When you see certain films, you sense the presence of a director. And to me, that is the crux of defining “cinema”: whether it’s been made by a “director”.
Spoilers ahead…
Given his essays for mainstream publications, Martin Scorsese hasn’t been a happy man for a while. In 2019, in the New York Times, he wrote a lengthy clarification about why he felt the Marvel movies weren’t “cinema”. And now, in an exquisite piece on Federico Fellini in the March issue of Harper’s magazine and “the lost magic of cinema”, he reiterates the point. In talking about Fellini’s films, he talks about what “cinema” is (in his opinion) and what it isn’t.
Read the rest of this article at the link above.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Vikram s
February 23, 2021
BR, such a beautiful way of connecting us to the Scorsese article. His (& your) abiding love for the movies is amply seen in the writing. Reading both makes me want to go back to 8 1/2 and Cabiria and La Dolce Vita…
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MANK
February 23, 2021
“The cinema has always been much more than content, and it always will be…” And that’s what this is about.
Cant put it any better. Sometimes (or all times) content is enough to reach out to a mass audience, as Drishyam films prove, that’s why the idea of films should be cinematic remain an issue only with critics or within filmmakers. There’s also this misunderstanding that being cinematic means being showy or indulging in technical showboating. Anyway, Scorsese is the last of the Mohican. i don’t think we will see a director of his caliber ever again.
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Madan
February 23, 2021
I do appreciate Marty fighting the good fight. But this battle has already been lost in the music biz and will be eventually in cinema too. A professional recording costs money to make and likewise a professionally shot film. Therefore you can never completely divorce market requirements from the art form. Best to think of the 60s and the 70s as a happy accident rather than what should have been. It’s fortunate that the machine allowed for that brief interlude of adventure but it soon relearnt how to get control. And if you look at the so called golden age of cinema or the pre Beatles era of pop music, that was a lot more staid and conservative compared even to today. A residual appreciation of a cinematic point of view still remains. We don’t know for how much longer but at least as enough of us pay for it and like it.
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vijay
February 23, 2021
“Sometimes (or all times) content is enough to reach out to a mass audience,”
sometimes, even content is not needed to reach out to a mass audience, look at most Ajith/Vijay films
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brangan
March 6, 2021
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