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David Puttnam: A Righteous Social Critic
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11538 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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10 / 1986 |
3,984 Words |
| Author
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Cynthia Grenier
Cynthia Grenier is contributing editor to the Arts section of
The World & I. |
ARE HUMANIST MOTIVES WHAT COCA-COLA REALLY WANTS FOR AMERICA?
This summer in Atlanta the corporate overlords of Columbia Pictures - Coca-Cola - in quest of a new formula for their movie company made an unusual decision. They named as chairmen and chief executive officer of Columbia a forty-five-year-old Englishman. An independent producer since 1970, David Puttnam was well known to Hollywood. Indeed, in recent years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science had voted two of his productions best film of the year. This is no small achievement in a deeply parochial industry. Although neither Chariots of Fire nor The Killing Fields - both made overseas - was a mega-box-office hit like a Star Wars or a "Rocky" film, they had a very considerable success d'estime with critics and with those alienated children of the 1960s seen in The Big Chill. What makes David Puttnam's appointment significant is that he represents the same generation and, judging from his work, shares its values.
In the 1960s and early 1970s million of America's young considered themselves radical - anti-establishment, anti-Vietnam War, counterculture - and radical-Left movies found many viewers. These were the prime years of Miss Jane Fonda. But studies show that today's youth - who dominate movie audiences - are more professionally oriented than their counterparts of the 1960s. They are the ones calling for a third term for Ronald Reagan. The mass market for overtly leftist movies has largely vanished.
The cinema is the only art large enough, in terms of both its audience and the number of people it employs, to provide an accurate gauge of the sociological and ideological trends in the United States. A book, for instance, is considered a best-seller in its hardback trade edition when it sells 100,000 copies. A Pulitzer Prize-winning play that runs several months on Broadway might not have been seen by more than 150,000 people. But a movie today, if it is to break even, must be seen on domestic release in the United States and Canada by more than 6 million people. For a hit, the scale might be something like a hundred to one over hardcover books and Broadway. Though the movies attract a select audience compared to television - which caters to an ever-larger market - it is problematical whether millions of people in America can be induced to share the sense of spiritual alienation found among some artists of the cinema.
In the autumn of 1983 leftist filmmakers witnessed a catastrophe as film after film on Nicaragua, the Rosenbergs, Palestinians, the arms
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