Film

I've always liked movies, ever since I was little. If I started watching a movie, and I left before it was over, you'd better watch out 'cause I would (and still probably will) get raging mad. I was the kid that sat in front of the TV and watched the lamest kids movies, now of course I know better. After the movie was done, I'd rewind it (back in the day of video tapes) and sometimes, if mom would let me, and sometimes even if she didn't, watch it again.
I took a class last semester, the best class I've ever taken so far, Survey of Classic American Films. Basically the class was this, watch a movie then analyze it. SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!
We watched Marx Brother's John Wayne, Alfred Hitchcock, Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, On the Waterfront, Citizen Kane, Some like it Hot Casablanca and countless others.
Most of the films were classics —you could've got that from the title of the class— so most of them were 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Those films were the films that defined film.
Where would we be without Citizen Kane? A lot of people don't realize this, but Citizen Kane broke the wave. Until then movies, didn't have much variations of camera angles. Plot-lines went from beginning to end, they didn't skip around. This movie changed all that.
Even movies that today are out-dated like King Kong (the first one ever made) without the horrific clay-animation. Or Wizard of Oz's flying monkeys and horse of many colors, we wouldn't have the Special Effects we do now.
Movies like Casablanca who didn't give film a novel idea in the way it was filmed. Yet somehow the film has been named a classic and, on most lists in the top five best movies ever. The everyday themes of love and war, good and evil. The script contains some of the most remembered movie quotes. Where would we be without "Here's looking at you kid"?
The point I'm trying to make in all this mess is this, if this is how films were started, with some of the best ever, where did it fall? Now I'm not saying that all the movies made in modern day are terrible, but it seems like they're all the same story. There's nothing new. There's are hardly any modern classics.
Like I said, not all films in the past ten years are terrible, just look at Lord of the Rings, but most of them have almost lost their luster. They don't have the art the early film did. You also, in some films, have to rake through a lot muck, before you can find the treasure at the bottom.
Let's take comedies for example in the early day you had comedies like "Duck Soup" and "The Philadelphia Story" I know there are several others, these are just some of the ones I've seen. All the jokes are funny... and clean. *Gasp* you can't make a comedy without profanity and dirty jokes, well apparently you can. And more importantly, these are comedies that considered classic. Now there is another comedy, "Some like it Hot" that contain... a few, unnecessary items, however, if all the films we watched now even lowered it down that far, I'd brake out into a Hallelujah chorus.
Once again, a lot of films lacked the luster they once had. I understand that once you go into over 80 years of a business it can be hard to create novelty, by that time everything already has been done, but that doesn't explain the fact that the art is dying away for some. Some still create amazing cinematography, acting, script, and direction, for the others, I'm afraid their only motivation is the money they make. That is not what Film was for, film is art. It's to be created so that people are supposed to enjoy.
I don't really have much of a sum-up for all this, it's really just me venting at how incompetent and stupid people can be (and I'll stop there). How much I wish for the "Golden Age of Film" to return to show us, once again, the magic of motion pictures.