Marxist Moments

A Marxist at the Movies (1):

 

Introducing Jon Boorstin

          It isn’t often that a historical materialist takes on the movies, but this is what I propose to do, at least in sketch-like form, through a commentary upon a book from 1991, The Hollywood Eye: What Makes Movies Work by Jon Boorstin. Born in 1946, Boorstin is a seasoned screenwriter, producer and teacher (see his website for career details), of much the same generation as the famous Movie Brats from Spielberg to Cimino, Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese and others who re-made Hollywood in their own image and are characterised not only by innovation but also by a profound veneration for the classics of Hollywood and world film making from DW Griffith onwards. This book is perhaps one of the best on modern film making technique and practical aesthetics ever written and was hailed enthusiastically on its appearance by amongst others Robert Redford, Paul Schrader, David Brown (producer of Jaws, The Sting, Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy) and Gordon Willis (cinematographer on The Godfather trilogy, Annie Hall, All the President’s Men and many others). A book admired by professionals like these should not be passed over. It arrived at a propitious time at the start of the 1990s. This was in the wake of the gradual demise of the Hollywood studio factory system over the previous three decades and the sense of experiment and independence leavened with rigorous self-training in the traditions of Hollywood studio methods and technique. Not to speak of Hollywood’s response to (and participation in) the various social, political and economic upheavals of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Meanwhile the memory of the great 1930s pictures, the film noire of the 1940s, and the flourishing of the French nouvelle vague, Italian Realism and Scandinavian angst of previous decades was still fresh to those in the early 1990s, some of them continuing to be active today, who had grown up amongst all these influences. The result forms a dense texture of cinematic understanding, and from a young man Boorstin was right in the thick of it. In addition he has an unparalleled teacher’s gift for a didactic stance which is fresh and approachable. The book does not pretend to be an intellectual treatise but is all the better for that in the wealth of expertise and experience (the Acknowledgements give us a formidable list of advisors in the industry whom Boorstin consulted) that it brings to our appreciation.

          I’ve given myself a difficult task, which is to convey as much as I can of The Hollywood Eye without making my commentary a substitute for reading the book. And at the same time to provide a critique of what I consider to be its latent and not-so-latent wider values. My excuse is that Marxism does not exactly abound in critical writing on Hollywood. This book, while being so informative on the doing and thinking behind film making, is also representative of the values which, whatever the innovations in film technique and means, have essentially never changed: that is, the values of commercial film making whatever the aesthetic merit of individual ‘products’. For film making on a Hollywood scale has always been a big business shaped and governed by the demands of box office, plus share value and returns on investment as with any industrial commodity. Hollywood’s genesis is from within the prevailing industrial capitalism, which is also its own institutional structure and ultimate purpose. It reproduces the art and medium of capitalism, both historically and instrumentally.

          As an art film has long since proven its ability to shape and inspire human consciousness alongside every other manifestation of art and literature. But – let’s face it – feature films are far more expensive to make than poetry or novels or graphic art. Like architecture – a much older manifestation but subsequently also bound to the laws of massive investment and profit-making, film exists in permanent tension between the imperatives of the art and the demands of investors and financiers.  Through human ingenuity this in many cases has been a creative tension, but the cash-nexus can over time affect artistic consciousness and ideals.

          And so it is the values that Boorstin implicitly accepts that form the object of my own critique, not his willingness and ability to explain a form that is as artistic as it is technical and the other way round. There is also the tension between the artist as supreme individual and the collective of collaborators necessary to achieve anything on film: and Boorstin brings out the artistic collectivity of film making very well, even if he does not necessarily take this to its logical conclusions.

          Because a blog should be as short as possible I shall have to break this study up into several related blogs in an occasional series, thus rendering the whole effect rather bitty. I hope you will be patient with that, and refer to previous blogs in this movie series as it progresses.