A Movie for Grownups

Works of art have a wonderful way of upsetting theories about art. A theory, after all, is a kind of intellectual cage into which the mind tries to lock unruly facts. But a work of art, a genuine work, is sly enough to squeeze through any bars.

I find the movies so entrancing a medium and their usual content such drivel that my movie-theory has gradually adapted itself to my taste. Granted the space-time limit, the corporate mode of production and the necessarily mass audience—I will argue—a movie should be a kind of formal pantomime, a cinematic com- media dell’ arte, without any attempt at subtleties of character or idea. The joy is in the moving camera, the represented surface of the world, the visual and aural counterpoint. Don’t let the movie bog down into the photographing of what is really a play or the transcription of what is really a novel; let the camera get out of doors as much as possible, so that the movie does what no other form of art can; keep the characters and plot formal, conventional, because otherwise they will turn into pretentious platitudes. In short, my ideal movie is a good Western.

JB

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James Burnham

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Works of art have a wonderful way of upsetting theories about art. A theory, after all, is a kind of intellectual cage into which the mind tries to lock unruly facts. But a work of art, a genuine work, is sly enough to squeeze through any bars.

I find the movies so entrancing a medium and their usual content such drivel that my movie-theory has gradually adapted itself to my taste. Granted the space-time limit, the corporate mode of production and the necessarily mass audience—I will argue—a movie should be a kind of formal pantomime, a cinematic com- media dell’ arte, without any attempt at subtleties of character or idea. The joy is in the moving camera, the represented surface of the world, the visual and aural counterpoint. Don’t let the movie bog down into the photographing of what is really a play or the transcription of what is really a novel; let the camera get out of doors as much as possible, so that the movie does what no other form of art can; keep the characters and plot formal, conventional, because otherwise they will turn into pretentious platitudes. In short, my ideal movie is a good Western.