Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

THEY STILL MAKE ‘EM LIKE THEY USED TO

            The phrase “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” became a cliché when nostalgic people talked about the films Hollywood used to make. The idea was that the old studios once turned out something enjoyable and entertaining, even if it presented an innocent or naïve view of the world.

            But I assert that, in fact, “they still make’em like they used to”. I do not mean this as approbation. I am pointing to the reality that many of the clichés of old Hollywood still persist, no matter how much audiences might regard themselves as more sophisticated in their tastes than their grandparents.

We no longer believe in strong, silent heroes solving everyone’s problems, do we? We laugh at sanitised versions of the private lives of public people, don’t we? So we no longer believe in Hollywood fairy-tales, right?

Wrong.

Look a little more critically, and you will see that the film industry in general (but the American film industry in particular) still feeds wish-fulfliment fantasies.

Let me consider a few recent specimens that have passed under my upturned, discerning nose.

 Drawn by favourable reviews, I went to see Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set at the end of the 1960s. It was amusing and enjoyable for much of its length. I appreciated good acting from the two leads who are intelligently outgrowing their former pretty-boy status: Leonardo da Caprio as an egotistical, fading cowboy star and Brad Pitt as his unassuming stunt double. I took the hint from the title (“once upon a time”) that this was going to be a sort of fairy-tale, not to be taken too seriously. I understood that there was going to be something elegaic about the movie when the Manson “family” were introduced into the narrative – the murders they committed did, after all, put a full-stop to the era of “flower power”. One sequence I found touching and sad as hell  - the sequence in which the actress Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) goes to the movies to see herself, and is clearly thrilled by the thought that she has now made it big. Clearly she hasn’t (her part is a silly supporting role in an indifferent film) and we know that, in real life, she would shortly be murdered by Manson’s mob. This is what gives the sequence some of its pathos.

BUT (and I make absolutely no apology for the spoilers here – the film has already been on release for months) the ending is ridiculous, whether or not we have been warned that it’s a fairy-tale. The Manson “family” never make it to their notorious murders. Instead, they raid the home of the stuntman who, with the faded cowboy star, fights them off and kills some of them. This sequence is filmed as joyful fun, including the cowboy star blasting one of the Manson group with a flame-thrower. The Manson murders never happen and there’s a sort of happy ending.

So in the end, what are we getting?  Just another movie with catharsis by violence, like those old cowboy films that we are now too sophisticated to enjoy. John Wayne kills the bad guys and rides into the sunset. Brad Pitt and Leonardo da Caprio kill the Mansons. Happy ending and fadedout. To say that this is “ironic”, knowing and self-referencing is simply having ten bob each way. It’s the same scenario old studio-dominated Hollywood used to make.

Now for a switch of genres. If ever we get to see them on Youtude, DVD or another platform, Hollywood’s old “biopics” of musicians and composers are things that we now laugh at, apart from the moments when we are enjoying their musical interludes or production numbers. Cornel Wilde in A Song to Remember (1945) as Frederic Chopin; Katherine Hepburn and Paul Henreid pretending to be Clara and Robert Schumann in Song of Love (1947); and Dirk Bogarde pretending to be Franz Liszt in Song Without End (1960). All of them can now be seen as soap-operas, hilariously inaccurate as biography, sanitised, romanticised and Americanised. The same is true of those old movies about modern, popular composers. Robert Alda pretending to be George Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945); or Cary Grant gamely pretending to be Cole Porter (and gamely pretending that Cole Porter was heterosexual) in Night and Day (1946). And don’t get me started on sanitised biopics about singers, bandleaders and dancers that the studios used to grind out – movies purportedly about Benny Goodman, Al Jolson, Glenn Miller etc. You have to groan your way through their contrived, fictitous soap-opera scenarios to enjoy the singing or dancing bits.

We are far too sceptical and worldly-wise to fall for this sort of thing now, aren’t we?

Okay then – compare them with the recently-released Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic of the late Freddie Mercury of Queen. I went along and enjoyed much of the music. And smirked in disbelief at the intended drama. Fact -  Brian May, lead guitarist of Queen, was one of the consultants and producers of the film. So guess who gets to be represented in the film as a paragon of hard work and decency when Freddie is in danger of going off the rails? Much of the film is complete fiction. There is a contrived ending where the band, which has broken up, reunites for the Live Aid concert. In reality, they hadn’t broken up at that time. The film makes them the great and outstanding hit of the concert (they weren’t) and it’s all so tragic and brave because, says the film, Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS shortly before the concert took place (in reality, he wasn’t thus diagnosed until years later). And then there’s the sentimental stuff about Freddie’s One True Love and a quick glossing over of his sex-life and… oh fudge! You see that I can easily pull apart this film as being essentially the same sort of soap that the old musical biopics were. I was now going to dissect the same techniques in the new film Rocketman, purportedly giving the life of Elton John (who, unlike Freddie Mercury, is still alive, and therefore capable of protecting his image).

Maybe fifty years hence, through some media device as yet uninvented, a youngster will watch Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman and laugh at the gullibility of audiences way back in the 2010s. The film industry now, more than ever, plays to youthful tastes (action flicks, superhero blockbusters etc. based on comic-book assumptions) and produces fantasy worlds as its prime income–earners. Hence the persistence of old tropes. But don’t let it be assumed that its “serious” films are more rooted in the real world than films were in the past. Movie-making is still essentially a dream factory; “irony” is just a way of re-packaging old storylines while claiming to be hip; and biopics of showbiz figures are the same soaps they always were. Generations X,Y, Z, Milliennial, Inane, Whatever please be advised. They still make ‘em like they used to.