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YEARS AGO, I MET SOMEONE WHO HAD MADE A DOCUMENTARY FILM called ''How Much Paint Does a Painting Need?'' What a great title. It not only stuck in my memory, but it dovetailed with questions that have plagued me for years about the history of cinema, and, more particularly, the cinema’s history of | YEARS AGO, I MET SOMEONE WHO HAD MADE A DOCUMENTARY FILM called ''How Much Paint Does a Painting Need?'' What a great title. It not only stuck in my memory, but it dovetailed with questions that have plagued me for years about the history of cinema, and, more particularly, the cinema’s history of | ||
itself. | itself. | ||
Consider, for example, Francois Truffaut’s remark that he liked Hollywood films because they were so similar to one another. Despite technological changes, aesthetic evolutions, and generic boundaries, it is easy to argue that Hollywood films always have more in common with one another than they have differences. By extension, the same could be said of all narrative cinema, whenever and wherever it is produced. | |||
Mikhail Bakhtin once referred to the novel as a genre (3–40). Foregoing my early devotion to auteur theory and the uniqueness of particular film directors, I might well be led to a similar conclusion about the cinema, at least on some days of the week. | |||
In years past, I have given many lectures on the importance of modern | |||
filmmakers recognizing and understanding film history. So many films have been produced over the last 120-odd years that they constitute not merely a well or a reservoir from which to draw, but oceanic depths of ideas and approaches | |||
to consider and understand. I believed those words as I spoke them, and most of the time I still do. I am both a film historian and a filmmaker, so I probably have little choice in the matter. | |||
Revision as of 19:49, 15 March 2025
YEARS AGO, I MET SOMEONE WHO HAD MADE A DOCUMENTARY FILM called How Much Paint Does a Painting Need? What a great title. It not only stuck in my memory, but it dovetailed with questions that have plagued me for years about the history of cinema, and, more particularly, the cinema’s history of itself.
Consider, for example, Francois Truffaut’s remark that he liked Hollywood films because they were so similar to one another. Despite technological changes, aesthetic evolutions, and generic boundaries, it is easy to argue that Hollywood films always have more in common with one another than they have differences. By extension, the same could be said of all narrative cinema, whenever and wherever it is produced.
Mikhail Bakhtin once referred to the novel as a genre (3–40). Foregoing my early devotion to auteur theory and the uniqueness of particular film directors, I might well be led to a similar conclusion about the cinema, at least on some days of the week.
In years past, I have given many lectures on the importance of modern filmmakers recognizing and understanding film history. So many films have been produced over the last 120-odd years that they constitute not merely a well or a reservoir from which to draw, but oceanic depths of ideas and approaches to consider and understand. I believed those words as I spoke them, and most of the time I still do. I am both a film historian and a filmmaker, so I probably have little choice in the matter.