Sad truth of our legacy

[AudioPostExpert]

And about people that "enjoy" these older art forms (fine literature, classical music, fine art, older popular music, etc.), if it isn't aficionados then who is enjoying them? Certainly not most mainstream audiences. If aficionados aren't the ones that enjoy these art forms, then tell me who does.

The fact is that classical music is not a popular art, neither is older cinema (or arthouse cinema), nor are the fine arts.

Classic FM, the biggest classical music only radio station in the UK, has a weekly listenership of about 6 million and an annual turnover of around $35m. This represents nearly 9% of the entire UK population, are you saying that 9% of the UK population are classical music aficionados? If so, what percentage of the population would you say are aficionados of old film? The Sistine Chapel quoted by the OP has about 20,000 visitors a day (5m a year) who are willing to brave the legendary queues and pay about $19 each for the privilege. Classical music is not as popular or popular music and fine art may not be as popular as other contemporary artistic media but "the fact is" that they are still popular with the general (mainstream) public, not just aficionados (!) and are still large global industries.

Furthermore, old classical music and old fine art are still at least as, if not considerably more "popular" than contemporary classical music/fine art. I wonder how many members of the public know the names Bach, Mozart or Beethoven and how many living classical music composers the public could name without using google? What about Michelangelo, Da Vinci or Van Gogh compared to living painters? Turn that question to film, how many know the names of Lang, Renoir, Capra, Ford or even Chaplin compared to say Spielberg, Tarantino or Cameron?

Pavarotti (a performer of old classical music) had huge global recognition and made a personal fortune estimated at nearly half a billion dollars, where is the comparison with recent filmmakers of old or arthouse films? How many cinemas, dedicated to only screening old films, are there in the world, how big of a global industry is it? Compared to soccer, basketball is a niche sport as is Tossing the Caber but just because these two sports can be described as niche doesn't mean there are any useful comparisons between them. Your comparison between old film and old classical music/painting just make no logical sense either in terms of their popularity, who preserves and enjoys them or in terms of finance/business.

It's fine that you have personal biases and fine if you want to let those biases affect your filmmaking. It's not fine however to let your biases lead you into misrepresenting facts and making spurious comparisons! I'm not saying silent and early films shouldn't be preserved, they absolutely should, but currently at least they need to be preserved for the sake of film history, film historians, academics and a few relatively extreme film buffs, not because there is a significant commercial public demand to see them.

Perhaps since you are so concerned about the development of technology in cinema (which is only ONE aspect of cinema), you are unable to see why people appreciate older films.

Technology may only be one aspect of cinema but it is the aspect upon which all the other aspects of cinema are based. If you want eschew technology and make silent films with a hand-cranked Parvo no one is stopping you but good luck screening your film without more advanced technology!

G

 

[cheeseandachallenge]

In reality, film (including video) is really too young to say what will be remembered in centuries.

APE makes a very important point about how the advancing of technology could very well make present films mere cultural artefacts studied by a handful of academics. That said, I know a number of "non-film" people who love films from 1930s onwards (anything earlier is rarer, which I would posit is due to those not being comfortably watchable compared to modern standards, whereas higher budget and higher quality "talkies" are far more accessible). I also work in a cinema, where we semi-regularly play old films (again, typically 1930 onward) as part of our own programming and as part of the yearly film festival here. Those screenings sell out our 700+ seat cinema. Only a handful of film festival films will do that, and I haven't seen anything other than said old films or film festival films sell out (though I imagine The Hobbit will when it's released).

If we're going to make comparisons to other art forms - which, as APE rightly pointed out, isn't necessarily appropriate - it's important to remember a lot of those "classic" painters, writers, musicians we're talking about are relatively modern in the grand context of the history of their arts. Very of the early artists in those fields would be recognised by a mainstream audience.

Take English Literature for example. People have heard of Beowulf - probably only due to the film. A few people (mostlky people who studied it) know of The Exeter Book. Similarly, moving into middle english, the same applies for Chaucer. It's not until centuries after Old English and Chaucer that we get a household name - Shakespeare (there are a few others before, but he's the only one everyone knows). Yet writing, and vernacular literature has been around for far longer than even those early texts I mentioned.

I would suggest that the influence of the evolution of language on literature could be considered synonymous to that of the development of technology on film. The development of language over those early centuries of the English language is hard to track, but it's rapid at points, and shifts around a lot. It's certainly a lot less stable than it has been since the Elizabethan era. Again, similar to the way that film, at first, technology in film (and the ways we told stories with film) was primitive and had significant evolutions (sound, colour). That's not to say film hasn't evolved - but better film stock, the shift to digitial, the recent 3D trend, etc, are less revolutionary than those early developments. Modern English is different from Early Modern (Elizebethan) English - but it's still recognisable and relatively understandable - in the same way we can quite comfortably watch a film from the 1940s. But Chaucer is something that takes a lot of practice and time to consume. It's unfamiliar and confusing. In the same way that cinema from 1900-1920 (and later in non-hollywood films) can be very difficult to watch due to the different acting styles, colour tinting, the differences in narrative structure - and most obviously, the sound (or lack thereof of diegetic sound) and visual quality.

So I guess my point is that we're speaking as if painting, literature, music, all has this "legacy" when in fact the stuff we're talking about is relatively modern. It's just much older than film itself. And so all art is, as Josh alluded too, mortal.

Sure, this is changed in the last 500 years as our systems of preservation have greatly improved - so perhaps these works will never be lost. But cinema, despite having evolved quickly, has existed only a fraction of time that other art forms have - and it's important to remember that the early forms of other arts have largely been forgotten by the mainstream. Despite improvements in preservation, early film isn't amazingly well preserved - with films that are considered classic (e.g. Metropolis) still being incompletely restored, whether it be due to missing footage, damaged stock, or missing the original sheet music.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

... is the transition from analogue to digital in some ways actually less stark or game-changing than moving from silent films to talkies, for example?

Yes it is, for a couple of reasons:

1. Sync sound (Talkies) was not an unrelated technology which someone decided to creatively apply to film which surprisingly took over. Talkies were a filmmaking dream/concept long before the technology existed to make them. The first clip of film with sync-sound was made over 30 years before the first successful talkie. The reason for the gap is that reliable sync could not be maintained and because the most powerful audio amplifiers available by the early 1920s had a lower output than your cell phone, which is obviously not practical for hearing dialogue throughout a cinema! There were many experimental films, inventions, patents and legal battles in the 20 years before the game changing Jazz Singer in 1927 because the Edison Company, other large corporate entities and individuals were all (with a few famous exceptions) well aware of what a game changer talkies were going to be. When the technology was finally mature enough to be practical and the Jazz Singer proved the commercial worth of talkies many of the films being made at the time stopped production, hurriedly converted to being talkies and started again. Within 5 or so years commercial silent film production in the US essentially ceased to exist.

2. Unlike with sync-sound/talkies, films weren't essentially analogue one day and digital the next. Instead, digital technology gradually entered various film crafts, through a succession of successful films over a period of 30+ years starting with some of the VFX in Star Wars. The 1990s probably saw the biggest changes when cheap mass produced micro-processors developed enough power to make digital editing, grading and Dolby Digital sound possible. So digital has been more of a gradual drip than the sudden avalanche which was the talkies.

I'm sure in time and as digital technology in film develops further, it will be seen as game changing as the talkies, although I don't think a direct comparison really works very easily or well.

G

 

[MiniJamesW]

Classic FM, the biggest classical music only radio station in the UK, has a weekly listenership of about 6 million and an annual turnover of around $35m. This represents nearly 9% of the entire UK population, are you saying that 9% of the UK population are classical music aficionados? If so, what percentage of the population would you say are aficionados of old film? The Sistine Chapel quoted by the OP has about 20,000 visitors a day (5m a year) who are willing to brave the legendary queues and pay about $19 each for the privilege. Classical music is not as popular or popular music and fine art may not be as popular as other contemporary artistic media but "the fact is" that they are still popular with the general (mainstream) public, not just aficionados (!) and are still large global industries.

Furthermore, old classical music and old fine art are still at least as, if not considerably more "popular" than contemporary classical music/fine art. I wonder how many members of the public know the names Bach, Mozart or Beethoven and how many living classical music composers the public could name without using google? What about Michelangelo, Da Vinci or Van Gogh compared to living painters? Turn that question to film, how many know the names of Lang, Renoir, Capra, Ford or even Chaplin compared to say Spielberg, Tarantino or Cameron?

Pavarotti (a performer of old classical music) had huge global recognition and made a personal fortune estimated at nearly half a billion dollars, where is the comparison with recent filmmakers of old or arthouse films? How many cinemas, dedicated to only screening old films, are there in the world, how big of a global industry is it? Compared to soccer, basketball is a niche sport as is Tossing the Caber but just because these two sports can be described as niche doesn't mean there are any useful comparisons between them. Your comparison between old film and old classical music/painting just make no logical sense either in terms of their popularity, who preserves and enjoys them or in terms of finance/business.

It's fine that you have personal biases and fine if you want to let those biases affect your filmmaking. It's not fine however to let your biases lead you into misrepresenting facts and making spurious comparisons! I'm not saying silent and early films shouldn't be preserved, they absolutely should, but currently at least they need to be preserved for the sake of film history, film historians, academics and a few relatively extreme film buffs, not because there is a significant commercial public demand to see them.



Technology may only be one aspect of cinema but it is the aspect upon which all the other aspects of cinema are based. If you want eschew technology and make silent films with a hand-cranked Parvo no one is stopping you but good luck screening your film without more advanced technology!

G

Okay you make many good points, and I'll concede that yes the older art forms are more popular than cinema, but all I was saying was that classic cinema will survive for niche audiences in a similar manner as these other older art forms have survived. I never talked about the niche audiences being equal in size, only that classic cinema will be for a niche audience but that it will indeed survive and it the niche audience will grow (though I don't think by too much). I do still stand by my comparison that classic cinema will be like these older art forms as they appeal only to niche audiences (though I never mentioned the size of this niche audience!) and that they will be preserved in a similar manner. Every business is different, and I never mentioned that the business would be the same, I think it's completely different since classic movies are viewed more on home video/streaming services.

I will say that the way the comparison between old classical music and contemporary classical music, and the same with fine arts is completely different than the issue of cinema. There are many reasons why older classical music is more revered and enjoyed that contemporary work, and the same for fine art, but I don't wish to discuss this on this thread.

And besides Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven I don't think the youth know many composers (well maybe Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi too). I don't think they don't even know Mahler, Stravinsky, Chopin, or Mendelssohn, and certainly not Cage, Takemitsu, Stockhausen, and Ligeti. But then again, I never meant to literally compare the audience size, I only meant to compare the size of the audience relative to mainstream or popular media (and no, I'm not convinced that classical music is mainstream in any form, nor is fine art).

You and I seem to have very different conceptions of what cinema is and why we appreciate cinema, so I'll prefer not to have a huge response as I don't want to hijack another thread.

 

[sfoster]

And besides Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven I don't think the youth know many composers (well maybe Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi too). I don't think they don't even know Mahler, Stravinsky, Chopin, or Mendelssohn

EVERYONE knows chopin. Funeral March is THE most recognizable song in the entire world.

 

[MiniJamesW]

EVERYONE knows chopin. Funeral March is THE most recognizable song in the entire world.

I didn't mean the music, I meant the names, a lot of my friends don't know him by name even though they know the Funeral March.

In any case, I don't know anyone that doesn't know Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse, both products of cinema.

And yeah, if we get picky about language we should just call them motion pictures since that doesn't suggest the actual medium it was made in. Either way things are muddled when you realize that video games, TV, and video art are also moving pictures, and PowerPoints can have moving images, and well any computer images really. But I'm not so picky with the language, I call them films, I call them movies, I call them motion pictures, all I know is that I can tell the difference between a movie and a Nam June Paik video installation or a television series or Powerpoint or a YouTube video regardless of how it is presented.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au1mo2QH4vg&start=1120&end=1157