From the Cheap Seats

Hi, glad you could make it. Take your seats. The fight’s about to start. In the red corner, there’s Mark ‘Lethal’ Lawson. He wrote a piece for The Guardian recently, saying how future generations will regard ours as a golden age of movies, comparable to the 1940s and the 1970s. He cited things like No Country For Old Men, Sweeny Todd, the Bourne franchise and (his favourite) There Will Be Blood. All are evidence, he said, of filmmakers reacting to our troubled times (spelt I-R-A-Q), and moviegoers should be grateful.

But not everyone agrees and in the metaphorical blue corner, there’s ‘Gorgeous’ George Clooney, perhaps metaphorically trash-talking about his opponent’s withdrawing hairline and (who knows?) his parentage. In an interview with the Radio Times, he pours scorn on modern films, including his own. He compared them unfavourably to what he thought was the golden age, 1964 to 1976: “it’s twelve years,” quoth cinema’s reigning Mr. Sex, “and you could find ten films a year that are masterpieces. They don’t make those films any more.” (He neglects to add if he remembers when it was all fields around here or whether policemen are looking younger.)

I doubt we’ll see George ‘n’ Mark go mano-e-mano anytime soon but between them they’re raising important issues. So, who’s the winner? Well, I am, obviously. The lazy assumptions and presumptions on both sides would give me material enough to fill this slot until Christmas if I wanted. For instance, the original pieces ignore foreign films, as though the only barometer of excellence are films with American accents: we could have hours of fun with that one.

To be fair to Clooney, he does say that it isn’t just American cinema he’s disillusioned with, it’s all “modern cinema”. Hmmm. Now, Clooney’s one of the few stars I respect. He’s made some interesting choices, he’s honest about who he is and he’s pissed off the right people. But on this one, he’s talking out of that-which-he-famously-bared-in-the-remake-of-Solaris.

Even a cursory glance shows that modern cinema is as buoyant as it’s ever been. Asian cinema is thriving, in particular Korean cinema. Anyone who still thinks that anything with subtitles automatically equals ‘art house’ is advised to pick up The Host or Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. Those are films that show ticket buyers just how short changed they are by western blockbusters and they’re just the tip of a huge iceberg. Elsewhere, countries as diverse as Mexico, Thailand and Romania could all legitimately claim to be in a golden age. If there’s really nothing out there that floats your boat, you probably don’t like movies.

But just because George Clooney is wrong, it doesn’t follow that Mark Lawson is right. His arguments for the health of American cinema won’t wash. He buttresses his arguments with some good films but just as one Swallow doesn’t make a summer, so a few good pictures don’t make a golden age.

Even the worst of times are never without some interest. If you ask me, the worst times for the America film industry were the 1960s, a meniscus between the old guard’s glory days and the arrival of the young Turks. Yet, our pal George Clooney includes six of those years in his golden age, identifying flecks of gold (Dr. Strangelove, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) amongst the sludge (The Happiest Millionaire; Doctor Dolittle).

However, I’d say the crucial aspect of a golden age is not so much the quality of the top-flight stuff but the state of the second or third divisions: when those are flying high, you know you’re on a roll. It’s the sheer diversity of the 1970’s that make it so worthwhile. It wasn’t just the young talent strutting its stuff, like Scorsese and Coppola (Taxi Driver and The Godfather respectively) but also older directors producing some of their best work: Robert Aldridge (Ulzana’s Raid), Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange), Don Siegel (Dirty Harry).

Below the radar, exploitation filmmakers like Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13) and Joe Dante (Piranha) were having a little golden age of their own. Even elder statesmen were getting in on the act: Hitchcock (Frenzy) and John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King, Fat City) to name but two. There simply isn’t that sort of wild proliferation these days.

When Clooney talks about his ‘disillusionment’ with cinema, I’m with him up to the borders of the USA. I’m deeply underwhelmed by much of modern American cinema and I’m not talking about the blockbusters. Many critical favourites – I won’t name names just yet, if you don’t mind – strike me as profoundly deficient. Because, historically, Americans have always had the most vigorous film culture we assume that it’s always the case, so we’re slower to notice when the standard slips.

But slip it most certainly has: the first stage to remedying it is for people to face up to the problem and stop bandying terms like ‘golden age’ about. Films like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood are as much exceptions as films like Seconds or Point Blank were in the airless sixties. We need to recognise the wider film culture; hopefully then, American directors will begin pulling their socks up, just as their forebears did circa 1970.

But just because Mark Lawson is totally wrong, doesn’t mean he isn’t right too. I’ve argued before how the only golden age is now, because we have the films that came before us and the films around right now. (With the added bonus, these days, that it’s never been easier to see them.). The 1970s might have been good but we still have those films today – and a clearer sense of which ones are worth bothering with.

So let us hear no more talk of golden ages. The best time for cinema will always be now. And tomorrow will be even better.