Pages

Monday 28 May 2018

The three stages of film



In my own mind, I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.
Steve McQueen

To my mind this clip from the fifties TV series Adventures of Superman could have something to say about maturity. It may be the clothes worn by the actors, their general appearance and demeanour, their diction and perhaps memories of our parents or grandparents, but the actors seem more mature than modern actors. They come across as mature people required to do something juvenile by acting out a comic strip.

Hey - we know this kind of thing is frivolous and not what real life is all about but it’s just a bit of fun for the kids so why not enjoy it? Let’s get their young imaginations fly too, just like Superman.

I’m not sure how far one should take this, if anywhere, but the same thing is easily seen in many old films dating back to the fifties or earlier. Yet go back a little earlier, say to the days of Laurel and Hardy, and many films seem juvenile again. In which case we have three stages - juvenile, mature, juvenile.

What next? Will mature come round again? I don’t think so.

3 comments:

Demetrius said...

In them days you could hear and understand what they said. Then it became difficult to understand what is was all about. Nowadays you cannot even hear it clearly even if you had a remote idea of what was going on inside the flashing lights and millisecond takes.

James Higham said...

I do see what you mean - it was very much that way in days gone by. Mind you, that still didn't stop them doing naughty things with people not their spouses. They just did it ever so nicely.

A K Haart said...

Demetrius - maybe the lack of clarity is used to disguise silly scripts.

James - and they knew it was caddish.