Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television’s Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- 6 Fast Worker: The Films of Sam Newfield
- 7 The Power of Resistance: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
- 8 Beyond Characterization: Performance in 1960s Experimental Cinema
- 9 Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- 10 “Let the Sleepers Sleep and the Haters Hate”: An Interview with Dale “Rage” Resteghini
- 11 Margin Call: An Interview with J. C. Chandor
- 12 “All My Films Are Personal”: An Interview with Pat Jackson
- 13 Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O’Hara
- 14 Andrew V. McLaglen: Last of the Hollywood Professionals
- 15 Pop Star, Director, Actor: An Interview with Michael Sarne
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
9 - Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television’s Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- 6 Fast Worker: The Films of Sam Newfield
- 7 The Power of Resistance: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
- 8 Beyond Characterization: Performance in 1960s Experimental Cinema
- 9 Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- 10 “Let the Sleepers Sleep and the Haters Hate”: An Interview with Dale “Rage” Resteghini
- 11 Margin Call: An Interview with J. C. Chandor
- 12 “All My Films Are Personal”: An Interview with Pat Jackson
- 13 Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O’Hara
- 14 Andrew V. McLaglen: Last of the Hollywood Professionals
- 15 Pop Star, Director, Actor: An Interview with Michael Sarne
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
There can be no doubt that the digitization of the moving image has radically and irrevocably altered the phenomenon which we call the cinema and that the characteristics of this transformation leave open an entirely new field of visual figuration. For those who live and work in the post-filmic era – that is, those who have come to consciousness in the past twenty years – the digital world is not only an accomplished fact, but also the dominant medium of visual discourse. Many of my students remark that the liberation of the moving image from the tyranny of the “imperfect” medium of film is a technical shift that is not only inevitable, but also desirable.
For younger viewers, the scratch-free, grain-free, glossily perfect contours of the digital image hold a pristine allure that the relative roughness of the filmic image lacks. Indeed, by doing away with film, many of my students persuasively argue that we are witnessing the next step in what will be a continual evolution of moving image recording – which, in turn, will be followed by newer mediums of image capture now unknown to us. For others, those of my age, the filmic medium is a separate and sacrosanct domain and the “coldness” of the digital image – stripped of any of the inherent qualities of light, plastics and colored dyes – betrays a lack of emotion, a disconnect from the real in the classical Bazinian sense. DVDs are easy to use and cheap to produce, but can't afford the visual depth and resonance of a projected 35mm filmic image. It seems to me that both arguments have valid points and are equally worthy of serious consideration.
Yet the problem, ultimately, with such considerations is that, in the end, there is no “right” answer – no clearly superior medium, no set of values that emerges as the clear winner in any disputation that must, of necessity, be based on personal aesthetics, as well as practical and financial consideration. 16mm, we might as well face it, is dead and I mourn its passing as much as anyone.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cinema at the Margins , pp. 105 - 116Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013