innovative producers, composers who so dominated cinema.
I think Sam should perhaps reword the question as “produced” implies the cinema made them. Chaplin was born out of the London music hall, Olivier and many actors on the London stage, Hepburn on Broadway, while some great composers in other fields also worked in film successfully (Korngold, Rózsa, Waxman, Kilar, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Walton, Takemitsu). Harold lloyd would be an interesting one, because while he didn’t really direct his films per se, he was the controlling force, and he also innovated many cinema techniques and also became a groundbreaking 3D photographer upon retirement.
Then there’s Pasolini, who as an intelelctual Renaissance Man – all round artist, film just one string to the bow.
As for Godard, I remember Malcolm McDowell’s comments hen discussing Kubrick. Someone asked if he was a genius and Malc said no. He said throw any form of adjective you like “brilliant, uncanny…all of those. But his idea of a genius had more humanity.” Godard is too cold, too remote. Has all the humanity of the Times crossword with the clues written in Linear B.
No doubt, the question is ambiguous, and I stuck to directors (mostly – I did include Lewton) only because expanding beyond that opens up a whole other can of worms. Of course, there are genius actors and composers and cinematographers as well.
I swear, I’m not going to get into the whole Godard thing again, but I’ve never understood the charge that he’s cold or remote, all intellect and no emotion. If you can watch something like First Name: Carmen or Hail Mary or Notre Musique (and I’ve intentionally stuck to post-60s works since those tend to get hit with this charge the most) and not be moved, well, you have a very different experience of Godard’s work than I do. In many ways, I think his work is MORE visceral and emotional than intellectual, even though he’s frequently characterized as the opposite.
I wanted to include Pasolini too. I mean consider something like his novel, ‘A Violent Life’ then any of his great films. I know literature doesn’t count, but it just shows how much of a supreme artist he was, he could produce masterpieces in anything be put his mind to.
Jean Cocteau deserves mention on these grounds too.
Agree with Ed, there is no ‘coldness’ in Godard.
Ed: I tried placing a wager in Vegas on you naming Godard, but nobody would take my action! Ha! Seriously, you have never failed at making a brilliant case each and every time he’s broached, as apparently have some further support on this thread from others. All those other choices are great, with Lewton one I acknowledge should have made my own list. Denis is the top woman, I quite agree with that. And your deep love for Hawks and Rivette push close to Godard.
Fantastic work as always!
Charles Chaplin
Orson Welles
James Wong Howe
Marlon Brando
Bernard Hermann
Alfred Hitchcock
Buster Keaton
Akira Kurosawa
Stanley Kubrick
I am only listing nine because # 10 includes many….Fuller, Lang, Woody Allen, Barbara Stanwyck, Hawks, Preston Sturges, Wilder,Greg Toland, Bogart (I agree with everything Bob Clark states) and, Scorsese. There are more but this will do.
James Wong Howe is quite a choice John! Herrmann is buffo! But who could argue? You and I have so much similarity in taste. I am smiling from ear to ear reading this list. Thanks again John!
Sam, I think I have to agree with you on the Little Tramp.
Charles Chaplin
Sergei Eisenstein
Federico Fellini
Jean Renoir
James Cagney
Greg Toland
Laurence Olivier (Mr. Fish may be right that the theatre “produced” him, but the cinema saw the full scope of his genius.
Buster Keaton
Marlon Brando
Bernard Herrmann
Love your choices Frank! And I did figure you to have Chaplin on top. That much I figured out. Ha!
To me it’s between Chaplin, de Mille and Cagney.
I’ll be different and go with de Mille.
Thanks Fred! De Mille is a terrific choice!
Here is my tentative provisional Top Ten:
1 Jean-Luc Godard : He has more ideas and more wonderful ways of expressing them than any other. Like everyone he has good and worse films but even those less successful overall have sparks of wonderment.
2 Krzysztof Kieslowski
3 Hayao Miyazaki
4 Andrei Tarkovsky
5 George Lucas
6. David Lynch
7 John Williams
8 Jacques Rivette
9 Robert Bresson – by no means consistently good but the best of him was unsurpassed
10 William Lubtchansky – When I think of Godard and Rivette I think of the light and colour of their images. The common denominator is Lubtchansky. I don’t care about cinematographers generally nor the specifics of their job but I feel credit is surely due.
I wouldn’t call anyone involved in Cinema a ‘genius’. The word gets used too much or maybe it means different things for different people. I don’t see the same quality of artistry (or rather finished product) at the top of film-making as I do at the top of painting or sculpture or music.
Special mention to Jacques Tati, Kenji Mizoguchi, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Steven Spielberg, and countless others, including actors and actresses, who I can barely remember.
Agreed on Lubtchansky–as much as for Garrel as for Godard and Rivette though.
Louis Lumiere and Thomas Edison (or whoever he stole credit from within his own company) for actually inventing the equipment that even allowed such genius to appear and occur.
Great historical choices Maurizio , and for the purposes of this interpretive post, quite valid. Many thanks my great friend!
I don’t believe cinema has an overwhelming figure like Shakespeare or even necessarily a trio like Bach-Mozart-Beethoven. The analogy is perhaps better served with painting where you have a number of titans though again no one in cinema is as pre-eminent as Raphael or Picasso and so on. Which is not to say cinema doesn’t have great directors. There are very many but I don’t consider many of these titanic talents. This ties in with a sense I’ve long had that cinema relative to the other arts doesn’t have comparable ‘geniuses’. Perhaps because cinema being a mass art is always a bit ‘compromised’ to begin with. Even art-house films need to depend on some sort of audience. And one could get more theoretical about it. In terms of directors I would provisionally nominate the following in no particular order as the most influential ones thus far:
1)Eisenstein
2)Kurosawa
3)Godard
I think these three have influenced cinematic trends more than other comparably great figures.
Ultimately however Chaplin must be placed above everyone else in cinema for being the most universal figure of this medium and by quite some distance.
Interesting that you’re the second person to state this– that cinema doesn’t really have ‘geniuses’ like the other art forms– which is interesting to me (even if I think it to be incredibly false). As the artists you name (in music and painting) are all not in this century (the only century cinema has existed in), with the exception of Picasso of course (though much of his great work is now more then 100 years old).
Just interesting to me, cinema faces the same compromises to appeal to ‘masses’ that the ‘great’ masters of painting did. Isn’t Caravaggio’s greatest triumph the fact that he brought the realism of the common man to the hallow halls of the churches? He (quite literally) put Jesus along side us. Is this that much different then Pasolini’s ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’? All that’s changed in the course of art is who’s got the money (/power) to commission this stuff…
Jamie, I didn’t say cinema did not have geniuses. Just that I don’t see those geniuses as being as supreme relative to their field as those other figures were relative to their own. Kurosawa is for example my favorite director. I see him as most Shakespeare-like among all directors inasmuch as like the Bard his films work as total entertainers and yet are often very complex otherwise and/or aesthetically very challenging (shot composition, cuts, and so on). As David Desser suggests there is more display of artistry in any 4 min segment of Seven Samurai than any other film he can think of. And yet I do not believe Kurosawa is the equivalent of Shakespeare as an artist. Much as Bach can be compared with Shakespeare not Schubert.
Cinema has certainly been the art form of the 20th century but it has never been allowed to fully realize its possibilities. It has largely been conservative as an art form. To put it in another sense what counts as ‘radical’ in other art forms is something cinema can only dream of. Again, there are some very great filmmakers but are their formal innovations as profound as those of some of those other artists I’ve mentioned? I have my doubts. Similarly has cinema’s ‘production of meaning’ been equivalent to trends elsewhere? This too I have very strong doubts about. For example important as Bergman is his entire existential thinking is fairly derivative. One could go to Ibsen and Strindberg, let alone Kierkegaard and do far better. Just among Scandinavians!
All of this does not mean that I consider cinematic form to be simply a ‘graft’ to be applied onto a body of meaning and so forth. Obviously form produces meaning. Antonioni or Godard for example. But are their formal experiments as radical as those we saw in painting in that very century? For all this cinema is still the most important art form since its inception. And here the question perhaps ought to be framed differently — is cinema the art form that complicated or disrupts our traditional aesthetic notions or even our expectations about what constitutes art? Because of the very nature of this medium (in a different more politically charged context one could say this is the ‘Fascist’ potential of cinema).
The best way that I can frame it is that cinema (and I’ve been obsessed with it since my childhood!) doesn’t give me as much to think as do many of the other art forms. Not does it do so by way of ‘experience’. But again both questions still leave unaccounted the potency of the medium and this is what deserves a great deal of thought. Badiou has a great formulation where he conceives of cinema as an art form where the deciding line between the ‘impure’ and the ‘pure’ is particularly hard to decide on. In other words cinema becomes art from that which is not initially art. This is a provocative way of framing it . Badiou incidentally considers Mizouchi’s Chikamatsu the greatest love story in cinema.
Kaleem Hasan at his most utterly brilliant here in both superlative essays. In the past I have agreed with him here in that ‘relative to their field’ argument. And the Chaplin to Shakespeare proposition is a compelling one. You shed so much light on the essence the conversation here Kaleem!
I can’t thank you enough!
Kaleem, those are really interesting thoughts, and I’m certain I haven’t read all the critical writings you’re clearly grappling with here. Film is probably less analogous with literature as it isn’t a visual art, but as my appreciation of painting is definitely lacking, I wonder if you’d be willing to consider it from that standpoint. And I should first say that I think what Bresson was doing, to name one director, is as radical and profound and directly related to cinema as an art form as anything Bach or Shakespeare were doing (and I wouldn’t say that of Kurosawa, in the same way that you wouldn’t say that of Schubert). But, if we talk about someone like Dickens, who didn’t reinvent form, who was in some ways “conservative” (although not necessarily politically or socially), who was a great writer but applied that virtuosity to a very specific genred form–couldn’t that be directly related to the filmmakers who often get discusses when we speak of the greats (Renoir, Hawks, Kurosawa, etc)? And this is way too schematic, I know that, and Dickens wasn’t just “telling a story” (neither was Hawks), I just find it hard to buy that only artists who were reinventing form matter, rather than artists who were able to use (maybe traditional) form in startling, revealing, novel ways (and I’m not saying you’re saying that, but I think you see where this could end up going). Another thing, and one that I think that is even more fundamental to movies are their essentially collaborative nature, which might end up precluding artistic genius, I’m not sure. But even if I bought the idea that cinema doesn’t have any Joyces or Faulkners (and I don’t), there’s nothing wrong with the Dickenses.
As always Sam you’re far far too generous! But greatly appreciated..
Thanks for that superb comment Peter. Your Dickens example is a valuable one. Perhaps I wasn’t clear on some points earlier. Let me try again. I didn’t mean to suggest that an art form is only defined by its radical figures. I don’t apply this standard to any art form including cinema. And as you rightly point out where would we be without the (and to sound absurdly, comically reductive about it) without the ‘bread and butter’ types in any art form?! I am however making two related points:
1)One can compare different art forms not literally but in terms of their ‘expressivity’. Each art form brings different ‘values’ to the table and within each art there are those who take that ‘expressivity’ to its limits. Or better still they reconfigure the entire field of meaning or form or both. They change if you will the terms of the debate for everyone. And so after Impressionism you cannot simply return to a more traditional kind of landscape art, after Schoenberg you can’t return to the old tonal forms, so on and so forth. A figure then who alters the entire field. After such a figure (or movement) to return to the old ways means to be ‘archaic’ at the very moment of producing art. The older styles do not lose their value at all but these cannot be ‘repeated’ once that revolution has come about.
My claim is that cinema is lacking when it comes to the possibilities of its own ‘expressivity’. So I am not comparing cinema directly with other art forms but only analogically. Does Godard express as much as does Bach? I have my doubts. Not because I have doubts about Godard’s pre-eminence or indeed that of many other directors but rather because I do not see these figures as completely exhausting the potential of their fields (whether in terms of form or meaning) as profoundly as does Wagner or say Flaubert. It is not necessarily a question of absolutes here but of ‘invention’. This is one way of indexing this question.
But now to your Dickens example. But here it’s easy to connect it to what I’ve just said. First of all Dickens of course is not an ordinary example. He’s probably second only to Shakespeare in terms of his global influence at least compared to his other Western peers and his achievement is less formal (you’re certainly right here) and more to do with his extraordinary number of characters. He creates dozens and dozens and while most of these are ‘types’ as opposed to the more nuanced kinds one expects from a novelist he’s nonetheless been universal. Nonetheless this doesn’t get to the heart of the point which is that the ‘bread and butter’ artist (that absurd term again!) is always so relative to the greatest field-defining ones. In other words Ibsen is a very great dramatist but infinitely inferior to Shakespeare. In other words it takes that kind of talent to put him in the shade. Or Faulkner is a very formidable novelist but he’s not Joyce or Proust.
One could have a similar spectrum for cinema. For example I’d say that Ford is great but he’s not Kurosawa, Vertov is great but he’s not Eisenstein.. and so on. But this entire spectrum in my view is ‘weaker’ than the comparable one for music or painting to name two other art forms. Again only by way of analogy. So Hawks to my mind is infinitely ‘weaker’ than say Debussy, two roughly comparable figures in their respective fields.
2)Note also how cinema is unusually contaminated as an art form. By literature (all the filmed scripts) and by painting. It is also not correct to say that literature isn’t a visual medium. I certainly understand what you mean. It isn’t literally so but most experience of literature if not all cannot come about without the aid of the visual. We visualize when we read. Cinema in any case borrows from these art forms and of course music (which might be even more important) more than any other art form borrows from the others. Cinema really is inconceivable without these borrowings. And here Bresson between his literary adaptations and his painterly instincts offers a privileged example of what I’ve been referring to. And here I would add that cinema might have been greatest perhaps with less contamination. For example to my mind the truest possibilities of cinema were blocked with the advent of sound. There were much to silent cinema that suffered a premature death.
All of this doesn’t mean that cinema doesn’t have its own soul or its own ‘value’. Far from it. And also to repeat the earlier point perhaps the very nature of the medium obfuscates these questions of form and meaning (and this is a crucial caveat). But if we are to retain these terms my claim is that the greatest trends and figures of cinema are not quite the equivalents of the same in other art forms. Always comparing like for like.
For example to my mind the truest possibilities of cinema were blocked with the advent of sound. There were much to silent cinema that suffered a premature death.
I’d love for you to expand on this a bit if you have time, especially if you were thinking specifically of an films or film movements here (or even just a general idea in terms of aesthetics of what silent cinema offered that so radically differentiated it from other forms). It’s an unfashionable view, I think, not that there’s anything wrong with that–during the twenties and thirties it was certainly held by a lot of American critics, but autueurism in the States was definitely reacting against that view; there’s a portion of Sarris’ interesting You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet in which he is clearly trying to tear down this idea (his arguments are along the lines of films were never really silent, etc.). I recall getting where he was coming from without truly buying it, and I’d love to hear an expansion on your argument here, especially if you have time.
I’m slightly ambivalent about ranking artists above each other the way you are here, and not just because I don’t agree with all your evaluations (there’s no question in my mind that “Ford is great but he’s not Kurosawa” should be the other way around). But I completely understand why you feel the need to do it, and it might be necessary, as unwieldy as it is in a way. If we are going to talk about genius these kind of systems almost certainly have to come up, and you definitely have a point–it’s very difficult to relate Godard to Bach (maybe Griffith? though frankly I don’t think I’ve studied either classical music or silent film enough to be qualified to make such pronouncements).
It is not necessarily a question of absolutes here but of ‘invention’.
I like that a lot, I think it captures succinctly so much of what you’re talking about. And of course there was always this enormous preoccupation in Hollywood films over whether or not cinema could be art–how many musicals exist where the sole point of the plot seems to be to make fun of the idea of high art and on the other side of the spectrum there’s of course all those glossy MGM adaptations of literary classics. And I don’t think these really help the case to be made for cinema as its own art form. And maybe it’s not yet, I’m not sure. But if it’s not, maybe it’s become involuntarily our attempt to synthesize all art forms, to take into account music and photography and painting and literature (the m-theory of the arts!) and create some kind of grand whole out of it (even if, as you suggest, the sum isn’t always the equal of any of the parts)..
Peter, odd as this might sound I completely agree with you that there’s a violence to lists. Sam will recall many debates I’ve had about this. On silent cinema here’s a discussion I once began:
http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/an-evolving-discussion-on-silent-cinema/
Much obliged Kaleem. That’s a great conversation.
Does it say something about us or him that no one’s mentioned D. W. Griffith yet?
I think it says more that I’m the only one to nominate a woman…
(and I almost put Catherine Breillat in my list too)
I nominated Claire Denis, who is unquestionably a genius. Breillat is interesting, too.
Yeah, it’s Denis or Breillat. I prefer Breillat almost individually because ANATOMY OF HELL. But then Denis has FRIDAY NIGHT and TROUBLE EVERYDAY… Briellat counters with BRIEF CROSSING… and on and on.
Both brilliant, and two directors that I see their new films as soon as I can. which I can’t say for many men working today.
It would be Chantal Akerman for me if I had to choose a female director. Not what people might call an “easy watch” but, for me, far more interesting.
I completely agree with Ed and Jamie that Claire Denis is the top female director.
Breillat is up there, as is Jane Campion.
Jamie, it probably reflects the limited opportunities women have had over the past century. A separate (but equal?) list of female geniuses would have to include some pioneers like Alice Guy Blache and Lois Weber, Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford, as well as the lone eminence of Ida Lupino, the evil(?) genius of Leni Riefenstahl, the endurance of Agnes Varda, and perhaps the indefatigable adaptability of Meryl Streep, along with the active and flourishing directors already mentioned.
No one has said Ms. Louise Brooks, still the template for screen heroines.
sam, god I’m blushing I didn’t also name Campion, and obviously Stephen is spot on with Ackerman,
If I was going to make any changes to my list, I’d take out John Hughes and put Kathryn Bigelow somewhere up there instead. Not because she’s a woman, or because she’s the first one to win wn Oscar, but because she is, quite simply, a kick-ass action director.
Lets not forget Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren gentlemen…
Don’t forget Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren if talking of women.
This is a fascinating subject, Sam, and I’m sure much of cyberspace will be bumpin’ with it!
It’s an approach I’m not going to be able to follow up with the kind of gusto real connoisseurs can readily muster. It seems to me that “genius” in filmmaking is a collective, historical event. Many brilliant insights and productions have attended to serious enrichment of lives in the film era, and therefore, I think, later efforts are positioned to reach more sophisticated, if not more incisive, heights. Following from this, Malick’s latest film carries extraordinary weight as propelled by virtuoso cinematic powers. But though it leads us to special rewards, I find many, far less comprehensive, efforts more riveting, at least while beholding them in the theatre. Recently, I was totally captivated by Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide (2009), ninety-nine minutes in the course of clamdigger, Jen Casad’s job—first at the onset of morning light, then at gathering nightfall, at a tidal area of Maine. I could watch this film a hundred times, but unfortunately there’s no DVD. James Benning’s Spiral Jetty is, for me, similarly exciting, more directly continuous with wider actions than film connoisseurship. (The Tree of Life—a huge step forward for Malick—bravely defers to the less than scintillating full package of historical drama. Films like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway set in relief more viscerally exciting dramatics derivable from the historical problematic that touches not only modern filmmaking, but all of modern art.)
This doesn’t really address your excellent challenge; but I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.
Brilliant comment here Jim, as usual! Well, it is very difficult to sort out this question. Some will negotiate an answer right away, while others like yourself need to deliberate a while. If you were to mention Lynch and a few others directly in this context I wouldn’t at all be surprised. And great too that Malick and TREE OF LIFE are brought into the discussion!
Sam, it’s a great question. Right now, I will have to go with:
Jean Renoir
Renoir simply has made more films that I love than any other filmmaker. In this group, I would include LA CHIENNE, LES BAS-FONDS, LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE, LA GRANDE ILLUSION, LA REGLE DU JEU, LA NUIT DU CARREFOUR, THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, THE SOUTHERNER, PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE, NANA, TONI, and LA BETE HUMAINE.
Jeffrey:
Most cineastes would name Renoir as the greatest French director. (where are you Rick Olson? Your glorious spirit is inviked here! We miss you buddy!) I know Jeffrey you are incomparable when it comes to Renoir appreciation, and have achieved the ultimate tribute, but attending some of his films in Paris theatres! Wow, WHAT A LIST there!!!! I love them all, and would add BOUDOU and FRENCH CAN CAN. There are many French film fans who haven’t yet seen PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE, which is (as you well know) one of the most exceedingly beautiful and poetic films ever made. I mentioned Renoir, but couldn’t figure where to place him.
You have him at the top. I salute you.
Tough question but I will do something different and place the Lumière brothers at #1 because they did invent a device which in essence opened up a world of possibilities and laid the foundation for other directors to explore new creative ways to portray stories and images. They also had public demonstrations of film so in a way, they helped usher in the social side of cinema watching, where people could discuss their feelings about the images they saw. Their first films were about everyday life, so it was not scripted cinema but a pure form of art that many current directors aim to achieve.
Many of the directors named above are ones I would place in my top ten but I will opt for the one director whose films are part of my earliest cinematic memory — Chaplin. I grew up watching his movies in a theater and that childhood love for film has led to my lifelong pursuit for other directors, regions, genres and film styles.
I should add another reason for my #1 choice. When I think of the word “genius” in regards to cinema, I feel the persons credited with inventing the device stand out as the true genius of cinema but this does go in line with your original question Sam. The original question was asking who is the greatest genius that cinema has produced which would exclude the inventors themselves.
Sachin: I can hardly blame you for going with the Lumieres, just as I can’t question others for naming D.W. Griffith. There is definitely a historical aspect to reaching a decision here, as others have attested to. Great qualification and personal anecdote on Chaplin my friend!
1. Stanley Kubrick
Talking about narrative filmmaking, I don’t think anybody else before him understood cinema as a distinct medium of its own, divorced from theatre and literature. In addition, I don’t believe anyone before him took as complete advantage of each decision that results in an instant of screentime.
2. Alfred Hitchcock
3. Charlie Chaplin
4. John Cassavetes
5. Jacques Tati
6. Andrei Tarkovsky
7. Orson Welles
8. Seijun Suzuki
9. Takeshi Kitano
10. Werner Herzog
Burt: Thanks for the great list! It seems whenever a knew project is launched here, you are always reliable to chime in. Thanks for all you’ve done over many months at WitD my friend!!!
“I don’t believe anyone before him took as complete advantage of each decision that results in an instant of screentime” This nails it exactly for me.
It’s a moot question from which I’ll abstain. But I’m shocked — shocked — no one has even mentioned D.W. Griffith, without whom we wouldn’t even be conducting this poll.
Not sure about that, Mark. American cinema might never have been the same, but with de Mille and Ince around, I’m not sure if Griffith’s loss would have slowed down the early cinema advancement much. There’s an argument that Bitzer was a bigger innovator, just as there’s an argument de Mille would have been nowhere without Alvin Wyckoff, the first master of chiaroscura camerawork whose career was sadly cut short by blacklisting for his union sympathies.
Good point, but where’s DeMille’s ‘Intolerance,’ ‘Way Down East,’ ‘Broken Blossoms,’ ‘Orphans of the Storm’ or his ‘Birth of Nation’? (I have to confess my ignorance here that I don’t know who Bitzer was!!) I think DeMille was a prodigious technical master and showman, but he was also cursed with tacky middle-brow tastes, the P.T. Barnum of film. I haven’t seen many of DeMille’s silent epics (his silent ‘The Ten Commandments’ isn’t bad), but his 50’s Biblical spectaculars (Victor Mature, Edward G. Robinson, Debra Paget, Yul Brynner, Hedy Lamarr) are hilariously untalented.
Griffith was a lover of Victorian theater and lit., the Dickens (and sometimes the Thomas Hardy) of film.
Or do I underestimate DeMille? Especially his early work? What would you recommend from that era?
By the way, Allan, who was Bitzer? It’s the first time I’ve heard the name.
Agreed on Griffith. I’ve seen enough features from 1914-15 (The Italian and Walsh’s Regeneration come to mind) to realize that Griffith led the field only in scale. Big chunks of Birth and Intolerance remain shockingly primitive, and not just in their social attitudes. I can’t believe that all his peers owed everything to Griffith. I agree, too, that De Mille benefited from many collaborators, especially Mitchell Leisen in the early 1930s, but he also had a kind of genius of sensibility that clearly outlasted Griffith’s by a long way.
Er, Billy Bitzer, Griffith’s cameraman.
For de Mille seek out The Whispering Chorus, Male and Female, even the silent King of Kings.
Oops, Allan, thanks kindly for reminding my knucklehead about Bitzer. For some reason the name just didn’t click. And I’ll definitely seek out those DeMilles. Probably hard to locate. But I still think Griffith was the great innovator. I mean, didn’t he invent the close-up, the fade-in, the fade-out, etc.? And wasn’t von Stroheim his assistant on ‘Intolerance’? Anyway, I know the great Russians, Eisenstein and Pudovkin, often cited Griffith’s work as a huge influence.
As for DeMille’s longevity, films like ‘Samson and Deliliah’ and ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ are beyond disbelief.
Yes, Mark, von Stroheim was Griffith’s assistant on ‘Intolerance’ (he was also an extra in that masterpiece) and yes, Griffith did bring the close-up to prominence, using it more than any other director before him. And yes, his films are monuments to abstract ideas, with characters set against the mammoth backgrounds of history, time and space. The architecture of ‘Intolerance’ has never been surpassed. DeMille was a mere drayhorse while Griffith was a genius of melodrama (not a shabby achievement. Read ‘Tess’ or ‘David Copperfield’). Watch 1956’s ‘The Ten Commandments’ again (if you have the stomach) and see that it is an absurdity to claim DeMille is more (or equally) important to Griffith, an assertion that would be comical if it weren’t so goddamned depressing.
(And I love your review of ‘Jail Bait,’ a film that stands very high in the Fassbinder canon. Agreed.)
I actually think the “scale” of Griffith’s works, while important historically, is less important than his humanism – with the exception of Birth & Intolerance, his best work is more concerned with small moments than grand ones (though they have their admirers, I consider America & Orphans of the Storm disappointing muddles). And, incidentally, I think the “size matters” aspects of Birth and Intolerance are only half the picture, if even that – the enduring strength of the films (the first moreso than the second, which is why I’ve come to consider the better film) lies not in the grand scale but in the small gestures and humanist touches alongside the epic elements: i.e. the termites carry the film, not the elephants (the elephants just amplify the scale of the achievement, not create the achievement itself). If that makes any sense whatsoever.
Incidentally, has anyone else seen The Struggle (I know Allan has, and admired it though not as much as me). I think it’s one of Griffith’s best works; it’s not large-scale at all but incredibly unique and poweful, presaging neorealism in some ways. Highly recommended.
Movieman —
That makes perfect sense. The way Griffith directed Gish — the dervish in the closet in ‘Broken Blossoms’ or the chase across the ice floes in ‘Way Down East’ are as terrifying and moving as anything in film. No pillars, no elephants, just pure electrifying emotion.
Haven’t seen ‘The Struggle’ but definitely have it on my must-see list now.
Let’s agree that a “genius” in any medium is someone who understands the medium not only thoroughly–technically, historically, intellectually–but also instinctually. A cinema genius, then, thinks in pictures, and knows how to make all the elements of filmmaking work together. With “Citizen Kane,” Welles did this–although anything else he made that was less than genius was due not to a lack of genius but of cooperation or dedication. Like Ford’s Westerns, Hitchcock narrowed his narrative gaze–focused it?–and produced genius 90% of the time. In some ways Scorsese is the epitome of the cinema genius: He understands cinema as thoroughly as anyone–and his lifelong immersion in film has given him impeccable instincts, at least at the level of the individual scene or shot (and in every frame of “Raging Bull, any random five minutes of which provides a mini-textbook of cinematic technique and effect.) D.W. Griffith more or less invented or codified film grammar–maybe making him a top contender. And I think Fellini loved cinema promiscuously.
Other geniuses: Coppola, at times (his “Dracula” is a delirious catalog of film technique/instinct). The oft-mentioned Harryhausen, at least in his (significant) corner of cinema. Kurosawa, who could take his time and find the marriage of the novel and the film–he is one of the greatest narrative filmmakers. Lynch doesn’t think in pictures, but my oh my he sure dreams in them. Like a blindfolded Marine with his weapon, Godard takes cinema apart and then puts it together again–a bit too cold and precise for my tastes, but I understand the effort it takes. Ozu makes me feel exactly what he wants me to. (Like Hitchcock, he understands that the movies are a machine for manufacturing emotions in humans.) Val Lewton made more with nothing than just about anyone. And of course there’s Disney, who understood how to make cinema familial, communal–movies not just FOR “the whole family,” but about them–with a pretty fair dose of filmic awareness–is “Pinocchio” the first cartoon noir, with a “Last Laugh”-style happy ending pasted on?
Actors: Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, Jean Gabin, Bette Davis, Paul Newman, James Cagney, Toshiro Mifune, Liv Ullmann, Anthony Hopkins, Barbara Stanwyck, Lillian Gish, Marcello Mastroianni–all of whom (and a dozen or so more) understands/understood movie acting, the specific things they could do to convey their performance effectively despite that big eye watching so closely.
Music: Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Howard Shore–at least in his ability to go from Cronenberg to LOTR without batting an eye–and just about any of the Warner Bros. Golden Age composers.
Cinematography: Gregg Toland, James Wong Howe, Eugen Schüfftan, Billy Bitzer, Sven Nykvist, Vilmos Zsigmond.
Honorable Mention: Murnau, Thelma Schoonmaker, Hedda Hopper, the Coen brothers, Truffaut, Lev Kuleshov, Richard Fleischer, just about every character actor who carried a mediocre picture or stole a scene from a “bigger” star.
The Best of the Best? The one who approached cinema as though he’d invented it? Hold on a second while I ask someone to hold a gun to my head and intone, “Choose or die” … OK: Kubrick–no, wait: Chaplin. Don’t shoot!
Paul, this is utterly brilliant and I love the way you ended it there!!! Ha!!!
Among the cinematographers I’d have to add Kazuo Mitagawa, Jack Cardiff, Charles Rosher, Rudolf Mate, Gunner Fisher, H. Burel, Guiseppe Rotunno, Eduard Tisse among others.
And among compsers we’ve have to add Max Steiner, Ennio Morricone, Miklos Rosza, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Aldred Newman, Nono Rota, Victor Young, John Barry, Dmitri Tiomkin….
But your entire presentation here is magisterial!
For composers
Morricone, Herrmann, Korngold, Lubos Fiser, Steiner, Rota, Hayashi, Rózsa, Preisner, Auric, Takemitsu, Tiomkin, Nyman, Jaubert, Delerue, Waxman, Legrand, Williams, Bernstein, Newman, Liska, Desplat, Hayasaka, etc.
Cinematographers, Zsigmond doesn’t really belong there with the others, certainly not ahead of this lot in rough order…
Miyagawa (best of the lot), Cardiff, Freund, Coutard, Alton, Figueroa, Storaro, Maté, Barnes, August, Decaë, Garmes, Périnal, Musuraca, Kaufman, Almendros, MacDonald, Burel, Shamroy, Rotunno, Jaenzon, Seitz, Martelli, Fischer, Daniels, di Venanzo, Krasker, Deakins, Hall, Doyle, Thirard, FA Wagner, Roeg, Metty, Miller, Unsworth, Francis, Burks, Ballard, Edeson, Kruger, RL Surtees, Struss, Young, Lubtchansky, Aldo, Alekan, Cortez, Delli Colli, de Santis, Arnold, Wyckoff, Matras, Nakai, Milner, Glennon, Gaudio, Alcott, Polito, Persson, Mohr, Tisse, Vierny, Watkin, Richardson, C Renoir, Willis, Dod Mantle, that’ll do for starters.
Zsigmond most definitely belongs. I see you just needed an excuse to write down a bunch of cinematographers to remind us of your expertise lol. Go back and check though because you missed at least two huge ones.
LOL!!!!!!!!
Touche, Maurizio, touche, but you’d need a bloody long sword from where you’re sitting, not to mention some grappling irons.
And remember that I was listing those in addition to Paul’s quoted ones.
So I didn’t have to mention…Gregg Toland, James Wong Howe, Eugen Schüfftan, Billy Bitzer, Sven Nykvist. None of whom I’d disagree with.
Just some friendly ribbing Mr Fish.
Is your long sword bit some Teddy Roosevelt analogy of carrying a big stick while walking trepidatiously. I have been known to refuse good practical advice when given.
That shit brown glow throughout McCabe has me forever enamored…
That’s probably as accurate a description of McCabe’s look as I have seen. Call it a latrine rinse.
Agreed, Allan. Kazuo Miyagawa is the greatest photographer of them all. I’ll never forget ‘The Ballad of Orin.’
As one of the mere groundlings, I’d just like to mention that you forgot Carlo di Palma (‘Red Desert’), Antonioni’s master photographer. As if anyone gives a rat’s ass what I think.
Mark: As one of the most brilliant commentators at this site, I’d say quite a few care quite a bit what you think about cinema. of that much I am certain.
Sam,
As I mentioned in the e-mail I came a little unglued at the cold shoulder given to Griffith during the greatest genuises tally. In American film you’ve got Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton and Welles in the unassailable genius category. Ford and Hawks rank pretty high, too. Post-1960, there’s Cassavetes (‘Faces’), Jack Smith (‘Flaming Creatures’), Coppola (‘The Godfather,’ ‘The Conversation’), Scorsese (‘Raging Bull’), Lynch (‘Eraserhead’, ‘Mulholland Drive’) Malick (‘Badlands’, ‘Tree of Life’) Altman (‘Nashville’), Daryl Duke (‘Payday’), Soderbergh (‘sex, lies and videotape’), Lee (‘Do the Right Thing’), Joel and Ethan Coen (‘Fargo’), Sofia Coppola (‘The Virgin Suicides’), Todd Solodnz (‘Happiness’), and so on.
But DeMille? Well, to put it kindly, he suffers considerably compared to most of these other directors. And I forgot Barbara Loden (‘Wanda’), Barbara Kopple (‘Harlan County USA’) and Elaine May (has anyone seen ‘Mikey and Nicky’ lately?). That’s my two cents.
t
Oh goodness me. How did I overlook Robert Altman (mentioned below)? As great as The Godfather films are, and as great as Scorsese is, I think I’d place Altman above both of them in terms of geniusness.
OK, I’ll bite.
Yasujiro Ozu — for ‘Tokyo Story.’
Mark, you have hereby been annointed King of the Realm and Guardian of all things filmic.
That answer has won you lifelong membership to Humanists Anonymous and an eternal spot in my affections.
You are Numero Uno.
Wow, Sam!
I’m intrigued by this challenge, but nervous to participate. Much as I love films, there are huge gaps in my viewing experience, and I don’t think I’m capable of drafting a definitive “top ten” list of cinema geniuses.
But here goes anyway.
I think Chaplin would top my list – he really did it all didn’t he? Created a memorable character that is recognizable and beloved to this day. Wrote, directed, acted – very often to perfection. Made the transition from silent to talkies, even if belatedly. Made us laugh and cry.
The rest of the list (in no particular order) would be: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Busby Berkeley, Lillian Gish, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Frederico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, MIchael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (although those last two seem like they should be halves of the same, single entry).
I picked LIillian Gish because I think her ability to act on film was particularly nuanced and naturalistic for the silent era, and because even as I’m writing this, I’m watching her in “Night of the Hunter” on TCM, and she’s blowing me away. She had a talent that endured and transcended different eras and film acting styles.
Pat: This is an awesome list, and the addition of Lillian Gish is not only deserved but inspired! I can’t understand why she is always taken for granted. Among actors she was a towering artist, and her involvement in the movies is legendary. And yes, she was unforgettable late in her career in HUNTER. So many other brilliant choices here!
It’s extremely difficult for me to chime in this one, since I don’t have as wide a scope as many of the people who have posted until now, but I’ll try…
1. Alfred Hitchcock. Amazed how many people haven’t mentioned him… or maybe I just don’t understand the rules and I shouldn’t be pùtting him in this list, but still, his style has been influential, and his style may be the best style around to make movies, always seemingly mechanical, but with a lot of feelings and things that aren’t told on the first level. He almost acted like a producer in most of his films, as well as writer, even if he isn’t credited in his own films in both accounts, he practicly had the scripts written around his regulations. He made a celebrity out of himself, maybe the first director to be a recognizable figure (and it may still be, I didn’t knew how Spielberg or Lucas looked like until I had internet when I was 15-16 years old, but I knew who Hitchcock was from the start). He managed to have cameos in all his films, he was an humorist, he had mystery stories compilations under his name, he had two TV series with his name in it. Who else could be the greatest genius in the history of cinema? He’s the man.
2. Akira Kurosawa
3. Stanley Kubrick
4. Jimmy Stewart
5. Chistopher Doyle
6. Yasujiro Ozu
7. Saul Bass
8. Ishiro Honda
9. Setsuko Hara
10. Chan-wook Park
I hate Hithcock with ther fire of infinite supernovas, save for the films he made with Stewart (who I like, and have great respect for as a combat pilot in WWII, but wouldn’t really call a cinematic genius). Awesome calls on Saul Bass and Isihiro Honda, though. The founding father of kaiju– if your personal canon ain’t big enough for the king of the monsters, then pardon my Caprican, but FRAK YOU.
Jaime sez, “I don’t have as wide a scope as many of the people who have posted until now”–but you went with Hitchcock, Jaime, which makes good sense. I wasted a lotta years caught up in a contradiction: I loved his movies and pooh-pooh’d his rep. Then one day I realized how much he understood the kind of director he was, and worked at it for most of his life. Consider “Frenzy”: He was no spring chicken, and he had no “stars”–but he crafted two or three of his most masterful set-pieces. So don’t get spooked by Bob Clark, that Hitch-hater. He’s watched one too many Godzilla movies.
(Bob, insert winking emoticon HERE. One of my four or five fondest moviegoing experiences was a “movie party” when I was a kid; we went to the Walt Whitman Theater in NJ and saw “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” Probably the last old-style Saturday matinees I ever attended.)
Paul, don’t worry here. Jaime and I share a bond stronger than anything a mere disagreement over directors could tear assunder. We are both gamers, and more importantly, we are both fans of Kojima.
But seriously, I frakin’ hate Hitchcock. “Rope”, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo” are all okay. The rest, I wouldn’t even watch if it were playing on an airplane that was about to crash.
Great list Jaime!
As far as Bob’s super-rare hatred of Hitchcock, well as always I won’t even go there.
Sam you’ve thrown down quite the challenge here in naming one genius and I guess I will stick to it. For me it’s not hard. It’s Ingmar Bergman. No other person in cinema has moved me, challenged me and inspired me more than he has. I find that I continually return to Bergman to find something. I often don’t know what it is that I will find, even when returning to an old favorite like Persona. Every time I watch it, something different grabs me. It’s like this with his other films too. I must have Bergman in my life. He asks the big questions about life, purpose, existence, relationships, love, morality, God. I don’t always agree with him, but I sympathize with his search. When I sit down to watch a Bergman film, I feel I’m in the presence of watching something special that no one else could have created but him. He hits me full force and I feel like he’s communicating directly to me.
As for others, there are several who follow… Hitchcock, Kubrick, Garbo, Liv Ullman, Welles, Kieslowski, etc.
But, as I said, I always come back to Bergman.
It’s a noble choice Jon. He is unquestionably one of the very few true geniuses, and the label seems practically made for him. Wonderful validation and follow up choices!
Oh hell, I can’t list “the greatest genius cinema has ever produced”. I just can’t. But I can list some extraordinary talents of cinema–each one a genius in their own right. And as anxious as I am to name only film directors, I thought I’d make it interesting for myself by narrowing that specific field down to just one, leaving the rest open for different contributions to the medium. Numbers 2 through 10 have been arbitrarily ranked; No. 1, however, is No. 1 – if I were to make a list of true greats, that person would definitely be on it, near the top.
10. Bruce Lee
A performance artist in every sense of the word. He understood every microcosm of his physique and physical nature. He understood how the smallest movements, the slightest twitch, registered on screen for the fullest effect. His physical self-awareness in proportion to the camera was astonishing. Had he lived, I’m convinced Lee would have become a truly great actor and even a great director. He had already proven himself an iconic persona and master fight choreographer, and was a genuinely thoughtful and intelligent person all around.
9. Dru Struzan
When movie posters become magical. Struzan’s gift with airbrushed acrylics render simple one-sheets that evoke pulpy wonders and make any film look like a rousing, fantastic exploit, even when the films themselves are vastly inferior: check out the poster for FAKE OUT – http://home.scarlet.be/~bliek/drew-index-037.html …what glamor!
8. Dean Cundey
To make my case, I refer all eyes to Exhibit A: THE THING. People may not think masterful cinematography when they see this movie, but they should. In every frame Cundey balances perfectly, invisibly, light and shadow, colors and temperates; the low cool blues of the night snow, a hot pink flare, or something as seemingly simple as a an artic station breakroom that hides in plain sight a rather sophisticated color scheme. Cundey’s lighting conveys an array of specific, even conflicting, moods within a single shot that helps tell the story with thankless, top notch craftsmanship.
7. Roger Corman
Not as a director (though an argument could be made) but as the greatest journeyman mentor in the history of film. Corman’s genius has been his selfless acceptance and no-nonsense tutelage of countless amazing talents that have since achieved great heights on their own, including directors, cinematographers, FX artist, various on-set designers and movie stars. The man is an opportunity factory. Laugh if you will at the Syfy hokum such as DINOSHARK and SHARKTOPUS, but who knows what future great filmmakers are cutting their teeth in the process?
6. H. R. Giger
Creatures from the id: sexualized, biomechanical nightmares that forever imbedded ALIEN into the filmgoing psyche. Giger tapped into something primal and horrifying but also strangely beautiful. Considering how sparse his work in the industry has been, it is all the more testament to the lasting power of his designs. I recommend looking up some of his concept images for a version of DUNE that never was.
5. Ray Harryhausen
He’s already been mentioned thrice but I’ll be damned if a fourth shout-out isn’t justified. Simply put, monsters are rad, and Harryhausen has left in his wake an epic of inanimates brought to life, of imaginations turned into Dynamations.
4. Stan Winston
After Harryhausen, Winston took it to the next level: full scaled animatronica, of the likes no one had ever seen before, not to mention his groundbreaking work in makeup and prosthetics. So many iconic creatures and characters that could exist nowhere else but on celluloid, and yet were none-the-less rendered tangible marvels that could be filmed and interacted with in-camera. The man built a Tyrannosaur from the ground up. Come on!
3. Jerry Goldsmith
He lived up to his surname. Never have I heard a bad Jerry Goldsmith score. Never. I have, however, seen some lousy films that have attained immortality because of Goldsmith’s music. Mixing classic Hollywood with modern techniques, he was a champion of worldly romantic, ethnic adventure scores while also blending electronic phrases to give some of the most elegant harmonies in sci-fi, fantasy and horror. His legacy is vast to say the least, with over 200 scores to mine.
2. Peter Lorre
Peter Lore was a genius at being Peter Lorre. I think he’s maybe the greatest character actor of all time who had one of those mugs that was cinema incarnate: that sad face, those big expressive eyes. He made sympathetic a pedophile serial killer. And I can always watch him as Mr. Moto.
1. George Lucas
Kudos, Cadet, for having the balls to put the Bearded One as your number one pick– I’m happy to have him in the top five, but even I’m not crazy enough to put him above the likes of Godard or Lang (if I did the list over again I might raise himabove Harryhausen and Kurosawa, but there’s simply not enough daylight in the day to cover the flaming that would ignite). Speaking of Lang, I must say that I am sorely saddened not to see him on your list, especially with the likes of the man formerly knoen as Hans Beckert occupying the number two spot. Lorre’s a fine performer, but it was the man in the monocle that drove him to those heights (or perhaps one shiuld call them depths). It’s not a terribly big deal, but Lang seems to have gotten the fuzzy end of the lollypop here, and I can’t help but believe that he deserves better.
Well, it’s like I said; I made an effort to keep my choice of directors narrowed down to one. Otherwise, I would have gone hogwild in that department alone. But since you asked (indirectly) …in addition to Lucas:
Stanley Kubrick
Orson Welles
Buster Keaton
Fritz Lang
Ingmar Bergman
Akira Kurosawa
John Ford
Howard Hawkes
David Lean
FF Coppola
Martin Scorsese
Walt Disney
Not exactly daring choices, yet I’m sure you’ve noticed no New Wave Frenchies or Italians; no doubt I admire those guys, but only from a certain distance – I reckon at this point the whole “genius” directive is really just gloss for me listing my personal favorites, though I’ll valiantly argue the genius of said favorites. But allow me to beckon scoffs and raise some eyebrows by further adding to that list some directors who, goddamnit, have a shine of genius all their own. You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!
Michael Curtiz
Michael Mann
John Carpenter
David Cronenberg
Tony Scott (yep, I went there)
Douglas Sirk
Paul Verhoeven
Mamoru Oshii
David Lynch
Walter Hill (whom, I actually prefer over Peckinpah)
Alex Cox
Terry Gilliam
Carroll Ballard
Peter Weir
John McTiernan
Sofia Coppola (even more than her dad, I say)
…and Steven Spielberg
I’m still can’t decide if Spielberg is a true genius or merely the greatest(?) adroit mechanism of cinematic language, or manipulation or cheap trickery …or whatever you want to call it.
All good choices there, Cadet. Cronenberg is one I love, especially his early period, but he’s lost a certain amount of credibility with me after entering his “Viggo Mortensen Hits People” phase– hopefully the Freud vs Jung and DeLillo flicks will jolt him out of that. Ballard is an excellent choice, indeed, a nice idiosynchratic blend of artist who makes family-friendly work that doesn’t talk down to anyone (unlike even the best of the Pixar dreck). Oshii is someone I mentioned, myself– I prefer Anno, but he’s not really a “cinema” figure (though on this blog, film and television appear to be the same damn thing most of the time), but he’s easily one of my favorite anime directors. It’s a bit too conventional to put Miyazaki up there, maybe, but if I was gonna buck the convention, it’d be for Anno.
And Tony instead of Ridley? Sofia instead of Francis Ford? Oh, no you didn’t! Putting Gilliam and Cox so close together is amusing, considering the behind-the-scenes drama of “Fear and Loathing”. I’d like to give Spielberg the benefit of the doubt, myself– he’s sincere, I think, but I prefer the sincerity of Lucas. I will say, as I’ve said before, that there was one hell of a lost opportunity between those two in the 80’s, when Spielberg almost (co)directed ROTJ with Lucas. I dearly wish they had become a Coen/Archer style directing team, instead of merely collaborating then and again with the Indy flicks. Together, they would’ve been incredible.
K Cadet – there is a padded cell waiting for you, and just about every film made prior to 1970, including all in a language other than American English.
Is that next to the room reserved for subjects who dismiss by default any potential artistic genius of post ’70s American(ized) talents for being un-chicly too modern and too commercial?
Oh, boy! We can be cell-block buddies!
be careful with the term ‘modern’ in art. Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron, et al are not ‘modern’ artists. Yes, they work in our contemporary times, but their work is not modern. At all.
Nope. They’re post-modern. Or post-post-modern. Or post-apocalyptic modern, which is probably just as good a term as anything.
Really, the word “modern” as it applies to any kind of art is rather meaningless nowadays. I love going to MoMA as much as the next person, but if they were serious about their name, they’d have to give away at least half of the dusty old relics taking up space in there. Hell, even Warhol’s work is getting a little long in the tooth.
Modern = last three years.
I’d be generous, and say the last ten. After a decade’s finished, it’s only so long before nostalgia starts to set in. By now, the 80’s might as well be the reign of Queen Victoria.
‘Modern’ in this context is a sensibility not a date.
As such Warhol’s oeuvre is still more forward thinking/cutting edge then anything offered by Lucas (sans THX), Spielberg, Cameron, etc. By miles actually. That trio clings to the status quo so much they probably go to sleep exhausted from the strain.
Spielberg and Cameron I won’t argue too much, but Lucas isn’t the guy who adheres to the old status-quo. He’s the guy who invented the new one. You can bemoan what has followed in his wake, but he’s not really following anyone’s example but his own (at least insofar as pastiche artists like Lang, Godard or Leone can, giants standing on the shoulders of other giants).
Obviously, I disagree. Riffing on others that have come before really doesn’t matter either. An early Godard is more forward thinking in construction, subject matter, formal aesthetics, idea, etc. then a Lucas film that came out in the last decade. Lucas has view of the world that isn’t seeking to unsettle anyone or question any preconceived notion.
I always chuckle at the wedding ceremony at the end of the Second prequel. Even in a galaxy ‘far far away’ they marry and court each other exactly like people on planet Earth have for centuries. It’s beyond laughable to say he’s modern in any artistic/social connotation. Baudelaire was and is more modern then Lucas could ever dream to be– almost 125 years before him.
I understand you like Lucas but it’s just not an attribute he has.
I was exaggerating re 3 years as modern. Ten seems about right. In terms of sensibility, how would you define a modern sensibility?
Jamie, you’ve got to stop it with this hang-up you have about conventions being portrayed on-screen, in any form. It’s the same thinking that insists something like “Hannah and Her Sisters” is a more realistic and sober film than something like “It’s a Wonderful Life” (I still can’t get over how cluelessly Allen portrays depression in that film, or the cop-out immaculate conception in the ending). And anyway, even if you’re not a fan of the wedding, at least it ends in a marital homicide.
Is Lucas as defiant to conventions as Godard? No, but then again nobody is. Even the Malick of “Tree of Life” seems the patron saint of linear narrative when compared to something like “Film Socialisme” (which I would gladly watch a hundred times even with those infuriating Navajo English subtitles before bothering to watch Sean Penn get lost in the desert again), so it’s kind of a false comparison. I’d instead hold what Lucas did in the Prequels, inverting and subverting the iconography of SW films past and jettisoning their shallow Manichean thematics in favor of a surprisingly bleak, uncompromising portrait of the quagmire created by political, commercial and personal greed. They’re mainstream, yes, but they’re also as experimental and unconventional as the mainstream can get, at least in America (or, more generiously, in live-action). I’ll take one shot out of any of those films rather than the entire output of guys like Nolan, Jackson or Cameron throughout the entire decade.
A modern sensibility in art, to me, is a shredding of preconceived values and forms.
This is as simple, and all encompassing as I can be. Everything (‘everything’ being social interaction, economic practice, humanism, religion/spirituality, formal aesthetics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc) needs questioned, reevaluated, and reconstructed. After a desired ‘goal’ is asserted of course. Once this ‘goal’ is understood by the artist, the work can then work in attempt to reach this desired goal. Obvious if you’re an sensitive artist you can’t accept or value the world as it is, so if you are creating work that doesn’t challenge or question this you have little to stand on.
With this definition it’s easy to see how ‘remix’ artists like Godard can still be considered ‘modern’ as obviously what they ‘beg, borrow, and steal’ from (and then advance on) are other pieces of modernity.
It needed be ‘grand’ either, as it starts with everything. Ironically (RE:) Lucas reached his ‘modern’ peak about 5 minutes into his career (a peak he’s never attempted to approach again, leading me to believe it was reached almost on accident): the title sequence in THX:1138 is not only one of the great title sequences in Cinema, its treatment of typography meets my criteria wonderfully.
btw, I understood that you were joking about the 3 year claim. What are your guys’ definitions of ‘modern’ in an artistic sense?
If they’re as experimental and unconventional as the mainstream can get then maybe none of us really have any business watching mainstream shit, which I think is what Jamie is getting at.
“I’d instead hold what Lucas did in the Prequels, inverting and subverting the iconography of SW films past and jettisoning their shallow Manichean thematics in favor of a surprisingly bleak, uncompromising portrait of the quagmire created by political, commercial and personal greed. They’re mainstream, yes, but they’re also as experimental and unconventional as the mainstream can get, at least in America (or, more generiously, in live-action). I’ll take one shot out of any of those films rather than the entire output of guys like Nolan, Jackson or Cameron throughout the entire decade.”
Your saying his shit doesn’t smell as bad as the worst-smelling shit. Hardly a vote of confidence where I come from.
I feel a ‘hang-up’ with conventional practices, when vile, is not the negative you think it to be. So I’ll disregard that more or less.
yes, Peter! You’re one the right track, and I love that you also chose ‘shit’ as your adjective for what objects are being discussed.
Remember, Jamie (and Peter, for that matter), not everyone equates “mainstream” with “shit”. Overexposed, sometimes? Yes. Taken for granted, consequently? Absolutely. My issue is that there’s really plenty of good in the mainstream that doesn’t deserve the taint belonging to the mediocrity that surrounds it. Guys like Ford, Hitchcock, Leone and et all have gone on the be celebrated in their respective modes, never mind the crap that stands in the genres they worked in (has anybody ever tried to watch a non-Leone spaghetti western?), and frankly I believe Lucas is entitled to the same celebration, from those who’ll provide it.
And again– if marriage was such a vile, contemptuous institution, Jamie, then I wouldn’t bother supporting it for same-sex couples. Is it overdone? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad.
The definition you have of “modernism” seems a little unrealistic, as it’s practically impossible for anyone to cast off all preconceptions, especially when going about the business of making any kind of representational cinema (Brakhage or other purely abstract filmmakers/animators could get there, at times). It’s a good goal, if one that can never really be met one-hundred percent, but if I were going to offer a definition of “modern” beyond being that which is “contemporary” (and that’s something worth paying attention to– too much hindsight, and you overlook the gems right at your feet), then I would say that I look for the game-changers, the ones who change the course of an art’s style or substance in big or small ways. Even if it’s being informed by influences from the past (and even those who try to shed preconcieved values and forms can only ever say they’ve done so, with certainty– consciously or otherwise, the past remains with us), those who fundamentally alter the course of art through their own invention are the ones I’d call modern.
“I love that you also chose ‘shit’ as your adjective for what objects are being discussed.”
Wouldn’t that be a noun? At any rate, it still doesn’t have to be pejorative. Sometimes the highest compliment you can give is “Dude, this is some good shit”.
If my definition of ‘modern’ was so ‘unrealistic’ we wouldn’t have the countless examples that actually exist in every medium. It’s incredibly realistic.
I also want to say that Lucas would make the argument that he should be anti-modern as if shaking the foundations became the norm his whole fortune (in the hundreds of millions, if not over a billion at this point) would become susceptible to being lost or at least severely dwindled.
Jamie, the same could probably be said of the game-changer theory of modernism, or any other subjective definition for these things. I’ll maintain that it’s functionally impossible to cast off all preconceptions as you’re talking about– one can distance one’s self from them, but going all the way would signal such a retreat from the rest of the world that you’d never see the artist again (though it is interesting how many of the big figures of modern literature and cinema become recluses– Salinger, Kubrick, Malick and even Lucas).
“I also want to say that Lucas would make the argument that he should be anti-modern as if shaking the foundations became the norm his whole fortune (in the hundreds of millions, if not over a billion at this point) would become susceptible to being lost or at least severely dwindled.”
So, he can’t be unconventional because he’s rich? Because his experiments have turned out to be a success? Perhaps you should stick to assuming to know what’s in the head of directors you do like, rather than the ones you don’t (I’m still anxiously waiting how your “Tree of Life” essay will turn out, on the matter of Malick’s beliefs).
Well, I’ll hold that Lucas isn’t modern, and I have 99.99999% of the world on my side (the .000001 that believes as you do are Lucas fan boys who can’t judge him objectively if they/you tried). Lucas isn’t anti-modern because he’s rich (here you make quit e leap of what I’ve said) but rather he’s rich because he’s a mainstream panderer (his fortune has come from franchise merchandising hardly the avenue for a shrewd questioner/experimenter).
Reread what I said, not all values will be deemed obsolete in my definition. After reevaluating it’s easy to think that some would prove incredibly valid and/or workable.
I’ll take your conclusions about my finishing (or not finishing) the Malick piece as nothing more then trolling. You don’t know the content or the thesis, so it’s little more then an attack.
Jamie,
You can’t really judge a work of art ‘objectively’ and if (for sake of argument) you can, then what makes you think that the crazy fan devotion people have for it isn’t arrived at after objective analysis?
No, Jamie. It’s me honestly expressing that I’m interested in reading what you have to say about “Tree of Life”. You’re a big Malick fan, and it’s a big Malick movie. Plus, it’s the closest I’ve come to sharing concensus opinion on a Malick movie, so I’m just interested in your take. Nothing sinister.
As for the division of opinion on Lucas– funny how the -1% of your estimation has room to include pretty much every movie-going person on the planet outside of those who only frequent the art-house circuit (there’s a pandering there, as well, giving them only what they want to see) and generations of filmmakers themselves, who have followed his examble in technique, style and substance for more than 30 years now. As for his merchandising, he’s just managed to play that game better than anybody else did before him or since, and it’s what bought him the creative currency to keep his franchise under his vision and authority. Do I wish that he would make good on his promise to go back to the days of THX? Yeah, but I’ll take what I can get at this point, like Anno with “Evangelion” (another great series whose reputation is somewhat diminished by the merchandise).
I’m reminded of an anecdote Lucas shared about being at a film festival with George Cukor (who quite liked the younger director, though I can’t imagine what they had in common), and saying that he didn’t want to be known as a filmmaker, but as a toymaker who makes films. This was long before “Star Wars”, mind you, and maybe before “American Graffiti”. So even if you want to debate the intellectual rigour of Lucas’ stuff, I don’t think you can really go after its integrity. No wonder he went into merchandising with SW– it was full of the stuff he liked anyway, with toys and comics. I recall when the Wachowskis pushed “The Matrix” into their own toys, comics, anime, manga and video-games– nobody was calling them panderers, or at least not nearly as much.
This is true, but I’m saying to judge Lucas on something objective, put him into some finite focus, not his work (most of his work isn’t worth this anyways). As for the fans, I can’t say that either way, but as long as his work is being judge just based of his own, or against other mainstream BS that isn’t really objective in relation to other art. I feel this is an incredibly fair assessment.
But see Bob how quickly the discussion is no longer about art, aesthetics, or values. We’re now defending/critiquing his merchandising talents. All bull shit more or less, and not the original topic, but this is what happens when you discuss Lucas where artists are concerned.
Jamie, if you’re not going to judge Lucas on his films, then what’s the point of your debating his validity as a filmmaker (debating him as a toymaker is another matter, I suppose)? And aside from artists with actual, legitimate moral hangups (Polanski being a rapist, Riefenstahl being a Nazi, Griffith heroicizing the KKK), I don’t really see any avenue for forming an objective opinion on anyone, outside of knowing them in real life.
As for judging his stuff against mainstream BS– we’re seeing far more mainstream escapist blockbusters being touted as art nowadays (the works of Nolan, Jackson, Cameron etc) and with few exceptions they tend to make overrated garbage. Considering the absurd commercial and critical success they enjoy, I don’t think it’s meaningless to say that Lucas is better than any of them. At the very least, if stuff like “Inception”, LOTR or “Avatar” can be placed on any respected critic’s list without shame, I don’t think it’s uncalled for to see the Prequels put there, as well.
He’s not as deep as Godard. But neither were Fuller, Ray or any of the people that Jean-Luc admire(s/d– I can’t tell if he’s given up on that stuff entirely).
And Jamie, being that I come to this conversation from the perspective of gaming/game-design, I don’t think talking about a filmmaker’s expansion into things like toys and whatnot as irrelevant as you think. It’s no less important than considering philosophy when tackling Malick. Does one have more prestige than the other? Yeah, but that’s beside the point. Toys and games additionally have an interesting way in which they break free of the rather passive nature of the cinematic medium, allowing for some kind of active engagement. It’s taken for granted in the films themselves, but Lucas’ game-like imagery (particularly the pointer-scene/heads-up-display visuals in THX and ANH) almost invite the viewer to take part in the story vicariously by following along with the action, which is made all the easier to understand with shots and moments that clearly outline the geography, stakes and rules of the set-piece. Ludic qualities like those are what help the film win over audiences, rather than simply bowling them over with a lot of meaningless shock-and-awe spectacle that’s present in most sci-fi/fantasy/action movies nowadays.
How exactly is the fact that philosophy has more prestige than toys or video games beside the point? Really, that is the point. If that Cukor anecdote is true (and I have no reason to believe it’s not), and Lucas’ chief influence was toys, then that speaks to clear deficiencies in his work, or at least a specific childishness. I’m all for celebrating works of so-called “low art” of true merit (I love Feuillade), but that doesn’t mean everything should be equalized, or that Flash Gordon (or Joseph Campbell) should be considered comparable to Martin Heidegger. That seems to be accepted practice now, and that’s insane.
It’s beside the point because on a long enough time scale, all creative mediums gain equal prestige sooner or later. Cinema used to be looked down upon by the theater; television by cinema; comics and animation by anything live action and games by pretty much everything, after the artistic-plateau of millennial culture. We’re especially starting to see games take off as a mainstream medium, with plenty of creators getting respect enough within an audience that is ever-expanding. Hopefully in the next decade or two names like Hideo Kojima and Fumito Ueda will be something closer to household names.
Bob, philosophy will NEVER be on equal terms with toy merchandising. You can quote me on that for the rest of human existence.
Peter nails my reluctance to continue.
I’m not talking about toy merchandising, at the moment, but game-design as a viable art form. Toy-design is just as viable, if it doesn’t quite have the same exposure as other forms (primarily because of how anonymous it tends to be).
As for merchandising, it’s just gaming the system, finding a way to export your work to make some money, support yourself in the marketplace. To me, Lucas selling toys isn’t any different from directors charging exorbitant prices for delivering lectures, or whatnot.
I think Jamie has a point here, though necessarily in the exact sense he means. For me the issue is not one’s value judgement of marriage (I don’t share his blanket condemnation, whatever my personal reservations) but rather that this is one of many examples of how Lucas domesticates the unfamiliar – I think one of the tenets of modernism is to do the opposite, make the familiar somehow alien. Lucas takes the vast expanses of the universe and turns it into a reflection of earth, and mostly western civilization at tjat (the eastern touches are more orientalist than oriental in nature).
Don’t get me wrong, his sheer brilliance at accomplishing this (which I do not view as perjorative, if done well – though I would not want to see it done exclusively) makes Star Wars one of my favorite films. But NOT a particular modern one, in the sense that Jamie is talking about – and certainly more conservative than, say, Godard. In a sense Spielberg is a tad more modern, though he most certainly falls into the same category – only because his treatment of domestic familiarity (the knicknacks of middle-class suburban life) does not take them for granted but rather looks at them with fresh, excited eyes which moves the ball a few more inches away from the status quo on the field (the status quo being, to me, bored acceptance rather than enthusiastic engagement, though I suppose many would see the former as closer to radical rejection than the latter and disagree with me; I suppose the difference is that my end goal as to where modernism should take us – if such a thing can even be conceived – is more spiritual than material, i.e. more about changing our mind than changing the structures of society, though I would argue that if we really do the former the latter will follow; wow what a tangent – and run-on sentence!)
Oh, and total side point: I like how Bob negatively contrasts Hannah with Wonderful Life. I like Hannah quite a bit; it’s very entertaining and well-produced. But it’s also takes Manhattan’s self-satisfied smugness (somewhat tempered in that film by Woody’s vulnerability, the melancholy of the b/w photography, and the unresolved ending) to a whole new level, and it’s probably one of Woody’s tidiest, most bourgeois films; I enjoy it but then it makes me kind of sad in the end, missing the simultaneously more romantic and more realistic restelessness of Annie Hall. Wonderful Life, despite its happy ending (which it earns with a Gibsonesque attention to human suffering, albeit spiritual rather than physical) is a far more unsettled, unsettling film – the characters have to struggle more than in Hannah, the depression has far more bite, and the social outlook is far more all-encompassing (really, the film is the best portrait of interwar America that I know of).
I’m not sure where this comparison even came up (was this the subject of a previous conversation I missed?) but anyways I liked it, Bob, and it made me think. So you can take that while losing on the Lucas point. 😉
What a lot of spelling eras. Oh well, too lazy to fix them…
*errors
Holy shit, I swear that was unintentional!!!
Joel, lots of good points about the “domestication” effect, and how that relates to modernism. Though I’m not entirely sure that I agree that you can’t be modernist without that domestic effect (a good deal of Godard’s work in the later 60’s seems primarily concerned with this), I’m also not certain that Lucas isn’t calling domesticity into question, especially in how it relates to the big wide, open universe it all takes place in. I enjoy the uncanny surrealism of all these familiar elements of Western civilization everywhere, and how he makes them big and obvious enough for us to look at them and call them into question ourselves. Yeah, he’s not actively subverting conventions like Lynch does, but in presenting these anchors of recognizable cultural (and pop cultural) artifacts throughout the films within increasingly foreign surroundings, he’s drawing more attention to them and prompting our inquisitiveness to do the work ourselves.
I remember being weirded out by the sheer ordinariness of Anakin’s home on Tatooine in TPM, how it looked basically like the desert-planet equivalent of a small two-bedroom apartment, his room full of knick-knacks, toys and even an everyday-looking backpack that looks as though it’d be slung on his shoulders going to school. There’s enough domesticity to make you wonder how he and his mother can be called “slaves”, but that’s more or less the point, isn’t it? If the modernist’s mission really is to “make the familiar somehow alien”, then for my money, mission accomplished.
Interesting point. Here, for me, is why I’m not so sure Lucas achieves this, and why I think Spielberg comes a tad closer. Let’s take Star Wars and E.T. examples.
Lucas starts with something alien, the universe beyond earth, or more pertinently, a universe apart from earth, an imaginative “other” dimension. From here, everything he adds essentially familiarizes the unfamiliar, bringing it closer to our world than it would be in theory.
Spielberg starts with something familiar, Californian suburbia, and by presenting it through the alien’s eyes and with a rapt attention and enthusiasm that most adults have forgotten, decontextualizes it and makes it strange again. (This point fascinates me so much, that I went off on a tangent which I’ve now cut-and-pasted into a separate comment)
So in other words I think the phenomenon you’re describing – sticking domestic and alien together allowing the latter to win out over the former – is correct, I think it applies more to Spielberg than Lucas.
As for Godard, that’s interesting – what do you mean? Are you talking about the Dziga-Vertov works, in the sense that they take avant-garde techniques and lock them into a specific ideology? That could be an interesting conversation, but I want to clarify your intent here first.
I still can’t believe Lucas is being debated as perhaps modern, it’s like debating for a week that the “sky might be green, we’re not sure”. To quote Pete Townshend (a true modernist a one point in time) it’s ‘beyond the beyond’.
Spielberg, on the other hand, starts with something familiar, suburbia (granted, the first sequence in the movie is E.T. running through the woods, but I’m talking more thematically than chronologically – and anyway, by first showing us suburbia through the alien’s eyes, he already begins to displace it). He then pays closer attention to its details than would most filmmakers, who would brush their camera impatiently past the toys, furniture, and TV, taking it for granted that we all know what these objects “symbolize” and that we don’t need to dwell on them as unique – specific, tangible realities vs. Platonic ideas. He does this because his own view is more intense, more engaged than your average blockbuster filmmakers’ but also because, narratively, it makes sense.
The movie belongs both to Elliot and his siblings, who domesticate the alien by introducing him to their world and dressing him up in funny clothes and teaching him English (though he remains so strange and “other” that this is only partially successful), but it ALSO belongs to E.T., who “alienizes” (alienates?) the children, especially Elliot and allows us to see all these familiar objects and icons of bourgeois American childhood as truly strange, he decontextualizes the familiar. Sorry if this all sounds pretentious but I think it’s true (and no I don’t think Spielberg set out to do this, it was more intuitive, which is why it works).
Spielberg’s cinema is more of an uneasy tug-of-war between the safe and the dangerous, the comfortable and the unfamiliar, the conventional and the adventurous, than his critics (and perhaps many of his admirers) realize. Which is why he’s so much more interesting to me than most “popcorn” cinema (though, as already stated, someone like Lucas – who does something else – can also have value).
Ultimately, Spielberg’s vantage point is with the familiar, conventional, and safe but he’s looking out at things beyond that category, like Mole and Rat looking at from the safe confines of the River Bank and the ominous Wild Wood and the mysterious Wide World beyond it – which I find endlessly fascinating. But I’m thankful we also have artists willing to actually go into the Wild Wood (and not to colonize and chop it down as Lucas does, but on its own terms) & beyond and relate what they see there. That’s where I myself am more drawn to, personally – but explorers get homesick too.
To relate to my argument about Spielberg’s vantage point above, and why his approach is still essentially conservative, despite the fact that he acknowledges and is intrigued by the unfamiliar…think how in his most archetypal, personal films, they stop just at that point where someone like, say, Malick in The New World begins (an example I know Jamie will appreciate, and a film related in some sense to E.T., a point he may not appreciate 😉 ). Close Encounters ends just as we leave the confines of earth, and Ray goes into the unfamiliar; E.T. concludes when the alien goes back into his (alien) world which we glimpsed only briefly in the first few minutes. To use a vulgar but very, very pertinent example…Schindler’s List puts us in the gas chamber only to jolt us out by showing us it really IS a shower (then we see the line of Jews who will actually be gassed in the end, but we aren’t in them, we’re outside of them). Even when dealing with the Holocaust, Spielberg can’t quite descend into the mouth of Hell; only in Saving Private Ryan does he really go there, and the rest of the movie is spent trying to justify or contextualize that Hell. AI may be his saddest film because there the little boy can NEVER even attain the world that other Spielberg characters take for granted, and that they are often so restless to leave. That’s one film in which Spielberg pulls a Malick on himself, starting it where most of his other movies end, at that departure point where the familiar comforts of home, something the android is programmed to understand even though he’s never actually experienced it, fade into the distance until they’re a speck and all that remains is the loneliness: it may be a more mature movie than Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan, superficial trappings aside. And the oft-criticized ending of that movie is actually its most brilliant stroke. A cold, deeply ironic twist in which the boy finally gets his dream state but it’s manifestly pretend – one could see this as Spielberg critiquing one of the crucial tents of Spielbergianism (not the sense of adventure, but the comfort from which one starts) and underlies the fear and disappointment which lies at the root of both his dreaming and his situating of that dreaming within a safe context (if we want to get all analytical here, and we might as well since Speilberg himself does so in interviews as well as the work itself, it probably stems from his parents’ divorce).
Joel, these are interesting thoughts on Spielberg’s film, and nicely clearheaded when it comes to diagnosing him as, in the end, someone who champions the domestic and conventionality as something to aspire to, to protect. Lucas’ cinema is really all about escape– both in terms of escapng from danger and conventionality, and in the frustrated adolescant mentality that desires that escape above all, even when one isn’t necessarily ready for it. Whether it’s one of the Skywalker youths looking to leave their boring lives on Tatooine behind for the selfish pleasures of “adventure and excitement”, the high school graduates juggling the choices between staying or leaving home, or THX himself suffering the slow but certain liberation from his bleak but benign consumerist dystopian paradise, his protagonists always find themselves caught between the domestic and the frontier, and it is he latter that tends to win out. Yes, you can call it a colonized frontier in the case of “Star Wars”, but he does a good job of dislpacing most of hat sentiment onto the villainous militarismbf the Empire and the bureaucratic nightmare of the Republic in ways that help make the heroe’s retreats from Western civilization feel all the more potent. Yes, there is at times a euro/amero-centric aspect to it, but I wouldn’t criticize it too much. To my eyes, it’s a fair deal more generous to “foreign” cultures than most other likeminded sci fi epics (unlike the saintly blue natives of “Avatar”, the representativefigues of Eastern and aboriginal societies in Lucas’ world can at least make mistakes instead of being taken fr granted as merely magical figres– they have the freedom to fail) or in any number of other, nongenre films (“The Darjeeling Limited” comes to mind for how the posh bourgeois brothers get to experience a trancendental commune with India only at the expense of a poor child’s drowning).
I would go on a bit morr, but I’m typing this on a ohone at te moment, and it’s not rrally te most conduive instrument to compose these kinds of long firm thougts. Suffce to say, I think your Spiepberg argumentbwould be etter suitedvfor “Close Encounters” all things consdered, and the Godard movies I’m thinkng of rane troughoutbthe whope f his career. More onvthis later.
Just to clarify, I don’t think Spielberg champions the domestic as something to protect or aspire to (as, say, Kenneth Grahame does in Wind in the Willows, even as he wistfully looks out his window), rather I think it’s something a bit more complex is going on: I think he is championing the dream of escape and exploration, but that once it comes time to escape and explore he stops…kind of like Billy Liar where Tom Courteney dreams of founding his own private dictatorship and being “free” but when it comes time to actually escape and take control of HIS OWN life, he chickens out and returns home, where he can continue to be discontent but comfortable.
Put it this way: Spielberg’s films are like a child’s vision of escape/adventure, Lucas’ are like an early adolescent (and in this sense, Raiders of the Lost Ark is probably more a Lucas film although we could point out that Indiana always ends up back at the cozy, quiet Midwestern campus…). In the first case, the dreamer stays at home and imagination stops short once the threshold to the unfamiliar is crossed; in the second, the dreamer restlessly kicks off the domestic trappings right away…but so unconsciously carries himself into the future, that the trappings of the Self are never really shaken off.
Keep in mind, this is addressed not to the text of the film itself (which is all about the Campbellian shedding of the Self, with Luke going from restless schoolkid to mature and focused, and somewhat distburbed, Jedi Knight) but rather to Lucas’ approach towards it, which generally keeps the mysticism on the page rather than in the air.
Taking a step back, I think we could say that it’s Empire which goes the furthest towards actually crossing into the Wild Wood – not just in its story, but in its settings alternately desolate (Hoth, less hospitable than even Tatooine) and overwhelmingly grand-scale, ornate, and inhuman (the bowels of Bespin make the Death Star look like a kiddie playground). But that is often taken (by you too, I think, though you don’t view this positively) as the least Lucasian of the whole saga.
I think ultimately THX 1138 is your best case for the more daring, challenging side of Lucas and perhaps it says something that only Empire, the film in which he was most uneasily out-of-control (relatively speaking, of course, this is still George Lucas and the Star Wars Trilogy we’re taking about), comes close to capturing that sensibility. Maybe Sith in moments – the first that comes to mind is Anakin standing at a window, overlooking Coruscant at dusk as the score rumbles on the soundtrack, one of the few “quiet” moments in the PT and easily the most rewarding.
Good call on Avatar and Darjeeling, btw. The first speaks for itself but as for the second I often feel that Anderson’s well-intentioned attempts NOT to take his privileged milieu for granted are a bit too earnest and self-conscious to really fly. Only Rushmore really workses this tension between responsibility and the free flight of self-indulgence, perhaps because the whole plot is centered around this fulcrum and where the Anderson surrogate is made loathsome – and psychologicaly/socilogically complicated – enough to repel as well as intrigue (and where, incidentally or not, Owen Wilson most fully collaborated with Anderson on the screenplay – aside from Bottle Rocket which I need to see again to include in this discussion).
And on Lucas, I don’t mean to criticize him ideologically or politically. I think his best film is Star Wars, the one that most fulfills my argument about his limits as a “modern” or “boundary-pushing” artist. Incidentally, the film’s ideology is…interesting, at once traditional and rebellious: yes, the Alliance is fighting against a totalitarian empire, but it’s also seeking to re-establish an old society, not establish a new one. Sort of like the followers of the Dalai Lama criticizing China in the hope of restoring a Buddhist monarchy rather than a liberal democracy (yeah, yeah, I know the Alliance’s desired form of government is a Republic, but you catch my drift). This makes me wonder – I used to read all the SW spinoffs when I was a kid, but I can’t recall their approach to this – how could one place the New Republic in a post-Old Republic context? I.e. is it simply a restoration of the old political system or are some new changes made? If Lucas ever made a post-Return of the Jedi trilogy perhaps the most interesting direction he could take it in would be to make a new rebellion, a more radical one, challenge the newly established Republic, so that suddenly they are outflanked on their left. And the figures who were just yesterday the rebels facing down the status quo, are suddenly forced into the role of repressors. As Mr. Townshend put it, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” That would be quite compelling, and quite true too, I think and an interesting way to put Luke into his father’s shoes.
Christ, this is turning into one of those old-school Wonders monster comment threads where it’s difficult to tell where exactly you should start your reply.
First of all, if Jamie’s flumoxed that we’re having a Lucas/Spielberg debate in here, color me confused that you’re talking up a “Wind and the Willows” game like there’s no tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing the book itself, or your devotion to the story (we all have our idiosynchracies, obviously). I’m just having a hard time seeing where that particularly agrarian fantasy of bourgeois talking animals fits into a discussion on modernism, as for me, a fundamental aspect of the modernist experience is urbanism, the free and open discourse of ideas and personalities that makes up city life on a small or large scale. That isn’t really present in WatW, as far as I recall– they’re all very rustic country fold and landed gentry for the most part, aren’t they? Like the Hobbits and their Shire, there’s something quintessentially English about their devotion to home and hearth, away from the wide wicked world of urban centers of commerce, politics and all that stuff and nonsense– if anything represents an anti-modernist sentiment, however sincere and wholehearted in its humanism, I’d point my finger in that direction.
However, I do think that how it informs your position on Spielberg is interesting, especially in the importance that the director has for homes, making them emotional fulcrums whether they’re kept hole or broken. There’s where you’re liable to find the best arguments for him as a modernist from the perspective of suburban childhood, in his uprooted upbringing as an Army brat and a child of divorce. The nostalgia he bears for the conservative dynamics of conventional domestic family situations is sincere, and it makes every attempt by one of his child or child stand-in protagonist an attempt to put together the broken pieces of so many unhappy early years. Whether it’s E.T.’s communication device cobbled together from spare toys or even, in a weaker note, the painful jig-saw of memories with which Peter Banning regains his identity as Peter Pan, I can see a slight post-modernist bent in the way that Spielberg portrays the modern existence as one that has to be looked at and pieced together in a non-linear fashion in order to make sense of it at all. In that sense, he’s been doing the same damn thing that Malick did in “Tree of Life” his entire career, and frankly doing him one better every single time.
Still– I maintain that Lucas has him beat on articulating a meaningfully modernist perspective on the whole of society, from the ground up of the lowliest droid to the highest perch of the most autocratic despot. Spielberg’s focus has been more intimate throughout his entire career, centering in on family units and never really broadening his expanse beyond that for any longer than a set-piece or two (“Jaws” is probably the only possible exception, in how it illustrates the corruption throughout the town in its great first act, but after that it settles into a band-of-brothers fraternal family unit on the boat, complete with a dictatorial Daddy Ahab figure in charge). Lucas, in all his films, has really been looking at entire social structures, letting his characters function as little more than archetypal placeholders to illustrate how their particular positions in the Rube Goldberg contraptions of civilization operate (funny how when Lucas indulges in thinly developed characters, it’s a travesty, but when Malick offers even less development, we’re all but expected to kiss his ring). One of the reasons I get such a kick out of the Prequels is how he insists on building a simulacrum of all our own 20th/21st century political quagmires in the usually posh, aristocratic assemblies of the space-opera– even the position of “Queen” turns out to be an elected official with term limits for Christ’s sake. He denies the audience what they expect, or what they deep down want both on film and in real life– not the uncertainty of a democratic republic, but the comfort and security-blanket warmth of an absolute ruler. Call it King, Chancellor, Emperor or “Don’t Change Horses in Mid Stream” Presidency, but in all honesty, a lot of people would much rather their citizenship be dependent on something far simpler and less demanding than the bureaucratic mess that constitutional democracy inexorably becomes after a long enough span of time.
I could go on, of course, but again, this thread has gotten so long, it’s hard not to lose your place in the discussion.
As for Godard– his treatment as the domestic as an everyday annoyance is there in small pieces in the films leading up to his DV days, particularly “Pierrot le Fou” and “Week-End”, but it’s there plenty in somewhat stronger tones in films before that as well. I might say “Alphaville”, I might say “Contempt” even, but at this point I’m a little out of fuel.
Oh, and with the exception of “The Clone Wars” and a handful of Prequel era or Boba Fett comics, the “Star Wars” spin-off literature is almost entirely bullshit. Part of me hopes that Lucas does in fact go back and do VII, VIII and IX if only to erase all that nonsense about “Admiral Thrawn” from the continuity, once and for all. What you’re talking about, with the Rebellion attempting to rebuild democracy from the foundations of the Old Republic, is definitely an interesting one that would make the enterprise worthwhile for me. It’s all rather unlikely, but if he gave himself fully into the project and decided to say to hell with whatever the fanboy crowd wanted, I dare say I’d rather see that than a return to the “smaller, personal” films he keeps talking about. “Star Wars” is proof positive that personal art-films don’t have to be small.
Wonderful post and I am so sorry I got to this so late!!!
Each and every comment added another interesting person or group of persons to ponder and take into consideration .
That said, I have to take a small amount of offense to the unnamed few that will bash me for adding the name of WALT DISNEY to the list that I would ultimately make signifying my beliefs on who the greatest geniuses of cinema are.
Working all the way back in the days of Griffith and Chaplin (and was actually working at same time friends Chaplin and Fairbanks were forming UNITED ARTISTS back in the day/ he bacame one of their most sought-after contracts), the man was no less a genius and a pioneer of this budding form known as cinema than any of the others listed in the thread above…
Frankly, I could never understand the bashing of a man that brought so much ingenuity and beauty into an artform that was in its infancy and, considering the many examples of it, who inspired so many filmmakers that ultimately made the list of geniuses you all seem to throw bouquets at here now.
Powell and Pressburger have often cited Disney as a major influence on their work (THE RED SHOES? THE TALES OF HOFFMAN? anyone? anyone wanna bash these guys?) and even Chaplin had admitted that their were certain elements of Disney’s earliest works that found their way into the construction of many of his Little Tramp films (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen have said Disney’s work was a major influence on their SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. Anyone wanna bash that film?). Guys like Harryhausen, George Pal and even, yes, Bob’s esteemed George Lucas owe Uncle Walt a small bow of gratitude in steering the inspirations of their dreams into realities.
Now, say what you want about where the WALT DISNEY COMPANY has gone (for good or for bad) since Walt’s death in the late 60’s, but I cannot and will not ever get what it is this man did prior to his death that so turned everone against a dreamer that had the facility to put his dreams and the dreams of others up their on the big screen for all to see.
Things like the stereophonic sound (introduced with FANTASIA), music synchronization on talking film (the early Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly Symphonies), the multiplane camera (adding depth to frame, used in his earliest features like SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO) have become standards that eveyone takes for granted to this day.
Add to the roster Disney’s brilliance with constructing narratives for his stories (many have said he was the ultimate story pitch man), his eye for detail and his never flagging enthusiasm for every film he made and I cannot see how anyone can bash this guy that has brought so much beauty and joy to the screen.
Miyazaki would not be on this list without him as Walt is a major influence to that director and animator and the paths that Disney treaded over the course of decades is a road every animator and animation director uses to get to where he is going today.
Just because the company he created makes tons of money with garbage that he has nothing to do with today you all feel it’s right to bash every iota of inflence the man has had on the form.
That’s really unfair.
I’d also add to my list of the greatest geniuses:
Murnau
Kubrick
Renoir
DeMille
Bergman
Griffith
Von Stroheim
Ozu
and my No. 1 of all time:
Mr. Charles CHAPLIN.
Disney, for me, is in great company…
I almost forgot my undying gratitude for a guy like James Cagney…
Dennis, I am leaving the house now for a Thursday evening showing of Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA at the Film Forum. As you know the film runs three hours (it starts at 7:40 P.M.) but I must battle traffic during rush hour, so I can’t say everything I want to here. You’ve done a fantastic job putting the names together, and I applaud your #1 choice!
Let’s not forget the likes of:
John Ford
Akira Kurosawa
Katherine Hepburn
Bette Davis
Carl Theodore Dreyer
Alfred Hitchcock
Lillian Gish
Bernard Herrman
Gregg Toland
Chuck Jones
Tex Avery
Sergei Eisenstein
Abel Gance
Francis Ford Coppola
James Stewart
Liv Ullman
Kristoph Kieslowski
Terrence Malick
Marlon Brando
John Cassavettes
John Willams
Powell and Pressberger
Roman Polanski
Michelangelo Antonioni
Jack Nicholson
Saul Bass
Douglas Trumball
Mel Blanc
Woody Allen
Sven Nykvist
Edith Head
Max Steiner
Billy Wilder
Fritz Lang
Thelma Schoonmaker
to add a few more…
Bernard Herrmann
Brando
Greg Toland
Shakespeare
Welles
That’s it
Ha Bobby!!!
And that’s certainly enough!
George Lucas has now appeared on this list 3 times, and Scorsese has yet to (if my quick counting is correct).
Jesus.
Jamie, did you put Scorsese on your list?
No, but that’s not the issue. It’s that he hasn’t appeared and Lucas has. Scorsese has forgotten more about film then Lucas knows.
This isn’t about knowledge, Jamie, but the kind of impact a filmmaker leaves behind. Say what you will about Lucas, but his has been deep enough that three people here have put him in their top five so far, and one right at number one. Scorsese? He’s great, sure, but maybe it’s telling that nobody’s put him in their top-ten so far. Not even you.
Well I’m under the impression that calling someone a ‘genius’ implies that that ‘genius’ has a little knowledge of what that craft is/works.
Yeah, but there’s different levels of knowledge. Does Lucas have the literally encyclopedic knowledge of cinematic history that Scorsese has? Probably not, but I’d be willing to bet he knows a hell of a lot more than he’s given credit for, and probably a hell of a lot more than anybody on these boards (save perhaps Fish, but he’s clearly a mutant, and probably on the side of Magneto). If we were going by pure knowledge of cinema alone, I don’t think anybody could realistically put anybody other than Godard at the top. I personally prefer the geniuses who invent cinema rather than catalogue it, which is why I put Lang at the top and keep room for Lucas. Scorsese is a great librarian of film, and a great filmmaker himself, but if he’s misplaced from a few top tens, I wouldn’t sweat it.
And again, your complaints would register a lot more if you had actually included him in your list. I’m willing to bet that Malick doesn’t have the extensive knowledge you’re talking about here– instead, he’s a master of craft.
I also mean intellectual rigor. Lucas has next to zero, he want to make movies that idiot 12 to 13 years old will say “Uh Cool” after watching. To be an adult and aspire to this is borderline evil to me.
It’s breed the whole Zack Snyder/Comic Book films/M. Night Shaymalon etc generation. The generation that wants it’s videogames and comics turned into 50 million dollar wastes of capital/resources.
And yet, all the allusions to Campbell, Bettelheim, politics both historic and contemporary, not to mention the frequent and layered cinematic quoting all thoughout– something tells me he’s onto something far more substantial than you’re writing him off as.
And as for comic-book films– hell, without those, we wouldn’t have Feuilliade, or Lang, or Godard for that matter. And don’t get me started on horror films, as the Carpenter/Romero/Cronenberg era owes a lot to the likes of the EC stuff that precipitated hearings in congress and the comics-code (talk about borderline evil).
Well, just for the record, I named Scorsese in my not-so-hallowed list. And well, Lucas didn’t find a place there.
You also included Woody Allen, and the only genius he’s associated with is the son that Mia Farrow won’t let him see. So, ain’t nobody perfect.
I don’t see that knowledge matters. It’s what comes out rather than what goes in. Otherwise Bordwell and Thompson would rival Powell and Pressburger.
Jamie, here we have a philosophical disagreement – or at least a disagreement on the output of Lucas-style works.
I don’t think art’s aim should be modernim exclusively; I think it should reflect all strains of life, some should push forwards, some should hold the line, some should look back. There will be accomplishments and drawbacks to all approaches. The most important, and here we agree, is the first because it enlarges art’s field. But if only pushing boundaries is acceptable, than we’ll be fighting a Vietnam-style war – taking a hill and then abandoning it. I’d rather expand the field of conquest, and hold on to territory already captured. (This is where I somewhat disagree with Kaleem above, though I kind of see what he’s saying, and maybe in the end we agree: yes, Impressionism expands our way of viewing art but I don’t think previous art then becomes “impossible” I think it just because one option among many. More difficult for the artist to achieve than in the past, yes, because he/she’s conditioned by more recent experiments – but not, I think, beyond approach. But that’s a longer, more complicated discussion.)
Where I overlap with Jamie, is his contempt for most modern comic-book-type movies, but for me this objection is more formal/aesthetic than ideological, and doesn’t include Lucas. Unlike the original Star Wars (less so for the prequels) these new blockbusters are very limited and “flat” in their approach. They seem to ONLY want to make 12-year-olds say, “Uh, cool” while there’s more going on in SW: Lucas fills the frame and the story with endless possibilities, whether they be little props or extras who could have entire stories of their own, or ideas or sentiments that lead us off onto a tangent. So I don’t think it’s fair to lump him in with Snyder, et al. (And to relate this to my above paragraph, my objection to this sort of thing is not that something better has come along, but that it was never enough to begin with.)
Oh, and I also hate the fanaticism with which fanboys demand subservience of the cinematic medium to source material. Films are celebrated for how “loyally” they adapt a given story, which is pathetic. If you like your book/comic/videogame so much than stick to it and don’t reduce the rich potential of the movies to a sort of pathetic me-tooism. I’m all far looking at a film in light of its source material but not with the aim of knee-jerk condemnation when the film goes somewhere else with it. This used to be kind of taken for granted as a no-brainer and it’s kind of sad to see it fall by the wayside (this doesn’t apply to anyone here that I know of, just a side rant we can probably all sadly nod along to).
American film will get itself out of its current rut when, among other things, it stops debasing itself before other forms (and younger ones, at that, which is even more pathetic, like a grandpa trying to get “with it” and only looking older and more out of it in the process).
“Unlike the original Star Wars (less so for the prequels) these new blockbusters are very limited and “flat” in their approach.”
Joel, if anything I’d say that the Prequels have far higher aims and approaches than the original trilogy did. They may not be entirely successful for those only looking for traditional narrative/dramatic gravitas, but even in their own awkward way they’re seeking to make a cinematic exploration of the politics of fear, greed and proxy-warfare in the modern age, while also continuing the same old ressurection and modernization of historical and mythoogical archetypes. The original “Star Wars” films may be more emotionally satisfying on an immediate level, but they’re also much more simplistic, Manichean, and intellectually shallow. Flawed as they are, the Prequels set out with far more complex and challenging ambitions. I’d compare them to the work that Oliver Stone did in the helter-skelter conspiracy speculation of “JFK”– yeah, not all of the theories hold water, not everything works, but the endeavour is worth it for the gains made, nonetheless.
Jamie, I caved and went for Chaplin–but in my comments I mentioned Scorsese. He has always been my favorite U.S. director, and–at least for now–I’ll summon up the courage to put him at the top. (I’m off to teach a summer kid course on movies–we’re watching “Touch of Evil”(!)–so I’ll leave my reasons for another time.)
I don’t think I could begin to name just one genius – but just wanted to say I’ve enjoyed reading all through this discussion and now have about fifty million more films and directors to try to track down and get my head round. Which will be fun.
Amen to that Judy. This is just about an impossible task.
For me, the term genius is a very high honor. There are many brilliant people who’ve worked in the movies, and quite a few I would call truly “great,” but only a few I would describe as geniuses. To me, the term genius implies a brilliance that does not merely accomplish great things, but transforms their field through their own creativity. A genius must be a ceaseless experimenter who continues to grow and change, and whose knowledge of their field is so comprehensive as to be legendary. In short, a revolutionary.
I have tried to include a variety in this list, not simply the greatest directors, so after the first one the numbering is rather arbitrary, and leaves out several who should really be on there.
1. Orson Welles– I haven’t seen anyone else put him at number one, and I have to say I’m mystified as to why. I would not necessarily name him as the absolute greatest director ever, but he is undoubtedly one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, his genius extending not merely from directing, but to writing, shooting, acting, and editing film, writing, directing, acting and set design in theater, writing, directing, acting and sound effects in radio, and he even showed a talent for television. He was also a wonderful magician and one of the greatest conversationalists of the age, probably up there with Oscar Wilde and Samuel Johnson. Really, just look at the facts. This is a man who was writing easy-to-use Shakespeare handbooks for kids while still in high school. He was performing at the Gate Theater in Dublin at 16. He began producing and directing theater professionally at 18. By 22 he had revolutionized American theater with his versions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar. By 23, he was revolutionizing radio with his Mercury Theatre on the Air and his War of the Worlds broadcast. At 25 he co-wrote, directed, and starred in the “official” greatest movie of all time and revolutionized cinema. And he didn’t stop there, going on to make half a dozen more masterpieces of film, while continuing to do great things in radio and theater (plus his brilliant Fountain of Youth TV program), culminating in his seventies work, including F for Fake and the still-unfinished The Other Side of the Wind, where his shooting and editing techniques revealed themselves as decades ahead of their time, meaning the old guy was still ahead of everyone else. Suggesting anyone else for the top spot is, for me, simply unthinkable.
2. Stanley Kubrick
3. F.W. Murnau
4. Buster Keaton
5. Jack Cardiff
6. D.W. Griffith
7. Walt Disney
8. Robert Bresson
9. Terrence Malick
10. Gene Kelly
As to the many other possible choices: I have only seen a couple films each by Bergman, Kurasawa, Renoir, Tarkovsky, and Fellini, and while I liked/revered all of them, I don’t feel qualified to rate their level of genius. I haven’t seen anything by von Stroheim (though I’ve seen two of his performances) or Abel Gance or Yasujiro Ozu or plenty of others. So my ranking is of course a preliminary one for which I will never be fully qualified.
Tremendous submission here Stephen! And deeply appreciated. Looks like you and Anu (below) are in full agreement for the top spot! Your entire presentation and runner-ups choices are all first-rate!
Although some may disagree, I’d like to mention Jim Carrey. He may not be to everyone’s taste but I’d say he’s a comic genius.
Funny you mention Carrey Pierre! I just saw him this afternoon in MR. POPEER’S PENGUINS. He is indeed a multi-talented guy!!!!
I know I’m late, but I want to chime in anyway:
I know a lot of people are putting Chaplin first, but when I think of geniuses of cinema, how can I not think of the greatest of all auteurs; Orson Welles. Take Citizen Kane out of his catalog, and you still have a list of only masterpieces. The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Falstaff, The Trial and F for Fake are all multi-layered works, each pushing the boundaries of cinema as well as exemplifying it as high art. Include Kane, a film that might as well be looked at as the birth of modern cinema as we know it, and the discussion is over. No filmmaker has ever reached me the way his films did. He wasn’t just a great storyteller (and he might have been the best), but he changed the language of cinema as we know it.
1. Orson Welles
2. Jean-Luc Godard
3. Michelangelo Antonioni
4. Stan Brakhage
5. Ingmar Bergman
6. Akira Kurosawa
7. Stanley Kubrick
8. Luis Bunuel
9. Dziga Vertov
10. Maya Deren
I want to also add that this isn’t my own personal top ten favorite director list either. These are names that helped cinema achieve it’s status as a truly powerful art-form intellectually, technically, and emotionally. I believe achieving this proves them to be geniuses of the medium. I’ll even admit I haven’t seen as many films by Vertov as the rest, but his work personifies what I believe the definition of genius is as an artist. Also for my number ten pick, I decided to add a female pick. Originally it was only going to be Leni Riefenstahl, but I believe Deren was the better filmmaker. I also have a stronger connection to her work emotionally.
Other artists that just missed my list include:
John Cassavetes
Oscar Micheaux
Jean Renoir
Robert Bresson
Alfed Hitchcock
Kenji Mizoguchi
Nagisa Oshima
Federico Fellini
Werner Herzog
Hollis Frampton
Michael Snow
Andrei Tarkovsky
Martin Scorsese
Shinobu Hashimoto
David Cronenberg
and so many more
I’m glad you mentioned Cassavetes — a name that had slipped my mind. His contributions have been visionary and essential to the medium.
I can’t wait to see your comments on Mr. Popper’s Penguins — I heard 2 reviewers on PBS be not so enthused. But I want to go to see Angela — there’s not enough of her!
Anu:
Thanks for gracing this thread with this spectacular submission!
Yes, Welles is a serious contender for this designation, as you have so compellingly proposed here for all sorts of valid reasons. And all your other choices are exception as well, needless to say!
Greatest genius? Louis B Mayer, of course!
This is obviously impossible for anyone to zero in on, so I’ll ust make a guerrilla entry here: Chaplin!
Cheers!
A hard question to answer…well, really, an impossible one, but sometimes those are the most fun. There are so many definitions of genius, so many fields it can apply to, that ranking geniuses of the cinema ends up an exercise in apples vs. oranges. In the end, it may say more about what we value than who is objectively “the greatest”. But then, I guess that’s why it’s so enjoyable.
I go for Stanley Kubrick. When regarding this question, I’m less concerned with how many hats an artist wore (although Kubrick certainly wore many, photographing his films as well as shooting – usually the D.P. was relegated to the role of complete technician while Stanley called all the shots – literally). Mostly, I’m interested in how fully and in how many directions and how completely a filmmaker explored the medium, and especially how well they were able to put it off.
I admire Kubrick because he does something I could never do: he completely controls each and every thing that we see or hear onscreen. Yes, there’s something cold and potentially manipulative about this (though I would argue that Kubrick uses his mastery to achieve open and unpredictable ends), and in some ways I’m closer in sensibility to someone like Godard, who will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. But I just have so much respect for someone who CAN rule the frame with an iron fist and I’m not sure anyone matches Kubrick in this regard; or rather, nobody else pushes this skill against as many potential challenges and risks as he does.
On another note, this is why this website is so dangerous. I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm last night and came here to re-read Stephen’s old piece and got reeled in by this week-old post! At a time when I’m trying to spend less time online, you’re a bad influence Sam haha!
At first I went for Chaplin–echoing in my head is Robert Warshow’s essay on Charlie, which leans on his need to be loved–and that is certainly a driving force behind greatness in this most narcissistic of all art forms. I later posted that Scorsese is my personal favorite. But you’re right about Kubrick–he captured me completely when I was eleven years old, sitting in the second row in a pre-multiplex giant-screen theater, watching 2001, staying one more time–ah, the days of Continuous Showings!–and then catching it at every re-release/revival throughout the ’70s. For a long time I would automatically name Kubrick as the best–and your reminder of his “iron fist” leads me back to him.
So is it Chaplin, Scorsese, or Kubrick? What day is it?
I couldn’t agree with MOVIEMAN more as I had a problem keeping back from just blurting Stanley’s name out the moment I read this post and got ready to answer Sammy’s query.
PS-BATMAN MASK OF THE PHANTASM is a great animated film, but to really get the full effect and understand the scope of the world the film depicts, you really need to sit through the episodes of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES…
Psst, Bob, down here!
Part of the confusion stems from the way we are using terms like “modern” and “modernism” somewhat loosely, and I will confess I let the conversation stray pretty far from its original course, to the point where I was less interested in exploring how modernist Spielberg’s films are than in just pondering him as a thematic auteur in general, and examining his relationship to the “unfamiliar” or “uncanny” or “the beyond” or whatever vague term you want to use for the things that keep us up at night.
As for Willows, you misunderstand: I am not addressing it in relation to modernism but in relation to Spielberg, i.e. it’s a tangent of a tangent. To the extent it relates to the overall discussion of “modernism = transgressing boundaries” I am indeed using it as an anti-modern touchstone.
Ultimately what fascinates me is the same thing that fascinates me about Spielberg. A knowledge of the darker shadows in life, of the uncertainties, of the confusions and turmoils and anxieties…but then an unwillingness to actually ‘go there’ (or ‘stay there’). That sort of teasing transcendence interests me, though I like works which actually go the extra mile too. There’s an interesting dialectic between revelation and imagination at work.
My main objection above was to Jamie’s assertions that Lucas’ work is somehow anti-modern, when I frankly feel it moves miles in the other direction. Is it modernist in the mode of rebelling against all previous conventions of politics, religion or aesthetics, among other things? That depends on your point of view, which only goes to cement in my mind the assertion that his work is instead post-modern in the very best and clearest sense.
I understood how WotW was being used as a touchstone for Spielberg’s work (which I still don’t think is really as transgressive against boundaries as you seem to suggest– I like him, but if anybody’s pulling for the status quo, it’s him). My discomfort, though a potent one at that, was the contrast between WotW’s agrarian sensibilities versus the urbanization of the modern world, and the differing mentalities both afford.
Beyond all these blanket terms we may or may not be misusing, here’s a diagnosis I think we can all sort of look to– Spielberg is a suburban filmmaker, whereas Lucas is torn between the city and nature. I’d expand those thoughts if it weren’t so late, so perhaps later. I still hold fast to this belief– those sensibilities all would’ve mixed wondrously well if only they’d found a way to work and direct together. They’re like a Lennon and McCartney that never got around to forming the Beatles.
My tendency to tie everything to the Prequels– that’s really more because I get pissed off at how film-critic hypocrisy (ignoring in-common faults in acclaimed stuff like LOTR & “Avatar”) and fanboy entitlement have gone out of their way to try and dismiss one of the biggest, and frankly most important cinematic efforts of the past fifteen years. Lucas has mainstream popularity on his side, not to mention newer generations of fans, but at the end of the day you’ve got a set of movies in almost as dire need of a critical re-evaluation as “Heaven’s Gate”.
To touch on just the part of the conversation that I am involved in, Lucas may of may not be ‘anti-modern’, as this applies a dogmatic anger towards a sensibility (I honestly think nothing really riles him up to anger, he’s just too soft). I think he is anti-modern if we sat him down and talked to him, for the simple fact that his approach and presentation is so classical and ‘normal’. But no, that wasn’t what I was asserting, I was asserting that he merely isn’t an artist with a ‘modern’ sensibility (which I then defined as I define it). You haven’t said what you feel ‘modern’ is in the arts, so you’re just shoving your foot in for Lucas to combat my definition. This is fine, but I’m really curious to know what you feel ‘modern’ is in relation to art, because I’m interested to read it if you consider Lucas fitting in this.
I watched VISAGE over the weekend, there’s a modern film. There’s a gulf between that film and Lucas stuff that’s quite obvious to the eye/mind I think.
BTW, this is assumed, and I think you understand but I want to say it. Obviously an artist needn’t be modern to be great, but to me he/she does for me to consider them as such. To not being looking forward exclusively (in art) is either offensive, stupid, or ignorant in my eyes. I can’t decide which (this is something MovieMan touches on above briefly). Even in avenues where strict progressive sensibilities aren’t at first thought to be needed (like say, landscape painting) when you start exploring more you understand the stuff that isn’t is garbage more or less.
Lucas isn’t post-modern either.
Strip his films/stories of all the technology and they’re classical blase yarns. The only thing that places them outside this is the highly charged technological fetishism. Which points to his man-child like approach to the world where he hasn’t contemplated his relation to these things, let alone thought about anything ‘post-‘ that.
_ _ _
If Spielberg and Lucas formed a band, the Beatles are the apt comparison. It would be a corporate whore like supergroup in vein of say Styx, REO Speedwagon, or Journey. All the chops and glitzy presentation, but not an ounce of individual integrity. Lucas and Spielberg just get to fight over who gets to be Neal Schon and who gets to be Steve Perry (who, in case you don’t know, are both huge ass clowns).
opps, should be ‘Beatles AREN’T the apt comparison..’
my apologies
First of all, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that a modern or post-modern artist cannot make use of classicism in their work, as Lucas has done. Many of the filmmakers we both hold as eblematic of modernist filmmaking betray all kinds of classical mannerisms that we take for granted– Godard’s early films have a unique, lively energy with their camerawork and editing, but by and large they correspond to the Hollywood genre conventions of the films he grew up admiring, and his later films (say from “Every Man For Himself” on) have gotten steadily more and more classical in composition– there are times that I’d say following his early and DV periods that he’s essentially entered a rather “dogmatic” approach to film and its techniques.
Malick, too, never really strays as far from convention as people like to give him credit for. His camerawork is pretty, but it’s always grounded in observationalism, representation. He doesn’t really frame people or objects in ways that divorce them from their practical reality, reducing them to abstract elements in the picture-frame. We always know what we’re looking at. Combine that with his reliance on voice-over narration, and what you really have is a tried and true narrativist, albeit one who does things while eschewing normal dramatic presentation. That’s classical, alright– hell, I’d give Billy Wilder bigger props for telling “Sunset Blvd” out of order than Malick for “Tree of Life”.
Does Lucas employ his own classical mannerisms in filmmaking? Of course he does. But as with anybody else, there’s the opportunity to make use of that classical quality in order to subvert it. If you want to play with conventions, you’re going to have to indulge in them somewhat just to build up the credibility necessary to sustain the critique. Malick has to give us some actual “war movie” if he wants to play with its conventions in TTRL. Lynch has to let his mind-warped mysteries play up to soap-opera or murder-mystery conventions whenever he does one of his basic “woman in trouble” stories. Likewise, Lucas uses a lot of the trappings of the space-opera, and though that’s obviously motivated by a desire to bring back to life the adventure and excitement of pulp-storytelling in his youth, at the same time he’s using it as a vehicle for broader, deeper mythmaking (giving us more modern and recognizable sign-posts for technology-age audiences to be lured in to the telling of the tale) and also using the conventions of his narrative, his aesthetic form and his own iconography to deconstruct the political, economic and philosophical impulses towards war, agression and greed in general. To dismiss what he’s doing here would be as bad as putting “Twin Peaks” on the same level as “Dallas”.
Furthermore, Jamie, I actually did offer my own personal definition for modernism. I’ll just quote from above– “if I were going to offer a definition of “modern” beyond being that which is “contemporary” (and that’s something worth paying attention to– too much hindsight, and you overlook the gems right at your feet), then I would say that I look for the game-changers, the ones who change the course of an art’s style or substance in big or small ways. Even if it’s being informed by influences from the past (and even those who try to shed preconcieved values and forms can only ever say they’ve done so, with certainty– consciously or otherwise, the past remains with us), those who fundamentally alter the course of art through their own invention are the ones I’d call modern.”
As for music, let’s split the difference and call them a Supertramp or Steely Dan that never happened. Besides, Lucas already made the same impact in movies that the Beatles did in the pop charts all by himself. And like Dylan, he wound up pissing off the better part of his fans when he went electric…
Maybe they’re a Travelling Wilburys that never happened? If that’s the case, maybe it’s all for the best after all.
Again, never did I say a modern artist can’t use classical forms and still be a ‘modern’ artist. It’s Lucas (and/or his work) that is classically minded. Huge difference there you’re attempting to blur.
And yes I hadn’t forgotten your definition of ‘modern’ but, that’s not really a ‘definition’ of art as it pertains to it being a ‘art movement’. Yours is to reliant on when it’s being said, and does nothing to separate it from anything else. Hence it loses it’s ideological underpinnings– in fact it doesn’t even have any (I’m not sure this makes it workable, accurate, or worthwhile).
And besides, Lucas still doesn’t fit, as besides technological advances (the work of craftsmen) his ‘art’ doesn’t move anything forward.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. You aren’t merely splitting hairs, here. You are now splitting hair extensions.
Beyond the technology, how has Lucas influenced the filmmakers who have come after him? A renewed interest for science fiction, for one thing, paving the way for countless productions and directors in his wake. An interest in the disciplined modes of the Campbellian hero’s journey and modernized mythmaking– and if you want to call that evidence of him being “classically minded”, I’ll argue it’s just him using the classical narrative forms in the same ways that Godard and Malick have used aesthetic ones (and, let’s face it, narrative ones as well– all they lack is traditional dramatic form, which is not the same thing as narrative). An emphasis on a storytelling method driven primarily by visual content and especially action than it is by formal dramatic presentation, the dominant mode of expression in the 70’s (let’s be honest, for all thr talk of how the French New Wave lit a fire under the ass of the New Hollywood movement, there was probably more influence from staid theatrical conventions ina lot of those movies than we care to admit– Coppola especially, for all his gifts with the camera, feels like he never really left the stage in his ways of thinking). A quickened pace of editing, a higher prominence of preproduction and atmospheric word building in camera, rather than actor driven films (Ridley Scott’s entire method of layering owes much to Lucas). A much more ambitious and imaginative spirit of set-piece design and choreography, especially when it comes to sequences driven by special effects rather than exclusively photographed elements, something which shouldn’t be taken for granted as mere technological advances. A new creative freedom when it comes to the methods for telling stories over a series of films (for all his reputation as being a traditional storyteller, he did popularize the notion of opening up a story to be told completely out of order in prequels and the like). An activated interest in the films that made up his own influences, and that he made certain to discuss whenever he was interviewed– as I’ve said before, “Star Wars” is perhaps the great cinematic gate-way experience, leading the way to the likes of Lang, Godard and Kurosawa without skipping a beat (that last director is a household name thanks primarily to Lucas), never mind the long string of genre and pulp works that paved the way as well.
I could go on, but seeing as I’m typing on a phone and making spelling errors left and right thanks to this less than reliable touchscreen (though I’ve gone back and edited most of them, I think), I’ll keep it at that for the moment.
still, the conversation remains on technological advancements. Nothing to do with sensibility, or artistic philosophical advancement. By your definition, we have to place, say Steve Jobs in the category of modern artist.
Again, your just trying to shove a square peg into a circular hole because you like Lucas personally.
Jamie, only one of the things I mentioned pertained to technology, and there it was more about the usage of it, rather than the technology itself. Decrying that is roughly the same as writing off the way early CinemaScope directors used the larger canvas as a mere gimmick.
It isn’t that Lucas is a square-peg, as much as it is you keep rephrazing the argument, and saying he doesn’t fit. It’s rhetorical gerrymandering.
No it’s not, you’re claiming he’s a modern artist in the vein of Rauschenberg, Baudelaire, Godard et al because he gave a ‘renewed interest in sci-fi’ etc. All the ‘gateway’ talk is fine too, but again it does NOT make him a modern artist.
To borrow your phrase, “for fucks sake”. At this point I don’t doubt that you love Lucas, I just doubt that you like Modern art’s sensibilities, or understand what that generally means.
You asked how he fits my own definition of modernism, and I gave it. It isn’t meant to, nor should it have to be beholden to your definition, especially when that’s something of a point of disagreement between us to begin with.
I don’t think that’s really a fair musical comparison for Lucas/Spielberg. I’ll accept that they differ from the Beatles inasmuch as the Beatles, in addition to being the standard-bearers were also something of an avant-garde (sort of the D.W. Griffiths of rock n roll) whereas Lucas/Spielberg turned the business and the medium in a new direction but did not offer radical new directions in the pop aesthetic. Essentially what they did is take the pop mainstream into a new era, i.e. they synthesized the old-fashioned virtues with the voice of New Hollywood.
A better comparison than Styx/Journey or Beatles would be U2; in terms of reach & control, maybe Michael Jackson (I recall how Robert Christgau or Greil Marcus or someone like that criticized Jackson by saying unlike other iconic artists – I think Elvis, the Beatles, and the Sex Pistols were the specific examples – Jackson did not offer “alternative ways of living”; once could say the same of Spielberg & Lucas perhaps – they have the deep reach of great artists, something I don’t think you give them enough credit for, but without the rebellious, transporting, or for the sake of our conversation here ‘modern’ spirit that usually goes with that. For me that’s ok – an essentially mythological aesthetic is one I still find interesting, but for some it’s a dealbreaker I suppose.
But I DO think the critic should recognize the power of what they’re rejecting if they’re going to reject it. Best example here is Robin Wood, writing of Spielberg/Lucas while rejecting their vision: “[The films] work […] because their workings correspond to the workings of our own social construction. I claim no exemption from this: I enjoy being reconstructed as a child, surrendering to the reactivation of a set of values and structures my adult self has long since repudiated, I am not immune to the blandishments of reassurance.” If one just writes them off as boring or uninteresting or bland, then I think one just isn’t getting them at all and thus isn’t in a real position to criticize.
Side tangent, but this got me thinking about an old idea I used to kick around – I think that in some sense there are 4 spirits which a film can evoke with its style, essentially: Meliesian/fantastical, Lumiereian/illusionism (or Bazinian), Brechtian/self-conscious (or Marxist), and the Jungian/uncanny. Of these, I am kind of fondest of #2 and #4, though I still like #1 (and think it’s crucial not to lose this ingredient even as one goes further), and am increasingly intrigued by #3. #4 is probably the one most important to me – David Lynch falls squarely into this category I think (representatives of the other categories might be Spielberg or Hitchcock for #1, Dreyer for #2, Eisenstein for #3). Godard seems to be mostly #3 but I think he touches heavily on #2 as well which makes him so interesting.
Aesthetically/formally speaking, #1 is usually represented by use of a “standard” – particularly Hollywood – style, which is flexible enough to include great auteurs who impose their own voice within that system but still firm enough to keep viewers from falling “outside” the movie. Variation of shots, continuity cutting, use of close-ups would probably fall in here. For #2, long takes are obviously the key – the point is not so much to be “documentary” in the sense of explanatory as in observational, obviously this is very much keyed into Bazin’s views of the documentary nature of photography.
#3 ties heavily to the Soviet sense of montage, using the film form not to conceal the illusion as a dream (like #1) or to present the illusion as reality (like #2) but to self-consciously expose the illusion as an illusion, constantly bringing the viewer out of the experience with a sense of frisson. This could be done with #2 as well (I think something like Jeanne Dielman, which I haven’t seen, seeks to do so) – the point is not necessarily just cutting up the image cubistically but heightening the artificiality by whatever means necessary.
Then there’s #4, the most interesting, subversive, and transporting to me. Like #1, it uses the film medium to get to somewhere; and unlike #3 it takes the tricks of the trade somewhat for granted. But the end result is not a somalike confirmation, as in #1, or a renewed appreciation of outside reality, like #2 but an understanding of the “other” realm beyond – the unconscious/subconscious, etc. In a sense this is the most spiritual use of film. It can be done in many different ways, Lynch does it by utilizing elements of #1 and #3, whereas Rivette incorporates many of the standards of approach #2. But ultimately it is its own beast.
These are just preliminary ideas, however long they’ve been percolating, so take them for what they are, but hopefully they clarify somewhat where I’m coming from here.
I’m not sure you’re giving L/S completely fair comparison with the Jackson thing, nor the idea that they merely “synthesized the old-fashioned virtues with the voice of New Hollywood”. In some cases, I’d argue that what they did added a new vocabulary of speed and structure to the grammar of mis-en-scene and editing, with Lucas especially in his pointed use of so-called “pointer scenes”. Granted, these were largely built from the traditions set down by guys like Lang, Kurosawa and countless WWII dramas in offering sequences where soldiers, criminals or samurai stand around a map and outline the sequence and geography of the battles to come, giving both them and the audience an understanding of the rules of the game and the stakes.
Lucas does this frequently in the films in big, obvious moments like the Rebel and Jedi briefing room scenes in both trilogies, but he also goes further by stitching similar, miniature versions of these kinds of scenes throughout prolonged battle sequences, especially during aerial-combat (it’s also heavily present throughout “THX 1138” as well). Because of the (sometimes simulated) computer-graphics on display, many critics tend to write these off as mere nods to video-gaming, much like the brief shots of an arcade in “Jaws”, appealing to the younger generation’s interest in the new, interactive medium. On one level, I think this is overlooking how these short “pointer scene-lets” keep reminding the audience of the spatial flow of sometimes complicated action sequences (Anno follows example in the surreal battles of “Evangelion”), allowing them to become progressively complex by always priming them with an in-film diagram (Lucas does everything but do sports-style slow-mo, replays and Madden-tablet drawings). On another level, I think it’s a remarkably apt comparison, as this kind of information-presentation is exactly the sort of thing that video-games do, themselves, keeping players up-to-date with various vital stats with Heads-Up-Displays (granted, there’s a movement in games to try and design without these intrusions, but a lot of hardcore stuff pretty much demands it).
A more explicit example of a directing philosophy that includes plenty of long-shots that illustrate the geography in a scene from afar, they represent an attempt by an action-filmmaker to present their set-pieces in as clear and logical a fashion, allowing the audience to become emotionally and intellectually invested in the contest of wills on display rather than merely being overwhelmed by the helter-skelter, panic and confusion. It quickens the pace, livens the film’s graphic sensibilities, and reaches towards the abstract while at the same time clearly outlining the representational in an almost blue-print minimalism. It seeks to make the cinematic experience less passive by empowering the viewer with a more subliminally interactive experience.
btw, how hot is it that I can now post my name with an account that just leads you to a picture of an avatar and that’s it (in this case the beautiful Selma Blair)?
Good for you Jamieru!
that was me, btw. I’ve been able to edit my account accordingly so the pic remains.
Just found this site. Re; the utterly brilliant discussion on the Greatest film genius. I may be too late to join in, as the postings were in June. You have all covered most of the great, classic names; in front and behind camera. The directors and photographers get a big mention. But not the script / story writers, without whom, no film. There are some big geniuses amongst them. I’ll chip in with some geniuses, innovators, from my personal favourite film genre; the Musical:
I like the energy, colour, razzmataz, the uplift of this genre. Thanks to geniuses like:
Busby Berkeley, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Arthur Freed, Roger Edens, the film song composers, Gershwin, Berlin, Arlen, and the rest.
For me, the greatest genius, who worked in cinema, that the cinema has ever produced, is Judy Garland. The word, ‘produced’, is debatable. She had it all.
In my opinion, you can find producers like an L.B. Mayer even an Arthur Freed. But a sheer genius like Garland, with all that she had, and you see it all on the screen, they only come along once in a…….
Wonderful choice for sure Michael, and terrific, much appreciated submission.
With our site’s Top 50 musicals countdown only week’s away, the great Ms. garland has again taken center stage.
Gene Kelly … most singular and varied talent in film history. And Spielberg’s the greatest filmmaker