Mon 4 Aug 2014

20 Responses to “IGNORANCE MAY NOT BE BLISS EXACTLY, BUT IT HAS ITS MOMENTS…., by Dan Stumpf”

1. Bill Crider Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 8:08 pm

   I agree, Dan, but I’m in my dotage, too. Going to STAR WARS on opening day after years and years and years of SF schlock. Just the opening with the gains spaceship passing overhead knocked me out. Nobody who wasn’t there can understand the impact the movie had on me and probably most people who saw it totally unprepared for what was coming. Now we know just about everything about any movie we see, and the surprise is gone.

2. Rick Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 8:19 pm

   Yup. I was taking my first film history class at UCLA as a freshman circa 1966 at the age of eighteen. I knew of Orson Welles and my parents would use the word “Rosebud” as a family punch line. I’d vaguely heard of CITIZEN KANE. But I was unprepared for the power of the technique and the unalloyed joy Welles obviously felt making it.

   I still remember the hair on the back of neck standing up as I watched the reporter enter the CFK Library; and the beauty of the deep focus and light pouring through a high window onto the polished marble floor. I realized for the first time that movies could be art.

3. Barry Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 9:30 pm

   Re Out Of The Past

   Both Bogart and Powell turned it down before Mitchum was assigned Jeff Bailey. Both men would have been more appealing in my own view and, just guessing why the other two were negative is that Bailey does not have a moment when he exercises sound judgment. They character is a classic dupe, as opposed to an unfortunate smart guy. And there is no way to film the story and alter that.

4. Yvette Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 9:52 pm

   STAR WARS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK spring instantly to mind. I did not know what to expect and I remember that I had to practically drag my husband and daughter with me. Later they thanked me. I will never forget, in STAR WARS, the dazzling impact of that golden robot moving across the screen. I’d never seen anything like that before. I was transfixed.

   On a more vintage bent, I remember sitting in my seat and being transported away watching LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE WIND AND THE LION.

   BAMBI too had a strong impact on me.

   Great topic.

5. Jonathan Lewis Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 10:43 pm

   Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg), Cape Fear (Scorsese remake), The Pianist (Polanski)

6. Barry Says:
   August 4th, 2014 at 11:38 pm

   Dan,
   Sorry for not addressing your thesis but when I saw the title Out of the Past in print, something I had been thinking of earlier today, compelled my submission. Hope you don’t mind the deviation — though I do stand by my observation.

7. Walker Martin Says:
   August 5th, 2014 at 12:22 am

   I think being young and innocent has a lot to do with the thrill of discovery. It’s been said that the golden age of SF is 13 and that was certainly true with me. I must of visited the corner deli a thousand times and never noticed the SF magazines until one day in February 1956 and it was as if blinders had been lifted off my eyes. I thought the magazines and paperbacks were so beautiful and desirable. Over 50 years later, I’m still obsessed with reading and collecting them.

   Another instance was my first visit to a baseball stadium when I was 12. My father had died recently and I was struck dumb by the shock. Fortunately a neighbor father took me and his son to a couple games at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia and I was overcome by the beauty of the ballpark. The dark green grass, the smell of the popcorn, hotdogs, and peanuts. The magic of the game of baseball. It’s been said that baseball reflects life and it made it worth living to me at the time even though I was a Philadelphia Phillies fan, one of the worst teams in baseball history. I still am a big lover of the game and often visit the Trenton Thunder, a double A minor league team.

   My passion for fiction magazines and baseball continues to this day, all because of events that occurred when I was a child.

8. BRADSTREET Says:
   August 5th, 2014 at 1:24 am

   One of the things I’ve found myself doing as I get older is deliberately not reading any detail about films that I’ve not seen. It isn’t easy (there’s a very good scene from THE SIMPSONS where a younger Homer leaves a first screening of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK loudly discussing the various plot revelations)but it is worth it. Over a decade ago my wife introduced me to some classic Hitchcock movies for the first time, and the experience was increased enormously by the fact that I didn’t know everything about them. One bit of advice I’d give to anyone is ‘Don’t watch the US trailers for any major film’ as they seem determined to give away every plot twist and every big scene! Modern media makes it much harder to avoid, as I came to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with absolutely no prior expectations. It would be that much harder nowadays, but as long as you don’t wait too long it might be possible. TV suffers the same problem nowadays, as people record stuff and don’t watch it at the same time. There is sort of an unofficial etiquette at the place I work that people won’t give aways the ends of programmes within 24 hours, but after that people ought to have watched it. The problem is that there is a very elderly, very deaf lady and her very elderly, very deaf husband who both use public transport and insist on talking about yesterdays television at the top of their voices “DID YOU WATCH THAT THING LAST NIGHT? I REALLY DIDN’T THINK THAT THE GIRL WAS REALLY THE MURDERER, DID YOU?” When I know that they’re taking the same bus I just cover my ears.

9. Jeff Meyerson Says:
   August 5th, 2014 at 6:26 am

   What about the other way round? What about something built up by so much hype that no matter how good it may have been it couldn’t be anything but a disappointment?

   I notice several of you mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark. By the time we saw it in England in August of 1981 I’d been assured by so many friends I trusted that it was the greatest thing EVER, EVER, EVER that I couldn’t help but feel let down when it wasn’t.

10. Todd Mason Says:
    August 5th, 2014 at 8:17 am

    Well, are you arguing for innocence (which in this case is ignorance, more or less), or are you arguing for lack of sophistication (because you can, after a certain amount of exposure to narrative art, often guess how any given specimen will turn out) or are you arguing for avoiding spoilers? One of the notes that sticks out for me in Algis Budrys’s critical writing is that THE MALTESE FALCON and THE INVISIBLE MAN the novels won’t have their full effect on the innocent reader…a certain amount of knowledge of how life and human behavior work are necessary for full understanding of these works, even if some approximation will work for the innocent, since one can make unsophisticated as well as sophisticated films of them (as has been done).

    I saw STAR WARS when it was new and I was twelve and thought it mediocre at best, though often pretty, and found C3P0 the character as irritating as I would later find Jar Jar Binks when Alice pleaded with me to see the first two of the newer films (even she was rather put off by the third)…I still haven’t ever bothered to see the third or sixth films in that series. I’ve yet to sit through the entirety of RAIDERS, in part because CLOSE ENCOUNTERS annoyed me so much, and while I’d enjoyed DUEL and JAWS when they were new Spielberg was already starting to get on my nerves, something that THE TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE and nearly everything else since did nothing to remedy (I’d already found his contribution to the NIGHT GALLERY pilot film pretty damned weak). I’ve enjoyed a fair amount of junk over the years for junk’s sake, and enjoyed any number of works when young that might’ve made even more impact if I’d first encountered them later on, but I’m not sure that any sort of innocence has ever struck me as a great virtue…aside from innocence of crime or malicious intent…

11. David Vineyard Says:
    August 5th, 2014 at 4:04 pm

    Much of this depends on how you view or read classics. While it would be nice to read THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES again as that fourteen year old boy, or discover THE MALTESE FALCON as film or book knowing nothing about it, I must admit there are classics I would never have viewed without studying film and books.

    When I watched and loved Fritz Lang’s MAN HUNT as child I had no idea of METROPOLIS and would never have watched it or any other silent if I was innocent of foreknowledge. I watch a film like THE SEARCHERS now with a critical eye and see subtle uses of color and camera I would not note if I was innocent of their presence.

    I can never relive the first viewing of PSYCHO, but I can see how really cleverly it is filmed and the story told.

    I don’t disagree with you Dan, just being the Devil’s advocate. I think I liked CITIZEN KANE better knowing more about it (so did audiences), I knew how OUT OF THE PAST ended, I had read Homes novel, and yet I loved the film. There is something to be said for both views.

    Frankly I think our society reveres innocence far beyond its actual value. Healthy farm kids grow up knowing about life death and sex, but move them to the city and suddenly that knowledge corrupts them. Losing my innocence in regard to international politics and crime are reasons I am still alive. Losing my innocence about writing is how I ended up in print.

    True you can’t recapture those innocent beneficial moments, but you can’t recapture how monumentally stupid you may have been either. I tasted caviar first when I was nine, and loathed it, I have a different opinion now. In my innocence girls had cooties, they still do, but I no longer mind.

    Celebrate innocence for what it is, but I am well rid of it, and there is little of it I would want to reclaim.

12. BRADSTREET Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 1:37 am

    In this case we are surely not talking about ‘innocence’ as naivete, but rather as coming fresh to something without any prior expectations. There is an example of this from someone I know: In Britain there is a rural soap opera called EMMERDALE. It was one of those show where very little tended to happen from episode to episode My friend was a fairly regular viewer, but he had another friend who had not watched it for years, didn’t read about, no interest at all. One of the big storylines was about a plane crashing into the village, and had been very well covered in the media. Friend B was staying with friend A, and was watching the soap simply because his friend was watching it. Then, ten minutes into the episode WHHHHOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHH! BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!! And the mayhem started. Friend B was completely taken aback, and watched the episode in complete shock as chaos ruled in the normally sedate soap. It was the sort of reaction that you could only get from being completely cut off from any interest in the show in question. He was innocent of what was going to happen. Innocence, not in the sense of being naive and childish, but innocence of what was going to happen. Sometimes it is nice to be surpised.

13. Randy Cox Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 10:30 am

    I was blown away by Star Wars on seeing it in 1977. A friend had recommended it as “our kind of movie,” but I knew nothing at all about it in advance. I went to see it every time I found a theater that was showing it and students at St. Olaf would come up to me and ask if I had really seen it seven times. Someone else told me he thought it was a good movie, but wished it hadn’t been so juvenile. When I bought the megapack of the first three films I commented to the clerk that I had seen it when it came out and then realized he probably had not been born yet in 1977.

14. David Vineyard Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 2:43 pm

    I’m talking about innocence in general because I think in general we are Victorian sentimentalists about it, and assume child like wonder and discovery are somehow superior to understanding and appreciation.

    I read reviews to see whether I want to spend $20 to go to the theater or wait and rent it, if that. I still enjoy Van Dine and Philo Vance, and he introduced the killer on the same page in every book. Knowing that doesn’t lesson the fun.

    I saw STAR WARS the first day it opened in Dallas, and loved it, but I get more from it now knowing of Lucas sources, intent, and use of Joseph Campbell’s work on hero myth. Even though I was only 11, I had read DOCTOR NO before seeing the film (precocious sort), and was already a Bond fan.

    Most people who saw GONE WITH THE WIND knew exactly what it is about, and I think I enjoy CASABLANCA more knowing how close the film we have now came to not being made and that there is almost nothing in the film that wasn’t pure serendipity including “As Time Goes By”. I understood why Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill film with Paul Newman went wrong knowing it was written for Cary Grant on screen.

    I still love STAGECOACH even though I never got to experience that first famous star making shot of John Wayne without already knowing him from dozens of other movies and as a superstar.

    Innocence is a burden we place on others because we wish we could unlearn some of the less pleasant facts of life in many cases. It is as much about our desire to escape into childhood or prevent our children growing into annoying adults that fuels our reverence of innocence in general, than any real value of innocence or ignorance.

    Choosing innocence over knowledge is not a good thing. Eve was right, knowledge, choice, free will, and even temptation and sin, are better ways to live. The innocent fun of writing and drawing and painting are long gone for me, but I get greater enjoyment at competence, and when I cash the check.

    Nostalgia is a dangerous mistress, it paints ignorance as innocence, knowledge as loss, and fuels the grand American delight in all things stupid and our contempt for education. Not a single good thing was ever created from innocence or ignorance, but much has been lost to them. Like hope they are actually the worst things Pandora let out of the box.

    Just speaking for myself I have seen far too many movies that disappointed because I didn’t know what I was going to see than because I did.

    A paleontologist friend had the perfect review of JURASSIC PARK I thought: “I wanted to see dinosaurs, and I saw dinosaurs.”

    The list of films that were happy surprises for me is far shorter than the list of those I sought out and appreciated. I certainly knew how MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS ended, and enjoyed getting there as much as anyone who was surprised.

    There are a handful of books I came to love after the first reading, but I have reread every one of them and a single passage can bring back that ‘innocence.’ To this day I am a 14 year old boy again when Dr. Mortimer says those famous words, ” Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of an enormous hound.” I feel the same every time Bogie says “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

15. Dan Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Todd and David,

    No, even if I could go back to being the sensitive, callow-but-handsome youth I was at 15, I would not give up being the suave, sophisticated man-of-the world I am now. It’s just that I sometimes recall the awe with which I watched films like ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES and reflect sadly that nothing is ever likely to hit me like that again.

16. BRADSTREET Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    “It was (the 1930s and 1940s), as I look back and remember, a very innocent time-even with the Depression and Hitler and the atom bomb it was still innocent. Perhaps that was why they happened”.

    George Macdonald Fraser

17. Walker Martin Says:
    August 6th, 2014 at 10:20 pm

    Speaking of the 1940’s, everytime I watch a scene in the Mickey Rooney films about Andy Hardy, I wonder was the world ever like this? The same thing with the singing cowboy movies. I guess many went to these films because they *wanted* the world to be like that.

18. Barry Says:
    August 7th, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    No more or less did they want singing cowboys than they want Madonna faking, I hope, gold teeth in awful music videos. AS for Mr. Fraser’s comment, I was in constant touch with him from the early seventies until his death, he was a man of taste and many moods. As are most people. Finding some pithy quote doesn’t have much historic or philosophical weight. Especially about that war.

19. David Vineyard Says:
    August 8th, 2014 at 10:50 pm

    I never really found Andy Hardy all that innocent, since I was an adult before I really watched them and they are all about teen age sex — or desire for it — else there wouldn’t be actresses like Lana Turner in them. A surprising amount of Rooney’s films from that era are about a horny teen who either gets in trouble because he is too sophisticated or not sophisticated enough about women. To a lesser extent the same is true of Archie, and wholesome Blondie was racy as it could be before the baby came along and people would not stand for it in a ‘family’ strip. At heart every Andy Hardy film is about Rooney wanting at some level to get laid and all the lessons he learns without achieving that goal but getting one step closer to it.

    Singing cowboys were about escape, first the depression and then the war, I don’t think there is really much more to it than a novelty that caught on because of two hugely popular and gifted stars. Children and adults could park their concerns in a bright world where the bad guys got theirs and the hero sang a few catchy tunes and got the girl with no threat of anything more than a chaste kiss before exiting into the sunset.

    It’s notable that both Autry and Rogers best pictures are in the post war era when their films became darker and more violent, but that it also marked the end of the phenomena. I don’t think they reflected innocence though any more than Madonna does decadence — they reflect escape and we choose to call it innocence for lack of a better word.

    Nothing is more ‘innocent’ than the phony violence, sex, and drama of pro wrestling even though they celebrate racism, radicalism, and brutality to women that their audience would condemn from a serious forum..

    Naïve and innocent aren’t the same thing. In their own way Mickey Spillane’s early novels are incredibly naïve but hardly innocent, Hammer’s idea of sex a twelve year old boy’s fantasy (even Max Allan Collins suggests Hammer doesn’t seem quiet sure what comes after he sees them naked), and his politics a throwback to the post WWI era and Carroll John Daly’s simple Race Williams or Bulldog Drummond. Much of the power of Spillane other than his word savagery comes from his simple and naïve view of good and evil. Well into the sixties he has the sophisticated KGB as twenties style Reds trying to mow down Tiger Mann from a black sedan with tommy guns,one of the most ludicrous such scenes of the era. It isn’t innocent, but naive, not childlike, but childish, saved only by his relentless belief in every word he wrote (I’m a fan, but you don’t read him for his sophistication as a political observer or his deep understanding of women).

    I grant all this is pretty heavy based on Dan’s essay, but the sentimentality of innocence is one of those incredibly harmful and false myths that simply never existed before the late 19th century, much as teen agers as we now know them are an invention of the early twentieth — before that there was no in between childhood and maturity, no long disparity between the one and the other in cultural terms. Even Romeo and Juliet were merely young lovers to Shakespeare, not teenage lovers, he would not have understood the concept or the word.

    My long winded point comes down to (could have got there quicker couldn’t I ) what Dan said about not really going back — and while the Fraser quote is pithy and perhaps facile, it still contains the sting of truth. Naivety if not innocence gave birth to many of the worst aspects of all history though wisdom poorly applied or misapplied is not without blame either.

    We should always keep in mind the incredible cruelty of children is also an aspect of innocence, LORD OF THE FLIES containing more truth than OUR GANG about how they behave without adults around. I don’t say to give up nostalgia, just look at it with a jaundiced eye. I can’t imagine many minorities are terribly nostalgic for the past.

20. Barry Says:
    August 8th, 2014 at 11:37 pm

    David,
    Re Autry and Rogers

    Best in film is an opinion, but in 1939 Autry, who was number 1 on the B Picture Western top ten was on the motion picture exhibitor’s top ten, the real one. It read like this: Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Gene…And he hung around until time for military service. The film work was cross pollinated with a sixteen year radio gig for Wrigley’s on CBS, many successful recordings, personal appearances that attracted crowds all over the United States, Canada and Europe. When Gene entered the service he was making $600,000.00 a year. This is cash on the table and the product of hard work, good luck and empathy. When Willie Nelson was a little boy, many years later, he wanted to be a guy like that. And, he sort of got it. Roy Rogers had some of the same success but was an invention of Herbert Yates after the Autry success. King of the Cowboys was the title of a film produced in 1943 when Gene was away. The sobriquet stuck to Roy and he took over top western star spot. No one else of the B picture stars had the top spot. Obviously John Wayne and Randolph Scott did well on the A level. I suppose, later on, but it wasn’t quite the same thing, Clint Eastwood got in there as well.

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