The Times (26/Nov/1963) - Where Film Men Cast No Shadows
(c) The Times (26/Nov/1963)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, J.M. Barrie, Mary Rose, Ronald Neame, Universal Studios
Where Film Men Cast No Shadows
To find doubt and bewilderment in Hollywood, where for so long a brash confidence has governed affairs, is a disconcerting experience, however well conditioned one may be to the prospect. In the air and down the boulevards, from every roof and store, the flashy slogans and raucous sounds of salesmanship stun the senses as if nothing had changed. Down these ways the film men move, casting no shadows. It is the atmosphere of Scott Fitzgerald and Lillian Ross, haunting, powerful and cold. Here is the whole circus of talk and double talk in its shrillest terms, it is a marvel that anything human can come out of it. And that is the question: what is to come next? Hollywood's front of Mars has been pierced, and so deeply as to make recovery a long process.
But if this is true of Hollywood, so it is of nearly every other place where films are made. The malaise is paralleled by events in this country and in Europe. In an effort to restore confidence Mr. Stanley Kramer recently launched, with De Mille-like extravagance, his extravagant comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a Cinerama production from which the "jiggle" of the triptych screen has at last been eliminated. Mr. Kramer is known chiefly as the director of such films as The Defiant Ones, which he frankly admits was not a box-office success, On the Beach and Judgment at Nuremberg. Hard experience as an independent producer leads him to take a realistic view of present trends, and these notwithstanding, or perhaps because of them, he still regards Hollywood as the film capital of the world.
"I don't know what the state of Hollywood is at the present moment", he said. "I only know the sort of picture 1 want to make, in this case a comedy essentially of movement and of the American idiom, using the resources of the screen as they were used in the Mack Sennett days. I am not the kind of person who cares for wide screens, but a wide screen suited this picture and I used it. I make pictures which give me a certain satisfaction; they must have theme and substance and then no one can dismiss them."
A COSTLY CRITICISM
Mr. Kramer does not speculate on the kind of film Hollywood will make in the future. He accepts the faot that some of the great film companies have gone and will not return, and any assistance producers get from television, he feels, will be in the form of talent, not technique. For himself, his next picture, Ship of Fools, will be on a small screen, and in black and white, and perhaps this, too, is indicative of trends, the individual response to current difficulties and discontents. Mr. Kramer admits that It's a Mad, Mad. Mad, Mad World was difficult to finance and to set up, and that he had to think and work within the rigid framework of the movie game. But he has had the satisfaction of producing a comedy which he also maintains is a criticism of life. At $9m. this may be considered the most costly piece of criticism yet. but in the context of the mad world it is a sign of faith in Hollywood's future.
Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, never so involved a figure as Mr. Kramer, but a law unto himself, has been working for some time in both media, television and film, but remains firmly on the side of pictures. Though he still directs a series on television, his participation consists in making those personal introductions which have intrigued viewers for so long. As a realist, he wastes little time in lamenting the past, but is aware of what the past had to offer.
"It is no longer possible", he says, "to build up stars. It takes about three years to create a star, and this depends on there being a regular succession of films for the new personality to appear in. Years ago a film company could tell its customers: 'We have two Garbos, three Barrymores. three Clark Gables, and a Ginger Rogers' and that could create a little boom, a promise of continuity. Now, with so little production going on, we must turn to other values and prescriptions." And with promptitude Mr. Hitchcock is doing so. After Marny, a story about a compulsive thief in his own style and tradition, which he is now directing, he will make J. M. Barrie's Mary Rose, but under the title The Island That Wants to be Visited. He fears, however; that his sponsors may want concrete evidence of where the island was and what are its tourist attractions.
In Universal City, where Hollywood may be said to have begun, a good half of the 32 stages, if not more, are devoted to television. The studios are geared to a big programme of expansion and modernization, and meanwhile grind out successions of television Westerns and serials. Eight feature films are promised for 1964, with such impeccable box-office names as Cary Grant, Marlon Brando and Deborah Kerr.
Mr. Goldwyn, when confronted with a disagreeable situation, replied: "I won't even ignore it!" and this is the staunch attitude of Universal Studios, which continue to describe themselves as "the entertainment capital of the world". With Stanley Donen, Ronald Neame and Michael Anderson as directors, no doubt this is promise enough, and eight major productions are a substantial contribution to the market. Mr. Martin Ritt, who' made Hud, puts the total Hollywood output at about 150 pictures a year, but with a correspondingly higher quality and a larger intellectual freedom, and this, he thinks, is the best thing that could have happened to pictures.
THE MEN OF VISION
Whatever decline there may have been, Hollywood's natural advantages will always favour the film men. The flight of American producers to Europe has been checked by disillusionments of various kinds, and there have been' several moves back to California. This may well continue. But the ambivalence remains, Hollywood having sold the greater part of its assets to television. Its hopes lie with a handful of men whose vision looks beyond the dollar and the sky sign to a cinema more meaningful, in closer touch with events, and above all detached from the past.
The years of prosperity, of suffering, indeed of dying, from a surfeit of pictures, have left Hollywood exhausted. A period of rest and recuperation is needed, to pare down the fat and renew the vision. Indeed, behind the fever and the frenzy, such is the condition of Hollywood at the present moment. It is not to be expected that a centre of such boundless vitality will remain, in its film operations at least, quiescent for long. But how long, the gods alone can tell, and they, it is known nowadays, function electronically.
