Wrestling with history
Those who have followed me here for some time, or on my previous blog, or on social media, or met me in person, will know that I have a strong tendency to complain about the persistent ignorance about film history among those whose job it would seem to be to know this stuff. A pet peeve that used to make me angry and frustrated; all these common claims and beliefs that are not true, or significantly more complicated than you are led to believe.1 But whether it is me maturing, or becoming more Zen-like, or stoic, or whatever, I have suddenly accepted that this is inevitable.
Part of the previous frustration came from me thinking that this ignorance was somehow specific to film studies/criticism. I had of course no reason to think this and finally, last year, acknowledged to myself that we are ignorant about most things in life, even about the things we think we are knowledgeable about, and not just about films and film history. Those for whom this article is their first encounter with me will perhaps be less impressed by this example of personal growth, but for me it has been very liberating to accept our common inevitable ignorance.2
I was reminded of this the other day from an online discussion about the belief that in classical Hollywood cinema you were not allowed to have a killer and the person killed in the same shot: if one person shot another there would, it is claimed, always be a cut in between, so that the gun was fired in the first shot, with the victim not visible, and then in the next shot only the victim and not the killer would be visible. Supposedly this had something to do with the Hays code and censorship. It is often specified that it was in westerns where this was the case, as if there was one set of rules for killings when you made a western and another rule when you killed someone in a non-western film. Some have claimed it was Sergio Leone who first broke this alleged rule, others that Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was the first film that broke it. Even the fact-checkers at The New Yorker let that one slip by the other year.
This is absolute nonsense, and the arguments for this claim are unreasonable and implausible. Thousands of films had been made in Hollywood prior to Sergio Leone’s Italian westerns,3 or Bonnie and Clyde, and uncountable numbers of them, from forgotten B-westerns to some of the most famous films of all times, have these alleged forbidden scenes with the murder and the victim in the same shot, and with people gunned down in cold blood in one single shot. This is almost a flat-earth situation because it is so obvious what is right and what is wrong. (This is as good a reason as any to suggest you watch the delicious opening sequence of The Tattered Dress (1957).4)
Another of these common misunderstandings, which I was also reminded of last week when reading a new book about Steven Spielberg,5 concerns the release of Jaws (1975). Below is the relevant paragraph:
This is a standard tale about the release of Jaws, but releasing films in hundreds of copies simultaneously across the US was not new. Several 20th Century Fox productions, from the late 1940s onwards, were each released simultaneously in about 500 prints in their respective years, like the marvellous Prince of Foxes (1949). Columbia, United Artists, and Allied Artists also liked to release some of their films on a similar scale in the late 1940s and 1950s.6 The producer/distributor Joseph E. Levine used this method with, for example, Hercules (1958) and The Carpetbaggers (1964). In 1974, The Trial of Billy Jack was released in over 1000 prints. A month before Jaws, Breakout (1975) had been released in about 1300 prints. Some James Bond films had been, for their respective premieres in the United States, simultaneously released in over 500 prints, years before Jaws.
The late 1940s is also when the term “blockbuster” was introduced to refer to films that were exceptionally successful at the box office. The word was used by film critics, in trade journals, in Congressional hearings, and elsewhere. Everything from Samson and Delilah (1949) to Peyton Place (1960) to The Graduate (1967) was called a blockbuster.7 I do not know why people think it originated with Jaws. Neither do I know why so many think it was the first film to be promoted by short TV ads. It was common practice already, for various kinds of films, including the James Bond films8 and the disaster movies that were dominating the box office in the years before Jaws came along.9
A third example is the erroneous belief that deep focus cinematography was very rare before Citizen Kane (1941), and could only be found in a handful of films by Jean Renoir and William Wyler. But deep focus had been a recurring tool for directors and cinematographers since the early years of cinema. The persistent look of Citizen Kane was unusual, but not deep focus in itself which can be found in all kinds of films, from forgotten B-thrillers to some of the most famous films of the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the misconceptions about Citizen Kane’s cinematography probably come from its cinematographer Gregg Toland’s self-advertisement, and later amplified by André Bazin. I think Bazin’s well-deserved importance has also meant that several of his mistakes or misunderstandings regarding Citizen Kane, as well as other films and movements, have become accepted as the truth of the matter.10
There is an expression within the field of statistics, zombie statistics, i.e. some piece of statistics that is repeatedly proved wrong yet continues to be used, and to circulate in the world, in the news, and, inevitably, on social media. (A good rule of thumb is that any piece of statistics that goes viral is inaccurate.) I think we could say this is the same phenomenon, a zombie fact.
It is possible that further research would show the origin of the above-mentioned beliefs about Jaws and killings, and many other zombie facts. Probably some critic or scholar made some claim at some point (like Bazin) and then nobody gave it much thought or cared to double-check, and it became absorbed as an historic fact, for no other reason than inertia, however absurd or wrong it might have been.
But such research is for another day. The primary reason for this article is to underline how my reaction to this has changed, as I wrote in the opening paragraph. Anger and frustration are unproductive, and unnecessary. It is not possible to watch all films, or to know all the context and history about each film. There is only so much we can learn, know, and remember, and this is as true within film studies as elsewhere in life. But it is possible to have more humility when discussing the past, and to accept that whatever you think is right might very well be wrong. That is true for me, as well as for you.
I give three examples in this article but there are many others I could give. When the first public film screenings were held, when the first films were made, the history of “auteur theory,” the development of neorealism, the workings and practices of the Hollywood studio system, the history of modernism films, and other similarly crucial events and movements about which confusion, misunderstandings, and contradictions are the rule.
This is not just about film history but my whole new approach to life and to our limited understanding and awareness of what goes on in the world and with ourselves. But that discussion is too long and too deep for this post!
If the argument that Sergio Leone was the first to break this rule was true it would suggest, as he was an Italian director working in Italy, that nobody in the whole world had done this before. How plausible is that?
The credits are almost like a Douglas Sirk movie: written by George Zuckerman, produced by Albert Zugsmith, music by Frank Skinner. But it was directed by Jack Arnold.
Devillard, Arnaud, Olivier Bousquet, Nicolas Schaller, Steven Spielberg, All the Films: The Story Behind Every Movie, Episode, and Short (2023).
I am not saying this release strategy began in the late 1940s, but I am not familiar with release patterns before 1945 so I have no older examples. This does not mean they do not exist.
“You'd better have a blockbuster action film to open on the West Side or you're going to lose money,” a distributor complained in New York Magazine, 31 August 1970.
Is it because the Bond films were British productions that they are usually left out of discussions about marketing and release patterns in the US? They should be included because they were influential. But there is in general a blind spot in film studies when it comes to the Bond films and their status and importance.
I have written a lot about the mythical tales about New Hollywood Cinema of the late 1960s and 1970s, here for example: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2021/02/1970s-and-economics.html
Many of the celebrated deep focus shots were not done by Gregg Toland, as is almost always claimed, and are not deep focus either. They were made by the special effects team at RKO, and led by a man called Linwood G. Dunn. You will be hard pressed to find any mentions of him in the extensive literature on the film.
