In which I cut New Hollywood some slack

I've been asked to elaborate on the Old v New Hollywood battle, and I suppose it's largely interpretive (in my mind, a 50-ft glamour-queen in an elegant, feather-trimmed gown is blithely slapping a scrawny midriff-baring, thigh-high boots-wearing teen with too much eye makeup and a vacant expression. Take that! And that!). I'm sure - in fact I know - that studios back in the day could be just as money-focused and story-indifferent as they are these days...but perhaps because there is so much more money floating around nowadays, it seems worse. Changing the ends of film adaptations in order to avoid a downer, casting the studio darling instead of the person who would have looked the part...oh, and remaking films that don't need remaking, just because you're sure they'll make you money, without caring about whether they are bringing anything significant to the world....

SIGH.

Maybe it all comes down to money - less chances back then to have a flop? Are there more classics to come out of Old Hollywood? Look at To Kill a Mockingbird, The Philadelphia Story, 12 Angry Men, It Happened One Night, Rear Window and Roman Holiday...they're not perfect films, certainly not from a technical standpoint, but there is more art in those films, and in the way that they do the best with what they've got to create magic.

But here are a few movies that I think have really gone for it with art.

Firstly, and obviously to anyone who has talked to me about films, is Road to Perdition. A gangster movie about family, regret, fear, consequences, but it's so much more. Some of the best Cinematography I've ever seen (by the late Conrad L. Hall) - I mean, there's the most awesome shot of someone smoking a cigarette that I've ever seen, some amazing, telling fades and transitions, and man, there's this scene in the rain, and JAYZUS, it's indescribably beautiful. So there's that. But there's also the Colours - muted, browns, greens, whites, greys, cautiously, tentatively lightening as our protagonists travel through the film, and the white, white sands of the beach at Perdition. And the Music. It just - oh, it just WORKS. It means something.

Also I prefer this poster to the one that happened later (one of those "big faces of the stars over what would have otherwise been quite a moving poster" posters).

Hmm. Quite liking this topic. Now what else...