Visions of the Apocalypse

Spectacles of Destruction in American Cinema

Wheeler Winston Dixon

• Publisher: WallFlower Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9780231850483
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Visions of the Apocalypse examines the cinema's fascination with the prospect of nuclear and/or natural annihilation, as seen in such films as Saving Private Ryan, Bowling for Columbine, We Were Soldiers, Invasion U.S.A., The Last War, Tidal Wave, The Bed Sitting Room, The Last Days of Man on Earth and numerous others. It also considers the ways in which contemporary cinema has become increasingly hyper-conglomerised, leading to films with ever-higher budgets and fewer creative risks. Along the way, the author discusses such topics as the death of film itself, to be replaced by digital video; the political and social tensions that have made these visions of infinite destruction so appealing to the public; and the new wave of Hollywood war films, coupled with escapist comedies, in the post-9/11 era. Encompassing both questions of physical and filmic mortality Visions of the Apocalypse is a meditation on the questions of time, memory and the cinema's seemingly unending appetite for spectacles of destruction.

CHAPTER ONE

FREEDOM FROM CHOICE

Before the proliferation of electronic media made possible the distribution of films at minimal cost through DVD, cable, and the World Wide Web, world cinema and Hollywood cinema coexisted on a relatively equal basis. Each country’s films had a different theatrical distribution system within the United States, depending on language, point of origin, and the perceived artistic merit of the film in question. British films, such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), The Knack (1965), Carry On Nurse (1958), Tom Jones (1963), and others required no subtitles and generally were accorded a wide release. French films usually appeared in major metropolitan centers with subtitles and in outlying districts with a dubbed version. Italian films such as Open City (1945; original title Roma, città aperta, 1945), La Dolce Vita (1960), Juliet of the Spirits (1965; original title Giulietta degli spiriti, 1965), Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958; original title I soliti ignoti, 1958), 81/2 (1963), and other films designated “instant classics” by US critics were generally subtitled, whereas titles such as The Day the Sky Exploded (1961; La Morte viene dallo spazio, 1958), Black Sunday (1961; original title La maschera del demonio, 1960), Hercules in the Haunted World (1964; original title Ercole al centro della terra, 1961), My Son, the Hero (1963; original title Arrivano i titani, 1961), and other more commercial fare were routinely dubbed. This general pattern of “quality” versus “commercial appeal” governed the linguistic fate of most non-US films. When Yojimbo the Bodyguard (1962; original title Yojimbo, 1961), High and Low (1963, original title Tengoku to jigoku, 1963), Woman in the Dunes (1964; original title Suna no onna, 1964), Kwaidan (1964; original title Kaidan, 1964), and other “quality” Japanese films appeared in the United States, they were subtitled; the Godzilla films, on the other hand, suffered from atrocious dubbing, usually done by the Titra Sound Studios in New York, which specialized in dubbing foreign imports.

Indian films remained, for the most part, within the boundaries of their own nation, except for the films of Satyajit Ray, which were always subtitled; Ingmar Bergman, for many years the sole representative in the United States of Swedish cinema, was also scrupulously titled. German films generally were subtitled, unless they were cheap programmers in the long-running Edgar Wallace mystery series, in which case they were dubbed. The same fate befell Hong Kong action films in the 1970s; an extremely slipshod, often asynchronous dubbing job ensured that films would reach only grind house audiences. The dubbing or subtitling of a film often determined its critical fate, as well as its commercial destiny. Dubbed films were almost universally excoriated by the critics and thus by the audiences who read their reviews; subtitled films, on the other hand, were usually afforded a modicum of respect. International coproductions were guaranteed an even warmer reception at the US box office, particularly if they featured an American star. Hammer Films used this strategy in its early British films of the 1950s, casting Tom Conway, Brian Donlevy, Alex Nicol, Hillary Brooke, and other fading stars to ensure US release. Occasionally, a film made outside the United States would be afforded a measure of commercial viability through its choice of director, as in the case of British director Thorold Dickinson’s Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955; original title Giv’a 24 Eina Ona, 1955), which dealt with the turmoil surrounding the early days on the state of Israel. Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer received solid distribution in both the United States and Great Britain, but hedged its bets by being shot in English (using British star Edward Mulhare as one of the leads), although the film was officially classified as an Israeli production.

Thus, even through the early 1970s, when Roger Corman’s New World Pictures functioned as one of the last surviving conduits of foreign theatrical distribution in the United States, most famously coproducing and distributing Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972; original title Viskningar och rop, 1972) when no other US distributor would touch it, non-US films had a chance to crack the US market, albeit an increasingly slim one as the decades rolled on. With the introduction of pay television, however, in the mid- to late 1970s, theatrical distribution was no longer a financial necessity, and the number of “art” houses in the United States began to dwindle. In the first part of the 21^st century, they have almost completely vanished—not only in the United States, but in Europe and Asia as well. At the same time, the number of repertory theaters also declined. Audiences could no longer see the classics of the past in their original 35mm format.

I remember the first time I saw Charles Crichton’s The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) in a revival house in 1961 on a double bill with Robert Dhéry’s just-released The American Beauty (1961; La belle Américaine, 1961), allowing me to see both films on equal terms—the then-current and the classic projected in their proper formats. The experience, of course, was overwhelming and nothing at all like the off-the-cuff, “background noise” effect of viewing a film on DVD on a television, no matter how gargantuan the screen. A very real argument can be made that all films that originated in 35mm should be screened in that format alone if one wants to approximate anything like the original viewing experience available to audiences when the film was first produced.

As another example of this phenomenon, in early 2002 I traveled to Los Angeles for a series of screenings at the American Cinematheque, coordinated by Dennis Bartok. On the bill that week were screenings of Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire, with its original color prologue and epilogue intact, and Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965; original title Terrore nello spazio, 1965), the latter presented in a brand new 35mm print. Both films are readily available on video and shown constantly on television; The Day the Earth Caught Fire, which is in CinemaScope, has even been screened on commercial television in letterbox format. Both films sit on my shelves in DVD format, but nothing prepared me for the shock of seeing them projected again, for the first time in nearly 40 years, on a large screen with first-rate International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union projectionists in front of an appreciative audience. Rather than viewing the films as a solitary spectator, I was allowed to experience them as part of an audience, as a social and communal act.

Subtle touches that would have drifted past my eyes on the small screen—a sudden optical effect, a striking composition, a deftly edited dialogue sequence—appeared anew to my eyes, seen in the proper size and format again. These films were never meant to be seen on the small screen; they were spatially and emotionally designed for a heroic canvas. Thus, as the director Roy Ward Baker has commented, although you can “inspect” a film in DVD/televisual format, you cannot really judge its effectiveness or participate in it on an emotional or artistic level of any real consequence. The DVDs we buy are mere aides de memoire of experiences we once shared with others and now are unable to authentically recall. In an interview with this author in 1994, Baker discussed his own film, A Night to Remember (1958), perhaps the best of the Titanic films. Having just seen the film in a retrospective of his work, Baker noted that

I had seen A Night to Remember, obviously, several times on television since I made it, but I made it, after all, in 1958. And since that time, I’d never seen it on a big screen. […] And the effect of seeing it again on the big screen, after all this time, it shows you the whole difference between movies and television. […] You see, when you see a film on television on a small screen, you’re not in the film at all. You inspect it. You can look at it. You can enjoy it to a certain extent, but you’ll never be involved in it. You can judge it; you can say, “Well, that was a good movie.” But it’s an entirely objective judgment; it’s not subjective because you’re not being subjected to the film. (qtd. in Dixon, Collected Interviews 156-7)

It’s almost like viewing a photocopy of a Caravaggio painting; no copy can ever do the original justice. What makes this all the more frustrating is that economics, not artistic forces, is driving the current digitization of the cinema, even as studio heads and archivists pay token homage to cinema’s past. Thus, when one speaks of a particular film being “available” on DVD or another home video format, one should more correctly say that an inferior copy of the original is available for viewing, rather than the film itself. An even more insidious factor is that although the American Film Institute and other organizations celebrate the heritage of the moving image, contemporary Hollywood studios are busily strip-mining the past (as we have seen) to create “new” product. In doing so, many production entities consciously engage in legal maneuvering to keep the source film off the market, even in 16mm and 35mm formats, in the ostensible hope that newer audiences, unaware of the original film, will be unaware of its existence. An example of this is the remake of Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975; remake 2002). Although the first film was deeply flawed, its vision of a future world without war, dominated by violent recreational sport, carried a direct political message to the audience. The remake, which centers only on the game of Rollerball itself as an extreme sport, eschews the theme of global corporate domination entirely. Does one really need to ask why?

At the same time, a great deal of evidence exists that contemporary audiences recognize the recycled quality of the current cinema—and reject it. They would go to see something else if they had the choice, but they do not. As Rick Lyman noted:

Something profound is happening at the megaplexes, and it has little to do with what appears on the screen. Rather, it is about how those movies are being seen.

The summer hits of 2001 are making about as much money as hits from previous summers, but they are making it quicker, making more of it than ever on opening weekend.

Movies are opening on more screens, generating staggering grosses and then plummeting off the radar. Many executives in Hollywood see this trend, which they call “front loading,” as a fundamental change in the way summer movies are being watched. […] In the future, when digital distribution comes and movies are shipped electronically rather than on metal reels, these trends will only be magnified, as they will when studios become more adept at opening films not merely all over the country but all over the world on the same day. (“Blockbusters” A1, A12)

Lyman goes on to demonstrate how newer films open in 3,000 theaters simultaneously to avoid Internet piracy and gain as much audience penetration as possible before negative word of mouth sets in. This strategy, originally created by James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures (AIP) in the mid-to-late 1950s, was originally dubbed “saturation booking.” Nicholson and Arkoff had no illusions about AIP’s product; they knew that what they were selling was commercial junk and that only a hit-and-run booking pattern would reap maximum return on their investment. Whereas major studios in the 1950s often “platformed” their films, opening them in major cities in “road show” engagements at higher ticket prices before releasing them throughout the United States and subsequently foreign territories, AIP’s smash-and-grab tactics gave the company a solid cash flow to produce new product, essential in what was a very thinly capitalized operation. Such AIP films as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), and Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959) have become exploitation classics, films that accurately pegged audience expectations and delivered what the majors at the time refused to do: adolescent entertainment. Made on six-day schedules and budgets in the $100,000 range, AIP’s films constituted a genuine threat to the majors, which had just been deprived of their guaranteed theatrical outlets with the advent of the consent decree of 1948. AIP offered exhibitors advantageous terms, immediate delivery, and splashy ad campaigns designed to appeal to the widest possible audience.

By the 1970s, when AIP was absorbed into Filmways, the majors had caught onto AIP’s strategy and began aggressively duplicating it. In 1975, Jaws opened in 409 theaters in the United States and did spectacular business. The budget was higher, the advertising costs greater, the number of prints more than AIP could ever have afforded. In 1983, Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi opened in 1,002 locations. In 1996, Mission: Impossible opened in 3,000 theaters; in 2000, Mission: Impossible II opened in more than 3,500 theaters. The Mummy Returns (2001) started in 3,401 theaters; Shrek (2001) in 3,587 theaters; and Rush Hour 2 in 3,118 theaters (Lyman, “Blockbuster” A12). By the summer of 2002, Spider-Man was able to open in 3,615 theaters simultaneously on as many as 7,500 multiplex screens. In the film’s first three days, it grossed $114 million (Di Orio, “Spider’s” 1). But how long it can hold on to that kind of audience is a real question. Planet of the Apes (2001) opened to $68.5 million, but fell by 60% in its second week at the box office. The Mummy Returns fell 50% in its second week; Pearl Harbor (2001) fell 50% in its second week; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) fell 59% in its second week (Lyman, “Blockbuster” A12). People rush to the theater on the week a film opens, but then just as rapidly desert it when the next blockbuster comes along. Studios are delighted with this phenomenon because opening weekend contracts typically stipulate a 90/10 split of the profits, with 90% of the first week’s profits going directly to the production entity. The theater makes its money on the concession stand, as it always has, and by the second week, an 80/20 split, again favoring the studio, usually kicks in. But by this time, another film comes roaring out of the gate, and the game starts all over again, week after exhausting week (Lyman, “Blockbuster” A12). Internet piracy only adds to the urgency in getting a film out to as many paying customers as quickly as possible; in the three days before the opening of Planet of the Apes, a complete version of the film, pirated from a stolen 35mm print, was circulating on the Web. AIP in the 1950s and 1960s would play their films territory by territory across the United States until every last dime had been extracted from the audience. The majors in the 1970s and 1980s could afford far larger “breaks,” increasing the chances that regardless how bad the reviews were, the film would be a hit. In the days before the Internet, the studios could also follow the seasons around the globe, opening a summer film in Australia in December, typically the warmest time of the year down under. No more. With piracy, the ubiquity of the Web, and the complete interconnectivity of contemporary audience and fan base, a film must open everywhere, all over the world, simultaneously.

As foreign markets open up (China will probably be the last to fall before Hollywood’s onslaught), the number of prints distributed will increase. Soon, releases of 5,000, even 7,000 prints will be commonplace, and then, film will vanish entirely. With the coming of digital distribution, the entire cinematic landscape will be altered forever. Movies will be shipped on disc, or, for better security, downloaded from a satellite directly into the hard drive memory of the projector. The theater owner will then flick a switch, and the “film” will appear on the screen. Still at issue, of course, is who would control the final distribution of any given title to a certain number of screens. Theater owners want the ability to shift nonstarters to fewer or less prestigious screens (with fewer seats) within the multiplex; they want flexibility. The studios, however, are unlikely to grant this. In one possible scenario, the heavily encrypted movie will be downloaded from a satellite to a dedicated projector for a limited number of runs, in one theater only. Studios would thus be able to guarantee a certain number of screens and seats for their product. As always, because the studios create the product, thereby offering a “pipeline” of continuous entertainment to the various theater chains, they will be able to dictate the terms that are most favorable to their interests. Finally, by producing films such as Spider-Man and other fare aimed strictly at teens on a constant basis, the majors have done away with the potential threat that an upstart independent producer, such as AIP, might cause. When and if audience tastes change and some new genre becomes the flavor of the month at the multiplexes, the majors will instantly adapt because all of the films they produce are the result of exhaustive market research (see Rosenbaum, Movie Wars, for more on this subject).

Where does this market research come from? Surprisingly, the Dutch firm Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeversbedrijven (VNU), or United Dutch Publishers, generates most of the data. This seemingly innocuous company has a truly astonishing global reach into all areas of consumers. VNU owns, among other holdings, the National Research Group (NRG), which conducts audience preference surveys throughout the United States. These surveys, conducted for the most part by poorly paid temporary employees who must generate a large pool of interviewees designed to reflect the public’s taste, govern t...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Tyranny of Images
• 1. Freedom from Choice
• 2. Invasion U.S.A.
• 3. The Limits of Time
• Coda: The Copenhagen Defense
• Works Cited and Consulted
• Index
• Photo Inserts
• About the Author