They say that you get old when the present begins to bother you and cause perplexity. Maybe I’m a premature old man, since this has been happening to me since I was fifty, maybe before.
Among the things that irritate me the most is modern cinema. Many years I can’t even save a premiere. Almost everything seems tedious, predictable, vulgar to me. Clint Eastwood is one of the few directors who captivate mebut his latest masterpiece, Gran Torinodates back to 2009.
From time to time, valuable works emerge, such as The dark knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008), Comanchería (David Mackenzie, 2016) o 1917 (Sam Mendes, 2019). It would be unfair not to recognize that the 21st century has left us other films of undoubted merit.as City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, 2002), The pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002), Other people’s lives (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006), Mystic River y Million Dollar Baby (2003 and 2004, both by Clint Eastwood), Big Fish (Tim Burton, 2003) o Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014).
[Vivien Leigh, Hedy Lamarr y Gene Tierney: el esplendor del Hollywood clásico]
And in the field of animation, there are true gems, such as Shrek (2001), Spirited Away (2001), Persepolis (2007) y Up (2009). However, That set of films is nothing compared to the golden age of American cinema.which begins in the late 1930s and concludes in the early 1960s.
In 1939 alone, twenty unforgettable classics were released. Titles like gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming), knight without sword (Frank Capra), The diligence (John Ford), Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks), The violent 20s (Raoul Walsh), Nice gesture (William A. Wellman), Wuthering Heights (William Wyler), Rock Your (George Stevens), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Sam Wood), The Wizard of Oz (again Victor Fleming) or young lincoln (John Ford again).
The prolific Ford even released a third film, Indomitable hearts. An unbeatable harvest starring legendary actors as Vivien LeighClark Gable, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Jean Arthur, Claude Colbert y una primeriza Rita Hayworth.
[¿Qué fue de Blanche Dubois?]
What did yesterday’s cinema have? Why was the year 1939 so prodigious? I think that The cinema of that time was characterized by a mixture of intelligence, good taste and a certain naivety.
Intelligence explains good scripts, those stories where almost nothing is flat or predictable and the clichés fulfill their function to sustain the image of the past subscribed to by several generations.
gone With the Wind offers an idealized perspective of the Confederacy: slavery is not an act of barbarism, but a form of servitude steeped in paternalism; Southern knights dispense justice, protecting their women from outlaws and scoundrels; The relationship between the sexes is regulated by scrupulous courtesy.
We know that things were not like that, but We accept that image because it has the charm of romantic myths, of the fictions that make life more tolerable, of the lies that temporarily alleviate our disappointments. Art is always a simulation, an artifice, not a faithful portrait of reality.
gone With the Wind alters historical facts, but offers us a masterful portrait of human passions and, above all, dazzles us with the character of Scarlett O’Hara, a heroine who destroys the image of the eternal feminine, according to which women must be obedient, sweet, chaste and discreet.
Scarlett O’Hara is none of those things. Fiercely independent, with great courage, a lot of ingenuity and few scruples, she survives the war and manages to restore the Tara plantation, reduced to rubble and scorched earth, to its splendor.
Vivien Leigh makes the character seem full of life and intensely real. We adore and hate Scarlett, that is, we fall in love with her, since her passion is always ambivalent and convulsive.
gone With the Wind It’s an intelligent film, well shows the gray areas of human behavior, addresses the harshness of war without becoming gratuitous and gruesome, and cultivates naivetyevoking an ideal based on beauty, romanticism and attachment to the land.
Some will say that it is dishonest naivety, but I would rather say that it is anachronistic naivety, where the principle set forth by Javier Gomá in Universal concrete: the song to an objective totality that transcends the individual. That alone explains why Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) and Rett Butler (Clark Gable) are willing to sacrifice their lives for a lost cause.
Still from ‘Knight without a Sword’.
knight without sword (in the original, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), by Frank Capra, is not contaminated by prejudices that are intolerable today. His intention is exemplary: to denounce the corruption of American democracy, to make visible its submission to the interests of economic power.
Jefferson Smith is a naive and idealistic young man who takes the place of a deceased senator. He ignores that he has been chosen because of his inexperience and because he considers that he can be easily manipulated.
El magnate Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) intends to enrich himself with the construction of a dam and to guarantee his goal he has bribed Senator Paine (Claude Rains), Smith’s political mentor and his father’s childhood friend.
When Smith discovers that he is just the pawn in a corrupt plot, he decides to expose it. He does not expect Paine himself to falsely accuse him of corruption, using rigged evidence. Smith is forced to leave the Senate, but he takes advantage of the fact that a senator’s speech cannot be interrupted to tell the truth.
He speaks for hours, fighting exhaustion and the senators’ boos. The press ignores her feat. Only one local newspaper picks up her fight, but the corrupt plot sends the police to hijack the edition. The delivery drivers, children who travel by bicycle, are beaten mercilessly and even suffer attempts to run over them.
Still from ‘Knight without a Sword’.
James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith. Without an iota of affectation, it seems that his way of being and that of the character coincide to a millimeter. Apparently, he is just an ordinary man, but his actions make him a true hero.
It is not Achilles, triumphing on the battlefield, but Antigone, tortured for exercising virtue. Her fight against corruption seems doomed to failure. Only Senator Paine’s improbable repentance saves him from a tragic end.
The admiration that Smith expresses towards American democracy during his visit to the Lincoln Memorial provides that necessary naivety that gave classic American cinema its status as a paradigm or archetype.
Frank Capra’s talent prevents the scene from sinking into sentimentality, but it preserves the dose of emotion necessary to remind the viewer that justice and freedom are not rhetorical expressions, but the pillars of ethical coexistence.
Individualism is always a divisive feeling. Smith knows that he is a citizen and that means he cannot live with his back on the community. Democracy is a totality that can only survive with the active commitment of its members. The fantasy of being an island among the crowd cuts the ties that preserve the social fabric.
Still from ‘Young Lincoln’, by John Ford.
Young Lincolnby John Ford, shares the ideology of knight without swordbut this time the hero is not an anonymous man, but rather that giant -physical and moral- whom Jefferson Smith admires and seeks to imitate.
Lincoln’s exemplarity is on a par with the great heroes of Homeric Greece, but he is not a cardboard exemplarity. Lincoln is a man of the people, a peasant who has read Shakespeare and who has graduated in law through tenacity and effort.
Tall and extraordinarily strong, he excels in lumberjack competitions, splitting logs in record time and cultivates an irony that arouses the joy of his listeners.
Characterized to be more convincing, Henry Fonda plays Lincoln brilliantly. Like James Stewart, he is a master of restraint, but has greater mastery of body movement. The way he walks reflects Lincoln’s thoughtful and mocking spirit.
It is not limited to moving. He views the world from the perspective of a phlegmatic and honest man. Affected by Marfan syndrome, Lincoln is the tallest president in American history.
Fonda, standing just over one meter and eighty centimeters, manages to convey the mixture of solemnity and clumsiness of a man almost two meters tall, whose strides affect his center of gravity, unbalancing him slightly.
Lincoln’s exemplarity is not pompous, but simple and spontaneous. He is not a refined aristocrat. In fact, he dances really badly, but he always transmits elegance.
He is not a poet, but he is moved when contemplating the waters of a river or the bare branches of an old tree. He knows that time passes relentlessly, sowing destruction, but he senses that good and beauty somehow endure.
Intelligence is scarce, good taste has become a rarity, and naivety has been mocked by cynicism.
The Catholic seal of John Fordnever blessed or burdensome, is manifested when Lincoln stops a lynching by combining humor, strength and a quote from the Gospel: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy” (Mt 5, 7).
Will a harvest like that of 1939 be repeated again? Not likely. In the case of cinema, nostalgia prevails over hope. Yesterday’s cinema seems irrecoverable. Intelligence is scarce, good taste has become a rarity, and naivety has been mocked by cynicism.
Azorín, A great lover of cinema, he maintained that to live is to see return. I can’t think of a better way to describe my life, especially every night, when I sit in front of my seventy-five-inch television – one of the few luxuries that adorn my routine -, turn off the light and select one of the movies my collection. I am subscribed to several platforms, but their catalogs are fluctuating.
From time to time, some titles disappear. That’s why I prefer to buy and keep the movies I love. The same titles scroll across my screen over and over again. Since last Christmas I found a few hours of relief and happiness in gone With the Windbroadcast on a small hospital television while my wife and I were recovering from pneumonia, I have rewatched the film three times.
And my passion for Vivien Leigh has continued to grow. It embodies all the virtues of yesterday’s cinema: intelligence, beauty, elegance, refinement. I don’t know what heaven will be like, but if it doesn’t include the chance to see Scarlett O’Hara walking through the gardens of The Twelve Oaks with her yellow hat, I’ll look for another place to spend eternity.
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2024-02-13 01:42:41
#Yesterdays #cinema #prodigious
