Film: Book 1 [antikvár]

THE DEADLIEST BUSINESS Cocteau once remarked that "Movies won't be an art until the materials are as inexpensive as paper and pencil." Whether film is, or ever has been, or ever will be an art is not at issue here,^ but rather some of the implications of the fact that film is the costliest art yet conceived. All but the most incurable Pollyannas know that the true history of the movies is a long, sad story, with no happy ending in view; a story whose grim-ness is only relieved by moments produced by those canny but tragic geniuses (Flaherty and Eisenstein will do) who somehow manage to obtain the tools of production long enough to make a personal statement in moving pictures, to reveal man and the world in a new light—this in spite of at least four maj or enemies: the businessman ("movies are merchandise"); the politician ("pass the ammunition"); the censor ("truth is indecent"); and the mass-man ("help me escape"). Film: Book i (the first of what we hope will be an annual series) is concerned with the audience and the filmmaker's relation to it. Book I began as a project for the American Federation of Film Societies, an organization whose membership includes a fair share of those people in this country who can tell a moving picture from a tranquillizer or a salestalk; but AFFS is in no way responsible for the form or content of the book. Book I is, and the series will be concerned with the situation of the serious filmmaker—how he works and what he is up against. (What is meant by seriousness will be answered best by a glance at the table of contents.) Future volumes, assuming there is a need for this kind of book, will also be arranged around particular aspects of this subject: the process and purposes of filmmaking, and the problems. The reception of Book i will prove whether there is an audience for this kind of conversation about the liveliest art—and the deadliest business. Robert Hughes I. Siegfried Kracauer's forthcoming book on film theory will provide the first significant answers to that question since Rudolf Arnheim's.