I'm not really a nostalgic person (again, I think people are exaggerating the badness of films, forgetting the ridiculous amount of crap throughout the decades), however, I would add that one of the main gripes my friends and I have is with some of the basic camera uses. We all despise shaky cam with a passion. We do prefer to be able to figure out what is going on if the situation allows for it. There is an appropriate way to capture motion from the perspective of a person, and it does not involve over reactive shaking of cameras. We also hate editing that is common with contemporary films. Why on earth must you do a cut every 2-5 seconds? Can't you just let the shot stay the same for a while? I promise I will not get bored. In fact, I will probably be more entertained.
I mean, come on. We all know Leone was the master at the long shot, but consider it.
This is what we could be looking at for a minute. It did not depreciate the tension or wonder that was so brilliantly captured in Once Upon a Time in the West.
And 12 Angry Men. I could not comprehend how someone would remake it today. The story takes place essentially in
two rooms, with the bathroom taking a minor role. Camera cuts were not frequent, even though the entire film's story is told through the words of the men, who recreate the night of the crime. I am confident today if they remade it, they would think their audience stupid, and decide to put "flash backs" a la
Ocean's Eleven or something to explain some portion of the murder. Camera cuts would occur every few seconds, to ensure that the act of
talking needed to be more interesting by cutting through various angles of one of the actor's faces. Hell, there may even be shaky cam like I witnessed in a film the other day, I can't recall its name (I want to say it was
Black Swan). The film was mostly dialog-based and cerebral, but for some god damn reason, the director thought it brilliant to do shaky cam, like we were children who needed to be coddled because the act of watching a film required some basis of verbal comprehension. It was completely unnecessary and didn't even add to the oddness of the film, which was wonderfully celebrated without it.
