The Missing Ingredient

The other day, my son and I saw The Departed, the Martin Scorsese film that is receiving extremely positive reviews.

It was indeed good...up to a point. The acting is excellent. The dialogue, although the film suffers from way too much profanity, is reasonably good but not close to A+ material. The plot works well at least until the end, when things fall apart. (I'll overlook the film's old "everybody is corrupt" theme which is such a favorite of the Hollywood Left.)

So what's missing? Style.

Why is it that we can watch films like The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, Charade, Rear Window, North By Northwest, and To Catch a Thief over and over without being bored?

Because, aside from the usual suspects (and which film did that come from?) of great acting, great dialogue, etc., the films went down easy. They possessed a grace that many of today's movies lack. You wanted to see them again.

So many of today's films have an excess of grit. Harry Lime, the memorable villain of The Third Man, was just as evil as any of the modern villains, but his crimes were not splashed before you. Your imagination had to work some and that made the film all that more effective. It was a fine wine that demanded a sophisticated palate. And yes, I'll be honest, when you've got Graham Greene writing the dialogue, it crackles considerably more than the quasi-wit of The Departed.

A distinctive feature of the old school's style was maturity. Just as in real life, the adults didn't have to use profanity to show that they were the ones in control. There is more sexual tension between James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window than between any of the characters in The Departed and it arises because of restraint, not exposure. The sad truth is we now have some of the best actors who ever lived and yet the studios continue to produce movies that tackle adult themes with an adolescent's temperment..

They are entertaining in the short term, but you probably won't smile at their dialogue ten years from now.

Martin Scorsese may well get his Oscar for this one. It's darned good, he's a popular fellow and people feel he's been overlooked. But, speaking strictly as a fan, I would have liked to have seen some more style.