The MacGuffin

What is in a look, a stare, or a knowing glance? What is an emotion? Ideally in film, emotions should be expressed in actions, since it’s a medium of moving pictures and all. However, over the decades directors have struggled to define the actor’s interior sense without words to do some of the heavy lifting. A long time ago, in the 1920s and before, sound and words were not taken for granted. The silent film era is still considered one of the most important, not only because they were the ones who were still making all the rules, but because they had to work within their limitations. Besides the obvious technological disadvantages, the actors had to come up with ways of showing emotion and moving a scene along with just their actions and expressions. Some of these now-silly acting techniques were acquired by overly melodramatic theater and have since been seen as a dated way to build a character. But perhaps there is something to be said for being able to get a scene from point A to point B without ever saying a word.

The common misconception about our society is that now we have iPods and antibiotics we are a more progressive, forward-thinking culture. But if we only look back into our inconveniently well-recorded history, we can see that might not have always been the case. When Americans think of Germany in the early-to-mid 20^th century, we tend to only remember Hitler, goose stepping, and The Rocketeer fighting that guy with the weird face on top of a giant red swastika blimp. The truth is, before the Nazi regime, Germany was one of the most important homes for forward-thinking Jewish filmmakers of the silent era. What they gave us was the Expressionist movement; dark, thematic, adult fantasies with a visual interest in jarring lighting contrasts and a kind of disorienting angular production design. Of these filmmakers, the name Fritz Lang has become iconic, as he made many emblematic Expressionist films, most famously the dystopian science fiction film Metropolis (1927). But before fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany in the ’30s to make genre movies in Hollywood, he made one of the most prescient and fascinating thriller precursors with M (1931), his moody indictment of the mob mentality. Living in a post-Psycho (1960) world of exploitation serial killer entertainment, we can only look at M and take it for granted, but even with this water being so thoroughly tread-upon, one can still recognize the complicated themes and characterizations as being anything but stock pulp archetypes.

In a darkened space below the deck of the Orca, a fishing boat that probably isn’t big enough, the Ahabesque character of Sam Quint relays a chilling tale about a mission to deliver an atomic bomb to Japan during World War II. While drunk and still laughing, Quint (played by Robert Shaw) begins to deliver this strange and haunting monologue to his two fellow crewmates, and while the music fades and the camera pushes in closer to his face, the tone of the movie makes an important shift. Carefully worded and with deep sincerity, Shaw explains in great detail about the night his character watched the other soldiers get picked off one by one by a swarm of tiger sharks while they waited in the Japanese waters to be saved by the US military. To anyone who has seen Jaws (1975) more than once, this scene quickly becomes their favorite. Steven Spielberg himself has admitted that this scene, consisting of only dialogue and a few reaction shots, is the moment from Jaws that he was most proud of. What this now-famous boat scene underlines is the dichotomy of its creator.

This has been percolating in my head for awhile. About how many people consider TV in a new golden age in the 2000s? With Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Dexter, and new shows like Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones emerging as well, the argument is strong. But now the bigger debate: is TV now the place to find stronger, edgier forms of entertainment, over film?

Found footage horror films are a genuinely modern phenomenon. We can attempt to trace roots to Cannibal Holocaust in 1980, tie origins to the aesthetic and stylistic techniques in the even older cinéma vérité genre, or, if we really want to go back, we can look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both novels were written in the epistolary format, i.e. with their fictional narratives created through letters, diary entries, and newspaper cuttings. Just like modern found footage films, they sold fiction as fact and the audience lapped it up.

One of my contributions to the horrible festivities for October is a discussion of Benjamin Christensen’s  (1922). As we’re still relatively far from the main event on the 31st, it feels apt to look at a film that rests at the edges of the horror genre, not fully committing itself to blood, gore or psychological tension, though never entirely breaking away.

Trying to figure out the Best Picture Oscars is based on looking at many things, including: what actors are in it, what director is making the film, whether it’s the kind of film the Academy has responded to in the past, and just plain old guesswork. Also, I am not saying these will be the best movies of the year, just the ones that could strike the Academy’s taste. Keeping that in mind, here are a list of seven more movies that I think have potential to be Best Picture contenders.

In the latest episode of Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a TV show airing here in the UK at the moment, it was suggested that sight—the fulfillment that comes from seeing something—is one of the key underlying themes of the Hollywood films of the 1920s. More specifically, he notes that the studios briefly and tantalizingly delay the desired object. Ultimately, of course, we do see, and our wish is joyously fulfilled. In a scene in Raoul Walsh’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924), for example, we’re made to want to see the Princess (Julanne Johnston) clearly. It’s a simple and unambiguous pleasure when our desire is satisfied.

I love the Oscar race! Just looking at the potential films and seeing which will become major contenders sends excitement coursing through me, especially for Best Picture. I try to figure out the films that the Academy will love and, more importantly, which films will I love as well. I always hope that I will agree with the Academy, because despite what my feelings might be about the Academy, them giving a movie Best Picture helps a movie become more well known and helps people embrace it. So, when they give it to something less than deserving (or worse), it is like they are hurting film. This is an intense love/hate relationship for me, but I keep coming back and right now we have reached the end of summer and are entering the fall. This is usually the starting point for the Oscar season.

I am a critic-loving filmgoer. When critics get excited about something, I am immediately attracted to the film, and even more so when audiences also really get excited. Even with this mindset, there are some critically loved movies that I just never understood what all the hype was for. So here is a list of five of the most overrated critically acclaimed movies.