Cut or Fade: Dilemma of the Celluloid Exit

I'm reaching a little with this next entry, so you'll have to bare with me. As I type, I have no real idea as to how this is going to play out, but I'll see you guys at the end. I was thinking, recently, about how I view films and the way they end. Not really in story, but the physical transition to black and then credits. These are things that I tend to stew about. The final transition is very important. It holds just as much emotional significance as the conclusion of the story.

We go to a movie to be entertained, first and foremost. We all know that watching films is a form of escapism. Now, to what extent you escape differs from person to person. I love to be entertained, but my form of escapism is picking apart a film as I watch it. It varies with each film, but whether it be camera movement, the writing, the acting, the directing or the general story, I have a need to critique what's occurring in front of me. Given that, I can't wait to see how a film transitions to black. I will admit that I do tend to pay more attention to the ones that I believe have more artistic merit than others, but nevertheless, I watch for it. Then, it becomes a matter of which one you prefer. I know which one I prefer, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to the other. As long as a transition supports the weight of its final message, then I'm all good. Dazzle me with YOUR transition, I say.

Okay, let's establish, very quickly, which transition I prefer. I'm a sucker for the cut to black. The films that I tend to watch these days are made by directors who love cutting to black. I don't think it would be a mystery for those who know me if I were to say that I dig Martin Scorsese's films. Over the last two years, if I had to choose a favorite director, Mr. Scorsese would be the guy. This man is in his mid-sixties and he still makes films with more energy and chutzpah than most directors half his age. A lot of that energy comes via his long-time editor/collaborator, the great Thelma Schoonmaker. She's brilliant. They've had a long, fruitful partnership since 1980's Raging Bull, because they seem to know each other's little quirks. It shows in the films. Scorsese cuts to black often and he does it in such a way that feels like the last sucker punch in a schoolyard fight. You never know when he's going to do it, but when he does, it completely catches you off guard. The aforementioned Raging Bull does it. So does Goodfellas, The Aviator, The Departed, and Mean Streets. These are films that exit in a way the rest of the film calls for. It's energetic and I feel like I've just seen something completely new. I can say the same thing when I view a film by Tarantino, both P.T. and Wes Anderson, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Robert Altman.

This doesn't mean that I don't like the fade to black. The fade is the friend that'll take you out for a beer and talk to you about sports or girls or girls who play sports. It doesn't feel complicated or disturbing. The fade to black, in all honesty, fits with a movie that's rife with emotion. I'm a sucker for the emotional stuff. Truly I am. The best example that I can think of is Mr. Holland's Opus. I love this movie. I don't care who knows it. It's a movie about teachers and music. Needless to say, both mean a lot to me. The last ten minutes make me cry like no other. It's not just a celebration of the career of this highly respected music teacher, but it's a celebration of the profession and the art form. The fade to black is subtle and just right. I feel most movies that end with a fade to black have glided along in a very elegant and wistful manner and that cutting would compromise its integrity. Cameron Crowe does that in his films. For crying out loud, Casablanca ended in a fade! Are you really going to be the one to tell me that Casablanca was wrong in any way shape or form?! It's heresy, my friend. Of course, it's a generational thing. Most classics of the golden age of film didn't cut to black. The turnaround came in the early sixties with the French New Wave filmmakers like Jean Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer. They were using jump cuts and fancy camera tricks that no one else was using. They changed the way a film could be made. That's including the transition to black.

Allow me to describe one final emotional pull for me in the transition. The music. The way directors use certain songs to exit out of their movie can make me stand up and applaud. Fade or cut. A great example of the fade that I've seen recently was Sarah Paulson's Away From Her. The two main characters are in an embrace that we've been waiting for for most of the film and it's played to k.d lang's version of Neil Young's "Helpless". The camera swirls around the two and then it actually fades to white over this beautiful song. That transition alone to that song solidified my opinion of the film. Wes Anderson LOVES to use a great song over a last scene done in slow motion. He did it wonderfully in Rushmore to the Faces "Ooh La La" and in The Royal Tenenbaums to Van Morrison's "Everyone". Quentin Tarantino uses The Lively Ones' "Surf Rider" brilliantly at the end of Pulp Fiction. Scorsese has used Sid Vicious' version of Sinatra's "My Way", Roy Buchanon's "Sweet Dreams" and the "Cavallerina Rusticana", to exit his films. Here's the thing that each of these films, fade or cut, have in common: they use the music as a rhythmic device to transition. For example, the first chorus will end and right as the second verse comes in, there will be a cut to black and we'll see the director's name come up on the screen. I can't stress how important the usage of music is to a film's ending.

I guess if a film serves its purpose, the transition will be invisible and not really matter, but then you wouldn't have schmucks like me who come along and obliterate that particular purpose. Personally, I'm okay with it. I accepted a long time ago that I'm quite the film snob. I have lots to learn, don't get me wrong, but I'm a snob, nevertheless. Those who exclaim that one transition is better than the other need to reevaluate the way they look at films. You can enjoy one more than the other, sure, but transitions to black serve best the energy of the movie. If you don't like the movie, most likely you won't like the transition...or you'll love it, because it's transitioning to you not having to view that movie anymore. My point being is that it's more fun to judge a film on HOW a director used a certain transition to black; not why.

The Great Adjectives

I was reading an article at www.thefilmjournal.com by a man named Gregory Avery. In the article, he was reviewing a newly-released book about Alfred Hitchcock, called Hitchcock Style by Jean-Pierre Dufreigne. I was taken by a sentence in the first paragraph of the article which read, "...Hitchcock can now claim the singular honor of having become an adjective". I always knew of the term "Hitchcockian" and I knew what it meant, but I had never once thought about it being an adjective. Not once. To break down a director to such a base level would seem almost disrespectful, but I don't think a filmmaker can achieve a higher mark. This is a filmmaker who has created a body of work so specific in theme and/or visuals that their name can be used to describe somebody else's work. Thus, the term "adjective". It's really quite something.

I can think of several directors who deserve to be adjectives. Of course, Alfred Hitchcock is the first one that comes to mind. The main themes of his movies were formed by his strong visual sense. The simple tricks he did with the camera; the things he didn't show you; these were the visual techniques of a man who was feeding the suspense of the story. There are only so many avenues a screenplay can go down in the way of moving the suspense along. A great director can take it the rest of the way. Hitchcock famously stated, "A bomb is under the table and it explodes: that is surprise; the bomb is under the table but it doesn't explode: that is suspense". He implored this methodology in such films as Rear Window, Strangers On A Train, Vertigo, The Birds, Notorious, Psycho, and North By Northwest. It's almost as if he was forcing you to look at what was going on and then make you feel guilty about it, afterwards. He was just as much a prankster as he was a "master of suspense". A generation of directors would soon use the "Hitchcockian" method to further their own stories: Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, and quite blatantly, Brian De Palma. I, personally, believe that Spielberg did the best job of it in Jaws. What little you saw of the shark made it that much more terrifying. We never knew when this thing was going to attack, we just knew that it would and that, my friends, is the bomb that doesn't explode.

Another director who I immediately think of as an adjective, is Frank Capra. Here's a director who has drawn about as much derision as he has praise from critics and fans alike. Personally, I know more people who enjoy his movies than don't, but he is a specific type of filmmaker. "Capraesque" is the term. Any movie that bases itself around an idealistic principle or has a yearning for a simpler time where patriotism didn't seem so overwhelming, is considered "Capraesque". He was truly the director of the people. With titles like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It Happened One Night (first film to ever win the big five at the Oscars), You Can't Take It With You, and It's A Wonderful Life, under his belt, it's hard to refute the fact that he was America's director. When I watch Rob Reiner's The American President or Ivan Reitman's Dave, I automatically think "Capraesque". The idealistic principle is always prevalent in both of those films. In fact, Aaron Sorkin alludes to it in the screenplay of The American President. The Annette Benning character, a lobbyist, has just arrived in Washington to have a meeting at the White House. She comes up to the guard at the main gate to the building and introduces herself. She's very excited about what she's doing and her co-worker tells her that she doesn't have to tell the guard her name. She apologizes and says, "I was just trying to preserve the sort of 'Capraesque' quality". The co-worker, cynically, says "He doesn't know what that means". Without missing a beat the guard says, "Sure I do. Frank Capra. Great American director of It's A Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". It's right there. Sorkin has paid tribute to the man with actual dialogue about him. Two other great examples are Phil Alden Robinson's use of, what I like to call, "realistic fantasy" in Field of Dreams and Frank Darabont's use of the America of old in The Majestic. The former is more of a modern-day version of a Capra film, while the latter would fit in the exact time frame of any Capra classic. There is one scene from each film that takes the Capra sentiment and enhances its ideas. In Field of Dreams, it's James Earl Jones' speech about baseball and the country who yearns for the days when things were much simpler. In The Majestic, it's Jim Carrey's testimony, as a Hollywood screenwriter, to the HUAC. A testimony fighting the forces who say that he's not American enough. "Capraesque" defines the better nature in all of us.

There's one more adjective that I'd like to discuss and that's "Felliniesque". I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not a big Federico Fellini fan by any stretch of the imagination. I do think his work is undeniably important to not only the Italian cinema, but worldwide, as well. Through the few films I've viewed, though, he's not quite my cup of tea. I am going to be the guy in the movie line, standing behind Woody Allen in Annie Hall and say that La Strada is my personal favorite of his. I've got plenty more to see, though, and I'll leave it at that. Fellini's films, like Hitchcock, tell as much visually as the plot does. He's probably one of the greatest visual minds the cinema has ever seen. If it wasn't his camera, it was what he put in front of his camera that enhanced the viewer's experience. Movies like Juliet of the Spirits, 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Fellini Satyricon, and Amarcord are filled to the brim with the unique visuals that almost always call for multiple interpretations. He, too, was a prankster of sorts, who always seemed to be one step ahead of his viewers. I know he was one step ahead of me when I was watching Juliet of the Spirits. It's a little bit more difficult to pinpoint filmmakers whose work has been considered "Felliniesque", but I think David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, and even Oliver Stone, to an extent, have probably used Fellini as a compass at one time or another. Watching Stone's Natural Born Killers is a lot like watching a Fellini film. It's physically and emotionally exhausting, but you can't really take your eyes off of it. Even Martin Scorsese has borrowed from Fellini. In his documentary My Voyage to Italy, Scorsese discusses Fellini's I Vitelloni and its characters. He states that it had a major impact on his breakthrough crime drama Mean Streets. The "Felliniesque" quality is harder to pinpoint mainly because it's harder to duplicate. It's one of the most specific.

There are so many other filmmakers who, with just a little more time, will soon be adjectives. Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, M. Night Shyamalan, and Alexander Payne all have qualities that are specific enough to be duplicated for generations to come. They're all true storytellers and visual mavericks. They follow in the footsteps of their heroes: Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Steven Spielberg. They break convention and come out on the other end unscathed. The biggest risk-takers end up getting to be the greatest.

Prologue

I love film. There are many people who love film. I know plenty who love watching movies. I, also, am familiar with a certain group of folk who love to attend the cinema. Each of these groups are, in fact, helpless victims to the undeniable power of the moving image. We could all, easily, say that we're fans of the moving image, but we would all sound like jackasses. So, we choose the sub-name of the moving image that we're most comfortable saying and that ends up being our go-to expression. As I just stated, I love film. I'm a filmgoer. There aren't a lot of things that make me happier than sitting down and looking at a good film. Maybe Alabama football, but I've been at that one for awhile, now. That's in a league by itself.

I believe I'm doing this blog for several reasons. I want to hone my writing skills, because I'm looking at going to grad school for film studies. Also, I would like to express my opinions in a little bit more formal of a setting than a bar with a hapless friend who could care less about my pontificating. My biggest hope is that discussions can arise from these entries. That's my ultimate goal. Someone will feel some type of emotion and want to argue or just have a great discussion. Talking about film is too much fun for me. Talking about the less-than-stellar ones is almost as much fun as talking about the great ones, simply for the challenge. To be able to come up with a lucid argument, showing the hidden genius behind Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Tommy Boy, or Billy Madison is an exercise in cinematic maneuvering.

Bottom line: any film, movie, or piece of cinema deserves to be discussed. I'm not saying just the good ones. The bad ones deserve it, too. If you think I'm wrong, then I dare you to tell me that you've never told a friend, almost ecstatically, how horrible the piece of crap you just saw, truly was. You start talking about why it was so horrible, don't you? Certain shots or dialogue absurdities. It's a great feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I'm attempting to do. Thanks.

Jonathan