Be sure to click here and read John Hanlon’s terrific review of Roger Ebert’s new memoir. It was while reading the review that I came across something Ebert floats that’s worth debating — and it only is a little bit about politics.
“Compared to the great movie stars of the past, modern actors are handicapped by the fact that their films are shot in color.” [Roger Ebert] adds, “In the long run, that will rob most of them of the immortality that was obtained even by second-tier stars of the black-and-white era.”
Ebert’s not the first one to make the argument that stars from the classic era have an advantage when it comes to becoming immortal due to being shot and remembered in black and white, as opposed to color. But in a word…
….this is preposterous.
Do we think of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman or Steve McQueen in black and white? What about Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Judy Garland, Kirk Douglas, Charles Bronson, or Gene Kelly? How about Clint Eastwood? Good heavens, James Dean became immortal after starring in only three films — all of them filmed in color.
Obviously the full context of Ebert’s thoughts can’t be included in a single book review, but like I said, I’ve heard this argument elsewhere and think it’s an excuse made by those trying to get ahead of the fact that the films that represent their values won’t live as long as those that represent age-old truths.
What becomes immortal is that which is eternal: beauty, truth, and the ennobling of the human spirit. Thirty years after his death, John Wayne consistently remains the most popular movie star in the hundred year-old history of cinema and we do not dream of him in black and white. We dream of John Wayne in blazing Technicolor, framed by the red sand and buttes that make up Monument Valley. But it’s what John Wayne stands for that makes him immortal, not the film stock that recorded it.
And now I’m going to be accused of being simple-minded as though my example of John Wayne is somehow simple-minded.
Yes, well, let’s talk about the themes of “The Searchers,” “Hondo,” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” How about the themes Steve McQueen explored or Brando or Newman. The truth is quite simple: It is the rich thematic complexity of “black and white” films that helps to explain their immortality. “Casablanca,’ “Citizen Kane,” “Stagecoach,” “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” “The Ox-Bow Incident,” “The Best Years of Our Lives” and their hundreds of counterparts live on forever because unlike too many of today’s “color” films, they explore how complicated doing the right thing can be as compared to their contemporary simpletons who explore the dull, one-dimensional thinking that goes with narcissism, nihilism, and hollow “edginess” — standing for nothing instead of standing for something.
In 200 years, people will be trying to decode color films such as “Bullitt,” “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Death Wish,” and “The Long Hot Summer.” In 20 years George Clooney’s career (thus far) will already have bored itself into oblivion.
What makes a movie star an immortal has nothing to do with cinematography and everything to do with how they make us feel and what they tell us. If it’s timeless, so are they. If it’s not … see ya.
Thousands of years before anyone ever dreamed of the motion picture, people kept stories alive by telling and retelling them around the campfire. The stories that mattered survived. The ones that didn’t were forgotten.
Other than how that story is delivered, nothing’s changed.
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