"Shane" too intellectual for today's audience?

[Phillyrich]

Today I heard a local film writer and critic, Lou Gaul, talk about his appearances in front of live audiences/schools, etc. He is always asked about his personal favorite film. He said he dreads the question, because he always answers: "Shane."

He says that audiences under the age of 45 immediately turn off to his explanation, because they cannot understand the subtleties of film. Shane is simply too "intellectual" for them.

That stunned me. Shane is not "Citizen Kane." It doesn't require the back references of say, "Sunset Boulevard." Lou is a very easy-going guy who rarely criticizes. He basically called the audience, well...stupid.

I wonder. What are other people's experiences? I know most people are allergic to b&w, but are classic films too hard for today's audience?

[boblipton]

he's right and he's wrong. Shane would pass by most people because they wouldn't give it the time, not because it is intellectual or subtle, but because its basic genre, its tropes and assumptions, are that of the western, a form that is rapidly becoming archaic. The modern audience would not make a smash hit out of the Passion Play as performed by the Oberammergau players for the same reason, and the idiocy of such a presentation was one of the gags in 20TH CENTURY.

On the other hand were you to recast SHANE in its 21st century equivalent, science fiction, it would undoubtedly do very well. Worked for HIGH NOON.

Bob

[drednm]

I can't remember why, but Shane got held up for a year or two before it was released. As a kid, I hated the film; now I think it's a masterpiece.

Of course any film with Nancy Kulp in it has to be good.

[Mike Gebert]

That puts me in mind of Andre Bazin's description of Seven Men From Now-- "the most intelligent and least intellectual of westerns."

I like Seven Men From Now a lot.

[Richard P. May]

I remember reading that SHANE was delayed after filming and before release was because George Stevens spent so much time in editing. I think he was known for this.
As far as the picture is concerned, I've always thought it was the best picture of its type ever made. From the opening, where the deer is eating the garden, it runs thru my mind that "this picture was planned, directed, and photographed by real experts".
Anybody notice it doesn't have an end title? Shane rides off into the mountains (Grand Tetons in Wyoming), and the Paramount logo comes on. It just struck me, maybe one of the Tetons is the Paramount logo.
If today's audiences can't connect with this movie, it's their loss.

[Phillyrich]

I can't see how the western form is archaic. Even the remake of "True Grit" (not a great film in 1969, either) was pretty well received.

I would think Shane doesn't register these days because our demasculinized society cannot comprehend a man's man.

One who lives by his own (higher) moral code, acts outside the law-- with no bravado-- suffers in silence, and in the end, sacrifices his own best interests for the good of others.

Today Shane would be sent to group therapy to become a team player.

[Dan Oliver]

Wait. We live in a demasculinized society? I need to go ask my wife what she thinks about that.

I used to love Shane. It was my favorite western. Now it seems a little over-determined and over-emphatic in its effects. I'm still fond of it, but it no longer seems like the masterpiece it did when I was younger.

[Phillyrich]

You question a demasculinized society when John ("I Feel Pretty" )Edwards, a man who almost became President, headlines the news?

Talk about living by a higher, selfless moral code...

Remember, "Stagecoach" is often considered a movie also thickly plotted, with stereotypical characters, and filled with cliche.

But in 1939, it was an original. Filmmakers stole from it endlessly. As with say, The Godfather. Makes these great originals seem less new.

When I watch a movie, I try to imagine myself in the year it was made. When I watch Shane, I pretend movies from 1954 onward, do not yet exist.

[precode]

In recent months, I've attended revival screenings of such varied classics as REAR WINDOW, GOLDFINGER and JAWS. After each one, the 20-somethings in the lobby were all grumbling aout how slow and boring they were (typical: "I thought we were never gonna see the f---ing shark!"). After a quarter-century of MTV filmmaking, we have created two generations of kids with the attention span of a ferret on a dozen espressos.

Mike S.

[Gene Zonarich]

After a quarter-century of MTV filmmaking, we have created two generations of kids with the attention span of a ferret on a dozen espressos.

Well put. In movies and television, you rarely see a shot held for more than 1.5 seconds, and cutting seems to be done for its own sake as if the filmmaker is trying to see how many irrelevant unnecessary cuts can be crammed into a scene. Otherwise, it serves no other function unless "disorientation" is the intent of the filmmaker.

And it's not liimited to motion pictures. I recently read an article in which college students were asked what "classic literature" they read and why (or why not). Charles Dickens was dismissed as having "too many words."

[Jack Theakston]

Come on, let's be honest here... it's not how the media is projected, it's just the intelligence level and perspective (ie. experience) of the viewer. Most people are unsophisticated to begin with, and the young folks we are picking on here haven't the film knowledge or life experience to even be taken seriously. There are those who do, but they're the ones doing rather than saying, so you miss them in the grand scheme of things.

When I worked at a film lab, we did a lot of student processing, and you would see this cockiness all the time in first year film students. You'd have someone wet-behind-the-ears come in and say something like "now push this and print it down, bleach bypass, yadda, yadda, yadda" and you'd get it off the printer and it would still be the same poorly-shot crap, this time looking crappier. Usually, because someone told them or because they saw it for themselves, they'd realize that there's nothing new under the sun, and they'd go back to the traditional techniques because they found out those work the best.

But like I say, there are those who are young, too, who have the life experience or artistic knowledge to know something good when they see it. There are even those who might not have either quality, but have a natural sensibility for good taste. I would be eager to say that if you asked for their opinion, you'd get a refreshingly different perspective on what young people think is good. But the problem today is that there are so many people who think their opinion is worth expressing (heck, perhaps I'm one of them) that they put it out there whether considering if anyone even cares, and it becomes one big sea of white noise.

Conversely, I've met a lot of old fogies who I am convinced always had bad taste and still do.

[drednm]

In my college teaching days I noticed that the "kids" had virtually no context, no knowledge, or experience to draw on. Never mind Dickens; they could barely grasp what was going on in The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises. Even with these 20s novels, the "kids" didn't recognize anything in the characters. With films, it's the same. We don't have to go back to silents or B&W to lose the audience. As was mentioned, the pacing and editing are boring to "kids" and anything resembling a plot leaves them confused.... unless it comes out of a comic book.

Of course this is all generalization, and there are certainly "kids" who get it and appreciate film and literature.

[Harold Aherne]

Comparisons between audience sophistication of the past vs. present is a tough subject, and one that can be hard to make heads or tails of. A much larger percentage of the public today has a high school diploma and/or college degree. Cognitive psychologists tell us that IQ scores have generally been increasing over the last century or more (the so-called Flynn effect). Yet so much of the popular entertainment of today strikes me as either hopelessly moronic or wearisomely jaded and self-aware.

In spite of having generally less formal education, audiences of the 19th and early 20th centuries still enjoyed some pretty sophisticated movies, songs, plays, books, et al. Personal writings from that time often reveal language skills (and penmanship!) that are much more advanced than one would expect, given the sterotypes that modern society sometimes attaches to people fewer years of schooling.

Obviously, the above generalisations can't apply to everyone: a considerable number of people 100 years ago probably never wrote very much, simply because they weren't required to as part of their jobs or daily lives. Thus our sample size is weighted in favour of people with reasons and skills to write (and the luck to have their writings survive)--and yet, their words have a certain panache that's often lacking in present-day writers, even those who graduated from elite universities.

Those "What the Picture Did For Me" reports published in movie trade journals of the 20s are a fascinating cross-section of small-town tastes. Clearly, most theatre owners had no great affection for "arty" films, owing both to their cost and their often tepid response from patrons*, but the films that were most popular (many of which we'd classify now as unremarkable studio programmers) were still made with a professionalism and astuteness that audiences had to appreciate on at least some level.

-Harold

*There's a compilation of 1928-29 reviews at http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/. Compare the reactions to Excess Baggage and The Wedding March and you'll see what I mean.

[Hillary H.]

In the early 1980s, I was in film school and helped out with the "Intro to Film" program. The (anonymous) teacher evaluation forms were always something we'd anticipate and dread. Under "suggestions," the two overwhelmingly popular responses were:

"Show more color movies"

"Show Star Wars"

I guess that was to be expected. No doubt by now, the students wouldn't even want to sit through the majority of color movies made more than 10 years ago! As frustrating as it was then, in some ways I fear it's worse now.

[Mike Gebert]

Now it seems a little over-determined and over-emphatic in its effects.

Well said.

By that point, George Stevens would never just make a western. He had to make a Western.

[mndean]

In recent months, I've attended revival screenings of such varied classics as REAR WINDOW, GOLDFINGER and JAWS. After each one, the 20-somethings in the lobby were all grumbling aout how slow and boring they were (typical: "I thought we were never gonna see the f---ing shark!"). After a quarter-century of MTV filmmaking, we have created two generations of kids with the attention span of a ferret on a dozen espressos.

Mike S.

You know, when I was in junior high (even elementary school) in the '70s, us kids were still using slang we picked up in the old movies invariably run on TV. Old movies aren't run anymore except on a few cable channels. You have to come to them now, they're not ubiquitous as they once were. Kids today are distracted in too many ways (Twitter, texting friends, on-line gaming, etc.) to care about watching a film. I'm not sure it's their fault.

MTV filmmaking is what I used to call Pavlovian film - everything crafted to get a certain base reaction, with no thinking. Blockbusters I've seen recently are rife with methamphetamine editing and arresting images just slapped up like a comic book.

...then again, maybe kids are smarter than we are and get the nuances in older films but are bored by such banal stuff.

[Phillyrich]

I've always been amazed bny the fact that todays' typical laptop has more computing power than the first Apollo space capsule.
To some, that is proof we live in superior times.
One can also say, what courage, creativity and intelligence it took-- in a scribble by longhand world-- to land a man on the moon.

As self-absorbed as my fellow baby boomers were, we always had time for the Marx Brothers, MGM Musicals, Film Noir and Bogart.

I had hoped the internet and sites like "youtube" would pique some interest in old films among the young. The shelves of BestBuy and Walmart, say no.

[Christopher Jacobs]

While the majority of people, old and young these days, seem to have little interest in movies made before the time that they first started going to movies, and some people can only bear to watch the latest Hollywood hyped releases, I've noticed just this past year that a somewhat larger percentage than in previous years are appreciating how black and white photography can contribute atmosphere to a story that would be missing in color. A few have even expressed how they prefer black and white for certain films whereas lack of color was a major barrier for the vast majority just a couple of years ago (before the likes of SIN CITY, no doubt).

As for getting the subtleties of the drama with slower pacing or unfamiliar actors, it seems more related to how "relateable" the students consider the story is to their own lives. It can take some initial pointing out how certain themes a film handles are timeless and universal before they watch it, or the period setting/peculiar filmmaking style can be too much for some to get past. Others (not surprisingly the better students) can make surprisingly adept observations and interpretations of films completely removed from their previous experience. Response to films like BLACK LEGION, MAYOR OF HELL, CROSSFIRE, and others were unexpectedly positive. Reaction to recent films with deliberate pacing are also based on students ability to connect with the characters. Many disliked THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING intensely but were surprisingly moved by TOKYO SONATA.

In short, it depends on the individuals and the situation, and especially the advance expectations of the people seeing something for the first time.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Old ... BluRay.htm

[Ray Faiola]

Have they restored Brandon deWilde's final "Bye Shane!" to the soundtrack yet? WHen they did the last "restoration" they remixed the soundtrack and left off the final call. A real shame. I have the Paramount betmax release with the original soundtrack mix.

[Michael O'Regan]

Today Shane would be sent to group therapy to become a team player.

[Daniel Eagan]

When I was with HBO we screened Shane outdoors at Bryant Park on a stormy night. When the screen came down (briefly), the audience was smart enough to call out, "Come back Shane!"