On Film-Making
Vincent LoBrutto
Film Quarterly, Summer 2007
It is a rare volume that attempts to address film directing as a profession. There are how-to guides such as Directing Film Techniques and Aesthetics by Michael Rabiger and Directing for Film and Television: A Guide to the Craft by Christopher Lukas, which are general texts written by little-known practitioners. When the writer is an acclaimed film director, as in the case of King Vidor: On Film Making, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet or On Filmmaking by Edward Dmytryk, they draw on experience culled from a body of work known to, and respected by, the reader. The Film-Maker’s Art by Haig P. Manoogian is of great interest because the legendary NYU professor taught so many now prominent filmmakers, notably Martin Scorsese.
Both teacher and practitioner, Alexander Mackendrick directed The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Ladykillers (1955) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), subsequently becoming the Dean of the film department at the California Institute of the Arts after his retirement, in 1969, as a filmmaker. At CalArts, Mackendrick wrote hundreds of pages of class notes and sketches that formed his curriculum and encapsulated his philosophy on the practical teaching of his craft. Those texts are adroitly compiled here by Paul Cronin, himself a film scholar and maker. The collection begins with a foreword from Scorsese, who explains that after only one hundred years there is little consensus concerning a syllabus for the training of a film director. After Scorsese applauds Mackendrick’s pioneering work in the field, Cronin provides a lengthy introduction which covers background and the essential tenets of teachings that stress practice over theory. Cronin pored over all the handouts and notes Mackendrick produced during his academic career before condensing them into a single volume divided into two categories: dramatic construction (the creation of a screen story) and film grammar (the rules and properties behind motion-picture production). Cronin proves himself as meticulous as his subject: his annotations, which are printed in the margins, are excellent and, at the beginning of the book, veritably encyclopedic. Mackendrick is especially vigorous on the topic of cinematic dramatic construction. He believed a film story should utilize limited dialogue to create meaning between the words. He judged storytelling by the highest standards, often citing the Ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, or Ibsen. Presenting himself as a classicist, Mackendrick challenged his students to learn the fundamentals of their art and craft and to discover their own future form. This position would be admirable at any point of time but was critical during the essential cinematic decades of the 1960s and 70s when filmmakers were fueled with passionate ideas but often lacked formal categories for their visions. Before the wave of script gurus (Syd Field, Robert McKee, and Linda Seeger), Mackendrick was exploring the writing process by suggesting the student create index cards indicating a simple account of the principal action, outlines as short as four pages or as long as fifty pages, charts of the chain of narrative events, step outlines of an existing film to deconstruct its architecture. And all this planning needed to be bolstered by constant rewriting.
In a series of lectures, the tenets of narrative writing are explored: activity versus action, exposition, dramatic irony, plausibility, structure, suspension of disbelief, creation of subplots, and poetics. A deconstruction of the screenplay for The Third Man (1949) includes a character relationship map that analyzes motivation, state of mind, emotions, and personal agendas. A lengthy section is dedicated to the story construction of Sweet Smell of Success in which Mackendrick explains his working process including the contributions of Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, character breakdowns, and an in-depth dissection of several key scenes following pages from the original screenplay.
The second section is a practical examination of film grammar that connects content with form. Mackendrick presents the rules of film direction with respect for dramatic interpretation, communication with the viewer, and self expression. Continuing his high-ground approach, Mackendrick references the teachings of Lev Kuleshov, Karel Reisz and the application of the moving camera of Alfred Hitchcock. Pacing is examined with a sample script page, a step-by-step list of the actions, analysis of the dramatic rhythm, then an annotated storyboard that solves the problem of narrative compression by application of proper shot size, angle, blocking, and camera movement. Directorial point of view and maintaining continuity through understanding the geometry of camera placement and framing is taught with detailed line drawings and intricate notation. Several overhead schematic illustrations clearly demonstrate the relationship of the camera to its subject in several different two-character scene circumstances. Much attention is given to the art and mechanics of covering a scene during production so it can be properly edited. The iconic and deeply emotional taxi scene between Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger from On the Waterfront (1954) is a valuable example accompanied by Mackendrick’s insights, drawings, and charts. Mackendrick’s high regard for Citizen Kane (1941) is evident at the conclusion of On Film-Making in which he uses Susan Alexander Kane’s attempted suicide scene to bring together all his lessons on cinematic techniques and concepts emphasizing the director- cinematographer relationship of Orson Welles and Gregg Toland which produced it. This is followed by a short epilogue concerning Mackendrick’s on-the-job training and the hope his instruction contained within On Film-Making will empower the reader with the basics of film directing. The rest, he states, is down to talent and hard work.
The lessons in On Film-Making are both dated and timeless. The book’s strength is in Mackendrick’s ability to demystify. The guiding principles of filmmaking don’t really change but it must be said that Mackendrick’s literary and movie examples are of their time. But readers looking to make Fight Club (1999) or Memento (2000) might remember that students of drawing in Europe once had to spend hours making meticulous pencil renderings of a white napkin dropped in front of their drawing-table by their teacher. On Film-Making is imbued with the same ethos of dedication and craftsmanship. Those who study Mackendrick’s old-school approach could, with time and practice, become the next David Fincher or Christopher Nolan.
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