ALAN writes:

Here are some additional thoughts on a topic addressed here a few weeks ago:

Motion pictures convey a certain sense of life.  In most classic and ordinary old movies (both American and British), it is what Ayn Rand called a “benevolent sense of life,” a firm but often unarticulated conviction that values are worth pursuing and defending, that men are not helpless lumps of clay, and that it is both possible and desirable to create happy, decent, and productive lives by means of hard work, responsibility, and restraint.  The three movies I named in my original essay include elements of sorrow, tragedy, unhappiness, and wasted years.  But they also reflect a benevolent sense of life.

By contrast, a benevolent sense of life is precisely what is absent from typical modern motion pictures, entertainment generally, and much of American culture.  Instead, there is a pervasive sense of nihilism, of hatred of values, hatred of the old and the past, and hatred for the very concepts of objective knowledge, truth, morality, and limitations.  These things did not originate in motion pictures, but they are a splendid means for encouraging and reinforcing such things.

Americans today cannot write or produce motion pictures comparable to those from the 1930s-‘40s-‘50s because they do not have the moral-philosophical frame of mind and worldview – encompassing an entire set of moral, intellectual, and esthetic standards – that they had in those years.  Modernists think that is cause for celebration.  I think it is cause for revulsion.  I think also that the moral-esthetic tone of modern motion pictures is proof all by itself that Americans have willingly entered a new Dark Age.

In a discussion of modern horror movies, Thomas Bertonneau wrote:  “When simulated evisceration and brain splattering become forms of entertainment, we should worry.”

I agree with that judgment, but I also nominate it as understatement of the decade.  Americans should have worried about such things long before now.

The explicit violence, brutality, obscenity, vulgarity, noise, commotion, and sensation that are presented in today’s “entertainment” do not come out of nowhere.  Such things do not “just happen”.  The moral framework upheld by motion pictures in the 1930s-‘40s-‘50s (both American and British) and the moral framework reflected in those today are light-years apart.  There is much more involved here than just concrete examples of atrocious behavior, profanity, and stupidity.  People who think they are “just” being entertained by such movies are in fact being dumbed down and softened up.  Motion pictures are just another institution that the Fascist Left targeted ages ago for one of their long marches through American institutions, whose purpose is to destroy what they can and remake whatever they can’t.

Laura Wood’s response to the first few minutes of the film “Titanic” paralleled my own response to hip TV programs like “Survivor” and “CSI.”  About ten years ago I made the mistake of agreeing to sit through a few such programs in deference to a friend who enjoyed watching them.  After the first few minutes, it became apparent to me that I would need all the self-control I could summon not to get up and walk out of the room.  How could any self-respecting person agree to watch and listen to such drivel?, I thought to myself.  It was impossible to say which was worse:  The content in those programs or the forms in which they (like motion pictures) are now presented.  I judged both to be insufferable.

The talented black actor Greg Morris was part of the “Mission: Impossible” TV series, whose episodes depicted a clash between good and evil.  It premiered in 1966, when the Leftist Cultural Revolution was gaining substantial momentum, but for the most part it still reflected the old, long-standing code of moral-intellectual-esthetic standards.

Thirty years later, when a movie version of “Mission: Impossible” was released, Greg Morris “walked out less than halfway through the film, according to the Associated Press.  ‘It is an abomination,’ he said of the movie.”  [ New York Times, Aug. 29, 1996, p. C19 ]

Why did he walk out and say that?  I do not know precisely.  But it may have had more than a little to do with radical changes that had taken place in the entertainment industry between 1966 and 1996, changes that must have been obvious to him.  Whereas the story had once been the guiding factor in movies and teleplays, by the 1990s the guiding factors had become sensation and spectacle favored by adolescent-witted writers, actors, and directors working on the delusion that improved motion picture technology would enable them to make better movies.  It is conceivable that Greg Morris was perceptive enough to see those things and sensible enough to dislike them to the point when he could endure them no longer.  If so, I know exactly how he felt.

Late in her life, silent film star Patsy Ruth Miller (born in St. Louis in 1904) said she would lie in bed at night switching from one TV channel to another, hoping to find something decent to fall asleep by.  It was a challenge.

“Films are supposed to be entertaining, and so many of the films today are so grim and ugly,” she said.  “I sense there’s a craving for romance, which you don’t get in modern films.  It’s almost like they’re inviting you to come in and wallow in the dirt.”

[ Interview by Michael Ankerich for his book Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars, McFarland, 1993, p. 205 ]

Some years ago, long before old movies became available on videocassettes, there was a woman in St. Louis who worked in an office by day and watched old movies at night.  She enjoyed giving parties where she would share those old movies with her friends.  A newspaper profile quoted her as saying she especially loved movies of the 1930s “because they truly entertained, made you laugh, had excellent script writers.  They gave you something to aspire to, like Michelangelo showed in his sculpture what man could aspire to…  Actors had star quality then…  Most movies now [1979] are dull, depressing; they lack quality, style…” [“When Actors Had Star Quality”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 10, 1979, p. 3D ]

Her judgment was dead on target.

In his books and essays 75 years ago, Richard Weaver warned about the trend toward greater sensationalism in newspapers.  The emphasis on sensation in modern movies is doubtless far greater than anything he could have imagined.

Technology cannot take the place of imagination, and sensation cannot take the place of substance.  The moral-esthetic-philosophical worldview that Americans carried with them until the 1960s was carefully and purposely dismantled or dumbed down and reconstructed to conform to the mindset of 14-year-old boys, and this in turn is the conceptual framework that most younger and middle-aged Americans have now absorbed.

People who defend modern movies love to decry the “mindless violence” in old Hollywood Westerns.  They miss the point entirely.  Violence was depicted in Greek plays two thousand years ago.  What mattered in them and in old Hollywood Westerns was how it was depicted and the context in which it was presented.

In all those old Westerns, good and evil were clearly defined and evildoers were always brought to justice.  That is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the making of motion pictures as morally sound and richly satisfying as those produced in Hollywood’s golden years.  There must also be classical restraint and respect for forms.

It is my contention that most modern movies are insufferable not only because of the evil and ugliness they depict in those pictures but also because of how even the few comparatively-decent ones are made and presented.  Clark Coleman made this point in a discussion at VFR three years ago.  Even a modern movie that may contain some elements of decency and heroism cannot be defended “regardless of how it is filmed, Mr. Coleman argued.  [“No Defense for Modern, Disgusting Movies,” View from the Right, July 21, 2012 ]  He was right.  What is there on the screen is important, but how it is presented – the form in which it is presented – is equally important.

Compare any modern motion picture with a classic British movie like “Brief Encounter” (1945).  Restraint is the most notable element in the latter, whereas hatred of restraint is the most obvious element in modern movies (as well as in daily life throughout American culture today).  And by restraint, I refer both to the story itself and to the way in which the director and the camera present the story.  Compare especially how the forms of presenting the story—the restrained use of the camera, scenes of extended dialogue, indirection, understatement, etc.—are respected in movies from the 1930s-‘40s and are trashed aggressively in most modern movies.

It would be hard to imagine an invention more slickly-packaged or effective than today’s TV and motion picture entertainment for undermining the formation of moral imagination in children.

Rapid-cut editing, multiple images on screen at once, optical tricks and gimmicks, explicit gore and violence, slow-motion effects, overpowering sound, wisecracks in place of measured, articulate speech, the hatred of reticence, the unrestrained movement of the camera—such things are a monstrous assault upon moral imagination.  But that is not the worst of it.  What is worse is that entire generations of parents have bought the lie that such things are innocuous entertainment for their children and even their babies.  It would be equally difficult to calculate the destructive or neutralizing effects of such gimmickry upon an infant’s brain and upon children’s capacity for concept-formation, i.e., the ability to learn to think conceptually, form ideas, and integrate what they see and hear into a preliminary conceptual framework for understanding the world and the people around them.  Of course, they do these things unconsciously and were able to do them quite well in the years before parents began using TV as a babysitter.  To what extent they are able to do them when video-screens are everywhere is another question entirely.  My own guess is:  To a minimal extent.

Those old movie producers knew how to get it right:  Not only did they work on the basis of a traditional iron code of moral-esthetic standards; they also understood the importance of classical restraint and esthetic distance.  [Spencer Warren wrote about this in his excellent essay “Classical Greece and Classical Hollywood”] In their dramatic plays two thousand years ago, the Greeks understood the importance of esthetic distance.  When will today’s hip, cool crowd catch up with that wisdom?

Another expression of that arrogance is their description of many modern movies as having “adult content” or “adult language.” This of course is a Big Lie.  Chicago newspaperman Bob Greene nailed it precisely when he wrote that the proper description for such movies is “pathetic, moronic content, suitable for imbeciles.”  [Bob Greene, Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights, Viking, 1997, p. 136]

And what does that tell us about the people who flock to such movies?  About the moral stature of a culture in which those movies are made, marketed, and celebrated? NBC reporter Edwin Newman, writing in 1985 about movies:

“My interest in watching people beating up one another, shooting one another, stabbing one another, setting fire to one another, and otherwise torturing and mutilating one another, is limited.  So is my interest in automobile chases, and in automobiles colliding, automobiles going off roads, into water, and off cliffs, through walls, through houses, through mud, and over fences…..”   [I Must Say: Edwin Newman on English, the News, and Other Matters, Warner Books, 1988, p. 3 ]

Those who defend modern movies like to claim that they are “only entertainment” and do not inspire viewers to absorb or copy the indescribably ugly, vulgar, and contemptible things they see depicted on screen.  This is another Big Lie.  Not only do many such movies have that effect; they also encourage viewers to absorb increasingly-lowered standards of thought, speech, dress, demeanor, and behavior.

It was typical for movies in Hollywood’s best years to have a very different effect: They appealed to the moral imagination and reinforced widely-understood and clearly defined standards of good and evil.  That is why many movie characters were looked upon—properly—as heroes.  The actor William “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd became one such hero.  As written, the original “Hoppy” character was a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking fellow.  When given the role, Bill Boyd refashioned him into a decent, well-mannered character who spoke properly and acted heroically.  And in altering that character, Bill Boyd altered himself.  It made him a better person, he said, than he had been before the “Hoppy” character came along.  If it had that effect on him, imagine the effect it had on millions of children and grown-ups alike who respected both the “Hoppy” character and the man who portrayed him so convincingly.  [ Allen J. Wiener, “The Redemption of William Boyd”, American History magazine, July 1995, p. 34 ]

Even a movie as late as 1960’s “I Aim at The Stars” reflected a benevolent sense of life and contained memorable scenes of inspiration.  It is the story of rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun.  Decades have gone by since I last watched it, but I remember a scene toward the end where cynical reporter James Daly asks Curt Jurgens (as von Braun) why he even cares about rockets and space exploration and science, what it is that motivates him.  Jurgens gestures upward and replies slowly and carefully, “….The whole universe….” – meaning:  Reality; existence; a desire to learn and comprehend what is out there and what is right here in front of us, just for the looking and the seeking, if only we make the effort.  It was a scene that conveyed the kind of confidence and optimism that Americans once felt.  I imagine it was the feeling—the conviction—shared by Project Mercury astronauts in the early 1960s, whose heroic achievements were some of the few inspiring events in that decade.

Old movies can be a source of endless delight and enchantment.  Carol Iannone watched a movie from 1941 and noted the kind of pride and self-reliance depicted in characters therein that were once part of Americans’ makeup.  [ “Losing the Old Ways of Being”, Nov. 6, 2013]   Scenes that are rich in beauty sometimes appear in old movies where viewers might least expect them.  Three examples come to mind:

(1)  In “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), note the scene wherein the parents (portrayed by Mary Astor and Leon Ames) sit at the piano and sing “You and I”, a song that is laden with memories for them and that induces their son and daughters, the grandfather and the family maid to make their way quietly back into the room.  It is their parents who draw them back together just moments after they are stunned by the thought of leaving their home in St. Louis.  The unspoken message is that they are a family and will stay together regardless of such a prospect.  There is so much charm and so many delightful moments in this movie that this particular scene is often forgotten or overlooked.  Any viewers beyond age fifty should know why it deserves better.  It is an understated scene with only a few words of dialogue, expertly directed by Vincent Minnelli.

(2)  In “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” (1942), note the moonlight ride sequence wherein Dick Foran sings to Anne Gwynne the lovely ballad “I’ll Remember April”.  This is accompanied by scenes of horseback riders following a trail that leads over a river and past a waterfall.  Against a background of moonlight filtering through clouds, we hear a mixed chorus of voices echoing the melody of that song.  All of this is presented through restrained use of the camera, with no scene or element overdone.  When the song has ended, there is the classic slow fade to black, giving viewers a chance to absorb and savor the beauty in that scene and that song.  It is an understated scene in a motion picture remembered primarily (and rightly) for the clean, expert, precision comedy routines of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.

(3)  Regarding the feeling conveyed in George M. Cohan’s World War I song “Over There”, Lawrence Auster wrote: “….This song is definitely pre-despair.  It has a sweetness, innocence, confidence, and happiness that is inconceivable in the culture of the last several decades and marks it of another era.  This is the way America used to be.” [ “Over There”, View from the Right, June 28, 2008 ]

I agree emphatically with his judgment, and I would apply the same words to a song presented in the movie “Keep ‘Em Flying” (1941).  Note the scene in that movie that takes place on the field at Cal-Aero Academy in Southern California where USO hostess Carol Bruce sings “Let’s Keep ‘Em Flying”.  She is well-groomed and wears a radiant smile.  She projects a kind of sweetness, innocence, self-composure, self-respect, and respect for those around her, wholly unlike the adolescent-wittedness and feminist arrogance we see in so many young women today.

Note the feeling of uplift and patriotism conveyed both by that song and by the pride and confidence in her demeanor while singing it; her attractive USO uniform and the glint of the light on the USO pin on her hat as she sings; her posture and that of the other four USO hostesses who stand alongside her; the discipline reflected in the hundreds of extras standing on the field around them in that scene; and the polish evident in the way the scene was put together.  The melody of the song will stay with you afterward.  It is a wonderful scene of inspiration and uplift set within another story showcasing the comedy routines of Abbott and Costello, and memorable for both reasons.

These are songs and scenes from the pre-decadent, pre-feminized, pre-vulgarized Hollywood.  These are examples of the proper, disciplined use of movie technology to convey moods of romance, enchantment, happiness, confidence, or inspiration.  These are glowing examples of the kind of entertainment Americans were given by their motion picture industry in its best years, which is a far cry from the moronic twaddle that it gives them today.

Laura writes:

The changes in the movie industry which Alan discusses were largely a result of deliberate efforts by a small elite to undermine the decency code that prevented movies from becoming violent, pornographic and sensationalistic. As a result, movies became a major cause of the loss of a moral framework Alan mentions.

In 1952, the Supreme Court, overturning a previous decision, ruled that movies came under First Amendment protection and could not be censored for indecency. Without this guarantee of government support, the Production Code Administration, which oversaw the Motion Picture Production Code, lost its teeth. The Motion Picture Production Code was written by a Catholic layman and a Jesuit priest in 1929 and was then adopted by the major studio heads.

After Vatican II, the National Legion of Decency, the Catholic organization which had enormous popular influence, faded away. The original 1933 pledge for membership in the Legion of Decency was:

I wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwholesome moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion. I condemn absolutely those salacious motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land. … Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.

While the “pope” today complains about global warming, he says nothing about the moral pollution in many movies. That’s because he isn’t Catholic, let alone a true pope, and he doesn’t represent the Catholic Church.

Please follow and like us: