>George Lucas has argued that Soviet film directors had much more artistic freedom than those in Hollywood ever did
>Hollywood films have to appeal to all of the biases and desires of the market while Soviet films just had to not criticize the government
>As such, while the greatest spectacles come out of Hollywood, there was more top quality Kino in the USSR
Was he right?
When you have a film body which can subsidize art rather than making it subject to market forces then of course you're going to get more experimentation and innovation without fear.
What's really interesting though is that 90% of the kids in Film School are making genre stuff or imitating Hollywood rather than making avant-garde shit just to "see if it works".
As a result Hollywood has no R&D department. That's a contributory factor to the formula of scripts, the sameness of performances from actors etc. etc. etc.
That's true. They also had 1/10 of the budget.
>That's true. They also had 1/10 of the budget.
Fuck! Something so simple explains so much.
He's right. He's a true kinographer.
Hollywood often tries to pack as much shit into one film and make it as much of a spectacle as possible. Lucas is a large part fucking responsible for this. Most of the time 1/10000000000th of the time spent on packing as much shit into one scene is spent on creating imaginative and intelligent screenplay.
thx 1138
>Soviet film directors had much more artistic freedom
USSR = what matters is the artistic value
USA = what matters is box office
Europe = both matter
Japana = ~~UGUUUUUUUUUU
Is this right?
>while Soviet films just had to not criticize the government
Well to be fair it's the same here except Hollywood films just have to not criticise jews.
When the government wants to be everywhere as the only provider of happiness and purpose, just "not criticising it" becomes a bit tricky.
only if you're implying that Japan is best
There are literally only two great Soviet Directors, Eisenstein and Tarkovsky.
IIRC Tarkovsky had to run away from Russia because they didn't let him make films the way he wanted.
Andrei Rublev was also butchered against his will in 1966, when America's Industry was at its prime.
American directors only lost theyr freedom after Heaven's Gate and Once Upon a Time in America.
You forgot Africa.
Africa=What matters is how much each green screen effect costs.
Anything to justify not just making a good movie, huh? Especially by an easily independent billionaire.
Fucking pathetic.
Which is why you had to be very subtle in criticizing in.
A huge thing this thread is implying is at Hollywood films even moderately criticize the state in our country.
>top quality Kino
>Kino
So, ITT things Lucas never said?
It's always funny when a Westerner tries to say something good about communism. No, it was bullshit censorship, every script went thought a party commission and the filming was watched by a party official and the final copy was screen in front of another commission and then you had to cut out or re-shoot the scenes they don't like.
inb4 "but it is the same in America"
No, no it's not.
Two!?!?!?!
>Parajanov?
>Sokurov?
>Vertov?
Fun story: in my ex-communist country the movie The Mirror started the joke "Is the movie good or is it a Soviet one?"
Also Lucas is a huge autist and his opinion on politics or anything can't really be taken seriously.
>Communication disruption can only mean one thing!
It depends on what decade are you talking about. I would say that until late 70s the soviet directors were pretty much free to do anything the wanted. They regime believed in film as a new medium to communicate with ordinary people and they were trying to find ways how to do it. That's why the directors could experiment with form and even a content. Unless it was really in conflict with communist ideology the film was good to go.
Later on the party gained more control over the industry and decided that experimenting is over and you should make such and such movies.
>They regime believed in film as a new medium to communicate with ordinary people
That's bullshit tho. Cinema was first and foremost a propaganda tool for the plebs.
>not criticize the government
... or challenge communist doctrine in any way, which perceives "the people" and the government as closely related and sometimes interchangeable, but whatever you say George
>inb4 "but it is the same in America"
>No, no it's not.
That's right. It's worse. Much much worse.
You want to know why?
Stalin, for example was a poet. Lenin was obsessed with cinema and it's propaganda capacity.
They understood what they were dealing with.
In Hollywood you're dealing with MBAs who probably have no visual literacy.
Did you know that when they Ren & Stimpy was being picked up, in a focus group it failed in 5/6 categories and the executive took a chance on it because the only category it succeed in was that it got "top marks for being funny"!?
Also how fucking dumb is the idea of a focus group? You get a bunch of people who somehow are meant ot be a cross section of society and they HAVE TO come up with an opinion. It's not: "would you pay for this, yes or no... okay bye" they have to state what they like. And we all know about the Forer effect and how easily questions can manipulate survey responses.
No doubt the Soviet system impinged on the creativity of it's filmmakers.
Kidnapping Caucasian Style is only slightly better than the Carry On films, but in the current Hollywood age where everything is micromanaged by people looking not at the film itself but metrics and dollars a bunch of communists seeing if it doesn't disagree with the party line seems like unbridled freedom.
Do you think they just let anyone obtain funding for a movie? Instead of appealing to the market, it was about appealing to whatever person or people that had the means to produce movies at their disposal.
Three, there's Ozerov too.
The rest is just ok and you just think they're great because hipster symdrome.
You can't explain totalitarianism to Western kids.
>hipster symdrome
You like Eisenstein for godsakes. Literally the most boring, propagandist, superficial, formalist filmmaker to ever be mistaken for a great artist. And you accuse me of liking stuff because of some "Hipster Syndrome"?
>Bait or not, there was no fucking way I was going to let you make such a declarative and arrogant statement about there being only two filmmakers unchallenged.
Stalin was a physical and mental midget with a knack for mass murder. That ghost review he wrote about one of Shostakovich's works is awful and blood-chilling at the same time, because it shows at the same time the depth of his ignorance, his fanatical devotion to the cause, and his immense power, as he could destroy a man's life just by writing an article under a pseudonym.
Lucas was a creature of the society he lived in, only in old age can he look back and properly reflect on what he has wrought.
This was the same interview where he called Disney a bunch of white slavers btw.
>implying capeshit isn't approved by the PRC before release
I actually haven't read that, but what I will say is that to get where he did in the political hierarchy and to cultivate his cult of personality he must of had some knack or understanding of visual rhetoric, which is an important component of film language.
Otherwise we're just going to get in to a race to the bottom deciding which is the lesser of two evils between Stalin and Amy Pascal when it comes to authority to determine what is a good film.
>it is the same in America
At the time, yeah. Hitchcock was considered avant-garde for showing a goddamn toilet flushing for Christ's sake.
Stalin. It's Stalin.
>Cinema was first and foremost a propaganda tool for the plebs.
Hollywood standards are not universal
90% of hollywood movies used to be shit
The last 5+ years 95% have been shit
Now 98%+ are shit
I honeslty only pick a few movies to see in theaters a year at maximum because of this.
I can sift through shit but I will not swim through it. So I only see what movies might peak my interest and look good. Critics and reviews don't matter anymore so its entirely at my descretion
>dat center pic
LOL
What part of "race to the bottom" don't you understand.
You seriously mean to say to me you would definitively pick a hypothetical DVD collection of Stalin's that includes stuff made after 1955 to Amy Pascal's personal movie collection?
DON'T ANSWER THAT because it doesn't matter: it's like trying to decide which turd has the more aesthetically pleasing texture.
What the fuck kind of an argument is that? How many toilets were in the Soviet movies? How many Soviet movies revolved around a murderer and thieves, who weren't fascists?
>Soviet film directors had much more artistic freedom than those in Hollywood ever did
That's like saying the prequel trilogy are better movies than the original trilogy. You have to be a special, very, very special kind of retard to claim that.
...
>90s film industry in post-USSR
kino...
>Soviet films just had to not criticize the government
>just
Yeah, freedom or artistic expression during communism was much like the freedom of movement
>You can go anywhere just as long as the party allows you
>just
If the party censorship was a bigger impediment on creativity than the Hollywood system, then why isn't there a boom of good filmmakers in Russia? Why hasn't anyone made anything as groundbreaking since the Soviet years? Same can be said for Poland, Hungary, etc. Lucas has a point. Censorship by dollars is just as bad, if not worse, than government censorship. There's a reason filmmakers have been critical of this since the beginning of Hollywood.
Latin America = What matters is the shock value
Wow, I hate capitalism now!
That line made perfect sense in context.
This is why nolan is a fucking hack cliche piece of shit who tries to go full kubrick for 2 hours and then compleely shits himself from the pressure.
Goddamn if the ending of interstellar isn't the most dull thing imaginable