Ask Mick LaSalle:
Why doesn’t Steven Spielberg trust his audience?
Hi Mick: Steven Spielberg often uses string instruments to tell the audience what emotions we should be feeling. Why do you think Spielberg doesn’t trust his audience to find their own emotions?
Roz Itelson, Noe Valley Hi Roz: I don’t think Spielberg tells audiences what to feel. He shamelessly makes audiences feel things. So I admire that and enjoy it and appreciate it, even as I sometimes feel like he’s selling me a bill of goods. Because I keep buying those goods. Dear Mick: Do you have a favorite Bette Davis movie? Kathleen Elzey, Elk Grove,
Sacramento County Dear Kathleen: My favorites are “Fog Over Frisco” and “All About Eve.” Basically, I like everything where she’s full of beans and don’t like anything where she’s full of regrets, as in “Now, Voyager.” My Dear Esteemed Mr. LaSalle: Would you rather be admired as a critic or as a writer?
Steven Horowitz, Berkeley My Dear Esteemed Mr. Horowitz :I would think it would be the same for everybody. Writer, of course. It’s the only thing I care about or have ever cared about, going back to the days when I had to wear a bandanna while typing to keep my hair out of my eyes. Winter Salutations Mick: I recently watched a young Judy Garland perform in blackface in the 1938 movie “Everybody Sing.” Though I know this was considered a form of “entertainment” at the time, it still made me cringe. Do you think Hollywood still unintentionally uses racist imagery as “popular entertainment” in movies being made 80 years later?
Julian Grant, Pacifica Winter Salutations Julian: I’d say no, but without complete certainty, because the people making “Everybody Sing” probably didn’t think they were being racist, either. But they did have to know they were being condescending. They probably just assumed condescension was so appropriate or so an acknowledgment of understood reality that they didn’t think they were being offensive, which is bad, too. Normally, nothing about politics or mores in older films bothers me, but blackface, common in musicals of the ’30s and ’40s, is in another category. I just watched “Holiday Inn” (1942), and out of nowhere come Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds in blackface as slaves, praising Abraham Lincoln in a song. The discomfort of such scenes goes beyond the obvious.
There is also the discomfort of realizing that the performers maybe didn’t know they were being racist, but had to almost know. They had to have an inkling, right? So these scenes aren’t benignly clueless so much as determined to be clueless, and determined to maintain the right to cluelessness. It’s like they almost know better, but they don’t want to know better, because if they admit it, then they’ll have to adjust, and they don’t want to bother. To do so would mean putting themselves in opposition to the bigger, nastier currents of racism that were marching through the culture as a whole. Instead they retreat to the safe position of doubling down on cheerfulness, which makes the whole spectacle even worse — like watching people smile all over themselves in some Nazi or Soviet propaganda film. Hi Mick: If “Dunkirk” wasn’t a true story, would you have still considered it a great movie? I did not see any character development.
Steve Salati, Saratoga, N.Y. Hi Steve: Great question, and the answer is no. If it weren’t a true story, the narrative strategy of eschewing character development and throwing the audience into the experience would make no sense. It only makes sense because it really happened. By doing it this way, Christopher Nolan is saying, “Hey, this is what it was like. It wasn’t like the movies.” That is, it wasn’t comforting. There wasn’t a Jewish guy and an Italian guy and a guy from Alabama, all trading faintly ribald stories, while making the world safe for democracy. It was hours of mortal terror, processed internally, in the midst of extremity.
Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification.