The interesting question is (alas, we'll never know) whether movies from, say, 1940s, accurately represented how people spoke those days, or whether the writers were creating a more heightened version of reality, where as nowadays, we tend to go away from "heightened" towards the realistic.
Great question. There will be less reportage footage than we have from our current time but I’m sure there are some studies of how people actually spoke.
Another question is the extent to which people in modern movies speak like we do. Things like never saying goodbye at the end a phone call, or generally sounding much cooler on-screen than in real life. Well, my life, certainly.
These could be two very interesting research strands for you to follow ;) And you’re right, people in movies still sound different. As an actor, I sometimes struggle with what people write in scripts. It always reminds me of Harrison Ford (it was him I think) who said to George Lucas: “You can write this shit, George, but you definitely can’t say it”.
I would generally argue the less dialog a movie has, the better, but that must be relative to screentime. If there are less words used to mean less things but they fill more screentime, that's a fairly strong indicator of poorer script quality.
Well, I just watched Casablanca again the other night, more aware of the sardonic quick wit, and now, since you mention it, longer dialogue sequences, yet still quite entertaining and engaging. One might suggest brilliant. Personally, I marvel at the intellectual dialogue, witty take-downs, and wonderful complex sentences. Bogart just nails it in such a clever way.
Then I am brought to think about a film such as Anora, which won an Academy Award for a screenplay that may have had the most F bombs ever in that award category.
I wonder is the simplistic dialogue more of a reflection of reality TV?
I felt that a film such as Anora was just that, a reality show rolled into a 90-minute sandwich and served lukewarm.
I also reflect on the dialogue in The Assassination of Jesse James, obviously a period piece with poetic, seemingly time-relevant dialogue, but produced in 2007, so not that long ago. There is a more recent contender out now, with very limited dialogue, that tries to emulate TAOJJ, but IMO falls quite short, some say for artistic merit, others may observe it had nothing to say?
This is true in legal writing as well. There has been a concerted push by judges and legal writing advocates for judges and attorneys to shift from legalese to more plain English. Even when conveying complex ideas, folks want to the writing to be as readable as possible. I imagine there’s a similarly desired shift in screenwriting.
The interesting question is (alas, we'll never know) whether movies from, say, 1940s, accurately represented how people spoke those days, or whether the writers were creating a more heightened version of reality, where as nowadays, we tend to go away from "heightened" towards the realistic.
Great question. There will be less reportage footage than we have from our current time but I’m sure there are some studies of how people actually spoke.
Another question is the extent to which people in modern movies speak like we do. Things like never saying goodbye at the end a phone call, or generally sounding much cooler on-screen than in real life. Well, my life, certainly.
These could be two very interesting research strands for you to follow ;) And you’re right, people in movies still sound different. As an actor, I sometimes struggle with what people write in scripts. It always reminds me of Harrison Ford (it was him I think) who said to George Lucas: “You can write this shit, George, but you definitely can’t say it”.
I would generally argue the less dialog a movie has, the better, but that must be relative to screentime. If there are less words used to mean less things but they fill more screentime, that's a fairly strong indicator of poorer script quality.
Well, I just watched Casablanca again the other night, more aware of the sardonic quick wit, and now, since you mention it, longer dialogue sequences, yet still quite entertaining and engaging. One might suggest brilliant. Personally, I marvel at the intellectual dialogue, witty take-downs, and wonderful complex sentences. Bogart just nails it in such a clever way.
Then I am brought to think about a film such as Anora, which won an Academy Award for a screenplay that may have had the most F bombs ever in that award category.
I wonder is the simplistic dialogue more of a reflection of reality TV?
I felt that a film such as Anora was just that, a reality show rolled into a 90-minute sandwich and served lukewarm.
I also reflect on the dialogue in The Assassination of Jesse James, obviously a period piece with poetic, seemingly time-relevant dialogue, but produced in 2007, so not that long ago. There is a more recent contender out now, with very limited dialogue, that tries to emulate TAOJJ, but IMO falls quite short, some say for artistic merit, others may observe it had nothing to say?
This is true in legal writing as well. There has been a concerted push by judges and legal writing advocates for judges and attorneys to shift from legalese to more plain English. Even when conveying complex ideas, folks want to the writing to be as readable as possible. I imagine there’s a similarly desired shift in screenwriting.
Movies have always been both dumbed-down (B-schlock), and elevated (documentary & drama), and the difference isn’t dialogue or genre, it’s craft.