Cinema and the Community of the Generations

On liberation from the hubris, agenda obsession, and hype of the present.

Bessie Love taking direction from Alice Guy-Blaché, 1918. (Picture from The Irish Times.)

There I was, eighteen and troubled, at grammar school in Brockenhurst in the south of England’s New Forest. I’d been chosen to play Shakespeare’s troubled prince in a symposium on Hamlet with a visiting troupe of professional actors. Not because I could act, then, now, or ever but because, like Denmark’s eponymous protagonist, if not quite to such existential extremes, I was troubled, sort of…

The day had been stimulating intellectually and practically — the actors proving generous, natural teachers — when after, we sixth-formers had the chance to mingle and chat with our visitors.

Among the group was former American silent movie star Bessie Love, who was born in 1898. Ms. Love is the young woman sitting on the horse in the photo above.

Coming from a working class background and having been told that my hopes of getting into film and TV would get nowhere because “you don’t know the right people”, I somehow summoned the temerity to ask Ms. Love if I was being completely stupid to imagine such a path remotely possible. It was her response — to the effect that there was no good reason why I shouldn’t follow my aspirations — that provided me with the permission I needed in order to pursue a career in film.

Years later I found the photo above, a moment from 1918. The woman giving direction is Alice Guy-Blaché, the first known female director.

So there I was at the end of that afternoon at school, a couple of handshakes away from a pioneering filmmaker, one of the first narrative movie writers and directors, born in 1873.

Taking into consideration the new filmmakers who are or have been under my tutelage, I can count myself among four generations of cineastes.

Add to this some people I’ve worked with — such as master filmmaker John Schlesinger, born somewhere between the dates of Ms. Love and myself — I might claim to be in a community of five generations. When the children of my alumni become filmmakers as — global circumstance allowing — they surely will, that will make for six generations over, maybe, as much as two hundred years.

Martin Scorsese, master filmmaker, historian, teacher gave a speech recently at the PGA Awards in which he described how, when he’d been awarded an honor there at age 22 for his student short It’s Not Just You, Murray! Cary Grant let him know how to approach his moment onstage (by kissing award-giver Elke Summer). So right here you have Scorsese’s connection to Grant and everyone Grant worked with — Hitchcock, Capra, Hawkes, Ingrid Bergman, Kathryn Hepburn, Eva Marie Sainte and many more.

Then look at the legions of filmmakers Scorsese has inspired and informed both by his own mastery and by his championing of past practitioners.

A long, long way — all of this — from the ephemerality of much to be found day upon day on social media. The current hype, the tribalism, the awards season fixation, the cultural lockstep conformism, the lack of original subject matter, the unthinking regurgitation of popular idioms, and the peremptoriness of critical thinking present a sliver of the rich terrain offered by the possible decades of discourse on cinema and its timelessness.

To be fair, there are posts recognizing and bringing attention to movies and filmmakers of recent and less recent decades, and often from the adherents of contemporary trends too, the all-round cinephiles I mention with respect. Amnesia has not (yet?) eradicated film history, which at its best lives and breathes still.

There’s a general point to be made here also. An aspect around long before social media and information overload. (So many movies are currently released, it’s tough even keeping up with the present.) I’m talking of the perennial tendency to look down on those who came before us, as though we know better, do stuff better, are more aware, more understanding, and just comprehensively superior. Hardly a new habit.

For some cinephiles it’s no different — even among talented but new practitioners. One now notable writer-director-producer, after I had taken the class through hours of shot-by-shot, cut-by-cut analysis of the cinematic mind behind Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious, asked me why I’d taken up so much time on this since “we don’t make films this way anymore”. No, but filmmakers still face the same storytelling challenges, still utilize the same resources even if the technology has changed radically, still work with the image and with sound — and let’s hope with actors rather than AI generated non-beings.

It’s insight gained into how Hitchcock recognized these elements and how he so consummately handled his articulation of them that renders my session more than a class in film theory or archeology. Far from that, it’s an exploration of filmmaking practice — at any time.

(With their subsequent experience and brilliant successes, the class member in question has since retracted his question — an important lesson for me in that some of the most effective education happens not in the instant of its dissemination but over the course of the years that follow.)

Some of us tend to restrict our viewing to contemporary fare. Someone, I seem to recall, once wisely observed that there is no such as an “old” movie, only one we haven’t seen. Indeed!

I’m not saying everyone has to meet the likes of Bessie Love, although that’s surely going to be an inspiring pleasure for anyone so fortunate.

I’m not arguing for the merits of some golden age or for nostalgia for the greats of the past. This has nothing to do with sentimentality or any lack of respect for the young. And I’m aware of the limitations of the past: few female filmmakers, few people of color, few working class cineastes (Martin Scorsese, Terence Davies — you showed the way.)

I’m saying we should take our place proudly and with humility, in the community of cinema’s generations… to be joined, let’s hope, by those who follow us…

In fact, let’s have it all — past, present, future. A screen that knows no generational exclusivity.

Peter Markham

February 2024