21st August 2009

It's always a source of minor annoyance to me that any movie is considered old about three months after its DVD release. Blockbusters aren't going to keep anything for much longer than that if they can get a fiver for it as an ex-rental sale; they've got to clear the wall space for 50 copies of whatever this week's shiny new idiocy might be. When Cineworlds have their occasional Classic Movie screenings, it's more often than not something along the lines of Gladiator, a massive nine years old. So full marks to Universal for digging a handful of positively ancient movies out of the vaults, including Spartacus, The Blues Brothers and Scarface.

However, there's a major problem here which is basically that modern audiences aren't much interested. The numbers for Spartacus were apparently very low, and that's a legendary, critically acclaimed and much-admired classic by one of cinema's biggest names. And of the tiny number who bothered to see it at my local, most of them were Unlimited card holders and weren't putting cash into the till at anything like the expected rate if they'd just showed the Will Ferrell movie that day instead. The Blues Brothers did better, but then that's much more recent, and more importantly it's a hell of a lot shorter. Maybe Scarface might scrape by despite being three hours, as it's a bit of a cult movie.

But here's the thing: if nobody bothers to go and see these revivals then it's hardly surprising when Universal and every other distributor decide not to bother with them any more. There's no percentage in going to all the trouble of restoring and digitising these films if no-one's actually going to turn up and watch them. So ultimately no-one gets the chance to see Spartacus unless it's on TV, and they probably won't watch it then anyway, and they won't buy the DVD either. One generation later and it's a lost film except for those who dare to dig into the cinematic past for something other than another two hours of Will Ferrell pulling faces.

Surely the willingness to experience more than this week's bland and homogenised studio sludge, no matter how shiny, should be encouraged. What classic movies are we making now that should be rediscovered in thirty years time? Transformers? What cinematic legacy is being left for future generations? Bruno? It really isn't good enough for the year 2009 and it sure as hell isn't going to be good enough for the audience of 2040.

This has come to mind recently when compiling and updating this year's lists and seeing with a heavy heart that, with the exception of John Woo's wonderful war epic Red Cliff, there's been nothing that's come even close to being a genuinely great film. Sure, I enjoyed Terminator: Salvation, Frost/Nixon, State Of Play, Drag Me To Hell, Star Trek, Valkyrie and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But are they great movies? Genuine cinematic classics? I don't think so: they're entertaining and enjoyable while they're on but are they going to last? A year from now they're all going to be in Blockbuster's "Previously Viewed" bin.

In fact, while two of the best movies I've seen this year were Spartacus and Barry Lyndon - both Stanley Kubrick films from 1960 and 1975 respectively - the very best time I've had in a cinema in 2009 (so far) involved trekking down to the National Film Theatre last week to see Cleopatra - all 243 minutes of it, on a spectacular 70mm print. And while it is one of the few movies about which you can honestly say it gets a bit stodgy in the fourth hour, it was an absolute treat. Because it was truly epic - these days they'd insist on doing it as a TV mini-series with maybe two people you'd ever heard of, most of the sets and crowd scenes would be generated in the computer and it would end up as a soulless, uninteresting bore. But back in 1963 they actually went out and built those vast sets and hired vast armies of extras and physically went out and did it. It wasn't made with the small screen in mind and even the highest quality DVD isn't going to impress nearly as much as seeing it properly projected in a cinema. Yes, it cost me £9 to get in and £16 to get to London in the first place, but I'm so glad I paid up and saw it.

But it worries me to think that a future generation's idea of a lost treasure is going to be something like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective or Alien Vs Predator. Is this really the best we can do? How many teenagers have seen (to pick at random) Taxi Driver, Vertigo, Where Eagles Dare or The Sea Hawk? That's before we even start with foreign language films. There's a whole cosmos of film discovery out there and so many people - grown-up adults who can vote and marry and breed - seem too content to not even acknowledge its existence, let alone actually sit down with a stack of Kurosawa videos or venture to a cinema during a season of Ingman Bergman.

Obviously I'm not including the FrightFest audience in this sweeping generalisation. But I can't help feeling we're in a tiny, tiny minority and the vast armies of cinematically illiterate, empty-headed gurgling nincompoops will swamp us through sheer weight of numbers. So if your local does, for whatever reason, decide to book Conan The Barbarian or This Is Spinal Tap or Sunset Boulevard: send a signal that this sort of thing should be encouraged and that we should have more of them. Go and see them. Scan those listings for the occasional Mad Max or Logan's Run or And Soon The Darkness. Otherwise the Ferrellians will win, and nobody really wants that.

Until the next time.

Richard.

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