1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,030 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation, or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:25,620 --> 00:00:28,270 DAVID THORBURN: Good afternoon, people. 9 00:00:28,270 --> 00:00:33,170 We begin this afternoon our-- if I'm right about this, 10 00:00:33,170 --> 00:00:35,480 I think I am, as the syllabus shows-- 11 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:37,277 that this is the last American film we'll 12 00:00:37,277 --> 00:00:38,360 be looking at in the term. 13 00:00:38,360 --> 00:00:42,060 So we're sort of finishing of the Central American 14 00:00:42,060 --> 00:00:45,060 phase of our course with tonight's film, 15 00:00:45,060 --> 00:00:47,690 Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. 16 00:00:47,690 --> 00:00:51,840 And I want to use this afternoon's lecture 17 00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:55,890 to contextualize that moment of the early '70s-- the late '60s 18 00:00:55,890 --> 00:00:58,280 and early '70s-- in American film history. 19 00:00:58,280 --> 00:01:00,470 And to try to draw out some of the implications 20 00:01:00,470 --> 00:01:05,069 of the astonishing transformation that overtook 21 00:01:05,069 --> 00:01:08,050 American film in this period. 22 00:01:08,050 --> 00:01:10,970 We've been talking about this topic in different ways 23 00:01:10,970 --> 00:01:12,140 all semester. 24 00:01:12,140 --> 00:01:16,090 So by now I think the narrative that I've been implicitly 25 00:01:16,090 --> 00:01:17,850 following in the course should already 26 00:01:17,850 --> 00:01:20,550 be overt for all of you. 27 00:01:20,550 --> 00:01:22,220 The film we're going to see tonight, 28 00:01:22,220 --> 00:01:27,160 Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 29 00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:31,010 can be understood as are particularly clear example 30 00:01:31,010 --> 00:01:36,880 of the kind of transformation and even subversion that 31 00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:40,480 becomes a dominant note of American movie making 32 00:01:40,480 --> 00:01:41,900 in the 1970s. 33 00:01:41,900 --> 00:01:43,890 And part of the lecture today will 34 00:01:43,890 --> 00:01:49,530 be devoted to speculating about why 35 00:01:49,530 --> 00:01:52,750 that transformation, why those forms of subversion, occurred. 36 00:01:52,750 --> 00:01:55,650 And of course, if you've been paying attention in the course, 37 00:01:55,650 --> 00:01:57,179 you know the answer already and it's 38 00:01:57,179 --> 00:01:59,220 the answer that's already embedded in the lecture 39 00:01:59,220 --> 00:01:59,950 outline. 40 00:01:59,950 --> 00:02:04,170 A new form of what I've been calling consensus narrative 41 00:02:04,170 --> 00:02:09,954 emerges really decisively by the middle and end of the 1960s 42 00:02:09,954 --> 00:02:11,590 and into the 1970s. 43 00:02:11,590 --> 00:02:16,370 It's a period that takes time but, essentially, television 44 00:02:16,370 --> 00:02:19,670 supplants the movies as the central story 45 00:02:19,670 --> 00:02:21,220 system of the society. 46 00:02:21,220 --> 00:02:23,850 Not that movies become trivial or unimportant, 47 00:02:23,850 --> 00:02:28,620 but they begin to occupy a new niche in the media 48 00:02:28,620 --> 00:02:30,280 ecology of the country. 49 00:02:30,280 --> 00:02:35,570 And I'll return to this matter briefly in a few moments. 50 00:02:35,570 --> 00:02:39,310 But let me begin by clarifying something 51 00:02:39,310 --> 00:02:42,480 about the importance of the presence in our syllabus 52 00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:45,690 of McCabe & Mrs. Miller and more generally, 53 00:02:45,690 --> 00:02:47,600 the prominence we've given in our course 54 00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:50,280 to the genre of the Western film. 55 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:53,330 So I ask you to remember the sorts of things we were saying 56 00:02:53,330 --> 00:02:56,850 about genre forms generally. 57 00:02:56,850 --> 00:02:58,910 About the aptness-- even one one might 58 00:02:58,910 --> 00:03:01,250 think of as the economic necessity 59 00:03:01,250 --> 00:03:05,840 genre forms for a system that is based 60 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:08,190 on the principle of mass production. 61 00:03:08,190 --> 00:03:09,880 And I also want to suggest to you 62 00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:12,710 that the particular forms of genre story, 63 00:03:12,710 --> 00:03:16,080 the particular kind of story that 64 00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:18,650 is told in a particular society and certainly the ones that 65 00:03:18,650 --> 00:03:20,870 are told in the generic forms that are chosen 66 00:03:20,870 --> 00:03:25,250 by American society, are going to very powerfully reflect 67 00:03:25,250 --> 00:03:27,000 aspects of the culture. 68 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:29,710 And we made a special emphasis on the importance 69 00:03:29,710 --> 00:03:33,580 in our previous classes of two particular genres that 70 00:03:33,580 --> 00:03:38,890 emerge with great decisiveness in the sound era. 71 00:03:38,890 --> 00:03:44,490 Both identified by some scholars as America's most distinctive 72 00:03:44,490 --> 00:03:46,750 contribution to world cinema. 73 00:03:46,750 --> 00:03:49,410 One form was the screwball comedy 74 00:03:49,410 --> 00:03:52,450 and the elaborations on comedy that developed 75 00:03:52,450 --> 00:03:54,670 through the '30s and 1940s. 76 00:03:54,670 --> 00:03:57,570 And the second form, the second distinctive American 77 00:03:57,570 --> 00:04:00,000 contribution to film-- has some scholars 78 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:01,280 have sais-- is the Western. 79 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:03,750 And we've talked a bit about the nature of the Western 80 00:04:03,750 --> 00:04:06,580 and how the Western as a form is rooted 81 00:04:06,580 --> 00:04:08,790 in the assumptions and preoccupations 82 00:04:08,790 --> 00:04:10,000 of American culture. 83 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:15,180 How it grows out of an historical actuality-- 84 00:04:15,180 --> 00:04:18,940 the period roughly from 1860 to 1890-- 85 00:04:18,940 --> 00:04:25,510 when the Civil War occurred, when the range wars occurred, 86 00:04:25,510 --> 00:04:29,790 when the when the great gold discoveries were made 87 00:04:29,790 --> 00:04:32,850 at the California Gold Rush, the laying 88 00:04:32,850 --> 00:04:34,450 of the transcontinental railroad. 89 00:04:34,450 --> 00:04:36,480 All of these historical realities 90 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:40,740 that become mythic elements in the founding story that 91 00:04:40,740 --> 00:04:44,380 becomes the epic account of American identity. 92 00:04:44,380 --> 00:04:48,940 The epic account of America's founding. 93 00:04:48,940 --> 00:04:52,340 And I've suggested that the creation of that mythology, 94 00:04:52,340 --> 00:04:56,320 expressed so powerfully and complexly often-- 95 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,520 and disturbingly too because there's a racism, as we've 96 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:02,610 said and imperialism implicit in certain aspects 97 00:05:02,610 --> 00:05:09,710 of the Western mythology-- that fundamental energy 98 00:05:09,710 --> 00:05:13,110 of the genre, as we've suggested, 99 00:05:13,110 --> 00:05:15,860 is not only deeply rooted in American culture, 100 00:05:15,860 --> 00:05:19,540 and grows out of the particular individualistic preoccupations 101 00:05:19,540 --> 00:05:21,970 of American culture as we suggested last time. 102 00:05:21,970 --> 00:05:26,360 But also, then becomes a particularly dramatic instance 103 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:28,500 of what we might say the movies as a whole have 104 00:05:28,500 --> 00:05:29,790 been in American society. 105 00:05:29,790 --> 00:05:33,680 Or were in American society, until the advent of television. 106 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:36,610 And that is, each genre, and then the Western genre 107 00:05:36,610 --> 00:05:38,810 especially, can be understood as kind 108 00:05:38,810 --> 00:05:42,340 of a small inversion of the larger processes 109 00:05:42,340 --> 00:05:46,700 that operates in this consensus system. 110 00:05:46,700 --> 00:05:48,520 And if you recall the kinds of things 111 00:05:48,520 --> 00:05:50,810 we were suggesting last week about the evolution 112 00:05:50,810 --> 00:05:55,010 of the Western, what we were confronting in a certain sense 113 00:05:55,010 --> 00:06:05,270 was the way in which this astonishingly protean 114 00:06:05,270 --> 00:06:08,840 shift-changing mythology can be altered depending 115 00:06:08,840 --> 00:06:11,520 on the preoccupations of the society that wants 116 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:13,410 to mobilize the mythology. 117 00:06:13,410 --> 00:06:15,110 Another way of putting this is to say, 118 00:06:15,110 --> 00:06:18,150 the mythology, like the larger culture, is never fixed. 119 00:06:18,150 --> 00:06:20,230 It's always in process, right. 120 00:06:20,230 --> 00:06:23,440 So that when one Western appears, a kind of conversation 121 00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:26,390 is going on with all previous Westerns. 122 00:06:26,390 --> 00:06:29,510 And maybe with other forms of discourse as well, 123 00:06:29,510 --> 00:06:32,650 about the central preoccupations that are part of the Western. 124 00:06:32,650 --> 00:06:36,140 I just want to remind you of the sort of historical scheme 125 00:06:36,140 --> 00:06:38,520 that I sketched in last time about the Western, 126 00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:41,750 so you can recognize the point at which McCabe & Mrs. Miller 127 00:06:41,750 --> 00:06:43,930 sort of fits our picture. 128 00:06:43,930 --> 00:06:45,990 Remember that I suggested in some degree 129 00:06:45,990 --> 00:06:50,760 that when the Western as a form emerges after the '30s, when 130 00:06:50,760 --> 00:06:54,612 it's mainly are sort of novelty item, which are singing cowboys 131 00:06:54,612 --> 00:06:56,070 in it and that sort of thing-- When 132 00:06:56,070 --> 00:06:59,740 the classic Western emerges in 1939 with John Ford's 133 00:06:59,740 --> 00:07:03,550 film-- what's the name of the film-- 134 00:07:03,550 --> 00:07:08,400 Stagecoach, the first film that Ford filmed in Monument 135 00:07:08,400 --> 00:07:13,160 Valley-- when the age of the so-called classical age 136 00:07:13,160 --> 00:07:16,850 of the Western begins in the 1940s, 137 00:07:16,850 --> 00:07:20,020 I suggested in that lecture that the Western's of that period 138 00:07:20,020 --> 00:07:22,560 had a kind of imperial dimension. 139 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:26,040 That those were the Westerns that most decisively and fully 140 00:07:26,040 --> 00:07:30,440 celebrated the white settlers idea of the manifest destiny 141 00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:34,560 of the American experiment. 142 00:07:34,560 --> 00:07:38,502 Which was translated of course into exterminate the Indians. 143 00:07:38,502 --> 00:07:39,960 The Indians are sort of in the way. 144 00:07:39,960 --> 00:07:42,250 The Westward expansion of the United States 145 00:07:42,250 --> 00:07:44,810 was, in many ways, clearly an imperial and even 146 00:07:44,810 --> 00:07:46,070 a racist project. 147 00:07:46,070 --> 00:07:49,330 But in the period of the 1940s, the disturbing elements 148 00:07:49,330 --> 00:07:51,830 of the mythology were suppressed or ignored, 149 00:07:51,830 --> 00:07:53,549 even though they were implicit. 150 00:07:53,549 --> 00:07:54,590 Why would that have been. 151 00:07:54,590 --> 00:07:58,042 Well one reason was America itself was at war in the 1940s. 152 00:07:58,042 --> 00:08:00,000 And the Western was a particularly appropriate. 153 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:02,140 It was not the only vehicle, but it 154 00:08:02,140 --> 00:08:05,080 was one of the vehicles in which imperial ideas 155 00:08:05,080 --> 00:08:10,300 of American destiny and American identity 156 00:08:10,300 --> 00:08:13,565 would be articulated or dramatized. 157 00:08:13,565 --> 00:08:20,020 And I suggested in the period of the 1950s, 158 00:08:20,020 --> 00:08:23,420 this Western form begin to complicate itself, 159 00:08:23,420 --> 00:08:25,630 that it became less imperial. 160 00:08:25,630 --> 00:08:28,390 And that there are many Western films 161 00:08:28,390 --> 00:08:31,030 of the 1950s that actually reflect 162 00:08:31,030 --> 00:08:33,700 many of the domestic concerns of that era. 163 00:08:33,700 --> 00:08:36,630 The generation gap, the discontent of young people 164 00:08:36,630 --> 00:08:40,100 growing up into a society that seem to have no work for them-- 165 00:08:40,100 --> 00:08:41,125 this is the early 1950s. 166 00:08:44,130 --> 00:08:46,710 And as the decade goes on and leads 167 00:08:46,710 --> 00:08:50,680 into the 1960s, an increasing awareness of racial turmoil 168 00:08:50,680 --> 00:08:52,110 in the United States-- so Westerns 169 00:08:52,110 --> 00:08:55,460 begin to be partly about juvenile delinquency, 170 00:08:55,460 --> 00:08:57,230 or about social problems. 171 00:08:57,230 --> 00:09:00,260 Always filtered, of course, through the historical lens 172 00:09:00,260 --> 00:09:01,150 of the Western. 173 00:09:01,150 --> 00:09:04,890 And I suggested to you that the great John Ford classic 174 00:09:04,890 --> 00:09:07,110 Western that we saw last week, The Searchers, 175 00:09:07,110 --> 00:09:11,520 had already in the late '50s began 176 00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:18,240 to incorporate certain kinds of subversive questions. 177 00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:21,200 So the '50s is a time when the Western 178 00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:24,320 begins to show social problems. 179 00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:25,730 There's a kind of inward turning, 180 00:09:25,730 --> 00:09:28,120 in which the psychological problems of characters 181 00:09:28,120 --> 00:09:30,060 become important in a new way. 182 00:09:30,060 --> 00:09:33,720 And then in the '60s, this questioning of the genre 183 00:09:33,720 --> 00:09:37,600 proceeds and expands even more fully. 184 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:42,410 And as we suggested, there are a series of films of Westerns 185 00:09:42,410 --> 00:09:45,360 in the '60s that, even more substantially 186 00:09:45,360 --> 00:09:47,930 than The Searchers, begin to sort of raise doubts 187 00:09:47,930 --> 00:09:49,940 about some of the most fundamental questions 188 00:09:49,940 --> 00:09:50,740 of the Western. 189 00:09:50,740 --> 00:09:53,520 And of course, as the decade wears on, 190 00:09:53,520 --> 00:09:56,980 there are increasing encouragements or incitements 191 00:09:56,980 --> 00:09:59,070 from the larger culture-- from the social history 192 00:09:59,070 --> 00:10:04,380 of the larger culture-- to make the Western genre begin 193 00:10:04,380 --> 00:10:05,190 to question itself. 194 00:10:05,190 --> 00:10:06,690 And what are those things that begin 195 00:10:06,690 --> 00:10:09,200 to happen as the '60s wears on. 196 00:10:09,200 --> 00:10:10,940 They were embedded in the '50s but they 197 00:10:10,940 --> 00:10:12,650 become much more serious. 198 00:10:12,650 --> 00:10:14,820 The first is racial turmoil, right. 199 00:10:14,820 --> 00:10:16,800 The Civil Rights Movement becomes more and more 200 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:18,620 militant through the 1960s. 201 00:10:18,620 --> 00:10:23,870 And there is real conflict in the society emerging 202 00:10:23,870 --> 00:10:26,330 very powerfully. 203 00:10:26,330 --> 00:10:30,940 And that racial turmoil becomes more and more militant, more 204 00:10:30,940 --> 00:10:33,820 and more polarizing as the decade goes on. 205 00:10:33,820 --> 00:10:37,090 But what's the other great terrible fact of the 1960s, 206 00:10:37,090 --> 00:10:40,210 that explains why American society was so divided. 207 00:10:40,210 --> 00:10:41,950 And so uncertain of itself. 208 00:10:41,950 --> 00:10:44,052 The Vietnam War of course, right. 209 00:10:44,052 --> 00:10:45,510 By the end of the decade, America's 210 00:10:45,510 --> 00:10:47,290 deeply immersed in Vietnam. 211 00:10:47,290 --> 00:10:52,280 The college-aged generation is alienated from its elders. 212 00:10:52,280 --> 00:10:56,560 There are demonstrations on campuses in 1967, '68, right. 213 00:10:56,560 --> 00:10:59,690 And then in 1968, two really horrific assassinations 214 00:10:59,690 --> 00:11:04,080 occurred to help mark the 1960s as a decisively disturbed time 215 00:11:04,080 --> 00:11:05,250 in American history. 216 00:11:05,250 --> 00:11:07,850 Who are the two great figures who die 217 00:11:07,850 --> 00:11:12,430 and were assassinated in 1968. 218 00:11:12,430 --> 00:11:19,990 One is Martin Luther King, the great hero of a peaceful, 219 00:11:19,990 --> 00:11:24,910 Ghandi-like Civil Rights Movement is assassinated. 220 00:11:24,910 --> 00:11:26,960 And that gives it even stronger impetus 221 00:11:26,960 --> 00:11:30,900 to the more militant arguments for civil rights 222 00:11:30,900 --> 00:11:36,210 that unlike Doctor King's position, 223 00:11:36,210 --> 00:11:40,750 did not so it really embrace nonviolence. 224 00:11:40,750 --> 00:11:42,980 So the combination of the Vietnam War 225 00:11:42,980 --> 00:11:45,510 and the civil rights movement combining together 226 00:11:45,510 --> 00:11:49,820 created a tremendous turmoil in American society. 227 00:11:49,820 --> 00:11:51,300 And there are many film historians 228 00:11:51,300 --> 00:11:56,700 who would say that the totally subversive genre films, 229 00:11:56,700 --> 00:12:00,020 the anti-genre films that emerge in the 1970s-- of which 230 00:12:00,020 --> 00:12:02,600 the most decisive example in our course 231 00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:06,370 is McCabe & Mrs. Miller, so it completes our argument. 232 00:12:06,370 --> 00:12:09,290 There are many who would say that a sufficient explanation 233 00:12:09,290 --> 00:12:14,890 for the subversion of the genre, for the fact that the Westerns 234 00:12:14,890 --> 00:12:17,580 of the '70s-- that some of the Westerns of the '70s 235 00:12:17,580 --> 00:12:20,150 and beyond-- in some sense, could 236 00:12:20,150 --> 00:12:21,940 be identified as anti Western. 237 00:12:21,940 --> 00:12:24,770 So hostile are they-- so hostile are they 238 00:12:24,770 --> 00:12:28,180 to the basic assumptions of their ancestors, 239 00:12:28,180 --> 00:12:30,560 so much that they turn the heroic values 240 00:12:30,560 --> 00:12:32,180 of their ancestors on their head. 241 00:12:32,180 --> 00:12:35,470 And you'll and you'll see a wonderfully decisive example 242 00:12:35,470 --> 00:12:37,060 of this in tonight's film. 243 00:12:37,060 --> 00:12:38,770 There's some social and film historians 244 00:12:38,770 --> 00:12:40,440 who would say, well, the difficulties 245 00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:43,680 in the outer society-- the war, the Civil Rights Movement, 246 00:12:43,680 --> 00:12:45,720 the polarization of the culture is 247 00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:49,650 sufficient to explain why these genres, and especially 248 00:12:49,650 --> 00:12:52,310 this centrally American genre the Western, 249 00:12:52,310 --> 00:12:54,130 would suddenly sort of turn on itself 250 00:12:54,130 --> 00:12:58,620 and attack what it had previously celebrated. 251 00:12:58,620 --> 00:13:01,990 The notions of individualistic achievement. 252 00:13:01,990 --> 00:13:05,080 Notions of violent masculinity. 253 00:13:05,080 --> 00:13:09,300 One of the best books on the Old West and on the Western film, 254 00:13:09,300 --> 00:13:13,600 has the wonderful title Regeneration through Violence. 255 00:13:13,600 --> 00:13:14,920 Regeneration through Violence. 256 00:13:14,920 --> 00:13:17,440 And it does describe what the classic Western 257 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:19,840 seems to believe. 258 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:21,530 It's actually a scary idea. 259 00:13:21,530 --> 00:13:24,650 You might think about how often this notion has been translated 260 00:13:24,650 --> 00:13:29,570 into sort of foreign policy behavior by the United States. 261 00:13:29,570 --> 00:13:32,416 Again, reinforcing the importance of these 262 00:13:32,416 --> 00:13:32,915 mythologies. 263 00:13:35,810 --> 00:13:37,790 But the social history of the country 264 00:13:37,790 --> 00:13:42,930 is not really sufficient fully, to explain why the movies would 265 00:13:42,930 --> 00:13:44,350 become so subversive. 266 00:13:44,350 --> 00:13:46,370 And what's the answer. 267 00:13:46,370 --> 00:13:49,840 It's implied up here in number three, right. 268 00:13:49,840 --> 00:13:51,660 It has to do with the new consensus medium. 269 00:13:51,660 --> 00:13:54,310 So let me try to make these arguments in a slightly more 270 00:13:54,310 --> 00:13:55,490 systematic way. 271 00:13:55,490 --> 00:13:58,800 And first, by talking more concretely 272 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:00,430 about the ways in which the movies 273 00:14:00,430 --> 00:14:03,070 were different in the 1970s. 274 00:14:03,070 --> 00:14:05,960 Wherever we look at central elements of the movies, 275 00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:10,160 we can see a profound change in atmosphere and tone and feel. 276 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:15,420 The first, if we think about the sort of characteristic actors 277 00:14:15,420 --> 00:14:19,030 or acting styles of the period, and especially 278 00:14:19,030 --> 00:14:21,610 the characteristic stars and contrast them 279 00:14:21,610 --> 00:14:23,700 to the great stars of the studio era, 280 00:14:23,700 --> 00:14:25,880 we can get a feel for how much more 281 00:14:25,880 --> 00:14:30,480 subversive, problematic, ironic, anti-heroic, this 282 00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:32,227 new period in American film is. 283 00:14:32,227 --> 00:14:34,310 But there are many, many people who would actually 284 00:14:34,310 --> 00:14:38,495 say that this moment in American film is actually one of the-- 285 00:14:38,495 --> 00:14:42,320 and I think I might say this-- is 286 00:14:42,320 --> 00:14:44,460 a moment of great artistic achievement. 287 00:14:44,460 --> 00:14:47,650 Whatever we would say about the early '70s and the whole decade 288 00:14:47,650 --> 00:14:51,220 of the '70s, we could call it a moment or a period 289 00:14:51,220 --> 00:14:53,490 of profound transition. 290 00:14:53,490 --> 00:14:55,730 A great artistic achievement. 291 00:14:55,730 --> 00:15:01,350 But also, an achievement gotten at a profound cost. 292 00:15:01,350 --> 00:15:03,260 A fundamental, irreversible shift 293 00:15:03,260 --> 00:15:05,820 in the relation of American movies to their audience, OK. 294 00:15:05,820 --> 00:15:07,140 So that's the basic idea. 295 00:15:07,140 --> 00:15:09,760 But what did this shift look like, what did it feel like. 296 00:15:09,760 --> 00:15:15,630 Well, I've suggested that it's grungier, more ironic, deeply 297 00:15:15,630 --> 00:15:16,690 anti-heroic. 298 00:15:16,690 --> 00:15:18,890 And one way I can capture this is 299 00:15:18,890 --> 00:15:22,100 by taking a scene from one of the characteristic, 300 00:15:22,100 --> 00:15:26,610 really defining actors of the 1970s, of what we might call 301 00:15:26,610 --> 00:15:30,320 the post-consensus era, the post-Hollywood era, Jack 302 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:31,290 Nicholson. 303 00:15:31,290 --> 00:15:33,800 I want to show you what is, in some sense, 304 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:35,170 his signature scene. 305 00:15:35,170 --> 00:15:36,812 And people who haven't seen Five Easy 306 00:15:36,812 --> 00:15:40,600 Pieces, where this fragment comes from, 307 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:42,480 know about this scene. 308 00:15:42,480 --> 00:15:45,030 What I want to propose to you as you look at this scene 309 00:15:45,030 --> 00:15:47,510 is think about Jack Nicholson's behavior in the scene. 310 00:15:47,510 --> 00:15:51,890 And ask yourself, is it possible to imagine one of the classic, 311 00:15:51,890 --> 00:15:57,110 much more dignified heroes-- male protagonists== movie 312 00:15:57,110 --> 00:16:00,230 stars-- from an earlier era behaving in the same way. 313 00:16:00,230 --> 00:16:02,720 Could we imagine John Wayne behaving this way. 314 00:16:02,720 --> 00:16:04,390 Or could we imagine Jimmy Stewart 315 00:16:04,390 --> 00:16:06,870 behaving this way or Henry Fonda behaving. 316 00:16:06,870 --> 00:16:09,320 And of course the answer-- I'm sure as you'll recognize-- 317 00:16:09,320 --> 00:16:10,530 is no. 318 00:16:10,530 --> 00:16:13,490 Here's the scene then, from Five Easy Pieces. 319 00:16:13,490 --> 00:16:16,496 Some people would call it Jack Nicholson's signature moment. 320 00:16:16,496 --> 00:16:17,370 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 321 00:16:17,870 --> 00:16:21,480 -I'd like a, uh, plain omelette, no potatoes, 322 00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:25,610 tomatoes instead, cup of coffee, and wheat toast. 323 00:16:25,610 --> 00:16:27,718 -No substitutions. 324 00:16:27,718 --> 00:16:28,586 -What do you mean? 325 00:16:28,586 --> 00:16:30,150 You don't have any tomatoes? 326 00:16:30,150 --> 00:16:31,425 -Only what's on the menu. 327 00:16:31,425 --> 00:16:33,300 You can have a number two-- a plain omelette. 328 00:16:33,300 --> 00:16:35,460 It comes with cottage fries and rolls. 329 00:16:35,460 --> 00:16:37,420 -Yeah I know what it comes with. 330 00:16:37,420 --> 00:16:38,865 But it's not what I want. 331 00:16:38,865 --> 00:16:40,865 -Well I'll come back when you make up your mind. 332 00:16:40,865 --> 00:16:41,490 -Wait a minute. 333 00:16:41,490 --> 00:16:43,280 I have made up my mind. 334 00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:46,540 I'd like a plain omelet, no potatoes on the plate, 335 00:16:46,540 --> 00:16:49,350 a cup of coffee, and a side order of wheat toast. 336 00:16:49,350 --> 00:16:51,830 -I'm sorry we don't have any side orders of toast. 337 00:16:51,830 --> 00:16:54,870 I'll give you an English muffin or a coffee roll. 338 00:16:54,870 --> 00:16:57,430 -What do you mean you don't make side orders of toast? 339 00:16:57,430 --> 00:17:00,160 You make sandwiches, don't you? 340 00:17:00,160 --> 00:17:02,320 -Would you like to talk to the manager? 341 00:17:02,320 --> 00:17:03,230 -Hey Mac-- 342 00:17:03,230 --> 00:17:04,770 -Shut up. 343 00:17:04,770 --> 00:17:07,950 You've got bread and toaster of some kind? 344 00:17:07,950 --> 00:17:09,839 -I don't make the rules. 345 00:17:09,839 --> 00:17:12,780 -OK I'll make it as easy for you as I can. 346 00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:15,880 I'd like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad 347 00:17:15,880 --> 00:17:17,980 sandwich on wheat toast. 348 00:17:17,980 --> 00:17:20,210 No mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. 349 00:17:20,210 --> 00:17:21,530 And a cup of coffee. 350 00:17:21,530 --> 00:17:25,079 -A number two, chicken sal san, hold the butter, 351 00:17:25,079 --> 00:17:27,280 the lettuce, the mayonnaise. 352 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:28,980 And a cup of coffee. 353 00:17:28,980 --> 00:17:29,970 Anything else? 354 00:17:29,970 --> 00:17:32,780 -Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, 355 00:17:32,780 --> 00:17:35,690 bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad 356 00:17:35,690 --> 00:17:38,700 sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules. 357 00:17:38,700 --> 00:17:40,600 -You want me to hold the chicken, huh? 358 00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:42,600 -I want you to hold it between your knees. 359 00:17:45,350 --> 00:17:47,092 -You see that sign, sir? 360 00:17:47,092 --> 00:17:48,300 Yes you'll all have to leave. 361 00:17:48,300 --> 00:17:51,671 I'm not taking any more of your smartness and sarcasm? 362 00:17:51,671 --> 00:17:52,970 -Do you see this sign? 363 00:17:56,052 --> 00:17:57,453 -[INAUDIBLE] 364 00:17:57,453 --> 00:17:59,330 [END PLAYBACK] 365 00:17:59,330 --> 00:18:01,760 DAVID THORBURN: Now, you've seen Nicholson 366 00:18:01,760 --> 00:18:05,800 in far more frenetic moments in, let's say the Batman movie, 367 00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:06,300 right. 368 00:18:06,300 --> 00:18:10,550 But the essence of the Nicholson character, he's 369 00:18:10,550 --> 00:18:12,780 actually calmer and nicer there than he normally is. 370 00:18:12,780 --> 00:18:15,730 His persona has not been fully established 371 00:18:15,730 --> 00:18:17,410 at this early stage in his career. 372 00:18:17,410 --> 00:18:19,160 But you can feel the energy there. 373 00:18:19,160 --> 00:18:24,870 And the hostility to-- I think we're 374 00:18:24,870 --> 00:18:27,610 supposed to be on Nicholson's side in that film-- 375 00:18:27,610 --> 00:18:30,720 but when he knocks that stuff off the table. 376 00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:35,360 He's doing something that we would never 377 00:18:35,360 --> 00:18:38,840 imagine a classic Hollywood hero to have done. 378 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:41,850 And I don't want to put too great 379 00:18:41,850 --> 00:18:44,290 of an emphasis on a single scene, 380 00:18:44,290 --> 00:18:46,610 but if you think about Nicholson's incarnations 381 00:18:46,610 --> 00:18:50,260 after that movie, you'll understand how decisively 382 00:18:50,260 --> 00:18:54,930 and fully a new kind of actor has emerged in the 1970s. 383 00:18:54,930 --> 00:18:59,100 And you might talk about some of the other actors-- you 384 00:18:59,100 --> 00:19:02,960 can do the other sheet there, Greg-- 385 00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:04,250 that emerge in this period. 386 00:19:04,250 --> 00:19:05,510 Warren Beatty. 387 00:19:05,510 --> 00:19:06,600 Elliot Gould. 388 00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:07,770 Dustin Hoffman. 389 00:19:07,770 --> 00:19:09,510 Robert De Niro. 390 00:19:09,510 --> 00:19:12,314 Fewer female stars emerge in this period. 391 00:19:12,314 --> 00:19:13,230 But they're important. 392 00:19:13,230 --> 00:19:17,290 some of them did begin their careers around this time. 393 00:19:17,290 --> 00:19:21,910 And even the actresses standing in the same sort 394 00:19:21,910 --> 00:19:31,880 of ironizing and anti-heroic relation to their ancestors 395 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:32,910 as the male actors. 396 00:19:32,910 --> 00:19:34,620 We might think about Julie Christie, 397 00:19:34,620 --> 00:19:38,060 who is the co-star of tonight's film in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. 398 00:19:38,060 --> 00:19:39,390 Or Jane Fonda. 399 00:19:39,390 --> 00:19:44,350 Or the actress Faye Dunaway, who does such a brilliant job 400 00:19:44,350 --> 00:19:48,360 in the characteristic early '70s film, Chinatown. 401 00:19:48,360 --> 00:19:51,790 And each of these performers, has, 402 00:19:51,790 --> 00:19:55,440 as I suggested, a sort of grungy, 403 00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:58,780 ironized, non-heroic relationship 404 00:19:58,780 --> 00:20:04,320 to the iconic figures of the Hollywood past. 405 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:06,600 And something of the same thing is 406 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:08,250 true about the kinds of directors 407 00:20:08,250 --> 00:20:10,630 and the kinds of films that emerged in this period, 408 00:20:10,630 --> 00:20:12,030 as well. 409 00:20:12,030 --> 00:20:13,920 It's the period in which some directors who 410 00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:17,290 then became dominant figures over the next 30 years, Martin 411 00:20:17,290 --> 00:20:22,740 Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Alan J. Pakula, Francis Ford 412 00:20:22,740 --> 00:20:28,120 Coppola, Sam Peckinpah, Altman himself, Stanley Kubrick. 413 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:31,590 All of these really distinctive, auteurist directors 414 00:20:31,590 --> 00:20:34,410 emerge decisively in this period. 415 00:20:34,410 --> 00:20:37,340 And again, the films that they make 416 00:20:37,340 --> 00:20:40,350 have a kind of personal stamp that 417 00:20:40,350 --> 00:20:44,020 would not have been possible in the studio era. 418 00:20:44,020 --> 00:20:46,350 And of course, what I've left out of the equation 419 00:20:46,350 --> 00:20:48,660 in talking about the transformation 420 00:20:48,660 --> 00:20:50,730 of American movies, is the reminder 421 00:20:50,730 --> 00:20:52,970 that it was in the period from 1950 422 00:20:52,970 --> 00:20:55,790 through the late '60s or early '70s, 423 00:20:55,790 --> 00:20:58,070 that the apparatus of the old Hollywood system 424 00:20:58,070 --> 00:20:59,990 began to break down. 425 00:20:59,990 --> 00:21:02,890 Movies continued to be made, but the old studios 426 00:21:02,890 --> 00:21:05,110 by the end of the '60s all really dissolved. 427 00:21:05,110 --> 00:21:09,290 The studios no longer held contracts for dozens, 428 00:21:09,290 --> 00:21:14,810 if not hundreds, of actors and armies of technicians 429 00:21:14,810 --> 00:21:16,340 and so forth. 430 00:21:16,340 --> 00:21:18,130 The mass production system that had 431 00:21:18,130 --> 00:21:21,530 been characteristic of Hollywood for most of the 20th century 432 00:21:21,530 --> 00:21:23,470 had broken down by the end of the '70s. 433 00:21:23,470 --> 00:21:25,330 And what movie is really had become, 434 00:21:25,330 --> 00:21:27,030 essentially, were deals. 435 00:21:27,030 --> 00:21:29,990 You've got a bankable star to agree to a script. 436 00:21:29,990 --> 00:21:33,094 You get the screenwriter to agree to do the work. 437 00:21:33,094 --> 00:21:35,385 You go to the money man and you say, I've got Nicholson 438 00:21:35,385 --> 00:21:37,880 and I've got this screenwriter, how about if we go ahead 439 00:21:37,880 --> 00:21:38,970 on the movie. 440 00:21:38,970 --> 00:21:41,900 Very different from the days in which the studio bosses would 441 00:21:41,900 --> 00:21:43,600 sit down and say, we have to produce 442 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:45,250 x number of films this year. 443 00:21:45,250 --> 00:21:48,080 Let's decide how many Westerns, how many comedies 444 00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:49,020 we want to make. 445 00:21:49,020 --> 00:21:52,060 Let's decide how we want to use Barbara Stanwyck this year, 446 00:21:52,060 --> 00:21:52,880 that sort of thing. 447 00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:54,500 That game is all over. 448 00:21:54,500 --> 00:21:57,330 So that from the economic circumstances 449 00:21:57,330 --> 00:22:00,080 and the physical ways in which movies are made 450 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:02,180 have undergone a transformation, as well. 451 00:22:02,180 --> 00:22:05,840 Every movie becomes a kind of major product. 452 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:10,929 And even though the studio names survive beyond the 1960s, 453 00:22:10,929 --> 00:22:11,720 they're just names. 454 00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:12,840 They're just labels now. 455 00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:15,440 They actually no longer represent 456 00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:17,820 what they had in the studio era. 457 00:22:17,820 --> 00:22:20,910 Not only a particular number of films 458 00:22:20,910 --> 00:22:22,660 that each studio would pump out each year, 459 00:22:22,660 --> 00:22:28,240 but holdings in land and major movie studios 460 00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:34,650 with all the supporting material and personnel 461 00:22:34,650 --> 00:22:40,130 necessary to run a systematic operation 462 00:22:40,130 --> 00:22:41,670 for the mass production of movies. 463 00:22:41,670 --> 00:22:47,360 That game is over really by the time the '70s began. 464 00:22:48,735 --> 00:22:50,860 And if you actually look at the physical appearance 465 00:22:50,860 --> 00:22:52,234 of the actors of this period, you 466 00:22:52,234 --> 00:22:53,760 could see that they look less grand. 467 00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:54,769 They look less large. 468 00:22:54,769 --> 00:22:56,310 They literally are often not as tall. 469 00:22:56,310 --> 00:22:59,340 Dustin Hoffman's a shrimp, is even shorter than I am. 470 00:22:59,340 --> 00:23:01,149 When he acts with some female stars, 471 00:23:01,149 --> 00:23:02,940 they have to put him on a box so it doesn't 472 00:23:02,940 --> 00:23:04,040 look like he's too small. 473 00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:06,350 They don't photograph the box, of course. 474 00:23:06,350 --> 00:23:09,450 And there's something, not exactly wimpish, 475 00:23:09,450 --> 00:23:13,240 but ironic or outlawish, an unwholesomeness 476 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,970 over a nervousness or a sense of explosive anger-- 477 00:23:16,970 --> 00:23:19,500 the Nicholson character is a wonderful instance of that-- 478 00:23:19,500 --> 00:23:20,360 might emerge. 479 00:23:20,360 --> 00:23:24,720 These qualities, the instability of the idea of the hero 480 00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:28,779 is part of what is emerging in these periods. 481 00:23:28,779 --> 00:23:31,070 And I have another clip I want to show you that I think 482 00:23:31,070 --> 00:23:32,740 and capture another part of this. 483 00:23:32,740 --> 00:23:35,080 It will also illustrate the new sort 484 00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:38,990 of grungy type hero and movie star who 485 00:23:38,990 --> 00:23:40,184 emerges in this period. 486 00:23:40,184 --> 00:23:41,850 But it will also tell you something else 487 00:23:41,850 --> 00:23:44,400 about the way in which these transformations 488 00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,980 and subversions were expressed in films, themselves. 489 00:23:47,980 --> 00:23:54,360 And this is a clip from the end of another Robert Altman movie, 490 00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:56,080 made roughly around the same time. 491 00:23:56,080 --> 00:23:57,500 It's also a genre film. 492 00:23:57,500 --> 00:24:00,770 And like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, it's a kind of anti-genre film. 493 00:24:00,770 --> 00:24:03,880 It uses the trappings of a traditional genre, 494 00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,090 but he turns those trappings askew 495 00:24:06,090 --> 00:24:09,630 in ways that make the audience nervous, in ways that depart, 496 00:24:09,630 --> 00:24:13,340 from not just the standard expectations of the genre, 497 00:24:13,340 --> 00:24:16,390 but even the moral assumptions that are made by the genre. 498 00:24:16,390 --> 00:24:18,500 In this case, the moral assumption 499 00:24:18,500 --> 00:24:21,430 that is at most decisively undercut, as you'll see, 500 00:24:21,430 --> 00:24:25,550 has to do with the moral rectitude of the hero, himself. 501 00:24:25,550 --> 00:24:28,010 And this expresses itself all the way 502 00:24:28,010 --> 00:24:30,380 through many of these stories and many of these films, 503 00:24:30,380 --> 00:24:33,250 but it often expresses itself with particular clarity 504 00:24:33,250 --> 00:24:34,705 in the endings of films. 505 00:24:36,300 --> 00:24:39,012 So watch for the kind of actor that Elliot Gould 506 00:24:39,012 --> 00:24:40,470 is, because he's the star, he plays 507 00:24:40,470 --> 00:24:42,730 the detective in this sequence. 508 00:24:42,730 --> 00:24:45,406 I want you to look now, at the final, 509 00:24:45,406 --> 00:24:47,030 really sort of the climactic sequence-- 510 00:24:47,030 --> 00:24:51,530 the dramatic ending-- of an Altman detective film. 511 00:24:51,530 --> 00:24:56,520 A remake of a film by the same title, based on a novel 512 00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,960 by the same title, going back into the '20s. 513 00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:06,290 It's a film entitled The Long Goodbye. 514 00:25:06,290 --> 00:25:14,890 And it stars Raymond Chandler's most famous private eye figure. 515 00:25:14,890 --> 00:25:17,780 This private eye figure had been played in the past, 516 00:25:17,780 --> 00:25:24,710 by a series of really, sort of tough guy, Hollywood leads. 517 00:25:24,710 --> 00:25:28,510 And in Altman's version of The Long Goodbye, 518 00:25:28,510 --> 00:25:31,650 I think Robert Mitchum, in fact, a very hulk, bulky kind 519 00:25:31,650 --> 00:25:35,800 of tough, studly kind of actor had played the role at least 520 00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:36,950 once, previously. 521 00:25:36,950 --> 00:25:40,610 In Altman's version of the film, Elliot Gould plays the roll. 522 00:25:40,610 --> 00:25:42,780 And Eliot Gould is a kind of-- as some of you 523 00:25:42,780 --> 00:25:45,260 know if you've seen his acting-- is 524 00:25:45,260 --> 00:25:48,190 an actor for the modern age in some ways. 525 00:25:48,190 --> 00:25:50,080 He talks to himself a lot. 526 00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:54,040 He always a kind of anti-heroic demeanor. 527 00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:58,780 So, remember we've said also that the endings of genre forms 528 00:25:58,780 --> 00:26:00,520 are often very conventionalized. 529 00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:02,590 Think about the endings of situation comedy, 530 00:26:02,590 --> 00:26:03,530 as an example. 531 00:26:03,530 --> 00:26:06,520 Or the way in which, at the end of certain forms of melodrama, 532 00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:11,100 you expect certain forms of reassurance. 533 00:26:11,100 --> 00:26:15,210 That things will work out, or have worked out, right. 534 00:26:15,210 --> 00:26:17,900 One of the fundamental functions of the happy ending 535 00:26:17,900 --> 00:26:20,910 of most genre forms in the classic age of Hollywood 536 00:26:20,910 --> 00:26:24,690 was precisely to return us to that form of reassurance. 537 00:26:24,690 --> 00:26:28,640 All right, so here is the ending of a detective film 538 00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:31,990 called The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould. 539 00:26:31,990 --> 00:26:33,420 And perhaps the only thing I need 540 00:26:33,420 --> 00:26:39,330 to do to introduce the scene, is to simply say 541 00:26:39,330 --> 00:26:43,792 that the detective's quest has led him, finally, 542 00:26:43,792 --> 00:26:46,000 at the end of the film, to sort of solve the mystery. 543 00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,920 And he's found the man who has committed 544 00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,490 the horrendous crimes he's been investigating through the film. 545 00:26:52,490 --> 00:26:55,480 And the man turns out to have been a friend of his, 546 00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:56,690 someone he has known. 547 00:26:56,690 --> 00:27:00,370 And in fact, someone who had taken advantage of him. 548 00:27:00,370 --> 00:27:02,676 And here's the very end of the film. 549 00:27:02,676 --> 00:27:03,642 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 550 00:27:13,724 --> 00:27:14,640 -How you doing, Terry? 551 00:27:17,618 --> 00:27:18,118 -Marlowe? 552 00:27:23,490 --> 00:27:27,070 I guess if anybody's going to track me down, it'd be you. 553 00:27:27,070 --> 00:27:28,360 Want a drink or something? 554 00:27:28,360 --> 00:27:30,890 -No, I don't want no drink. 555 00:27:30,890 --> 00:27:32,850 -You get a kick out of that medicine I sent ya? 556 00:27:32,850 --> 00:27:35,620 -Yeah, I got a big kick out of it. 557 00:27:35,620 --> 00:27:38,300 So you murdered your wife, huh Terry? 558 00:27:38,300 --> 00:27:40,860 -Well I killed her, but you can't call it murder. 559 00:27:40,860 --> 00:27:44,810 Wade told her about Eileen and me, she started screaming. 560 00:27:44,810 --> 00:27:47,110 She was gonna tell the cops. 561 00:27:47,110 --> 00:27:48,950 She knew I was carrying money for Augustine. 562 00:27:48,950 --> 00:27:51,020 She was gonna turn me in. 563 00:27:51,020 --> 00:27:52,400 I hit her. 564 00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:53,900 I didn't try to kill her, I hit her. 565 00:27:53,900 --> 00:27:55,220 I didn't mean it! 566 00:27:55,220 --> 00:27:56,440 -I saw the photographs, boy. 567 00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:58,270 You bashed your face in. 568 00:27:58,270 --> 00:27:59,520 She didn't give me any choice! 569 00:28:02,910 --> 00:28:04,982 -You didn't have much choice, huh? 570 00:28:04,982 --> 00:28:06,912 So you used me. 571 00:28:06,912 --> 00:28:09,920 -The hell, that's what friends are for, I was in a jam. 572 00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:11,960 Come on, have a drink. 573 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:15,152 I had a dead wife, $350,000 that doesn't belong to me, 574 00:28:15,152 --> 00:28:15,860 I had to get out. 575 00:28:15,860 --> 00:28:17,390 It's as simple as that. 576 00:28:17,390 --> 00:28:19,130 -Simple as that, huh? 577 00:28:19,130 --> 00:28:20,341 -Goddamn simple. 578 00:28:20,341 --> 00:28:22,700 Cops have me legally dead. 579 00:28:22,700 --> 00:28:25,580 Augustine's got his money, he's not looking for me anymore. 580 00:28:25,580 --> 00:28:27,040 I got a girl that loves me. 581 00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,560 I got more money than Sylvia and Augustine put together. 582 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:32,275 What the hell, nobody cares. 583 00:28:32,275 --> 00:28:35,700 -Yeah, nobody cares but me. 584 00:28:35,700 --> 00:28:37,612 -Well, that's you Marlowe. 585 00:28:37,612 --> 00:28:40,266 You'll never learn, you're a born loser. 586 00:28:40,266 --> 00:28:41,760 -Yeah, I even lost my cat. 587 00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:58,370 [END PLAYBACK] 588 00:28:58,370 --> 00:28:59,703 DAVID THORBURN: Pretty shocking. 589 00:28:59,703 --> 00:29:03,520 The hero of the movie-- the protagonist-- the guy 590 00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:05,380 we identify with all the way through 591 00:29:05,380 --> 00:29:07,440 commits cold-blooded murder. 592 00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:09,962 He's a vigilante-- commits cold blooded murder 593 00:29:09,962 --> 00:29:10,920 at the end of the film. 594 00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:12,253 And that is the end of the film. 595 00:29:12,253 --> 00:29:14,060 He gets away with it. 596 00:29:14,060 --> 00:29:16,532 So there is a kind of justice done 597 00:29:16,532 --> 00:29:18,490 at the end of the film in a kind of narrow way, 598 00:29:18,490 --> 00:29:20,323 because the murderer is caught and punished. 599 00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:24,800 And incidentally, this violates what 600 00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:26,450 happens in the original novel. 601 00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:28,440 It violates what happens in the first film 602 00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,970 version of the novel. 603 00:29:30,970 --> 00:29:33,700 But think what happens to genre forms, 604 00:29:33,700 --> 00:29:36,150 not only when the hero or the protagonist 605 00:29:36,150 --> 00:29:39,710 becomes grungy ironic and anti-heroic in his behavior 606 00:29:39,710 --> 00:29:41,730 and demeanor. 607 00:29:41,730 --> 00:29:45,820 And then when the story itself begins to undermine the deepest 608 00:29:45,820 --> 00:29:47,890 assumptions about heroism and righteous 609 00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:54,145 behavior that seem to justify or undergird these endings. 610 00:29:55,890 --> 00:29:57,730 But in a way, one could say it's a happy 611 00:29:57,730 --> 00:30:03,020 ending if one has a very austere notion of justice. 612 00:30:03,020 --> 00:30:05,070 An almost inhuman notion of justice. 613 00:30:05,070 --> 00:30:07,000 But what about this protagonist who 614 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:11,400 does his own vigilante justice. 615 00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:16,930 And when the film first appeared-- 616 00:30:16,930 --> 00:30:19,170 it's impossible to exaggerate the effect 617 00:30:19,170 --> 00:30:20,265 this shocking and had. 618 00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:24,590 One reason it's so shocking of course, 619 00:30:24,590 --> 00:30:28,650 is that the generic expectations run so totally 620 00:30:28,650 --> 00:30:31,580 in the opposite direction-- that the most cold blooded murder 621 00:30:31,580 --> 00:30:33,820 in the film should be the character with whom you've 622 00:30:33,820 --> 00:30:35,440 identified all the way through. 623 00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:37,400 Who is supposed to be solving the crime 624 00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,860 and bringing evil to justice should turn out 625 00:30:40,860 --> 00:30:44,340 to be evil himself in such a shocking and brutal way 626 00:30:44,340 --> 00:30:48,690 undermines some of the most up the basic assumptions 627 00:30:48,690 --> 00:30:50,490 you make about the kind of safety 628 00:30:50,490 --> 00:30:52,620 that the genre of the detective story 629 00:30:52,620 --> 00:30:54,550 seems to afford to its viewer. 630 00:30:54,550 --> 00:30:56,910 And this is not an isolated instance, 631 00:30:56,910 --> 00:31:00,150 as you'll see in tonight's film. 632 00:31:00,150 --> 00:31:03,960 Altman does almost exactly the same thing with the Western 633 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,740 that he does in The Long Goodbye to the detective story. 634 00:31:07,740 --> 00:31:11,380 I'll return tonight to say a little bit more 635 00:31:11,380 --> 00:31:14,210 about the particular ways in which McCabe & Mrs. 636 00:31:14,210 --> 00:31:23,070 Miller embodies this notion I've been suggesting to you. 637 00:31:23,070 --> 00:31:28,450 Embodies the anti-generic or subversive principles 638 00:31:28,450 --> 00:31:30,300 of the kinds of movies that begin 639 00:31:30,300 --> 00:31:36,290 to emerge at the end of the '60s and in the 1970s. 640 00:31:36,290 --> 00:31:39,310 Well I've already talked to you about the social history 641 00:31:39,310 --> 00:31:42,970 of the '60s and '70s. 642 00:31:42,970 --> 00:31:45,330 And I don't want to repeat myself, 643 00:31:45,330 --> 00:31:48,070 but there were some things that I left out in my quick account 644 00:31:48,070 --> 00:31:48,570 earlier. 645 00:31:48,570 --> 00:31:50,960 So let's return briefly to remember 646 00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:52,550 the sequence of presidents. 647 00:31:52,550 --> 00:31:56,470 Because of course, the sequence of presidents-- Kennedy, 648 00:31:56,470 --> 00:31:59,460 who was assassinated in the early '60s, right. 649 00:31:59,460 --> 00:32:02,230 Already, the social fabric in the United States 650 00:32:02,230 --> 00:32:03,750 was frayed to the point of breaking 651 00:32:03,750 --> 00:32:05,147 by the end of the '60s. 652 00:32:05,147 --> 00:32:06,980 Those of us who lived through it will always 653 00:32:06,980 --> 00:32:12,190 remember it as an astonishingly polarized time. 654 00:32:12,190 --> 00:32:16,500 And in the progression from Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon, 655 00:32:16,500 --> 00:32:18,220 there is a social history in which 656 00:32:18,220 --> 00:32:23,090 that change in the society is of course, implied. 657 00:32:23,090 --> 00:32:27,310 And of course, it concludes in a way, with the terrible event 658 00:32:27,310 --> 00:32:30,870 of the Watergate scandal-- the Watergate investigations-- 659 00:32:30,870 --> 00:32:32,750 in which for the first time in our history, 660 00:32:32,750 --> 00:32:34,480 a sitting president resigned. 661 00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:38,000 And so you can see that the outward social-- and of course, 662 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:41,330 the Watergate scandal raised doubts 663 00:32:41,330 --> 00:32:44,730 about the probity and decency of the highest 664 00:32:44,730 --> 00:32:46,060 officers of our government. 665 00:32:46,060 --> 00:32:48,830 And while that might not seem so surprising 666 00:32:48,830 --> 00:32:54,880 in the age of-- I have to avoid offending some of you-- 667 00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:58,710 in our current situation, where it isn't that 668 00:32:58,710 --> 00:33:01,720 difficult to doubt what we're told by our government leaders, 669 00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:04,700 it's important to recognize that-- not 670 00:33:04,700 --> 00:33:06,870 that this was a new experience for Americans, 671 00:33:06,870 --> 00:33:09,070 governments always lie-- but there really 672 00:33:09,070 --> 00:33:12,850 was a sense of disillusionment with the fundamental structures 673 00:33:12,850 --> 00:33:14,770 of the society that was emerging. 674 00:33:14,770 --> 00:33:16,390 Because of the Civil Rights Movement. 675 00:33:16,390 --> 00:33:19,620 Then because of the well because of the war in Vietnam. 676 00:33:22,340 --> 00:33:27,560 And then also, as a kind of icing 677 00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,840 on the cake in a certain sense, a kind of terrible addition 678 00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:34,440 to this weakening the country, but strengthening 679 00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:37,490 this sense of polarization and disturbances, if nothing 680 00:33:37,490 --> 00:33:38,220 can be trusted. 681 00:33:38,220 --> 00:33:40,650 As if our structures are falling apart 682 00:33:40,650 --> 00:33:44,180 or are endangered in some way was the fact the president, 683 00:33:44,180 --> 00:33:46,960 in effect resigned, rather than face impeachment. 684 00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:51,880 Because of his behavior in the Watergate business. 685 00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,514 So the highest levels of government 686 00:33:54,514 --> 00:33:56,930 and the fundamental structures of government were in play. 687 00:33:56,930 --> 00:34:00,400 And it would obviously, in such a time, it's not inappropriate. 688 00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,440 You would expect the central story forms of a culture 689 00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,530 to reflect some disturbance. 690 00:34:05,530 --> 00:34:08,110 But why is it not sufficient simply 691 00:34:08,110 --> 00:34:11,250 to urge this social history argument? 692 00:34:11,250 --> 00:34:13,230 To explain what happened to movies? 693 00:34:13,230 --> 00:34:15,000 The simplest answer is, if you look 694 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,330 at what was on television at the same time, 695 00:34:17,330 --> 00:34:20,679 you can certainly see television becoming more complex. 696 00:34:20,679 --> 00:34:22,370 In fact, the late '60s and early '70s 697 00:34:22,370 --> 00:34:25,070 are a transforming moment for television, as well. 698 00:34:25,070 --> 00:34:27,949 Partly because that's the moment when television consciously 699 00:34:27,949 --> 00:34:31,147 realized that it has a more central place in the society 700 00:34:31,147 --> 00:34:31,980 than the movies did. 701 00:34:31,980 --> 00:34:34,120 It had, for awhile, already achieved this. 702 00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:37,150 But no one on either side of the divide fully recognized it. 703 00:34:37,150 --> 00:34:39,420 But by the late '60s and early '70s, 704 00:34:39,420 --> 00:34:41,480 American television now knows itself 705 00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,199 to be the central medium of consensus narrative. 706 00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:46,489 The society recognizes that the changes occur. 707 00:34:46,489 --> 00:34:48,449 I don't mean that legislation is passed, 708 00:34:48,449 --> 00:34:51,570 I mean this understanding slowly dawns over a period of time, 709 00:34:51,570 --> 00:34:52,070 right. 710 00:34:52,070 --> 00:34:54,889 And there was a great sense among filmmakers 711 00:34:54,889 --> 00:34:56,020 of liberation and freedom. 712 00:34:56,020 --> 00:34:57,394 And they're not wrong about that. 713 00:34:57,394 --> 00:34:59,650 I mean, one might argue that the '70s 714 00:34:59,650 --> 00:35:02,630 is the greatest decade of all in the history of American movies. 715 00:35:02,630 --> 00:35:06,280 So many remarkable films were made in that time. 716 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:08,270 And surely, one of the reasons for it 717 00:35:08,270 --> 00:35:11,060 was film was liberated from the necessity 718 00:35:11,060 --> 00:35:13,260 to embrace what we're ultimately, 719 00:35:13,260 --> 00:35:15,340 although very generous principles, 720 00:35:15,340 --> 00:35:17,870 they were still in the end, conservative principles. 721 00:35:17,870 --> 00:35:21,280 About how a story in a consensus medium can be told, right. 722 00:35:23,300 --> 00:35:32,090 But the reason that the social history argument 723 00:35:32,090 --> 00:35:35,376 is insufficient for explaining the way movies changed, 724 00:35:35,376 --> 00:35:36,750 is that if you look at television 725 00:35:36,750 --> 00:35:39,850 you could state a story system that's 726 00:35:39,850 --> 00:35:42,960 telling stories that are more complex, and more ironized, 727 00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,240 and do raise certain kinds of questions 728 00:35:45,240 --> 00:35:46,950 about the social and political order that 729 00:35:46,950 --> 00:35:50,430 might be thought to be disturbing, and even 730 00:35:50,430 --> 00:35:51,890 potentially subversive. 731 00:35:51,890 --> 00:35:53,990 But on television, the center holds. 732 00:35:53,990 --> 00:35:56,030 On television, the endings remain happy, 733 00:35:56,030 --> 00:35:58,790 or at least reassuring, mostly. 734 00:35:58,790 --> 00:36:02,270 On television, some of the very same genre forms, especially 735 00:36:02,270 --> 00:36:05,710 detective and cop shows, are all over the place. 736 00:36:05,710 --> 00:36:07,190 The fables of law and order. 737 00:36:07,190 --> 00:36:09,520 Fables of injustice. 738 00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:11,610 And the stories that are being told on television 739 00:36:11,610 --> 00:36:14,640 do not have the subversive, completely, 740 00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:17,740 anti-generic energies that we're being told on television. 741 00:36:17,740 --> 00:36:18,530 Why not? 742 00:36:18,530 --> 00:36:21,190 And again, my answer is the movies 743 00:36:21,190 --> 00:36:23,450 have been supplanted by television. 744 00:36:23,450 --> 00:36:26,530 That consensus role is now being played by television. 745 00:36:26,530 --> 00:36:33,420 And one, quite, I think, truly dramatic way 746 00:36:33,420 --> 00:36:37,800 in which we can recognize this development is 747 00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:42,700 to talk about the differences between the movie version 748 00:36:42,700 --> 00:36:46,290 and the television version of another Robert Altman text. 749 00:36:46,290 --> 00:36:52,160 One of his distinctive films of the 1970s, the movie, MASH. 750 00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,700 How many of you have seen Altman's MASH? 751 00:36:54,700 --> 00:36:56,980 Only two, three, not very many. 752 00:36:59,030 --> 00:37:00,430 But it's a significant film. 753 00:37:00,430 --> 00:37:04,480 Not as remarkable, I think, in its full shape 754 00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:07,910 as the film you're going to see tonight. 755 00:37:07,910 --> 00:37:10,040 But a very, very remarkable film. 756 00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:12,700 How many of you have seem the television show, MASH. 757 00:37:12,700 --> 00:37:13,850 A much larger number. 758 00:37:13,850 --> 00:37:16,590 But still, for an American environment, 759 00:37:16,590 --> 00:37:17,660 a very small number. 760 00:37:17,660 --> 00:37:22,520 Especially because the show was on for, in its original run, 761 00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:25,059 for something-- I forgot-- like 11 years. 762 00:37:25,059 --> 00:37:27,350 It's one of the longest running shows American history. 763 00:37:27,350 --> 00:37:29,150 And then of course, it was in re-run 764 00:37:29,150 --> 00:37:31,330 for more than a decade in virtually every market 765 00:37:31,330 --> 00:37:32,490 in the United States. 766 00:37:32,490 --> 00:37:37,270 So there's hardly anyone over the age of probably 15 767 00:37:37,270 --> 00:37:38,950 or 20 in the United States who hasn't 768 00:37:38,950 --> 00:37:41,570 seen many episodes of MASH. 769 00:37:41,570 --> 00:37:44,530 So it's somewhat surprising that only a minority of you 770 00:37:44,530 --> 00:37:45,080 have seen it. 771 00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:49,520 But we can take the difference between the television version 772 00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,950 of that story and the movie version 773 00:37:52,950 --> 00:37:55,180 as a kind of emblem for this transformation 774 00:37:55,180 --> 00:37:56,480 that I've been talking about. 775 00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,410 And you don't have to seen either of the films fully 776 00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:01,930 to see what I have in mind. 777 00:38:03,970 --> 00:38:06,710 Elliot Gould, the character that you saw just a moment 778 00:38:06,710 --> 00:38:09,870 to go in the clip from The Long Goodbye, 779 00:38:09,870 --> 00:38:14,150 is one of the central doctors in the movie. 780 00:38:14,150 --> 00:38:17,330 And the other doctor, the partner doctor, 781 00:38:17,330 --> 00:38:21,900 characters that are played by Alan Alda and a comrade, who 782 00:38:21,900 --> 00:38:24,180 changes over the course of the full run 783 00:38:24,180 --> 00:38:25,540 of the show in the series. 784 00:38:27,030 --> 00:38:29,040 Elliot Gould plays that character in the movies 785 00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:33,200 and his partner-- also varies in the film-- 786 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,890 but his most decisive partner is Donald Sutherland. 787 00:38:36,890 --> 00:38:38,830 And Donald Sutherland is another of these sort 788 00:38:38,830 --> 00:38:41,590 of ironic, anti-heroic actors. 789 00:38:43,260 --> 00:38:45,230 They're often actors whose diction is odd. 790 00:38:45,230 --> 00:38:47,650 They mumble and they swallow their words. 791 00:38:47,650 --> 00:38:49,220 They're sometimes literally harder 792 00:38:49,220 --> 00:38:54,960 to hear than their elocutionarily superior-- 793 00:38:54,960 --> 00:39:02,882 bad adverb-- than their better spoken ancestors 794 00:39:02,882 --> 00:39:04,215 in the classic age of Hollywood. 795 00:39:06,180 --> 00:39:10,010 The movie MASH came out in 1970 and it 796 00:39:10,010 --> 00:39:13,030 was a kind of disguised Vietnam fable, 797 00:39:13,030 --> 00:39:18,040 it was officially based on a novel 798 00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:21,340 describing a MASH unit-- a medical unit-- 799 00:39:21,340 --> 00:39:22,790 in the Korean War. 800 00:39:22,790 --> 00:39:25,490 And the movie dealt with the Korean War too, ostensibly. 801 00:39:25,490 --> 00:39:28,580 But it was clearly a metaphor for the current war 802 00:39:28,580 --> 00:39:29,450 that we were in. 803 00:39:29,450 --> 00:39:32,470 And the doctors, especially the two central characters 804 00:39:32,470 --> 00:39:36,150 played by Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, 805 00:39:36,150 --> 00:39:38,840 are unbelievably subversive figures. 806 00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:41,270 They take their energies more from the counterculture 807 00:39:41,270 --> 00:39:43,280 than they do from any other source. 808 00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:45,850 They have no respect for authority at all. 809 00:39:45,850 --> 00:39:50,600 They engage in forms of subversive monkey business, all 810 00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:55,200 the way through the Altman version of MASH. 811 00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,380 When the movie is translated a year or two later, 812 00:39:58,380 --> 00:40:01,900 still while the Vietnam War is on-- onto American television 813 00:40:01,900 --> 00:40:03,700 in 1972, I guess-- 814 00:40:03,700 --> 00:40:06,540 And the series are oddly quite a lot different. 815 00:40:06,540 --> 00:40:10,480 It does still mobilize certain anti-war sentiments, of course. 816 00:40:11,940 --> 00:40:14,700 But, the television program-- which 817 00:40:14,700 --> 00:40:17,060 I think in an artistic sense is probably 818 00:40:17,060 --> 00:40:18,850 over the long run of its series better 819 00:40:18,850 --> 00:40:21,470 than the movie for all kinds of reasons, 820 00:40:21,470 --> 00:40:24,630 partly because the characters evolve and change over time 821 00:40:24,630 --> 00:40:27,840 in the series in a way that could not in the movie-- 822 00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:29,540 but the most decisive thing about it 823 00:40:29,540 --> 00:40:36,610 is that the television series retains some of the qualities 824 00:40:36,610 --> 00:40:40,410 that we associate with an anti-genre form. 825 00:40:40,410 --> 00:40:43,100 There are subversive implications in it, for sure. 826 00:40:43,100 --> 00:40:46,330 But the center holds in the television version. 827 00:40:46,330 --> 00:40:47,344 Why? 828 00:40:47,344 --> 00:40:49,010 When I say the center holds, what I mean 829 00:40:49,010 --> 00:40:53,060 is that the remains in the film are respect for the larger 830 00:40:53,060 --> 00:40:55,570 structures of authority and order in a society, 831 00:40:55,570 --> 00:40:59,156 however antic and subversive the doctors might behave 832 00:40:59,156 --> 00:41:00,280 in any particular instance. 833 00:41:05,192 --> 00:41:08,950 The literal behavior of the characters is often less grungy 834 00:41:08,950 --> 00:41:14,480 and doesn't work with pornography on the television 835 00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:16,797 show as it does in the movie. 836 00:41:16,797 --> 00:41:18,630 I don't mean that the movie is pornographic, 837 00:41:18,630 --> 00:41:21,310 but it's much more overt about sexual matters 838 00:41:21,310 --> 00:41:24,680 than the more than the television series is. 839 00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,130 And one of the best ways one can see the contrast 840 00:41:27,130 --> 00:41:30,320 is to contrast an actor like Alan Alda with an actor 841 00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:31,160 like Elliot Gould. 842 00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:37,760 There's something dark and grungy and self-reflective, 843 00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:43,340 self-aware about Elliot Gould that one 844 00:41:43,340 --> 00:41:44,480 doesn't feel about Alda. 845 00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,850 Alda is much easier in his skin than Elliot Gould. 846 00:41:47,850 --> 00:41:49,790 One feels about Elliot Gould as about many 847 00:41:49,790 --> 00:41:53,177 of the actors that emerges-- dominant stars in the '70s 848 00:41:53,177 --> 00:41:54,760 and beyond-- is that they're afflicted 849 00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,170 by a kind of cosmic anxiety. 850 00:41:57,170 --> 00:42:00,900 That they're anxious figures, that they're figures of damage, 851 00:42:00,900 --> 00:42:02,620 in some way. 852 00:42:02,620 --> 00:42:04,860 Warren Beatty is such an actor in many ways. 853 00:42:04,860 --> 00:42:08,040 He's the star of tonight's film, McCabe & Mrs. Miller. 854 00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,960 There's a particularly wonderful film of the 1970s 855 00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:13,870 that I also want to mention to you after I complete 856 00:42:13,870 --> 00:42:15,360 my discourse about MASH. 857 00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:19,870 So these two versions of MASH then, sort of dramatize for us, 858 00:42:19,870 --> 00:42:25,050 not that television becomes-- especially by 1970-- simply 859 00:42:25,050 --> 00:42:27,170 a reactionary medium that just repeats 860 00:42:27,170 --> 00:42:30,000 what the ruling class in the United States wants to say. 861 00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:32,290 It's a much more complicated medium than that. 862 00:42:32,290 --> 00:42:34,510 But it is a consensus medium. 863 00:42:34,510 --> 00:42:38,730 It understands that it operates according 864 00:42:38,730 --> 00:42:41,640 to certain unwritten rules that the society, as a whole, 865 00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:42,580 has accepted. 866 00:42:42,580 --> 00:42:45,730 And one of those rules is that in a consensus medium, 867 00:42:45,730 --> 00:42:52,710 you can mobilize all kinds doubts, and dubieties, 868 00:42:52,710 --> 00:42:56,440 and ironic perspectives on the larger culture 869 00:42:56,440 --> 00:42:58,280 are on the central values of the culture. 870 00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:00,390 But you can't repudiate them completely. 871 00:43:00,390 --> 00:43:03,660 You can't let people come out of a consensus medium thinking 872 00:43:03,660 --> 00:43:05,522 that the society is totally corrupt. 873 00:43:05,522 --> 00:43:06,980 That there's no hope for the world. 874 00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:12,820 Consensus systems won't allow that. 875 00:43:12,820 --> 00:43:15,510 They have a comes a kind of aesthetic and political 876 00:43:15,510 --> 00:43:17,970 conservatism built into them. 877 00:43:17,970 --> 00:43:20,990 And the movie MASH shows how free it 878 00:43:20,990 --> 00:43:22,840 is of those consensus values. 879 00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,070 The television show MASH, on the contrary, 880 00:43:26,070 --> 00:43:28,990 demonstrates how much pressure a particular genre may 881 00:43:28,990 --> 00:43:34,910 receive and still remain, in some sense, a consensus form. 882 00:43:34,910 --> 00:43:38,300 And it seems to me, there are many arguments 883 00:43:38,300 --> 00:43:39,760 to be made for the idea that MASH 884 00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,890 is one of the most distinctive artistic achievements 885 00:43:42,890 --> 00:43:44,090 of American television. 886 00:43:44,090 --> 00:43:46,590 That it represents the culmination, 887 00:43:46,590 --> 00:43:48,680 in some sense of series traditions 888 00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:51,770 that go back almost 30 years by the time MASH appears. 889 00:43:53,220 --> 00:43:56,070 But what gives it its real authority and power 890 00:43:56,070 --> 00:43:59,110 is that incorporates into itself a subject 891 00:43:59,110 --> 00:44:01,450 matter that, before the mid '60s, 892 00:44:01,450 --> 00:44:03,650 anyway had never been on television before. 893 00:44:03,650 --> 00:44:06,700 So it's not that the television that appears in the late '60s 894 00:44:06,700 --> 00:44:08,930 early '70s is trivial or foolish, 895 00:44:08,930 --> 00:44:12,510 it's just that it is constrained by these consensus 896 00:44:12,510 --> 00:44:20,090 principles that no longer constrain the American movie. 897 00:44:20,090 --> 00:44:21,820 And when we look at tonight's film, 898 00:44:21,820 --> 00:44:23,860 you'll see very decisive examples of this. 899 00:44:23,860 --> 00:44:28,860 And I'm excited about how clearly McCabe & Mrs. Miller 900 00:44:28,860 --> 00:44:31,200 will crystallize the kinds of things I've been 901 00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:33,780 saying to you this afternoon. 902 00:44:33,780 --> 00:44:40,720 Now I also want to mention this other example. 903 00:44:40,720 --> 00:44:42,120 A film I meant to mention earlier 904 00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:46,280 when I was going through these notions about the way in which 905 00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,760 we have different kinds of directors, 906 00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,890 different kinds of actors, different kinds of endings, 907 00:44:51,890 --> 00:44:52,390 right. 908 00:44:52,390 --> 00:44:54,280 Which means that the style of the movies 909 00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:55,620 is often different, as well. 910 00:44:55,620 --> 00:44:57,610 The visual texture of the film is-- 911 00:44:57,610 --> 00:45:01,240 they favor jump cuts and discontinuity tricks 912 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:03,590 much more than the classic Hollywood movie does. 913 00:45:03,590 --> 00:45:05,950 And the film I wanted to tell you about 914 00:45:05,950 --> 00:45:07,655 is a film-- I meant to mention earlier 915 00:45:07,655 --> 00:45:09,380 and I'll conclude today's lecture 916 00:45:09,380 --> 00:45:12,840 with sort of another example, like the examples I've 917 00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:15,970 given so far-- in which what we get 918 00:45:15,970 --> 00:45:18,610 is it a profoundly subversive film. 919 00:45:18,610 --> 00:45:22,180 Whose presence would have been impossible five years earlier, 920 00:45:22,180 --> 00:45:24,760 or 10 years earlier, when the movies were still 921 00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:28,070 performing their consensus function in American society. 922 00:45:28,070 --> 00:45:31,120 The film I'm thinking about as a film by the director, Alan J 923 00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:36,510 Pakula, some people call him Alan Peculiar, 924 00:45:36,510 --> 00:45:38,280 called The Parallax View. 925 00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,010 Any of you seen The Parallax View? 926 00:45:40,010 --> 00:45:44,840 It's one of the great films of this early '70s period. 927 00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:48,260 And it's a conspiracy fantasy film. 928 00:45:52,510 --> 00:45:57,680 Warren Beatty plays the central character in the film, a drunk. 929 00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:01,640 And fact that he's a drunkard and radically imperfect person, 930 00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:03,610 is also characteristic of the kinds 931 00:46:03,610 --> 00:46:07,260 of heroes-- a protagonist-- that we begin to see in the '70s 932 00:46:07,260 --> 00:46:08,090 and beyond. 933 00:46:08,090 --> 00:46:10,800 Radically imperfect protagonists begin 934 00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:15,160 to become much more the norm in American movies 935 00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:18,070 after the Hollywood system has declined. 936 00:46:18,070 --> 00:46:21,640 Well in this film, Warren Beatty plays 937 00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:24,380 a recovered alcoholic journalist, 938 00:46:24,380 --> 00:46:27,490 who has been fired from a series of important jobs 939 00:46:27,490 --> 00:46:30,450 and is now working for a minor newspaper 940 00:46:30,450 --> 00:46:32,260 in Seattle, Washington. 941 00:46:32,260 --> 00:46:33,660 His name is Frady. 942 00:46:33,660 --> 00:46:37,820 F-R-A-I-D-Y, I think, or maybe it's F-R-A-D-Y, 943 00:46:37,820 --> 00:46:40,760 but it's supposed to echo afraid. 944 00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:43,116 He's like a fraidy cat. 945 00:46:43,116 --> 00:46:45,240 you're supposed to sort of partly feel in the film. 946 00:46:45,240 --> 00:46:50,240 And with the help of a newspaper editor 947 00:46:50,240 --> 00:46:53,910 he works for, he stumbles upon what 948 00:46:53,910 --> 00:46:56,780 turns out to be a vast political conspiracy. 949 00:46:56,780 --> 00:46:58,970 He's actually present in the beginning of the film, 950 00:46:58,970 --> 00:47:02,510 at what looks like a random killing 951 00:47:02,510 --> 00:47:04,280 of a political candidate. 952 00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:06,152 Begins to investigate, he discovers in fact, 953 00:47:06,152 --> 00:47:07,720 that there was probably conspiracy. 954 00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:10,610 The candidate was assassinated. 955 00:47:10,610 --> 00:47:16,050 And then he goes undercover and he engages 956 00:47:16,050 --> 00:47:17,660 in a long investigation. 957 00:47:17,660 --> 00:47:20,450 The shape of the film, and the energies of the film, 958 00:47:20,450 --> 00:47:23,620 are very like dozens of films we've seen earlier, especially 959 00:47:23,620 --> 00:47:24,840 during the Hollywood era. 960 00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:28,590 In which a lone hero, discovering terrible facts that 961 00:47:28,590 --> 00:47:34,010 are dangerous to his community or his society, 962 00:47:34,010 --> 00:47:35,780 shows the courage and the fortitude 963 00:47:35,780 --> 00:47:39,700 and the end resilience, and the focus, 964 00:47:39,700 --> 00:47:41,570 to follow through and solve the mystery 965 00:47:41,570 --> 00:47:43,010 and then save the world. 966 00:47:43,010 --> 00:47:45,930 In the most elaborate versions of this fantasy, what's 967 00:47:45,930 --> 00:47:48,880 at stake is the fate of the world or the fate of a society. 968 00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,720 In smaller versions, it might be something somewhat less. 969 00:47:52,720 --> 00:47:54,320 And that's what it turns out here. 970 00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:55,800 He penetrates into this conspiracy 971 00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:57,820 and there are allusions and references 972 00:47:57,820 --> 00:47:59,990 that make you-- especially at the end of the film-- 973 00:47:59,990 --> 00:48:05,030 associate the conspiracy with the Kennedy assassination. 974 00:48:05,030 --> 00:48:09,430 There is, in the film then, a kind of ongoing process 975 00:48:09,430 --> 00:48:12,760 in which the full nature of the conspiracy begins to emerge. 976 00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:15,050 And in fact, it is an unbelievable. 977 00:48:15,050 --> 00:48:17,860 If you actually saw the world in that way 978 00:48:17,860 --> 00:48:21,070 you probably couldn't even get a job in the White House. 979 00:48:21,070 --> 00:48:21,610 I'm sorry. 980 00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:27,220 But said it's really an unbelievably conspiratorial 981 00:48:27,220 --> 00:48:32,280 film, in which it turns out that there are a sort of network 982 00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:34,970 of corporate controllers who are sort of, in effect, 983 00:48:34,970 --> 00:48:37,160 taking over the government of the United States. 984 00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,260 And they have unbelievable power nobody knows-- but anyway. 985 00:48:40,260 --> 00:48:42,720 This detective has finally uncovered the plot 986 00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:44,030 and watch him do it. 987 00:48:44,030 --> 00:48:46,090 And as the film comes to its conclusion, what 988 00:48:46,090 --> 00:48:47,380 do we expect will happen? 989 00:48:47,380 --> 00:48:50,550 What's the normal expectation in such a film? 990 00:48:50,550 --> 00:48:53,490 That his revelations will save the day, right. 991 00:48:53,490 --> 00:48:55,530 Well in the very final sequences of this film, 992 00:48:55,530 --> 00:48:58,930 we see what looks like a kind of revelation scene, in which 993 00:48:58,930 --> 00:49:04,674 our character, Frady, is in a convention hall 994 00:49:04,674 --> 00:49:06,840 where they're about to hold the political nominating 995 00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:07,780 convention in fact. 996 00:49:07,780 --> 00:49:11,240 It's very resonant because the conspirators are trying 997 00:49:11,240 --> 00:49:14,420 to control that space as well. 998 00:49:14,420 --> 00:49:17,340 And essentially, he starts chasing a bad guy, 999 00:49:17,340 --> 00:49:21,450 being chased by a bad guy, without going 1000 00:49:21,450 --> 00:49:24,390 into any detail-- I'll spoil the film for you a little in a way, 1001 00:49:24,390 --> 00:49:26,470 I must-- guess what happens. 1002 00:49:26,470 --> 00:49:27,720 Our hero is killed at the end. 1003 00:49:29,180 --> 00:49:31,930 And the film ends with the idea that the conspiracy 1004 00:49:31,930 --> 00:49:33,760 is enforced. 1005 00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:36,070 That there's been no change. 1006 00:49:36,070 --> 00:49:39,220 So, it would have been a disturbing film, 1007 00:49:39,220 --> 00:49:41,430 even if it had ended with the requisite happy ending 1008 00:49:41,430 --> 00:49:42,450 and a reassuring ending. 1009 00:49:43,930 --> 00:49:47,820 And in and how many films does the great hero, the character 1010 00:49:47,820 --> 00:49:49,660 you've been following all the way through, 1011 00:49:49,660 --> 00:49:52,470 who's supposed to be one in which you've invested 1012 00:49:52,470 --> 00:49:54,010 all your sympathy and respect. 1013 00:49:54,010 --> 00:49:57,030 In how many films does this guy get blown away at the end. 1014 00:49:57,030 --> 00:50:00,050 But it's a mark of how subversive, 1015 00:50:00,050 --> 00:50:14,610 how morally turbulent, and politically and morally engaged 1016 00:50:14,610 --> 00:50:17,700 movies had become by the early '70s, that's such an 1017 00:50:17,700 --> 00:50:18,900 was possible. 1018 00:50:18,900 --> 00:50:22,950 So, The Parallax View is another kind of anti-genre in a way. 1019 00:50:22,950 --> 00:50:27,050 It's like a spy film-- in some ways it's 1020 00:50:27,050 --> 00:50:29,930 like one of those Hitchcock romantic thrillers, in which 1021 00:50:29,930 --> 00:50:33,120 Cary Grant and a beautiful woman travel 1022 00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:35,760 through beautiful locales and finally, even though they look 1023 00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:37,780 as if they're in great danger, win the day 1024 00:50:37,780 --> 00:50:43,010 and are able to marry at the end then also incidentally, 1025 00:50:43,010 --> 00:50:45,720 have saved the United States government. 1026 00:50:45,720 --> 00:50:48,720 The film fits that kind of category, 1027 00:50:48,720 --> 00:50:51,360 but it explodes all of our expectations 1028 00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:57,970 about the characters and about the atmosphere of such films. 1029 00:50:57,970 --> 00:50:59,780 And in that sense, The Parallax View, 1030 00:50:59,780 --> 00:51:05,720 like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, like Altman's film MASH, 1031 00:51:05,720 --> 00:51:08,800 like his film Nashville, like the films 1032 00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:12,180 of Martin Scorsese that appear-- Mean Streets, his first film 1033 00:51:12,180 --> 00:51:14,700 and maybe his greatest film appears in this period 1034 00:51:14,700 --> 00:51:18,890 as well-- have given you a much grungier, more disturbed, more 1035 00:51:18,890 --> 00:51:24,280 damaged, more hopeless view of urban violence than any film 1036 00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:25,340 before it had done. 1037 00:51:25,340 --> 00:51:28,680 Again, mobilizing the genres of the gangster 1038 00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:30,510 film and the urban crime film. 1039 00:51:30,510 --> 00:51:33,460 But mobilizing it in a way that leaves the viewer unsettled 1040 00:51:33,460 --> 00:51:34,610 and disturbed. 1041 00:51:34,610 --> 00:51:37,780 So the '70s is an astonishing, remarkable moment 1042 00:51:37,780 --> 00:51:39,300 in the history of American film. 1043 00:51:39,300 --> 00:51:41,320 It's remarkable, not only because films 1044 00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:43,880 became more courageous and more dangerous 1045 00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:48,820 in the thematic and moral sense, but also because it 1046 00:51:48,820 --> 00:51:51,890 was an era in which that happened in consequence 1047 00:51:51,890 --> 00:51:54,890 of the fact that the movies had surrendered 1048 00:51:54,890 --> 00:51:57,340 their central place in American society 1049 00:51:57,340 --> 00:52:00,159 to this new medium of television. 1050 00:52:00,159 --> 00:52:01,700 I'll talk about some of these matters 1051 00:52:01,700 --> 00:52:04,700 tonight in a much more concrete way by looking closely 1052 00:52:04,700 --> 00:52:06,360 at McCabe & Mrs. Miller.