Friday, March 29

The films of journalists, between science fiction and the epic


They really like movies starring an unscrupulous journalist whose management in the shadows manages to bring a story to light. This is due to both the fascination with clever villains and the desire of the public to endorse their suspicious opinion about the lack of morality as the engine of the world. Such characters are the tycoon Kane (Orson Wells) who builds his immense fortune with the tabloid press. A Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas in the great carnival) which restores his prestige as a reporter, which he himself had taken care to destroy, turning the accident in a mine into a circus. A Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) who discovers that he can make a living by being the first to accidents and getting the bloodiest photo. Or the young poet Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin in the lost illusions) who accepts that they buy the meaning of his literary criticism to gain a reputation that allows him to publish his book.

Lou Grant and other fictional journalists who made the job very toxic

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In real life, the journalist spends many hours reading dense reports, making unsuccessful calls or deleting useless emails from his inbox. He works late, can’t get off the weekends and on the 20th of the month he’s already pelao. But with those wickers good movies do not come out. It is more exciting to meet a fountain in a parking lot (All the president’s men), interviewing a convict (this is how Walter tries to stop Hildy from getting married in New Moon) or get the exclusive of the lipstick killer to take over the position of editor of the newspaper (While New York sleeps by Fritz Lang).

“I think there is still no good film that analyzes the profession in our time,” reflects Beatriz Martínez, a journalist for the film magazine Fotogramas. “It would still be too boring, given the degree of precariousness that exists. Of course, I envy those film editors who could spend months working on a case to get an investigative article”, she adds, recalling that the profession lives in a time where “productivity prevails” and “I want it for now”. ”. For this reason, these films seem to him “of science fiction or fantastic genre”.

That cinema of rotaries, burbon and booths

The 1970s are a “glory era” for this subgenre, explains Martínez, as well as the early 1980s, where the plots in which journalism confronts political corruption are especially relevant. “The climate of upheaval and political scandals fed a generation of filmmakers who, through thriller, he knew how to dig into the sewers of the State with combative films, critical of the system and capable of generating reflection”. In that decade, the aforementioned film about Watergate (Alan J. Pakula, 1976), Network, a relentless world on the power of television (Sidney Lumet, 1976), Front page (Billy Wilder, 1974), The reporter (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1976) or, already scratching the eighties, absence of malice (Sydney Pollack, 1981).

“From the earliest times, cinema looked to journalism for its vertigo, dynamism, hectic profession, conflicting passions and ethical dilemmas, as well as for its exceptional social vocation,” explains David Felipe Arranz, professor of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at the Carlos III University of Madrid and author of the book The 100 best films about journalism (Cacitel, 2018). Arranz recalls that the silent cinema premiered the first short on journalism —Charlot journalist (Making a Living) in 1914—, about a swindler who accepts a job as an events reporter, and where not only the rivalry between newspapers is shown, but also the lack of scruples of some journalists. We make a jump in time and give the play to the BBC series Press (2018), which pits the fictional progressive newspaper The Herald against the sensationalist tabloid The Post, whose newsrooms are located in the same London square. Both cover the same information but work, write and title very differently. However, both want the same thing: to have the exclusive.

David Felipe Arranz stops to comment on the aforementioned network as a very relevant film of the genre because “Paddy Chayefsky anticipated many of the evils that television was going to suffer with the arrival of the reality, that were stealing prominence from the information services of CBS”. “It is an impressive film that knew how to see that a journalist from the WXLT-TV channel would end up committing suicide live with a shot to the head at the age of 29, Christine Chubbuck. And Dave Itzhoff in mad as hell has documented that Chayefsky wrote it before the tragedy. Arranz indicates that Bertrand Tavernier later also inquired along this path in death live (1980), “another jewel”.

Journalism students cite movies as vocation activators. Nowadays spot light, the film that portrays how the Boston Globe team led by Martin Baron uncovered sexual abuse in the Massachusetts Catholic Church. It is a good reference because it is a choral film, well documented, where the context of the work is important. Other generations were influenced by fantasy references, archetypes molded with epic, romanticism or the humor of common places, from Lou Grant, Lois Lane or Murphy Brown. Some boys and girls imagined themselves as reporters watching the young British students from the pen gang (Press Gang, 1989) on Spanish Television in the early 1990s.

“I am not a woman, I am a journalist”

It is true that the cinema has been nourished by these commonplaces of journalism. But it is also appreciated that there are films that, far from that, have set out to recognize and dignify journalism that is undoubtedly dangerous. In 2021, 46 journalists have been murdered. 65 were kidnapped. 488, imprisoned. It is the count of Reporters Without Borders. “I think that the audacity and the risks that reporters around the world face in their investigative work have been reflected on the screen in an exemplary way: the powers that be see the fourth estate as a threat,” recalls Arranz. “If it weren’t for the movies, no one would remember that Irish journalist Veronica Guerin was shot dead by drug traffickers on June 26, 1996, as stated in The value of truth (2000); that the press has openly confronted the world of the underworld and the mafia, as it appears in relentless poison (1951), the captive city (1952) or the fourth power (1952); or that thanks to 60 Minutes a group of journalists put the big US tobacco companies on the ropes, as filmed in The dilemma (1999), practically a literal transcription of the case and an extraordinary film. EITHER All the President’s Men (1976), thanks to which we know everything that happened when Nixon’s men entered the offices of the Democratic Party. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman worked at The Washington Post as journalists before and during the shoot – they were steeped in the trade.”

In addition to knowing the film well based on Woodward and Bernstein’s research, citing the four adaptations of the play The Front Page is the rite of passage for fans of the genre. The first was made by Lewis Milestone in 1931 (The front page, A great report). In the second, Howard Hawks changed the gender of one of the journalists to introduce the romance in the script. (New Moon, 1940). In the third, Billy Wilder returned to the male couple again with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in Front page (1974). And in the fourth, Ted Kotcheff takes the plot to a television network in the eighties (interference, 1988). “My reference classic is New Moon”, admits Beatriz Martínez, “in which, through the chaos of the screwball comedy, the viewer is immersed in the maelstrom of a newsroom. In addition, notes were already present in it regarding the way in which the news is treated and its sensationalist aspect”. But let’s return to the character of Hildy, who had already made her appearance a few paragraphs above: “And what about that totemic Rosalind Russell, so modern, moving within a world of men and proving that she is better than all of them. ‘I am not a woman like the others, I am a journalist,’ she said at the end of the film”.

David Felipe Arranz has a favorite sequence to bring to the end of this article, now that the music is beginning to play and the credits are heard after this final paragraph. “One of The dilemma, when Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) desperately tries to gather evidence and deliver dossiers to his colleagues in the press late at night, in the rain, while Jan Garbarek’s saxophone or the voice of Lisa Gerard. All of us who love this profession have felt this way.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ymySEDouSQ



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