The Motivation for Quintessential Cinema
Quintessential Cinema was born out of my passion for motion pictures. I have always recognized film to be the best form of entertainment: entertainment in its most compact and condensed form. Film is inherently superior to other forms of mass entertainment simply because of the effort involved in making a film.
Film viewing has traditionally been an out door affair. Before the 1980s, viewers were forced to select from a handful of titles that were on display in their local theatres. The VHS cassette brought with it freedom of selection. With this choice came confusion in selecting good films to watch. Video stores mushroomed all around. A whole new business of video guides and catalogues emerged in tandem. The owners of cinema theatres should be grateful that they survived the war against video. This time the threat posed by video is real. In this new century, the availability of life size plasma displays, surround sound systems and high definition may be the final blow. Home entertainment systems are beginning to match cinema theatres in the experience they provide. It appears likely that the whole paradigm of film marketing will shift from the cinema screens to five inch discs. The recent sales figures of DVDs is testimony to the fact that home entertainment industry will only grow in size with the introduction of newer disc formats. At the same time the recent innovations in video compression technology have increased the number of movies available to the common man. In the ‘old days’ of the VCR you required two VCRs to make a copy of the movie you had rented. Now you can save anywhere from 1 to 20 movies on a single disc. And who needs to bother to take a trip to video store to rent or buy a movie when technology has made it possible to download movies in the cozy atmosphere of your own home? The best part of it is that they are absolutely free. The major studios now realize that they are fighting a lost battle against piracy. They are bound to follow suit of the music industry. The emergence of an iTunes for movies is a question of time.
In this age when we are spoiled by an unlimited choice of entertainment but have little time to enjoy our selves, it is very easy to be misled by those who intend to sell you as many DVDs as they can or those movie channels that will play every thing they can lay their hands on. What must be realized is that first, despite whatever nonsense you hear or see on mass media, you are no longer bound to watching the latest releases. Secondly, the internet has provided unlimited access to pure uncensored information. This choice and access creates confusion for most people. It is vital that you know how and where to look for the correct information in the chaotic world of the web.
Nearly all websites about film promote new movies. They are filled up to the brim with news, gossips, hyped up reviews about the latest releases and of course, ads for DVDs. Nevertheless, we cannot undermine the service some of the film sites are rendering for humanity. Creators of these websites often showcase a selection of what they consider to be the greatest films ever made. The number of movies in these lists can vary from 100 to 1000. All other films are treated as ordinary and average. But then there is no consensus among the makers of these lists on the films they have selected. These lists consists mainly classic films from the 40s and 50s and a large number of non English films that the average film-goer finds boring. The remainder is not enough to provide a good choice for avid film buffs. Another anomaly is the fact hat there is no recognized standard to define the 100 or so greatest films ever. Great films cannot be measured scientifically. Greatness is extremely subjective. The greatest works of cinema can never be ranked or quantified. Still another paradox that presents itself is the ranking of great films among themselves, which in my honest opinion, should not be attempted. What needs to be done is to formulate a set of criteria and then to separate each and every film that is acceptable. This selection must include each and every film that can safely be considered as great or ‘good enough’ or that has some quality that makes it worth recommending for the majority. To this end we must, once and for all, filter out the vast majority of ordinary bad or vile movies and select the remainder. These selections can than be ‘graded’ into batches of varying greatness. With such a selection available one can conveniently select a movie of his choice to watch. Such a list will benefit avid film collectors and video store managers also.
To make such a selection appealing for all film buffs, it is absolutely critical that it must not be based on any special preferences or prejudices. This list must include each and every title that is agreed to be a good or great film by the majority of critics. It must include a fairly large selection of films of all genres, styles, formats and forms. It must be statically distributed over all periods of cinema. It must contain movies of choice that cater for the tastes of all types and yet does not contain films that a significant proportion of films viewers may find offensive.
To the best of my knowledge, there has been no serious effort to compile such a grand list. The realization of this fact presented me with an opportunity and compelled me to investigate the practicality of such a hypothetical list. With the genesis of this idea, the fist question that struck my mind was about the total number of feature films ever made. I decided to concentrate on English language feature films only. At this point I find it necessary to clarify the commonly help misconception between a movie and a film. Both words are used interchangeably to describe the same thing. The end product of a ‘film’ (often called a motion picture) must be a strip of celluloid material containing an imprint of the actual images comprising the motion picture and is meant to be displayed by projecting the image onto a plain screen. A feature film (sometimes referred to as a feature-length film) is a film that runs over 40 minutes and is presented as the main feature in a cinema theatre [1] . Short films, documentaries, newsreels and educational films are not feature films. Television movies (TVMs) and direct video productions comprise of a sizeable portion of the total number of movies that are produced. However, their contribution in the movie business is somewhat insignificant, both in quality and in revenues.
The total number of English language feature films that were ever made is staggering. The American Film Institute (AFI) claims that more than 40,000 feature-length films were made in the United States during the course of the 20th century [2]. This figure contains silent films and animated feature films. Co-productions with other countries are also counted as American films. The United Kingdom is the second major player in the English language motion picture industry with more than 7,000 productions to its credit [3]. Again, this figure includes silent films. Australia was a latecomer in this business, but its contribution cannot be ignored. The contributions from other countries can be ignored for the purpose at hand. From these facts we can safely assume that the total number of English language feature films ever produced to this date is less than 50,000[4].
The celluloid material used to manufacture commercial films is inherently unstable under normal conditions. Films require careful storage to slow their inevitable decomposition over time. This was particularly true for movies from the first half of the 20th century. Their nitrate film base made them prone to catching fire if left in the open. An 1970 report by the Library of Congress states that of the approximately 21,000 U.S. feature films produced before 1950, 48% had been lost. Fewer than 20% of the features of the 1920s survive in complete form; for features of the 1910s, the survival rate falls to slightly above 10% [5]. Many silent films were discarded when sound came in, because they were simply deemed worthless. The number of films obliterated by the elements keeps on increasing with each passing year. The vast majority of films that have survived since the days of World War II are not in immaculate condition. The image may be distorted and scratched. Remember that these figures are from 1970. During the past 35 years the number of films lost forever has only increased. The fact that less than half of the films ever made have survived is disturbing and demands immediate attention.
Making a fairly large assumption that half of all films ever produced have survived to this date, the total number of English language feature films that are available today should roughly be 25,000. This figure also accounts for silent films produced in the USA and the UK. Very few of the silent films that have managed to survive are available on video. When we take silent films out of the equation we can safely say that there are fewer than 25 thousand films left to contend with.
The majority of films produced were never converted to video. Films with no or little prospect of commercial success were never released on video. A significantly large proportion of the feature films from the golden age of Hollywood that is locked up in the film vaults of studios or in libraries can only be viewed by those who have access to these collections. Availability on video is a crucial factor in film selection [6]. A movie that is off limits for the public should not be counted among the ranks of the greatest films. The figures mentioned above and some complex calculations reveal that we must make a selection from more than 15,000 films if we are ever to compile a complete list of each and every English language film that is worth recommending to others.
The golden age of Hollywood gave us a staggeringly large number of the masterpieces of cinema. Even then, the worthwhile movies were the tip of the iceberg: probably eighty percent of what was produced was ghastly rubbish. The best kind of film buff loves the movie business for what it can be at its best, not for its journeyman ‘B’ features, its crackpot experiments, those relentlessly boring bottom-of-the-bill fillers or the tenth sequel of a smash horror flick of yesteryears. Assuming that one fifth of all films that exist have some qualities that demand some respect and recognition, while the existence of the rest can ignored, we have no more than 5000 English language titles that have any possibility of providing quality entertainment. This figure includes all films that can be labeled as great, good or ‘good enough’. Quintessential Cinema is an attempt to identify all such films.
Biblography
[1] The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film
Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of forty minutes or longer.
[6] The DVD Register
The DVD Register maintains lists of all films that are available on DVD and laserdisc. The site maintains a list of movies available on laserdisc that were never issued on DVD