Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge Searchers - or John Ford - fan that this A.O. Scott claim struck me as wrong-headed in the extreme.
Ernest Hemingway once said that all of American literature could be traced back to one book, Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” and something similar might be said of American cinema and “The Searchers.”
What about those six decades of American cinema that came before 1956? I know the New American Cinema holds a special sway over cinephiles today, but one really shouldn’t overlook the classical studio era in these matters.
So what would I consider the Huck Finn of the American cinema? Well, the search for one-work origins is a dodgy enterprise, but if I had to pick one film, it’s hard to overlook the importance of Birth of a Nation in cementing as industrial standard much of what Hollywood would do over the next several decades - from the formal techniques of alternating close up and long view, static and moving camera, to the fusion of melodrama and realism, romance and “real” plot. Else, I think Robert Ray makes a convincing case that Casablanca, though hardly super-popular or influential in its time, actually contains the thematic and narrative key to most of Hollywood’s classical texts, including ones made before its release.
Other nominations welcome.
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