Do film studies make people dumber?

I’m now almost three serials into Louis Feuillade's silent Fantômas films, and two things have surprised me: how good the movies are, and how hard it is to find words to talk about them.

Part of the latter is due to my previous ignorance of Feuillade's work. I lack the commonplaces that come so readily to discussions of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton or D.W. Griffith. But part is due to the films themselves.

Feuillade’s movies don’t hit the viewer over the head with technical gimcrackery, and they don’t monger the sorts of symbols that lend themselves easily to sophomore-level “analysis.” They're just well-written, and they tell good, atmospheric stories, and it’s a lot harder to talk about how writing makes a movie than it is to see Christ symbolism in every crossed set of window mullions.

Good god, and it’s not just sophomores who talk that way. A few months ago, I squirmed in my seat as a film professor breathlessly informed an audience gathered for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt that the film’s runaway protagonist and his niece are both named Charlie!!! and that this is significant!!!

Anyone who has taken a film course can talk about Orson Welles’ deep focus or D.W. Griffith’s use of close-ups. But anyone who thinks that those devices are what make their movies great is missing the point.

OK, readers and viewers, what's responsible for the great volume of superficial blather about movies — or films? Who are the worst offenders?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Detectives Beyond Borders meets Fantômas, plus a question for readers

I've begun my journey down the roads where Noircon 2010 will lead me.

Fantômas, first of Louis Feuillade's five French silent films from 1913 and 1914 about the master-of-disguise thief and anti-hero, included two silhouette shots, one of which John Ford might well have had in mind when he repeatedly framed characters in doorways in The Searchers.

The movie's moral ambivalence and inconclusive ending were not what I expected from a 1913 film serial; I'll be watching further episodes.

Next up, Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's original 1911 novel, Fantômas.

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The Web site to which most links in this post take you is rich with articles on such subjects as "Fantômas & the avant-garde" and "Pulp surrealism." Juan Gris included a Fantômas novel in one of his paintings, for example, and René Magritte used the character as a direct source for several paintings.

Offhand, I can think of no other figure from popular culture who held such fascination for high culture. Can you?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010