Ready For My Close-up? Awww, Forget It!

The new generation of movies has abandoned the close-up. “This trend towards wide shots is in part explained by the landmark technological changes which cinema is undergoing. Those who doubt that the digital revolution is significant should consider the fact that the two previous occasions on which film “went wide” and turned to stories set in classical times were the 1950s – after the switch to the various widescreen processes such as CinemaScope – and the very first decades of filmmaking, when audiences were still agog and directors such as Cecil B DeMille presented frieze-like tableaux of classical excess. Both were formative moments, and so is the present one. In each of these three periods, producers and directors who were faced with a new technology fell back on primitive, likeable, pre-cinematic ideas of showmanship.”