(On TV, July-August 2019) As someone who’s working on a book-length film history organized by decades, I had more than a passing interest in seeing how CNN would approach the topic in its flagship documentary production The Movies. Well, it turns out that they divided the topic in six 90-minute specials: Pre-1960, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000+. The decades are obviously chosen to make CNN’s target audience happy, compressing the earlier and later decades in looser groupings. I was a bit disappointed to see both the 2000s and 2010s lumped together, but that does reflect what I’ve been finding in my own attempt to categorize the decades: The 2000s were a fairly dull period in terms of cinematic evolution, whereas I suspect that the dramatic changes of the 2010s (studios focusing exclusively on spectacles, malleable digital reality, the rise of streaming) do not mesh well with the golden-hued nostalgic atmosphere that CNN aimed for. I’m less critical of the lumping of 1910–1959 together for a broadcast aimed at general audiences — I think it’s a fascinating period and that episode of the show did a really good job at pointing out the stars of the time, but I can see why most viewers wouldn’t care for more. I have more serious issues with the overall structure of the 1960s and 1970s shows — I think that the New Hollywood period and its counter-reaction were not sufficiently highlighted, but that may just be me. This being said, The Movies is not a documentary series with a strong structure: within each episode, we get 2–4 minutes segment meant to illustrate various trends and genres within that period, focus on beloved movies, or talk about specific actors. As you’d expect, almost all of the series’ material is either made of clips from the movies or talking heads footage—sometimes historical—featuring actors, directors, film critics and historians (including Drew McWeeney!) discussing the topics at hand. There is no overriding narration nor much in terms of interstitial material, further contributing to the series’ lack of structure. The series is obviously very proud of the people it managed to interview: Predictably, it often focused on superstar actors (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, etc.) and directors (Spielberg, Howard) — The actors often come across as mere big-name fans with only superficial contributions (unless they’re talking about acting, in which case they have a few interesting insights), while the directors are reliably more interesting. The critics and historians usually do the heavy work of pulling together the material into coherent mini-theses. The excerpts are chosen well and usually hit the high points of the movies that should be discussed in each decade. It amounts to a series that works as intended — I can certainly argue against some choices, but this is meant as a generalist overview of a century of film and as such is rarely boring. The total length of The Movies is roughly nine hours, and as a quick course on Hollywood movies it’s actually not too bad.
