DC Film Society: Adam's Rib March 2021

Scorsese’s Call to Action

In the March 2021 issue of Harper's Magazine, Martin Scorsese sounded an alarm. He wrote that “The art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content’ ... ‘Content’ became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode.” Scorsese then aimed his fire directly at “streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores.” After acknowledging that streaming had benefitted him, he still criticized these platforms for creating “a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is ‘suggested’ by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?”

While Scorsese was surely not the first to raise this concern, his words carry much weight. Beyond his own acclaimed work as a filmmaker, Scorsese has devoted his life to preserving and celebrating film history. In 1990, Scorsese founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization that’s restored over 850 films from around the world. He’s launched the World Cinema Project to restore foreign films. More recently The Film Foundation partnered with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on an effort to restore and distribute African films. Scorsese made two documentaries about the films that influenced him, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy. His efforts led to a rediscovery of the visionary British director Michael Powell’s films. I always used to look forward to Scorsese’s monthly column in the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) guide, pointing out some hidden gems.

By now just about everyone knows the algorithms that Scorsese so detests. The streaming sites work the same way most retail websites pitch you products. If you buy many blue jeans, you will see ads for more blue jeans. If you watch many action movies Netflix will push more action movies. The algorithms do have some benefits. After my wife and I watched One Night in Miami, Amazon steered me to a documentary on Sam Cooke. Not knowing much about Cooke beforehand, I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about him and his music. Still Scorsese’s point rings true. Algorithms are more tied to quantity than quality. Moviegoers relying solely on these algorithms would gradually become passive consumers. To some degree that’s already happened. COVID has only exacerbated this trend by increasing our dependency on streaming. The algorithms also lead to unintended consequences. I kept wondering why Hulu kept pushing cheesy reality shows until my wife reminded me that we gave our password to our 16-year old niece.

Scorsese prefers that streaming services be curated, with recommendations coming from film connoisseurs: “Curating isn’t undemocratic or ‘elitist,’ a term that is now used so often that it’s become meaningless. It’s an act of generosity—you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you.” He cites The Criterion Channel, Mubi, and TCM as examples. In a perfect world Netflix, Amazon and Hulu would all curate their films the way Scorsese describes. Of course his own statement explains why it will never happen. Curating is an act of generosity, and how often are huge corporations generous? The Criterion Channel, Mubi, and TCM all target cinephiles who specifically look for lesser-known, independent, older or foreign films. For the larger streaming services, why should they higher curators when algorithms are so much cheaper? As long as the subscriber income rolls in, there’s no incentive for these services to do anything different.

To some extent the mainstream streamer platform model is just the latest evolution of how Hollywood changed when large multi-national corporations bought studios in the late 70s and the 80s. Films became one of many products that these corporations offered. Greenlighting a movie gradually became dependent on demographic studies, marketing and merchandising opportunities. When home video emerged initially it was mom and pop stores with clerks who could make recommendations. Eventually Blockbuster subsumed many of these stores, offering 30 copies of the hot new releases and mere scrounging for anything else. These corporations met the consumers where they were just as most of the streaming services are doing now. If we accept it, there’s no reason for it to change.

Later in the column Scorsese looks back at the late 50s and early 60s, when independent movie theaters in New York regularly exhibited the finest in world cinema, thanks to smaller distributors such as Grove Press and New Yorker Films: “The pictures that came to these shores thanks to the efforts of these and other distributors and curators and exhibitors made for an extraordinary moment ... I feel lucky to have been young and alive and open to all of it as it was happening.” As a film history buff, I enjoy learning about that era. Sometimes I wish I was alive then. Scorsese paints such a vivid picture that we understand so clearly why he is reminiscing. But too much looking backward diminishes his larger point.

Martin Scorsese was at the right place at the right time to nurture his love of cinema. Thank you to fate or divine providence for that. Most aren’t so fortunate. New York in the late 50s and 60s was nirvana for him, but what of others who may have lived elsewhere in that time? Would they have had the same access to see the films he did? Maybe in a few other cities. It was a very concentrated opportunity. I have my own less exciting example. Going into the mid-90s I knew little about classic films and even less about foreign films. Then I began going regularly to the American Film Institute (AFI) theater, first at the Kennedy Center and then later in Silver Spring, Maryland. I was very lucky to have a curated repertory theater so close by. Thanks to the AFI, I discovered Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Fellini, Truffaut, Altman and so much more. Now if I were describing that experience to my niece, would that encourage her to see some of these films? Probably not, because it was a singular experience for me with little relevance to her life.

The “It was so much better in my day” mentality also presents other problems. Scorsese explains that “Godard and Bertolucci and Antonioni and Bergman and Imamura and Ray and Cassavetes and Kubrick and Varda and Warhol were reinventing cinema with each new camera movement and each new cut, and more established filmmakers such as Welles and Bresson and Huston and Visconti were reenergized by the surge in creativity around them.” I don’t doubt that for a second, but notice there’s only one female filmmaker on that list and no black filmmakers. That’s no knock on Scorsese’s choices, which were what was available then. Scorsese has championed female, black, and Asian filmmakers throughout his career. However, if you’re trying to celebrate a “surge in creativity,” it falls a little short when non-white male filmmakers, at least in this country, had few outlets for their own creativity. While there’s still a long way to go, you could argue that we have a more diverse surge in creativity now. Just look at Nomadland by Asian-American Chloé Zhao, One Night in Miami by African-American Regina King, Judas and the Black Messiah by African-American Shaka King, The Forty-Year Old Version by African-American Radha Blank, or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by African-American George C. Wolfe, just to name a few. So again, if Scorsese’s column’s purpose is to encourage love of cinema, is pointing to a specific time 55-60 years ago the best, most inclusive, way to do it?

When Scorsese writes about his love of cinema it hits home because he has demonstrated that love for more than 50 years. I love cinema too, and I’m sure many of those who may read this love it as well. Do we all agree on what cinema actually is though? Clearly we know it when we see it, and when we don’t. Lawrence of Arabia is clearly cinema, while The Croods: A New Age is not, but there are many films in-between. Attitudes about cinema can change. In the 1950s, many film critics derided Alfred Hitchcock works as lowbrow movies for the masses. Now critics and historians celebrate Hitchcock as a visionary auteur who mastered and defined so many film techniques while combining craftsmanship and style. To me cinema is where film art and entertainment converge. An artistic film with no entertainment value, no matter how beautiful it looks, will quickly grow boring and tiresome. An entertaining film with no artistic value will keep you amused for two hours but will wash away as soon as you are finished. Cinema engages you while you are watching and stays with you afterwards. It resonates with you and hopefully others.

For cinema, however you define it, to truly resonate, it must be cherished so it can be discovered, enjoyed, appreciated and rediscovered. Who will cherish these films, preserve them, and share them? Scorsese nails the answer in two parts. First, who won’t be cherishing the great films: “We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema. In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word ‘business,’ and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property—in that sense, everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001 is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the ‘Art Film’ swim lane on a streaming platform.” In the 2000s, studios wanted to cash in on the DVD boom and shared much of what remained in their archives, and in doing this restored, to a degree, some of these films. When the DVD boom dried out, studios backed off their earlier efforts. No one is going to get rich off film restoration or preservation.

So if not the major media corporations, then who? Scorsese rallies the troops: “Those of us who know the cinema and its history have to share our love and our knowledge with as many people as possible. And we have to make it crystal clear to the current legal owners of these films that they amount to much, much more than mere property to be exploited and then locked away. They are among the greatest treasures of our culture, and they must be treated accordingly.”

In the end it’s up to us. We may not have the time or the resources to directly preserve films, but we can support those that do by donating to The Film Foundation, the Film Noir Foundation or other organizations that perform this valuable work. Another way is to use the streaming services that Scorsese identified, The Criterion Channel and Mubi. TCM also offers streaming. For those of us like me, who still purchase DVDs, we can buy them from Criterion, one of the few remaining providers that presents movies with the highest visual and sound quality along with commentaries and other special features. We can go to repertory theaters such as the AFI Silver again when they reopen. While we are still stuck in our homes we can use the Internet, social media and Zoom to, as Scorsese asked, “share our love and our knowledge with as many people as possible.”

While I may not agree with everything Martin Scorsese wrote, I am forever grateful that he is out there sharing his passion and expertise. Thank God he loves cinema and is helping all of us love it too.

Adam Spector
March 1, 2021