Hollywood and European Cinema – Convergence of Elements: Part III

‘The Exorcist’ is a charmingly repellent movie. It can be expected to not only scare but even nauseate a weak mind. One might think that it is impractical to expect the elite and intellectual community to appreciate The Exorcist type of movies. Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ is often described as a contemporary classic, but it can be doubted whether it can entertain children and people who place the highest priority on the story. Kevin O’Donovan describes it as a ‘second-tier movie’. He attributes his stand to the film being “thematically vacant” (cinekklesia.com).

If we now look at two other films, ‘Titanic’ and ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, both focus on two universally favorite themes, namely love and humor, with humanism being a common emotion in both. . Youngsters certainly enjoy them the most, but everyone else does too. But these hypothetical notions are immediately dispelled by the fact that all four of the aforementioned movies were hugely commercially successful. All of them received a ‘fresh’ rating on the rottentomatoes.com tomato meter (The Exorcist: 85%; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: 98%; Pulp Fiction: 94%; Titanic: 88%).

What it testifies is that a movie, be it European or Hollywood, be it a horror film or a romantic thriller, can move the audience equally, of course, subject to the creative potential of the filmmaker. That’s what the four movies under study did. They could stir up the audience; its creators were able to arouse a wide range of emotions in different segments of the audience: men, women, children, adolescents and others.

Often, we are all tempted to classify films into two categories, namely “art films” and “commercial cinema”. The terms may sound good and the discussion may be intellectually interesting, but the fact is that art and business are the same thing. There can be no commercial success without aesthetic success. As Richard Maltby said in Hollywood Cinema, “Titanic wouldn’t have won eleven Academy Awards if it hadn’t proved its popularity at the box office.”

We’d probably do well not to try to label a movie ‘commercial’ or ‘offbeat’ because, said and done, there can’t be a movie that can be made without investment. Nor can there be a movie that is offered ‘free’ to viewers. The intensity of a filmmaker’s passion can vary, but in the end, every film is meant to be a commercial venture. To think about it in practical terms, any human effort that produces wealth should be welcomed and anything that appears to ‘waste’ wealth should be discouraged, as long as it does not imply a deviation from the fundamental moral standards established by society.