On Film-Making
Gregory McNamee
Hollywood Reporter, 1 September 2005
Is art a thing of nature or of nurture? That is to say, can someone without that hard-to-define thing, the soul of an artist, be taught to make art?
Alexander Mackendrick thought not, at least as applied to filmmaking. Can it be taught? “Absolutely not, no more than anything else that is an ‘art’ can be taught,” he said. And then, as if remembering that he had signed on at CalArts to do just that, he added, “On the other hand, it may just be possible to call to the attention of the beginner the usages of the ‘language’ of cinema that have so far developed (and continue to evolve).”
A modest goal, that, pointing out to a green student that there are such things as visual grammar and stylistic conventions and offering useful rules of thumb to ease the way. Yet his quarter-century of teaching was anything but modest, and he had great expectations of his students. The lecture notes and other documents that film scholar Paul Cronin gathers in this readable, helpful book show that, above all else, making a film is hard work, requiring the endless refinement of skills and the labor of many hands — and that if it is to be done well making a film benefits from the recognition that others have gone before, screenplay by screenplay, movie by movie.
Thus, much of On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, concerns how others have wrestled words, images and ideas onto film, with some of the usual suspects – particularly Orson Welles – standing as examples. Some of the best parts of the book show Mackendrick at work dissecting such classics as Citizen Kane, On the Waterfront and The Third Man, noting camera coverage here, lighting there, an actor’s movements there and, everywhere, the director’s role in putting things together.
Mackendrick makes a refreshingly clear case for the adage that though there are only a few stories in the world to tell, there are an infinite number of ways to tell them. He notes that Cinderella, The Bicycle Thief and Hamlet follow much the same fairy-tale conventions, as if to point out that, despite a young filmmaker’s desire to put a new spin on things, the classic techniques of storytelling work. There’s no hifalutin theory in such discoveries, for Mackendrick mistrusts theory and aims for the practical lesson always: “Dramatic structure is, you might say, the craft of keeping an audience excited, of avoiding boredom in your listeners.”
In his analyses, Mackendrick is unsparing of what he perceives to be mistakes, not least his own; though many critics and buffs regard his Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as a classic, he writes, “I cannot recommend the film for student study on aesthetic grounds.” He does allow that the film has some virtues, especially in the scene construction. But so, too, he writes, does the 1954 science-fiction film Them! – featuring atomic mutant ants and chin-stroking scientists – from which he draws another lesson: “A rule of the genre seems to be that we are allowed only one major Incredible Thing. Given this, everything else will, surprisingly enough, seem to be logical (if wholly improbable).”
Mackendrick, who also directed such films as The Man in the White Suit (1951) and A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), prided himself on one skill in particular: an ability to get to the essential. He recounts how, early in his career, he distilled 25 pages of dialogue into “three non-verbal noises and a single word,” and he urges his students to be similarly devoted to economy, grumbling that “screenplays come in three sizes: long, too long and much too long.”
As, a crusty sort might complain, they continue to do today. Mackendrick’s book holds ample lessons for students, practitioners and filmgoers alike, and it’s a pleasingly thorough education.
© Gregory McNamee/The Hollywood Reporter
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