Cinema of the Depression

David Thomson in this morning’s Guardian: Once upon a time you could go to the theater and see your economic circumstances taken seriously. There was Chaplin’s City Lights, The Grapes of Wrath, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The “talent in American pictures was from literature, the theatre and journalism, with educated backgrounds and a shared sense of the moral identity in being American.” In other words, they got what was happening. Today, facing what might be our next depression, our auteurs leave much to be desired. “Today's talent consists of absurdly rich young people who have made the hits of the past dozen years,” Thomson writes. “They know very little about life, except what they have to lose.”