ScottDS,

I get exactly what you're saying, and am plenty sympathetic to the view that us nostalgic conservatives often go too far in holding up the past as a "Golden Age." Shining a light on these older films by no means suggests that we should bring back the production code and do away with films like THE GODFATHER, DIRTY HARRY, and ANIMAL HOUSE, something that I trust will become apparent as I begin covering more modern films. (Did you read my posts on SIXTEEN CANDLES, TAKEN, and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT last year?)

Even in an IMPERFECT world there's room for both kinds of films. Remember that the silent era and the early thirties were not subject to a production code, so there were plenty of raw stories to be found -- do you think that THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) is at base any less hard-hitting than THE GODFATHER forty years later? Were THE THREE STOOGES any more artistically highbrow than ANIMAL HOUSE? The forties and fifties were filled with dozens of bleak film noir movies, while guys like Kubrick brought us THE KILLING (1956) and PATHS OF GLORY (1957). I still remember seeing THE SCARLET EMPRESS (1934) for the first time and being (pleasantly) shocked at the naked breasts on display in one montage. Old films are often awash in sexual and moral innuendo of all kinds. No, I wouldn't give up ANIMAL HOUSE in exchange for a return to the thirties, nor would I give up the likes of DENZEL WASHINGTON, WILL SMITH, LAURENCE FISHBURNE, MORGAN FREEMAN, et al. in exchange for the so-called "good old days." (neither would King Vidor, who in 1929 made HALLELUJAH, the first studio film with an all-black cast, battling numerous obstacles and opposition the whole way).

Context is king -- movies like THE GODFATHER, DIRTY HARRY, and ANIMAL HOUSE are not nihilistic or self-loathing or thoughtlessly cruel to the audience, they aren't veiled excuses for rank perversion or for hawking lame-o leftism to unsuspecting filmgoers, and they aren't populated by cardboard characters sleep-waking through utterly predictable plots. Each one of them offered a damn good time for the buck, as well as plenty of food for thought. My beef in re: the modern age is not with them. Don't misunderstand Vidor's quote above -- he's not saying that every film has to be rosy cheeked and wholesome, the Wonder Bread equivalent of filmmaking. He's saying that trash and filth and sex are not in and of themselves art, it's the moral spectrum of a piece that counts.

All the movies you mention are, under the sheen of pure entertainment, deeply concerned with HUMANITY, which means by association with MORALITY -- yes, even ANIMAL HOUSE has quite a bit to say on that score. There's a reason why a movie like ANIMAL HOUSE endures while countless other comedies from the same era have been forgotten. What was it, exactly, that made ANIMAL HOUSE funnier and just plain BETTER than the rest? What made the characters so winning, and the audience leave feeling so satisfied? Get the the heart of all of that, and you'll have found the essence of what King Vidor is saying in his quote about the "upward mission," the "good fight," the "quest for the good life."

Raunch, sex, murder, death, evil, corruption -- all of that has its place in art. The freedom of artists to barter in these currencies was hardly invented in our lifetimes -- one only needs to re-read the Bible or Homer to remember that. But the quality of art is predicated on WHAT it says about these things and HOW it goes about saying it. That's where so many of today's movies fail -- the WHAT is frequently a message filled with empty calories of faux spiritualism, loony utopianism, anti-human nihilism and leftist propaganda, while the HOW is a pathetic mix of shaky-cams, cheesy-looking CGI, mindless rollercoaster thrills and tired predictable scripts we've seen a thousand times before.

Note that I'm not advocating the banning of these films on moral grounds, I just think they suck. But there ARE exceptions, and we'll explore some of them together in this series.

(Like you, I hope at least some of the above was even remotely coherent. . . .)

Tom Carty says,

"Too bad King Vidor's hope that the 'makers of films' would one day be 'as unafraid of good films as the public' has yet to be realized."

I largely agree, but there are modern exceptions to be found (anyone who hasn't needs to listen to John Nolte and go check out Pixar's UP). Some current filmmakers were very much in the Vidor vein during their early years, before Hollywood's temptations, excesses, and leftist politics corrupted them (think of early Spielberg, or Kevin Costner's pre-JFK canon of films). And conversely, we have to remember that the 1930s had plenty of junk too, but that we never had to wade through it -- the passage of time has done that for us, leaving only the gems.

Marbie says,

"Hollywood needs a 'revival,' renouncing trash in the name of art, which fools no one, and returning to matters of the heart, not the body, and the issues of life, not sex. Spotlighting the greats like King Vidor and THE CHAMP reminds us all of what real art truly is, and what real talent looks like."

Very well put. So nice to see someone understanding EXACTLY, to the very letter, what I spent thousands of words and five weeks trying to put across.

FamousDrScanlon says,

"Particularly was impressed by how all the characters, including Beery's ex-wife and her new husband, were not stereotypical but very human, complex and sympathetic."

Yeah, I'm always grateful when a gripping, entertaining movie gets by without having any villains to speak of. Spielberg did this masterfully in his two great movies about aliens, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and E.T. -- neither one relies on mustache-twirling evil antagonists, whether alien or human, and by the end of each Spielberg has revealed the Big Bad Government and Military as essentially filled with good-hearted people looking out for the country's best interests.

THE CHAMP has plenty of drama, but as I said up above it isn't false or manufactured drama, and that makes all the difference. Think of how easy it would have been for Marion to have included some nefarious gambler in Tijuana looking to steal little Coop and hold him for ransom against the Champ's gambling debts, or to force him to throw the fight, or for something else equally unnecessary and inane. Every minute Vidor didn't have to focus on that sort of nonsense was one more minute he was able to dedicate to the two main characters and their "upward mission."

SomeDame,

Often I come across comments that make me jealous, where I think, "Damn, I wish I had wrote that." Your quip, "Can you even imagine Oliver Stone saying such a thing?" is a perfect example -- I should have said that right after the Vidor quote, as it admirably and succinctly hammers home the big difference between the filmmakers of the past and those of today.

Those few directors of our era who might conceivably say something about "the good fight" would actually be talking about saving the enviroment or standing up to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, a far cry from the clearly Christian slant of Vidor's remarks.

maatkare,

I'm interested to hear how your "funky parents" lured you into an appreciation of classic movies, and especially how they squared their admiration for the films with the monolithic monochromaticism of the "good old days."

maatkare says:
"I dispute that it's only snobs or geeks who know that stuff now."

We could have a lot of fun attempting a "You're a Film Geek if. . ." questionnaire to separate the geeks from the armchair TCM enthusiasts. If you took a cross-section of people off a busy city street, I'm sure a (fairly low but not-insignificant) number of people could answer affirmatively to having seen THE FOUNTAINHEAD or THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Whether they knew anything about the directors is a different matter entirely. Anyone who hears a name like "Vidor" or "Kurosawa" and can off the top of their head name five films from the canons of each would qualify as a film geek in my book.

So how many of those people are out there? If you went outside and start asking people, "I'm doing a poll. What are your favorite King Vidor films?" what kind of answers do you think you'd get? Gathered together, would the people who've heard of Vidor at all equal even 1% of the total population?

Snobs are much easier to identify. People aren't snobs because they know stuff, but because they rub other people's faces in it (like "Max Fischer Players" below musing that he "forgot who this website caters to," i.e. knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing conservatives).

maatkare also says:
"I really do feel basic film knowledge since the video store/cable era has gotten a lot broader. And for a film site where people continually bemoan how great movies were in the 'good old days,' I suspect the basic knowledge here is even greater."

You would think so. But I glumly note that last week when Young Ben posted his thermonuclear Top Ten Directors thumb-sucker, only ONE PERSON out of hundreds asked, "No Vidor?" (I assume the poster meant King and not Charles).

I agree that the combination of Netflix/TCM/IMDb/Wikipedia has resulted in a more cinema-savvy populace, but any such gains need to be kept in perspective. A few months back, I quoted Ford biographer Joseph McBride's shock that numerous cinema teachers and Hollywood insiders he queried had no idea who John Ford was. I myself went to the Aero Theater in Santa Monica last week to see their double feature of FORT APACHE and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, and there were maybe 60-70 people in attendance -- this in a city of nearly TEN MILLION, a city that is considered the film capital of the world, a city supposedly filled with film geeks and snobs of all kinds.

A fair number of people (a couple thousand?) will have walked away from my article happy that they now "know" King Vidor. But I fear that the number who go on to watch his movies will be far lower. Heck, many people under thirty I know have never seen RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, much less THE CHAMP.

Technology might eventually go a long way towards rectifying this. When THE CHAMP gets re-released in virtual-reality 3-D, and completely realistic Wallace Beery and Little Jackie Cooper avatars are being cast in new movies, perceptions will change. Someday we'll have to explain to children that their favorite actor isn't new at all, but actually a simulacrum of a long-dead real person. It's gonna get real weird.

Bill,

Thanks so much for that link. You're right -- what a goldmine. If I start missing deadlines at Big Hollywood in the coming weeks, I'm blaming you.

Angles, lighting, sound, screenwriting, acting -- there are as many roads to greatness in movie-making as there are in painting, music, literature or any other art. It all matters.

maatkare,

Girl, you know it's true. Hardcore film geeks like us excepted (and we're far less numerous than we appear to be when congregating at Internet watering holes like BH, or in person at Hollywood haunts like The American Cinematheque), those names don't mean a thing to the average filmgoer aside from sounding foreign and thus, by extension, most likely arty-farty. Mike Myers got laughs from his old SNL "Sprockets" routines for a reason.

If I asked, say, my Mom or Dad what their favorite Ford or Hitchcock movie is, they'd have an answer and know exactly who I was talking about. If I asked them what their favorite Curtiz movie was, I'd get a blank stare until I started rattling off titles (some of which they in fact own on DVD). With the others even titles wouldn't help, and any attempt to explain would just end with them bored and wondering when I was going to shut up so they could start watching the copy of CRANK 2 they just picked up at the local Redbox.

One of my primary goals with this series is to ease general readers into a working knowledge of these obscure (not to you, but to them) names and their importance. Acknowledging the bitter truth about the name recognition of some of my favorite directors is a part of that. But there is a method to my madness -- note how I used THE WIZARD OF OZ, which has spectacular name recognition, as a gateway drug to King Vidor and THE CHAMP, which do not, much as I'd like for them to.

movie lovah,

Glad you liked the Marion volume. That reminds me, I was negligent this week in not recommending the books King Vidor himself wrote, A TREE IS A TREE (his autobiography) and KING VIDOR ON FILMMAKING. Among much else, both contain lots of information about his use of music to time scenes in silent films for specific effects.

Next week we'll get into the actual production of THE CHAMP from Vidor's point of view, and see how he discovered that there were many things about sound that facilitated the making of better pictures.