The Elements of a Great Film

[Blarg]

I think you're narrowing beauty down way too much. Matrix was a gorgeous movie, with beautiful motion in the frame, beautiful costumes, great set pieces, plenty of tension, great fight scenes.

I'm not sure The Matrix should be held to the standards of Grapes of Wrath in many ways, but it was certainly tremendous fun and extremely watchable.

[fyodor]

Just ran across this quote:

"To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script." Alfred Hitchcock

[Peter666]

Revisiting this thread, I noticed that no one has mentioned the primary essence of a great film: great cinematography. You don't need music or dialogue in a great film, but you most certainly need a great picture. Cinematography is the most powerful element in telling the story and evoking mood.

While channel surfing, I am able to tell within five seconds whether a film is a classic or not just by seeing the picture. Every great director has a distinctive look. Excellent cinematography can make a film that sucks in every other way, watchable (eg. Heaven's Gate). But a film that looks bad is unwatchable.

Television, as an artistic medium, lags far behind film for this very reason.

[MegaloMialo]

"Art occurs when things are kicked up to another level"

Art occurs more often then that. Does not make it great though.

[dlk9s]

While there is no one thing that makes a great film, I personally think the most important thing is that the audience must care about the main character(s). Of course, this could go either way; the audience might really like the character and want him to succeed, or hate him and want him to fail. But the audience must care.

The Star Wars example is a good one. Now, that film has a whole heck of a lot going for it, but one thing Lucas and company did very well was get you emotionally involved with the characters from the start. If you don't care about them at all, then you don't care about the movie.

Obviously, the story/script is intrinsically linked to the characters, so it's not like you can say "characters important, story not so much."

[fyodor]

Peter666 a film that springs to mind when you talk about cinematography is Black Narcissus. Jack Cardiff owned that film.

[Peter666]

[ QUOTE ]
Peter666 a film that springs to mind when you talk about cinematography is Black Narcissus. Jack Cardiff owned that film.

[/ QUOTE ]

All the Powell and Pressburger films have beautiful images. What would the David Lean epics be without the cinematography? And the greatest American directors, Orson Welles and John Ford, used Gregg Toland and his crew in their greatest films which is certainly no coincidence.

[fyodor]

Watched The Passenger (1975) yesterday and this thread seems like a good fit for a review. Stars Jack Nicholson (who had just done Chinatown) and Maria Schneider (not long after doing Last Tango in Paris) Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.



This movie goes a long way towards proving pryor right about directing being the most important facet of a film. I’m sure Antonioni was working from a script, but I’m not sure it would be recognizable from the finished product. There is a story here but it takes a back seat to pace, mood and the pessimistic vision presented.

It takes awhile to figure out who Nicholson’s character is and what his motives might be. If you think along normal plot lines like I found myself doing, you might assume he has switched identities to pursue a story (he was a reporter). Eventually you realize he is just running from his life. The problem is he now takes his direction from someone else’s life and there really isn’t any more to the new life than what he has left behind; appointments where no one shows, people with time on their hands. Life simply isn’t worth living appears to be Antonioni’s bleak belief. Ironically, Antonioni himself never quit living right till the end.

The film is a lot of blank spaces. Things happening in real time. Huge chunks with no dialogue, no background music. I listened to a bit of Jack Nicholson’s commentary afterwards, and for some reason he didn’t want to talk over the dialogue of the movie. He still got a lot said.

There are some wonderful pieces of film work here. One flashback scene starts in the present with Nicholson sitting on the edge of his bed in a hotel room in Northern Africa. The camera pans away from him to the view of the balcony through the window. Without a cut, Nicholson now appears on the balcony in a change of clothes and talking to someone who we have just seen is dead.

Undoubtedly the most famous shot in the film takes place very near the end with Nicholson again in a bed in a hotel room; this time in Spain. Again the camera pans away. This time the view is a courtyard through the bars of the window. Incredibly slowly it zooms in on the ‘action’ outside. I won’t describe the actual events that take place but the camera eventually goes through the bars and out to the courtyard. Slowly, slowly, the camera moves and turns, following characters outside, and eventually we are looking back at the hotel and along it’s exterior back to Nicholson’s room. We look back through the bars at him on his bed. That unbroken shot must be two minutes long.

If your penchant is action flicks, or your attention span is short from watching too many movies composed of Psycho-shower-scene like editing, you will find absolutely nothing to like about this film. Maria Schneider’s character at one point has to lose someone who is pursuing Nicholson. She tells the guy (Ian Hendry) to follow her in a taxi and she will take him to Nicholson. She pulls away in her car and pedestrians crossing the street immediately impede the taxi. As she pulls up alone in front of the bar where Nicholson is waiting, Nicholson on the commentary track laconically notes in his droll voice, “Antonioni’s idea of a car chase”.

The Passenger is a beautiful movie to watch. Every scene is like a painting and moreover the painting of a master. In a lot of the scenes you may even think you’re looking at a painting when there is so little action and so little sound. It can be very rewarding sitting in front of some paintings though, even if you don’t take the same view as the artist. When someone so clearly presents a view – that’s art.