A (film) Education - Part 2: It's all a matter of taste

Or is it? Well it is and it isn't.

Now, I'm not talking in riddles here just to bamboozle you. Taste is intangible. What one person likes, another person might despise. It's true of most art forms: painting, music, cinema, theater.

What we personally like, is dependent on a myriad of different factors that relate to us personally: age, gender, sexuality, race, religion. (Exactly the same factors that marketing people base their research on; this is no accident.) And any number of personal factors of taste, that are unique to us as individuals.

However, what you must now begin to understand and accept is that in all art forms there is a recognised canon of what is considered to be of worth. That is to say, it's inherent properties give it an intrinsic value, in and of itself. (Of course we must acknowledge that films are a business, but at their best they can achieve the level of art.)

Undoubtedly, there will be many films regarded as classics, which you will not care for. The same can be said for me. This is absolutely fine, you are entitled to your opinion, but that is not the point. That it is all a question of taste, is almost irrelevant when it comes to the appreciation of something. If that were the case we would accept the stance of millions of students who cannot stand Shakespeare. But they are wrong. Shakespeare is a genius and they may just be reluctant learners. This is just a fact of life. What must be acknowledged is that there is an accepted criteria for what constitutes good or better in everything. Film, is no different. If you don't get it, it is your job as a student to try to do so, even if it is a struggle. Nothing in life worth having comes easy, knowledge and understanding as much as anything.



Another aside:

I continue to struggle with the work of Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni.

His modernist masterpieces leave me cold. This, as the man might say, is the whole point of these films. They are cold, clinical exercises in formalism; stylistic experiments where the locations are as much "characters" as the people.

-But, I repeat, they leave me cold. I wish to care about the people in these stories.

-Well, look elsewhere for your succour then, the aesthete admonishes.



BUT, and this is a big but. As students of media, you have a duty to at least try to understand why some dodgy looking old 1940's film. with a lot of stagey acting and wobbly sets, may be considered a classic by generation after generation of audiences, filmmakers and critics. This is just common sense.

Bogart in Casablanca

Why is Humphrey Bogart revered as one of the greatest screen actors to have ever lived by everybody from Quentin Tarantino to George Clooney? When to you, he just looks like somebody's slightly rough uncle, who likes a drop too much of the hard stuff.



How did a bald, rotund, (apparent) buffoon from Ealing - who caricatured himself in his own TV show - come to be regarded by many, as perhaps the greatest filmmaker of all time? This was Alfred Hitchcock.



Hitchcock is a point in case. His 1958, tale of sexual obsession, Vertigo, created a template for many similarly themed psycho-sexual thrillers. It is not a only regarded as Hitch's greatest, but regularly makes the top 3 in top ten lists of the greatest films of all time. But personally, I'm not  big fan. I reckon it's about 20 minutes too long, and the effects have dated really quite badly.



I prefer Rear Window, which as anybody will tell you, is gimmicky, stagey and more than a little bit daft. But it does have Grace Kelly, not Kim Novack as Hitchcock's standard issue icey blonde. I am a big enough man to admit that this may have not a little to do with my fondness for it.

The key thing is, I understand why everyone thinks, Vertigo,  is so brilliant, it just doesn't really do it for me.

Ironically neither of these films will feature on my list, though another Hitchcock will.

Whilst the main purpose of the list I am going to compile is to educate you about what constitutes a great film, it would be remiss of me were I to cram it full of the sort of masterpieces that you would never in a million years want to watch. That would be self-defeating.

Ideally you should LOVE these films.

But while, you may not love all of them, I am hoping that my selections will be intriguing enough for you to give them the time to try to understand why they are held in such high esteem.