Looking through the Radio Times the other day, searching the film guide pages for some well-reviewed gem to improve my film education, it suddenly struck me how few classic films are on the box these days.
Film publications are full of lists – ‘best of’ lists are a marvellous way to stimulate debate and fill empty pages when promised interviews have fallen through or the film world is just so afraid of some monster release that everything else has been rescheduled – anyway in an age of lists and rankings, where do younger viewers get to see these classics?
Judging from the Radio Times, not on television. I would be hard pressed to come up with more than a half-a-dozen films that were made before 1990. Where has our film heritage disappeared to? Is it all locked away in a vault? Is it film rights? Have the DVD companies squirreled away the rights to so many classics that they are no longer available to television companies?
Do TV channels think that people only want to see recent films? This might carry some weight because this recent film phenomenon is not just restricted to terrestrial television. Searching through the satellite listings, with the honourable exception of TCM and to some degree Film4, again it was virtually impossible to find a film that was more than 20 years old.
Like most of us, the majority of my film education was delivered by television. I discovered the film greats on television. Today it would be unheard of for a mainstream television channel to deliver a season of John Ford movies or even Alfred Hitchcock classics. Instead we get endless re-runs of the James Bond films and as much as I love them, they could do with a rest. Familiarity does breed contempt.
As a youngster I used to love that BBC2 6pm slot. I would come home from school, have tea and then settle down to a season of classic British Peter Sellers films which then slipped into a series of Boulting Brothers films or Ealing Comedies.
Late at night, there were seasons of Hammer classics or one Christmas I remember, the BBC did a series of Universal horror classics from the 1930s and 40s – Dracula with Bela Lugosi, the Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jnr, The Phantom of the Opera with his father and of course Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff.
Today it is almost impossible to see any of these films on telly. I remember just stumbling across The Day the Earth Stood Still and Creature From The Black Lagoon. Similarly, I remember just coming across Marilyn Monroe “running wild” in Some Like It Hot. Yes, you can search out these films on DVD but you have to know of their existence first.
Our knowledge of classics from the past informs our appreciation of current films. Someone, knowing my enthusiasm for the Coen Brothers, was enthusing to me about their remake of The Ladykillers which he had just seen on TV.
I had to break it to him gently that, although as a general rule I love Coen Brothers films, The Ladykillers was an abomination. Had he not seen the Ealing original by Alexander Mackendrick? He hadn’t and it seems that there hasn’t been an opportunity for him to do so since it came out in 2004 either.
It seems to me that more than a lifetime of classic cinema is missing out on an audience. Good films are good films, they never go out of fashion. Smokey and the Bandit may be past it’s sell by date but Rear Window certainly is not nor is The Searchers or any number of classic films.
Thankfully, cinemas, the home of new releases, are coming to the rescue of their own heritage. Organisations like the BFI (British Film Institute) and commercial companies like Park Circus, have been busily restoring a host of timeless classics and returning them to where they should be seen – the big screen. But without a culture of watching and enjoying classic films there is a danger that these restored classics will only appeal to those ‘in the know’ or have seen them before.
I hope I am wrong. I hope when we show Metropolis at the IFT on Thursday November 18, I hope that we will be besieged with film fans anxious to get a glimpse of a classic silent – a science fiction groundbreaker – back on the big screen in a dazzling new print.
For those of a certain generation, it will also illustrate where Queen got the idea for their Radio Gaga video from!
