On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Kevin Burton Smith wrote:
> >The original is a great film, something the big
studios just couldn't do
> >nowadays: a crime film that really requires
careful watching. The
> >narrative is elliptical, as is proper for
hardboiled fiction, and there
> >are no exciting climaxes which they now depend
on. I just don't want to
> >see the original film to be ruined.
> with all due respect, I beg to differ,
Juri.
Let me return to this question. What I wrote earlier was to
say that the narrative style has changed so much from the
seventies when "Get Carter" was made. There are influences of
French new wave, a bit of Bresson perhaps, more than a bit of
American new wave crime films. In
"Get Carter" Hodges & co. use the narrative techniques
that aren't deployed anymore. Tarantino claims that he loves
Godard, but I haven't seen any reference to this in his
movies. He doesn't use jump cuts. He doesn't mix moving image
with boards saying something about Marx or Vietnam. The Coen
bros. are postmodern, but their narrative style is one of
style and glamour, thirties screwball comedy and fluent
editing and camera movements. "Twilight" is a Ross
Macdonald-ish pastiche, with touching melancholy. And so on.
These are movies of a different era and I would like to claim
that the era of "Get Carter" was much bolder when it comes to
movie making. "Get Carter" comes from an era when the
directors and movie makers wanted to trust people, wanted to
be able to tell stories without pointing out the motives at
every instance. And without showing action. Haven't yet seen
the new Carter, but I have a feeling that they show action
more than is necessary. And as we all should know, when less
is shown, more is seen. I think this is what hardboiled
means.
And now back to work.
Juri
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