Movies

In 1981 I took a 'Film Studies' course as part of my BA. We surveyed film from the beginning through to the present, each week reading about, watching, and discussing one 'classic' movie representing a genre or time period. The course took us through those crazy silent movies, including Sunset , Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies, through the talkies and musicals, slick dramas, adventures, mysteries, comedies, film noir, horror, through to The French Lieutenant's Woman and Body Heat, two of the really good movies of 1981. We learned that Citizen Kane was considered the best movie ever made, and that Hitchcock was the most economical and efficient director.

Nearly 30 years later, movies are better than ever. Last year we watched Kate Winslet in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. From every standpoint I can consider -directing, acting, script, lighting, sound and music, editing - these films are better than anything to date. They simply blow away Citizen Kane, or any of the old 'Classics' that we nostalgically set aside as 'the best ever'. We are living in a golden period of film, and it seems that the standards are simply getting better every year. These films challenge us to reconsider stereo-types, present a world as a series of grey-shades rather than black and whites, require us to follow complex story and plot lines, and appreciate the complexities, foibles, and whimsies of the human soul.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that 'nostalgia is masochism tempered by boredom'. As a general rule I am happy to dismiss nostalgia in favour of celebrating what we have presently, and with films it is easy, because they have never been this good.