About user experience
In a 1981 essay entitled The art of cinemaBruno Bettelheim, a giant of psychoanalysis, compared the experience of cinema to an experience of a religious nature.
A bit like a sacred ceremony: you enter a solemn environment, there is a stage, you are witnessing a ritual, there is spirituality. You leave this experience meditative, compassionate and sometimes dreamy. The feeling doesn't last long, but with a film it can stay on more, because the transfer is triggered.
If we follow Bettelheim today's puzzle “everywhere? or in the hall?” it is nonsense. In order for the cinema to exist, it takes the hall, the theatre, as they say in America.
But that's not what I want to talk about. If there is anyone interested in the topic, we refer to an intervention by AO Scott, senior critic of the "New York Times".
AO Scott
In 2002, AO Scott's dense, multifaceted and hermetic articles prompted me to easily convince my partners at MYmovies to open a film critic press review column within the site to accompany the reviews of our critics (who had their beautiful fixations) and those self-published by visitors.
This review achieved and still has considerable coverage by the Italian and foreign press and has made it possible to build an evaluation of the films that was the median between critics, audiences and internal reviewers. A blend that not even IMDB could dream of having at the time.
MYmovies has always had the most neutral judgments on films thanks to the brilliant algorithm that Gianluca was able to elaborate on this blend (ante-litteram big data).
The success of MYmovies was based on a simple, very Jobsian principle: building a service on each content and new content on each service. That's all!
Olivia de Havilland, the still water
Remember Gone With the Wind (1939), 4 hours of screening and 10 Oscars? If Scarlett/Rossella was the rebellious and indomitable protagonist, Melania was the insignificant and mild supporting character – “that puppet”, as Rossella comes to define her.
In reality there is something very solid in Melania, so as to convince Ashley to prefer her to the more compelling and ringing Rossella. Look at this scene memorable. Melania is a strategist. Don't you introduce O'Hara Rhett Butler into the house? Other than "puppet"!
Although more sophisticated than it appears, the character of Melania marked de Havilland's career. After Gone With the Wind, Warner Bros. continued to give her supporting roles. Those starring went to other actresses such as the hated sister, Joan Fontaine.
This artistic minority of de Havilland was even formalized in the contract with Warner. But de Havilland had what it takes to take on the studio big boys and claim her role in Hollywood, that is, that of a leading actress, by Oscars, which in fact she won for that role in 1947 and 1950.
No pasaran!
And so in 1946 Olivia de Havilland did something that changed the motion picture industry and ended the dominance of the studios. She took Warner to court, won and tore up the contract that penalized her. It was a revolution, and not a celluloid one, for her and for the whole environment.
Until that moment, cinema creatives (directors, screenwriters, actors, etc.) were a sort of employees of the studios, mere subordinates (see Deficiency by David Fincher).
After Olivia's sensational court victory, the creatives became freelancers and took the lead in their careers.
Even on the salary everything changed. A variable component calculated on the film's box office receipts was added to the fixed part of their cachet. The studios had to negotiate. Do you think it was easy to deal with a hothead like Marlon Brando?
They won't stop! #2
Similarly, Scarlett Johansson, today's superstar, is suing Disney. He accuses her of this: Black Widow, where she stars, was used by Disney to get people to subscribe to the Disney+ streaming service. Disney – like Warner and other studios – is releasing the novelties both in theaters and on streaming. Thus the three-month exclusive window that favored the big screen is missing. Nice problem!
Disney wants to make Wall Street happy. And this is understandable. A lot of pension funds have Disney stock on their stomachs. However, it will be Johansson who will pay the price, whose bonus in the cup to the substantial fixed amount of 20 million dollars is linked to the result of the film's collection at the box office and not on Disney +. Johansson is furious, she wants damages, she wants to cancel the simultaneity of release between theaters and streaming.
What happens is that streaming is tearing apart the economic model of Hollywood at all levels and the studios want to regain control of the industry.
Will the "Black Widow" be able to change history like de Havilland did half a century earlier? According to the “Financial Times” Johansson has little chance of leading Hollywood streamers to reintroduce the projection window as it was before the pandemic.
Good luck Scarlett! For us viewers, however, that's fine: we like to have the news immediately in streaming. We want to choose. And we certainly prefer to see movies in theaters!
The superheroification of Hollywood
In an entertainment dominated by subscription streaming it is not possible to determine a certain value for a film, on which to carve out the star bonus.
Furthermore, it is no longer the stars who create today's blockbusters, but the so-called franchise. Alas, it is precisely the superheroification, the marvelization of the film industry that also makes and unmakes stars.
Warners and Netflix, who lack the gold mines of Marvel or Star Wars, are more guarded and less assertive than Disney. They walk on eggs, but they don't want to break them. For now, they compensate the stars handsomely as if every film were a blockbuster.
Can this expensive model hold up once the dust surrounding the film industry settles? Who can tell? One thing is certain: “ce n'est qu'un début”, the fuse is on.
