Blathr Wayne Lorentz

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Showing blathrs with the tag “Audrey Totter.”

Talking talkies

Sunday, October 2nd, 2022 Alive 18,786 days

Audrey Totter in the 1947 film Lady in the Lake. One of the few films that I will watch repeatedly.

The louder Hollywood features get, the more explosions movie makers cram into two hours, the more over-saturated and contrast-y they become, the more I find myself watching old black-and-white movies.

I have little affinity for the current line of major motion pictures. I think itʼs because everything is handed to the viewer on a platter. Did this character have a bad childhood? Yes, hereʼs a flashback tinted blue and out of focus. Did this character get hurt? Yes, hereʼs pictures of the sucking chest wound. Did these characters have sex? Yes, here they are getting it on.

It seems like all of the budget in big budget films is spent on big budget special effects. I know that as a movie-goer, Iʼm supposed to invoke my “willful suspension of disbelief.” But even the James Bond films have gotten so over-the-top unrealistic that Iʼve stopped watching.

I think part of the draw of the lo-fi cinema is similar to the draw of books.

Books, almost universally, are better than the films that they give birth to. The focus in books, naturally, is the writing. Your mind is engaged to fill in the vividness of the scenes, the sounds of the voices, and the smells of the environment.

Likewise, though to a lesser degree, black-and-white films call upon your mind to fill in the missing color. And because of the era in which they were created, the special effects are minimal to none, the locations are largely interiors rather than exotic, and the sex is implied rather than broadcast.

Bette Davis in the 1938 film Jezebel. That was the wrong film to watch at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Engaging a personʼs brain to bridge gaps in content is something that brains seem to enjoy. Itʼs the basis of such elemental human experiences as faith, hope, and the lottery. There would be no doomscrolling of social media if it wasnʼt for the human brain yearning for a little something more. A little more engagement with the content flickering by underthumb. A little hope that the next finger flick might bring joy.

Like books, old films focus on the writing, because they live and die by the dialogue, and not the explosions. It wasnʼt until giant grasshoppers eating Chicago became a regular occurrence that film-makers figured out that they could replace expensive writing with cheap special effects. The normalization of money-over-quality is how we got to the hyper-optimized theater-going experiences we have today. Just like de-valuing writing is how we ended up with reality television.

I didnʼt used to like black-and-white movies. And I used to refuse to watch anything with subtitles. But as Iʼve found that the Hollywood of today isnʼt interested in customers like me, Iʼm learning that the Hollywood of yesterday was. Fortunately, I can explore what the old Hollywood created without pouring any of my money into today's trough of gluttony. Itʼs all available for free at the public library, or on free over-the-air television.

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