American Cinema

Even before the first spool of the first video begins to turn, you've got a pretty good idea where this series is headed. The title is a dead giveaway: not the "flicks," not American "movies," but American "CINEMA." When people use the "C" word, you can bet the tone will be suitably reverential. The opening episode, The Hollywood Style, offers a grab bag of musings from such luminaries as directors Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, The Age of Innocence), Sydney Pollack (The Way We Were, Tootsie), and Joseph Mankiewicz (All About Eve), film editor Dede Allen (Bonnie & Clyde), and legendary script doctor Robert Towne (Chinatown, The Last Detail). Backed by a copious amount of film clips, the interviewees talk about the early days of the formula studio pictures, and how directors like Howard Hawks and John Ford were able to rise above the factory sensibility of the movie moguls during the 1930s and produce enduring films such as Scarface and Stagecoach. Although the content of the episode seems to be driven more by what Scorsese or Pollack wants to talk about than by a pre-formed script, the program is still an entertaining--if rather unfocused--introduction to the subject. We also watched Film Noir, the seventh episode, an ode to a genre that produced such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, and Night and the City. Dark, moody films about fall guys and femme fatales, noir films featured sophisticated use of lighting and shadows, as well as deep focus shots, on the technical side, and warped love triangles and seedy private detectives on the story side, to create a picture where, in filmmaker Paul Schrader's words "everything is on the edge." Interviews with directors Kathryn Bigelow (Blue Steel, Point Break), Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, Wyatt Earp), Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet), and Joe Lewis (The Big Combo), and a clever demonstration of noir lighting techniques with director Erol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time), round out an exciting hour. Sure to be quite popular, American Cinema is not the in-depth examination of American film that the title suggests, but it does offer a decent survey introduction and it's definitely fun to watch. Recommended. (R. Pitman)