[ExI] squeeze the classics

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 11:06 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Perhaps some here have noticed that our collective decreasing
> attention spans apply to ourselves as well as the younger set.

I often wonder about this -- whether it's actually true, whether it's
significant, and whether it's a bad thing. I've not studied it closely,
hence my skepticism since I only hear about a handful of studies quoted
endlessly. The significance might be an issue because I'm unsure how well
it was studied in the past to see if humans, on the whole, had longer or
shorter attention spans. For instance, looking at long novels from the 18th
century, one has to also remember that only a small sliver of society at
that time was reading them -- people usually who had the leisure for
reading long works of literature and, therefore, were not a good
representative sample of their societies. Given that I have all these
qualms, I should explore this matter in more depth, but these are my
current qualms.

> Anyone who has tried to view the 1950s Perry Mason early TV
> dramas, which were so excellent at the time, but unimaginable in
> any courtroom today.  We haven’t the ability to concentrate at that
> level for the required time to follow the story.  Today with real-time
> news, a lot happens in a couple days, or even a few hours.

Have you been in any courtroom recently or back then? I don't know how
actual courtrooms played out sixty years ago, but I imagine they were as
tedious and boring as ones today. Did you mean TV courtroom dramas? I doubt
a 01950s TV drama is a good way to measure how actual courtroom trials
played out -- any more than how a war film from that time tells us how a
battle went or what soldiers did or felt during war.

> Yesterday I was viewing one of my old favorite movies, Bogart and
> Bergman in Casablanca.  Excellent story!  But the pace of life is
> so slow, it got me to wondering.  These old classics are pretty
> much out of reach of the younger generation,

How much younger? Was "Casablanca" really a young person's film when it was
released in 01942? I've enjoyed the film, but I only really sat down to
watch it when I was in my late teens. (And I was probably atypical even at
that time.) I don't think I would've watched it through at 8 or 15 years of
age. Not sure, but I'm also not sure what you're expecting here. I imagine,
too, people watching it in 01942 were watching something about their times.
People watching it in 01952 were watching something about the not so
distant past, about stuff that happened during their lifetime and that they
might have been somewhat involved in -- the war and all that -- or read
about in the papers, etc. Even by the 01970s, I imagine most people would
know people -- parents or grandparents who were directly attached to those
times. By the time I sat down to watch it seriously -- 1990s -- it was
already a more distant past, but someone watching it now -- say, in the
terms or twenties, it's even a generation further removed.

> but what if we figure out a way to somehow edit them, cut out
> some of the dead space?

That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure what the dead space is in
"Casablanca." I once had the idea that a good film class would be taking
any classic film and trimming a scene or rearranging the scenes -- without
adding anything -- would improve the work. (That something's a classic
shouldn't mean no one should ever tinker with it or presume the work is as
close to perfection as is.) "Casablanca" might be a good candidate for
that. Recollecting it -- the last time I saw it was about a year ago -- I
think it's already fairly tight, but I'd have to look at it with an eye
(and ear) toward cutting it down.

> Can it be done?  Could we somehow shorten old movies without losing the
thread?
> If we did, would there be a dozen different abridged Casablancas out there
> competing for attention?

To be sure, sometimes this was done already. There are different versions
of films out there where parts are cut out, especially to suit it for TV or
back when many audiences tended to not like really long films. (Yes, one
thing I noted was that the three plus hour film has risen in a recent
years. Granted, no one is churning out something like "The Human Condition"
(over 9 hours), but there are many films released today in the two hours
plus category that make wide release.)

Would this be a bad thing? There are many versions of "Hamlet" on film.
What's wrong with each generation discovering its own version of "Hamlet"?
(This reminds me of how every few years certain classics of literature get
a new translation. Think of "The Iliad," which, happily, gets translated
into English probably once a decade. Butler's Iliad, which I read preteen,
is very different than the one by the late Robert Fagles. No reason to
stick with Butler's Victorian prose over Fagles or anyone else. I imagine
some of this is the conception of the poem changes over time and new
discoveries are made.) And with film anything lasting like the printed
text, one can still refer to the earlier versions. (Any stage adaptation of
anything is likely to depart from the so called original text, so why
should film versions not do likewise?)

By the way, for some strange reason, your use of Casablancas in the plural
makes me think of the novel _Draculas_. Much fun to be had there. :)

Regards,

Dan
 Please take a peek at my latest Kindle book at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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