For the movies, the `80s ended with two significant deaths-those of John Cassavetes in February, and Sergio Leone in May.
Both filmmakers were still at work-Leone, at 60, was in the midst of preparing his epic film on the siege of Leningrad, and the 59-year-old Cassavetes was continuing his theater work in Los Angeles. Their loss means the loss of what no doubt would have been several more important films.
But the loss of Leone and Cassavetes also suggests a great deal of what`s happened in their chosen art form in the decade past.
Cassavetes, the maker of such fiery independent films as ”A Woman Under the Influence,” ”Faces” and, most recently, ”Love Streams,” was the ultimate Hollywood outsider, a man who fought the system for the right to make his own movies his own way. There was nothing conventional about Cassavetes`
films, from the amplitude of their emotion to the distinctive off-rhythms of their story-telling.
Leone, on the other hand, was more Hollywood than Hollywood. Though he lived and worked largely in Italy, his artistic touchstone was Hollywood in its mythic state, that lost, large-scale universe of genres become legends
(for Leone, the western and the gangster film), of outsized stars and epic struggles. In Leone`s hands, and those of no one else, the golden age of the American cinema lived on-corrected, it`s true, by his often ironic, European sensibilities, but still with much of its original dimension and mad grandeur. Without Cassavetes and Leone, what remains is an American film shorn both of its individual creativity and its industrial majesty. Thomas Schatz titled his recent study of old Hollywood ”The Genius of the System”; at the end of the `80s, neither the genius nor the system survives.
There are still, of course, independent American films being made, but with depressingly few exceptions, they seem designed as calling cards-self-financed audition films, such as Steven Soderbergh`s ”Sex, Lies and Videotape,” meant to gain entree into the world of big budgets and wide distribution.
And there are still old-fashioned epics being made, though no one would confuse the lumpy incompetence of an ”Old Gringo” or the designer look of a ”Batman” with ”Red River,” ”The Searchers” or Leone`s ”Once Upon a Time in the West.”
Instead, the American cinema is now largely a matter of packaged commodities, a development initiated by ”Star Wars” in 1977 and epitomized this summer by ”Batman.” Though these films may feed on the old myths, they do so only to create pleasurable childhood associations-marketable nostalgia- rather than to reinvent the legends as Leone did. It`s the same principle that drives Ralph Lauren`s clothing empire: a touch of retro that confers an instant pedigree.
The movies aren`t much good, but the marketing is better than ever, and that`s probably what the `80s will be remembered for. The last decade has seen the overthrow of a localized distribution system-absurdly antiquated by the standards of any other industry-in favor of a modern, streamlined, nationally based approach.
Independent theaters (such as Chicago`s Biograph) and local chains (such as Chicago`s M&R) alike have been gobbled up by huge national organizations
(Cineplex-Odeon, Loews, General Cinema), creating centralized booking offices that virtually eliminate the need for the studios to sell their films on a regional basis.
Instead of having to deal with individual theater owners, each with their own cranky demands, and local audiences, each with their own eccentric tastes, the studios can now deal with a single head office that can put the same film into amazingly similar theaters from coast-to-coast. Monster releases, with as many as 2,000 prints in the field, are now easy to assemble, and have become common.
The huge national releases maximize the effect of the advertising dollar
(which now tends to be spent on national television rather than local newspapers) and make the job of publicity and promotion much easier-a few well-placed articles in national publications eliminate the need for expensive, exhausting city-by-city tours. Even film critics, a relatively minor link in the marketing chain, have become national with the rise of the TV review shows.
Standardized marketing, of course, requires a standardized product, and there`s the catch. Although the new techniques have brought record profits to the industry, individual films seem to mean much less to individual filmgoers; movies are products to be consumed and then discarded, with no more regret than one has for an empty bag of Fritos. Something made for everyone means something that wasn`t made for you. If movies are to be sold like detergents, they must be made like detergents-always identical, free of quirks or surprises-and there is little room for a Cassavetes or Leone there.
Titles become trademarks, to be exploited through as many sequels as possible, and creativity becomes centered on the logo-the strong, simple image that sums up the product. The system works so well that a film such as
”Batman” can become a major hit months before anyone has seen it.
At the end of the `80s, the movie lover finds him or herself in much the same position as the jazz fan in the `50s. After a long period in which the best in the art could also be the most popular in the art-as happened in jazz in the `30s and `40s-there suddenly seems to be a separation, and the movie lover must look farther afield for his pleasures, to such foreign, little-known and (often) state-supported artists as Manoel De Oliveira of Portugal and Raul Ruiz of France. To love film at all right now is to leave oneself open to charges of esotericism and elitism, and that is a very lonely, very sad position.
