18 comments

1. James Robinson Posted about 13 hours later

   Yo, Robbie, what's with the "G-d" bit? I thought you were a fine godless heathen, not some fearfull orthodoxie. I know, it's a minor point in a good opinion piece, but it sticks out.

   p.s. Love your Hideout shows, too.

2. Andrea Posted about 13 hours later

   So, I'll see your 10 and raise you ten, right off the top of my head:
   The Tin Drum
   A Clockwork Orange
   Johnny Got His Gun
   Dr. Strangelove
   The Lover
   Raise the Red Lantern
   Belle De Jour/Repulsion (tie)
   The Long Hot Summer
   Olivier, Olivier
   The Grapes of Wrath
   Film is definitely art, if only by definition. If it evokes a response from you and connects you to the artist, character, writer, director or even in my case ususally the cinematographer. If it takes you to a place and offers you a view of an event or person that you would have never gone to or seen by your self, that would be art. If a film especially araises your awareness of the human condition whether joy or debasement or somewhere inbetween isn't that art? The argument seems to me more of one of preciousness. What do you deem to be art?

3. Dan Holway Posted 1 day later

   I don't know if anyone disagrees with the notion that movies can "change and elevate our lives", but the idea that they should be considered works of art in the same way that works by Monet or Milton are is more problematic. At first blush, it's easy to say that Vertigo is a work of art worthy of contemplation. Unlike works by painters or poets or composers, however, there is no single artist responsible for its creation. Vertigo is universally considered "a Hitchcock film", and in many ways it is, but Hitchcock didn't write the screenplay; Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor did. And Hitchcock, Coppel, and Taylor didn't write the novel The Living and the Dead upon which the script is based. Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac did. Some credit for the creation and artistic qualities of Vertigo must go to the actors, the cinematographer, and the musical director as well. Auteur theory holds that Hitchcock is the "author" of Vertigo, but surely this is much different from the way that Shakespeare was the author of King Lear. I guess that what I'm suggesting is that almost necessarily collaborative nature of movie making may doom films to be considered more as products of a studio than as art created by an artist.

4. It should be obvious Posted 1 day later

   The only thing better than jackass dorm-room chatter is the jackass dorm-room prank.

   Vertigo makes me dizzy. And Night Of The Hunter contains one of my fav-o-rite movie quotes of all time. I have a few movies I will always like, but never mind all that. I am on here, yes, to comment on Robbie's Jew-like use of the phrase "G-d forbid." It does stick out, but then we *are* talking about film. Where did you pick it up Robbie?

   I did not know that Hitchcock dorks claimed Vertigo as their own. Ignorant thieves! There are like 50 ways to skin this cat, but in the end it's all just a lot of invisible guys in turtlenecks dueling with invisible dead French guys in berets. To what end?

5. Dave Posted 1 day later

   As the man said, I may not know art, but I do know shit. And Jeff Koons is shit of the lowest order. When people stand in a gallery looking at an aquarium with basketballs or a vacuum cleaner in it and are contemplating the deep messages they're conveying, the emperor is no longer clothed.

   In the right hands, any medium including comic books can be art.

6. lazyranchhand Posted 2 days later

   Charlton Heston didn't paint the Sistine Chapel all by himself, did he?

7. Andrea Posted 2 days later

   Worth checking out. David Brooks (who I normally can't abide) op-ed in the NY times today. Last paragraph is rich, I love Groucho sotto voce to Dick Cavett. Anyhow someone blogged a response and stated that Ben Hecht, screenwriter, said 55 years ago, "I hate movies, they prevented the American people from developing a great culture."

8. Pattie Miles VB Posted 2 days later

   I think any creative (as opposed to commercial) endeavor done for an audience is art. Is it always great art? Rarely.

   My off - the - cuff list:
   Mulholland Drive
   The Ruling Class
   Cutter's Way
   High and Low
   Bamboozled
   Scenes from a Marriage
   Bowfinger (for Eddie Murphy's performance)
   Career Girls
   Husbands
   My Night at Maud's

9. David A Posted 2 days later

   Tom Jones

10. ned Posted 3 days later

    Here are the films which make me sometimes think that the world is good, and that everything will end up right and good, forever, and ever:
    
    The Assassin (an Indian film c. 1990) - very difficult to find - John Malkovitch saw it in his travels, and it made such an impression on him, that he brought it to the West, and had it shown at various film festivals;
    
    The Battle for Algiers (c.1965) - what is terrorism, who is a terrorist - are We absolutely right, and They absolutely wrong? I was surprised - Bush, the late Dick Cheney, Obama, McCrystal, in other words, the whole ruling class of America should see this film);
    
    On the Wings of Desire (1988) - love between a man and a women is possible, no! I'll go out on a limb here: desirable, necessary, and good - as in "And it was good." - without which my friend, behold! look about you! Satan is God's ape - slapstick mimicry, imitation, copying of the real thing - look at Bonzo in a tux, doing the Fox-trot, tickling those ivories, smoking that big fat cigar, trying to mount that blond - ah! he's no Ronald Coleman, that's easy to see!
    
    Henry Poole Is Not Here (2007-8?) won best film at the Sundance Festival - if you don't believe, you're an idiot, and you deserve all the shit that happens to you - I shed tears.
    
    Of course there are others, but I have to earn my living. Many thanks to Robbie for thinking about these things.

11. Mark Posted 5 days later

    Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

    Art. It's right under your nose and in the title.

12. liz Posted 5 days later

    Of course film is not only art, it is the most significant art form of the 20th century. And Dan's postulation that collaborative art forms aren't art forms is ... well, hmmm. What about dance, theatre, symphonic music, opera, etc. Okay, that's all I have to say. No list of movies from me, there are too many great ones to even get started.
    Speaking of movies, I saw Crazy Heart last night. Devastation for any middle-aged person who enjoys the trad country music and has dealt with the hardcore alcoholic family members. I was a basket case after the movie, just the way I like it. I hope Jeff Bridges wins the Oscar.

13. Dee Posted 6 days later

    Can film be art?
    All film? Are avant-garde films art while commercial blockbuster are not? Does it have to do with taste? Whose taste? If film is art then who is/are the artist; the actors, directors, writers, the cinematographers? If the maker “intended” it to be art, is it art? Can a slasher film be art? How about pornography? If I say it's art, it's art. Isn't it? If the caveman could have produced cave film, would it be considered art or just a moving photographic record? Is our civilization moving toward dumbing down what art should be/is? Should we see Mike Judge's comedy "Idiocracy" as a warning that in the year 2505 the top movie will be a movie called "Ass" containing 90 minutes of a butt farting? Will it be art?

14. Jordan Barnette Posted 8 days later

    Any time there is an extreme changing-of-the-guard, skeptics and authority figures (whose authority may be derived from or glued to the old guard) try to tell us that the new medium isn't relevant. I'm sure people that spent their entire lives memorizing stories were afraid of the printing press.

    There are worthwhile works of art in almost every medium (maybe even collage). There is pulp art and pulp lit; some of it is very good. Visual art has Andy Warhol and airbrush paintings of fairies, literature has Dan Brown and Jon Krakauer, music has Bruce Springsteen, and film has Die Hard. All of these artists/works of art are at least competent. I don't care for any of them and find them pretty simple, but they don't define their mediums.

    The Merit of The Seventh Seal and 400 Blows seems obvious to me, since those are a few of the ones you mentioned.

    To whoever was saying art can't be commercial-- Plenty of artists do paintings on commission or scores for movies. Shakespeare did a good deal of plays because he was paid by a king. I think I understand your meaning, but art can be a commercial endeavor.

15. Nick Barber Posted 10 days later

    "Appreciation" of some art form implies objectivity and almost a lack of passion for it - the films that move me aren't perhaps "great" in terms of historical/contextual/tapping into the mass psyche - type appeal, but they do it for me for all sorts of non-critically endorsed reasons. To turn this into the "Anti-Morrissey" - they say something to me about my life - whether that be an emotional/psychological/personal thing or not. Isn't that all that matters? Anything else is for the historians and sociologists.

    My nine pence, for what it's worth. (I couldn't think of a tenth that would merit the personal effect that these films have.)

    Amelie
    Wilbur wants to kill himself
    Splendor in the grass
    American Friends
    Miss Austen Regrets
    Brigadoon
    Sweet Home Alabama (Definitely not of much critical worth)
    Rock'n'Roll High School
    Pleasantville
    High Fidelity

16. Dan Holway Posted 17 days later

    "...Dan's postulation that collaborative art forms aren't art forms is ... well, hmmm. What about dance, theatre, symphonic music, opera, etc." I hear ya, Liz. I was merely offering some jackass dorm-room devil's advocacy for why film might be considered a different form of art from paintings or novels. With paintings and novels, you can readily point to the painter and novelist, and with theater and music, you can point to names on the scripts, scores, and libretti and be able to refer to them as the artists, even if the art never gets performed. I mean, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #2 would still exist as a discrete work of art even if Van "the Man" Cliburn or anyone else never played it. With a film, you can point to the stack of canisters or to the images flickering on the screen, but the question of who the artist or artists are gets very muddled. (I suspect that part of the reason that people reflexively refer to the director as the author of the film is so that there can be one artist and thus easier to classify as art.)

    Btw, all other films are footnotes to Lawrence of Arabia.

17. Mark Vasko Posted 18 days later

    Some people go to films looking for an artistic experience and some go to films looking for explosions. It depends on what language you speak. I don't speak 'painting' but I do speak music. I go to music for artistry so I am a fan of yours. Lady Gaga fans don't speak 'music'...which is fine. They go to music for candy. If I went to the Art Institute, all I would see are pretty colors because I don't speak that language. Even though I know there is artistry there, it's all Chinese to me. Artistic paintings don't speak to me. Music does and movies can. I am more fluent in music than in movies, but I can appreciate artistry there. Some film-makers aim for the fluent but most don't. Rarely, a movie can be both. The song 'Dancing in the Dark' is like that. It was a huge hit because it was catchy enough for the candy crowd, but I speak the language so I loved it too. Those lyrics are certainly artistic....filled with desperation, self contempt, loneliness etc. It moved me. Movies can do both too, it's just safer to not even try. Just give the people candy, make money and go home.

18. Zach Parker Posted about 1 month later

    1. I love this list: "do the Art thing: provoke disquiet, introduce unforgettable characters, trouble certitudes, evoke sympathy with alien consciousnesses and experiences, display an individual signature, and illuminate human life in a fresh way."
    Thinking on that, it came to mind that witnessing a car crash could do all those things. Though I mean it, that's crass; my point is that I like to think of art as a matter of will. If I wipe a bogey on the window and call it art, I may be a jackass, but I don't like the idea of anyone drawing a line between what is and isn't art. Call it shit, just don't call it Not Art.
    2. I figure that people's life-experiences and perspectives are individual enough that we pull different meanings from things like paintings or poems, or films, even ones mutually enjoyed. A work that provides Jack with an intellectual and/or visceral art-experience might cretinize Joe, and that's fine.

    Great discussion.