BY ANDREW MOODY
“Made it ma! TOP OF THE WORLD!”
Most media critics falsely claim that we are living in the “Golden age of TV”, based on Hollywood’s constant production of TV boxsets for streaming services like Netflix. We are actually, in a media sense, living in the Golden age of consumer choice. Nowadays, technology far in excess of that which sent the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon in 1969 is available to anybody, at prices so cheap that any consumer can quickly build a state of the art home entertainment system for a more affordable price than ever before, bolstered by social media and smartphone tech, which gives the audience more ready access and experience of instant interaction with even the most famous celebrities and film stars.
The current entertainment industry holds little to admire. Back in my early teens, addicted to the old movies that played back to back on Sky Movies Gold, a compulsive reader of anything and everything, I never anticipated the mess that Hollywood would make of itself twenty odd years later. (Who will win the Best Picture Oscar this year? Top Gun 2 or Avatar 2?) I no longer use social media, I no longer watch YouTube or have a Netflix account. Since the debacle of the final season of Game of Thrones, obviously the worst ending in film and TV history, and the inability of the industry to accept criticism of any kind, my interest in modern entertainment has ended. Instead I have started a collection of DVDs purchased cheaply on Amazon or from second-hand stores like CEX. With a powerful smart TV, far in advance of any I’ve ever had, my choice as a consumer is to enjoy the sort of movies I will sadly never get to make. One recent purchase was a James Cagney boxset with four of his most famous movies: The Public Enemy (1931), The Roaring Twenties (1939) The Fighting 69th (1940)and White Heat (1949).
In an interview in 1974, Orson Welles called Cagney “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera.”
For genuine movie fans, this appears to be a relatively accurate statement. In terms of his influence on cinema, and his morally ambiguous, grandstanding roles as gangsters Tom Powers in The Public Enemy, or Cody Jarrett in Raoul Walsh’s masterpiece White Heat, Cagney inspired everyone from Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Joe Pesci, James Gandolfini (in fact most of the great gangster roles in The Sopranos) and even 60’s boogeyman Charles Manson, and was one of both Stanley Kubrick’s and Winston Churchill’s favourite actors. Warner Bros even arranged private screenings for the then UK prime minister.
Watching these four classics for the first time in many years, there is much in them to enjoy, especially the clear influence that The Roaring Twenties had on Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, and a vigorously trashy performance by Virginia Mayo as Cody Jarrett’s moll in White Heat. The Fighting 69th (1940) made as pro-war propaganda to inspire the US to join the war against Germany, and is clearly one of the big influences on Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957)and Full Metal Jacket (1987).
After the takedown of (actual gangster) producer Harvey Weinstein in 2018, who for many years was the overlord of Hollywood cinema, the icy, enormously paranoid culture of celebrities still trying to hide in plain sight, tending their lies to Twitter and Instagram followers, belies the true ineptitude (and savagery) of Weinstein’s legacy. As a consumer, these beautiful old movies with Dolby surround sound and digital picture clarity, remind me of my more optimistic, movie loving youth, and serve as some small, poignant consolation.