Good romantic comedy movies come out every year, directed by good directors, starring good actors. But the Hollywood system that mass-produced dozens a year, is gone. Fewer movies mean fewer classics.
Movie Stars Start On TV
Up and coming actors and directors have less opportunity to learn their craft. Without a big name, it is hard to raise money to make a film, and it is harder than ever to build a name. Stars build names on TV, which has its own form of studio system.
Many try to switch to movies, where the pay is better for less work, but not many TV stars are as successful in the movies as they were on TV. For every Chevy Chase, there are several Shelley Longs. Their smaller-than-life TV images do not translate to larger-than-life movie screens.
A movie star's presence must fill a screen the size of a building, in Dolby Sound, like Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Meg Ryan..It's not a matter of physical size. Nobody filled a screen more than tiny Bette Davis, and little Reese Witherspoon is also a large presence on screen.
Hollywood has not made a good, original movie musical since Saturday Night Fever 35 years a go, and it was not a comedy. It was a serious coming of age drama set in a discotheque. Fred Astaire called it the best movie he'd seen in 25 years, especially the opening scene with John Travolta walking down a street in time to the music playing in his head.
Modern Remakes of Classic Comedies
Modern Hollywood also remakes old romantic comedy classics, a sort of admission that they can't do better. None of these remakes, except True Grit, holds a candle to the original. The 2010 True Grit is so different from the old John Wayne classic that it can hardly be called a remake. The remake was a first-rate comedy.The original was a great John Wayne movie.
The Shop Around the Corner, produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, written primarily by Billy Wilder before he became a director, is the story of two employees who hate each other, but carry on a passionate, anonymous love affair through the mail. The comedy is in the sparks between them face-to-face, and the difficulty they have getting together when they drop the anonymity and meet in person,
In the Good Old Summertime (1949), a musical version of the Lubitsch classic, with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, is considered a classic movie musical in its own right today. It appears on Turner Classic Movies at least as often as Shop Around the Corner.
You've Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, directed by Rob Reiner, uses the device of anonymous lovers by mail, who clash when they meet in person. The movie shows how they fall in love through e-mail, and go from hate to love in person,. It pays homage to the classics. One of the protagonists owns a bookstore named "The Shop Around the Corner." It's a great movie, not a re-make.
Typical forgettable remakes are The Longest Yard, Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch with Jim Carrey, A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Did the filmmakers think they could improve on excellence, or that remaking still-popular classics with modern stars would be an easy, automatic payday?
There is no such thing as more excellent. It's an oxymoron, a silly phrase that contradicts itself, like (according to many) military intelligence.
Loss of Big Studios
Talent and star power that existed in Hollywood's Golden Age are not what's missing today.
Big studios that mass produced romantic comedy, the Hays Code, and companies of great supporting actors and off-screen craftspeople no longer exist.
Fewer productions naturally mean fewer great and classic productions. A classic is a work of art that continues finding audiences, and influencing young artists, in future generations. Making one is beyond craftsmanship. Making a classic movie is especially hard because a film requires so much collaborative excellence from so many artists.
Loss of Studio Repertory Companies
Star actors and directors can stay wealthy making a good picture every two or three years. Supporting actors and off-camera artists, who turn good movies into great movies, need steady work and a steady paycheck.
Each Hollywood studio had great repertory companies, under contract, turning out six or seven movies a year. Many of the actors developed name and face recognition in their own right. People could tell the difference between MGM, Warner Bros, Paramount, and other studios. They all had different "looks."
All those artists today are freelance, independent contractors. When they finish a movie, they are unemployed, looking for a new job.
Today, any director or producer who wants to make a comedy must raise the money, then assemble an outstanding collaborative team from scratch. Woody Allen solves the problem by working with many of the same people in most of his movies.Clint Eastwood does the same, but does not usually make comedies. Other filmmakers don't have that option. It takes a long time, and a lot of success for a filmmaker to create a personal community of artists.
Loss of Censorship
The Hays Code forbade all sex and sex talk on the screen. Writers, actors, and directors had to use creativity, talent, and wit to tell sexy stories. It all had to be implied, between the lines. That's what made Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn such a great comedy team. They had help from directors like George Cukor, and writers like Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Billy Wilder's steamy (for the time) Some Like It Hot and The Apartment in 1959 and 1960 demonstrated to the industry that the censors had less control over content than they used to. Both movies were big winners, artistically and financially.
Everyone in the industry, and most of the audience, was happy about the new freedom. But new freedom usually comes at a price. Sexy movies require less wit, and chemistry between actors, when you can show and tell so much more.
SOURCES
Austerlitz, Saul, Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy, (Cappella Books) (9781556529511)
About Billy Wilde, PBS American Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/billy-wilder/about-billy-wilder/733/
Seidenberg, John, "Censorship and Societal Presures Shaped Casablanca"
Braiterman, Ken, "Censorship Made 1945's Mildred Pierce Better than the HBO Remake," http://ken-braiterman.suite101.com/censorship-made-1945s-mildred-pierce-better-than-the-remake-a363441
Ken Braiterman - Ken Braiterman writes columns for the Concord (NH) Monitor print and online editions. He also writes and lectures on recovery from ...
