Say What?!: Ridley's Right

Talking up his latest movie, American Gangster, at the Venice Film Festival last weekend, Sir Ridley Scott was surprisingly downbeat on the future of movies. The British director insisted that science-fiction, the genre in which he made his name with the likes of Alien and Blade Runner, has run its course and that modern Hollywood is "three per cent good, ninety-seven per cent stupid".

"I'm not criticising Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there," he explained. "But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line.”

But Tinsel Town money-grubbing wasn‘t the only thing on Scott‘s mind. “People sit there watching a movie on a tiny screen," he grumbled of the increasing use of small-screen gadgetry to watch films on. "We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. I'm sure we're on a losing wicket but we're fighting technology. Whilst it is wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."

Indeed, those downsides will be keenly felt for a director of Scott’s pedigree. From Blade Runner and Alien to The Duellists and Gladiator, Scott’s films are the work of a visual genius. He uses the full screen to tell the story, utilising its grandeur to highlight the freedom Thelma and Louise felt in the deserts of America or the isolating boredom the crew of the Nostromo suffered against Alien’s deathly silent starscapes.

But Scott isn’t the only one to see the fruits of his labour squashed by the onslaught of technology. Could you imagine how Stanley Kubrick would feel seeing The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel turned from an agoraphobic nightmare into a cozy motel. For that matter, what would Martin Scorsese think seeing the bruising boxing sequences of Raging Bull reduced to a bar room bust up, or Steven Spielberg witnessing the menacing underwater sequences in Jaws rendered no more threatening than a casual dip at the local leisure centre?

Of course, I can see the convenience of such gadgets and I‘m certainly not saying that a film can only be correctly viewed on a giant screen. But there’s a limit. Directors shoot their films with aspect ratios and resolutions in mind. Every frame, every angle, every cut is mulled over and thought through, crafted lovingly to give the viewer as good an experience as possible.

To take that craftsmanship and squeeze it onto a mobile phone screen is tantamount to reproducing the Mona Lisa on the back of a postage stamp or watching the RSC perform the abridged version of Macbeth. Sure it’s convenient, sure it’s shiny and new and exciting, but by watching films on these things you’re denying yourself the chance to see a great piece of art in the form it was meant to be seen in.

Of course, the people who want to do that should be allowed to, after all, they‘re not doing anything but ruining it for themselves. But there’s a wider risk here. If UMDs, PSPs and mobile phones continue to sell as quickly as they are now (and they‘re selling pretty fast), then we’ll have a generation of kids - of future filmmakers - who have grown up watching films without appreciating the unique visual sensation that only cinema can supply, and that can only be a damaging thing for the British - perhaps world - film industry.

In the end, Ridley’s right: Films should be enjoyed in a quiet, darkened room on as big a screen as possible, not on the back of a postage stamp on your way into work on a Monday morning.