jaketwilson wrote:

> Question: if Hawks was doing some very sophisticated
>filmmaking "sub rosa", without being particularly articulate or self-
>conscious about it, couldn't the popular audience have RESPONDED
>intuitively to that sophistication in the same way?
>
>
>
Yes, of course; I don't want to start getting overly snooty about
assertions about what the "popular" audience didn't "understand" because
they never talked about it. For all I know, the things I love about
Hawks affected other many others, including the audiences of the time.
What is clear is that whatever Hawks was doing wasn't self-consciously
"artistic," in the way that later directors, whether you like them or
not, are. And I think that's my main point: that as the expectations of
audiences changed, a different kind of filmmaking was needed, and one
that paradoxically even though it was more "innovative" and diverse than
"genre" filmmaking, may have left filmmakers less free, or at least,
less free to make the kinds of things I love.

This isn't because I don't love films which are self-consciously
artistic: two of my all-time favorites, "Au Hasard, Balthazar" and
"Tabu," certainly are that, and never mind about Brakhage and Kubelka. I
think my point is that the particular kinds of self-conscious artistry
-- never anything as extreme as Bresson -- needed to appeal to American
mass audiences of the last three decades may have been inimical to the
kinds of filmmaking I like. But then, I don't like Altman and Scorsese
and Tarantino, so in that I differ from many here.

- Fred C.