Why I'm Sick and Tired of Hearing That American Movies Are Dying

Pauline Kael's collections of film criticism, which stretch from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, all have a couple things in common.  First, they all have outstanding, well-considered reviews of the movies of the day.  Second, they have hand-wringing articles about the decline of American cinema.

I think about those pieces a lot as I see the endless laments over the state of American film.  You know the story: it's all sequels, remakes, franchises.  And looking at the list of upcoming franchise expansions--this doesn't even include all the DC and Marvel franchises--it's easy to get disheartened.  No, I'm not very interested in seeing any of these films.  Yes, I think Hollywood is foolhardy for thinking it can project tastes over the next decade.  But I think it's worth taking a look at the past, as well as the overall state of the present, before we go into mourning

I'm focusing here on American films; great foreign films have been reliably hitting our shores for decades, and nobody seems to be complaining about them.

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The 1930s and 1940s are traditionally known as the first Golden Age of cinema.  Hollywood benefited tremendously from an influx of talented writers, from newspapermen to novelists, who injected wit and energy into the studios in exchange for large piles of cash.  But the subject matter of movies of this time were limited, just as our own are.  Hollywood tended to make either romantic comedies and dramas or epic Westerns and war films.  Moreover, these movies tended toward sentimentality, with "good guys" and "bad guys."  There wasn't much room for emotional or moral ambiguity.  You can argue that they can't be blamed for reflecting their times.  But you can't give bonus points to a film that belonged to a less interesting age.

The 1950s and 1960s had their share of classics.  But Hollywood was struggling through a period of transition.  Antitrust rulings took the theaters away from the studios, which broke down the old studio system that gave opportunities to those writers.  And with the erosion of the Hays code and progressive changes in society, movies began to acknowledge some uncomfortable truths, like the fact that people have sex outside of marriage or that black people aren't inferior.  The blurry lines resulted in some awkward--and just plain bad--entertainments like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

The 1970s are rightfully known as a Golden Age in their own right, for reasons I needn't go into here.  Suffice to say that not every age can be golden, and that there's no use in wishing for a set of circumstances--particularly the uncertainty in Hollywood over what would be a hit--that aren't coming back.

The 1980s were quite dire.  I'm consistently surprised at how mediocre the "good" movies of that decade turn out to be.  I wish today's grumbling critics would be forced to sit through the treacle that Kael had to deal with on a weekly basis.

The 1990s are known as a time of resurgence, when independent studios that made quality their brand burst onto the scene.  But they often oversold their wares, favoring middle-of-the-road feel-good pap that seemed better and more serious than it actually was.

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That brings us more or less to the present day.  In this century, Hollywood has slowly given up on almost everything beyond the big tentpoles.  But the independent studios have stepped up their game, bringing us tough and uncompromising films like "The Hurt Locker" and "Foxcatcher."

Two factors offer hope for the future.  First, digital photography has made filmmaking far cheaper.  There's less money available for quality films, but less is needed.  This is most noticeable in the documentary genre.  These are films that make almost no money, yet they're flourishing--"Exit Through the Gift Shop" and "The Act of Killing" are just two recent examples--because it's now so cheap to film.  Second, because the independents aren't worried about reaching a broad swath of the public, they can make movies that are far more honest about the world.  We've gone from "Driving Miss Daisy" to "12 Years a Slave" in less than 25 years.  If that isn't progress, I don't know what is.

And let's try to be a little more honest about the past, too.  It's hard to know what movies are not getting made, but that's always been true.  We're talking about an industry that destroyed the careers of greats like Orson Welles and Sam Peckinpah.  Wesley Morris laments that it might have taken Robert Altman 12 years to make a movie today, but Altman basically was in the wilderness for 12 years, from his "Popeye" flop to his comeback with "Short Cuts."

Looking back, 2014 was not the bumper crop year that its predecessor was.  There haven't been a ton of standout films over the past 12 months.  But there are some clear bright spots, like "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Under the Skin," and "Gone Girl."  Of course I wish for more from American cinema.  But I suspect that many have done so before me.