Saturday, December 8, 2007

Craft

Sean Collins writes:

"Craft is the enemy" is a weird motto for film critics of all people to embrace.


Agreed, but this is a sentiment that keeps popping up throughout the history of talking about the movies. See certain defenses of neo-realism, Cassavetes, the Dogme films, etc.


Partly this is because in the movies "craft" gets conflated with "money" or "studio" (Big Media). So "craft is the enemy" becomes a political statement.


I also have the suspicion that many people who watch a lot of movies eventually get burned out on "mere craft". This happened to me (temporarily) during the time when I was in a cinema studies grad program, working in a video store, and watching two or more movies a day. Fortunately, I'm not suffering from this affliction anymore.

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