DO YOU KNOW ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 20 WHO FEELS MOVIES WERE GENERALLY BETTER PRE-1990?

…or at the very least, has many or most favourite movies drawn from the pre-1990 period? What about teenagers who go to the cinema to witness classics from the black-and-white era? Is there still hope for the preservation of cinematic classics? I know many very small children are taken along to see old films at the Astor, but is this sort of thing becoming frightfully uncommon? Shall the age of lazy parenting (buy your child a mobile phone, an i-Clod, set them in front of the television and let them be entertained) combined with the general demise of movie palaces and the proliferation of film pirating from the Internet spell curtains for real cinema culture? I dare say, by and large the folks in their teens and perhaps even twenties are quickly forgetting the essence of real cinema. I know there are many twenty-somethings on this board who do love film, as there are thirty-somethings who really don’t “get” cinema, but I feel it’s the pre-20s set who are in danger of being totally oblivious to the magic of classic cinema. There are exceptions, but it would be wonderful if more of the old classics drew packed houses…I think it’s sad most moviegoers only recognise the latest Hollywood blockbusters, when classics can be enjoyed at the nostalgia cinema for sometimes half the price that’s being charged at the multiplex. It is my firm belief that, if exposed to these golden greats on the silver screen, many folks under 20 would be truly amazed and ergo become more demanding of current Hollywood and world cinema, too. It would change film culture and then perhaps we would see a radical change not only in how films are made, but also how they are presented.

You remind me of my grandma when she just sits on her weelchair and starts talking about the disgust of this generation while watching a report on her ’17-inch television about French teenagers from the Banlieu vandalazing the streets of Paris.

When I was 20 I thought that way too. Today I don’t because what usually happens is a filtering effect: we only see the best films produced in a certain year or decade. Nowadays we can and often see many films that we wouldn’t if home video didn’t exist. We see the good and the bad films. And there was a lot of bad stuff released in the 80’s and before.

its to do with the segmentation of the cinema audience! in the golden era of cinema, going to the cinema was a multigenerational experience with most films designed to appeal to a broad base. with the current preeminence of home-video, ghettoized and self limiting film watching is the norm.[the red shoes was a inspiration to working and middle class girls and some boys as well!]

Not many. There’s the rare breed of pre-20-something that contradicts the view of “film is so much better today” – which, of course, isn’t necessarily untrue, but as a blanket statement it’s wrong. I’m not sure why that is. Personally, as being one of the “over 20” persuasion, I tend to look at my own generation and early maturation period skeptically, but also fondly (after all, the ’80s was a smile-inducing period) – I treat nostalgia (which affects us all whether we want to admit it or not) with a very aware quarter-smile.

Then there’s those of the older generation who look at film differently but are just as generalizing and narrow-minded. So, there are several camps of limited thinking going on. Cinema has progressed in many impressive ways with the increasing sophistication of technology as well as years upon years of examples on how to do a thing rightly or wrongly (or just plain weirdly). I think I’d be hard pressed to side with one group of generalizers or the other, because I’d know I was wrong and often have trouble keeping that sort of a thing a secret.

Never trust anyone under 20!

“…and the proliferation of film pirating from the Internet spell curtains for real cinema culture…”

Hey, hey… let’s not go overboard. First off, piracy is not killing cinema. At all. Even assuming that a film was downloaded a billion times, only around 5% of those people would go see/ buy the movie if it were not available online. 40% have already seen it in theaters before downloading. Besides, I’ve yet to see a single stroke of red ink on any MPAA-affiliated company ledgers. The movie industry is doing fine. As I have explained many times, the argument that “such an such a company has lost a billion dollars this year!” is just a ploy to fool successive congressional committees in to proposing increasingly draconian bills to cut and paste on the DMCA. The only thing more rare than an under 20 year old “classic” film lover is an honest corporate lawyer. Film industry “losses” are generally valued in one of two ways:

i: By making an approximation of the number of downloads which, as I have already pointed out, is rubbish.
ii: By determining the difference between the capital gains of a particular film or, even more common, that of an entire fiscal year and the projected gains (mapped and graphed a full year ago in different economic conditions). This latter method obviously produces results which, in any but the most grandiloquent of speech, cannot be considered “losses.”

As you can see, both are unrealistic. Otherwise, how would it be possible that, since the new millennium, access to high speed internet and piracy have increased drastically and in almost equal proportion while paradoxically film industry “losses” have actually been decreasing over the same period*? Does piracy therefore help the film industry? By the same logic the “majors” employ, we are forced to believe so (even while common sense would dictate the contrary). The only reasonable conclusion therefore is that piracy has, at best, an inconclusive and indeterminable (and probably neutral) impact on the movie business. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that should the film industry be “hemorrhaging” cash (which is actually not the case, as movie companies are still turning net profit) I would say this effect would be in direct relation to the products they are proposing the market. Essentially, “make better films and they will come.”

*Check out the numerous articles written to this effect, with references, on the TorrentFreak website.

As for the matter at hand and after having longly digressed, I must say “anyone under the age of 20” cannot be trusted to have a valid opinion on anything. Even nineteen is pushing the limits, in my mind, of those who are capable of reasonable judgment. It’s not a question of intelligence which, as we all know, is an innate and imperceptible quality (unlike knowledge and instruction with which it is most often confused) but rather one of experience. Children like sweet things and gaudy colors because they have not grown las of them.

Post Scriptum:

I’m aware there are physiological differences that children undergo explaining this phenomenon, but my analogy was meant in a poetic sense. To be perfectly honest however, even the human brain is not entirely mature or “adult” until between 22 and 24 years of age, so don’t expect much from youth.

yes I am

“As for the matter at hand and after having longly digressed, I must say “anyone under the age of 20” cannot be trusted to have a valid opinion on anything.”

Gee, thanks…

Myself.I,m 19.And my best friend too!I actually think that movies have become worse since 1990.60s must be my favorite decade in cinematic terms.Of course the majority of poeple in my age would be too surprised to learn that cinema exists before 1990,maybe with the exception of some extremely popular Hollywood movies of previous decades.But I don’t think we should bother about these people,cause the majority of them,really didn’t take films seriously.I doubt that there are real cinephils who believe that films became better since 1990.So,it’s not a problem for me.I don’t think that the tastes of general public have become worse the recent years.Many films that are considered classics and undeniable masterpieces nowadays,were commercial fails and negatively criticized.There are hundrets of example.So,I don’t think that the problem is about the films that came out after 1980,1990,2000,or any decade.The majority of the audience has never such a good taste on films.

@Cecil Will Burchett: You’re very welcome. I feel I should note at this juncture that, when speaking generally, every individual case is an exception to the rule. No one can fall into the generalized, as it’s simply the median. At any rate, it would be about as likely as a tossed coin landing on it’s rim which, if we can believe The Twilight Zone, would cause a rift in the normal functioning of universal physics.

“Not many. There’s the rare breed of pre-20-something that contradicts the view of “film is so much better today” – which, of course, isn’t necessarily untrue, but as a blanket statement it’s wrong.”

If you are arguing from the point of innovation though, it’s not wrong, unless you are referring specifically to the various technological developments that have occured through the last decades, but don’t pretend that one cannot accurately generalise along those lines because they can. very easily. and they do ;-) But i guess it all depends on perspective doesn’t it? If someone argues that the directors of old were better because they were more ‘individual’—-i.e they were more bonafide auteurs in the past—that wouldn’t be a particularly hard position to defend, but you could very well run up against those that argue that auteur theory is a delusion, or that old auteurs tended to remake the same film over and over, and that it’s basically a ‘trap’.

Having said that, there is a small group of youngsters that prefer both film and music from an older period. it’s like a nostalgia for an era they never grew up in. I’ve met a lot of younger kids that accept the fact that the older bands were better, particularly in genres like rock and metal. whether it’s just a form of rebellion is open to debate, but i certainly do not remember anything like that when i was in high school. I guess the younger kids have grown up with so much recycled music that some of them have gone back to discover the originals

Um…I kind of agree with most of your post and I understand what you are trying to get across. Honestly though, I don’t know too many people AT ALL who prefer to watch movies made more than 20 years ago, including parents and everyone else in my family. The only thing my dad really seems to watch that is older than that is The Godfather which is practically on repeat (I come from an Italian family). So I don’t necessarily think it’s a generation thing to be honest, I just think the general audience wants to see mostly new stuff.

I myself was diving into cinematic history around the time I turned 16, turned it to AMC and said “Hmm…these actually aren’t that bad. Why have I always shunned these?”. Then I started off with Hitchcock and expanded from there. Again, people are who they are you know?

I think the biggest thing here is that in general, a lot of people don’t hold movies up as a high standard of art. It’s just something for them to do on the weekends or it’s just something to throw on the TV when people are over, even though no one is really watching it. Is it bad? Ehh…I don’t know. Part of me agrees and thinks that by them spending money on more general minded Hollywood fare, it makes it harder for better films to get released. However, the civil side of me respects the other person’s feelings that they don’t really care much about film. Who am I to tell them what they should and shouldn’t care deeply about? There are certainly other priorities in their lives I’m sure, even though art is #1 in mine.

People under 20 are assholes.

@ Rock and Bull, thanks for that generalization.

I’m 19 going on 20 and I have to say many of my favorite films came out prior to 1990. Just recently I’ve found favorites in The Earrings of Madam de… (1953) and Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946), and today I’ve enjoyed viewing Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), Walkabout (1971) and Rome, Open City (1945). I do enjoy the silents as well, my favorites being The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Metropolis (1927) and Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) and A Story of Floating Weeds (1935).

^^you have good taste then, more power to you :-)

i’m 19

i am 16

I am 17

I’m 15, bitches.

i’m older than you guys

oops—-

I’m 13. I mean 20. I mean 54… let’s just say the sum of those three. I’m so old I still remember Obama’s election.

I’m currently 17. Film, artistically, may have been in a much stronger state pre 1990, but I do think the 90’s were an excellent decade for film. Many, many, many “classics” from this decade as well. I think this would be more appropriate if it was titled “pre 2000” and at which time I would Whole Heartedly agree.
I wish I could see classics in the cinema, but as I live in a small town that only plays the newest special effects fest that we’re supposed to be brainwashed into believing is good, I’m confined to my simple home theatre and my netflix Q and my Amazon cart. All I have to say is thank god for things like Criterion, and other dvd companies without which I would have never seen a great deal of my favorites and probably would have dropped my dream of becoming a filmmaker long ago. (Plan B was always a bank robber.)

i am 18 and agree. i like a lot more pre 90’s films than later. generally speaking.

Firstly, I should clarify, I was born in 1978, and as you can see from my profile photo (if it’s still up there at time of you reading this), I’m hardly what you’d call a square. People who called me a square in secondary school can go fuck themselves. Undoubtedly they live boring lives and continue to do everything that society tells them. Good for them. Assholes.

So don’t compare me to your wheelchair bound grandfolks. I grew up on television and cartoons as much as anyone. But I am enlightened enough to respect and enjoy the classics, and even though you may think oldsters are being elitist for waxing nostalgic, there’s a certain arrogance to skinny-jeans wearing, quiffy-hairstyled, Justin Timber-Fake adoring nitwits who wouldn’t know shit from clay and think nothing that happened before 1992 matters to anyone, that just makes you want to dump a big bag of Exxon oil over their silly little heads.

Anyway, I would like to discuss this whole “filter” thing, that suggests people my age only see the BEST of cinema’s bygone era. Not true. I’ve seen all manner of films from previous decades, and I don’t think all so-called classics from several decades ago are great movies.

The best way to avoid this so-called “filter” is to compare the best of the best from today with the best of the best from yesteryear. Film for film, reel for reel, frame for frame, I believe it’s the greatest films from yesteryear (especially the 1970s) that outdo, by a significant margin, the highest quality films of today. Yes, they still make classics, just nowhere nearly as often.

ANONYMOUSE:

Internet pirating has only been “en vogue” for less than 10 years. Also, the majority of people in the world still don’t have the Internet at home (certainly not in my country). This it the tip of the iceberg. Wait until another 10 to 20 years (incidentally, what you could one day get for bootlegging films from the internet).

It’s pointless to quotes estimates and figures from movie studios. Hollywood shall always come out ahead financially. I realise that. I’m not talking about the whole moviemaking business in terms of dollars going down the drain. I mean authentic cinema culture.

Look at theatres nowadays: smaller screens, less care given to technical elements of presenting a film, et cetera. Yes, enough people shall always go to the cinema to see the big blockbusters to preserve at least a few local theatres in your nearest metropolis. However, because people are so accustomed to seeing films on television, laptops, mobile fucking telephones, they too are less demanding about theatrical standards and shall accept whatever lacklustre presentation they are given of a film. And these audiences may be the filmmakers of tomorrow. Which means we shall get less visually (and possibly aurally) satisfying cinema. Because they shall have been exposed to a less-than-ideal cinematic influence. You only need to look at the output from young film students these days to see there is definitely a lot of visual flair lacking in their work, as entertaining in other ways their works might be.

I know a lot of these students from my hometown go to the Nova quite often, and I thought this would be a good thing…only to discover Nova will (to pinch a line from a certain film palace owner in Melbourne) show a movie in a broom closet if they can get away with it. So you can imagine how small the theatres and screens have become at the Nova. It’s an arthouse theatre that attempts to be a multiplex (11 or 12 screens, I believe), but consequently, the rooms are getting smaller and the technical commitment to presenting films just isn’t there, at least not enough to enable them to do justice to the great films of yesteryear.

And since people are so attuned to watching films on latops and iPhonies, they shall view “2001” on a small screen and probably think it’s boring trash, never stopping to realise Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece was meant to be experienced on a gigantic friggin’ screen the size of the Berlin Wall.

Yes, they might “see it first” online. But what if they view “The Red Shoes” online…on their laptop? It might not appeal to them at all. However, take someone into the cinema and show them a film like “The Red Shoes”, “North West Frontier”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Ryan’s Daughter” (above) for the first time…it would constitute a major revelation.

In conclusion, I must say, the proliferation of television and videos stores has exposed a lot of people to old classics, but it is my belief people deserve to see these films presented on the big screen. Paradoxically, with
so many alternative options available for film viewers, few venture to the cinema to enjoy the classics. I am one of the relative few who still goes to see an old favourite at the cinema, even if I own a DVD copy. There’s nothing quite like seeing it on the big screen…this is what I try to convey when I mention “film culture”.

P.S. — Some of the most enlightened people I’ve encountered in my life have been under 20 years of age. Some of the biggest dumbasses have been old enough to know better.

I’m 18, and while I wouldnt say that movies were better pre-90s, I would say that they are pretty much equal. They just look better now cause we only remember the good films.

And while most of my top 15 was made within my lifetime, it does include Vivre Sa Vie, A Night at the Opera, and Herzog’s Nosferatu.

@Mark D Vanselow: I think that while yes, most films are meant to be experienced on the big screen, great filmmaking works on any size screen. I’ve watched a number of films on my iPhone, and I’ve enjoyed them just as much. An action movie works better in a theatre, a really great film works well anywhere.

The question is WHY would you watch a film on your iPhonie?

Sorry, you cannot tell me you’d honestly get the same thrill from “Cabaret” on something the size of an airmail stamp as you would in the art deco surroundings of a cinema. That ain’t happenin’.

And for those who find the above images incongruous with each other: as a fellow sitting behind me at the Liza Minnelli show said when I told him and his female companion I was going to see the pro wrestling at the same venue a few weeks later: “Liza Minnelli, wrestling, it’s all the same thing”.

True, my friends…very true.

The reason I would watch a film on my iPhone is because I can not afford to buy many movies (especially not Criterion), and for about a year I had no computer of my own, so the only way for me to watch some films was to watch it on my YouTube app. And surprisingly, its actually incredibly easy to watch a movie on the screen as it is a decent size. So unless you have really bad vision, don’t knock it til you try it.